The Dancer and the Raja Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Maria Victoria” working-class district in Cuatro Caminos. The great composer Breton, who had written La verbena de la Paloma , had composed a wedding march especially for the occasion. The Maison Modèle, a shop in Carretas Street, offered the most elegant range in hats, dresses, and corsets “brought from Paris, for ladies of the Court and provinces who come to the wedding.”
    Also from Paris, on May 28, 1906, the “Train of Princes” arrived, on which were traveling a large number of members of European royal houses: Frederick Henry, Prince of Russia; Louis, Crown Prince of Monaco; Eugene, Prince of Sweden; Luis Felipe, Crown Prince of Portugal; Thomas and Isabel, Duke and Duchess of Genoa … and to represent the King of England, George and Mary, the Prince and Princess of Wales. The chronicle in La Epoca ended with overflowing enthusiasm: “Make way for Europe! Europe is coming to Spain, Europe is coming to the wedding of Don Alfonso XIII. Spain has not disappeared from the world! Spain is alive!”
    The arrival of the train was a major event. Madrid was in the mood for dreaming. The whole Delgado family joined the crowds to see the retinue with their own eyes making the trip from North Station to the Royal Palace, where the illustrious guests were going to pay their respects to the king. The city had never before seen such a procession of dignitaries. The people came out onto the streets to take in a little of the opulence of those aristocrats who rode by in sumptuous carriages. Anita and her sister, Victoria, managed to make room for themselves in the crowd to watch the show “from front-row seats.” And what a show! In a Hispano-Suiza convertible, the tall and distinguished Albert of Belgium appeared, with his impressive retinue, followed by Franz Ferdinand, the archduke of Austria, dressed in a splendid military uniform, standing in a carriage, also surrounded by his dukes and counts, and so on until the most important delegation, that of the Prince and Princess of Wales, who were accompanying the bride, whom the people of Madrid affectionately called “La Inglesita.”
    â€œLook, Victoria, look!” What Anita’s eyes suddenly saw challenged the imagination. Standing in a huge white carriage, a prince who looked as though he came from a story in Arabian Nights gazed augustly left and right, observing the city and its people, waving his hand or politely nodding his head. Wearing a turban of white muslin fastened with a brooch of emeralds and a plume of feathers, dressed in a blue uniform with a silver sash, with his beard carefully coiled up in a little net, and his chest covered in medals and a necklace of thirteen strings of pearls, His Highness Raja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala embodied perfectly the idea held of an Oriental monarch. A personal friend of the Prince and Princess of Wales and of Don Alfonso de Borbon, whom he had met in Biarritz, in Madrid the raja represented “The jewel of the Crown,” that immense country known as India, overseen and administered by the British. Anita and her sister, Victoria, stood stupefied and openmouthed at this apparition, wondering whether he could be a Moorish or Cuban king.
    That night, as every night, the Delgado sisters had to fulfil their contract as curtain raisers. They crossed the Puerta del Sol to get to the Central Kursaal, a games court where ball was played in the daytime and which at night the owners turned into a café concert. They turned the back wall into a stage, lined up chairs in the middle of the court, and on the other half they improvised a café, with chairs and tables; they offered a “variety” show, the latest fashion imported from Paris. In Madrid, the theater critics complained that many serious theaters had gone over to “the other side,” to a frivolous genre. Even the Zarzuela Theatre was in decline. Perhaps the success of the variety shows was due to the