The official world, the Press, the people and society at large have been most kind to me.
Let me close with a French saying, “La distance n’est pas l’oubli.”
Au revoir!
Infanta Eulalia
The domestic affairs of the Infanta and her husband about twelve years ago received that undesirable publicity which the “fierce light which beats upon a throne” gives even to those who are only related to its occupant. The result was a rumour that the Royal couple were divorced. This was wholly untrue. The fact was that, by mutual consent and without any intervention on the part of the Courts of Justice, a separation was arranged. By this arrangement, the Infanta continues not only to receive the £6,000 annually voted by the Cortes, but also the allowances under her marriage settlement. Her town residence is in Madrid, and she has a cottage at Navas de Pinares, in the Province of Avila, high up in the Sierra de Malagon, a continuation of the Sierra de Guadarrama. The name Comtesse d’Avila, under which the French edition of this book was published, is taken from the province in which her country residence is situated.
The Infanta has two sons, both of whom were educated, first at Beaumont College, the Jesuit institution near Windsor known as the “Catholic Eton,” and later at the Spanish Military Academy at Toledo. The eldest is Prince Alphonse-Marie-François Diego, born in Madrid in 1886. He holds a commission in the infantry regiment of San Fernando. Three years ago he married Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, daughter of the
late Duke, better known in this country as the Duke of Edinburgh. The Prince Alfonso served in the recent Melilla campaign, and as late as December of 1911 was received by King Alfonso, who conversed with him about the situation in that Spanish colony on the Moroccan coast. About the same time the King also received the Infanta’s second son, Infante Louis-Ferdinand-Marie-Zacarias, who was born at Madrid in 1888.
It will be noticed that the elder brother does not bear the title of Infante of Spain. He was deprived of it on his marriage to a Protestant princess. It has been reported—it cannot be said with what amount of truth—that his mother declared that “her cup of bitterness was full” after the treatment meted out to her son after serving in the Moroccan campaign, for she asserted that a promise had been made that his title should be restored to him if he served efficiently in Morocco.
The chequered career of the Infanta from her earliest childhood—a career almost without precedent in the annals of Royal houses—has given her the wide purviews, the all-embracing, generous sympathy with human joys, woes and strivings, which can be the attributes only of one who, by nature broad-minded, has had the opportunity and the discernment to form her own opinions on the great problems of life. The Royal infant, hurried from a country in revolution; the little Paris schoolgirl in the care of the nuns of the Convent of the Sacred Heart; the young princess receiving her rightful homage at her brother’s Court; her visit to the United States, with all that it taught her; the failure of her married life; her unassuming later years in France, and her frequent visits to her English friends—all these varied experiences contributed to the making of a character some interesting details of which were given by a Paris correspondent to the Daily Telegraph on the occasion of the King of Spain’s sensational action regarding “The Thread of Life.” He wrote as follows:—