Letters from Spain

by Joseph Blanco White

The Queen was preparing the dismissal of Saavedra and Jovellanos, when a dangerous illness of the former brought forward a new actor in the intricate drama of Court intrigue, who, had he known how to use his power, might have worked the complete ruin of its hero.

The First Clerk of the Secretary of State’s Office—a place answering to that of your under-secretary of State—was a handsome young man, called Urquijo. His name is probably not unknown to you, as he was a few years ago with the Spanish Ambassador in London, where his attachment to the French jacobins and their measures could not fail to attract some notice, from the unequivocal heroic proof of self-devotion which he shewed to that party. It was, in fact, an attempt to drown himself in the pond at Kensington Gardens, upon learning the peace made by Buonaparte with the Pope at Tolentino; a treaty which disappointed his hopes of seeing the final destruction of the Papal See, and Rome itself a heap of ruins, in conformity to a decree of the French Directory. Fortune, however, having determined to transform our brave Sans-Culotte into a courtier, afforded him a timely rescue from the muddy deep; and when, under the care of Doctor V——, he had been brought to understand how little his drowning would influence the events of the French war, he returned to Madrid, to wield his pen in the office where his previous qualification of Joven de Lenguas,[49] had entitled him to a place, till he rose, by seniority, to that of Under-Secretary.

Every Spanish minister has a day appointed in the course of the week—called Dia de Despacho—when he lays before the King the contents of his portfolio, to dispose of them according to his Majesty’s pleasure. The Queen, who is excessively fond of power,[50] never fails to attend on the occasions. The minister, during this audience, stands, or, if desired, sits on a small stool near a large table placed between him and the King and Queen. The love of patronage, not of business, is, of course, the object of the Queen’s assiduity; while nothing but the love of gossip enables her husband to endure the drudgery of these sittings. During Saavedra’s ministry, his Majesty was highly delighted with the premier’s powers of conversation, and his inexhaustible fund of good stories. The portfolio was laid upon the table; the Queen mentioned the names of her protegés, and the King, referring all other business to the decision of the minister, began a comfortable chat, which lasted till bed-time. When Saavedra was taken with that sudden and dangerous illness which Godoy’s enemies were inclined to attribute to poison, (a suspicion, however, which both the favourite’s real good nature, and his subsequent lenity towards Saavedra, absolutely contradict) the duty of carrying the portfolio to the King devolved upon the Under-secretary. Urquijo’s handsome person and elegant manners made a deep impression upon the Queen; and ten thousand whispers spread the important news the next morning, that her Majesty had desired the young clerk to take a seat.

This favourable impression, it is more than probable, was heightened by a fresh pique against Godoy, whose growing disgust of his royal mistress, and firm attachment to La Tudó, offered her Majesty daily subjects of mortification. She now conceived the plan of making Urquijo, not only her instrument of revenge, but, it is generally believed, a substitute for the incorrigible favourite. But in this amorous Court even a Queen can hardly find a vacant heart; and Urquijo’s was too deeply engaged to one of Godoy’s sisters, to appear sensible of her Majesty’s condescension. He mustered, however, a sufficient portion of gallantry to support the Queen in her resolution of separating Godoy from the Court, and depriving him of all influence in matters of government.

It is, indeed, surprising, that the Queen’s resentment proceeded no farther against the man who had so often provoked it, and that his disgrace was not attended with the usual consequences of degradation and imprisonment. Many and powerful circumstances combined, however, in Godoy’s favour—the King’s almost parental fondness towards him—the new minister’s excessive conceit of his own influence and abilities, no less than his utter contempt of the discarded favourite—and, most of all, the Queen’s unextinguished and ever reviving passion, backed by her fears of driving to extremities a man who had, it is said, in his power, the means of exposing her without condemning himself.

During Saavedra’s ministry, and that interval of coldness produced by Godoy’s capricious gallantries, which enabled his enemies to make the first attempt against him; his royal mistress had conceived a strong fancy for one Mallo, a native of Caraccas, and then an obscure Garde du Corps. The rapid promotion of that young man, and the display of wealth and splendour which he began to make, explained the source of his advancement to every one but the King. Godoy himself seems to have been stung with jealousy, probably not so much from his rival’s share in the Queen’s affections, as from the ill-concealed vanity of the man, whose sole aim was to cast into shade the whole Court. Once, as the King and Queen, attended by Godoy and other grandees of the household, were standing at the balcony of the royal seat El Pardo, Mallo appeared at a distance, driving four beautiful horses, and followed by a brilliant retinue. The King’s eye was caught by the beauty of the equipage, and he inquired to whom it belonged. Hearing that it was Mallo’s—“I wonder,” he said, “how that fellow can afford to keep such horses.”—“Why, please your Majesty,” replied Godoy, “the scandal goes, that he himself is kept by an ugly old woman—I quite forget her name.”

