It was part of our luck, as Patsy said, that we should have had that sharp crisp day for our expedition, our one experience of life in a Spanish hunting lodge. Even the weather was on our side!
We drove back through the town of El Pardo, a sleepy place on the bank of the Manzanares. Cattle were drinking in the river; in a meadow where we stopped to admire some fine oaks, a flock of half-tame magpies were hopping over the grass.
In spite of April hailstorms it was a forward spring, the fruit trees put on their bridal dresses early to welcome the bride. In the Buen Retiro purple and white violets bloomed so thick that the air was scented. The laburnums shook out long golden clusters, the wistaria unfurled amethyst blossoms. The honey-sweet smell of the acacias in the Recoletos came in at the windows and drove us abroad early and late. It was impossible to stay indoors with the trees in flower, the streets abloom with children and girls. The crowd of vehicles in the Paseo was so great that horses and automobiles moved at a foot pace.
In the noon hour the working men and their families, who in winter had sought the sunny corners for their out-of-door feasts, hunted for the shadow of tree or kiosk. We were on friendly terms with several of these family groups, and had often been invited to join them at their meal. Patsy, consumed with curiosity to know just what they had to eat, made an excuse to stop one day and talk with a mason, just as the man left off work.
“Not two minutes after twelve,” Patsy told us afterwards, “the mason’s wife and children came trotting up with the family dinner. The wife carried a kettle of hot puchero, the eldest girl a dish of sausage and garlic, neatly tied up in a clean napkin; one boy had the bread, another the fruit, a middle-sized child plates, spoons and knives for the party. The father said there were few days in the year when his children did not dine with him; he believed in family life. He could not give time to go home, so the family came to him and they all dined together in the open air at the nearest sheltered corner.”
The house where the mason was at work was being swept, garnished and put in apple-pie order for some of the wedding guests, who were to lodge there. It was a good season for the working people. It may be that Madrid is always as fresh, smart and tidy as it was in that year of Grace, 1906, but it seemed to us that everybody tried to add to the general festive air by a little private gilding and varnishing on his own account. Don Jaime bought what he had threatened to buy for years, a new set of teeth. Pedra made herself a scarlet bodice, in which she looked prettier than ever. At the palace an army of furbishers were touching up, silver-plating, gilding and polishing. Work was pushed at the royal stables. The fifty state carriages needed for the wedding pageant, with the harnesses, liveries, and ostrich plumes for the horses, were renewed or furbished up to look as good as new, at a cost of half a million duros.
The hostlers at the studs of Aranjuez had extra work, for the eight cream-colored horses chosen to draw the bridal coach must have coats like satin on the King’s wedding day. Aranjuez, a royal summer residence, is a place lovely with the noise of running waters and the songs of nightingales. The elms here were brought out from England by grim Philip II, who laid out the garden so well that I relented a little towards him when I saw it. The court no longer goes to Aranjuez, and the royal stud is not what it was in the days when camels and lamas were raised there; but it is still an interesting place, if I only had time to tell about it! During the wars of the last century the French destroyed the breeding stables, but in 1842 they were restored and stallions were imported from England.
Extra hands were taken on at the Madrid Tapestry Manufactory. “Everybody who owns a tapestry wants it in order of course,” said the Director who showed us over the factory. A dozen men were at work upon a famous set of ruby velvet hangings emblazoned with silver, priceless things, not only unique but beautiful.
“You will see these hanging from the front of the Duke of Cestus’ palace all through the fêtes,” the director said.
“Suppose it should rain!” I cried horrified.