it was during these years of travel in europe that i was offered the opportunity of going to america to represent the throne of spain at the world’s fair that was to be held in chicago to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of columbus’s discovery. i accepted the invitation with joy. i had no longer my childish idea that if i could only take a boat and sail to america i should be really “free”; but i had still in my mind the household saying that i was “only fit for america,” and i felt sure that i should like the great democracy, and i was eager to see it. it was planned, also, that i should visit cuba—in the usual administrative hope that a royal visitor might revive the loyalty of a rebellious colony exasperated by misgovernment. the misgovernment was a thing for which the royal family was as little to blame as the cubans themselves; but i was willing to be made use of, in one of the few ways that royalty can be of use in a constitutional{223} monarchy, and i prepared to see—and be seen by—cuba, too.
there were such stories in spain of the dangers from yellow fever in the colony that ladies-in-waiting were as reluctant to make the trip as the sailors of columbus; and though my husband took a large suite of gentlemen, i found only one lady-in-waiting to go with me, and one maid, a faithful old servant who had been in the family for thirty years. we set out, in april, 1893, on board the reina maria cristina from santander, after the inevitable te deum in the cathedral of santander, a state dinner and reception, an illumination of the harbour, and a choir in a tender to sing us off. there were more te deums and receptions and illuminations at the spanish ports and islands where we called; and at one port we were met by the authorities with a black-bordered protest against the suppression of the local capitan general. the paper was signed by a “defence assembly.” the officials warned us that it would be unwise for us to land. i insisted on it. they went away, and as soon as i understood that they had gone for a police order i went ashore without any escort except our suite, and walked through the crowded streets to the{224} cathedral. this proceeding aroused such a furore of popular enthusiasm that i might have been another jeanne d’arc entering a beleaguered town that she had relieved; and for the rest of my trip i had no hesitation about putting aside the officials and trusting myself to the people. at las palmas i got on so well that in the cathedral, when the bishop was singing the te deum, the crowd forgot they were in church and interrupted him with shouts of “vive la infanta!” as a matter of fact, i have found that the danger to royalty comes not from informalities of this sort so much as from the parade of bodyguards and escorts that exasperate the unhappy people by personifying the power of the social conditions that oppress them. it is usually on the most impressive occasions that bombs are thrown.
we arrived outside the wonderful harbour of havana early in may, and i watched for the first sight of morro castle with curiosity. i had heard from my mother that it had cost her grandfather, king charles iv., such an incredible sum to build that he had longed to see it, as he said, “if only through a keyhole.” i understood that i was the first of the royal family to look at it. certainly,{225} i was the last. and the fact that i should probably be the last was the strongest impression that i got from cuba.
my first impression, of course, was of the heat. immediately on my arrival i was visited by a physician, who came to warn me of all the diseases i might catch, and to tell me of all the things that i must do and must not do to avoid them. it was terrifying to listen to him. i had insisted on having cold drinks, and he was sure that cold drinks would be fatal. i had been installed in the palace of the capitan general, and i was going about on the marble floors in my stockinged feet to be cooler. this also i was told was dangerous. “well,” i said at last, “if i don’t cool myself down, i shall surely die of the heat, anyway, so what matter?” and i decided to do what i wanted and let my natural vitality take care of the consequences. because of this policy i made what appears to have been a startling impression of energy on the cubans. there is nothing more popular than energy in a royal person—perhaps because it is so unexpected. i had, for once, the good luck to please by doing what i pleased.
the heat was so great on my first night in the{226} palace that i could not sleep, and being by no means fat, and my bed being without springs—just the stretched canvas of a “petate” fastened on a bed frame—i ached with the hard discomforts of it. at two in the morning i demanded a mattress. my maid sent for one. after a half-hour of waiting a young aide-de-camp appeared, in full uniform, and when i asked why he had come, he replied: “but it is i who have made your bed; if it is wrong, i must fix it.” i roared. he explained that in order to have the bed prepared with all possible care for me, it had been decided that an officer should make it. i told him to send me a mattress, and go back to his sleep. my maid, a simple old soul, was in a state of distraction. “my poor infanta! my poor infanta!” she kept wailing. “what will become of her, with no one but these stupid men to look after her!”
