The King and Queen met for the first time in the little oratory where their marriage was to be confirmed by the Archbishop of Toledo, and then, after more comedies and bullfights, the royal pair proceeded to the Escorial, lit up for the occasion by 11,000 lights, to pass the first days of their honeymoon. From the Retiro on the 15th November Mariana made her state entry into Madrid. The capital surpassed itself in its signs of rejoicing, for Philip was extremely popular and his subjects yearned for an heir to the throne. We are told that the whole distance from the Retiro to the old palace, from one end of Madrid to the other, the way was spanned by arches of flowers, whilst monumental erections with devices of welcome were placed at each principal point.[[238]] The Queen rode a snow-white palfrey; and as she smiled her frank gratified smile to the lieges they welcomed her for her rosy, painted cheeks and red pouting lips, knowing little the cold selfish heart that beat beneath the buxom bosom.
Philip was too busy for weeks in the delights of his honeymoon to write to his confidante the nun, presumably also because the sins he so deeply deplored, and so constantly repeated, did not tempt him during the first weeks of his married life. But when, on the 17th November, he found time to write, he expresses the utmost satisfaction at his bride. ‘I confess to you,’ he says, ‘that I know not how I can thank our Lord sufficiently for the mercy he has shown to me in giving me such a companion; for all the qualities I have hitherto recognised in my niece are great, and I find myself exceedingly content, and full of a desire to prove myself not ungrateful for so singular a mercy by changing my mode of life and submitting myself in all things to His will.’[[239]] The nun in answer to this urged the King to live well in his new condition, ‘trying earnestly that the Queen shall have all your attention and regard, instead of your Majesty casting your eyes on other objects strange and curious.’ All Spain, the nun continues, is yearning for an heir, and her own prayers are ceaseless to that end.
Philip was full of good resolves. He would never go astray again; but, though he was as anxious for a son as his people were, he was in doubt yet as to his new wife’s having arrived at sufficient maturity to have children: ‘although others of her age, which is fifteen years, can do so. But it is easy for our Lord to remedy this, and I hope in His mercy that He will do it.’[[240]] In the meanwhile, the depositary of all these hopes, Mariana, was diverting herself as best she could in girlish romps with her stepdaughter of ten, who seems to have been her constant companion. Philip, in writing of them, generally speaks of them as ‘the girls,’ and frequently mentions Mariana’s joy at shows and gaiety. Once more the Buen Retiro rang with light laughter. Comedies and masquerades were again the constant diversion of the Court, though pestilence was scourging the land, Catalonia and Portugal defied the arms of Spain, and the French in Flanders still held the armies of Philip at bay. Pleasure, the joy of living, absorbed the young Queen’s attention; and after the first few months of marriage, Philip usually refers to her somewhat wearily, and only with reference to her enjoyments or to his hopes of progeny. After one disappointment a child was born in July 1651, a girl, who was christened with the usual unrestrained splendour by the name of Maria Margaret.[[241]] Again high hopes were entertained in due time, only to be disappointed, and Mariana fell into melancholy; for Philip had relapsed into his bad habits again, notwithstanding his vows and resolves, and the delay in the coming of a son increased his coldness towards his wife. A frenzied round of gaiety at the Buen Retiro did something to arouse the Queen out of her depression,[[242]] but Philip had now but little pleasure in his old love for glittering shows; for the prayed for son came not, and war and pestilence still scourged Spain, as he firmly believed for his own personal backsliding.
MARIANA OF AUSTRIA.
After a Painting by Velazquez.
The life of the palace had settled down to utter monotony. Philip, immersed in business; ‘with his pen always in his hand,’ as he says, had little time for frivolity. His demeanour in public was like that of a statue, and when he received ministers or deputations it was noticed that no muscle of his face moved but his lips. Every movement was settled beforehand; and it was possible to foretell a year in advance exactly where the Court would be on a given day, and what the King would be doing at a certain hour. Mariana lived in her own way, with little show of affection for her elderly husband, or for the people amongst whom she lived. She had fallen by this time (1657) into the stiff etiquette of the Spanish Court, and in the intervals of her hoydenish merriment she displayed a haughtiness as great as that of Philip himself without his underlying tenderness or his pathetic resignation. She was German in all her sympathies, and soon lost the love of Spaniards that had been gained by the freshness of her youth.[[243]] Dressed in the tremendous triple-hooped farthingale; with her stiff, squarely arranged wig, and her full painted cheeks, she presented a sufficiently dignified appearance in public; but her flat, unamiable face, hard, weary eyes, and bulging jaw, gave her a look which repelled rather than attracted.
