If the painter has handed to us by his genius the exact reflection of this Court in a way that makes it live for us more vividly, perhaps, than any other, Quevedo and his followers, especially Velez de Guevara in El Diablo Cojuelo, have left in biting prose records no less faithful of its amusements, its follies, and crimes. By the light held up by the satirists we see an utterly decadent society, sunk, from the King downwards, into a slough of apathetic despondency of ever bettering things, whilst each individual strives madly to get as much pleasure as he can wring out of life, by fair means or foul, before the catastrophe overwhelms them all. Faith has decayed, and trembling superstition mixed with scoffing irreverence has taken its place: idleness is everywhere; poverty and squalor seek to masquerade as nobility, in order to claim the privilege to plunder which Court and Church alone possess, and labour is scorned as beneath the subjects of a King so wealthy and powerful as the sovereign of Spain is still assumed to be, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. A pretentious, hollow society it was, where all sought to share in the scramble, even at second or third hand, for the possessions of the State, oblivious to the fact that the State itself could possess nothing but what the individual citizens supplied.
Pretence was not limited to rank and material possessions. The noble poet and satirist kept a sycophantic man of letters to supply him with the lucubrations that moved the Court to admiration when they bore the name of a marquis, the cities swarmed with sham students, who pattered Latin tags, and cadged on the strength of a scholarship that was not theirs: and when showy pageants palled upon the King, and even his beloved comedies failed to spur his jaded wit, Philip could always find solace in the pedantic and affected academies and poetical contests over which he was so fond of presiding in his palace. There well-studied impromptus were mouthed, far-fetched conceits declaimed with a pomposity worthy of inspired prophecy, and preciosity run mad twisted and befouled the noble Castilian speech into the bastard Latiniparla, at which Quevedo gibed whilst himself revelling in it.
It was a Court of mean shams and squalid splendour, where all was rottenness but the fair outside. How ostentatious that outside was may be seen in the many records of court festivities that a bombastic age has handed to us. They are for the most part insufferably tedious catalogues of the dress and ornaments of pompously named nobles, courtiers, and favourites;[[217]] but a few details of two great feasts in which Isabel took a conspicuous part, may be set forth here as a specimen of the diversions of her time. An entertainment, given to the sovereigns by the Countess of Olivares early in June 1631, in the garden of her brother, the Count of Monterey, inspired Olivares with the idea of outdoing all previous efforts in the same direction. The time was short, for the night of St. John (24th June) was the day fixed. Two comedies had to be written specially for the occasion; and Lope de Vega, the most marvellously prolific playwright that ever lived, managed to compose one of them in three days: whilst Quevedo and Antonio Mendoza, put on their mettle by Lope’s rapidity, wrote another jointly in a single day, whilst Olivarez himself snatched rare moments of leisure from State affairs, of which he was the universal minister, to superintend the rehearsals.
As if by enchantment, in a few days there sprang up in the gardens[[218]] a sumptuous pavilion from which the King and Queen, with their favoured courtiers, might see the play. In front was erected the open air theatre, crowded with crystal lights and rare flowers, whilst all around were platforms for other guests, choristers, etc. At nine o’clock at night, Philip and Isabel alighted from their coach, and were received by Olivares to the sounds of soft music. When they had taken their seats, Philip on a chair of state, and Isabel on a pile of cushions, trays of presents were brought them, perfumes, embroidered scented handkerchiefs, and essences in cut glass flasks,[[219]] Isabel being especially asked to accept in addition a jewelled Italian fan. Quevedo’s comedy, Quien mas miente medra mas (He who lies most thrives most) was represented first, after a musical prologue and a poetic welcome to Isabel recited by the famous actress Maria de Riquelme. The first representation occupied two hours and a half, we are told by an eyewitness: ‘during which many excellent dances were introduced; and although the players, having had little time to study, did not succeed in bringing out all the witty invention of the verses, it is certain that in many ordinary comedies together could not be found such an abundance of smart jests as in this one alone; for one day’s work was sufficient for Don Francisco de Quevedo’s wit to invent it all.’