when the mattress arrived we arranged it ourselves, and i settled down again; but it made the bed so much hotter that i could not sleep any better than before; and i did not dare to make any more demands for fear of disturbing the officer again. at seven in the morning a deafening uproar of military{227} music suddenly broke out in the salon that adjoined my bedroom, and my maid went wild with panic, crossing and blessing herself and saying frantic prayers. i hurried into a dressing-gown and opened my door on a german regimental band that had received a cable from the kaiser to serenade me with the traditional “guten morgen,” and had marched at once on the palace as if they were going to take a fortress, and were now blowing their trumpets and beating their drums with an obedient diligence that seemed likely to crack the walls. none of the palace servants had understood what this was for; and these servants, by a horrible custom not uncommon in parts of spain, were convicts who wore leg-chains and worked in the palace as in a prison, going about in livery and bare feet, and dragging their chains on the marble floors. they were as bewildered as my maid, and they were scuttling around as helplessly. as soon as i saw the uniforms that the musicians wore i guessed what had happened; and, the noise drowning my voice, i tried, by smiling and bowing, to reassure the general panic. when the music stopped i got things straightened out, but while it lasted we were a scene from a madhouse or a thea{228}trical burlesque. i went back to my mattress feeling that my first night in havana had not been too tame.
my day had been more successful, because of a curious accident that had made my arrival almost triumphant. my maid, as we neared the shore, had packed all my gowns but the one i had decided to wear—a striped gown of blue and white, around the collar of which the dressmaker had put a red edging. when i came on deck in it, some one protested at once: “but, your royal highness, that is the uniform of the insurgents!” it seemed impossible, but it was so: they wore just such a blue-and-white stripe with red facings. there was consternation. my trunks had been taken from my state-room. we were nearing shore. no one seemed to know what to do. and while we delayed, talking and arguing, the boat proceeded. it was soon too late to do anything, and i said: “never mind; it will not matter. no one will notice it.”
but they did. they not only noticed it, but they supposed that i had worn it purposely with i do not know what idea of pleasing the people or showing that the throne of spain was above the quarrels of the factions in the island. it aroused incredible en{229}thusiasm. and after that beginning i was received everywhere with the honours of a national hero. whenever i drove out my carriage was showered with pamphlets of loyal congratulations and poems and panegyrics. at a bullfight given in my honour, not having thought to bring a present for the torero when he made his speech to me from the arena, i threw him one of my finger-rings; he was offered huge sums for it, but refused to sell it, as if it had been aladdin’s. everything i did was accepted as admirable—whether i rode horseback at the military review when i wanted the exercise, or received in my arms a little girl who slid down a sort of fire-escape at an exhibition of the volunteer fire brigade, when i was afraid that she might fall and break her neck in my honour if some one did not catch her.
it was evident that i was making “a personal success.” but as soon as i talked to men who knew the situation in cuba, i was convinced that the success was only personal. for too long had spain been sending out officials to cuba who had no ambition but to fill their pockets at the expense of the cuban people; and the cubans had made up their minds that they would endure it no longer. in administrative{230} circles, every one who was candid confessed that “it was too late.” in spain, the people, though the victims of the same sort of corruption, had the consolation of knowing that the government was their own; here the corruption was imposed on them by a government in which they were not represented. in spain the army could be used to suppress armed rebellion; but here, the army itself was so enfeebled by corruption, so badly led, so wasted by yellow fever, that it was nearly useless. at a dinner to the influential men of the colony i had to change the conversation several times in order to avoid hearing spain abused. leaders of both political parties, whether they were for or against spain, were of the one mind: “it was too late.” cuba was determined to be free of a maladministration which no sensible person could blame her for refusing to endure. all the sensible people were aware, at last, that the conditions ought to have been corrected, and one could only say to one’s self: “it’s too bad you didn’t think of it sooner.” as we sailed away from the harbour of havana i was oppressed with the conviction that the crown of spain, in my person,{231} was saluting for the last time the spanish flag flying over that fortress. cuba was gone.
steaming northward, the weather turned delightfully cold, and i revelled in it, reviving myself after the strenuously exhausting days of our crowded week in havana. when we picked up our pilot off sandy hook i was on the upper deck, promenading happily in the chill wind in light clothes, and the pilot remarked to one of the boat’s officers that it “was dangerous for that young girl” to be exposed in such a way to such weather. he was told that i was “the spanish infanta,” and he laughed uproariously at the idea; and the more seriously the officer assured him of it the more he enjoyed the joke. i saw him looking at me and laughing, so i inquired what was the matter; and when i found out i was slightly puzzled.
