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Title: Court Life From Within
Author: Spain, Eulalia Infanta of
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Court Life From Within" ***
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[Illustration: H. R. H., THE INFANTA EULALIA
Photograph by Henrie Manuel, Paris]
COURT LIFE
FROM WITHIN
BY
H. R. H.
THE INFANTA EULALIA
OF SPAIN
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things,
“Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax,
“Of cabbages and kings.”
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1913, 1914
BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY THE CENTURY CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1915
BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE SEEDS OF REVOLT 1
II IRKSOME DUTIES OF A PRINCESS 22
III PULLING THE STRINGS OF SOVEREIGNTY 43
IV LOVE AND ENNUI 63
V MY MARRIAGE--IN MOURNING 85
VI ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 106
VII THE KAISER AND HIS COURT 134
VIII THE TSAR AND HIS PEOPLE 157
IX THE REGAL POSE 181
X THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES 190
XI THE COURTS OF ITALY 213
XII ADVENTURES IN AMERICA 222
XIII AFTER THE WAR 242
ILLUSTRATIONS
H. R. H. The Infanta Eulalia of Spain _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The King’s Study in Escurial 26
Gardens of the Alcazar, Seville 38
Royal Palace, Madrid 50
The Infanta Eulalia 72
Alfonso XIII of Spain 96
Dowager Queen Alexandra of England, Queen Maud
of Norway and Prince Olaf, Crown Prince of
Norway 108
King George V, the Late King Edward VII and the
Prince of Wales 120
Infanta Eulalia on Horseback 138
German Emperor in Austrian Uniform 148
Nicholas II and the Heir of Russia 164
King Albert of Belgium 186
King Haakon of Norway 198
Infanta Eulalia at Window of Her Apartments 218
INTRODUCTION
I have endeavoured in these pages to present a true picture of Court
life. It is a life hedged about by many restrictions; to me a great deal
of it all was empty and meaningless.
I say nothing of those who are actively engaged in the duties of
rulership; but to the other members of Royal families, life is little
more than a round of useless ceremonies, from which a mind with any
pretence to independence flies in relief--does opportunity offer. I have
left behind me the life of Courts and palaces. But for many years, in my
own youth, and while my sons were growing up into manhood, I fulfilled
my part as a Princess of Spain, after my marriage visiting practically
all the Courts of Europe. I have written here of these visits and of my
impressions of the rulers of Europe, and, while I hope there is much in
this book of kindliness and sympathy, yet I have considered truth to be
the first essential in these recollections.
I am democratic in my sympathies, and consider the day has gone by when
Royalty should live behind closed blinds. The world, as I see it, is
peopled by one big family. We are all brothers and sisters; let us know
one another better.
Paris, 1915.
COURT LIFE FROM WITHIN
CHAPTER I
THE SEEDS OF REVOLT
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things,
“Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax,
“Of cabbages and kings.”
_Alice in Wonderland._
Once, when I was making an official visit to the South of Spain with my
brother (who was then King), we were told of a gentleman of the Province
of Sevilla who had had a talking parrot sent to him from South America;
and this parrot had been taught to say “_Viva la Reina!_”--that is,
“Long live the Queen!” But soon after its arrival in Sevilla there was a
revolution, and Spain became a republic; and it was not at all
comfortable for the gentleman to have a parrot screaming “Long live the
Queen!” So he shut it up in a room in his house and set himself to teach
it to cry “_Viva la Republica!_”--“Long live the Republic!” It was a
very intelligent parrot, and he easily taught it to say “_Viva la
Republica!_”; but it had a tenacious memory, and it took him a long
time before he could be sure that it would always say “_Viva la
Republica!_” and never forget its change of politics and cry out,
inopportunely, in a voice to be heard by the neighbours, “_Viva la
Reina!_” Then there was another revolution, and Spain became a monarchy
again, and every one shouted “_Viva el Rey!_”--“Long live the King!” And
the gentleman carried his parrot back to the closed room, and after many
days spent in trying to teach it to cry “_Viva el Rey!_” he wrung its
neck.
It was a very valuable parrot, and most intelligent, but it was not
sufficiently facile to take a speaking part in Spanish politics in those
days.
I have remembered this sad story of the parrot because the events of its
life were so important to my own. The Queen whom it first supported was
my mother, Isabella II. The King on whose account it lost its life was
my brother, Alfonso XII. And the Republic (which lasted from 1868 to
1874) was the one that made it possible for me to escape, at least
mentally and spiritually, from the prison--very gilded, very luxurious,
but more guarded than a Bastille--in which Royalty is compelled to
live. Such an escape, I think, is more difficult than any of Baron
Trenck’s. It is one that leaves, as you might say, the impediment of
fetters on the mind, even when the body has gone free. And I have long
been curious to consider what it was in me that made me struggle out of
this splendid confinement, in which one is so envied and so many are so
content.
When the revolution of ’68 first disturbed my life--and the parrot’s--I
was too young to know it. The intelligence was still unformed, the body
infantile. But both the body and the mind had been born of a race so old
and in traditions so established that it would seem no revolution could
affect them. For many hundreds of years a few families of human beings
had been inheriting the thrones of Europe, generation after generation,
as families inherit property, from parents to children, by the consent
of society and under the protection of law. They were by birth “Royal,”
as persons may be, in democracies, by birth wealthy. And they were born
to rule as unquestionably as the children of the poor to-day are born to
poverty. They were spoken of as “Blood Royal,” as if they were of
special flesh, and they intermarried only with Blood Royal, because the
people whom they governed demanded children of this special flesh to sit
on the thrones of their countries. A king here or a queen there might
lose a crown by bad management, or misfortune, or the ill-will of
subjects, as a man might lose an inherited estate by similar causes; but
he could not lose his place among the families of Royalty (with whom he
and his children had intermarried) nor the honours of Courts and the
respect of peoples who still obeyed members of the ruling families into
which he had been born. So, since I had been born into one of these
families--the Bourbon--the essentials of my life were as little changed
by the revolution of ’68 as the parrot’s were. We both remained in our
cages.
My mother, leaving Spain, came to Paris, to live in the Palais de
Castile with her children, a Queen in exile, but still a Queen; Napoleon
III. extended the hospitality of the nation to her; and she continued to
move among ceremonies and Court functions after the manner royal.
Of all this I recall almost nothing. I have a vague memory of Napoleon
III. making us a visit, and I remember that the young Prince Napoleon
came to play with my brother and my sisters, who were older than I. I
can recall our flight from Paris, when it was about to be besieged by
the Prussians, for I was ill with measles and I was carried downstairs
wrapped in a blanket, and I saw, somewhere on our journey to Normandy,
German soldiers with helmets as our carriage passed them. But these are
recollections of the eyes alone; they mean nothing.
My first clear consciousness of myself I cannot place. It pictures me in
rebellion against wearing the earrings for which my ears had been
pierced soon after my birth, so that I might be decorated with the
jewels that were part of the regalia in which a Princess of Spain was
expected to appear, even as an infant. I do not know why I
rebelled--unless it was because the earrings interfered with the bodily
activity that was irrepressible in me. I was very healthy, very strong.
I wished to play outdoors, where I could run; I chafed at the restraint
of our formal living; and I think it was this revolt of the body that
became a revolt of the mind as soon as I developed a mind.
Conceive that we children had no playroom in the Palais. We had to
amuse ourselves in a decorous sitting-room, quietly. And we were never
allowed to be alone. We were always under the eyes of some Spanish
lady-in-waiting who guarded and repressed us. When we were taken for a
walk in the Bois, we were accompanied by ladies who prevented us from
playing with the children we met. At home some one always sat and
observed what we were doing. At night some one watched and slept in the
bedroom with us. Whatever we did there were eyes on us. It is true that
until after I was married I was scarcely left alone for a moment to sit
by myself in a room. That seems to me very sad.
I am sad, too, when I remember this: there was a courtyard in the Palais
that had in it a stone pool of water a little larger than a round tub;
and it was an escapade for me to get down into the court and play in
that pool. In summer I got fish and put them in it, and pretended that I
was fishing. In winter I skated on it, although I could scarcely make
two strokes without bumping into its sides. There was not a child in
Paris so poor that he would not have laughed at such a playground; but
to me it was liberty. One’s childhood, at least, might be more free
than that.
Not that my childhood was pathetic. On the contrary, I was very robust,
and instead of succumbing to repression I reacted against it. All my
earliest recollections find me engaged in an incessant struggle for
merely physical freedom and the enjoyment of sunlight and open air. I
would not sit and play with dolls. I could not be entertained with the
Spanish stories of witches that correspond to the fairy-tales of the
North. I was not an imaginative child, and I did not care for pets. I
had found a boy in the Palais--the son of one of the maids of a
lady-in-waiting--and I ran away, whenever I could, to romp in the court
with him. When my brother was home from school, _he_ was my playmate,
although he was seven years older than I. I liked him because I could
fight with him--real fisticuffs--and be rough. We played a sort of
football in the court together, and my mother used to say that she had
two sons.
Once when we were at Houlgate, in Normandy--where we had a summer villa
by the seashore--I decided to run away from home because I had been
prevented from playing with children on the beach. After dark, when no
one could see me, I set out, without knowing where I should go, all
alone, determined never to come back. I had no plan. I did not even
understand that food and lodgings had to be paid for and worked for in
the world. I walked along the country road in the dark, quite happy
because I was walking, but puzzled because when I began to tire I did
not know where to stop. So when I came to the farm of an old woman from
whom we had bought apples, I turned in, naturally, to get an apple,
without telling her that I had run away.
I was overtaken there. The lady-in-waiting--who was very shrewd--as soon
as she missed me, found out from my sister that I had threatened to run
away, and she guessed that I would go to the apple-woman’s farm, since
it was the only place near by where I had ever been. They brought me
back home, but they had all been frightened, and I began to get my own
way. For example, there was always a maid sleeping in our room at night,
and I did not wish it--as much, perhaps, because she snored as because I
wanted our bedroom for ourselves. When they insisted that the maid must
be there, I dragged my bed into the corridor every night, until they
gave me a room to myself in which I could at least sleep without being
guarded. I would not wear tight clothes, and I put my hands down inside
my waist-band when they were dressing me, so that they could not fasten
tight things on me; and in this way I avoided many tiresome affairs of
ceremony, which I disliked.
These are very trivial matters to recall, but consider that it is one of
the chief pleasures of most royal persons to dress themselves in costume
and play the parts of resplendent figure-heads that have never been
allowed to think, or see, or know anything for themselves. The small
restraints against which a healthy body made me struggle in infancy were
the attempted beginnings of those impassable walls of isolation and
ignorance and inexperience from which, in later years, I should never
have escaped.
When my sisters and I were sent as day-scholars to the convent of the
Sacré Cœur, my real escape began. We wore the dark blue uniforms of the
school, as all the girls did, and we were treated exactly as the others
were. We studied in the common classrooms and played with our
class-mates at the recreation hour in the convent grounds. How can I
tell how eagerly I went to school in the mornings with the governess who
took us through the streets? Or how happily tired I came home at night
after all the study and play and little incidents of the class-room that
had filled the day? I would be so tired that I would fall asleep at the
formal dinner that was served for my mother and her guests of honour in
the evening; and the servants would have to carry me to bed. But I would
be awake next morning very early, before any one else in the Palais, in
haste to be off again to school.
If we had remained in Spain I should never have been allowed such
freedom. They would have brought tutors and governesses to teach us in
the palace. I should never have been allowed school companions like
those we had in Paris. It was for this that I have to thank the
revolution.
I have one recollection of these days that is quaint. My sister had come
to school wearing earrings; and a nun, telling her that earrings were
forbidden in the convent, attempted to take them off. In freeing one she
tore my sister’s ear accidentally, so that it bled, and I was very angry
and I wanted to strike the nun. When we spoke of this at home to a
lady-in-waiting, she reproved me, saying that it would be “a double sin”
to strike a nun. I replied that I would not strike any one except to
give back as good as I got. “Well,” she said, “you will never have to
strike any one, for no one can strike you.” “Why not?” She answered,
because I was “a royalty.” “Then,” I said to myself, “as long as I live
I shall never have a good fight!” And this made me so sad that I
remember it yet, with a sort of sinking, as one remembers something
irreparable that made a great difference to one’s outlook on life.
My mind, by this time, had become as active as my body, and I was very
curious and full of questions. The Spanish ladies-in-waiting who formed
our household were quite ignorant. Many of them could not read or write,
and they could teach us nothing but old wives’ tales and silly
superstitions. I had learned to read very young but I could not get
books of the sort I needed. Outside of our school-books we had little
but “The Lives of the Saints,” which was read to us every day--the life
of the saint on the day dedicated to that saint--as the Bible is read in
pious families of Protestants. I remember that I had “Robinson Crusoe”
in French, and some books of Jules Verne, that were welcome because they
told of travels and adventures in the world of which I wished to know.
Otherwise our books were all religious; and I had found that I could not
ask questions about religion.
For instance, a nun at the convent, giving us religious instruction in
the mysteries of the creation, had said that the world must have been
created because nothing could exist without a creator; and when I
interrupted her to ask, childishly, who, then, had created the Creator,
she replied that it was a mystery beyond our human comprehension. I
asked her who had told her about it, and she was very angry, and
punished me by making me copy out pages of Racine’s poems during the
recreation hour. This method of teaching religion was not successful
with me, because--not being an imaginative child--I was sceptical of
anything that could be explained to me. And, being contemptuous of the
ladies-in-waiting, who were very religious in an ignorant way, I became
contemptuous of the superstitions which their ignorance had added to
their faith.
They carried about with them great numbers of metal images of saints,
blessed medals, and relics in little lockets, which they kissed and
believed in as potent against all sorts of diseases and misfortunes.
They had large pockets for the purpose under their skirts; and my
sisters and I had the same kind of pockets, filled with the same things.
It was not long before I had emptied mine to make room for the cakes
which I used to smuggle from the table to eat at school, where our food
was rather scanty. For such irreverences as this, and for laughing at
incidents in the lives of the saints which amused me when they were read
to us, I became rather a scandal to our household, and they would say to
me, “You are only fit for America! You ought to be sent to
America!”--since America was regarded as a barbarous place where the
manners were bad. And so I came to think that if I could only take a
ship and go to America I should be really happy.
The nuns were very sweet and gentle with me, but I would have liked them
better if they had been rough. There was something in me that distrusted
suavity and desired brusqueness. I was not sensitive about harsh
contacts, and I did not fear or resent punishment. Consequently, I not
only imposed myself on my sisters, who were less robust than I, but
upon my teachers, who could not control my spirit. Mirrors being
forbidden in the convent, I put sheets of paper behind the panes of
glass in the doors, and dragged the girls to them to look at themselves.
And this seemed an ingenious perversity that staggered the nuns.
My two sisters having gone through their preparation for First
Communion, my mother took them to Rome to receive the sacrament from the
hands of the Pope. She took me, too; and, although I had not been
prepared, the Pope gave me communion at the same time, saying that I was
a “little angel,” because I had fair hair and blue eyes. When I returned
to the convent and the nuns heard that I had received communion without
the preparation, they were outraged. “Well, then,” I said, “isn’t your
Pope infallible?” And this shocked and silenced them. Altogether,
although I lost many recreation hours by having to do “impositions” as
punishment for small rebellions, school failed to subdue me, and I kept
a wilful freedom of mind.
I had heard from the gossip of the household that my mother--who had no
knowledge of the value of money--was spending so extravagantly that we
should soon have nothing to live on. And this delighted me. I used to
picture myself working hard to earn--perhaps by teaching languages or
painting, of which I was very fond--and the joy of the thought was
intense. My eldest sister suffered from headaches in school; she used to
be sent often to the infirmary; and I would ask permission to go up to
her and sit by her bedside, and tell her wonderful stories of my dreams
for our future when we should be fighting for life.
It seemed to me the happiest, the most exciting thing, to be in such a
struggle, among people who had to work and make their way, always busy
and interested in something, and never shut up in idleness to be bored.
No Cinderella ever invented for herself stories of rescue by Prince
Charming with more longing than I looked forward to my escape from the
sort of life with which Cinderella was rewarded. And I still think that
I was wiser than she.
My grandmother, Queen Maria Cristina--the widow of Ferdinand VII. of
Spain--was living in retirement in Normandy; she had lost her throne by
marrying a Spanish officer of her escort; and she would tell me that
she had never been so happy in Courts--never as happy as since she had
been exiled with the man she loved. We went to visit her very often
during our summers--a very clever old lady with a mind of her own--and I
liked her the best of all my relatives.
Her story of her marriage with the officer (which she told me herself)
made a deep impression on me. She had been on a journey through the
mountains near Madrid, and the altitude had given her a bleeding at the
nose. The ladies-in-waiting had given her their handkerchiefs, and she
had used all her own, but the bleeding still continued, and she turned
to the officer of her escort riding beside her carriage and asked him
for his handkerchief. She did not know him; she had never spoken to him
before; but she was in such distress that when he gave her his
handkerchief she passed all the others to him without knowing what she
was doing. He kissed them and put them in his breast. Then the ladies
said to themselves, “Ah, the poor officer! Now he will be sent away to
Cuba or the Philippines!” And they were sorry for him, because he was a
very handsome man and very well liked.
Next morning he was summoned to a private audience with the Queen, and
the ladies said, “The poor man! Why did he do it? What a mistake!” But
when he came away from the audience he was not depressed, and it was
understood that the Queen had reprimanded and forgiven him. He continued
in attendance on her as an officer of the household, and it was not
suspected until long afterwards that they had been secretly married. It
seems incredible, but the Queen had several children by this marriage
without it being known even to Court circles. She once opened Parliament
a few hours after the birth of a child, going to the ceremony in a
carriage, very weak, but determined to show herself to the people
because a rumour of the birth had been circulated by her enemies. She
was a woman of unconquerable will. When the truth of the marriage could
no longer be concealed, and the people revolted, she left Spain with her
husband, and was very happy, living near Havre with him and their
children. She was a real grandmother to me, and my visits to her were
always a delight.
My father, who was the Infante Francisco, my mother’s first cousin, had
been married to her for reasons of State; they had separated after the
revolution; and he lived near us in Paris, or at Epinay, in an
establishment of his own, where we children sometimes went to see him.
He was a small, grey man, very silent, very formal, fond of books and
solitude, and contented to be out of politics and affairs of Courts.
There had been no sentiment in his marriage to my mother, and there was
none in his relations with us children. My mother, too, was more a queen
to us than a mother; and, as a girl, I knew nothing of the parental
affections of a home. I think that may have been partly because my
parents were quite old when I was born to them, so that the years
separated us. But also it is one of the penalties of Royalty that their
life cannot be intimate and fond.
My great devotion was for my brother, whom I was like. He was never
religious in a superstitious way, and he was very lively and athletic
and fond of sports, so that we played congenially. He was a clever
student, and helped me with my school work. And he was talkative with
me, and told me about his life at school, as I chattered to him about
mine. But he went away to college in Vienna when I was very young, and
then to a military college in England, and I saw him only in his
holidays.
That, then, was the sort of childhood one had in the Palais de Castile.
I saw the comings and goings of politicians and personages from Spain
without paying any attention to them and without knowing what they were
about; for I spoke French and but little Spanish. With my mother, who
spoke almost no French, we talked with difficulty in a mixture of both
languages. We scarcely saw her except at dinner in the evening among her
foreign guests, or on Sunday when we went to chapel in the Palais; and
we children made our own lives among ourselves, apart from the affairs
of our elders. I had achieved a certain independence of mind, although
no independence of action was possible to me. I had escaped the
narrowing influences of our life, but no broadening influences reached
me. I had to make my own mental growth without the aid of liberal books
or the culture that one gets from informing conversation. I often wonder
what would have become of me if another revolution had not returned us
to Spain.
I was about eleven years of age when it happened. And it came like a
bomb. I had not thought of it. I was expecting that, when I finished
school, I should have a life like other girls; and I was bewildered when
my mother summoned us to her room one morning and told us that my
brother Alfonso had been proclaimed King of Spain. I could see from her
manner that it was to her a happy event that would make a great
difference to us, but I did not realise how it would be. It was as if
some one should tell a little girl of a great inheritance that was to
make her very wealthy, when she did not understand what money could buy.
The first signs of the change came immediately from the nuns at the
convent, who treated us more formally than before. And we learned from
the girls that they had been told to be different with us, but, of
course, they did not succeed. They came to us much excited and curious
to know how we felt; and I could see that they were disappointed because
we did not feel as delighted as they supposed. Then a great many people
began to come to the Palais--Spanish personages, Republicans who had
never visited us before, and men who, I learned, had been concerned in
my mother’s exile. And it puzzled me to see that she received them all
as if they had always been as friendly as they now appeared.
Like most children, I was not forgiving; I had not learned to tolerate
the disloyalties to which life accustoms one; and I was disgusted by the
cheerful falseness of the self-interest that brought these people about
us. I began to look cynically at the show of devoted deference that
makes the peculiar atmosphere of a Court. And then I forgot everything
in the announcement that we were to join my brother in Spain--my dear
brother, whom I thought of as a playmate, not as a king. I had missed
him so much. I believed that I should always be happy now, since we were
to be together.
CHAPTER II
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.
CHAPTER III
PULLING THE STRINGS OF SOVEREIGNTY
If our fortunes had carried us directly from Paris to stay with my
brother in the palace of Madrid, perhaps I should have found myself
still caged there. But freedom is only by comparison; and, after my
unhappiness in the Alcazar, it seemed to me now as if my life had really
been given wings. Our arrival was almost private; the people in the
streets, accustomed to the sight of royalty, did not make a great to-do
about us (for it is chiefly curiosity that draws crowds, I find, even to
see kings!), and the one thing that looked like a public decoration in
our honour was the washing, which it is the custom in Madrid to hang
from the street windows to dry. It was an embarrassing decoration,
because the articles were, as one might say, very intimate. They made a
joke for us.
We arrived in high spirits at the royal palace, and I was glad to find
it not only gorgeous, but most comfortable. It had been built by Charles
III.--as everything in Madrid seems to have been built--but my brother
had had it modernised with those conveniences of heating and plumbing
which our antique splendour had hitherto done without in Spain. He had
allotted a whole wing to us three Infantas (my sister Pilar, my sister
Paz, and I), and we each had our own maids and servants from Sevilla, so
that we made quite a household. He had installed in another wing my
sister the Infanta Isabel, whom I hardly knew, because she had not been
with us in France during the revolution. She was to take our mother’s
place towards us. She had been married at sixteen to a prince of Naples;
she had lived all her life among the forms and traditions of royalty,
and she was genuinely devoted to their maintenance. I should have been
afraid for my new liberty if I had not foreseen that her direction over
us would be tempered by my brother’s indulgence. I knew that he had as
much impatience as I for what we called, jocularly, between ourselves,
the “singeries” (monkey tricks) of royalty. And so I began, with great
expectations, what proved to be the happiest period of my life.
I was able to rise early, because my brother was always up at half-past
seven, to ride in the Casa Campo for an hour, and I rode horseback with
him--to my great joy. Then, at nine, we girls had our lessons while he
met his Ministers. Early rising is not a Spanish habit. My mother, when
she was Queen, had met her Ministers after the theatre, at midnight, and
worked with them more in the nighttime than during the day. And my
brother’s Ministers had protested against his nine o’clock Cabinet
meetings; but he had won them to it with the smiling and tactful
determination that always secured him his own way.
At midday we lunched with him, the whole household together, a score at
table, with ladies and gentlemen-in-waiting, officers, and
aides-de-camp; but, on account of the presence of the latter,
conversation was always formal. It was different on the afternoon
drives. Then we were alone, for he drove himself, and I sat beside him;
there were just the two servants on the rear seat, and no one to
overhear us. Best of all were the visits I paid him in his apartments,
where it was not considered necessary that I should be followed by a
lady-in-waiting, since I was under the protection of the King. The
guards only took me across the public gallery in the centre of the
palace--a soldier on each side of me and an officer in front, because in
this gallery some attempts had been made to kill my mother when she was
Queen--and the ushers, who led me down the halls, left me when I entered
my brother’s antechamber. He had collected a large library for his own
use, and he made me free of it on condition that I should not tell any
one. At last I had books! And more than I could read.
