Chapter V (2)

"It is four o'clock in the afternoon by this time, and the performance has not begun yet. Our friend, looking vaguely about him, first on one side and then on another, suddenly feels that {205} someone is pulling at his cloak. He turns his head and sees an orange-seller, who, bending towards him between the two spectators behind, whispers in his ear that the lady who is tapping her knee with her fan has watched with sincere pleasure the spirit he showed in the quarrel about the seat, and that it would be a gracious thing if he bought her a dozen oranges in recognition of her sympathy. Our friend scans the cazuela again, and sees that the lady in question is the one that caught his fancy before; so he pays for the oranges, and tells the orangeman to let the lady know that he will willingly pay for anything else she would like. When the orangeman disappears with this message, our friend thinks of nothing else than how he shall approach the lady when they leave the theatre, cursing the comedy in the meanwhile, which appears to him interminable, such is his impatience. He signifies his disapproval aloud, and groans without cause, exciting the musqueteers[26] below to imitate him and to break forth in offensive cries. This is not only rude and uncultivated, but monstrously ungrateful, for, of all men, actors are those who strive hardest to gain applause. What a bad time they pass, and how laborious whilst they rehearse a piece. And when the first representation comes, any of them would give a year's wage to be applauded for his part. What anxiety assails them, what inexpressible yearning they feel on the stage to please the public. When they have to cast themselves down from some {206} precipice, they throw themselves off the painted canvas rock with desperation; when they have to represent a dying man and to writhe in agony, how they soil their clothes, which have often cost much money, and tear their hands with the nails and splinters of the boards!"

The rest of the chapter is more concerned with the evils of the actor's life than with the audience, which is the point most interesting to us; but it is clear from what has been quoted that the comedies, witty and facile as they were, nevertheless did not form the only attraction that drew crowds daily to the theatres of the Court. In the first place, they were a pretext for the prevailing idleness, and the sure sign of decadence which manifests itself in the inactive many gazing upon and criticising the hired exertions of the active few. But the "corrales" of Madrid are also shown in the above extract, and in hundreds of allusions in the comedies themselves, to have been places of assignation and incentives to promiscuous gallantry.[27] The King himself, behind the impenetrable window grating of a first-floor private room (_aposento_) first saw many of his mistresses, they were not mistresses in the sense that prevailed at the Court of the French Bourbon kings. None of them ever aspired to, or attained, political or social power, for the distance between the sacrosanct sovereign and common humanity was too great for that to be possible in Castile. They were just the creatures Of Philip's caprice, and the {207} momentary playthings of his passions, none of them retaining hold upon him but for a very short time.

[Sidenote: "The _Calderona_"]

Of his thirty and more illegitimate children, of whom eight were recognised, the only one that was given princely rank was that Don Juan of Austria who was beloved by his father above all others of his offspring. From the theatre, at the period which we are now writing, Don Juan of Austria sprang. It was at the Corral de la Cruz in 1627 that Philip first set eyes upon the girl whom one of Olivares' agents had sent from the country to act upon the Madrid stage. Her name was Maria Calderon, and at the time she appeared in the capital she was not more than sixteen years of age. She was no great beauty, but her grace and fascination were supreme, and her voice was so sweet and her speech so captivating that Madrid fell in love with her at once.[28] The King from his aposento was enamoured of her the first time he saw her, and for him to desire was to enjoy. She was immediately summoned to the private apartment, that the King might listen more closely to her lovely voice, and when he heard it the King's love grew fiercer still. From the corral to the palace was but a step when Philip willed it, and thenceforward the _Calderona_ became the King's best beloved mistress. She still acted upon the stage, though gifts and tokens of affection were piled upon her by the love-lorn King. She, proud of the ineffable honour vouchsafed to her, became rigidity itself in her virtue, and turned a hard face to all other lovers.