his amusement proved to be typical of my whole reception in the united states. as one of the newspapers put it, they had expected a “big, dark spanish princess with a black moustache,” and it was with a tickled surprise that they found me “like any of the girls you see walking down fifth avenue.” their{232} pleased curiosity was reflected in the accounts that the reporters gave of me. no conceivable personal detail escaped them. one reporter even discovered that i had a gold crown on one of my back teeth, and i was mystified to know how he could have seen it. surely my smile was not so broad as all that! i tried myself before a mirror. no! by no possible grimace could i expose that tooth. i remained mystified. i do still.
the amusement, however, was not altogether on their side. the newspapers had not prepared me for this familiar but kindly tone of the american press; and the people of european countries had not the simple benevolence of the curiosity that brought the smiling crowds to greet me in the united states. the american young girl is the spoiled darling of the nation, and they were all as willing to spoil me—and i was willing to be spoiled—by their almost affectionate and chivalrous desire to give me “a good time.”
i cannot pretend that i saw anything at all of the problems of government in the country—nothing of the poverty, of the industrial exploitation, of the inequalities of opportunity and the control by the{233} moneyed classes, of which we have since come to hear so much in all the kingdoms and republics and democracies of this changing world. i was merely a caller in the parlour. i knew nothing of the family life in the house, much less of the difficulties below-stairs.
we did not land at new york, but at jersey city, where a special train was waiting to carry us to washington. it would have taken us in spain twenty-four hours to go the distance; we covered it in five hours, and i did not feel shaken. in spain, if luncheon had been served us on the train it would have been “to kill time”; here it was served us “to save time.” one was struck at once by the busyness of the life and its efficiency. we had been caught up by an organisation that transported us, fed us, housed us, delivered us into the hands of a host or at the doors of an entertainment, returned us to our hotel, took us on excursions, provided us with drives, protected us from intrusion, conducted us through crowds, intelligently, suavely, without any hitch, comfortably, almost invisibly, with a foresight that seemed to provide for every contingency that could happen, and to be prepared for any change{234} of plan that we could wish. and the spectacle of the life, through which we hurried, had the same air of having conquered the material agents of existence to the same end; namely, that every one should get as much as possible done in a day with as little friction as possible in the mechanical means of doing it.
from some of the americans whom i have seen abroad i had not got a very happy impression, and now i understood why. they had been out of their element; they had left at home their reason for being. the women, for example, were less conspicuously dressed than some i had seen in paris, and less nervously self-assertive; and the men were more easy and more natural. they were not on the defensive among foreigners whom they felt to be critical, or whom they desired to impress. they were not blatant nor apologetic. they were happy, intelligent, hospitable, and altogether engaging. i found no one with whom conversation was not instantly possible; and the volubility of my conversations was a matter of amused comment with our suite. the truth was that i was not only sympathetically interested in all i saw and eager to talk about it, i was also at once aware of the friendli{235}ness of the eyes that watched and listened; and i talked, and my vis-à-vis talked, without any awkwardness of restraint.
there were no royal “monkey tricks” expected of me. i was unable to dance—though i often longed to—because i was on an official visit, and questions of precedence would have made it necessary for me to choose the most important personage in the room as my partner, or take the risk of offending him. and the most important person at a dance is not always the best dancer. but i was not set apart on a dais as i would have been at home—“always on a stand, like a harp,” as i used to complain—and i enjoyed myself. i felt that i was really meeting the people whom i met. i was not merely royalty; i was a sort of national guest, whom every one tried to interest and entertain.
one accepted as an inevitable part of one’s public character the army of reporters and photographers who surrounded us at every official appearance. they were not intrusive; and having learned that i could not give interviews they did not try to get any. the goodwill of the crowds, who were as omnipresent as the newspaper men, was always de{236}lightful. they gathered, of course, merely out of curiosity, but their stares were not, as in other countries, either awed or inimical, or just curious. they greeted you, as they might greet one of their own representatives, with amiable smiles and cheers, waving their handkerchiefs. in the thronged streets of the exposition they could not be held back by our police escort, who struggled with them good-naturedly as they, good-naturedly, pressed in upon us; and one could not help but accept their pressure with a smile. it was all quite human and jolly and inoffensive—a democratic crowd, democratically unrestrained in its interest in everything and everybody. when i was complimented on the popular impression which i seemed to make i could reply, quite truthfully, that if the americans liked me it must be because they could see how i liked them. i liked them immensely.