What adventures! I was most eager for history and philosophy, because my
mind had been denied access to facts, and I read all that I could find,
indiscriminately. It was probably my brother who directed me to Kant,
his own education having been chiefly German, in Vienna. But my personal
favourite among the philosophers was Emerson. I suppose it was his
sturdy doctrine of self-reliance that appealed to me--his insisting that
nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of one’s own mind--and,
although I have not read him for years, I still remember him with the
glow of my pleasure in his words. For poetry I had no appetite. French
poetry seemed to me very light, without ideas. And fiction, English
fiction particularly, to which my sisters were devoted, interested me
but little. I wanted things to be true. I could not read Balzac; I do
not know why.
With Shakespeare I had an odd experience. We studied him with our
governess to perfect our English, and of course I realised that his
verse was beautiful; but when his kings and queens spoke their lines
they seemed to me to be playing parts that had been written to make fun
of the claims of Royalty. My governess was indignant when I told her
that. She said it was not true; that the speeches were meant to be taken
seriously. “But no!” I would cry. “Don’t you see? Shakespeare is making
fun of us. He knew we were not so, but he could not tell it in those
days. He is laughing at us. He knew it was absurd.”
And when we read _Hamlet_ I argued with her: “There! He has made a mad
prince who talks foolishness. If he had respected Royalty as much as you
say, he would not have written it. If you have an idiot in your family,
you do not let people see him. No; he is laughing at his pompous
kings.” And my governess scolded in vain. I still feel the same about
Shakespeare’s Royalties.
Outside of my books I began to be most interested to understand the
conditions in Spain itself. Why had there been a revolution? And why had
my brother been called to the throne? I was told that my mother’s rule
had been too “clerical”--that the priests had had too much power--and
that when the Republicans had failed to provide a stable Government my
brother had been welcomed as a liberal King. But the story of the way in
which he came to be proclaimed seemed to contradict this reasonable
explanation.
The ladies of the Court, it appeared, had merely given money to soldiers
in the army to cry “_Viva el Rey Alfonso!_” when General Martinez Campos
called out to them one morning, “_Viva el Rey!_” General Campos had then
telegraphed to my brother that the army had proclaimed him King. My
brother admitted to me that he had received the telegram as an
invitation to an adventure, and, being fond of adventures, he had
accepted it.
He rode into Madrid, a boy of seventeen, on a spirited horse, followed
by the general and his officers. The horse, excited by the crowds,
pranced and curveted; the crowd cheered his riding, and the more they
cheered the more he made the animal caper. Every one admired him. He
had--what is a valuable asset for a King--a very winning smile, and he
smiled and rode his way into the hearts of the people. From the palace
he announced to the Parliament that he had been proclaimed King, and the
Parliament accepted him on behalf of the country. The only opposition
came from the Carlist rebellion, led by Don Carlos, a rival claimant to
the throne. My brother went at once to the war, and the rebellion was
put down. General Campos and his family were rewarded with lands and
titles, and my brother remained securely on the throne.
I thought it was a strange thing that a King could be made in Spain on
the strength of a shout from a few soldiers; but it was the only
explanation that any one could give me. When my mother had been
dethroned, the Republicans had first chosen as King a Prince Amadeo of
Savoy, son of Victor Emmanuel. But after a brief reign Amadeo resigned
the crown and left the country. He told me himself that he had never
found out why the throne had been offered to him, nor why his rule had
been rejected. It was all a mystery to him.
Similarly, I found that the way in which my mother herself had come to
the succession was as peculiar as all the rest. When her father,
Ferdinand VII. was taken with his final illness, there was a Salic Law
in Spain by which his brother Carlos would be his heir and successor.
But an old enmity existed between Don Carlos and my mother’s aunt, the
Infanta Luisa Carlota. She had said to him, “You’ll never reign.” And he
had laughed at her. But when the King was plainly dying of paralysis,
she put before him a paper that she had prepared, abolishing the Salic
Law; and, placing a pen in his hand, she took hold of his fingers and
began to sign his name to the decree. The Prime Minister, Calomarde,
seeing what she was doing, put his hand over hers to stop her. She
stopped long enough to strike him a blow on the head that dazed him.
When he recovered himself the document had been signed and King
Ferdinand was dead. Calomarde bowed gallantly and said to her, in the
words of a Spanish proverb, “A fair hand can do no wrong.” She
[Illustration: ROYAL PALACE, MADRID]
replied, “No; but it can strike, eh?” And the law against the succession
of a woman having been thus repealed, my mother came to the throne, an
infant, under the regency of her mother, Queen Maria Cristina, and
protected by her aunt. Don Carlos made war upon her, but he was
unsuccessful.
This story my mother told me herself. I was puzzled to know why no one
but Don Carlos had objected to such a manner of changing the succession.
I got no explanation. Like the proclaiming of my brother and the summons
to King Amadeo to rule, it was a mystery. Did it all mean, then, that no
one but the Royal claimants cared who was King in Spain? Was it that the
apparent Government in Spain, as in most countries, was not the real
Government, and that the actual rulers of the country did not worry
about who was in power in Madrid, since the power was impotent?
I found in talking with my brother that he was very interested in his
work and the problems of government--but puzzled to know how to do
anything to help the people--and saddened by conditions that he could
not improve. He used to say, “I do not understand this country yet, but
I shall find a way to do something with it after I have reigned over it
a little longer.” He had no faith in the politicians, and when one party
lost office and another came to authority, and I asked him if this would
improve matters, he replied: “No. It makes no difference. They are the
same dog with different collars.”
He was apparently very popular, and no one openly opposed him; but one
could see that much of the common show of loyalty was a pleasant
make-believe, designed to flatter. Once when we were visiting a town
together, driving in a carriage with the mayor, the boys in the street
kept screaming “_Viva el Rey!_” so shrilly that my brother, who was
trying to talk with the mayor, could not make himself heard. “It is too
bad,” he said to the mayor. “They scream so loudly that I cannot talk
with you as I wish.” The mayor replied, with simplicity, “Ah, your
Majesty, if I had known that you would wish to talk with me, I would not
have paid them so much.” And thereafter, whenever I saw a people very
enthusiastic in welcoming a king, I wondered how much they were being
paid.
At another time my sisters and I were making an excursion in the
mountains, and we were accompanied by a mayor who had provided us with
the donkeys on which we rode. Whenever we came to a village, the
children first, and then the older people would come out and cheer us.
And they cheered us by name. “See!” the mayor would say. “See how
popular you are! They know you all.” As there were four of us, and we
had never been in the district before, we were astonished and very much
flattered! And the mayor beamed. At every village it was the same.
“_Viva la Infanta Isabel! Viva la Infanta Pilar! Viva la Infanta Paz!
Viva la Infanta Eulalia!_”--each as we came. And the mayor, delighted
and smiling and bowing, kept repeating: “But see! It is really
wonderful! You are all known. You are so popular!”
After a time I wished to try my sister Pilar’s donkey, and I asked her
to change with me. The mayor objected. No, no; I must not do it. It
would not be right. “What?” I said. “Is it forbidden by Spanish
etiquette that I ride my sister’s donkey?” And I insisted. Then the
mayor, seeing that I was determined, explained, in angry confusion that
we could not change donkeys because our names had been clipped on their
tails, so that the people might know who we were! And at the next
village I watched the boys come behind us and read our names on the
donkeys’ tails before they set up their shouting!
I thought it very clever--though such a joke on us--and I soon found
that it was typically Spanish. They were very ingenious at playing such
little tricks of deception. One of the oddest happened when we were
making an official visit to another town, and driving again with another
mayor. As we proceeded slowly through a crowded street, suddenly a boy
ran into the roadway and dived between the wheels of our carriage. We
were afraid that he would be killed, and we shouted to the driver, who
pulled up his horses. The boy crawled out between the opposite wheels
and ran away, but before we could start on again another boy did the
same thing. This alarmed me so--with the fear of running over some
one--that I wanted to stop altogether. How could one drive through a
town where the children did such mad things? I would not go. The mayor
assured me that it would not occur again, but I refused to believe him.
How did he know? If these two boys would do it, why not others? Finally,
to calm me, he admitted that he had hired these two boys to throw
themselves under our wheels. But why? Because we were in front of his
house, and his wife and family had wished to have a good look at us, and
he had devised this charming plan to stop the carriage under their
windows.
With a people whose simpler citizens are capable of such subterfuges,
you may believe it was not easy to discover the truth of what was going
on in the intricacies of Government. The truth, as far as I was ever
able to discover it, was this.
In Spain there was an elaborate system of what is called “bossism” in
the United States of America. But in Spain it had been carried to its
final perfection. In every small community there was some wealthy person
who controlled the machinery of public administration. He chose the
persons who were to fill the elective offices, and the election returns
were changed or manufactured to certify the election of his creatures.
In office, then, these men obeyed his orders. Taxes were levied, the
laws were administered, and justice was dealt out, as he directed, for
the benefit and protection of himself and his friends. All the
officials, ostensibly appointed or elected to represent the people and
carry out the popular will, represented only the “cacique” (as he is
called) and obeyed only him.
Over the smaller caciques were bigger caciques, with more power and a
larger following, just as, in the United States, over the boss of a city
there is a state boss. But in Spain the people had become quite unable
to free themselves, and there was an absolute administration of the
functions of Government for the benefit of the office-holders and the
wealthy men who put them into office.
A change of the party in power at Madrid made no difference. They were,
as my brother said, “the same dog with different collars.” They all
obeyed the caciques.
As in America, all indirect taxes fell most heavily on those least able
to bear them. The rents, the cost of living, the necessities of life
were high; wages were low. No poor person ever dared to go to law. There
is a Spanish proverb that “Lent and prisons are made for the poor.”
Money ruled, and ruled everything.
Along with this rule of money went a rule of the priests. Spain had been
for centuries the outpost of Christianity in the war with
Mohammedanism. In the age-long struggle against the Moors the Church
became the symbol of national freedom to all Spaniards; their faith and
their freedom were both threatened, and they fought for both together.
The wars for the possession of America kept the same aspect of religious
wars, because they were waged against a Protestant nation; and down
almost to modern times the Government and the Church were such partners
in being that it was impossible they should separate.
Now, with peace and commercial development, the problems of Government
had become wholly political, and the priests were as busy in politics as
were the caciques. The State not only maintained all the churches and
buildings of the religious orders, but paid salaries to the priests and
the monks and the nuns. They were all, in this respect, officials of the
administration, drawing money from the public revenues, so that they
conspicuously benefited by the plundering of the people. Therefore,
whenever discontent with the Government gathered head in rebellion, it
was inevitably an “anti-clerical” revolt, even though it had no concern
whatever with religion. That was not only very unfortunate for the
State, since it made reformation difficult by making it seem
anti-religious; it was also very unfortunate for the Church, since it
directed popular dissatisfaction against the priests instead of against
the misgovernment.
So the people of Spain, although they were almost as free to vote at
elections as the people of the United States, had really no voice at all
in their own government. When they revolted they made a useless
“anti-clerical” revolt that took them nowhere, because they got involved
in a quarrel about religion and the burning of churches. When a Republic
was declared, with the aid of the army--which was Republican because the
aristocracy did not even serve as officers--the system of misgovernment
continued under a new name.
It made no difference to the caciques whether there was a King or a
Republic; _they_ ruled. If the army proclaimed my brother King, the
Parliament, for the caciques, accepted him in the name of the people. It
did not matter; he was powerless, simply because he could only act
through the officials of the State who were largely responsible for the
conditions. I think the caciques would rather have a king than a
Republic, because the throne could be made a scapegoat in case of
revolt. And, though jealous of the influence of the priests with the
people, they were always in partnership with that influence to protect
themselves.
I write this explanation here as if it were something that I and my
brother and everybody else understood. As a matter of fact, we none of
us understood it. How should we? We were strangers to the country. There
was a Chinese wall around us, to keep us from learning anything that the
administration did not wish us to know. My brother was very young--at
this time only nineteen. (It is significant how the Government of Spain
prefers young sovereigns.) And the poor people of Spain, who might have
told us if they had not been dumb, did not even know themselves what was
wrong.
My brother worked very hard, trying to oversee those departments of the
Government that were most easily watched, such as the army and the navy.
He did not trust to official reports, but went himself to see if the
reports were accurate. It was on such visits that we had our adventures
with the mayors.
Once when we were out driving, he said: “Let us go to the French
hospital. I must inspect it. We will go without warning, so that they
will not be able to prepare appearances for me.” So we drove to the
hospital, and when we entered and it was seen that the King had arrived
a man who had been paralysed for years was so startled that he got to
his feet and walked. A miracle! And I thought if it had happened a few
centuries earlier it might have made my brother a saint. Who knows? I
might have had a little shrine myself.
He gave audiences every afternoon to whatever persons wished to see him,
whether to present petitions, or merely to pay their respects, or what
not. And his patience with everybody amazed me. It was impossible, I
found, to learn anything from those who came. They were usually too
oppressed by the formalities to be natural. One day, when I was
assisting an older sister at an audience to ladies of Madrid, one lady
was so embarrassed that when my sister invited her to sit down--in the
rather brusque voice that was her characteristic utterance--the lady
sat down on a chair in which a kitten was lying. I supposed, at first,
that the kitten had escaped, but I soon saw the lady growing red in the
face and shifting in her chair, as if she were painfully uncomfortable.
My sister tried to put her at her ease by asking her the conventional
questions about herself, and I struggled to control my amusement, but
without succeeding well enough to trust myself to interfere. At last my
sister dismissed the lady, and turned on me to demand what was the
matter with me that I should be grinning and choking instead of behaving
myself with dignity. I cried: “But your kitten--your kitten!” And then I
saw that my laughter had been very cruel, for the kitten was dead. The
lady had accepted the invitation to sit down as a Royal order, and had
not dared to get up off the cat till she was dismissed, although the
poor thing was struggling and fighting under her for its life.
Naturally it was difficult to get any information from people under such
conditions. Not that I wish to represent myself as going about with the
air of a determined student eager to know. I had only a desultory
curiosity that was continually stirred by finding some new puzzle of
false appearance. My brother’s problems of government were usually laid
aside with us. We shared his recreation rather than his work. And, being
human, I was much more interested in myself, my own problems of life,
and the outlook of my future than I was in anything else. Being a Royal
person in Spain was, in some of its aspects, rather a lark, but in
others it was serious. For however free I might be in my mind to be
amused, to be curious, to be cynical, there was no disguising the fact
that I was limited in my friends, controlled in my affections, and of
liberty in love and marriage wholly deprived. My mind might be what I
pleased--my body was Royal.
CHAPTER IV
LOVE AND ENNUI
In speaking of one’s past it is difficult not to take a present point of
view; and when I say that being a Royal person in Spain had its serious
aspects--because I could not love or marry as a private person--I mean
that it had those aspects as I look back upon it. At the time I was not
aware of them. They were accepted by me as constituting the natural
order of life. Long before I could begin to think of such things as love
and marriage I had been schooled to the idea that I could have such
relations only with Royal persons. Humanity was divided in my mind into
three sexes; there were women, men of Royal birth, and a third sex, who
were to me, as you might say, priests. Any affair of love with the
latter was unthinkable--not only to me but to them. It never entered my
mind, any more than it would with a priest. If it ever entered _their_
minds, I could not know it, because they could not speak to me, even if
they wished.
In the palace of Madrid, when the usher would take me to the
antechamber of my brother’s apartments, I would always have an interval
of waiting while word of my visit was being carried to the King. And
during that interval there would usually be some young officers or
aides-de-camp standing in another part of the room. Since they were
Spaniards, and I was not hideous, if I glanced at them I found them
trying to look romantic. If one of them was alone, he would either sigh
“like a furnace,” as Shakespeare says, or try to look unutterable
silences across the room. At first this embarrassed me. But when I grew
reassured by the fact that none of them dared approach me or speak to
me, I found it comical; and I used to watch them slyly to see whether
they were going to be melancholy and sigh, or make lambent calf’s eyes
at me in the best Spanish manner. Afterwards I would tell my brother,
and he would laugh, because he knew the officers and enjoyed teasing
them. It became one of the little jokes between us, that all his young
aides were languishing their lives away in hopeless devotion
to me. Later, some of them--unwilling, perhaps, to be merely
amusing--announced that they were going to blow out their brains. I
never heard that any did it; and I did not see what satisfaction it
would have been to them if they had. I supposed that they came to the
same conclusion themselves. After a while I learned that one does not
take such threats of self-destruction seriously in Spain. They are only
a form of mild attention paid to ladies by the gallantry that wishes to
be dashing.
At luncheons, when the officers ate with us, even sighs were impossible;
and they behaved like very good boys before the school-teacher. My own
behaviour must have betrayed amused interest, for I remember that our
mistress of the robes--called the “_aya_”--who is a sort of Court
duenna, read me long lectures on the government of my eyes. When a man
conversed with me I must not look directly at him. That look, in Spain,
meant courtship. I must always look down, and just glance at him
sidelong, under the ends of my eyelashes, demurely. The Spanish girls do
it very well, but my eyes were not Spanish. I had the habit of direct
gaze; and after repeated lectures from the _aya_ I pretended that I had
acquired a squint from trying to look sideways; and this annoyed the
_aya_ and made fun for my brother.
The Spanish girls are taught to regard men as some sort of wild animal,
whom it is dangerous to meet unless one is well protected by chaperons;
and they become as timid as Oriental girls, and, of course, as curious.
Sometimes in the evenings, when my sisters and I were with my brother in
his apartments, he would have with him young men of the Court, friends
of his own age, grandees’ sons and members of the foreign legations, who
went shooting and hunting with him. I enjoyed talking and listening to
them, much more than conversing with the young ladies of noble families
who were invited to Court as companions to us Infantas. The men had
travelled, and read, and met interesting people. The girls had had no
experiences and no thoughts. They could talk only of their religion or
of their _fiancés_.
They went to church for both. When a young Spaniard wished to begin
courting he told the priest about it. The priest consulted the girl’s
parents, and if the match was thought suitable, arrangements were made
for her to attend certain Masses on certain mornings with her chaperon.
Her official cavalier then posted himself somewhere near, made eyes at
her during the service, and stood at the holy-water font when Mass was
over, to offer her holy water as she went out. It was possible, also, to
leave a letter at the church door with some old beggar, who would
deliver it to the proper person in return for alms; but this
correspondence was not for young girls. Their courting was carried on by
means of devout looks, which were not required, one hopes, to be too
oblique. I thought it very silly, and I said so; but the girls argued,
piously, that since love was “a sacrament” it was right it should begin
with holy water and benefit of clergy. I do not remember that the same
argument was made for the intriguing ladies who carried on their
correspondence through the beggars. As a matter of fact, the relations
between the sexes were all wrong, since there could be no secure
happiness based on such ignorance and Orientalism in a Western
community, where the women can not be denied after marriage the liberty
for which they are not prepared before that event.
When I was about fifteen years old, a young Austrian archduke came to
Madrid to visit my brother, and I was presented to him with my sisters,
and saw him at a distance at the dinner-table, and bowed to him as I
passed him in the hall. Next morning my brother summoned me to his
apartments to tell me that the archduke wished to become engaged to me.
“But,” I said, amazed, “I have scarcely spoken to him!” Never mind; he
had said he was in love with me; he wanted to marry me. And as soon as I
had recovered from my first astonishment, the idea delighted me. To be
engaged! It made me feel quite grown-up. Quite important. Almost
married. And I thought it would give me a standing at Court that would
prevent the Mistress of the Robes from being so dictatorial.
It would be impossible for me to marry for some time. Our family
fortunes had been so depleted during the revolution that I had no _dot_,
and the young archduke had not yet come into his estate either. My
brother, acting as a father to his sisters, was paying all our expenses
out of his own pocket, and saving for us, as _dots_, the moneys that
were allowed us by the Government. So it was agreed that my engagement
with the archduke should not be made public and official until enough
money had been saved to make a provision for me.
Meanwhile I was privately engaged--and very proud of it. It was not
extraordinary, in the Spanish Royal Family, for a girl to be engaged in
her teens. My sister Isabel had been married at sixteen; and my
grand-aunt, the Infanta Luisa Carlota, had been married at thirteen and
was a grandmother at twenty-seven. But neither of my other sisters was
engaged yet, and I enjoyed the advantage over them.
Even so, the archduke was not allowed to see me alone, and his courtship
had to be formal. We were allowed to walk together in the garden of the
palace, but only under the chaperonage of a lady-in-waiting, who
followed a few paces behind us. One day, turning a corner of the path,
we were hidden for a moment from the eyes of our chaperon, and the
archduke seized his opportunity to kiss me. There was an adventure for
you! When we returned to the palace I hastened to tell my sister. She
was horrified. She ran to tell the governess. The governess was even
more shocked. She declared that I had committed a mortal sin. “Good!” I
cried. “I’m glad of it! At last I have committed a mortal sin! I didn’t
think it was possible--the way I am watched.” There was a great to-do.
They declared that I must go to confession at once.
I went, next morning, defiantly, and in such excitement that I confessed
in a voice that could be heard by every one near the confessional. I had
committed a mortal sin! I had been kissed by the archduke! And the
manner in which I blurted it out was so funny that the priest burst out
laughing. I asked him how it could be a sin to be kissed by the man who
was going to marry me. He replied, teasing me, “But if you don’t marry
him, still the kiss will remain.” “I don’t care,” I said; “it won’t
show.” He assured me, finally, that it was not a sin at all; and perhaps
I should have been crestfallen if it were not that I had triumphed over
the others. Then, as the story got about, it started a reputation for me
as a flirt, which I enjoyed innocently. An Infanta of Spain kissed by a
man at fifteen! It was almost a record.
When the archduke went away we were allowed to write to each other,
though, of course, our letters had to be read by some one. I gave mine
to my brother, but I do not suppose he ever glanced at them; the letters
of a girl of fifteen, in such circumstances, would not be very
interesting. I began to ask questions about the Austrian Court, where I
should have to live after I married; and the reports I heard of it were
not reassuring. The etiquette was most strict. I should be worse off
there than in Madrid. And I should be separated from my brother. Very
soon I did not like the thought of my engagement at all.
My brother had told us, at our first meeting on our return to Spain,
that he was in love with a daughter of the Duc de Montpensier; that they
had been corresponding unknown to her family--who were not so strict as
ours--and that he intended to marry her. My mother was outraged at this
announcement, for it was well known that the Duc de Montpensier had
helped to bring about the revolution that had lost her the throne. When
we went to Sevilla, to live in the Alcazar, she forgave the Duc, who had
a place in Sevilla, but she continued to intrigue against my brother’s
marriage; and it was because of this that he quarrelled with her, and
let her go back to France when we Infantas came to live with him in
Madrid.
The Duc de Montpensier was the youngest son of King Louis Philippe of
France, and--like all that king’s sons--extremely clever. He had married
my mother’s sister, another daughter of King Ferdinand VII., on the same
day that my parents married; and he had lived in Spain ever since. In
Sevilla my sisters and I became very friendly with our young cousins,
the Duc’s children, and I became like another daughter to the Duc, whom
I adored. He had all the charm of the _esprit Français_, animated and
witty, accustomed to conversation with clever people, tolerant of
opinions opposed to his own, and hating--more than anything else in the
world--stupidity. He delighted me. He sympathised with me. I used to
tell him all my little troubles.
I think that when the history of my mother’s reign and the republic is
written, it will lay great stress on the Duc’s influence in Spain. At
once, on his arrival, he had attracted to himself all the Liberal
elements in the Spanish Court, unconsciously, as
[Illustration: Photograph by Henrie Manuel, Paris.
