Bolivar: American Liberator Page 6

  The new object of her concupiscence was Manuel Mallo, a strapping young bodyguard from Caracas and, as it happened, a friend and confidant of Esteban Palacios, the uncle Simón had come to see. The fifteen-year-old boy could hardly know it, but the madre patria was a hotbed of decadence—not the inviolable power it pretended to be. Politically, economically, morally, Spain was suffering the consequences of its own ruinous management. The upper classes could feel it in their pockets; the rabble, in their bellies. It is hardly surprising that a rich young aristocrat from the Indies was welcomed with open arms.

  Simón arrived in Madrid “quite handsome,” as his uncle Esteban reported. “He has absolutely no education, but he has the will and intelligence to acquire one, and, even though he spent quite a bit of money in transit, he landed here a complete mess. I’ve had to re-outfit him totally. I am very fond of him and, although he takes a great deal of looking after, I attend to his needs with pleasure.”

  Esteban had been in Madrid for more than six years, trying to confirm the title of marquis for Simón’s older brother, Juan Vicente. In the process, he had expended a considerable amount of Bolívar funds and achieved very little. However charming and handsome—however engaged in swank musical circles—Esteban was inexpert at politics, unable to win the sort of influence it took to rid a family tree of its pesky defects. He had been about to abandon his efforts and return to Caracas empty-handed, when three eventualities changed his mind: he was made minister of the auditing tribunal, a distinguished if modestly paid position; he knew Saavedra, who had just been appointed prime minister; and, last, his housemate, the irresistible Manuel Mallo, had become the favorite of the queen. All Spain had heard about María Luisa’s latest inamorato, and all Caracas was abuzz with rumor. Though Mallo had actually been born in New Granada, he had grown up in Caracas and was a fixture in Mantuano society. Sure that his fortunes would rise alongside his friend’s, Esteban had decided to stay. He had urged his brothers in Caracas to send Juan Vicente and Simón, so that they, too, might take advantage of this new American moment. When Juan Vicente demurred and Don Carlos Palacios proposed to send Simón alone, Esteban had agreed. When the Palacios’ younger brother Pedro wrote that he also wanted to come bask in Mallo’s successes, Esteban had agreed to that as well.

  Simón arrived in Madrid eleven days after the San Ildefonso had docked in Santoña; he had little baggage and almost no clothes. Days later, his uncle Pedro stumbled into the city, penniless and scruffy; his ship had been seized, first by British corsairs near Puerto Rico and then by the English navy, which had set him free. At first, Simón and Pedro moved into Esteban’s rooms in the house Esteban shared with Mallo, but the crowded conditions soon made it evident that they would need to find their own quarters. The three took a modest apartment on the Calle de los Jardines and hired three manservants to attend to their needs. “We do enjoy some favor,” Pedro wrote to his brother Carlos, “but it is too complicated to be explained in writing.” The favor, in fact, was scant. Mallo appeared to have considerable run of the queen’s boudoir, but he had little influence in her court, surely nothing approaching Godoy’s power. More troubling, the war with England had thwarted the regular transport of funds, which the young Venezuelans needed desperately in order to keep up appearances. Neither of the Palacios brothers possessed anything like the fortune that belonged to their charge, Bolívar. As best he could, Esteban set about organizing Simón’s education, so that the boy might shine amid society circles in Madrid.

  He hired a tailor to outfit the boy in an elegant uniform, an evening tailcoat, cashmere jackets, velvet vests, silk shirts, lace collars, and capes. He arranged special tutors who could teach him proper Castilian grammar, French, mathematics, world history. But after a few months, Esteban had a better idea. He asked the Marquis of Ustáriz, a native of Caracas and an old family friend, to take on the boy’s education. The marquis, then sixty-five, was a highly respected member of Spain’s Supreme Council of War and in the prime of a distinguished career. But he had never had a son. He did not hesitate; he accepted the responsibility with pleasure. An erudite man who read widely and studied deeply, the marquis turned out to be an ideal teacher. He was liberal, wise, a paragon of integrity, and an ardent lover of all things Venezuelan. He and Bolívar liked one another immediately. Within days, the sixteen-year-old moved into the marquis’s resplendent mansion at No. 8 Calle Atocha and began study under his direction.

