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.

Several oratories open into the royal apartments. One set apart for the Queen is adorned with a very costly, and at the same time beautiful altar, rich, simple, and majestic; not an ornament is lavished in vain. Two Corinthian columns of a most beautiful purple and white marble, sustain a pediment, as highly polished and as richly mottled as any agate I ever beheld; the capitals are bronze splendidly gilt, so is the foliage of the consoles supporting the slab which forms the altar. The design, the materials, the workmanship, are all Spanish, and do the nation credit.

The king’s oratory is much larger, and not ill-designed; the proportion is good, about twenty-six by twenty-two, and twenty-four high, besides a solemn recess for the altar. The walls entirely covered with fresco-painting; saints, prophets, clouds, and angels, in grand confusion. The sides of the arch, and all the frame of the altar-piece, are profusely and solidly gilt. A plinth of jasper, and a skirting about three feet high, of a light-grey marble, streaked with black, not unlike the capricious ramifications on mocho-stones, and polished as a mirror, is continued round the room, so that nothing meets the eye but the rich gleam of gold, painting, and marble, all blended together in one glowing tint. The pavement, too, of different Spanish marbles, is a _chef-d’œuvre_ of workmanship. I particularly admired the soft ivory-hue of the white marble, but my conductor allowed it little merit when compared with that of Italy: I think him mistaken in this remark, and heartily wish him so in many others.

This conductor, an old snuffling domestic of the late king, was rather forward in making his remarks upon times present. A sort of Piedmontese in my train, I believe the master of the fonda where I lodge, pointing to a _manege_ now building, asked for whom it was designed, the King or the Duke d’Alcudia? “For both, no doubt,” was the answer; “what serves one serves the other.” In the royal tribune, I was informed, with a woful shrug, that the King, thank God! continued to be exact and fervent in his devotions; never missing mass a single day, and frequently spending considerable time in mental prayer; but that the Queen was scandalously remiss, and seldom appeared in the chapels, except when some slender remains of etiquette render her presence indispensable.

The chapel, repaired after designs of Sabbatini, an old Italian architect, much in favour with Charles the Third, has merit, and is remarkable for the just distribution of light, which produces a solemn religious effect. The three altars are noble, and their paintings good. One in particular, on the right, dedicated to St. Anthony, immediately attracted my attention by the effulgence of glory amidst which the infant Jesus is descending to caress the kneeling saint, whose attitude, and youthful, enthusiastic countenance, have great expression. The colouring is warm and harmonious; Maella is the painter.

I inquired after a remarkable room in this palace, called in the plan _Salon de los Funciones_, and vulgarly _el Coliseo_. The ceiling was painted by Mengs, and esteemed one of his capital works: here Ferdinand and Barbara, the most musical of sovereigns, used to melt in ecstasies at the soft warblings of Farinelli and Egiziello--but, alas! the scene of their amusements, like themselves and their warblers, is no more. Not later than last summer, this grand theatrical apartment was divided into a suite of shabby, bandboxical rooms for the accommodation of the Infant of Parma. No mercy was shown to the beautiful roof. In some places, legs and folds of drapery are still visible; but the workmen are hammering and plastering at a great rate, and in a few days whitewash will cover all.

Coming out of the palace, and observing how deserted and melancholy the walks, garden, and avenues appeared, I was told, that in a few weeks a total change would take place, for the court was expected on the 6th of January, to remain six months, and that every pleasure followed in its train. Shoals of gamblers, and ladies of easy virtue of all ranks, ages, and descriptions. Every barrier which Charles the Third, of chaste and pious memory, attempted to oppose to the wanton inclinations of his subjects, has been broken down in the present reign; boundless freedom of conduct prevails, and the most disgusting debauchery riots in these lovely groves, which deserve to be set apart for elegant and rural pleasures.

In my walks I passed a huge edifice lately built for the favourite Alcudia. Common report accuses it of being more magnificently furnished than the royal residence; but as I did not enter it, I shall content myself with noting down, that it boasts nineteen windows in front, and a plain Tuscan portal with handsome granite pillars. Adjoining is a house belonging to the Duchess of Ossuna, full of workmen, painters, and stuccadors: a goggle-eyed Milanese, most fiercely conceited, is daubing the walls with all his might and main. He is an architect too, at least I have his word for it, and claims the merit, a great one as he believes, of having designed a sort of ball-room, with many a festoon and Bohemian glass-chandelier and coarse arabesque. The floor is bricked, upon which thick mats or carpets are spread when dancing is going forward.

I was in hopes this tiresome custom of thumping mats and rugs with the feet, to the brisk airs of boleros and fandangos, was exploded. No music is more inspiring than the Spanish; what a pity they refuse themselves the joy of rising a foot or two into the air at every step, by the help of elastic boards.

Next to this sort of a ball-room is a sort of an oval boudoir, and then a sort of an octagon; all bad sorts of their kind. This confounded painter is covering the oval with landscapes, not half so harmonious or spirited as those which figure on Birmingham snuff-boxes or tea-boards. He has a terrible partiality to blues and greens of the crudest tints. Such colours affect my eyes as disagreeably as certain sounds my teeth, when set on edge. I pity the Duchess of Ossuna, whose liberal desire of encouraging the arts deserves better artists. In music she has been more fortunate: Boccharini directed her band when I was last at Madrid; and I remember with what transport she heard and applauded the Galli, to whom she sent one morning a present of the most expensive trinkets, carelessly heaped up upon a magnificent salver of massive silver, two or three feet in diameter.

The day closed as I was wandering about the Duchess’s mansion, surprised at the slovenly neglect of the furniture, not an article of which has been moved out of the reach of dust, scaffoldings, the exhalations of paint, and the still more pestilential exhalation of garlick-eating workmen. Universal apathy and indifference to everything seems to pervade the whole Iberian peninsula. If not caring what you eat or what you drink is a virtue, so far the evangelical precept is obeyed. So it is in Portugal, and so it is in Spain, and so it looks likely to be world without end: to which, let the rest of Europe say amen; for were these countries to open their long-closed eyes, cast off their trammels, and rouse themselves to industry, they would soon surpass their neighbours in wealth and population.