THE INFANTA EULALIA]
mind attracts mind. He became the head of a Liberal party--subsequently
called the “Orleans” party, because he was of the House of
Orleans--although he always declared that he had neither desired nor
tried to organise any following for himself. Men like the famous writer,
José de Echegaray, gathered around him, and his palace became a centre
for the dissemination of Liberal ideas. He was antagonistic to the
Conservatives, who were chiefly Clerical; and he was much feared and
opposed by the priests. He wished to improve the conditions in Spain. He
wished, as he used to say, humorously, “to make it habitable.” But I do
not think that he had any personal ambition to rule; for, although he
had distinguished himself for bravery in the French army, and was a
general in the Spanish army, he made no attempt to use his influence
with the army or with the politicians, in order to obtain the throne for
himself when it went begging after my mother lost it. He had not
expected, he told me, that the reformers contemplated interfering with
the ruling family. He supported the Liberals and gave them money, in the
hope that they would correct the abuses and corruptions of
misgovernment in Spain. And when no good came of it, he assisted the
movement to call my brother to the throne.
My brother was as devoted to him as I was, and held to his intention of
marrying the Duc’s daughter in spite of all the intriguing and the
opposition of people who feared the Duc’s influence, and the warnings
that this was a new attempt of the Duc to get back into political power
by putting his daughter on the throne of Spain. It was a love match
purely--the only one I ever knew in Royalty. For royal love matches are
usually marriages between persons of royal birth who are enthusiastic
because they find they have no positive aversion for each other.
The Duc, even in Sevilla, had planned to marry me to one of his sons,
Antoine d’Orléans, whom I liked as a cousin, but had no other affection
for. I said “No.” When I came to Madrid this was still talked of, as
such things are discussed in families, but I paid no attention to it. My
engagement to the archduke ended it for a time; but when I grew
melancholy at the thought of going to Austria my brother would say,
“Well, then, why not marry Antoine, and we shall never be separated.”
And if you have to marry some one who will be more or less indifferent
to you--and you foresee that in one choice your father-in-law, at least,
will be charming--and that choice will keep you near a beloved brother
whom you might otherwise lose--well, why not? Besides, I did not have to
decide immediately. I could not marry any one yet. I let it drift--and
drifted with it.
The Duc, to encourage me, perhaps, told me the story of his own
marriage; and I think it is unique even in the annals of royal
alliances. It was, of course, an affair of State, arranged for him. His
bride, my aunt, was only fourteen years of age, and she could not speak
a word of French. He spoke no Spanish. When they had been married--in
great pomp at a double wedding with my mother and father--he was left
alone for the first time with his wife, and the poor child was so
frightened that she began to cry. He did not know what to say to
reassure her, since he could not say anything that she could understand;
and, looking around the room despairingly, his eye was caught by a
movement of the curtains in the far corner of the bed-chamber. He looked
more intently and made out the plume of a head-dress showing between
the hangings. He rushed across the room and dragged out a
lady-in-waiting! His exasperation at his bride’s sobs and his own
inability to quieten her broke in fury on the head of the unfortunate
woman. She explained as well as she could that they were afraid the
bride would be too frightened if she were left alone with him, and they
had agreed to conceal one of her ladies behind the curtains to give her
secretly a sort of moral support. The Duc put her violently out of the
room.
I suppose that the Duc had a strong influence on both my brother and
me--on our opinions and our points of view--yet it must have been the
influence of personality unconsciously exerted, for he always refrained
from giving opinions about public affairs, even when he was asked for
them. “No,” he would say, “I have learned not to express my opinions.
They are always brought back to me--so transformed that I can not
recognise them--and presented to me as my own. Look at the revolution.”
He conformed in matters of religion to comfort his wife, who was very
devout; but he never went to confession, and he required that when he
attended Mass the priests should not take more than twenty minutes for
it. He would keep an eye on the clock, and when the twenty minutes had
elapsed he would say, “Watch him now,” and cough with peremptory
impatience. The priest would immediately begin to race through to the
conclusion of the service, and every one would be anxious for him to
finish, as if the Due’s impatience were some terrible threat to be
placated. Yet, for a man so feared, I never knew any one less fearsome.
He was very patriarchal-looking when I knew him--white-bearded,
heavily-fleshed, and benign. To his receptions in the evening came all
the clever people, of whatever opinion, and whenever bores arrived he
pretended that they had come to see his wife, and had them ushered to
her apartments, and said, contentedly, “There now. They will pray
together and enjoy themselves.” It was the one thing that he asked of
life--not to be bored. Imagine how that would appeal to one in the
atmosphere of a Court. For the plague of Courts is ennui.
Princesses are peculiarly subject to it. A king or a prince has usually
some work to do, some power to exercise. A princess is as much more idle
than a young lady as a young lady is more idle than a working girl. In
an attempt to keep up an exercise of my brain, I continued my studies
during the whole ten years of my unmarried lite in Spain--studying
languages, the piano, singing, the harp, painting--and keeping myself
occupied with reading and writing as well as I could. People tell me
that princesses are stupid. I wonder that we are not all idiots. During
my life in Madrid, almost my only public duty was to help lay
corner-stones. I helped lay enough to pave the city. Whenever nothing
else could be found to justify our existence, the authorities would say,
“Come, let them lay a corner-stone.” I can not believe that any other
stones were put on top of them. It is not possible. There were too many.
If the buildings had all been completed, there would not be room now, in
the town, to walk. And the Te Deums that I listened to were numerous
enough to exhaust the ears of Heaven.
I have already spoken of the audiences that we gave. They were stupid
beyond words. One received strangers under conditions of formality that
made them more strange, asked silly little questions of the women--“Are
you married?” “How many children have you?”--smiled politely, and
waited for the next one. It is the sort of thing that you might expect
from the Chinese. And the purely Court receptions were even worse. There
you had not even strangers, so you could not ask them whether they were
married. You knew--or you were expected to know--all the dignitaries,
statesmen, officials, aides, and diplomats who make up the Court circle;
you met them again and again, for a perfunctory moment, said something
innocuous, and passed on--until you met again.
The problem was to think of something to say each time. Once after a
Royal chapel--when we always had to make a circle of a roomful of
officials lined up around the walls--I noticed, as we approached one
officer, that he wore black gloves with his uniform. It is a sign of
deep mourning. The others of the Royal Family, preceding me, made the
usual conventional attempts to say a little of nothing as if it were
something worth saying; and so, when I came to him, although I had no
idea who he was, I said, “I was deeply sorry to hear of your
bereavement.” The others, overhearing me, were mortified that they had
not offered him their condolences too; and when the reception was over
they spoke to me about it. Whom had he lost? How had I remembered it?
And when I explained what I had done, without knowing who the man was,
even the King was envious. It was so difficult to have anything to say,
and a Royal Family is always so haunted by the problem that my little
ruse quite made a reputation for me. And, if you can believe it, the
officer was deeply touched and gratified, poor soul, by my knowing of
his grief. It is on such trifles that a king makes his personal
popularity. But what a life!
When my brother married the Duc’s daughter, Mercedes, we had that
beautiful and charming creature added to our circle; but they were such
lovers and so happy together that we had our brother less, though we had
Mercedes more. By this time I had quite lost interest in the daughters
of the grandees whom my brother invited to Court to make companionship
for us. They could play no game more active than croquet, which they
played languidly. When I drove them behind my four ponies they wanted
always to go to the parks, where they could look sidelong at the young
men; and I preferred the country drives with more freedom. I soon
wearied of a conversation that was all holy water and fiancés.
And before long the Spanish young men came to bore me as much as their
sisters. They had only one conversation for a woman--the romantically
sentimental, exaggerated to the point of foolishness. It was too silly.
If they were not pretending that they were blighted with melancholy
because of your unearthly charms, they were assuring you that they would
shed their blood for you. I did not want to see their blood, but their
brains; and they either had none or did not consider it necessary to use
them in their conversation with a princess.
In the evenings I often went to the opera, but my brother had no ear at
all for music; he could not tell the Royal March when it was played; and
he complained that the singing depressed him like the howling of a dog.
So I went with my sisters and some older chaperon. One night, on our way
to the opera, we had an adventure that could happen only in Spain.
There, whenever the priest is summoned to attend the dying, he takes the
sacrament and sets out on foot, accompanied by an attendant with a
little bell. The first carriage that he meets, even if it be a hired
hack, is stopped at the sound of the bell and he is invited to ride. If
the hack then meets a private carriage of more luxury, it is the
privilege of the owner to take the priest into his vehicle. And if the
Royal carriage is met, the Royalty not only take the priest with them,
but they are expected to follow into the house of the dying, and kneel
in the death-chamber while the last rites are being performed.
On this night I was in our carriage with a princess who was most
gorgeously arrayed in a bright green evening gown ornamented with
silver, with a great display of jewels on her corsage, and on her head a
huge rayed ornament of diamonds in the shape of a diadem. Her hair was
prematurely grey and rather wild. She had been riding in the sun, and
her face was flushed. She was an enormous woman--so large that she had
to give up horseback-riding because it became impossible to find a horse
capable of carrying her.
We were scarcely well away from the palace when we heard approaching us
the bell of the sacrament, and I said to her, hurriedly, “We can’t go to
a death-bed in this finery. I’ll make the driver turn round.” But she
was very religious. It was a sacrilege to her to turn our backs on the
Host. In spite of my protests, we met the priest, took him into the
carriage, and drove him to his destination. There the princess and I
followed him into the death-chamber, devoutly, though with very doubtful
feelings on my part.
We found a man dying of some sort of fever, lying on his back in bed,
with a holy candle burning on his forehead--to improve his temperature,
no doubt. He opened his eyes at our entrance; and when he saw the
unearthly apparition of the princess in bright green, with the hair and
face of a soul in purgatory and a blaze of glory about her head; he sat
up in bed with a shriek, pointed his shaking hand at her, and cried
“Booh!” That was all I saw. I got down on my knees, helpless with
hysterical laughter, and covered my face with my hands. When the
ceremony was over, I hurried out as best I could and went to pieces in
the carriage. The man died that night.
One would think it was not very sanitary to be making such visits to
fatal cases of disease. And it was not. We went once to the death-bed of
a smallpox patient and knelt on pillows that had been under his head.
But the Spanish people seem to have a vitality that is proof against
infection; and in the South of Spain particularly they live to
incredible old age.
CHAPTER V
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.
CHAPTER VI
ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH
There now began for me an interesting experience. I had started out to
travel and see the sights of Europe, a bride of twenty-two, with a mind
in some ways older than my age, as inquisitive as youth, but, perhaps,
not so subject to youth’s self-deception; as interested as youth in my
own observations (rather than in any general view or philosophical
explanation of society), but sceptical, and with no youthful tendency to
illusions either romantic or royal. The European travels of such a young
lady could not have much interest, ordinarily. But, for ten years and
more, I went from Court to Court, rather than from country to country,
in that huge family of Royalty whose members have been intermarrying for
so many generations that all the occupants of the thrones of Europe have
become cousins, and a princess can visit from palace to palace as if
from house to house among relatives in a countryside. And it was an
interesting experience, I say, because Royalty is not of semi-sacred
caste that in one country will be accepted as quite holy and God-given,
and in another will be merely allowed to live pensioned--like vergers in
some fine old cathedral after its worship has been abolished and its
altars removed--and in yet others will be existing in all the
intermediate stages between these two extremes; honoured by this faction
and attacked by that, reformed and reconstructed and embellished and
defaced.
It was interesting, as it had been in Spain, to discover the anomalies
and false appearances and thin lava-crusts on which we seemed to live so
securely. Being well aware of how I saw myself in my own mind, it was
interesting to study what was in the minds of other royal personages--to
see how they regarded themselves and how they thought they were
regarded--and to learn what real credit we had and what actual
appearance we made in the minds of the people who saluted us with such
varying degrees of curiosity and respect.
In Paris, where we went first, Royalty has no problems. Being for ever
dispossessed of its claims in France, it is accepted there without awe
and without enmity. It flees to Paris from the dulness of its official
life in every monarchy of Europe; and at times it seems that more
royalties are there than in all the other capitals of the Continent
together. Paris has become a holiday rendezvous for them; and it needs
them as little as it does its tourists. They can meet and dine and
gossip, unobserved even by the Press. They can find circles of
aristocracy in which they will be received as formally as they would be
in their Courts. Or they may enjoy, if they can, on terms of some human
naturalness, the life of salons and studios. And if they desire the
crowded solitude of the streets, they will rarely find any one to stare.
Paris is freedom, even for princesses. It was, for me, on that first
return, an old home of childhood that I was revisiting; and I went to
the convent to see the nuns who had taught me, and hunted up some of my
playmates to recall myself to them after the nine years that seemed a
lifetime that had passed. Then, in a week, we set out for England; and
there we were Royalty again.
It was then I first saw Queen Victoria, and I shall not easily describe
what a surprise it was. She had been for a long time the great Queen in
my thoughts, on the throne of an empire beyond imagination in
[Illustration: DOWAGER QUEEN ALEXANDRA OF ENGLAND, QUEEN MAUD OF NORWAY
AND PRINCE OLAF, CROWN PRINCE OF NORWAY]
wealth and power, and ruling so many millions of the most civilised
people devoted in their loyalty. I had formed a mental picture of I do
not know what majesty and grandeur for her. We came to her from the City
of London (so impressive after Paris) to have luncheon with her in
Windsor Castle, that is so noble a seat of sovereignty; and when I
entered the room in which she waited to receive us, I had a shock of
pity and dismay. She was so small that I thought at first she must be
sitting down. And she was not only feeble with age, but evidently ill,
her eyes dulled, her hands swollen, her face as if feverish. Her merely
human aspect of infirmity was increased by the black dress of mourning
and widow’s cap that she wore; and standing with her two Indian servants
behind her, leaning on her short cane, in that magnificent apartment
that would have dwarfed a giant, holding out a tired hand to you vaguely
as if she did not clearly see you--it brought a lump to the throat. Here
was Royalty then! The greatest and most famous of us all! Queen
Victoria!
My father-in-law and she had known each other many years, and at the
luncheon table he sat beside her and kept up a conversation with her.
She said very little, and with her eyes most often on her plate, like a
person who is polite, but distracted by illness, and incapable of
rousing the mind. The English Royal Family has the sensible habit of
dining without the ladies-in-waiting, who take their meals in another
room; so we were _en famille_; and the conversation was that of intimate
domestic interests and the little social happenings of the day. One
could hardly find a family more charming, more serene, more simply
happy.
And the explanation of this air of the English Court is easily found.
England is a country of accepted classes, of which each class makes no
infringement on the rights of the class above it and fears none from the
class below. There are even upper and lower servants in a household. And
each class receives servility from the class below it to reimburse it
for the servility that it pays to the class above. Royalty is just a
final upper class, neither envied by an aristocracy which cannot aspire
to it, nor feared by the lower classes over which it has no authority.
It is a social ornament of government, a symbol of national majesty.
The aristocracy is almost equally ornamental, with certain appearances
of power that are allowed it by the sufferance of the rest. The real
government is the commerce and industry of the nation. It is a
commercial empire, ruled by considerations of trade, but disguising
itself, even to itself, by forms of administration that are
aristocratic, with an established church in a nation largely
nonconformist, a military power that in the main engages in wars for the
extension or protection of commercial interests, and an ideal of empire
for humanitarian ends--at the same time making it pay. You will always
hear, for example, of the devoted self-sacrifice of the British rule in
India, which carries the peaceful blessings of civilisation to natives
incapable of self-government; but if India were being held at a
continual loss to the British tax-payer--if he had to pay out of his own
purse, without return, to protect the natives from their own
incapacity--I wonder whether the British Empire in India would last a
year. It is this faculty of almost honest self-deception which makes the
Englishman so insoluble a puzzle to the foreigner.
It makes the English Royal Family the most popularly revered in Europe,
even though it has, of all the royal families, the least governmental
power to compel awe, and has no English blood in it to endear it to the
nation, and is allowed not even a pretence of leadership in peace or war
to make it picturesque. When I attended Queen Victoria’s jubilee, about
a year after my first meeting with her, it seemed as if the whole nation
had poured itself into the streets of London to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of her succession to the throne. And if one were sceptical,
it might be said that they were only to come to enjoy the spectacle and
to rejoice in the display of their own national magnificence. But the
celebration had all the evidences of a personal tribute, and it was
undoubtedly so accepted by the Queen and her family.
King Edward, who was a man of the world not easily deceived, always
seemed to have this conviction of his importance in the eyes of his
people. I do not know to what extent he interested himself privately in
the problems of their government, from which the Royal Family is so
jealously excluded; certainly, in years of familiar acquaintance with
him, I never once heard him refer to them. Yet he was a man whose
intellect would have been of value to his country, for he was one of the
cleverest sovereigns of Europe, a striking personality, genial and
shrewd. It seemed a pity that such a brain should be wasted in the
idleness of royal life after it had succeeded in developing itself in
spite of the restrictions that make most royal brains so dull.
Coming first to England from the animations of the South, I thought the
people looked as stupefied as if they were all just recovering from a
fit; and I felt the same general blank of reserved dulness among the
aristocratic and official circles that surrounded the Court. It seemed a
country that was not ruled by intelligence but by property. Property is
a blind master, and great masses of the people were already rotted out
by a poverty and industrial oppression from which any governing
intelligence would have protected them. It took the fiasco of the Boer
War, and the strikes and internal disorders of the last few years, to
awaken the nation from its stupor of imperial complacency. Since that
time there has been a great appearance of revolt and reform; and I have
been interested to hear the foreign speculation on the probable fate of
the throne in the final issue of the upheaval. I should like to know
what power the British throne still has of which the country could
deprive it, or what liberty the people could acquire by its abolition!
They would gain as little as if, by a popular uprising, the citizens of
London killed the lions in their Zoo. There may have been a time when
lions were dangerous in England, but the sight of them in their cages
now can only give a pleasurable holiday-shudder of awe--of which, I
think, the nation will not willingly deprive itself.
There was then beginning the great industrial and commercial rivalry
between England and Germany that before war came led to so much talk of
it; and this rivalry was paralleled by an antipathy between the Kaiser
and King Edward that was as frank as the enmity between the nations.
Neither sovereign made any disguise of it even when they were together,
and I always felt that it did them both good--for a strong hostility is
often as potent as a strong affection to make character.
But let me leave the sovereigns for a moment and turn to the people. The
English impressed and baffled me in many ways. To the foreigner of Latin
blood and temperament, the English character indeed presents an almost
insoluble enigma. Often just when we feel that we are really beginning
to understand it, we are faced with some contradictory trait that
completely baffles us. Certainly when we saw the country, apparently
seething with internal dissensions, lay aside its family quarrels and
present a united front to the enemy, we realised more than ever what a
complex thing the English mentality is.
I must confess I thought that it would be hard for England to rise to
any great national emergency, not so much because things seemed to have
reached the breaking point in Ireland or because her colonies seemed
bound to her more by self-interest than by real loyalty, but on account
of the devastating habits of ease and luxury that had spread like a
disease among her aristocracy. But now we know that these corrupting
influences had not vitally affected the upper classes. Unlike the
extravagances of ancient Rome that had eaten to the heart of the
nation’s energies, England’s hurt was only skin-deep.
We can have no doubt of this when we see great ladies facing unfamiliar
hardships and risks at the battle front, others dismantling their huge
country houses and transforming them into hospitals and others freely
giving their whole time and activities to the great relief organisations
for the war’s sufferers. The English aristocracy’s ingrained sense of
responsibility to the nation remains untouched by all its latterly
acquired taste for luxury and over-indulgence in sports.
I say “latterly acquired,” because it is undoubtedly true that this love
of extravagance has grown enormously during the last decade or so. From
the pomp and lavishness displayed nowadays in certain smart
establishments, I should never realise that I was in the same circle
whose courtesy and simplicity used to delight me so in the England I
learned to love years ago.
It was, as I have said, as a young married woman that I had my first
experience of English life. The Comte and Comtesse de Paris, my
husband’s relatives, had been exiled from France and had been living for
some time in Tunbridge Wells. I spent many months with them there, and,
through their large circle of friends, I became acquainted with all
sorts and conditions of people, and soon found myself accepting the
hospitality of these newly-made friends. When I made it clear to my host
and hostess that I desired them to forget that I was an Infanta and to
be treated as an ordinary individual, etiquette was banished, and I was
able to do as I liked.
Life in the country houses always pleased me best. In those days it was
the custom for the family and guests to breakfast together, and I loved
the informality of it all undisturbed by the ministrations of liveried
lackeys. Often, when there were children in the house, they were allowed
to come to the table too, and we all had very jolly times over the
porridge.
We often went bicycling for the whole day, carrying our lunches with us
and eating them in some pleasant grove by the wayside. Sometimes we went
on coaching expeditions and lunched in some old thatch-covered inn. When
my children were little, I seldom missed passing some time in England
each summer, so that they too could enjoy the freedom of the open-air
life.
It did not take me long to appreciate the charm of the English home and
country, which are vastly different from anything abroad. In Spain,
people never live all the year round in the country if they can possibly
avoid it, and they seldom visit their estates unless they wish
practically to retire from the world. On the rare occasions when they do
snatch themselves from the conventional round of gaieties in the cities
or the big watering places, they shut themselves up in their big, bare
castles, receiving no one and seldom venturing outside their own
properties. It is almost a time of penance.
They are simply incapable of understanding the English love of life in
the open air, with its many exhilarating and ingenious pastimes which
appeal so strongly to me. More than that, they are inclined to look upon
such taste as rather ill-bred. For instance, only the humblest Spaniard
would dream of eating his cold lunch by the roadside, and I am sure that
the true aristocrat would never appreciate the charm of seeking out some
picturesque spot and having tea from a tea-basket. No Spanish lady of
quality would even allow herself to walk hatless in her own garden, and
reclining in a hammock or on the grass would be ruthlessly banned by her
traditions and upbringing.
One summer day Queen Cristina came to me with a look of sheer
consternation on her face.
“Eulalia,” she said, “I have just seen an appalling sight: an
Englishwoman lying on the grass in the park.”
The culprit was a lady-in-waiting, who had been brought to Spain by an
English princess visiting the Court. I had some difficulty in convincing
the Queen that such an action would not be considered such a shocking
breach of etiquette in England as she imagined.
In France, country life in the Smart Set is more animated than in Spain,
but it still lacks the spontaneity and freedom of the English
out-of-doors. The châteaux are occasionally thrown open to visitors, but
the guests are content to undergo the same routine as in Paris--the only
difference being that it is adapted to another setting. Of course, there
are hunting meets, and, of late years, garden parties, but much of the
entertaining takes place indoors--dinner-parties, theatrical
performances, afternoon receptions, etc. The French have not yet learned
how really to live in the country, to relax and to change their entire
mode of thought and activities.
There is hardly a county in England that I am not familiar with. I have
spent many weeks in Cornwall, Devon and Yorkshire, and have returned
again and again to Brighton, Tunbridge Wells and Richmond. Curiously
enough, during one visit to Richmond I received a message from the
Duchess of Teck that her daughter, then Princess of Wales, had just
given birth to her first boy. I went at once to White Lodge to offer my
congratulations, and I fancy that I was the first, outside the immediate
family, to hold the future Prince of Wales in my arms.
What to me is convincing proof of the change in latter years from
simplicity to lavish display is the difference in the way of living I
have remarked amongst many of my friends. Each time I have visited
England recently I have been struck with this.
One thing that used to delight me so was the informality of the English
tea. It was invariably served _sans cérémonie_ in the drawing-room.
After the servants had brought it in they retired and left us to our own
devices. Neighbours frequently dropped in without warning, and often, as
we gathered round a big blazing fire and ate those wonderful home-made
delicacies unknown to Continentals, there was a charming feeling of
expansiveness and intimacy that we never had at other times of the day.