  The change Simón experienced under the marquis’s fatherly tutelage was swift and dramatic. Until then, his schooling had been erratic. The only surviving letter written in his hand before this time—directed to his uncle Pedro—exhibits an appalling lack of knowledge for a fifteen-year-old aristocrat. He misspells the simplest words, has little grasp of good grammar. His mentor surely recognized this right away and undertook to remake the boy completely. He hired the best tutors available in Spanish literature, French and Italian languages, Enlightenment philosophy, world history. He recommended books, piqued Simón’s curiosity with tales of his own experiences, looked over the boy’s shoulder as Simón read and wrote. Surrounded by the marquis’s books in his magnificently appointed library, Simón read avidly, applying his considerable energies to mastering the classics as well as works of contemporary European thought. He listened to Beethoven and Pleyel—composers of the day, whose works were just being introduced in Madrid’s salons. He learned principles of accounting, which he would turn one day against his predatory uncle Carlos. But as cultured and academic as the program of his instruction was, it did not lack the physical. He trained in fencing and, being quick on his feet, developed a keen aptitude for it. He studied dance, a pastime that gave him enormous pleasure. Come evenings, he would engage in long philosophical conversations with the marquis, mingle with illustrious guests, or embark on a whirl of social activities with his uncles.

  From time to time, the young Venezuelans would call on Mallo in the royal court, where Simón would have the opportunity to observe Queen María Luisa at first hand. He had glimpsed her before, when she had visited Mallo in the house Esteban shared with him. Disguised in a monk’s cape, slipping furtively into her lover’s quarters, the woman would not have inspired particular awe in a boy. But here, in the glittering halls of the royal palace, there was no question that she was a powerful presence. Surrounded by toadies, ruling her courtiers by whim, she cut a formidable figure with her grim face and flamboyant silk gowns. In a portrait painted within a year of Bolívar’s arrival, Francisco de Goya captured the queen’s frightening amalgam of debauchery and cunning. Even then, judging by Goya’s candid and openly satirical depiction, her critics were legion. “There is no woman on earth who lies with more composure or is as treacherous,” a respected diplomat in Madrid wrote. “Her simple observations become irrevocable law. She sacrifices the best interests of the crown to her low, scandalous vices.” Now, with her empire beset, her lust too much in evidence, her very teeth marred by decay, the queen’s corruption cannot have been lost on the young man from the Indies. He was acquiring an education befitting a Spanish nobleman, but he was also learning how fragile the construct of monarchies could be.

  Henry Adams, a great chronicler of the times, described the fatuousness of the Spanish court in his History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison:

  The Queen’s favorite in the year 1800 was a certain Mallo, whom she was said to have enriched, and who, according to the women of the bed-chamber, physically beat Her Majesty as though she were any common Maritornes. One day in that year, when Godoy had come to pay his respects to the King, and as usual was conversing with him in the Queen’s presence, Charles asked him a question: “Manuel,” said the King, “what is it with this Mallo? I see him with new horses and carriages every day. Where does he get so much money?” “Sire,” replied Godoy, “Mallo has nothing in the world; but he is kept by an ugly old woman who robs her husband to pay her lover.” The King shouted with laughter, and t
urning to his wife, said: “Luisa, what think you of that?” “Ah, Charles!” she replied; “don’t you know that Manuel is always joking?”

  One afternoon, Bolívar made a trip to the palace to visit the queen’s fifteen-year-old son, Prince Ferdinand, the future king. Ferdinand had invited him to a game of badminton. In the heat of one of their volleys, Simón’s shuttlecock landed on the prince’s head, and the young monarch, incensed and humiliated, refused to continue. The queen, who had been watching all the while, insisted that Ferdinand go on, instructing him to comport himself like a good host. “How could Ferdinand VII possibly have known,” Bolívar commented twenty-seven years later, “that the accident was an omen that some day I would wrest the most precious jewel from his crown?”

  At about the same time, in February of 1800, Esteban and Pedro moved out of their apartment on Calle de los Jardines and left Madrid altogether, wanting to distance themselves from a mounting problem. It’s not entirely clear why, but it is reasonable to assume that they had come under suspicion as the century turned, power shifted in court, two prime ministers came and went, and the queen’s lover was taken for what he was: a simple gigolo. It might also have been due to the queen herself, who was highly jealous, inclined to suspect that Mallo was disloyal and had mistresses elsewhere. In any case, Esteban was arrested and put in prison—an unremarkable eventuality in those convoluted times—and Pedro proceeded to make himself scarce, spending much of his time in Cádiz. The Marquis of Ustáriz, a proud pillar in that increasingly venal city, became Bolívar’s sole anchor.