Mallo’s day of prosperity was but short. His vanity, coxcombry and folly, displeased the King, and alarmed the Queen. But in the first ardour of her attachments, she generally had the weakness of committing her feelings to writing; and Mallo possessed a collection of her letters. Wishing to rid herself of that absurd, vain fop, and yet dreading an exposure, she employed Godoy in the recovery of her written tokens. Mallo’s house was surrounded with soldiers in the dead of night; and he was forced to yield the precious manuscripts into the hands of his rival. The latter, however, was too well aware of their value to deliver them to the writer; and he is said to keep them as a powerful charm, if not to secure his mistress’s affection, at least to subdue her fits of fickleness and jealousy. Mallo was soon banished and forgotten.

The two ministers, Saavedra and Jovellanos, had been rusticated to their native provinces; the first, on account of ill health; the second, from the Queen’s unconquerable dislike. Urquijo, who seems to have been unable either to gain the King’s esteem, or fully to return the Queen’s affection, could keep his post no longer than while the latter’s ever ready fondness for Godoy, was not awakened by the presence of its object. The absence of the favourite, it is generally believed, might have been prolonged, by good policy, and management of the King on the part of Urquijo, if his rashness and conceit of himself had ever allowed him to suspect that any influence whatever, was equal to that of his talents and person. Instead of strongly opposing a memorial of the Prince of the Peace, asking permission to kiss their majesties’ hands upon the birth of a daughter, borne to him by the Princess his wife, Urquijo imagined the Queen so firmly attached to himself, that he conceived no danger from this transient visit of his offended rival. Godoy made his appearance at Court; and from that moment Urquijo’s ruin became inevitable. His hatred of the Court of Rome had induced the latter to encourage the translation of a Portuguese work, against the extortions of the Italian Dataria, in cases of dispensations for marriage within the prohibited degrees. Thinking the public mind sufficiently prepared by that work, he published a royal mandate to the Spanish bishops, urging them to resume their ancient rights of dispensation. This step had armed against its author the greater part of the clergy; and the Prince of the Peace found it easy to alarm the King’s conscience by means of the Pope’s nuncio, Cardinal Casoni, who made him believe that his minister had betrayed him into a measure which trespassed upon the rights of the Roman Pontiff. I believe that Godoy’s growing dislike of the Inquisition spared Urquijo the horrors of a dungeon within its precincts. He had not, however, sufficient generosity to content himself with the banishment of his enemy to Guipuzcoa. An order for his imprisonment in a fortress followed him thither in a short time—a circumstance, which might raise a suspicion that Urquijo had employed his personal liberty to make a second attempt against the recalled favourite.

This supposition would be strongly supported by the general mildness of Godoy’s administration, if one instance of cruel and implacable revenge were not opposed to so favourable a view of his conduct. Whether the Queen represented Jovellanos to the Prince of the Peace as the chief actor in the first plot which was laid against him, or that he charged that venerable magistrate with ingratitude for taking any share in a conspiracy against the man who had raised him to power; Godoy had scarcely been restored to his former influence, when he procured an order to confine Jovellanos in the Carthusian Convent of Majorca. The unmanliness of this second and long-meditated blow, roused the indignation of his fallen and hitherto silent adversary, calling forth that dauntless and dignified inflexibility which makes him, in our days, so fine a specimen of the old Spanish character. From his confinement he addressed a letter to the King, exposing the injustice of his treatment in terms so removed from the servile tone of a Spanish memorial, so regardless of the power of his adversary, that it kindled anew the resentment of the favourite, through whose hands he well knew it must make its way to the throne. Such a step was more likely to aggravate than to obtain redress for his wrongs. The virtues, the brilliant talents, and pleasing address of Jovellanos had so gained upon the affections of the monks, that they treated him with more deference than even a minister in the height of his power could have expected. Godoy’s spirit of revenge could not brook his enemy’s enjoyment of this small remnant of happiness; and with a cruelty which casts the blackest stain on his character, he removed him to a fortress in the same island, where, under the control of an illiterate and rude governor, Jovellanos is deprived of all communication, and limited to a small number of books for his mental enjoyment. The character of the gaoler may be conceived from the fact of his not being able to distinguish a work from a volume. Jovellanos’s friends are not allowed to relieve his solitude with a variety of books, even to the number contained in the governor’s instructions; for he reckons literary works by the piece, and a good edition of Cicero, for instance, appears to him a complete library.[51]