Of late years I have noticed that the custom has
[Illustration: Courtesy of Collier’s
KING GEORGE V, THE LATE KING EDWARD VII AND THE PRINCE OF WALES]
changed. When you are invited to tea, you find your place set at a table
loaded with expensive flowers and accessories from the _chic_ caterer.
Footmen are in constant attendance and the charm of informality has
entirely gone.
Friends of mine who used to be content to dine in some simple tea-gown
now wear the latest Paris creations and their jewels--and this every
evening. Although the Frenchwoman may still think that the
Englishwoman’s taste in dress is far beneath her own standard, she would
have to admit, if she were invited to some fashionable house-party, that
the Englishwoman of means has far eclipsed her in the matter of frequent
change. She would see the hostess and guests appear in tweed suits and
stout boots for their morning constitutional and breakfast, then
reappear in white flannels for their afternoon game of tennis or
boating. She would wonder how, in the thick of sports and entertainment,
these energetic women found time to put on some clinging creation for
tea which would later be laid aside for the _décolleté_ dinner-gown.
Of course, these departures from the simple tastes of twenty years ago
seem harmless enough in themselves, but they are surely indications of
a constantly growing love of lavishness in the whole social routine. I
am sorry to say that the fine old-time courtesies of the English gentry
seem to have suffered by these more luxurious habits of living. In many
smart circles, polished manners seem to have become as super-annuated as
crinolines and stage coaches.
Whatever may be the faults of the English land-lord-system--faults
inherited from the centuries--the system used to work excellently
whenever the lord of the castle or manor-house lived up to his
responsibilities. In spite of its touch of paternalism, there was
something impressive about the white-haired earl inspecting his broad
acres, bowing tenants standing aside to let his carriage pass, and
something altogether touching about his lady visiting the cottagers, her
footman--far haughtier in mien than she--bearing gifts of food and warm
clothing. As long as the villagers were well cared for, I suppose they
never questioned whether it was right for their master to have a mansion
while they had to toil so hard to keep their humble thatched roof over
their heads. But when the young lord took to dissipating the family
fortunes on the turf, when he married some footlight favourite--in
other words, when he began to neglect the responsibilities of his
race--that, probably, was the beginning of their doubt in the justice of
the English social order. Then they forgot to curtsy whenever the young
lord and his bride motored through the village, and they began to listen
to the itinerant labour agitator at the tavern.
Of course, the democratic spirit that is spreading all over the world
has been at work in England for years, undermining rigid caste
distinctions and differences, but I feel that it could not have grown so
quickly nor expressed itself in just such forms as it has, if the
extravagance and irresponsibility of many of the rich and powerful had
not paved the way for it. Destroy respect and you destroy docility.
There is no doubt that the English lower classes, in their first efforts
toward democracy and equality, have made some pretty ludicrous mistakes.
Instead of copying the fine qualities of the aristocracy, they have,
more frequently than not, managed to imitate their shortcomings and
limitations. I remember hearing that the valet of some prince insisted
on having a valet for himself! I know that French maids, whom I have
taken to England, have had their heads turned by the amazing etiquette
of the servants’ hall--all unquestionably due to the servants’ desire to
pattern their masters.
The maid of the Infanta is a great person, and she soon found that she
could take precedence over all the others. She had to be elegantly
dressed. Indeed, whenever I go to England, I always remark that my maid
has double the luggage she requires when I take her to other countries.
Once I discovered that the English servants’ attitude toward their work
had so affected one maid that she was almost completely spoilt. For
instance, after a visit to England on which she had accompanied me, this
maid broke down and sobbed when I told her to light a fire.
“I can’t, I can’t,” she said, piteously, with tears streaming down her
face.
“But for years you have been accustomed to light fires for me,” I said.
“What has happened to make it such a terrible thing to light one now?”
She explained that she had learnt in England that it was beneath the
dignity of a lady’s-maid to do menial work.
A Spanish maid from Seville had more sense, and amused me immensely by
telling me that the English servants had told her that it was
exceedingly smart to walk out on Sunday afternoons with a soldier, and
they had added that if she desired to show herself with a Guardsman, he
would expect to be paid.
“Fancy my paying a soldier to walk out with me!” she said, laughing.
However, it is not unreasonable to hope that the war, which has already
done so much toward rousing the rich from their lethargy of extravagance
and neglect of responsibilities to the most praiseworthy usefulness,
will help correct the lower class conception of equality. As I have
already said, no character is so full of surprises as the English--so
capable of appearing to be one thing while underneath it is the exact
opposite. Can this be what people of other nationalities mean when they
speak of English hypocrisy? It is rather an innate reserve which the
foreigner finds great difficulty in penetrating. It comes, no doubt,
from the Englishman’s veneration for tradition, and for centuries he has
been schooled to show no emotion. That is often why he is supposed to be
either stupid or inattentive. As a matter of fact, this very exterior
gives him the great advantage of being able to size up a situation
without betraying either the process or his conclusions.
The proof of what I say is the Englishman’s unquestioned superiority in
diplomacy. People who have no experience of cosmopolitan society seem to
think that the successful diplomat must be a detective of the popular
novel type: an astute if somewhat unscrupulous politician and a polished
lady’s man all rolled into one. To be sure, the representatives of
certain countries often do their best to realise just such an ideal,
but, although this type may succeed in carrying some of their
machinations to a conclusion satisfactory to themselves, they almost
never accomplish anything really worth while for their governments. Most
of the English diplomats I have known on the Continent give the
impression of being serenely indifferent to any intrigues that may be
going on around them. It has often amused me to watch them at
dinner-parties. Unlike certain representatives of other powers, they
never go out of their way to make themselves agreeable to ladies. I have
never seen them pay special attention to the wives of powerful statesmen
for the purposes of their profession--indeed, they seem to scorn these
backdoor methods. Perhaps, it is because they know very well that real
diplomacy is built on more solid foundations than on the gleanings of
drawing-room conversations or the chance confidences of indiscreet
women.
And they are right in this, for the whole tradition of diplomacy in
England is different from that of any great power. She has not changed
her tactics for centuries.
England has established such a prestige among nations that she is able
to transact her international affairs in London, and has at her disposal
the brains of her best statesmen. King Edward, in bringing about the
_entente cordiale_, thus probably initiated the French Government into
this way of conducting its international affairs, for of late years
French diplomacy has steadily improved.
King Edward himself possessed in a high degree those national qualities
that make the English such good diplomats. Not only in the conduct of
nations, but in society, his self-possession and tact were unfailing.
They certainly did not fail him on one occasion when I saw him placed in
a very comical and embarrassing situation. We were both at a
dinner-party in a great London house, and among the guests was a lady
who bore an historic Italian title. She was English by birth, and before
her marriage had been famous in London society for her great beauty and
her charm of manner. A wealthy Jew, who shall be disguised under the
name of Abraham, was madly in love with her, and her friends, including
King Edward, saw his growing infatuation with concern.
“Don’t you marry that man,” was the advice given her, peremptorily but
good-naturedly, by King Edward.
But marry him she did; not, however, before he had been to Italy and
bought the palace and the pompous title of an impoverished Florentine
noble. Of this fact the king was unaware, and when the lady was
presented to him at the dinner-table as the Marchesa di X., he smiled
and said: “I am delighted to meet you again as the Marchesa di X., and
so thankful you didn’t marry that awful Abraham.”
A few moments later, the king observed that the “awful Abraham” was
standing close by and had heard the unfortunate remark. Without turning
a hair, he smiled at him and congratulated him heartily upon his
marriage.
King Edward was the first member of the English Royal Family that I met.
My acquaintance with him started in Madrid when, as Prince of Wales, he
came with his brother, the Duke of Connaught, one of the most charming
princes in Europe, to be present at the festivities given in honour of
the marriage of my brother.
Later I stayed with him and Queen Alexandra at Sandringham. One of the
first things to impress me there was the king’s extreme punctuality.
Somebody used always to come and warn me ten minutes before meal-times
that I must not keep him waiting. For some unknown reason, he had all
the clocks in the house set half-an-hour in advance of the right time,
and one of the first things that guests at Sandringham learnt was the
existence of this curious practice. The king liked to be amused, and, as
he had a taste for the Gallic turn of wit that makes Latin races such
good _raconteurs_, there were always one or two foreigners about who,
although they did not wear the cap and bells which would have defined
their functions in an earlier age, played the part of Court jester
admirably, and enlivened conversation at the dinner-table with
praiseworthy persistence.
The Princess Louise, now Duchess of Argyle, possesses a share of the
talent which distinguished her brother and their sister, the Empress
Frederick. I spent a very agreeable time with her in the Isle of Wight,
when I went to England for the first time. We had many cosy times
together, leaving our husbands to amuse each other, and our mutual
interest in art and literature naturally drew us together.
Undoubtedly, one of the cleverest and most charming figures in the royal
circle is the Duchess of Connaught. Her husband would, I am certain, be
the first to admit that his success in creating for himself the special
place he holds in English life and in the life of the British Empire is
largely due to the Duchess’s loyal help and wise advice. In spite of her
German upbringing, she has given herself wholeheartedly to the country
of her adoption, and her daughters, the Crown Princess of Sweden and
Princess Patricia, are delightful and typically English girls.
The Russian princess, known best in England as the Duchess of Edinburgh
and now Duchess of Coburg, was unable to adapt herself to life in a
strange country. It is a canon of Court etiquette that imperial
personages take precedence of royal personages, and consequently it was
held in Russia that the Duchess of Edinburgh, being the daughter of the
Emperor of Russia, should take precedence of the Princess of Wales, who
was merely the daughter of a king. Queen Alexandra is so amiable that I
believe that she would have contentedly allowed the duchess and anybody
else who wanted to do so to pass before her; but obviously the wife of
the heir to the throne could not be permitted to take any place but the
first after the Sovereign. What was to be done? Queen Victoria solved
the difficulty very cleverly. She caused herself to be proclaimed
Empress of India, and the claim put forward by the duchess immediately
fell to the ground. The assumption of imperial rank by the Queen was
undoubtedly dictated by political considerations, but the solution of
the difficulty, created by the conservatism of Court etiquette, was an
argument which weighed with her when she took the decisive step.
In no country is the veneration of royalty carried to greater lengths
than in England. That is doubtless why King Edward’s many American and
Jewish friends were so readily received by the smart set, although these
new-comers brought with them a love of lavishness and display that went
counter to the taste and tradition of the English _noblesse_. When
society opened its doors to these people of vast wealth and luxurious
habits, and accepted their prodigal entertainments, it is hardly
surprising that their example became infectious. Let us hope that
England’s ingrained respect for royalty will induce the aristocracy to
copy the simplicity and dignity of King George’s and Queen Mary’s life,
and that this influence will aid in completely reviving the old-time
ideals of courtesy and good-breeding.
As I have already said, this revival has already begun. The war, which
has had the effect of rousing the rich from their over-indulgence in
luxury and sports, will no doubt do much toward leavening the attitude
of the classes toward each other. Surely, since they have been drawn
together in a spontaneous movement of patriotism in the face of the
enemy, they will lose much of their common mistrust and misunderstanding
and the real democracy of the spirit--not the sham equality of
externals--will have freer leeway. More than that, I dare hope that the
war, which has not only forced different classes but different nations
to stand side by side, will break down their insular habit of thought
which sees no good in foreign life and customs.
CHAPTER VII
THE KAISER AND HIS COURT
After hearing King Edward’s opinion of his nephew, I was eager to meet
the Kaiser. I was never more eager to meet any sovereign. And there was
none who ever made such an impression on me. One felt at once the
vibration of a strong personality, an incessantly active mind, a dynamic
nervous energy, a Latin temperament intellectual and gay. He has the
kind of hard grey-blue eye that is usually called piercing. And he uses
it, I think, with some knowledge of its effect when he wishes to be
disconcerting. But the wrinkles on his face come from smiling, not from
scowls; and in his private life he is altogether charming and unaffected
and delightful.
When I first visited at the Schloss, in Berlin, I was struck by the
perfect household management. I was told that the Kaiser personally
supervised all the details of the establishment. The next time I was
there, I found on my arrival a little library of my favourite authors
waiting in the apartment that had been prepared for me; and I
discovered that the Kaiser had selected and provided the books. The
charming thoughtfulness of the attention is as characteristic of him as
the thoroughness of the superintendence. He seems to be as thorough in
all he does. His activities are, of course, enormous. His mind appears
untiring. He accomplishes an incredible amount of routine labour and
comes to his recreation eager and not fagged.
The quality that makes him most misunderstood, both in Germany and
abroad, is his religiosity. He has an intimate sense of the constant
direction of a personal God--how intimate no one will believe who has
not seen the expression of his face when he is silently praying. Since
he believes that God directs every incident of the life of the world, he
believes that he has been divinely appointed to rule over Germany, as
every one else has been divinely appointed to the station he occupies
and the work he has to do. He rules, therefore, under God, responsible
only to God, and going chiefly to prayer for direction. This conviction
is so profound and moving in him that I believe if he had not been born
a king, he would have become a religious leader whose energy would have
made him as compelling as one of the old prophets. And it is a
conviction that governs him in the most unexpected ways. For example, he
has often spoken publicly of the responsibility of the ruler who
involves his people in a war in which so many men may be killed, when he
cannot be sure that their consciences will be in a state to meet death.
Hitherto the intelligence of his rule in many directions has been beyond
all question. The immense industrial expansion of the country has not
been made at the expense of the lower classes. During the Boer War a
shameful percentage of the recruits in England had to be rejected as
physically unfit for service; the recruits for the German army have
always been healthy. The foundations of the nation have not been rotted
away by poverty and exploitation. It has not been wealth that has ruled
here.
The German royal family is of the blood of the nation; it always had the
picturesque qualities of military leadership; and it represented, even
more than in England, the magnificence of national success and the new
unity of German patriotism. Although the growth of the Socialist party
has gone on surely, inside these very evident aspects of loyalty, it
would seem that so long as Germany had to be organised on a war basis it
would accept a dictatorship that is intelligent. Only when the Throne
became stupid, the trouble would begin.
Meanwhile, the German Emperor was the boast and the model of certain
sections of modern royalty. Many of the young kings who should be
attending to the arts of peace were imagining themselves little “War
Lords” and strutting about in uniforms that made them ridiculous. The
lesser royalties saw themselves as divinely ordained to their
conspicuous idleness as he to his work. Those qualities in the Kaiser
which King Edward quarrelled with--because they appeared mediæval to a
man of his type of mind--were parodied in imitation by princelings who
had not the Kaiser’s brains and force of personality. I once had such a
sovereign send an aide to order me to put down my parasol in a royal
procession, for no reason except to exercise a petty authority; and I
started a warm enmity by sending back word, through the aide, that the
control of my parasol was not within the power of the Crown.
I think it was these imitations of the Kaiser that exasperated King
Edward more than their original. The Kaiser’s antipathy to King Edward
was another matter. As the father of his people, the German Emperor sets
an example of personal virtue and austerity such as a parent might set
his sons; and King Edward enjoyed his life to the full. The King
practised all the diplomacies of silence; the Kaiser always had an
impulsiveness in private and public utterance that was the despair of
his ministers. The two men were personally antipathetical. They
misunderstood each other and underrated each other. But, as I have said
before, they did each other a lot of good.
When to-day I think of William II., I always recall a scene which seemed
symbolical of the German Sovereign and his people.
A great crowd filled an immense hall of the grey castle which the past
has left in the heart of modern Berlin. People of every rank stood
shoulder to shoulder, for it was the one day of the year when the
Imperial Court sets courage and faithful service before birth and noble
ancestry, the day of the _Ordensfest_.
I was quite young and I felt joyous and happy as
[Illustration: _Eulalia_]
I passed up the hall in the Imperial procession, with a page bearing my
long _manteau de cour_. And each time that I turned from side to side to
bow to the people, I caught a glimpse of the Kaiser at the head of the
procession, a silver figure, like Lohengrin, on whose cuirass and helmet
the light flashed. Before him walked four heralds in mediæval dress,
sounding silver trumpets, and when he reached the dais and stood before
the throne, looking down the castle hall, I saw in his steel-blue eyes
that look of exaltation which his profound and unshakable belief in the
divinity of kings gives him.
Was I a princess born in a democratic age? Or was I living in the age of
chivalry, or at the vanished Court of Versailles? Before me, as I went
to the dais, stood an Emperor as unshaken in the belief that he
possessed godlike qualities as Charlemagne when a Pope set the
unexpected crown upon his brow, or, as the _Roi Soleil_, unflattered by
worship he believed to be his due. It seemed that I should have been one
of those Infantas of Velasquez in a brocade dress and fluttering a
little fan.
The impression the Kaiser made on me that morning of the _Ordensfest_
was not new, though it came with fresh, almost startling, force. I had
known him years before as Prince Wilhelm--a simple and unaffected youth.
Then he became Crown Prince, and I noted a change. His manner became
more imperious, less spontaneous. I felt that he was schooling himself,
holding himself in check, conscious of the burden of coming
responsibilities, fearing, yet longing for, the golden irksomeness of
the Imperial crown. Since he has ascended the throne, I have never met
him without realising that he is dominated by the belief that he is an
instrument in the hands of the Almighty, divinely appointed to reign.
As he conferred orders and decorations on the stream of men who humbly
approached his throne at the _Ordensfest_, I could see from their
reverence and from the look of awe on their faces that his manner, his
regal pose, his glance, had forced them to accept his own belief in the
majesty and righteousness of kingship. But when we had passed to the
great banqueting-hall he forgot for a moment to be godlike, and became
the unpretentious Prince Wilhelm of the past.
We sat at a table on a dais, looking down on the great company invited
to enjoy the Emperor’s hospitality, and we were served by young nobles.
The page who had carried my train--a handsome boy who looked about
twenty--stood behind my chair and handed dishes or filled my glass with
the skill of a practised footman. It was the first time that a foreign
princess had been present at the _Ordensfest_, and I had received a hint
that it was customary to send the page who served one a present the
following day, and I had learnt that there was an unwritten law that the
present should be a watch. I was sitting next the Emperor and suddenly
he turned to my page with an almost roguish smile.
“You are a happy boy,” he said, “to have the privilege to serve the
beautiful Infanta.” Sovereigns always know how to flatter. “What present
would you like her to give you?”
“Sire,” answered the page, “there is nothing I should like Her Royal
Highness to give me so much as the flower that caresses her neck.”
It was a courtly and charming reply.
“You must give it him,” said the Emperor gaily, and of course I did.
And the page kept the flower.
“The deity has come down from its pedestal,” I said to the Emperor, when
I had given the boy the flower, and we both laughed.
That was a little incident that relieved the tedium of a visit to the
Schloss at Berlin; for, in spite of the courtesies of host and hostess,
I felt then, as I do in all palaces, that I was in a prison. Indeed, to
me the palace life is so irksome that when I hear the sentry pacing up
and down outside my windows, I always feel that he is there to prevent
me from going out more than to prevent other people from coming in.
Whenever I have stayed with the Kaiser and Kaiserin I have been given a
beautiful suite of rooms; but a prison is still a prison, however thick
the gilding on the bars. Everything one does or says is noticed and
talked about, and criticised and spread abroad. All day long my Spanish
lady-in-waiting sat in an ante-chamber with the German lady-in-waiting
and the German chamberlain appointed to attend me. It was intolerable to
think that these three persons were sitting there with nothing whatever
to do but to speculate on what I should take it into my head to do next
and to exchange Court gossip. In an outer chamber was another group of
idlers, servants whose chief duty was to conduct me processionally from
one part of the castle to another.
Madame la Princesse appears in the antechamber, and the ladies
make profound curtsies and the gentlemen profound bows. She
smiles--princesses must always appear to be radiantly happy--and she
tries to find something agreeable to say to each, and not to make bad
blood by being more agreeable to one than to another. She announces her
desire to go to the Kaiserin’s apartments. The chamberlain passes on
that interesting information to the footman in the outer ante-chamber. A
procession is formed, and Madame la Princesse is conducted, with the
pomp of a bishop entering a cathedral to say Mass, to the other side of
the castle. The procession passes through the Kaiserin’s ante-chamber,
where another army of servants is idling, and the ladies-in-waiting who
make profound curtsies and the gentlemen-in-waiting who make profound
bows expect Madame la Princesse to smile and to repeat the gracious
remarks about the state of the weather she has already made to the
members of her own suite. The doors of the Kaiserin’s apartments are
thrown open with becoming reverence, and Madame la Princesse
disappears, leaving her suite to gossip with the Kaiserin’s, and
probably to speculate on the nature of the royal conversation across the
sacred threshold they may not pass unless bidden. A quarter of an hour
elapses, and Madame la Princesse emerges, smiles at the bowing courtiers
and curtsying ladies, and, feeling more like an idol than a human being,
is solemnly conducted back and enshrined in her own apartments.
The etiquette of Versailles in the time of Louis XVI. could hardly be
more exasperating to a modern woman than that of Berlin in the twentieth
century. Before luncheon and dinner processions converge from all parts
of the castle, conducting members of the Imperial family and royal
guests to the drawing-room.
“The Kaiser will be in the drawing-room in ten minutes,” was the regular
warning I used to receive from a lady-in-waiting, fearful that I should
be late, and knowing the value the Kaiser sets on punctuality. In point
of fact, I never was late, and, indeed, punctuality almost ceases to be
a virtue at the Schloss, where one lives under a hard-and-fast code of
rules.
On the way from the drawing-room to the dining-room the Kaiser and
Kaiserin and their guests pass through the apartment in which the ladies
and gentlemen in attendance have been discarded. They stand in a great
circle, and it is the invariable custom to make the tour of the circle
with the usual smile and the usual banal remarks. That duty performed,
the royal personages go into the dining-room, and the suites retire to
eat in another room. In Madrid the persons in attendance on the royal
family dine with them. When I first went to Berlin the Kaiser’s children
were young, and, although they lunched with us, they were not permitted
to speak unless first spoken to. After the meal the royal party returns
to the drawing-room, but it must not be thought that when alone royal
persons unbend and behave naturally. The daily discipline of relentless
etiquette has its effect on them; they cannot forget that they are
royal, and therefore obliged to mask their feelings more rigorously than
is necessary for ordinary people; indeed, most princesses I know are
reduced by this inexorable discipline to nonentities whose mouths are
twisted in an eternal smile. At Berlin we conversed politely for the
regulation time, and, after making the circle of the suites again, were
conducted back to our apartments in half a dozen processions.
Back in one’s rooms, it is impossible to emerge without a repetition of
wearisome ceremonies. To go out for half an hour’s walk by oneself is a
relaxation the poorest can enjoy; it is forbidden to a palace prisoner.
The etiquette of Berlin requires a princess to be accompanied by a
lady-in-waiting. And usually the lady-in-waiting cannot walk fast, so
that the enjoyment of a little vigorous exercise in the open air is
impossible. Moreover, people about courts are usually uninteresting
companions. Obviously, intelligent persons would not consent to lead
such aimless lives and to conform to such an inexorable code. How
inexorable is that code may be judged from the fact that one of the
Court ladies in Berlin was confined to her room for three days as a
punishment for walking across the courtyard in an indecorous manner,
that is to say with one hand ungloved.
The Emperor William’s insistence on law and order even extends to
details of house-keeping. For instance, he knows that I like to begin
the day with something more substantial than the coffee and rolls most
Continentals take in the morning. Accordingly, whenever I have stayed at
the Schloss he has himself given orders that an English breakfast should
be served in my apartments, and I have always been indulged with the
eggs and bacon and marmalade I am accustomed to. At first sight it may
seem a little odd that an Emperor should be at the pains to arrange the
menu of a guest’s breakfast. The Kaiser evidently knows as well as I do
that a princess in a palace is less happily situated than a visitor in
an English country-house, who gives his orders and gets what he likes
served in his room. It would never occur to me to ask for a boiled egg
at breakfast in a palace where people are not accustomed to have boiled
eggs for breakfast, because the order would pass through so many persons
before it reached the kitchen that my egg would probably be an _omelette
au surprise_ or a _terrine_ of _foie-gras_ before it arrived in my
dining-room.
