Court Life From Within

by Infanta of Spain Eulalia

He accompanied us to the Escurial, which we approached from the mountains, so that we looked down on it. It was built in a square, with a wing coming out of one side like a handle. “What a funny palace!” I said. “It is the shape of a frying-pan.” My brother told me that this was intentionally so; that Philip II. had dedicated the palace to St. Lorenzo, who had been martyred on a gridiron; and the shape of the building was designed to remind the kings that if they were wicked they would be fried in hell. I enjoyed with him the charming naïveté of the symbolism. He was no more illiberal than I about his religion. Indeed, I think he was the only King of Spain who did not constantly go to confession.

Half of the Escurial was a monastery and a school, where the monks taught; for Philip II. had been fanatically religious, and he had lived there as “Brother Philip,” even while he conducted the war in the Netherlands and sent the famous Armada against England. The tombs of the Royal family were all here—to make it more cheerful—and new tombs were waiting for us, the daughters of Queen Isabella, so that I might regard my own sepulchre. I regarded it with amusement, because it seemed to me a childishness to make a daily bugaboo of death.

It appeared that we were not put in our tombs immediately after dying. We were placed first in the crypt, in a chamber called the pudridero, until decay had reduced our bodies to bones; and my brother whispered to me that in the pudridero reserved for Infantas so little care had been taken during the revolution that the bones had been mixed up together, and he had had to have them sorted for burial as best he could, rather haphazard. The thought of the poor Infantas in their fine tombs, with the bones of each in the tomb of another, set us laughing again. I thought that the Escurial was a very pretentiously funny place, and I enjoyed the tour of it with my brother as a great joke.

Next morning, before I was up, an important-looking officer in a gorgeous uniform of red and gold came bowing with dignity into my bedroom, and spoke something in Spanish. I could not understand what he wanted, and I tried to make him understand that I did not want him. He kept repeating himself deferentially, but with the air of a dignitary who knew his rights, until I ordered him out of the room with a gesture that he could not mistake. He went, much offended, and I hurried to my mother’s room to ask her who he was. She explained that he was an important Court official; that his sole duty in life was to carry slops from my wash-table—which was upholstered in red and gold to match his uniform; that this was a privilege which he valued highly, and that I had probably hurt him very much by denying him the right. I was indignant that any man of intelligence should be doing anything so absurd. My mother did not sympathise; it was an affair of Court etiquette. I refused to have a man coming to my room. She insisted that I must. “Very well,” I said, “if he ever comes in there again, I’ll beat him with something.” And although my mother was angry with me, he never did come in again.

This proved to be a sample of much of the formality that made life difficult at the Escurial. We had not only, now, the ladies-in-waiting to be with us always; as soon as we came out of our bedrooms in the morning we had ushers also to precede us everywhere; and if we crossed a hall a guard accompanied us and waited at the door. The Escurial is one of the most magnificent of palaces, with huge rooms of state as high as chapels, richly furnished and hung with tapestries and paintings. I found these rooms excellent to skip in, since all the furniture was arranged along the walls, as in ball-rooms; but I had to make friends first with the ushers, to persuade them to stand aside and let me play, otherwise, I suppose, I should have had to skip in a procession, with an usher marching in his uniform solemnly ahead of me and a lady-in-waiting behind!

I had no studies here and no playmates; my sisters were older than I, and they did not like my active games. I soon found the Escurial depressing. It was chilly in the mountains after sunset, and there was no way of heating the palace in those days except with fireplaces, that might as well have been burning out of doors. The view from the windows was desolate, for there were no trees, and the hills were bare. I saw no visitors but personages speaking Spanish, who came to see my mother formally; and to these we children were shown to satisfy curiosity. They all congratulated us on being back in the land where we had been born. I wondered why they expected that to make us so happy. After all, I did not remember being born there. As for the Escurial, it was picturesque, no doubt; it was magnificent; it was as historic as a public museum; and if I had been a tourist, sightseeing, I might have admired it as much as tourists do Versailles. But I do not think that even a tourist would be happy if he had to live permanently imprisoned in the magnificent discomforts of the palace of Versailles—especially if his only recreation was to skip in the Hall of Mirrors under the eyes of a uniformed museum guard.

Then there came to us a formidable relative, a princess to whom her royalty was a religion; and a new trouble began for me. I offended her unconsciously with every word—and, when I was not speaking, with every action. It appeared to her that I had not at all the manners of a princess, nor the mind. She set herself to instruct and counsel me, severely.

She tried to impress it on me that, with my brother on the Throne, every word I uttered had importance; that it would be weighed and studied and repeated. Therefore I must not express opinions of any sort about public affairs, or personages, for fear I should say something that might be used to make difficulties for my brother. It was a duty that we owed the Crown to have no opinions at all, except about matters that could have no public bearing or affect the popularity of the King.

Similarly, we could have no special friends, for fear of arousing jealousies that might embarrass the Throne; and in order to avoid even the appearance of having favourites, we must not show any special sympathy or antipathy for any person. We must be the same to all, and unvarying in our manner from day to day, so as to avoid comparisons. It was a duty that we owed the Crown. We must perform all our social and religious duties and observe all the etiquettes of Court life to the same end—that no act of ours, either of omission or commission, should make difficulty for the King. We must not only avoid the occasion of scandal, but we must efface ourselves so efficiently that even the most innocent gossip could not find its source in us. It was a duty that we owed the Crown. I must not say that I found the view from the Escurial desolate; it might be construed into an offensive criticism of the country. I must like everything and everybody, unless the King expressed a wish to the contrary in a particular instance. It was a duty that we owed the Crown.

At first she bewildered me with the sort of fright that comes on a child confronted by a dictatorial schoolmaster and a new lesson to learn. She talked and talked, and I did not understand her. Then I began to think her absurd, because her pomposity was stupid, and her self-importance made me smile. When she told me that every word I uttered would be weighed and repeated, I thought to myself, “No! People can’t be so silly as that! Or if there are such people, why worry about them? It isn’t worth the thought.” And the idea that I must not have opinions or friends was repulsive to me, because it was a restraint of spirit that would cramp me. After hearing it all from her, over and over, again and again, I decided that she was not a very clever person, and that she had exaggerated trifles. I knew that my brother would not expect such things of me, and I decided to pay no attention to her.