The outward prudery of her Court barely veiled a state of atrocious immorality amongst all classes. It was considered almost a reproach for any of the ladies, all widows or unmarried, who were attached to the palace service by hundreds, to have no extravagant gallant ready to ruin himself for her caprices; and, as a natural consequence, assassination was rife in the capital; and the news letters of the time are full of scandalous stories, in which nobles, ladies and actresses are concerned disgracefully. Corruption reigned more impudently than ever, and whilst ships were rotting on the beach, and unpaid soldiers were starving in the midst of war, vast sums were spent on foolish shows and revelry. Philip now had little pleasure in it all, going through it like a leaden automaton, only to torture himself with remorse afterwards, but withal, habit or mere weakness led him to allow such scandals as the imposition of a tax upon oil to pay for the new stage at the Buen Retiro, and the robbing of the shrine of the venerated Virgin of Atocha of a great silver chandelier for the illumination of the theatre.[[244]]
In September 1654 it was announced that Mariana was again pregnant. ‘God grant that it may be so,’ wrote a courtier: ‘but if it is going to be a girl it is of no use to us. We do not want any of them. There are plenty of women already.’[[245]] The King’s hopes rose that a son would at last be born to him, and Mariana insisted upon accompanying him everywhere; for in the intervals of her merrymaking she was a prey to deep melancholy, increased when a girl infant was born only to die a few days afterwards. The prognostications of astrologers and quacks decided in the summer of 1655 that the prayed for son was now really on the way; and as time went on unheard of preparations were made for the event. The Marquis of Heliche had twenty-two new comedies written ready for representation in the coming festivities, and large sums of money were spent in decorations beforehand. Mariana’s lightest caprice was law, and Philip hardly left her side. The old palace depressed her, and the Buen Retiro became her permanent abode; Don Juan of Austria sent from Flanders the most wonderful tapestries, and bed and bed furniture ever seen, with a vast bedstead of gilt bronze which cost a fortune; the bedroom furniture being a mass of seed pearl and gold embroidery upon satin. ‘There is no getting the Queen out of the Retiro, for she frets in the palace. She passes the mornings amongst her flowers, the days in feastings, and the nights in farces. All this goes on incessantly, and I do not know how so much pleasure does not pall upon her.’[[246]] But again the prophets were wrong, for in December another epileptic girl child was born and died: ‘Saint Gaetano notwithstanding.’[[247]]
Mariana fell gravely ill after this, and a slight stroke of paralysis, amongst other ailments, kept her for many weeks hovering between life and death. Philip did his best to raise her spirits, and when the Cortes petitioned him to have his elder daughter Maria Theresa acknowledged as heiress, he refused, in order not to distress his wife, who, he said, would be sure to have an heir directly. His letters to the nun show that he, at this period, was himself in the depths of black despair, overborne by his troubles; for Cromwell had seized Jamaica, and Spain was at war by sea and land with England and France together. Whilst Philip was gratifying his young wife by such entertainments as looking on from concealed boxes in a theatre crowded with women, whilst a hundred rats were surreptitiously let loose upon the floor;[[248]] he was a prey to a morbid misery closely akin to madness, anticipating an early death, weeping for the utter ruin that enveloped him and Spain, and the absence of a male heir.
One of his strange whims at this time was to pass hours alone in the new jasper mausoleum at the Escorial, to which the bodies of his ancestors had just been transferred. He wrote after one of these visits in 1654:—‘I saw the corpse of the Emperor whose body, although he has been dead ninety-six years, is still perfect, and by this is seen how the Lord has repaid him for his efforts in favour of the faith whilst he lived. It helped me much: particularly as I contemplated the place where I am to lie, when God shall take me. I prayed Him not to let me forget what I saw there;’[[249]] and shortly after this another contemporary records that the King passed two solitary hours on his knees on the bare stones of the mausoleum before his own last resting-place in prayer; and that when he came out his eyes were red and swollen with weeping.[[250]]