Above and beyond the Kaiser’s love of seeing that things work smoothly
in his home is his love of his capital. To him Berlin is a daughter,
whom he likes to see beautiful and well turned-out, just as he likes to
see the Kaiserin and the Duchess of Brunswick charmingly dressed.
“It has been raining hard,” he said, coming into my room one morning,
“and it has just stopped. I want you to come out with me, because I have
something interesting to show you.”
I put on my hat at once and we went down to a carriage which was waiting
and drove away. I was wondering what interesting sight I was going to
see and what surprise the Kaiser had in store for me.
“Look!” he cried suddenly, “look at the streets! There have been
torrents of rain and the weather only cleared up a few minutes ago, but
do you see that there is not a speck of mud on the road?”
It was true. The streets were surprisingly and absolutely clean.
“You appear to dry as well as to sweep them,” I said.
“I have an army of road-sweepers,” he said. “Here they are,” and he
pointed to a group of men energetically plying their brooms. “I wanted
you to see how clean I keep Berlin.”
“And is that all you have brought me out to see?” I said teasingly.
[Illustration: Courtesy of Collier’s
GERMAN EMPEROR IN AUSTRIAN UNIFORM]
“Yes, all,” he said, and we both laughed.
The Kaiser knows that I am passionately fond of dancing, and he used to
make a point of arranging small dances when I was at the castle, so that
I could enjoy myself without the restraint imposed on Royal personages
at the formal Court balls. They used to call these small dances: _Les
Bals de l’Infanta_. At Court balls we walked round the circle of
guests--at all Courts people seem eternally standing in smiling
circles--and the foreign ladies, penned behind their ambassadors, used
to afford me considerable amusement, especially the Americans, who used
to appear in larger numbers than they have done recently. There they
stood in the glory of expensive court trains, which could be no possible
use to them afterwards, and curtsied to the ground when the ambassadors
had recited their names to each of us. I often wondered why they came
and what pleasure they could possibly derive from seeing us smile and
from curtsying to us. Obviously sensible and representative women would
not be among them, unless, indeed, their husbands held official
positions which necessitated their presence.
After circling the circle, we went to the dais and sat for a few
moments in gilt armchairs, facing the general company, before descending
to dance the _quadrille d’honneur_. When that ceremony was ended, one’s
partner, a prince or an ambassador, handed one back to the dais, made a
low bow and retired. At Courts etiquette does not allow a princess to
choose a partner because he happens to waltz well or to be amusing. At
Berlin chamberlains had lists of partners for princesses, and one of
them would bring me the card on which their names were inscribed, just
as a waiter brings one a bill-of-fare in a restaurant, and I gave my
orders. Each partner came to the dais, made a very low bow, and, when
the dance was over, consigned me to my golden arm-chair with another low
bow. The Kaiser has caused the minuet to be revived at his Court, and,
when I watched that stately dance from the dais, I used to feel certain
that I was at the Court of the _Roi Soleil_. But the _Bals de l’Infanta_
were far more charming, for then I could dance with whom I liked and
waltz to my heart’s content.
These informal dances are just an instance of the personal consideration
which the Kaiser has always shown me. “_Madame, vos desirs sont les
ordres pour Guillaume_,” he telegraphed to me once, and that was in
answer to a letter I had sent, begging him to ask the Sultan Abdul Hamid
not to chop off the head of Izzet Pasha, who was lying in prison under
sentence of death. A Turkish lady, whom I knew in Paris, had been to see
me and had begged me to ask the Kaiser, who was about to visit
Constantinople, to intercede with the Sultan for the unfortunate man. I
knew nothing about Izzet Pasha, but my friend was so distressed and so
confident that I would help her, that I was very much touched, and
immediately wrote to the Kaiser. The lady was overjoyed when I showed
her the courtly reply I had received, and the Sultan, of course, granted
the Kaiser’s request.
The matter did not end there. Two years later, when I had entirely
forgotten it, I arrived one day in Madrid, and the instant I had got out
of the train, the Queen Mother and my sister, the Infanta Isabella, who
were waiting on the platform to receive me, began to question me about
some mysterious Turk in whom they evidently supposed I was deeply
interested.
“Who is this Turk you have sent us, Eulalia?” asked the Queen.
“But I do not know a single Turk,” I said.
“But this Turk who has arrived in Madrid, because you want to have him
near you,” said my sister.
“What crazy nonsense!” I cried. “Are you both out of your minds?”
“Certainly not,” said the Queen, “seeing that I have a letter from the
Sultan, saying that he has sent the man here as Turkish Minister
entirely to please you.”
Then the truth dawned on me. Abdul Hamid must have asked the German
Emperor why he desired the prisoner he had pleaded for to be pardoned,
and the Kaiser must have told him that it was the wish of the Infanta
Eulalia. Mohammedan ideas of feminine psychology made the Sultan see a
tale of the Arabian Nights, and, determining to humour me to the top of
my bent, he sent the hero of the imaginary romance to Madrid where, as
he expressly stated in the letter the Queen Mother showed me at the
palace, he hoped he would remain as permanent Minister, to be for long
years an ornament of the Court of the Infanta Eulalia.
French people, who think of the Kaiser as a Teuton to the backbone
caring only for German ideals and achievements, would be surprised at
the genuine taste he has for French literature, which he has cultivated
by an exhaustive reading of French classics. Realising that I am _au
fond_ of French in spite of my Spanish name and title, the Emperor often
showed me that side of his character which makes him an admirer of
French literature, French art and French drama. One day he took me to
the old palace of Sans-Souci at Potsdam to show me the apartments of
Frederick the Great and the relics of the King’s friend, Voltaire, which
are preserved there. We went into Frederick’s library, and when the door
was closed, I found myself in a circle of book-shelves from which there
seemed no exit. All the books were French.
The Kaiser smiled.
“Here you are again in your dear France,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered; “I am very proud of my French ancestry, and you
yourself are very proud to let me see that Frederick lived in a French
atmosphere, and to show me all these French books with which he
surrounded himself.”
Of course, as may be imagined, the Kaiser’s interest in French culture
is more in the way of relaxation than anything else. As I have
intimated, his dominant characteristic is his deep-rooted belief in the
divinity of his office. Why the ruler of a modern state, which has been
so progressive in its scientific and commercial achievements, should be
so imbued with mediæval ideas of kingship is a problem to puzzle
psychologists; but it is a factor that cannot be neglected, if one is to
form any proper appreciation of governmental conditions in Germany.
The origin of the Kaiser’s belief in the divinity of kings is one thing;
but the acceptance of this belief by the whole nation is quite another.
Probably the only explanation lies in the docility of the Teutonic
temperament. An average citizen who does not revolt at a system of
police control so irksome as to be unbearable to the Anglo-Saxon, who
does not balk at addressing even minor officials with high-sounding
titles, is certainly more ready to believe that absolute power is vested
in his Emperor than a man of more independent habits of thought and
action.
No matter how distasteful such a form of government may be to citizens
of a freer state, or how unsound in theory, it has had its good points.
Because the Emperor William has believed in law and order, and has had
power to enforce his conceptions on his people, German cities are clean,
well cared for, and are freer from the curse of corruption in local
governments than in some more democratic countries.
But because the Kaiser’s ideas of proper government included mighty
armaments, the military party, always the dominant class, was encouraged
to grow stronger and more powerful each year. His very enthusiasm over
his efficient army and navy no doubt had a very great influence on the
nation at large. Trained to venerate their ruler, naturally they were
willing to uphold what he upheld. He had always fostered the growth of
trade, and his people had seen how this policy had benefited them. The
Kaiser believed in increasing his army and navy, and the people, never
questioning his judgment, did not rebel when the tax-collector took a
little more of their earnings each year.
Whether the Kaiser ever realised that his encouragement of the military
caste had loosed a force that might sweep everything before it is hard
to say. If it ever occurred to him that the party was growing too
strong, surely his mystic belief in his own divinely derived power
reassured him with the argument that his personal authority could
always hold these turbulent elements in check. Accustomed to rule as
absolutely as any mediæval potentate, the Kaiser had unconsciously
called into being vast forces which in turn were to dominate him, to
engulf him, and to make him the foremost figure in the most gigantic
cataclysm of human history.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TSAR AND HIS PEOPLE
Looking back over my travels, few visits stand out with more pleasant
recollections than those I have paid to Petrograd.
In the present Tsar, Nicholas II., one finds a type of sovereign not
only different from either King Edward or the Kaiser, but, in my
experience, unique. Sovereigns may have moments of an affectionate
emotion; they rarely have consistent tenderness. In their most intimate
relations of family life they are apt to resume suddenly the frigid
tones of royalty; and I have seen a king, talking even with his mother,
get himself unexpectedly into his royal manner and speak as stiffly as
if he were giving his mind to some lower breed of human being. Many a
person, chatting _tête-à-tête_ with a sovereign alone, has been charmed
by the simple naturalness of his manner, and meeting him an hour later,
before others, has wondered if it could be the same man. Not so the
Tsar. He has more human tenderness than I ever saw in any other man. He
enters a crowded audience-room with the same charming kindliness and
unconsciousness of self that he has in the privacy of family life. His
eyes have always the one clear gaze of a clean soul.
He is not at first impressive, simply because he is incapable of playing
a part, even a royal one. But the more you see of him the more he grows
on you. He has no love of display, of uniforms, of the parade of royal
power. He is wise with the wisdom of sympathy, and eager to help his
people, and benevolent in his thought of them to a degree for which I
know no parallel. I think it must be due to the unmistakable
irradiations of this kindliness of heart that no attempts have been made
upon his life, even during the bitterest frenzies of revolutionary hate.
In the menace with which the existence of royalty is surrounded, one
would expect to find the Imperial family living amid all the oppressions
of constant fear. On the contrary, I thought them the happiest royal
family I have seen. They were so naturally affectionate and happy that
it was even possible to forget that they were royal. They had apparently
accepted the dangers of their life as soldiers do--as we all accept the
lesser dangers of our ordinary day--and were unaffected by them.
What they thought of the problems of their rule I do not know; and I do
not know enough of their people to understand what those problems really
are. But surely no power could be more beneficently exercised than this
man’s must be; and if his spirit could only animate the instruments of
his authority and the innumerable officials who are necessary to
administer it, the mad asperities of recrimination in Russia would be as
impossible to the administration and its opponents as they are to the
Tsar himself.
He is a Dane, through his mother, and his qualities are those that make
the Royal Families of Denmark and Sweden so charming. But these are the
constitutional monarchies of a kindly and contented people, who have no
cause to rebel against a government that is their own creation, and who
show no awe of a ruling family as unassuming as themselves. I think, if
one must be born Royal, it would be wise to be born to a Scandinavian
Crown.
I have rarely felt happier than I did when I heard that Nicholas II. had
called on his subjects to take a share in the government of the vast
Russian Empire. The publication of the Imperial Manifesto of October,
1905, in which the Emperor announced the creation of the Imperial Duma,
was an event of first-class importance, and I admired the spirit of the
nation which had shown its determination to limit the power of the Crown
and the wisdom of the Emperor in yielding to the desires of his
subjects.
“This is the first step,” I said, “on the path which must ultimately
lead to the substitution of democratic for autocratic government in
Russia.”
My affection for the Emperor and Empress, my enthusiasm for the
advancement of democratic ideas, my recollections of a long visit to
Russia, all combined to intensify my interest in the dawn of freedom in
a land which I felt, when I visited it, was part of Asia included in
Europe by some strange mistake of the geographers.
It was mid-winter when I arrived for the first time in Petersburg,
magical beneath its snow mantle, and I came as a simple tourist to see
the country and to study the conditions of Russian life. I established
myself in a hotel as a Spanish countess, feeling delighted that nobody
knew who I actually was, and revelling in the freedom of strict
incognito. But I had not been in the hotel five hours before a Grand
Master of Ceremonies arrived and betrayed my secret. From that minute
everybody knew that the countess was an Infanta of Spain, and my liberty
was gone. It is my usual experience. I arrive somewhere, believing that
not a soul knows where I am, and, almost before I have taken possession
of my rooms, there is a whirr of the telephone bell and somebody at the
other end saying: “Eulalia, how did you get here? You must come and see
us at once.”
The Grand Master of Ceremonies brought me a message from the Emperor and
Empress, telling me how delighted they were to know that they were going
to see me soon, and suggesting that I should come to the Winter Palace
the next morning for the Twelfth Day ceremony of the Blessing of the
Waters.
“But I have nothing to wear!” I cried.
It was absolutely true. I had never expected to figure at a Court
ceremony, and it had not occurred to me to bring a _manteau de cour_.
Etiquette, however, is less severe in Russia than in Spain or in
Prussia, as I soon discovered, and the next morning I put on my
smartest frock and drove to the Winter Palace, a gigantic building,
painted dull red, with rows of gods and goddesses standing on the
cornice of its stupendous façade, looking cold and unhappy in the
nipping air.
I had not seen the Empress since we were girls, staying with Queen
Victoria at Windsor or in the beautiful Isle of Wight. And what a
charming girl she was! A simple English girl in appearance, in a skirt
and blouse, utterly unaffected, warm-hearted, and fresh as a rosebud
touched with dew. I was thinking of the happy, careless days when we
were in England together, as I drove to the palace, forgetting the
change that the passage of the years makes in the friends of one’s
youth, and when I went into the room where the Empress was waiting to
watch the Blessing of the Waters from the window, I felt startled to
find, instead of the girl I used to know, a surpassingly beautiful and
stately woman. The petals of the rosebud had unfolded. She was the
centre of a brilliant group of Grand Duchesses and ladies, all wearing
the strange but beautiful dress of the Russian Court, with long hanging
sleeves. On her head was a _kokoshnik_, a crescent-shaped diadem,
flaming with diamonds, from which fell a long white veil, and her
stateliness and beauty distinguished her from all the other sumptuous
figures surrounding her. A stranger who had never seen her before would
have been certain that it was she, and not one of the others, who was
Empress.
“How good to see you again, Eulalia, after all these years,” she said,
coming towards me; and she put her arms round me and kissed me.
And in that greeting I realised that the Tsaritsa had not changed. She
was still the affectionate and unaffected friend I had known years
before. We had a hundred questions to ask each other, but almost before
we had had time to begin, we had to stop talking to attend to the
imposing ceremony which was beginning on the frozen Neva.
From the window I saw that a pavilion, like an exceedingly decorative
bandstand, had been erected on the ice, just in front of the palace, and
I watched a procession of ecclesiastics in stiff Byzantine robes and
glittering mitres move slowly across the road separating it from the
palace, followed by the Grand Dukes and the Emperor. The singing of the
choir floated to us through the frosty air and the Empress crossed
herself devoutly. She is a sincerely religious woman.
I watched the Emperor standing motionless beneath the fretted and gilded
canopy of the pavilion, and the thought suddenly flashed into my mind
that the Russian Emperors alone claim the right to govern the souls as
well as the bodies of their subjects. The Autocrat is a great
ecclesiastical personage as well as a secular ruler, and the Russian
Church depends upon him and can do nothing without his consent. I
remembered that banishment to Siberia was the punishment for those who
deserted the Orthodox Church and refused to believe as the Tsar believes
and to pray as the Tsar prays. The Kings of Spain and the Emperors of
Austria are sons, not rulers, of the Church, and I had been taught that
the Pope was king of kings. It seemed to me that no worse form of
despotism could be conceived than the concentration in the hands of an
autocratic ruler of the spiritual and temporal power and, as these
thoughts crowded into my mind, there seemed to me something sinister and
terrible in the ceremony I was watching, and I realised, as I had never
done before, the immensity and the awfulness of the power
[Illustration: Courtesy of Collier’s
NICHOLAS II AND THE HEIR OF RUSSIA]
wielded by the motionless figure beneath the gay pavilion. Nobody
rejoiced more than I did when the Emperor published the Manifesto of
April, 1905, granting his subjects religious liberty, and I realised
that the stupendous claim which had made me shudder when I thought of
it, as I watched the sumptuous Twelfth Day ceremony from the windows of
the Winter Palace, had been renounced for ever. In point of fact,
Nicholas II. had no desire to maintain it, and he renounced it as soon
as an appropriate occasion arose.
After the picturesque ceremony which had stirred these thoughts had
ended and the Archbishop had dipped a golden cross in the water running
below the ice of the river, the holy water was brought into the palace
to the Empress, and the Emperor joined us. He gave me a
characteristically Russian welcome. His manner was engagingly simple and
unaffected. The contrast between him and the German Emperor was
extraordinary. The Kaiser, a constitutional monarch, whose power is
strictly limited, shows by his bearing and his manner, as I have
indicated in another chapter, that he holds the divine right of kings to
be a cardinal article of faith. When one is with the Tsar it requires a
certain effort of the imagination to remember that he possesses
autocratic power over the lives of 160,000,000 human beings. The
Russians are the most hospitable people in the world, and the Emperor
and Empress are not excelled by any of their subjects in kindness and
generosity to guests. They both insisted that, so long as I remained in
Petersburg, I must be with them as much as possible, and, in point of
fact, although I slept at the hotel, I was constantly at the Winter
Palace, and had my part in the intimate family life of the Imperial
family.
When a man likes nothing better than to remain at home with his wife, it
is a sure sign that he is very much in love with her. Judged by that
test, there is no happier couple in Europe than the Emperor and Empress
of Russia. They are never more contented than when together, and it was
obvious to me that the Tsar simply adores his wife. It would be strange
if he did not, for there is not a gentler or sweeter woman in the world
than the beautiful Tsaritsa. And both of them are devoted to their
children. They used to make me come with them sometimes to the nursery,
where the little Grand Duchesses used to welcome us with shrieks of
delight. What games there were! People who think of the Tsar as a
frowning despot would have been astonished to see a vigorous
pillow-fight going on between him and his children. And away from the
formalities of the Court, closeted with her children, the Tsaritsa was
always radiant and happy. Under the spell of their prattle and of their
caresses she was transformed. The smiling mother seemed a different
woman to the beautiful but grave lady seen by the public in the
ceremonies of the Court.
“Do try and get the Empress to smile, Eulalia,” said one of the Grand
Duchesses to me at some Court function.
But that was sooner said than done. There is not a trace of
artificiality in the Empress’s character. She seemed unable to pretend
she was enjoying herself, when, in point of fact, she was fatigued and
bored. Moving as the central figure of a splendid pageant, I think she
was always wishing the ceremony to be at an end and to find herself free
to be with her children again.
The tastes of the Emperor are as simple as those of the Empress and in
curious contrast to those of most of the Imperial family. Neither of
them likes the late supper-parties in which the majority of their
relations indulge. Early to bed and early to rise is my motto, and
supper-parties, hardly finished at two o’clock in the morning, bored me
unutterably. When I went to the opera with the Emperor and Empress, we
used to take time by the forelock and sup in the second _entr’acte_, in
order to be able to go straight to bed when we got home. The ballets
given at the Marinsky Theatre were exceedingly beautiful, and the
Empress followed the movements of the dancers with evident enjoyment
from the stage-box. Behind the box is a charming room, and there it was
that supper used to be served.
“Here is your high tea, Eulalia,” the Empress would say merrily, and
then we sat down to a square meal of cold meat and countless cups of
tea, to which I used to do ample justice, as I did not dine before going
to the theatre.
His love of simplicity does not, however, prevent the Emperor from
enjoying Society. Like most Russians, he is fond of it, and his
animation and vivacity at Court balls were delightful and, moreover,
genuine. I liked to watch him dance the mazurka, that rushing, almost
violent, dance that they say only a Slav can dance to perfection. It was
so obvious that he enjoyed it. When supper was served we went to a long
table on a dais, set at one end of a great hall, and I discovered that
the Russian Court has a very charming custom which does not obtain
elsewhere. The Emperor and Empress took their places, facing the general
company, with their Royal guests and other members of the Imperial
family to right and to left of them; but we had hardly been a minute at
table before the Emperor rose and went to one of the tables below the
dais, where he sat down and chatted with the people supping at it. After
talking for five minutes, he went to another table to greet other
guests, and then passed from group to group, sitting down at each table
for a few minutes. And, with the Russian instinct of hospitality, the
Emperor played the part of host so well that the conversation became
more animated at each table he visited. The presence of some sovereigns,
too careful of preserving the distance between themselves and persons
who are not of the blood royal, sometimes casts a gloom on their
guests.
Perhaps the Emperor’s obvious enjoyment of a ball was due to the fact
that it is but seldom he can allow himself relaxation. There is not a
busier man in the world. I once remarked to him that I find it
impossible to get through the work of the day unless I follow a definite
rule, and I asked him how he divided up his time.
“I get up early,” he answered, “and after a light breakfast I work until
eleven. Then I take a walk and come back for luncheon at half-past
twelve. After that comes the task of giving audiences to ministers and
others, and, when work allows it, I take a drive before tea in order to
get some fresh air. Immediately after tea I am busy again with my
secretaries, and work with them lasts until dinner-time.”
“A strenuous day,” I said.
“But that is not the end of it,” he answered, smiling. “I am very often
obliged to go back to work straight from the dinner-table, and sometimes
it is not finished until far on into the night.”
The Emperor’s devotion to duty is in striking contrast to the almost
traditional love of pleasure displayed by the Grand Dukes. A foreigner
might easily be led to suppose that the House of Romanoff is at heart
in sympathy with democratic ideas. The lack of formality at Court, the
marriages between Grand Dukes and commoners, the presence of unlettered
peasants at certain of the ceremonies of the Winter Palace, the share
taken by some of the members of the Imperial family in amusements
accessible to anybody who has money in his pocket, their supper parties
in restaurants and their enjoyment of the _café concerts_ of the
capital--all these things might deceive the stranger. To know the Grand
Dukes and Grand Duchesses is to realise that they neither understand the
aspirations of the democracy nor sympathise with them, for, reflecting
the glory of Autocracy they are more firmly convinced than any other
Royal persons in Europe that a gulf divides them from the rest of
mankind. And this conviction is so deep that they appear to believe that
the most ordinary actions are ennobled by the mere fact that they are
performed by persons in whose veins flows the Imperial blood.
The life led by most of them would be unbearable to me. A perpetual
round of amusements becomes in the end as wearisome as the treadmill.
How people who are not in the first flush of youth can day after day sit
up until two o’clock in the morning, as too many of them do, eating
unnecessary suppers and drinking champagne, I can not understand. High
tea with the Emperor and Empress pleased me better than late suppers
with the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses. Indeed, when I yielded to
persuasion and went out with them for an evening’s amusement my
sleepiness used to divert them immensely.
“Eulalia, you’re yawning,” they would say.
“It is two hours past my bedtime,” I would answer.
And then we laughed, and it was probably the Grand Duke Alexis who would
suggest that we should all drive out to the Islands and have another
supper at a _café concert_. Then I would strike and go home, scolding
myself for sitting up so late and marvelling at the extraordinary
vitality of the rest of the company, starting merrily on the long sledge
drive to the Islands, where they would sit by the hour in a private room
overlooking the little stage on which the unsuccessful artists of Paris
danced and sang.
Perhaps it is because I am Spanish and not Russian that I failed to see
the pleasure to be derived from spending the night in frivolity; for, in
point of fact, there is nothing characteristically grand-ducal in this
curious craze; it is simply Russian, and Moscow merchants will spend
thousands of roubles in extravagant amusements between midnight and
sunrise. The Grand Dukes are typical Russians. They have the virtues and
the failings of the typical Russian, and--I am not sure whether it is a
virtue or a failing--they are, like all the Russians I have ever met,
exceedingly susceptible to feminine charms. To the Russian, love is
everything, and in Russia women have more power to change men’s lives
than in any other land.