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[Sidenote: Birth of Baltasar Carlos]

The tradition in Spain made the position of King's mistress not by any means one to be coveted by most women, since it was understood that when the liaison ended the lady must immure herself in a convent for the rest of her life, to prevent such a sacrilege as for the King to have a successor in any woman's regards. It is told of one young lady of the Court to whom Philip was making unmistakable advances, that she shut herself behind a locked door when she knew the amorous King was seeking her, and cried out to him from the inside: "No, no, sire; I don't want to be a nun!" The Calderona had no such scruples, either from natural devotion or because she really felt the honour of the King's love to be overwhelming. Her son by the King was born on the 17th April 1629, and as soon as the _Calderona_ could leave her room she sought the King, and, throwing herself at his feet in tears, prayed for his permission for the mother of his son to sin no more. For it was enough, she said, to have borne a child to the greatest monarch on earth, and nothing more was left for her but to devote the rest of her life to cloistered sanctity. Philip was deeply in love with her still; all his children by the Queen, none of whom had been sons, had expired at, or soon after, their births, and this boy by the _Calderona_ was held to be the most beautiful and perfect child ever seen. Philip tried hard to alter the resolve of his mistress, but she absolutely refused to cohabit with him again; and at last, but with sorrow, he gave way, and the actress Maria Calderon became the abbess of a remote convent, whilst her child was sent with semi-royal surroundings {209} to be educated with exquisite care at Ocaña, with a view to his future greatness.

This was the background: a vast conspiracy of make-shift and of make-believe, before which the Court of Philip IV. alternately prayed and postured unconvinced. An utterly decadent society, of which each individual was striving to get as much as possible out of life without giving anything in return; a society which combined besotted superstition and abject servility to priests and ritual with appalling impiety, a society that lived from day to day for such pleasures as it could grasp, knowing that all was crumbling to dissolution beneath its feet, that squandered and lavished money, mostly ill-gotten, in empty splendour, whilst the whole nation beyond the mud walls of the "Court" was sunk in carking penury. And amidst the festivities and stage plays, the poetical recitals, the battues that stood for sport, and the _autos-de-fe_ that stood for holiness, "Philip the Great" moved like a demigod, knowing in his heart of hearts that all was hollow--his wealth a lie, his dignity a mask, and he himself but a poor sinning trifler whose coward conscience denied him even pleasure in his sin.

Philip's love for ostentation had full opportunity for its exercise in October 1629, when, six months after the birth of his son by the _Calderona_, an heir was born to the Spanish crowns. The month had begun with splendour, for on the 3rd October the Prince of Guastalla had entered the capital as the envoy of the Emperor to marry by proxy the Infanta Maria for the King of Hungary, heir to the imperial crown. The whole of the grandees of Spain had gone out to receive him, {210} and his train of thirty-six pages and lackeys in liveries of black velvet and gold, and his thirty-six baggage horses with crimson and gold horse-cloths, the Spanish nobles being so numerous and smart, as Soto says, that "Madrid looked like another Indies for richness." Before the splendours of Guastalla's welcome had become dim, the prince of so many prayers was born, and Madrid settled down to another orgy of festivities. The magnificence of the baptism in the Church of St. John near the palace need not be detailed in full; suffice it to say that a temporary staircase and gallery splendidly adorned with tapestries descended from the great balcony over the palace portico to the church. Down this corridor, in a sedan chair of silver and crystal, preceded by heralds and followed by crowds of nobles, the child was carried very slowly to its baptism on the lap of the Countess of Olivares. On the left hand of the chair marched Olivares himself, strangely dressed, as was remarked at the time, in a long robe of cloth of silver with sleeves reaching to the ground, his breast crossed by a crimson baldric--some ceremonial dress, it was thought, of the house of Austria. Then came the new Queen of Hungary, her nephew's godmother, and the rest of the high personages, to attend the ceremony. It was against the etiquette for the King to be there, but he was too proud and happy to forego the pleasure of seeing the show secretly, which he did from a closely curtained pew reached from the adjoining house. The Countess of Olivares, as supreme in the palace as her husband was in the Government, held the child at the font, seated upon "a chair of rock {211} crystal, the most costly piece of furniture ever seen in Europe," whilst cardinals and bishops did their best to make Prince Baltasar Carlos of Austria a member of the Christian Church. As soon as the Queen was able to appear, which was on her birthday, she was feted in her turn as she had never been feted before. Masked equestrian contests, torchlight parades, bull-fights, and balls succeeded each other day after day, and in all of them the King and his brother, Don Carlos, made a gallant appearance.[29]

[Sidenote: Philip's field sports]

