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.