To please the woman he loves a Russian will exile himself to a foreign
country, will alter his habits, and change his manner of life
completely. It is not, therefore, surprising that members of the House
of Romanoff have deliberately incurred the anger of the Emperor and
voluntarily left Russia to live abroad for the sake of the women they
love. They make their homes in Paris or in the English countryside, and
become the humble slaves of the wives they have chosen; while these
ladies, although perhaps of humble origin, find themselves treated by
Society, always anxious to gain the approval of princes, with hardly
less reverence than princesses of the blood royal.
But if the majority of the members of the Imperial family love
extravagant amusement, there is one notable exception to the rule. The
Grand Duchess Elizabeth, widow of the Grand Duke Serge, who was
assassinated by revolutionists, shares the simple tastes of her sister,
the Empress, and detests the empty formality of Courts as much as I do.
When we were girls we saw a great deal of each other at Windsor and in
the Isle of Wight, and it was a great delight to me to talk over the old
days when I visited her in her palace within the fantastic battlements
of the Kremlin.
She was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women in Europe, and her
husband was extraordinarily handsome; indeed, their beauty and their
bearing made them the most distinguished couple at the great gathering
of Royal personages I met at Buckingham Palace when the Jubilee of Queen
Victoria was celebrated. After the terrible death of her husband, the
Grand Duchess devoted herself to the education of the Grand Duke Paul’s
motherless children, the Grand Duke Dmitri and the Grand Duchess Maria
Pavlovna, and, that task accomplished, she became a sister of charity.
She has founded a convent in Moscow, where she follows a severe rule and
devotes herself to hospital work and the care of the poor, realising
that even a princess has no excuse to shirk the responsibilities of life
and to lead a useless existence.
How is it that there is such a marked difference between the tastes of
the Emperor and those of his uncles and cousins? The answer is not
difficult to find. The Emperor’s love of simplicity comes from his
mother, the Empress Marie, who, now that she can indulge her own tastes,
lives the greater part of the year with Queen Alexandra in a small villa
on the Danish coast. When I visited them there I found that they were
living as simply as private persons who know nothing of the life of
Courts.
But, while recognising the influence of his mother in the formation of
the Emperor’s character, I like to think that something of the spirit of
Peter the Great has been conserved in the Imperial family, and that the
love of work, the courage, and the simplicity displaced by Nicholas II.
are in some measure gifts from his great ancestor. One afternoon I drove
out to the Islands in a troika, a sledge that might have come from
Fairyland, covered with glistening trappings and luxurious furs and
drawn by three horses abreast, and, on my way, I stopped to visit the
little house in which Peter the Great lived when he was building his new
capital. It is a tiny cottage, a mere hut, with two rooms. Nothing could
be simpler or more unlike the vast Winter Palace. Yet I felt, as I left
this humble abode, that the spirit of the man who was content to live in
it still reigns in the splendid home of his descendant, the present
Emperor.
I have alluded to the courage of Nicholas II., and it may surprise those
who only know him by repute that I should emphasise this trait of his
character. I myself had often heard that he was timorous and dreaded
assassination. It was therefore a great surprise to me to find that he
often walked from the palace to my hotel, with only a single
aide-de-camp in attendance. Although his grandfather had been
assassinated by revolutionists, he himself appeared to be absolutely
fearless and to disregard the risk he ran by walking about Petersburg.
If precautions are taken to protect him now, he permits them solely
because he is convinced that his life is of value to his people. Russia
is his one thought. During recent months he has proved this, too, by the
way he has identified himself personally with the campaign in which his
soldiers are engaged.
Those who do not know him often speak or write of him as cruel,
tyrannical, caring for nothing but the conservation of the Imperial
power and wealth. That is an absolutely false estimate of his character.
One has only to look into his beautiful blue eyes to realise that he is
neither harsh nor cruel and to understand his great tenderness. Indeed,
it is his tenderness that distinguishes him from most of the sovereigns
I know. His affection for his mother, his devotion to his wife and
children, are the outcome of this quality, and its exercise is not
confined to his domestic life. I have heard him speak on more than one
occasion with the utmost feeling of persons who had been condemned to
exile in Siberia. It was perfectly clear to me from the way in which he
spoke of them that, had he followed the dictates of his own heart, he
would have cancelled the sentences and pardoned the offenders. I could
see that the thought of their sufferings made him suffer himself, and
that it was only a stern sense of duty that made him acquiesce in
penalties he regretted.
The bulk of the Tsar’s subjects are peasants, and he very often spoke of
their life and their customs. Indeed, he displayed the keenest interest
in plans to better their condition and to raise their standard of
culture. Sovereigns, I have noticed, carefully eschew any reference to
questions which they and their ministers are unable to solve, and it is
to me significant that neither the Tsar nor the Kaiser has ever spoken
to me of the Polish question. The Tsar was, however, aware that the
Bourbons and the great Polish family of Zamoyski are now connected--my
cousin, Princess Caroline of Bourbon, married a Zamoyski--and he very
delicately appointed a gentleman of that family to be in attendance on
me during my stay in Petersburg. From intercourse with this gentleman
and with other Poles I met in Russia I discovered that there is a
profound difference between the Russian and the Polish character. There
always remains something of the Asiatic in the Russian, but the Pole
belongs to the West. He has the Slav charm and the Latin culture. I know
of nothing sadder than the tragedy of Poland. That splendid nation,
which once saved Europe from the Turks, has been parcelled out between
three Empires, but neither the iron will of the German Emperor nor the
autocratic power of Nicholas II. has succeeded in killing the Polish
spirit. Small wonder that both at Berlin and Petersburg the subject was
not broached at Court. Since then the war has come. Will the end of it
witness the resurrection of Poland as a nation?
The Emperor is perfectly well aware that my sympathies are with the
democracy. But naturally I never attempted to force my ideas upon him. I
am able to understand that a sovereign who wields absolute power and to
whom the most powerful of his ministers is obliged to yield may be
necessary for Russia at the present day. I am convinced that the world
will be happier--princes and people alike--when democracy has triumphed,
but I realise that in a country like Russia, the bulk of whose
population is unlettered, it would be foolish, as well as dangerous, to
introduce suddenly and without preparation methods which are successful
in the West. Education, and education alone, can establish the victory
of democracy.
From my home in the capital of a great people, in whose motto is
enshrined a profound belief in the brotherhood of mankind and the
essential equality of prince and peasant, I look out over Europe and see
the decay of old institutions and the movements which are slowly but
certainly reducing those monarchs who still retain power to the position
of decorative figureheads. In Norway the process is already finished,
and, although I confess that I was first surprised, I was immensely
pleased to find, during a recent visit to King Haakon and Queen Maud,
that they were simply the first among equals. I am firmly convinced that
this will be the ultimate form of monarchy throughout Europe, but long
years must pass before the Russian people have the culture and political
knowledge which make a simple Norwegian the equal of his sovereign.
Meanwhile, it is satisfactory to know that the man guiding the destinies
of the Russian people possesses the fine qualities which distinguish
Nicholas II.
CHAPTER IX
THE REGAL POSE
Will democracy ever rule in some countries? I will not dare to prophesy,
only in so far as there is a tendency gradually spreading which gives
hope that in the end it will permeate the entire Western life. Many
years will be necessary for its development here and there--in Russia,
for instance--but most peoples are almost ready for the change, and
unless kings meet the movement and, so to speak, merge themselves in it,
leading it, they will pass and their thrones with them. Some great
crisis will occur, and suddenly the people will themselves displace
their dictators.
But the tentacles of royalty are firmly fixed into the beings of many
nations. In Austria, for example, before the war there was so much
royalty that half the Austrian Army seemed doing sentry duty round the
palaces of archdukes. In that country there is a vast amount of
clericalism and a vast amount of Court stupidity, which, however
ridiculous it may appear to the outside observer, is really the prop
upon which the monarchy rests. I should think that the Court life there
must be one degree duller than in Spain.
In Italy the people are more clever; the country is alive and
prospering, and the King is sufficiently Socialistic in his leanings to
be in sympathy with the progress and the ambition which he helps to
direct.
Unfortunately, on our visit to Rome, we had arranged, through our
Ambassador, to be presented both to the Vatican and to the Court; and at
the eleventh hour, before going to the Vatican, we were notified by
letter that the Pope would only receive us on condition that neither
before nor after seeing him should we call on the King. This stipulation
had been withheld from our Ambassador, with characteristic cleverness,
until it could put us in a position of insulting the Throne by failing
to keep an appointment that we had solicited. We were saved from the
awkward situation by a telegram that called us back to Spain, with the
news that my mother-in-law was seriously ill. But that is one of the
things that can make the travels of Royalty not altogether comfortable.
The princes of the house of Orleans have almost all been very clever.
They are good financiers, shrewd politicians, witty, and easy in their
address. The late King Leopold of Belgium had these qualities in a high
degree, together with the cynicism that often accompanies them. He was
less like a king in his palace than like a banker in his counting-house;
and he left Belgium established in wealth. When his nephew, the present
King Albert, succeeded to the throne it was the problems of wealth and
the dissatisfaction of the working classes that confronted him. How
tragic that fact sounds to-day with the country laid waste and despoiled
and her people scattered. He is one of the few sovereigns in Europe who
have clearly seen the power and virtue of the modern Socialist movement;
and he seemed to me to be alone in his ability to lead it beneficently
for itself and its opponents. He had made it an effective engine of
social reform instead of a disruptive force of revolution. The King of
the Belgians is a man of such quiet tact and modesty that he was little
known in Europe, but that did not prevent him from being one of the
wisest and cleverest of its rulers. Through a peaceful reign he would
have done much for his country. Apart from the share he took in the war,
he, by his ability as a sovereign, would have been a factor to be
reckoned with in world politics. As it was, his success so far in the
internal affairs of his kingdom could give lessons to half the
Governments of Europe. If I did not go, at least twice a year, to see
for myself what he had been doing, I had come to feel that I was
neglecting my best opportunity of education. There are few kings for
whom one can feel that!
Another sovereign of the Orleans family, recently little known but
certain to become important, is King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the strength
of whose secret hand was shown in the downfall of the Turkish power in
Europe. He is a son of the only daughter of Louis Philippe of France,
and therefore my cousin by marriage; and I knew him intimately before he
was called to the throne of Bulgaria. He has made that country almost
single-handed, building it up commercially, attracting money to it for
railroads and industrial development, and administering its finances as
ably as he administers his own private fortune. His cleverness in using
rightly for his own ends circumstances that would pass unperceived by
any one less astute, made him one of the marked men of Europe. He used
to flatter me that I was the only person who understood him; and I could
reply that it was lucky for him, since, if others understood what he was
trying to do, they would surely stop him. He has a wonderful mind.
The lives of these men, who are kings in fact as well as in name, are as
full and interesting as the life of any one who has work to do and power
to do it. They have something to compensate them for the restrictions of
grandeur and the cramping stiffnesses of pomp. Their dignity has cause.
Their isolation is inevitable. But, for every one of these, there are
hundreds of little princes and princesses, grand dukes and archdukes,
and such minor personages of royal blood, who are less free in their
lives than kings are and have nothing to occupy their mental idleness.
It astonished me as I went among them to find them supported by a
consciousness of self-importance that seemed to me pathetic. I could
name a score of such persons, quite unknown, who would never believe
that their existence is not a matter of eager public interest to the
whole world. They apply themselves to the observances of royal
etiquette devotedly. They patronise and condescend to the lesser orders
of mankind with a touching sense of their own supremacy. They defend
themselves jealously in their degrees of royal blood and precedence, and
see themselves as conspicuously exalted as if they had high seats in
some hierarchy of heaven just below the Eternal Throne.
After a little experience, one can recognise these lesser royalties at a
glance and pick them out in a crowded drawing-room. They all have the
same high-shouldered carriage, stiff-backed, with a stretched neck to
carry a raised chin. Their lips smile very easily, but their eyes almost
never. They are accustomed to being stared at; indeed, they would be
disappointed if they did not attract stares; and they seem to present
their faces even to a private company, not nervously, nor quite
self-consciously, but with an expression of friendly and impenetrable
self-complacency that becomes recognisable as the royal mask. They are
usually, because of their training, rather stupid, but their dignity
makes them look wise. They are always concerned with their own
popularity, are gracious by policy,
[Illustration: KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM]
and try to leave each individual with the impression that he has been
personally distinguished by their notice. They are not only playing a
part, but they believe that they are really the part they play; so that
any true conversation with them is largely impossible. Their minds, like
their faces, are always making a public appearance and considering
effect.
When they are alone with their own kind, they are free to talk of the
matters that really interest them, and it is a conversation as typical
as the little gossip of a group of nuns. They have no opinions to
express on the problems of government; “it is a duty that they owe the
crown” to express none, and consequently they rarely acquire any. They
know little of the world around them, and say less. To arrive at any
speaking acquaintance with matters of literature and music and art, one
must make a mental effort in study, to which the Court life of busy
empty-mindedness is not conducive. They converse, therefore, about
royalty only--the latest marriage, the most recent engagement, the death
of this prince, the illness of that, a birth in Spain, an archduke’s
affair with a mistress in Austria--family happenings considered only in
their family aspect, as idle as gossip, largely innocent, wholly
uninteresting.
I can understand the respect paid to power; and royalty with power is
far from ridiculous, even when it is unintelligent; but royalty without
power is as great a bore as an aristocracy without the estate to support
its pride. We are no longer in the feudal ages. Money has now the rule
that used to belong to rank. And the chief use of the lesser royalties
seems to be to dignify wealth by associating with it. Hence the court
that the rich pay to them--the eagerness to entertain them, to take them
on private yachts, to amuse them with automobile trips, to promote their
fortunes on the Stock Exchange, and even to give them money if they will
take it. They are usually too proud, of course; and the money is made by
canny aristocrats who charge wealthy “climbers” for introductions to
Court circles. The unfortunate royalties stifle in stuffy drawing-rooms,
smiling on the compliments of aspiring riches, without even receiving a
little “tip” for their complacency. Life in Court was little to my
taste; I had found it no place for any one with an instinct for
independence. But the accepted life of royalty outside of Court seemed
to me worse. It was a life for gulls.
When my father was on his death-bed, at the age of eighty, my mother
asked him, as she was leaving the sick-room: “When do you want me to
come back to see you?” He replied: “No more. No one. Let me, at last,
have my desire for solitude. Let me die alone.” And he did.
Before these years of travel were over, I had come to the same
conclusion about myself. Since there was no life that I thought worth
living in Courts, and no social life for royalty outside the Courts, I
would have solitude. But it is easier to find solitude to die in than
solitude to live in. By this time I had two sons growing up, whose
careers had to be considered; I could not cut them off from the
opportunities of advancement that would come from powerful friends and
Court influence. I was very happy with them, in a companionship that had
none of the lack of intimate parental affection so often denied to
royalty; and I began to live for them, contentedly, as mothers do.
After all, that is the real life--the natural life--and the best of life
while it lasts.
CHAPTER X
THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES
“I am so glad that I am queen of a country in which everybody loves
simplicity.”
This was the testimony to the charm of Norway which Queen Maud gave me,
when I saw her in her little home near Christiania in the autumn of
1913. She spoke with enthusiasm of her adopted country, and I was not in
the least surprised, for Norway is undoubtedly the happiest and most
progressive country in Europe. Indeed, if anybody wants to know what
life will be like in the good time that is coming, when Capitalism will
be dead and Democracy triumphant on both sides of the Atlantic, let him
go to Norway and study its institutions and the life of its people.
“When I am at Lourdes,” said a devout Catholic, “I do not believe--I
know.” And when I was in Norway I did not need to make an act of faith
in democracy, as I must in Paris or New York or London; I saw for
myself that a nation is happier when its life is based on democratic
principles.
“How deadly dull!” said a fashionable woman to me, when I told her of
the simplicity of life in Christiania. “Surely Your Royal Highness does
not want to eliminate the colour and brilliancy of life!”
She had never realised that the glitter and magnificence of Society in
great capitals can only exist against a background of misery and
starvation. Norway is not a wealthy country and it does not afford
capitalists opportunities for piling up fortunes. Nobody is very rich,
and everybody appears to have a sufficiency. The cosmopolitan
plutocrats, who corrupt the Society of Western Europe, would be wretched
there, and, in point of fact, they avoid a country in which they are
perfectly well aware they would be unable to display their wealth. And
if the citizens of Christiania are deprived of the sight of millionaires
darting about the town in illuminated motor-cars, with jewelled wives
and daughters, they are compensated for the loss by the knowledge that,
thanks to the equitable distribution of such wealth as the country
possesses, crime and robbery are practically unknown. Education and
common sense have broken down the barriers of pride of purse and pride
of rank, which separate man and man in other countries, and the King
himself is simply the first among equals.
When the Norwegian people determined that the industrial and commercial
life of the country should no longer be hampered by Sweden, and declared
their independence, they placed a king at the head of the State. They
were clever enough to see that the country would have more prestige in
the eyes of Europe as a monarchy than as a republic, and they were wise
enough to give the king no power. Possibly they thought that a prince,
who, if the expression be allowed me, is born to the business, would
make a more effective figure-head than a commoner, and they may have
considered that the peaceful succession of hereditary monarchs is less
agitating to the nerves of the nation than recurring presidential
elections. However this may be, their king is to them what their flag
is: a symbol of national unity. Both are saluted with respect, but
neither one nor the other is invested with power.
King Haakon’s fine figure and handsome face make him look the part he
has to play. He is a man of great tact and kindliness, and has the
simple tastes characteristic of the Danish Royal Family. To these
advantages the King adds the supreme one of having a clever Queen, who
helps him wisely and loyally in his work. Their son, little Prince Olaf,
is utterly charming and, in spite of being an only child, not the least
spoilt.
I had not seen Queen Maud in her kingdom until I went to Norway in the
autumn of 1913, and I wondered whether her rise from the rank of mere
“Royal Highness” to that of a “Majesty” would have altered or spoilt
her. She was staying at a little château near Christiania when I arrived
in the city, and she asked me to come out and have luncheon with her.
When a royal carriage arrived at my hotel to take me to the country, and
I noticed that the servants wore plain, dark liveries, instead of the
regal scarlet, I began to feel that the charming Maud had not changed.
Half an hour’s drive brought me to the château, and as the Queen
welcomed me I felt ashamed of the suspicions I had entertained, and
realised that she remains the same simple and unaffected girl I used to
know in England.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, and as she spoke I heard in her
voice and saw in her manner the charm she has inherited from her mother,
Queen Alexandra.
The château is a small house of one story, standing in a public park. A
plot of ground has been railed off round the house, so that the King and
Queen may have a garden in which they can enjoy privacy. Not that they
are annoyed, like most kings and queens, with demonstrative
manifestations of loyalty. The Norwegians contrive to make life
agreeable for the Royal Family by allowing them to go about the
countryside or through the streets of the capital as freely as ordinary
citizens. Queen Maud revels in her new liberty.
“I find it so nice to be able to go out shopping without any fuss,” she
said, and told me that she could go into a shop in Christiania without
anybody taking any notice of her, buy what she wanted, and leave with
her parcels tucked under her arm to walk back to the palace.
I could understand her delight better than most people, for in Madrid I
have experienced the misery of knowing that I can not get in or out of a
carriage without attracting a small crowd. To find oneself perpetually a
public show is beyond words exasperating.
Queen Maud’s Court consists of two ladies-in-waiting and a Grand
Mistress, a suite which is no larger than that of the least important of
the numerous Austrian archduchesses. And, moreover, these ladies do not
make deferential curtsies to Her Majesty. The Queen shakes hands with
them when she meets them, and treats them, not as glorified servants,
but as friends. The point may appear trivial, but it is worth
mentioning, for it shows with what tact a princess, accustomed to the
etiquette and the splendour of the English Court, has adapted herself to
the spirit of a democratic people.
“You were perfectly right,” she said to me, “in what you used to tell me
about the happiness of simplicity.”
“Of course I was right,” I said, “and I do not believe you would care to
go back to the old Court life.”
“I am much happier in this life,” she said, and then it was that she
told me how glad she was to be Queen of a country in which everybody
loves simplicity.
It was obvious to me that both the King and Queen adore the fascinating
little Olaf; but I noticed that he has been very well brought up and is
very obedient. He is being educated with Norwegian boys of his own age
and leads a healthy out-of-door life.
“I want you to see Olaf driving the motor-car his grandmother has sent
him,” said the Queen; and Queen Alexandra’s present, the tiniest and
most dainty little car imaginable, was brought round to the door of the
château. The little prince made a splendid chauffeur, and evidently
thoroughly enjoyed rushing round the park in his car.
I left the château feeling that I had had a glimpse of ideal family
life, and thoroughly convinced that the democratic Norwegian Court is
the nicest in Europe.
I do not in the least mind confessing that when I advocate democratic
principles I have the interests of the royal personages at heart as well
as those of their peoples. There are plenty of princes and princesses,
bound hand and foot by etiquette and galling restrictions, who, whatever
their present views may be, will welcome the liberty democracy will
bring them. Happy King Haakon and Queen Maud; although they are
addressed as “Your Majesties,” they are allowed to live in a tiny red
bungalow, up in the mountains at Holm Kelm, when winter comes, and there
they and Prince Olaf dart about on skis, talking to everybody, making
every one happy, happy themselves in being three Norwegian citizens.
And beyond the circle of the Court the constitution of Norwegian society
is utterly different from that of society in the more powerful European
countries. Both the law and society regard woman as in every respect the
equal of man. Women have the same civic rights as men and use them. At
the last parliamentary elections, in 1913, 75 per cent, of the women of
the towns who had the right to vote used it; indeed the proportion of
women who did their duty as citizens and recorded their votes was higher
than that of men. All the higher professions are open to women, and at
the present time the most important of the professors at the university
is a woman and the leading lawyer connected with the Supreme Tribunal is
also a woman. The Norwegians refuse to tolerate cheap female labour; if
a woman does the same work as a man she gets the same pay.
Society is equally just. It does not apply one standard of morals to man
and another to woman. Both are judged by the same standard, and a girl
does not lose her position in society for conduct which in other
countries is blamed in a woman and condoned in a man. Some Norwegian
couples prefer to contract free unions instead of legal marriages, and
now that the influence of Lutheranism on the life of the country is
practically dead, society does not look at such unions askance. Married
and unmarried couples live in peace and associate freely. In a country
where everybody works there is little time or opportunity for the
development of _crimes passionels_, so if a couple find that they have
made a mistake and that life in common is too difficult, they just part
without quarrelling and build up their lives anew.
The happy relations existing between the men
[Illustration: KING HAAKON OF NORWAY]
and women of Norway are, I am convinced, largely due to the fact that
they are educated together at school and in the university. The equality
of male and female students at the university seems to be symbolised by
the wearing of identical caps of the same gay colours. From childhood
they grow up together and become good comrades, understanding each other
thoroughly and without _arrière pensée_, having the same moral code and
the same views of life. In most countries boys and girls are segregated
apart and only allowed to meet under the supervision of their elders.
The system is not a good one. Indeed, I have often thought that nothing
gives a girl’s brain such a wrong twist as the false view given her at
school about the companionship of men. Why perpetually dread man and see
in him only the seducer? By doing so I believe we very often wake up in
him instincts that might otherwise lie dormant.
The education the girls and boys receive together is an excellent one.
Norwegians understand the importance of acquiring foreign languages,
which they require in commerce and for dealing with the numerous foreign
tourists who make their beautiful fiords and mountains a holiday
playground. Hence both English and German are taught in all the schools,
and the instruction given is so good that the children actually learn to
converse in these languages. More than once I was astonished to find
that a cabman could answer me in English or German.