The fact that both Philip and Olivares were accomplished horsemen made equestrian pastimes and field sports specially fashionable in this the best period of Philip's reign. At least two realistic representations exist of hunting battues in which Philip was seen to great advantage, reproducing from the brush of the great painter the exact aspect of such diversions. That in the Ashburton Collection portrays one of the deer hunts in the leafy glades of Aranjuez, Philip's spring palace on the Tagus, twenty-eight miles from Madrid. In the wooded park the afternoon sun glints through the dark verdured trees against the cloudless sky, and upon a wide stretch of sward a great white canvas enclosure is erected. Into its gradually narrowing limits the frightened deer are being driven by beaters, and at the narrow end of the funnel, the only outlet from the enclosure, the "hunters" are stationed on prancing steeds. Over the narrowest part of the funnel neck a leafy bridge or balcony is built, decked with crimson hangings and furnished with soft cushions, upon which the {212} Queen and her ladies sit, dressed in brilliant colours. Just beneath them, on horseback, are the King, his brother Carlos, and the inevitable Olivares; and as the terrified deer rush past them underneath the ladies' bower, the cavaliers, with big sharp hunting-knives, slash at them, killing some, laming others, and leaving those they miss to the mercies of the hounds that await them beyond. The ground beneath is drenched with blood, but the ladies smile approvingly upon the butchery. The exercise demanded a firm seat in the saddle, and great agility and dexterity in the management of the horse, and it was universally admitted that no one in Spain shone so brilliantly at these battues as Philip himself,[30] though Olivares, courtier like, was only just inferior to him.

The other picture by Velazquez, which is in the National Gallery in London, presents a sport somewhat less repugnant to English eyes. The scene in this case is the hunting seat of the Pardo, a few miles out of Madrid, and the King, within the canvas walls of the vast enclosure, is, from the saddle of his caracoling steed, which he sits like a centaur, thrusting his forked javelin into the flank of the boar as it rushes past, Olivares being close by, whilst other mounted courtiers in different {213} parts of the enclosure are participating in the sport. Inside the enclosure there are stationed some of the heavy leather-curtained coaches then in use, filled with ladies. The mules in every case have been unharnessed and put out of the way of a charge from an infuriated boar; but as the boars were agile when aroused, and had been known to leap into the carriages themselves, the ladies inside are armed with dainty little javelins to repel any such attempt; not very easy to happen, one would imagine, as the heavy leather aprons or screens that cover the footplate and serve as doors are closed.

To look upon these pictures is to view the very life of Philip's Court; the posturing gentlemen outside the enclosure, the prancing gentlemen inside. Beyond agile showy horsemanship and well-trained steeds, nothing was called for on the part of those who joined in the sport. There was no danger, and little exertion needed from the "hunters," for the quarry was all driven into the enclosure, and could not get away. One sees that ostentation and "show-off" are the main attraction and object of the sport; and in the sports, as in the pleasures and devotions, the same inevitable note is struck: that of selfish epicureanism that seeks to enjoy sensuously without risk or labour. Each poor mortal is marked out in his own esteem as the central point of a brilliant show, and gorges the best of life's banquet to the end, careless of who pays the scot.

[1] British Museum, Egerton MSS 2081, p. 261. Some of the papers in question were also published many years ago by Valladares in the _Semanario Erudito_.

[2] Fernando was as yet only a deacon, not a full priest, and the King when this was written had only one child, an epileptic girl infant, who died soon afterwards.

[3] _i.e._ the great minister of Isabel and Ferdinand.

[4] This was the worst possible advice, and its ultimate adoption consummated the ruin of Spain. Philip II. had left the sovereignty of Flanders to his daughter the Infanta Isabel and her husband the Archduke Albert, in the hope that they might remain Catholic and friendly, but separate thenceforward from the Spanish crown. The Infanta had no children, and when she died the resumption by Spain of the sovereignty of Flanders, on the advice of Olivares, was disastrous. Fernando, in effect, became Governor of Flanders for his brother a few years afterwards on the death of the Infanta, and turned out a Prince of great promise, and a military commander of real distinction, but he died young, and of course unmarried, in Flanders, after years of ceaseless war.

[5] Contemporary transcripts are in British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338, fol. 571.

[6] Novoa says that Olivares turned Fernando out of his bedroom, which adjoined that of the King, in order that he (Olivares) might occupy it during the King's danger.

[7] The principal conspirator with Olivares is represented by Novoa to have been the Marquis of Hinojosa who had until recently been the ambassador in London, and had specially signalised himself by his bitter enmity against Buckingham, whom he had tried to ruin by means of statements damaging to him, and impugning his loyalty to King James. See the correspondence in Cabala.

