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.