Through Fuenterrabia, San Sebastian and Vitoria, Isabel travelled towards Burgos, where she was to meet her boy bridegroom. Dressed in Spanish garb from Vitoria onward, she won all hearts by her gaiety and brightness; and, as an eyewitness says of her, ‘even if she had French blood in her veins she had a Spanish spirit.’ Philip III. and his son met the bride a league from Burgos, and we are told that the prince of eleven years old was so dazzled with her beauty that he could only gaze speechless upon her. The next day Burgos was all alive with the splendour of the welcome of the future Queen, who entered the city on a white palfrey with a silver saddle and housings of velvet and pearls; and so, from city to city, smiling and happy, the girl, in the midst of the inflated Court, slowly made her way to Madrid. On the afternoon of 19th December 1615 Isabel rode from the monastery of St. Jerome[[202]] through Madrid to the palace upon the cliff overlooking the valley of the Manzanares. An eyewitness describes her appearance as she rode through the mile of crowded narrow streets of old Madrid, under triumphal arches, past thousands of peopled balconies, hung with tapestries, with songs and music of welcome all the way. ‘Her Highness was dressed in the French fashion, with an entire robe of crimson satin embroidered with bugles, a little cap trimmed with diamonds, and a ruff beautifully trimmed in French style, and with a rosette and girdle of diamonds of great size. She went her way, bright and buxom, full of rejoicing. Her aquiline face was wreathed in smiles, and her fine eyes flashed from side to side, looking at everything, to the great delight of the populace.’[[203]]
It was five years after this, on the 25th November 1620, at the palace of Pardo, that young Philip and Isabel began their married life together. Philip was yet barely sixteen when (in March 1621) the low vitality of his father flickered out, and the monarch, who should have been a monk, passed, in alternate paroxysms of fear and ecstacies of hope, from the world in which he had meant so well and done so ill. The corruption and waste under Lerma and his crew of parasites had bled Spain to the white, and utter ruin was now the lot of whole populations. The tradition of the King’s wealth which still lingered could hardly be kept up now, though at the fall of Lerma some of the worst robbers had been made to disgorge their booty. The King had been beloved and revered for his saintliness, but all saw the desolation that his idle dependence upon favourites had caused. Spain now looked only to the sallow, long-faced boy, Philip IV., with the light blue eyes and lank flaxen hair, to save the people from starvation. Not to him, but to the man at his side, it soon learned to look. He was a big-boned powerful man of thirty-three, with a great square head, heavy stooping shoulders, fierce black eyes, burning like live coals in an olive face; and his upturned twisted moustache added to the haughty imperiousness of his mien. This was the man, Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, Duke of St. Lucar, who made a clean sweep of all the corrupt gang that had fattened upon Spain, the brood of Rojas and Sandoval, and replaced them with his own creatures. Philip, like his father, meant well, and was naturally a much more able man; but he was idle, pleasure-loving, and pathetically unable to resist temptation, each constantly recurring transgression being followed by an agony of remorse, only to be again committed when the first poignancy of regret had passed.
Following the advice of Olivares, he attempted to mend matters by cutting down expenses alone, instead of changing the system of taxation and finance; and the ‘spirited foreign policy’ which he adopted soon involved him in expenditure, which later completed the downfall of the country. The foolish old dream that catholic unity might be won by Spanish arms still kept him at war with the Dutch, whilst the Moors were harrying the Spanish coasts and commerce, and France and Spain were already at loggerheads again, now that Marie de Medici and her crew had been thrust into the background. Instead of recognising facts and lying low to recuperate, Olivares and Philip, with the blinded nation behind them, were as boastful and haughty as their predecessors had been in the days of Spain’s strength. The weak poltroon who reigned unworthily in England, was ever ready to truckle to apparent strength. He had sacrificed Raleigh at Spain’s bidding, he had been contemptuously used and scorned by Lerma and Philip III. when he had tried to marry his heir to a Spanish Infanta, and he had been cleverly kept from an alliance with France by hopes and half promises. But the Palatinate was still unrestored, and when Philip III. had died, James made another attempt with the new King to win Spain’s friendship by a marriage.