they seemed all prosperous and all happy. we had no begging letters and petitions for alms thrown into our carriage, such as would have overwhelmed us at home. we did not meet any of those affected excesses of deference to royalty which would have been so out of place in a country where there is no{237} crown. if people crowded to see us, out of curiosity, i could not complain; i was just as curious to see them. they were not rude—and i hope i was not.
any one who makes a royal visit to any country must see it superficially; and if i wrote here that president cleveland and his beautiful wife were charming hosts, that the country around washington reminded me of england, that the lake front in chicago (which was about all of chicago that i really saw) was handsome, that new york was new york, and the hudson river the hudson river—i should not relieve my mind of anything that even lewis carroll’s conversational walrus would have cared to hear. and i should not interest even myself by writing it. if i had come to america as a person distinguished by intellect instead of merely by birth, i might have been very proud of the crowds that came to see me; and my contact with american life might have been an illuminating experience worth detailing. as it was, my apparent popularity could mean nothing to me personally; and my experiences, though pleasant, can mean nothing to any one else. nothing had happened to change my belief that my{238} public life as a royal personage was a busy futility. and when our steamship drew away from the shores of new york, and all the farewells had been said, and the last cheers of the last crowd had sounded, i was at once sad to watch a land recede that i felt i should never see again, and glad to be alone with my own thoughts and free to lay off my public character.
i suppose the truth is that i do not easily reflect the “collectif” sentiment. i am not able sincerely to laugh or cry because others are laughing or crying. and i return gladly to solitude, because it is only in solitude that i seem to be myself.
as i have said before, this desire for solitude had been growing in me for years. and for years i was held in royal circles by my desire to establish a future for my sons. but my eldest son inherited the fortune of the duc de montpensier, and my youngest the fortune of the duchess; and they became independent of me. the death of the duc deprived me of one of the few dear friends i had in the world, and broke the last of the few sympathies that had made my life with my husband possible. we had discovered no affection for each other. he had freed{239} himself, in all but name, from the marriage contract. we had never quarrelled; i should say we were never sufficiently interested in each other to quarrel. i decided that we should separate. and in spite of the opposition of royalty, who would have had me endure anything rather than bring a scandal near the crown, i forced the separation with the aid of my husband’s relatives, who sympathised with me. i returned to my mother’s home in paris, the palais de castile, and it was one of the happiest mornings of my life when i awakened there, alone, and free. i could get no divorce, because divorce is not possible to any one in spain—least of all to an infanta—but i was at liberty to live my life in my own way, and that satisfied me.
when my mother died, i was able to get wholly clear of the formalities of court life, and i left the palais to rent an apartment for myself where i could live like a private person, with my maids, without even a lady-in-waiting. i bought a few acres of land on the seashore of my beloved normandy, and built myself a summer cottage cooled by the happy breezes that i had known as a child. and here i can say, and do, and think, and write what i please, un{240}troubled by the prohibitions of crowned heads, who can enforce no command on me and impose no punishment—except to deny me an entrance to courts from which i have been only too glad to escape.
when my first little book was about to be published, the king of spain wired me that i could not publish it without his consent. i repudiated that control of my liberty, and they threatened to deprive me of my title and the small income that comes with it. i was puzzled to know what they would decide to call me, if not “the infanta eulalia”; and i was interested to see if the king would set a precedent for depriving the “inviolable” royal family of its titles and its property by legislative enactment. he decided, wisely, to let the matter drop, and i heard no more of it.
it is my final realisation of freedom that i celebrate now in these pages. i have escaped, mind and body, from my gilded cage. it has taken a lifetime, but it was worth it. i have no respect for anything in the world except intelligence. i live in france because it is the most intelligent of all the countries i have known. i have seen the world waking to the fact that the rule of money is no better than the rule{241} of rank, except when it is more intelligent; and i can foresee the day when the inequalities of property will have no more authority than the inequalities of rank to oppress mankind. i read and write to keep my own intelligence in health by exercising it. and i am afraid of no critic except the one who may find my intelligence feeble, with a prison pallor, in spite of its joy in its escape.