When the first comedy was finished Philip and Isabel were led to the adjoining garden of the Duke of Maqueda,[[220]] where there had been erected two bowers or summer-houses of leaves and blossoms, with a great number of coloured lights. These two arbors, one for the King and the other for the Queen, communicated by an arched passage of foliage, and were surrounded by similar erections for the suite, each bower being supplied with a table of light refreshments. In the King’s bower there was a hamper containing a long cloak of brown cloth, ornamented at the edge by scrolls of black and silver, solid silver hanging buttons, and loops serving for fastening. This was accompanied by a white wide-brimmed hat trimmed with brown feathers and a white aigrette, and a Walloon falling collar,[[221]] which was still occasionally worn in place of the almost universal golilla. The King’s brothers were similarly supplied with disguises; whilst in the Queen’s bower the hamper contained a mirror, a brown woollen cloak embroidered at the bottom with sprigs of black silk and silver, the fastenings in this case also being solid silver hanging buttons and silver loops. The cloak was lined with silk of the same colour, hemmed and stitched with black and silver, and with it was a beautiful lace mantilla, a pleated lace ruff, and a white hat adorned with brown and white plumes and spangles. The whole Court was thus supplied with wraps and headgear against the night air. A light supper of surpassing daintiness was then served in the arbors, and the whole party, politely supposed to be disguised, proceeded to witness the second comedy; the Queen in her capricious garb, ‘adding to her natural and marvellous graciousness and beauty the extraordinary attraction of the strangeness of attire, without losing an atom of the dignity which distinguishes her Majesty, no less than the other admirable virtues and perfections which shine in her.’ We are assured that the unusual hats and garments worn by the King and his brothers were equally powerless to spoil their dignified appearance, ‘as they unite those qualities which vulgar censure and envy always strive to keep apart, namely, great beauty and a noble air:’ and the writer of the account from which I quote, nervous, apparently, at what the outside public would say to such a derogation of royalty as to don disguises, assures us that only a very select company was allowed to be present.[[222]]
The comedy of Lope de Vega, ‘La Noche de San Juan,’ was then represented on the open air stage, and a short concert followed, after which the King and Queen were conducted to a flower-decked gallery erected in the other adjoining garden.[[223]] Here, after midnight, another delicate refection was partaken of, the Count and Countess of Olivares serving the King and Queen, the whole banquet being so well organised that everything went off with the utmost decorum and quietness, except for the sweet music which enlivened the feast. When the day was just breaking the King and Queen entered their coach and, after a few turns in the Prado, rode home to the palace to bed. Olivares was praised to the skies for the organisation of this lavish feast, and the wonder is expressed that the licentious crowd of people who frequented the Prado at night should have been so awed by the presence of the King in the garden adjoining, that no disturbance or disorder took place.
This feast, fine as it was, was completely thrown in the shade by another which took place a few yards away, two years later (1633), when, at tremendous expense, and much unjust appropriation of other people’s property, Olivares run up and sumptuously furnished, in an amazing short time, the pleasure palace of the Buen Retiro, which afterwards became Philip’s favourite place of residence, where his comedies, academies, concerts, recitations and masquerades could be indulged in with more propriety than in the gloomy, old half-Moorish palace on the cliff at the other end of the town. The house warming of the Buen Retiro lasted for a week in one continual round of tedious entertainment, in which invention and lavishness exhausted itself; but this was only the first of a series of such revels in the same place, for which any pretext was seized.
In January 1637, for instance, when Philip learnt that his brother-in-law, Ferdinand, had been elected King of the Romans, and future Emperor, an entertainment was ordered on a prodigious scale at the Buen Retiro. Three thousand men were set to work to level a hill that Pinelo (Anales) says ‘had stood since the world was made,’ for the purpose of building a wooden enclosure 608 feet long and 480 wide. Four hundred and eight large balconies or boxes surrounded this vast space, which was painted to look like masonry outside, whilst the inside was hung with silk and tapestries, and a silver railing ran round the front of the boxes. Nine hundred huge candelabra, ‘with four lights in each,’ illuminated the plaza; and the royal box, with its gilded roofs and pillars, and its green and gold appointments, glittered with mirrors which cast back the twinkling lights that fell upon them. Blazonry, imperial and royal crowns, scutcheons of arms and ‘conceited devices,’ were displayed on every side; and when, on the 15th February (Sunday), Philip came to the feast in state from the house, in the Carrera de San Geronimo, where he had robed, through a broad lane of people, with torch-bearers standing shoulder to shoulder throughout his route, people said that never had such a gorgeous show been seen in Spain.
With martial music, before them rode in his train, sixteen bands of nobles, twelve in each band, all dressed alike in black velvet and silver, and every man carrying in his right hand a lighted wax taper, whilst he restrained his prancing steed with the left. Last of all the bands came those of Olivares and the King, dressed like the others, but with some richer ornaments; and then great triumphal cars of strange and showy designs, made by Cosme Lotti, the clever Florentine. Each of them was 30 feet long and 46 feet high, lit with 100 torches, and contained innumerable figures and devices; and bands of music, the weight being so great that twenty-four bullocks were needed to draw each one, the bullocks themselves being hung with crimson, and accompanied by men in the garb of Orientals bearing silver torches. After them followed forty savages, whose clubs were torches; and as the great procession entered the enclosed space, and each party passed before Queen Isabel in the royal box, a fanfare sounded and the men saluted the sovereign; the whole procession, after having completed the circle, forming up in front of the royal box, whilst the mummers on the cars represented before the Queen ‘a colloquy of peace and war.’
Philip’s band of nobles in their musical ride and intricate evolutions, of course excelled all others; and the King, acclaimed as the champion cavalier of his realm, ascended to his wife’s box to lay at her feet the guerdon of his prowess, and witness the rest of the feast at her side. For ten days thereafter the feasting and vain show went on, comedies, concerts, banquets, balls, water fetes on the lake, illumination of the woods, bull fights by torchlight, a poetical contest and greasy poles; a cotillon in which the party pelted each other with eggshells full of perfume, and a hundred other devices to waste time and money,[[224]] and to beguile Philip from the looming affairs of State, now wholly managed by the strong, dark-faced man with the big head and bowed shoulders, whom most people hated for his imperiousness and his greed, the King’s bogey as some called him, the second King of Spain, the Count Duke of Olivares.