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.