The hare-brained trip of Prince Charles and Buckingham to Madrid, to win the hand of the Infanta and the alliance of Spain, has often been described, and can hardly be touched upon here. The Prince suddenly appeared disguised at the English embassy at Madrid on the 7th March 1622, and the next day, to the dismay of Olivares, the awkward visit was known to all the capital. He and young Philip made the best of a bad business. To abandon Austria and the Palatinate for the sake of protestant England did not suit them, but they could be polite. All the edicts ordering economy of dress, eating, and adornments, were suspended, and whilst Charles stayed in Madrid a tempest of prodigality prevailed. Isabel and the Infanta played their parts in the farce with apprehension and reluctance, for the former knew that the besought alliance was directed against France, and the Infanta was horrified at the idea of marrying a heretic. But they did their best to keep up appearances, especially Isabel, who treated Charles most graciously. The day after his arrival, Philip and his wife and sister, the latter with a blue ribbon round her arm to distinguish her, rode in a coach to the church in the Prado, and Charles, of course quite by accident, met them both coming and going, to his great satisfaction. Soon after Isabel sent to the English prince a fine present of white underwear, a nightgown beautifully worked, and several scented coffers, with golden keys, full of toilet requisites, probably guessing that in his rapid voyage he had not brought such luxuries with him; and at the great bull fight at the Plaza Mayor in honour of the Prince, she sat in brown satin, bordered with gold, in the fine balcony of the city bread-store overlooking the Plaza, as Charles, in black velvet and white feathers, rode his fine bay horse into the arena by the side of Philip, to take his place in an adjoining box.
Before the masked ball on Easter Sunday, given by the Admiral of Castile in Charles’s honour, Isabel in white satin, covered with precious stones, dined in public; and then, changing her dress to one of black and gold, awaited the English Prince to lead her to the ballroom. There during the entertainment, and on all other occasions, he sat at her right hand under a royal canopy, with Philip on her left; whilst the Earl of Bristol, on his knees before them, interpreted the small talk suitable to the occasion. And so, with comedies and cane tourneys, banquets and balls, Charles and Buckingham were beguiled by Olivares for well nigh six months, until the farce grew stale, and Charles wended his way home again, nominally betrothed to the Infanta, but really outwitted and his country humiliated. The defeat was softened by much loving profession and splendid presents from Philip and his courtiers to the English Prince; and it is somewhat curious that, on the departure of Charles, the present given to him by Isabel again took the form of white linen garments, fifty amber-dressed skins, two hundred and fifty scented kidskins for gloves, a large sum in silver crowns, and other things.[[204]]
Philip and his wife had now settled down to their regular life in the most brilliant court in Europe. It was the Augustan age of Spanish literature and the drama, and a perfect craze for comedies and satirical verse seized upon the Spanish people, under the influence of the King and Queen, both of them passionately fond of the theatre and diversions of all sorts. Isabel, like her husband, was conventionally devout, and her religious benefactions were constant, as well as her attendances at the ceremonies of the church;[[205]] but in her devotion she had none of the gloomy monastic character which had afflicted her husband’s family, and the social demeanour of the courtiers and of the townspeople generally underwent a complete change in her time. Her manners, indeed, were so free and debonair as to have given rise to some quite unsupported scandal as to her faithfulness to her husband. Madrid was a perfect hotbed of tittle-tattle; everybody considered it necessary to be able to spin satirical verses, and as these were generally anonymous and in manuscript, the reputation of no one, high or low, was safe from attack.
The reaction from the rigid propriety of previous reigns led the Court of Philip IV. to assume a licence that quite shocked foreigners. Much of the day was passed in parading up and down the Calle Mayor (High Street) in coaches, and much of the night in summer in promenading in the dry bed of the river. Gallantry became the fashion, and ladies, very far from resenting, welcomed broad compliments and doubtful jests addressed to them by strangers in the streets.[[206]] The palace itself, especially the new pleasure palace of the Buen Retiro, built in the Prado for Philip by Olivares in 1632, was a notorious focus of intrigue; encouraged by the example of Philip himself, by far the most dissolute king of his line. From his early youth he had delighted in amateur acting, and under a pseudonym (Un Ingenio de esta Corte), wrote comedies himself, and delighted in the society of dramatic people.
Isabel was as keen a lover of the stage as her husband, and from the first days after the mourning for Philip III. was over, she began her favourite diversion of private theatricals in her own apartments. From October 1622, every Sunday and Thursday during the winter, as well as on holidays, comedies were performed by regular actors in her private theatre. Some of these comedies may be mentioned to show the taste of the Queen in such matters. ‘The Scorned Sweetheart,’ ‘The Loss of Spain,’ and ‘The Jealousy of a Horse,’ were three plays by Pedro Valdés, for which Isabel paid 300 reals (£6) each, the previous price having been £4. ‘Gaining Friends,’ ‘The Power of Opportunity,’ and ‘How our Eyes are Cheated,’ ‘The Fortunate Farmer,’ ‘The Woman’s Avenger,’ and ‘The Husband of His Sister,’ were others; and the total number of such plays represented in the Queen’s apartments in the palace during the winter of 1622–23, was forty-three, the fees for which reached 13,500 reals (£270).[[207]]
Whilst the Prince of Wales was in Madrid the theatres in the palace, and the two public courtyard theatres in the capital, had a busy season. James Howell, writing from Madrid at the time,[[208]] says, ‘There are many excellent poems made here since the Prince’s arrival, which are too long to couch in a letter. Yet I will venture to send you this one stanza of Lope de Vega:
“Carlos Estuardo soy,