Court Life From Within

by Infanta of Spain Eulalia

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