[8] Novoa.

[9] _Ibid._

[10] An important series of letters from Olivares to the King soon after his illness, mainly about the Infantes, their characters, their friends, and their proceedings, is in Egerton MSS., British Museum, 2081, from which I have already quoted some papers on the same subject of an earlier date. The whole object of the letters is evidently to arouse the suspicion of the King against his brothers.

[11] Contemporary draft, British Museum MSS., Add. 10,236 f. 382.

[12] All one side of the great square was destroyed by fire a few years after the time of which we are writing (in 1631).

[13] The fact of so many of the wretched houses of the capital having only one storey is explained by the oppressive arrangement which placed at the disposal of the Court one entire floor of every house of more than one storey, a right grossly abused by Court hangers-on to quarter their relatives and friends rent free upon the citizens. In Philip IV.'s time this oppressive right had been partially commuted to a payment of 250,000 ducats annually by the municipality, which was estimated to be one-sixth of the rental value of such houses. Mesonero Romanes, _El Antigua Madrid_.

[14] A vivid picture of Madrid of the time is given in _El Diablo Cojuelo_, by Velez de Guevara, a judge, and favourite of Philip IV.

[15] In this he only followed the recognised rule of Spanish ministers. Quevedo, writing from Madrid to his patron the Duke of Osuna, Viceroy of Sicily, shortly before Philip's accession, says: "Men here are like strumpets, every one of them has to be bought.... The Marquis of Siete Iglesias (_i.e._ Calderon) would like a present for his cabinet, and it would be worth while to send some trifle for his cell to the King's confessor." The "trifle" he did accept was a diamond reliquary worth 20,000 reals and a splendid altar jewel.

[16] Carl Justi.

[17] Carl Justi.

[18] _Ibid._

[19] When Sir Francis Cottington went to Spain to negotiate peace in 1629, Endymion Porter asked him to try and buy these drawings by Leonardo da Vinci from D. Juan de Espina, whom everybody knows, for Lord Arundel. The half-Spanish Porter gave a good many other commissions to Cottington on his departure: some paintings by Titian, some orange-flower water, some orange confection, a dozen baskets of oranges, six barrels of large Seville olives, caraways, figs, chestnuts, marmalade, wine, gloves, perfumes, matting, wine, dried peaches, fine crocks, etc., in considerable quantities. (Record Office SP. Spain MS. 34, November 1629.)

[20] At a somewhat later period Murillo sprang into fame and fortune through Philip seeing a picture of his exposed for sale here.

[21] Pacheco, _Arte de la Pintura_.

[22] He offended Olivares somehow in 1627, and remained in exile until the minister fell.

[23] Zabaleta, _El dia de fiesta_, Coimbra, 1666.

[24] The mere admission to the theatre was, and still is in Spanish theatres, paid for separately from the seat. And from the extract quoted it would appear that the bench seats at the time were sometimes booked beforehand, as they may be to-day. The _entrada_ in Spanish theatres gives the right to the run of the house, but nothing more. The noble army of deadheads appears to have been as numerous and unblushing three hundred years ago in Spain, as they are in England at the present time.

[25] The side gallery where the women were seated.

[26] The men who had only paid for the entrance and stood at the back of the patio (or pit) were so called, but they soon became a recognised paid claque.

[27] The rooms in the top floors were called _desvanes_. The attic rooms were often occupied by priests.

[28] Contemporary Italian MS. in British Museum, MSS. Add. 8703. "Ritratto della nascitá qualitá ed accioni di Don Juan d'Austria."

[29] All are described _ad nauseam_ in the _Soto y Aguilar_ MS.

[30] Most of the Spanish kings have been fanatical devotees of the chase in various forms. During the reign of Philip's father it used to be said that "Lerma and the woods were King." Philip IV. spent much time in field sports. In a letter from the Venetian ambassador in Madrid, enclosed in one from Dermond O'Sullivan Bear to an Irish correspondent (March 1628), the following passage occurs: "The King is so inclined to horse exercise and hunting, that Olivares manages to keep him at it all day, thus leaving the King no time to do anything but sign the decisions of the Councils, which suits Olivares perfectly." Record Office, S.P. Spain 34, MSS.

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