The Norwegians are a vigorous and hardy race. In their veins flows the
blood of Vikings, and they are determined that the nation shall not
deteriorate physically. With this end in view the law provides for the
protection of the mother during her time of expectation and for her
support and comfort during the six weeks following the birth of her
child. Moreover, careful provision is made for the upbringing of
children born outside wedlock, and neither father nor mother is allowed
to shirk the responsibility of parentage.
The separation of Norway and Sweden was due to the desire of the
Norwegians, whose merchant fleet is twice the size of the Swedish, to
have their commercial interests abroad properly looked after by an
independent consular service. This was the formal cause of separation,
but undoubtedly the marked difference between the social organisation of
the two countries facilitated the unloosing of the bonds that held them
together. Sweden still has an aristocracy, and the nobles who sit in the
Upper House of the Swedish Parliament are able to check in some degree
the advance of democracy. Yet in their love of simplicity the two
nations are alike. This was made clear to me in rather an amusing way
soon after my arrival in Stockholm during my autumn tour. I was going to
the theatre with a friend, and when she arrived to fetch me I was
getting into an evening gown.
“Is Your Royal Highness going to wear a low dress?” she said in a manner
that made me feel I was doing something thoroughly unconventional.
“Oughtn’t I to?” I asked.
“We do not go in evening-dress to the theatre,” she said.
“Then what am I to wear?” I asked.
“Just a skirt and blouse,” she said.
And accordingly in a skirt and blouse I went. It was rather a pretty
blouse--I confess that I love pretty things--and when I got into the
theatre I felt just a trifle overdressed.
“What sensible people you Swedish women are!” I said to my friend, when
I looked round the theatre and saw how simply the women were dressed.
“You save hours and hours which women in London and Paris fritter away
at their toilet-tables.”
In point of fact the Swedish woman has not usually either the time or
money required to turn herself into a woman of fashion. And even if she
had, she is too sensible to make her appearance the absorbing care of
life. Careers which are closed to women in other lands are open to her,
and she prefers to be independent and to earn her living. At the present
time the Swedish women have not been granted electoral rights, but there
can be no doubt that they will obtain the same right as men in the
course of time. The Conservative party in the Upper House shrinks from
yielding to the demands of the women, fearing that their votes will
strengthen the Socialists in the Lower House. But the nobles are certain
to do justice to women sooner or later, and at the present time there is
only a majority of twelve in the Upper House against the granting of the
suffrage to women.
As it is, that Upper House puts too strong a brake on the wheels of
progress. At one Swedish railway-station I saw a number of emigrants
who were starting for America. They did not display the least sorrow at
leaving their native land; on the contrary, they were bearing wreaths of
flowers and singing joyfully, as if they were only too thankful to get
away from Sweden. It was a sad and eloquent testimony to the evils that
still mar the social structure of Sweden. Indeed, the stream of
emigrants who cross the Atlantic to enrich the life of America with
their work is so great and so constant that a Royal Commission has been
endeavouring to find out its causes. In their report the Commissioners
state that the principal cause of emigration is the failure of the
Government to accelerate legislation for the improvement of the
conditions of the working classes. In the circumstances, it is but
natural that there should be a powerful Socialist party in the country.
The Crown Prince is clever enough to see that this party is one which
will increase in power with the lapse of time, but his efforts to
establish friendly relations with its leaders have not been very well
received. He talks good-humouredly and shakes hands with prominent
Socialists, but the party appears to see in these little attentions
nothing more than a symptom of the future king’s fear of the rising
power of the working classes.
The Court of Sweden is, however, characterised by Scandinavian
simplicity, although this is naturally not so strongly marked as at the
ideal Court of King Haakon and Queen Maud. The Queen of Sweden’s health
is too bad to allow her to appear in public. Hence the principal figure
at Court, apart from the King, is the Crown Princess, before her
marriage Princess Margaret of Connaught, and she has contrived to give
it just a touch of the elegance of the Court of St. James’s. I lunched
with her when I was in Stockholm, and she told me how much she loves her
Swedish life. Her marriage is a very happy one. King Gustav has
inherited from his father a great charm of manner and a fine figure,
which devotion to tennis helps him to keep. He is fond of all sorts of
sport and is an excellent shot.
I used to see a good deal of the late King Oscar. His French ancestry
and his personal charm made him very popular in France, a country he
loved, and during his numerous visits to Paris I had the opportunity of
getting to know him well, and I became very fond of him. I was in Sweden
in 1897, travelling incognito, and I remember sitting down to rest one
day within sight of Sophie Rue, King Oscar’s Norman villa, and, as I
looked at the peaceful home of my old friend, I hoped that his last
years would not be embittered by the dissolution of the union between
Sweden and Norway. But the blow came to the “poet king,” whose spirit
seemed to live above the dull realities of life, and it came when he was
old and broken down with the illness which at last caused his death.
Kings must yield to the imperious will of democracy, and I look forward
to the time when Sweden will have the advantages enjoyed by her sister
kingdom.
I visited Denmark as well as Norway and Sweden that autumn, and there
also I remarked the growth of democratic ideas. It is a peaceful
country, and the souls of the people seem as clear as their blue eyes.
The Danes are a kind, industrious and simple race, and, if they strike
one as being less hardy and vigorous than the other Scandinavian races,
they certainly have the same courteous manners as the Swedes and the
Norwegians.
The first time that I visited Denmark King Christian, the father of
Queen Alexandra and the Empress Marie, was reigning, and the castle, in
which his large family used to assemble for those reunions which he
loved, was looked on by the Danes with a sort of reverence. But I
remember that once, when I was travelling incognito, I drove past the
castle in a cab, and the friendly driver, anxious to oblige a tourist,
told me that a great family gathering was taking place there. He reeled
off the names of the world-famous personages who had gathered round the
King, and he did so with as much indifference as a London cabman
displayed when he pointed out Mme. Tussaud’s to me the first time I was
in London, and casually explained that wax figures were kept there. The
attitude of the Danish cabman towards the Royal Family, which seemed to
me curious years ago, appears to be that of most Danes at the present
time. They have ceased to take any particular interest in the doings of
their Sovereign and his relations. Nothing strikes me more, as I go
about Europe, than the fact that, if I may be allowed the expression,
the market value of princes and princesses has enormously decreased.
I went to an hotel in Copenhagen, and I had not been long in the
capital before a card, inscribed with a single Danish word, was brought
to me. I stared at it, not recognising the name and wondering who it was
had been to see me. Then it suddenly dawned on me that the word on the
card was simply the Danish for “Queen.” Her Majesty had been to see me,
and, of course, I went to see her. The Royal Family appears now to live
in retirement, and its members form a small caste, penned off from the
rest of mankind by their rank. Their chief amusement seems to be paying
calls on each other. Most of them live at their country villas and
châteaux, and in these pleasant homes there is a constant succession of
cousinly meetings, when family news is exchanged, and while the children
play the elders take a stroll in the park surrounding the house at which
the family gathering is taking place.
The King displays that peculiar form of wit which I have often noticed
is characteristic of crowned heads who have lived much in retirement.
With them the gaiety of childhood seems, with the passing of the years,
to turn into a curious spirit of mockery. Trifles create shouts of
laughter, enlivening the family circle and confusing those who are
unacquainted with the type of witticisms which goes down in royal
circles.
And beyond the tranquil enclosures of the royal parks the Danish people
is moving surely and steadily towards a broader and more democratic life
than it has hitherto enjoyed. And women are in the forefront of the
movement. The Danish women refuse to be slaves of fashion and display a
certain charming coquetry in their dress. Numbers of them earn their own
living and are thus independent of men. This is the sure road for women
to take if they desire to have the same rights and privileges as men. As
it is, the Danish woman has established for herself a position which her
Latin sisters may well envy, and the law secures her independence. She
will, I am convinced, be given electoral rights, and she will have no
need to resort to militant methods to obtain them.
On the road between Copenhagen and Helsingfors a milk-white villa stands
out against the faint blue background of the northern sky. There it was
that I passed the happiest moments of my stay in Denmark, and there I
found at least two crowned heads who have remained human in spite of
the crushing weight of the crowns they have worn for so many years. The
Italian villa is the home of Queen Alexandra and the Empress Marie, and
the two sisters, who adore each other, are absolutely happy in each
other’s society, and in the simplicity of the life they lead. They
welcomed me with enthusiasm, kissed me, and were quite excited to have
somebody to whom they could show their little house. In the sitting-room
they share they both wanted to show me their special corners at the same
time.
“Come and see my writing-table,” said the Empress, pulling me to her end
of the room.
“No,” cried Queen Alexandra gaily, pulling me in the opposite direction;
“come and see my writing-table.”
How we all laughed!
“This is my chair,” said the Empress, showing me one in her corner of
the room.
“And this is my chair,” echoed the Queen, calling my attention to the
favourite chair in her corner.
I had to see everything and admire everything. The two sisters seemed
particularly proud of their kitchen garden, and seemed to be delighted
to find that I knew something about growing vegetables. I have a
kitchen garden of my own in Normandy, where I have a little house, and
we were able to compare notes.
And after we had inspected flowers and vegetables we went through an
underground passage, which their Majesties have had cut beneath the road
that divides the garden of the cottage and the sea-shore, a tiny stretch
of which has been walled off, so that the Empress and the Queen may
enjoy it undisturbed. When we were inside the cottage the Empress
offered me a thin Russian cigarette, and lit one herself. Then Queen
Alexandra showed me their tea-kettle and the little kitchen in which
they make their own cakes and brew their own tea.
“This is where I make my tea,” cried the Queen.
“And this is where I cut the bread-and-butter,” said the Empress.
They were as happy as two schoolgirls, revelling in the simple life of a
home where they can live like two ordinary women, untrammelled by Court
etiquette and without even a single lady-in-waiting to attend them.
After visiting the Norwegian cottage I had to see a new marvel. We went
down to the beach, and the two sisters explained to me that it was a
splendid place for picking up bits of amber. I had seen so much amber in
the Castle of Rosenberg and in the shops of Copenhagen that it seemed
improbable that there could be any more in the Baltic. Nevertheless,
there appears to be plenty left, for both the Empress and the Queen
showed me the boxes in which they store the treasure they find on the
shore. The Empress is luckier in finding amber than the Queen, and her
box contained more than her sister’s.
“It is most unfair,” said the Queen gaily.
“I always pick up more than you do,” said the Empress triumphantly.
We searched for amber until it was time for me to go, and we enjoyed
ourselves like children.
Both the Empress and the Queen have played the great parts they have had
to fill on the stage of life with dignity and distinction, but they are
Danes, and they have never lost the love of simplicity which is the most
notable characteristic of the peoples of Scandinavia. Now that they can
live their lives as they like, they deliberately leave their palaces and
spend a great part of their time more simply than many commoners. To
see their happiness made me happier myself, and, indeed, my tour in
Scandinavia has given me new courage. All that I saw and heard made me
feel that the time will come when democracy will make many of the
crooked things of this life straight.
CHAPTER XI
THE COURTS OF ITALY
I was at Genoa, and one spring morning I strolled through a network of
narrow streets to the harbour. The sea was as blue as a turquoise,
gleaming like a jewel in the sunshine, and I could not resist the
temptation to hire a boat and waste an hour gliding over the enchanted
waves. The boatman who rowed me was a lively fellow. Luckily for me, as
I afterwards realised, he had not the faintest idea who I was, and I let
him chatter to his heart’s content.
“The old Duke of Galliera gave many million lire to make that,” he said,
indicating, with a jerk of his head, the new harbour, hidden from sight
by the building on the Molo Vecchio.
“The Duke of Galliera,” he went on, “was a fine gentleman. The Duchess
was left a widow, and inherited the enormous, the colossal fortune of
her husband. And what did she do? Does the signora know what she did?”
I did know, but I thought it prudent to shake my head.
The man leant on his oars, and looked intently at me.
“The Duchess,” he said, “left the title and every lira she had, and her
palace in Bologna, and all the estates of her Duchy, to foreigners. A
curse on them! And the Duchess belonged to Genoa; she had relatives in
Genoa. Everything went to the Duca di Montpensier, a Frenchman who had
become a Spaniard, and now it belongs to his son.”
“Really,” I said; and I did not mention that the Duc de Montpensier was
my father-in-law, and that I was actually Duchess of Galliera.
“If I could get hold of that man and his wife, although she is an
Infanta of Spain, I would kill them,” he shouted at me fiercely. “I
would show them no mercy.”
On the whole I was not sorry when I found myself on land again, and I am
convinced that the man would have upset his boat and let me drown, if he
had discovered who I was. And I have often wondered who he was; perhaps
a relative of the old Duchess. There was truth in the story he told, a
mystery which neither I nor anybody else is ever likely to solve. The
Duke of Galliera had a son, Philippo Ferrari, who refused absolutely to
use the privileges which his birth bestowed upon him. What were his
reasons, nobody knows. And why in default of the son, one of the richest
duchies in Italy was left to my father-in-law is a question which
remains, and is likely to remain, unanswerable. And partly through the
strange connection of the family into which I married with Italy, partly
through my love of the most beautiful and romantic land in Europe, I
have lived there a great deal. I used to stay often at the magnificent
palace of the Galliera family in Bologna, a sumptuous place with vast
rooms paved with mosaic and glittering with rare marbles. The people of
that city of colonnades and cool courtyards took a kindlier view of the
new owners of the palace than the Genoese boatman did, and the ancient
families of the place had that charm of manner which gives such a
fascination to the cultured society of Italian towns. It was a great
delight to receive them, and I used to enjoy the balls and parties in
that wonderful palace.
In most countries society gathers in the capital, and when there is a
Court it acts as a magnet to draw people from the provinces. The
unification of Italy, and the erection of the Italian kingdom, had not
materially altered the structure of Italian society. It remains what it
was when Italy was divided into a number of small states. Rome and the
Quirinal do not attract the nobles of Venice, or Florence, or Bologna,
or of other historic Italian towns: they continue to spend the winter in
the cities with which their families have been associated for centuries,
giving to them a certain brilliance which is not to be found in the
provincial towns of France or England.
It seems to be the special prerogative of a Queen Mother to be Queen of
Hearts, and Queen Margherita holds the same place in the affection of
the Italian people as beautiful Queen Alexandra--has ever a Queen been
more beloved than she?--holds in England, and the Empress Marie in
Russia. I paid a visit to her and King Humbert at the Castle of Monza,
their summer home in the outskirts of the town in which the kings of
Lombardy were crowned, and, although the etiquette of the Court was
severe, she had a charm which made one tolerate the restrictions of
palace life. Those about her used to complain that she hardly ever sat
down. I have remarked that several queens whom I know have this rather
trying capacity for standing, and, as nobody can sit down while they
stand, their guests and their ladies-and gentlemen-in-waiting are
sometimes a good deal fatigued. Numbers of women are not aware that they
owe to Queen Margherita the pretty fashion of wearing a string of pearls
in the daytime. But she did not limit herself to the single string of
pearls worn by women of fashion, she was simply hung with ropes of
pearls morning, noon and night; in fact, I have never seen her without
them.
Although the King of Italy made Rome his capital, the other members of
the Royal Family have never gone to live there, and continue to make
their home in Turin. Among these are the Duke and Duchess of Genoa and
the Duke and Duchess of Aosta, and the exasperating etiquette peculiar
to Royal personages is rigorously maintained in their palaces.
Gentlemen-in-waiting and ladies-in-waiting are always in attendance on
them, and it used to surprise me that people could be found to devote
themselves to such an insufferably dull occupation as that of serving
in miniature Courts, until I remembered that some of them might be glad
to do the work, if work it can be called, for the sake of being
maintained and of receiving the salaries attached to their offices.
English princesses have the daily distraction of opening bazaars, but
little happens to enliven the Courts of Turin. When I have stayed there,
the chief excitement of the day has invariably been a drive to a park
outside the city, where the Royal personages walked for a little,
attended by the inevitable ladies-and gentlemen-in-waiting, and after
half an hour of that mild form of exercise, drove back to their homes.
These proceedings did not appear to awaken any great interest in the
citizens of Turin, for in Italy, as in most other countries, the public
has ceased to concern itself about the little doings of princes and
princesses.
The Dowager Duchess of Aosta sometimes shows her independence by freeing
herself from Royal bonds when she is abroad, and I remember her once
arriving in Paris entirely unattended. She was Princess Lætitia
Bonaparte before her marriage, and enjoys the style of Imperial
Highness, while, rather oddly, the young Duchess of Aosta is a Princess
of
[Illustration: INFANTA EULALIA AT WINDOW OF HER APARTMENTS]
the House of Bourbon and sister of the Duc d’Orleans. She is a somewhat
masculine type of woman, and spends a great deal of her time in
Abyssinia. She leaves her husband and two boys and, with no companion
except an elderly Englishwoman, sets out on a hunting expedition. She is
lost in the heart of Africa for months, and then suddenly reappears and
settles down to the humdrum life of her palace. But soon she hears again
the call of the wild, and is away once more. What she does in Abyssinia
nobody knows, if one excepts the elderly Englishwoman. The country seems
to have cast a spell on her, and she cannot resist its fascinations. The
Duke of Genoa, Queen Margherita’s brother, and his wife, who is a
Bavarian Princess, live in the same palace as the Dowager Duchess of
Aosta, but their households are independent and, in point of fact, the
two duchesses rarely see each other. The duke is almost a recluse; he
spends several hours in his private chapel every day, lost in prayer and
meditation.
I was a little surprised the first time I went to Turin to find that the
Piedmontese dialect of Italian was spoken in Royal circles. To
understand what was said sometimes required close attention, even when
one knew Italian well, and I have found a similar difficulty in other
Italian cities. In Bologna, for instance, where I have lived so much,
the cultured classes, as well as the peasants, talked dialect, and
travelling about Italy one seemed constantly under the necessity of
learning new words and phrases.
There are so many beautiful Italian cities in which agreeable society
may be enjoyed that had one to choose one in which to live permanently
it would be difficult to come to a decision. Venice is one of the most
adorable, and the time I spent with the Duke and Duchess of Genoa at the
King’s palace there was a dream of delight. But there is one objection,
and that a serious one to a prolonged stay in Venice, and that is the
difficulty of getting proper exercise. As everybody seemed prepared to
spoil me when I was there, I made it clear that it was essential for me
to do something more vigorous than gliding down silent canals in a
gondola or strolling in the Piazza. It was therefore arranged that I
should play tennis at the Arsenal, and that indulgence gave me the one
thing that seemed lacking in the charming life of the city. Italians
can play tennis very well when they choose, and Monsignor Montagnini,
the Papal Legate who was turned out of France when diplomatic relations
between the Republic and the Vatican were ruptured, was a case in point.
He played an excellent game, and we often had a set together in Paris.
Little did I guess what his means were, and never will I forget his
false behaviour when his papers were captured. In Venice too, I found
some good players, and so managed to get the vigorous exercise I needed.
Apart from this, I lived the life of the Venetians--walked in the Piazza
from half-past eleven to half-past twelve, took the air in a gondola
about half-past five, went occasionally to the opera at the Fenice, that
most exquisite of theatres, and ended the day by dancing in the
enchanted palaces that rise from the sea. It was often sunrise when I
stepped into a Royal barge with gondoliers in scarlet and, to the
rhythmic music of oars that cut the water and the splash of the spray
that fell from their blades, floated through the rosy dawn to the Royal
palace.
CHAPTER XII
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.
CHAPTER XIII AFTER THE WAR
What interests--fascinates--the student of contemporary humanity rather
than of contemporary politics is to what extent the war will either
advance or set us back as a civilisation; shall we be better for it,
will life be better for it?
I have always had a horror of war. I hoped and thought up to the last
moment that it would be averted. It seemed impossible that France and
Germany could come to blows; the cost looked to be too big. Yet I see
the Kaiser swept away by the war party behind him, urged by that
mysticism, which always characterised him, to believe that war was a
divine duty. This is the only reason I can find for his declaration. He
loved to preach and pray and live and talk among the stars. The impulse
of religious fervour ran riot in him, and he persuaded himself that to
plunge the world into the most horrible war of all time was his divine
mission.
The horror of war which we feel was naturally enough not shared by the
Kaiser and the war party in Berlin. They had grown used to the idea, for
years it had been among their ambitions, and many of them had spent all
their lives training for it. In fact, that is the biggest and most
tragic mistake of modern history--Germany’s conception that to conquer
the rest of Europe was her divinely appointed mission; you can see it in
every bellicose utterance of the Kaiser! This was never a mere pose. He
was in his private life exactly the same man as in his public
utterances.
What is to be the result of this war? The setbacks are obvious. It will
take Great Britain, with all the wealth and resources of her Empire, a
dozen years to recover from the exhaustion of it. France, with large
stretches of her country desolated, and crippled financially, will
perhaps take longer. Russia will feel it less in many ways, and
certainly will reap one big benefit in that the war will, I do not
doubt, help to cement her scattered and immense population and bring in
a new era of unity.
It may well be, indeed, that the end of the war will see a Russia
reborn, rid of her antiquated systems of local government, released from
methods which were mediæval--a country set upon a definite road to
freedom.
I do not mean that a Russian republic is a likely result. I think the
war will strengthen the monarchy; a successful war always does.
Why, even in France to-day there is a widespread feeling that a return
to monarchy would be welcome. Personally, however, I do not believe the
monarchical party will gain much headway; the whole tendency of the
world is against it.
The spirit of the times is democratic. When a people realises that kings
and queens are in no way superior mortals it gradually brings about a
republic. This is the only natural and logical conclusion of things.
France has learned this lesson well enough, she will never go back from
her present methods of government--methods which have developed the
natural genius and intelligence of her people and brought such
prosperity that she has become one of the wealthiest countries in the
world. The aristocracy of France has not sufficient power to overthrow
the people, especially now when the people have been fighting with true
patriotism, not for the ideal of a kingship, but for the ideal of a
country--confraternity.
This spirit of democracy, I think, will extend all over Europe.
Republics will arise, not by force of arms, mutinies or revolutions, but
by natural evolution. To kill a king does not make a republic; that
comes from the natural growth of ideas and ideals, from the development
of the democratic spirit, the spirit of freedom, which follows in the
wake of liberal education.
One effect of the war, then, may be to substantiate monarchy for the
time being, save in France, where I think it will create a bigger
confidence in the Republic. In other words, if the Allies emerge with
considerable success, conditions of government as they are will be
strengthened, particularly in Russia.
A great deal has been written in the past about the tottering power of
the monarchy in Russia. All of this has been mostly untrue, and
certainly misleading. I can recall statements in print of the fear of
the Tsar to appear before his people. This is not the truth. When I was
in Petrograd he often came to visit me practically unattended, and
whenever he has been counselled to take precaution he has adopted such
measures only because he has thought it best for his country. He loves
Russia; how much has been splendidly evident since the war broke out,
and when all is over one effect will surely be that he will be all the
more beloved by Russia. I see, too, as a result of his generous attitude
the possibility of a resurrected Poland, whose populace will freely give
suzerainty to Nicholas II. because they recognise amid all the riot and
disaster of to-day that he is their friend.
Exaggerated statements have also been made that the Tsaritza fears
assassination. The writers have based their reports no doubt on the fact
that the Tsar’s grandfather met his death in this way, and they have no
doubt assumed the fears of the present monarchs as a matter of course.
The Empress is said visibly to tremble in public, but this is occasioned
simply because she is unhappily a sufferer from timidity!
But what about Germany? Who shall dare to prophesy?
But more interesting than these things is the question of armament--or
rather disarmament. Is the latter possible? Arbitration in council
instead of the sword and the gun--shall we, any of us, live to see that
dream come true? Democracy, and a world-wide development of a Hague
Conference of the Powers--these are the hopes of those who think. Is it
too near the Utopia of the Romanticists? Is it the impossible
Millennium?
