Madame Badaan and her spouse, the very best people in the world, and the readiest to afford their company all possible varieties of accommodation, sent for the most famous band of musicians Madrid could boast of, and proposed a dance for the entertainment of his bearded excellency. Accordingly, thirteen or fourteen couples started, and boleroed and fandangoed away upon a thick carpet for an hour or two, without intermission. There are scarcely any boarded floors in Madrid, so the custom of dancing upon rugs is universally established.
LETTER XVII.
Valley of Aranjuez.—The island garden.—The palace.—Strange medley of pictures.—Oratories of the King and the Queen.—Destruction of a grand apartment painted in fresco by Mengs.—Boundless freedom of conduct in the present reign.—Decoration of the Duchess of Ossuna’s house.—Apathy pervading the whole Iberian peninsula.
Tuesday, December 1st, 1795.
IT was on a clear bright morning (scarce any frost) that we left a wretched place called Villatoba, falling into ruins like almost all the towns and villages I have seen in Spain. The sky was so transparent, so pearly, and the sunbeams so fresh and reviving, that the country appeared pleasant in spite of its flatness and aridity. Every tree has been cut down, and all chance of their being replaced precluded by the wandering flocks of sheep, goats and swine, which rout, and grout, and nibble uncontrolled and unmolested.
At length, after a tedious drive through vast tracts of desolate country, scarce a house, scarce a shrub, scarce a human being to meet with, we descended a rapid declivity, and I once more found myself in the valley of Aranjuez. The avenues of poplar and plane have shot up to a striking elevation since I saw them last. The planes on the banks of the Tagus incline most respectfully towards its waters; they are vigorously luxuriant, although planted only seven years ago, as the gardener informed me.
Charles the Fifth’s elms in the island-garden close to the palace are decaying apace. I visited the nine venerable stumps close to a hideous brick-ruin; the largest measures forty or fifty feet in girth; the roots are picturesquely fantastic. The fountains, like the shades in which they are embowered, are rapidly going to decay: the bronze Venus, at the fountain which takes its name from Don John of Austria, has lost her arm.
Notwithstanding the dreariness of the season with all its accompaniment of dry leaves and faded herbage, this historic garden had still charms; the air was mild, and the sunbeams played on the Tagus, and many a bird flitted from spray to spray. Several long alleys of the loftiest elms, their huge rough trunks mantled with ivy, and their grotesque roots advancing and receding like grotto-work into the walk, struck me as singularly pleasing.
The palace has not been long completed; the additions made by Charles the Third agree not ill with the original edifice. It is a comfortable, though not a magnificent abode; walls thick, windows cheerfully glazed in two panels, neat low chimney-pieces in many of the apartments; few traces of the days of the Philips; scarce any furniture that bespeak an ancient family. A flimsy modern style, half Italian, half French, prevails. Even the pictures are, in point of subjects, preservation, originality, and masters, as strangely jumbled together as in the dominions of an auctioneer. This may be accounted for by their being collected indiscriminately by the present King, whilst prince of Asturias. Amongst innumerable trash, I noticed a Crucifixion by Mengs; not overburthened with expression, but finely coloured; the back-ground and sky most gloomily portentous, and producing a grand effect of light and shade. The interior of a gothic church, by Peter Neef, so fine, so clear, so silvery in point of tint, as to reconcile me, (for the moment, at least,) to this harsh, stiff master; the figures exquisite, the preservation perfect; no varnish, no retouches.
A set of twelve small cabinet pictures, touched with admirable spirit by Teniers, the subjects taken from the Gierusalemme Liberata, treated as familiarly as if the boozy painter had been still copying his pot-companions. Armida’s palace is a little round summer-house; she herself, habited like a burgher’s frouw in her holiday garments, holds a Nuremberg-shaped looking-glass up to the broad vulgar face of a boorish Rinaldo. The fair Naiads, comfortably fat, and most invitingly smirkish, are naked to be sure, but a pile of furbelowed garments and farthingales is ostentatiously displayed on the bank of the water; close by a small table covered with a neat white tablecloth, and garnished with silver tankards, cold pie, and salvers of custard and jellies. All these vulgar accessories are finished with scrupulous delicacy.