The gardens with which Philip V. surrounded his palace cover an area of three hundred and sixty acres, and are the finest in the kingdom, while even the admirers of Versailles admit that La Granja has the more amazing fountains. From the grand walk one looks out across a panorama of the rocks and forests of New Castile, or gazes down upon the beautiful extravagancies of these literally hand-made gardens. The formal design of the ground-plan, the regularity of its well-ordered box avenues and mazes, the artificiality of its numerous fountains, its marble vases and statuary, and the baths and summer-houses that rise out of the dwarf-like vegetation, are all in striking contrast with the wild grandeur of the distant scenery. Yet, artificial as the aspect undoubtedly is, the gardens are a sheer delight, for beyond the flower-beds are masses of yellow broom and springing ferns, and the grass is a blaze of wild hyacinths, forget-me-nots, cowslips, and periwinkle. Higher up the mountain, to where the sky-line shows, 3000 feet above the palace, are woods of chestnut trees, oaks, elms, and innumerable pines, in which myriad butterflies of every hue disport themselves, and scores of streams trickle down to feed the royal fountains in the gardens below. The statues representing Lucretia, Bacchus, Apollo, Daphne, America, Ceres, and Milo, and many others, are of no great artistic value; while the fountains, to the number of twenty-six, are unique. The Fama, which throws up its waters to a height of 130 feet, is the most renowned; and from another fountain, compact of sculptured flowers and fruits, forty spouts send out their two-score jets 80 feet high. The Cenador is a single vast cascade of gleaming water from the mountain snows. Then there are the Ranas (Frogs), Ocho Calles, Canastillo, Tres Gracias, and the Neptuno, at which, says M. Bourgoin, the Egotist read Virgil and quoted ‘quos ego.’ Last of all, there is the wonderful Baño de Diana, to which reference has already been made.
Here, where Art is truly French, and Nature is truly Spanish, where even Nature conceives in bleak discomfort for eight months in each year to bring forth four months of flowers and faërie, the King of Spain and his English bride retired to surroundings amid which a honeymoon will not be forgotten. Madrid has its magnificent royal palaces; El Pardo boasts its wondrous tapestries; Aranjuez its gardens, and Rio Frio its orchards; El Escorial is the eighth wonder of the world, and Miramar looks over the yellowest of golden sands into the bluest of blue waters; but La Granja, in the Guadarrama Mountains, is that place apart where lovers may find a bower
‘Of coolest foliage, musical with birds’;
and here one may listen to
‘The murmurs of low fountains that gush forth
I’ the midst of roses!’
The auxiliary residence to the palace of San Ildefonso, located some fourteen miles from it beyond the city of Segovia, is the royal house of Rio Frio, situated in a picturesque park which is full of game of every description. The small elegant building which stands in the centre of the park was begun by Isabel, the widow of Philip V., and was completed internally by Alfonso XII. It is a two-storied square building, the four sides of which are all exactly alike, and a large square court, paved with granite flags, occupies the centre of the building. A large portico of Tuscan pilasters surrounds the court and supports a covered gallery on the level of the first floor. From this court a noble staircase, consisting of two independent flights, which start from the vestibule in opposite directions, each subdividing into two other parallel ones, on the level of the first landing. The two independent flights end at the first floor at the opposite ends of the room which is used as a guardroom for the halberdiers. The steps are of granite, and the balustrades, which are supported by figures of children in various attitudes, are of a pretty yellow limestone. The sculpturing is also in stone, but it was unfortunately painted white, thus depriving it of its artistic merit, and giving the appearance of plaster. The whole of this work is from the chisel of Bartolomé Seximini. The entire weight of the staircase rests on four large Tuscan columns (monoliths), constructed of granite, and eight semi-columns of the same kind.
The apartments on the first floor, which with the exception of the sacristy and chapel on the ground floor are the only rooms that call for description, are decorated and furnished with a simplicity that would seem to betoken actual poverty. This is accounted for by the fact that the royal family very seldom resides in this palace; and at such times whatever is required is conveyed there from the palace of San Ildefonso. On the other hand, the collection of pictures is superior in number and merit to that of San Ildefonso, for among its six hundred and fifty-eight pictures there are many originals of the great masters of the different schools. There is one each of Van Dyck, Titian, Albert Dürer, and Goya; two by Zurbaran, Navarrete, Guido de Reni, Pantoja de la Cruz, and Correggio; eight by Jordán, three by Teniers, four by Domenichino, and six by Poussin.
III
EL PARDO
At the royal residence of El Pardo Maria Cristina was lodged on the eve of her marriage with Alfonso XII. in 1879. Seven years later in the same palace she wept beside the deathbed of her husband, the father of the unborn king, Alfonso XIII. For a score of years El Pardo was avoided by the queen-mother, until, in 1906, Don Alfonso brought to the suburban palace the English princess who, on the 31st of May of that year, went in state to the church of San Jeronimo to be married to the King of Spain.
From the earliest days of Madrid’s claim to royal favour, over a hundred years before Charles V. transferred the Court from Valladolid to the present capital, the Kings of Spain have had a residence at El Pardo. Henry III., El Doliente, when making some additions to the old town of Madrid about 1461, built a pleasure-house on this site. The attraction of the district was undoubtedly the abundance of boar and bear which found ample cover in the forests which surrounded the capital. Generations of improvident inhabitants have destroyed these woods, but the preserves within the stone wall which surrounds the royal residence are well timbered, and the plantations are full of deer and boar and all kinds of small game. Charles V. transformed the building into a winter palace and left the task of completing it to Philip II., who, one imagines, spared but scant leisure from his colossal building operations at the Escorial to superintend the furnishing of a mere shooting-box. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the original structure was destroyed by fire and the present château was built by Philip III. Charles III. altered and added to the palace in which he found refuge after the famous riots against Squillaci, and here in the reign of Charles IV. were hatched the plot and counterplot of Ferdinand and Godoy which culminated in the revolution of Aranjuez, the fall of the much-abused favourite, and the deposition of Charles and his crafty sons.