I do most honestly believe this will be the last big war; it will be a
lesson to the wide world of the cost of fighting, the cost in lives, in
comforts, in money. The English will surely feel this; they are fond of
luxury. When I visited England I was impressed by the almost reckless
extravagance of living; money did not count so long as entertainment was
obtained; women seemed to have a careless disregard of all things save
pleasure. I have wondered and marvelled at the way they have acted since
war broke out; now no sacrifice is too great for them to make. Truly the
English are remarkable; they are on the surface lovers of ease and lazy
luxury, so as to seem almost degenerate. Yet, beneath it all, there is
stamina, grit, the power to bear hardship, the spirit of the real
adventurer. The war will do English social life good--for a time; but
though for a little while the English will eschew gaiety perhaps--I
mean the recklessly extravagant gaieties which were their wont--will
their phlegmatic nature presently allow this disturbance to be forgotten
and the old conditions to recur?
Sincerely I hope not. To end some of the senseless dissipations would be
one of the best results of the war; there is no room in life for stupid
extravagances, for heedless rushing after novel excitement. For English
Society I hope the lesson will go too deep to be forgotten lightly. And
I am interested too in the movement which is just now on foot in England
to prohibit, or at least to curtail so extensive a sale of alcohol. An
abstemious Europe would have made the war almost worth while. And why
should it be impossible? France has closed down the sale of absinthe,
Russia sells and consumes no more vodka. In England the evil is whisky.
But the question of disarmament: there is so much to hinder it. Each
country has a different condition of things to consider; England, for
instance, has never kept her army for her own insular needs; her army
has been maintained to protect and uphold the ends of her Empire--and
those needs will remain; how can she disarm altogether when India has
to be considered, and while she has interests to defend, not against the
great Powers, but against the native insurgent in so many parts of the
world, it is vital to her--and the present crisis emphasises it beyond
mistake--that the seas should be kept open, and were there no force
behind that need she as well as her food supply would be at the mercy of
any pirate. Similarly France has colonies which call for a guard by land
and sea.
But the day of the big military power will surely pass with the defeat
of Prussian militarism, and the nations should see to it that never
again shall one country deliberately arm herself so as to be a menace to
the world’s peace. Is it not possible that the great nations should have
an amalgamated navy and army powerful enough to command peace from
insurgents--to be a sort of world-wide police? Surely at some conference
of the Powers a decision should be arrived at by which the boundaries
and influence of nations could be fixed for all time, with due regard to
the scope required for the natural development of the ambitions of each.
It is certain that there is enough territory in the world for the
peoples of the earth; it is equally certain that the laws of supply and
demand would balance and leave a reasonable living for all the people of
the world if only economic conditions could be properly adjusted. I
fancy that here lie the big problems of the future--not the conquering
of one another by the force of sword and gun, but the equalisation of
the possibilities of possession. There are too many men with big
fortunes and too many homes with not sufficient income; on the face of
it there should be a way to balance these discrepancies, and there the
big thinkers and the students of political economy will step in. The
ultimate destiny of the world, when this terrible war is over and done
with, will rest upon the shoulders of those thinkers and economists, and
upon the success of their efforts will depend the peace and happiness of
our children’s children.
I know that here I am laying down the ethics of Socialism, but not the
Socialism that depends upon labour upheavals in which the worker merely
seeks to get all he can from the employer, but that larger Socialism
whose aim is the good of the community as opposed to the fortune of the
individual in the pursuit of the general well-being.
I see all over the world evidences that this spirit is alive and
prospering. In Switzerland, for instance, if a company earns more than a
certain percentage upon its capital the surplus goes to the State to be
used in the public interest--subsidise education and mitigate such
poverty as there may be. As a fact--and as a result--you see very little
poverty in Switzerland. In the Scandinavian countries, too, no man may
become absurdly wealthy, and even in rich England a levelling-up process
is in the act of formation by means of taxes upon the very wealthy. Soon
I am hopeful that this spirit will spread among our Governments; it is
the way to universal peace, for unquestionably money and the acquisition
of money lies at the back of most international unrest.
It lies, if you think of it, behind this war. What was at the back of
Germany’s dream of world-wide conquest? Was it not the expansion of her
commerce? Was it not her envy of other nations’ wealth that drove her to
seek a first place among the nations? She wanted to extend her borders,
to enlarge her trade, to increase her wealth. End this amazing of
private fortunes and you will end this constant fighting and intriguing
for power and position. America’s worship of the almighty dollar
influences her attitude to-day.
I wonder shall we ever find a substitute for money which will reduce its
value. The value of money is the curse of life; it leads to wars, it
creates half the intrigues in Court and political life, it provokes
senseless luxury. But I am talking of a Utopia, and we live in an age of
greed and personal aggrandisement, however sure to those who look
beneath the surface are the signs of coming reform.
One good thing the war will leave in its train is a recurrence of
simplicity. It cannot but be that the awful costliness of it all will
reduce the means left for wastefulness in living. I wish the larger
nations--and especially England and America--would study the life of the
Scandinavian towns and see how much preferable is their simpler life,
how much happier folk are when there is not this greed for gold, which
takes up all one’s time and makes men forget the joy and the meaning of
life while they are earning and cheating and hoarding. There should be
a law preventing great possessions. I don’t mean that the genius in his
business or profession should not be able to earn enough to give him
greater comforts than those who have not succeeded so well as
he--probably because they have not tried so hard. To give the
industrious and the indolent an equal reward, to be sure, would set a
premium on laziness, and much of the world’s work would go undone. But
there ought to be a limit to what a man can own, or what one company can
earn, especially when there are so many quite deserving poor who are
poor not because of indolence but through lack of opportunity.
This is a part of Socialism, and I know in England Socialism is a bad
word to use. Socialism is unfortunate in its champions in England;
Socialism has come to mean, in the popular, thoughtless sense of the
word, strikes and demands for improved wages and conditions. No doubt
Socialism would so revolutionise industry that the present wages and
conditions would then seem antiquated to the point of mediævalism, but I
think your wise men of England are those who carry on the work of social
reformation and leave the word Socialism alone. Mr. Lloyd George has
the right idea; I call him a Socialist, though perhaps he wouldn’t agree
with the designation.
Will the new era which follows the close of this European holocaust be
one of social advancement? If so, the war will not have been in vain.
And everything points that way.
In a second way, the war will bring improvement more complete than a
generation of peace could ever have done. On the battlefields of France
the British aristocrat and the boy from the slums will have met and
become brothers. Class distinctions will break down not a little, and
this is a good thing, for the private who came from the estates whereon
his ancestors have lived for centuries, and the soldier who came from
the foundry or the pit, have found each other of the same flesh and
blood, comrades in a common cause. Hitherto the class distinctions have
been very definite; they did not merge. After the war those barriers
will become far more shadowy.
Surely also if there are no more gigantic wars, but a vast curtailment
of armaments, millions and millions will be saved, and this money, after
settling the war bills, will be available for setting our houses in
order.
I do not think there will be any great hardships and poverty when the
war is over. On the contrary I anticipate a great trade revival, and in
this respect the understanding between the present Allies will greatly
increase the business done by them. Germany will no doubt be crippled,
her military role will end, and her business men--among the best in the
world--will find many of the old works closed. It will take Germany many
years to rebuild her fortunes, for she will have made her one gigantic
throw for world power, and lost.
France and England and Russia have between them most of the necessities
of life, and this should tend to keep down the cost of those
necessities. But I hope that a revival of trade will not mean a return
to riotous living and deadening indulgence.
To all the Allies the war has brought individual unity within their own
boundaries; there was danger of internal trouble in all three a year
before the cloud burst. Undoubtedly the fears of civil war in Great
Britain had some foundation; France was in a certain sense in a
condition of unpreparedness; and Russia was on the edge of a
revolution. In a day these questions were laid aside. To-day the French
army is as one man; France has behaved with a splendour that cannot be
over-extolled, and she will never lose that power of cohesion she gained
through the opening stages of this conflict. Indeed, in all the
countries of the Allies I fancy the old questions will never recur in
the same degree.
On the whole, then, the outlook has its bright side. We are appalled at
the loss of life, at the desolation of territory, at the complicated
wastage of war. But the Allies will come out of it stronger in many
ways, not only with recovered territory--France with her long-lost
children returned, and Russia no doubt with her southern port (which
means her emancipation)--but with ancient instincts of race reawakened
and sharpened, with broader views, particularly on the part of France
and Great Britain; for this war has killed the distance across the
English Channel, and England, losing her insularity, will become more
and more closely attached to her great Republican neighbour.
INDEX
Abdul Hamid, Sultan, 151, 152
Absinthe, sale of, prohibited in France, 248
Albert, King of the Belgians, 183
Alcazar, the palace of the, 35
description of, 36
life at, 37 _et seq._
Alcohol, the War and, 248
Alexander II., Tsar, assassination of, 176
Alexandra, Queen, 129, 131, 175, 194, 205, 209
Alexis, Grand Duke, 172
Alfonso XII., King, 2, 28
a family reunion, 27
a love match, 74
a visit to the French hospital, 60
and the Spanish aristocracy, 93
at the Escurial, 27-28
buried in the Escurial, 97
death of, 96, 97
grief at death of his wife, 90 _et seq._
his activities, 93 _et seq._
his children, 96
his education, 46
his popularity, 52
his second marriage, 95
ill-health of, 91
marries Mercedes, daughter of the Duc de Montpensier, 80
proclaimed King, 20, 48, 49, 58
the Infanta and, 5, 7, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27, 34-5, 44-6,
64, 66, 68, 81, 89, 90 _et seq._
Alfonso XIII., King, birth of, 96, 104
Amadeo of Savoy, Prince, 49
Amber, a Royal search for, 211
America, a democratic crowd in, 235-6
the author in, 222 _et seq._
the Press of, 232, 235
the railways in, 233
Antoine of Orléans, Archduke, 68 _et seq._, 74, 99
marries the Infanta Eulalia, 100
separated from his wife, 238-239
Aosta, the Dowager Duchess of, 218 _et seq._
Aosta, the Duke and Duchess of, 217, 221
Aranjuez, the palace of, 100
Arbitration, democracy and, 247
Argyll, Duchess of, 130
Armada, dispatch of the, 28
Atoche, the church of, 104
Austria before the War, 181
Belgians, Albert King of the, 183
Belgium, King Leopold of, 183
Berlin, Court life in, 134 _et seq._
“Blood Royal,” prerogatives of, 3-4, 11, 31, 32 _et seq._, 62, 63, 84
Boer War, the, 113, 136
Bologna, 215
Bonaparte, Princess Lætitia (_See_ Aosta, Dowager Duchess)
“Bossism” in America and Spain, 55-6
Bourbon, Princess Caroline of, 175
British rule in India, the, 111
Bulgaria, King Ferdinand of, 184-5
Caciques in Spain, 56 _et seq._
Calomarde, Señor, 50
Campos, General Martinez, 48
Canovas, Señor, 85
_Cara de Dios_, la, 98
Carlo, Don, and the Spanish succession, 49-51
Caroline of Bourbon, Princess, 178
Charles III., 43
Charles IV., 224
Chicago: the World’s Fair, 222
Christian, King of Denmark, 205, 207
Christiania, author at, 190 _et seq._
Cleveland, President, 237
Coburg, Duchess of, 130
Connaught, Princess Margaret of, 204
Princess Patricia of, 130
the Duchess of, 130
the Duke of, 129
Constantinople, the Kaiser’s visit to, 151
Court diplomats, 87-9
life, anomalies of, 105 _et seq._
life in England, 110-12, 129
Cuba, 222, 225 _et seq._
Spanish corruption in, 229-30
Democracy and arbitration, 247
and monarchy, 244
education and, 180
in Denmark, 205, 208
in England, 123, 132
in Norway, 190 _et seq._
in Russia, 160
Denmark, democracy in, 205, 208
the King of, 205, 207
Disarmament, the question of, 246, 248-9
Dmitri, Grand Duke, 175
Echegaray, José de, 73
Edinburgh, the Duchess of (now Duchess of Coburg), 131
Education and democracy, 180
Edward VII., King, 112
and the _entente cordinale_, 127
and the Kaiser, 114, 134, 137, 138
entertains the Author, 129
his American and Jewish friends, 132
his punctuality, 129
Elizabeth, Grand Duchess, 174
England and Germany, industrial and commercial rivalry between, 114
and Socialism, 253
and the English, 106 _et seq._
author’s visits to, 108
and the question of disarmament, 248
changing customs in, 120
country life in, 116 _et seq._
democracy in, 123, 132
her international affairs, 127
love of extravagance in, 115-16, 132, 247
strikes and internal disorders in, 113, 248
taxing the wealthy in, 251
the aristocracy of, 110, 115, 132
the charm of home and country, 117
the landlord system in, 122
the veneration of Royalty in, 131
English, author’s views of the, 114
Court, the, a canon of Court etiquette, 131
character of the, 114, 125
diplomats, 89
Royal Family, the, 111
the, their superiority in diplomacy, 126
_Entente cordiale_, the, 127
Escurial, palace of the, 26 _et seq._
Alfonso XII. buried in, 97
arrival of Royal Family at, 28
interment of Queen Mercedes in, 90
Royal tombs in, 28
Eulalia, the Infanta, a guest at Sandringham, 129
a separation from her husband, 238-9
Alfonso XII. and, 7, 18, 21, 27, 35, 44-5, 64, 66, 68, 74, 81, 90 _et seq._
and Court etiquette, 31-2
and democracy, 179, 244
and Izzet Pasha, 151
and Edward VII., 128 _et seq._
Eulalia and the death of Alfonso XII., 96 _et seq._
and the English Royal circle, 130 _et seq._
and the language of eyes, 65
asserts herself, 8, 26, 30, 40
at Rome, 182
at the convent of the Sacré Cœur, 9 _et seq._, 108
at the Norwegian Court, 193 _et seq._
at the Ordensfest in Berlin, 138, 139, 140
at the palace of the Alcazar, 36 _et seq._
at Richmond, 119-120
death of her mother, 239
her engagement, 69, 74, 99
her father, 17, 189
her First Communion, 14
her growing desire for solitude, 238
her irksome duties as a Princess, 22 _et seq._, 142 _et seq._
her love of books, 46 _et seq._
her “mortal sin” and confession thereof, 70
her mother, 2, 4, 14, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 35, 38, 45, 75
her sisters, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 15, 25, 40, 41, 44, 52, 60, 61, 68, 81
her sons, ix, 189, 238
in America, 232 _et seq._
in Russia, 160 _et seq._
marriage of, 100
Prince Napoleon a playmate of, 4
the Kaiser and, 134 _et seq._, 140-41
the King of Spain and, 240
visits Queen Victoria at Windsor, 108-9
“Face of God, the,” 98
Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria, 183-4
Ferdinand VII. of Spain, 15, 50
Ferrari, Philippo, 215
France and the Great War, 242-3
and the question of disarmament, 248
country life in, 119
Louis Philippe, King of, 72
Royalty in, 107
Francisco, Infante, father of Infanta Eulalia, 17, 189
Frederick, Empress, 130
Frederick the Great, the library of, 153
French, the, diplomacy of, 127
Galliera, the Duke of, 213, 215
Genoa, the Duke and Duchess of, 217, 219
George V., King, the simplicity of his life, 132
George, Mr. Lloyd, 253
German Emperor, the (_see_ William II.)
Royal Family, the, 136
Germany and the Great War, 246, 255
growth of Socialism in, 137
her greed for power and wealth, 251
industrial and commercial rivalry with England, 114
military party in, 155, 242
Great Britain and the Great War, 243
Great War, the, 115, 125, 132, 133, 179, 184
author’s reflections on, 242
good results of, 252 _et seq._
the Allies’ individual unity, 255
Tsar Nicholas II. and, 176
Gustav, King of Sweden, 204
Haakon, King of Norway, 180, 192, 193 _et seq._
Havana, author visits, 224
convicts as servants in, 227
the author’s curious predicament in, 228
Houlgate, an adventure at, 7
Humbert, King of Italy, 216, 217
India, British rule in, 111
Infection, immunity of Spanish to, 84 (_cf._ Viaticum)
Isabel the Infanta, 44, 53, 95, 151
marriage of, 69
Isabelle II. (mother of the Infanta Eulalia), 2, 4, 14, 17, 19,
24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 35, 38, 42, 45, 239
an anecdote of, 102
attempted assassination of, 46
dethronement of, 49
intrigues against marriage of Alfonso XII., 42, 71
returns to Spain, 20, 22
succeeds to the throne, 50
Isle of Wight, 130, 162, 174
Italian Court, the, and the Vatican, a quarrel between, 95
Italy before and after the unification, 216
dialect in, 219
King Humbert of, 216, 217
King Victor Emmanuel of, 49, 182
miniature Courts in, 218
Queen Margherita of, 216, 217
the Courts of, 213 _et seq._
Izzet Pasha, 151
Kaiser, the, and his Court, 134 _et seq._ (_see also_ William II., Emperor)
La Granja, the summer palace of, 86
Las Palmas, the author at, 224
Leopold, King of Belgium, 183
London, the author in, 109
Louis XVI. and the Court of Versailles, 144
Louis Philippe, King, 72, 184
Louise, Princess (_see_ Argyll, Duchess of)
Luisa Carlota, the Infanta, 50
marriage of, 69
Madrid, a popular feast in, 98
an audience--and a kitten, 60-1
an embarrassing street decoration, 43
the Royal palace of, 43
Margaret, Princess of Connaught, 204
Margherita, Queen of Italy, 216
Maria Cristina (wife of Alfonso XII.), 95, 118, 151
Maria Cristina, Queen (wife of Ferdinand VII.), 15, 51
character of, 17
romantic marriage of, 16
Maria Padilla, the bath of, 38
Maria Pavlovna, Grand Duchess, 175
Marie, Empress, 175, 206, 209
Mary, Queen of England, 120
her simple life, 132
Maud, Queen of Norway, 180, 190, 193 _et seq._
Mercedes, Queen, 80
death of, 90
Mohammedanism, Spain and, 57
Montagnini, Monsignor, 221
Montpensier, the Duc de, 71, 214
a unique marriage, 75
and his orange crop, 93
and Isabella II., 71
and Queen Victoria, 109
appearance of, 77
death of, 238
head of the Orleans party, 72-3
his religious ideas, 76
marriage of, 72
Monza, the Castle of, 216
Moors, the, 57
Morro Castle, 224
Napoleon III. and Isabella II., 4
Netherlands, the, war in, 28
Nicholas II., Tsar, and his people, 157 _et seq._
as host, 169
courage of, 158, 176, 245
happy married life of, 166-167
his autocratic power, 164
his children, 166
his great tenderness, 177
his love of simplicity, 168, 176
his personality, 158
his strenuous days, 170
Normandy, the Spanish Court removes to, 5
Norway, democracy in, 180, 190
education in, 199
free unions in, 198
Queen Maud of, 190, 193
the King of, 180, 192, 193
Norway and Sweden, union of, repealed, 192, 200, 205
Olaf, Prince of Norway, 193, 196, 197
_Ordensfest_, the, 138, 139, 140
Orléans, Antoine d’, 68 _et seq._, 74, 99
Orleans family in France, 104
party, the, 73
the House of, 183, 184
Oscar, King of Sweden, 204-5
Palais de Castile, the Infanta’s life in, 4 _et seq._
Paris, flight from: the Infanta’s recollections of, 5
the author in, 107
Paris, Comte de, exiled from France, 105
the Comte and Comtesse de, at Tunbridge Wells, 105, 116
Patricia of Connaught, Princess, 130
Paul, Grand Duke, 175
Paz, the Infanta, 44, 53
Pedro the Cruel, 39
Peter the Great, 175
Petersburg. (_See_ Petrograd)
Petrograd, 160, 166
the Twelfth Day ceremony at, 161, 163-4
Philip II. and the Escurial, 28
Pilar, the Infanta, 44, 53
death of, 91
Poland, the tragedy of, 179
Polish question, the, 178
Quirinal, the, 216
Recruiting in England and Germany, 136
Richmond, author’s visit to, 119
Romanoff, the House of, and democracy, 171
Rome, the Infanta Eulalia at, 14, 182
the Pope of, 182
Russia and the Great War, 243
and the Orthodox Church, 164
creation of the Imperial Duma, 160, 165
Empress of, her beauty, 162
her devotion to her children, 167
her natural timidity, 246
her religious instincts, 164
the Blessing of the Waters in, 161, 164-5
the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses of, 171 _et seq._
the peasantry of, 178
Tsar Nicholas II., 157
Russian Court, the, a charming custom at, 169
the mazurka a favourite dance at the, 168
Sacre Cœur, convent of, 9, 108
Sagasta, Premier, 85
St. Lorenzo martyrdom, of, 28
Salic law in Spain, the, 50
San Jean de Luz, 22
Sandringham, a curious practice at, 129
Sans-Souci, the palace of, 153
Santander, 86
the Cathedral of, 25, 223
Savoy, Prince Amadeo of, 49
Scandinavia, Socialism in, 251
the simple life of, 252
Scandinavian democracies, the, 190 _et seq._
diplomats, 89
Serge, Grand Duke, assassination of, 174
Seville, 36 _et seq._
Shakespeare, the Infanta Eulalia and, 47
Social reform _versus_ Socialism, 253
Socialism in Belgium, 183
in England, 253
in Germany, 136
in Italy, 182
in Sweden, 202
the ethics of, 250 _et seq._
Spain, “anti-clerical” revolts in, 57, 58
becomes a republic, 1
caciques in, 56 _et seq._
corruption in, 55, 94
influence of the Duc de Montpensier in, 72
intricacies of Government in, 55 _et seq._
king-making in, 48 _et seq._
medical science in, 90-92
priests and their rule, 56
religion and politics in, 57
Republicanism in, 58
taxation in, 56
the aristocracy of, 93
the Catholicism of, 98
the church and courtship, 66-7
the claque in, 52-3
the Clerical party in, 73
the question of succession, 42
the Salic law in, 50
the Viaticum in, 81 _et seq._
tricks of deception in, 54
Spanish Court, the, life at, 85
the diplomats, 87 _et seq._
Strikes and Socialism, 113, 249
Sweden, King Gustav of, 204
King Oscar of, 204-5
Socialism in, 203
the aristocracy of, 201
the Court of, 204
the Crown Prince of, 203
the Crown Princess of, 130, 204
the Parliament of, 202
the Queen of, 204
Sweden and Norway, union of, repealed, 192, 200, 205
Switzerland, true Socialism in, 251
Teck, the Duchess of, 120
Tunbridge Wells, the Comte and Comtesse de Paris at, 105, 116
Turin, the Courts of, 217
United States, “bossism” in the, 55, 56
Universal peace, the ideal way of obtaining, 251
Vatican, the, and the Infanta Eulalia, 182
and the Italian Court: a quarrel, 95
Venice, 220 _et seq._
Versailles, 32
of Spain, the. (_See_ La Granja)
Viaticum, the author’s experiences of, 81 _et seq._
Victor Emmanuel, King, 49
Victoria, Queen, and a problem of Court etiquette, 131
description of, 109
jubilee of, 112, 174
Vienna, the Court of, 95
Vodka, prohibition of, in Russia, 248
Voltaire, 153
Wales, Albert Edward, Prince of, at the wedding of Alfonso XII., 129
Prince (Edward) of, his birth, 120
Princess of (now Queen Mary), birth of her first son, 120
Whisky, the evil of England, 248
Wight, Isle of, 130, 162, 174
William II., German Emperor and Edward VII., 114, 134, 137, 138
and the divinity of kingship, 135-6, 140, 154, 165, 243
and the Great War, 242-3
as host, 146-7
at the Ordensfest, 138-140
his children, 145
his flattery of the author, 141
his literary tastes, 153
his love of Berlin, 147-8
his personality, 134, 137
his punctuality, 144
his religious instincts, 135-6, 242
the household of, 134-5
the Infanta Eulalia’s visit to, 134
Windsor Castle, the author at, 109
Woman, the equality of, in Norway, 197 _et seq._
World’s Fair, the, 222
Zamoyski family, the, 178
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