The secret history of the court of Spain during the last century

by Rachel Challice

It was certainly a marriage which, if wanting in class distinction, was not failing in morality. The Queen-mother was now so taken up with “Fernando VIII.,” as he was called, that she preferred the more private life of the royal country-seats to that of the palace of the capital. So on March 15, 1834, we find her at Aranjuez, at Carabanchel on June 11, and then at La Granja, whose beautiful gardens formed a fitting scene for the happiness she had found with Muñoz. It was at Pardo that her child was born, and to an affectionate nature like Cristina’s the obedience to the law of circumstances, which took the baby from the mother’s arms, cost her many a tearful and sleepless night. The little daughter was confided to the care of the widow of the administrator Villarel, who had settled at Segovia, and for this reason La Granja was the favourite resort of the Queen-Regent, as she could have her child brought to her to Quitapesares, the beautiful estate on the road to the palace, where she had wooed its father.

Doña Teresa Valcarcel, the daughter of the Court dressmaker, was, as we have said, the great confidante of Queen Maria Cristina, and it was as her friend that she first met Muñoz, who soon exercised such a fascination over her.

When Teresa accompanied the Queen to Bayonne, she sent letters to her mother with the official correspondence, and the well-known leader of a gang of thieves, Luis Candelas, having discovered this fact, determined, with the complicity of a man in the employment of the dressmaker, to turn the fact to his advantage. Calling one day in the uniform of an official, the servant introduced him as an agent of the French post. The dressmaker was rather astonished at the visit, but she admitted him. Hardly had he entered the room than he was followed by others, and Candelas declared he had come to inspect the place. This act the dressmaker declared was illegal except in presence of the Mayor. Then, casting off all disguise, the robber and his gang proceeded to pillage the place, pocketing all the jewels and money they could find. Two ladies who called at this time were bound and gagged like the modiste and her workers.

The robbery proved considerable, and the fact of its having taken place in the house of the Queen’s dressmaker led to strong steps being taken for the capture of this Spanish Robin Hood. For be it known, that although the adventurer openly took all he could lay hands on, he never shed blood or injured anybody if he could help it.

The efforts of justice were successful, and the fact of the robbery being connected with the correspondence of the Queen-Regent led to the removal of the scourge from the capital, for hitherto the police of Madrid paid little heed to these open attacks against the safety and the property of the citizens.

Candelas was publicly hanged on December 6, 1837, but his partner in his burglarious campaigns escaped.

Of course, the luxurious carriage in which the child visited its mother, and the care which attended the drive from Segovia, opened the eyes of the people to the relation between Cristina and her little visitor, and the coach would be followed by cries of “There goes the Queen’s daughter!”

In the revolution of the sergeants in August, 1836, Muñoz was in the Palace of La Granja, but he did not make his appearance on the scene, as he was not supposed to be there. The apartments in which he spent his time with his wife were commonly termed “Muñoz’s cage,” and on the night of the insurrection he escaped from the royal domain by the channels and conduits of the fountains.

But the time spent thus with Muñoz in the royal retreats was not of unmixed joy; for whilst the Queen sought to please her husband and his relation by playing lottery with them, or battledore and shuttlecock with the chaplain, Muñoz soon showed that he preferred going out after pretty girls with the Duke of San Carlos. Naturally this conduct fired the heart of the Queen-Regent with jealousy, and, woman-like, she gave vent to her pique by allowing a play called “Making Love to a Wig” to be acted in the Conservatoire of Fine Arts, for the play made humorous allusions to the baldness of Muñoz.

The disaffection of her sister, the Infanta Luisa Carlota, was a fresh trouble to Maria Cristina, who was experiencing so many disillusions both in her private and public life. Naturally the sister, who had been so proud of the position to which she had been instrumental in bringing the Queen, was much aggrieved at the wild fancy shown for Fernando Muñoz. She called Cristina the “Muñonista,” and, in virtue of what she termed the nullity of Cristina’s position to be guardian to her daughter, she proposed herself and her husband as those fitted for the office. This fact outraged the poor Queen-Regent both as a wife and as a mother, and her anger was shown by her declining to authorize the appointment of her brother-in-law, Don Francisco de Paula, as a senator.