  But by then young Simón had a very pressing distraction: he had fallen in love. He had met María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro in the marquis’s house and, in the course of two or three afternoon visits, expressed his affection and managed to win hers in return. She was the daughter of rich Caracans—a cousin of one of his close childhood friends, Fernando del Toro—which meant that even though she had been born in Spain, she had been raised with the American customs that Bolívar held dear. She was pale, delicate, tall, not particularly beautiful, but she had large dark eyes and an exquisite figure. Not quite nineteen, she was almost two years older, and yet she seemed pure and innocent, with a child’s easy nature. As the marquis and her father bent over a chess game or discussed politics in comfortable chairs by the great, blazing fireplace, Bolívar drew María Teresa into intimate conversation. Before long, he began to dream of a lifetime at her side.

  He proposed marriage to her father so soon that Don Bernardo Rodríguez del Toro was taken aback. It was an advantageous proposition for María Teresa, to be sure: the Bolívar name was persuasive in and of itself, and Simón had acquired quite a reputation for a young man, having been received at court and so obviously favored by the elegant marquis. But Don Bernardo worried about the aspirant’s age. He had yet to turn seventeen. Don Bernardo decided to take María Teresa off to their summerhouse in the Basque city of Bilbao to cool the youngsters’ passions as well as to test the genuineness of the boy’s proposal—and patience.

  In the interim, Bolívar persuaded the marquis to help him secure María Teresa’s hand. He shot off a letter to his uncle Pedro, advising him of his intent to marry. He wrote a letter to his beloved, calling her the “sweet hex of my soul.” Six months later, on March 20, 1801, with an official passport in hand, he left for Bilbao to join her.

  There is too little evidence to know with any certainty what happened during the year that followed, but it is clear that Bolívar spent most of it in Bilbao. All spring and summer, he visited with his prospective bride and family. By August, Don Bernardo had taken María Teresa back to Madrid, but Bolívar stayed on in Bilbao. A few months later, in the beginning of 1802, he made a brief visit to Paris. Why? Some historians have suggested that he had a plan to help his uncle Esteban escape from prison. Others have said that Bolívar had become persona non grata, because Queen María Luisa believed he was carrying love letters from Mallo to someone else. Yet others say that Godoy, newly reinstalled as prime minister, despised the queen’s lover along with all of his “Indian” cronies, and had intentionally blocked Bolívar’s movements. Most likely, Bolívar stayed in Bilbao and traveled to Paris simply because he had made French friends in Bilbao and was trying to prove himself to his prospective father-in-law—show that he was a man of the world. Whatever the reason, shortly after Cornwallis and Napoleon signed a treaty effectively ending the war between England and France, Bolívar was granted a passport and headed back to Madrid. It was April 29, 1802. He was eighteen years old.

  He applied for a marriage license immediately on arrival in Madrid, and on May 5 received it. Elated, he bought two tickets to Caracas on the San Ildefonso, the same ship on which he had sailed three years before. Clearly, he had already persuaded his sweetheart to return with him to his homeland, where life promised to be far less complicated and a large inheritance awaited them. One of the main stipulations of his inheritance, after all, was that he had to reside in Venezuela.

  Simón and María Teresa were married with all of her father’s blessings on the balmy spring day of May 26 in Madrid’s Parish Church of San José, a short walk from the bride’s house. The wedding, so ardently desired by the groom, was celebrated largely by the bride’s family, as Esteban was still in prison and Pedro unable to travel from Cádiz. Three weeks later, the happy newlyweds departed Spain from the port of La Coruña, in a ship’s cabin Bolívar had festooned with flowers.

  They returned to Venezuela for what Bolívar assumed would be a comfortable landowner’s life filled with the business of property, harvests, and the management of money and slaves. They spent a few carefree months in Caracas next to the cathedral, in the splendid mansion Bolívar had inherited from the priest who had baptized him—the house his uncle Carlos had coveted for years. María Teresa was welcomed warmly, not only by Simón’s family, but by her own. The del Toros had had a long, illustrious history in Venezuela and her uncle, the Marquis del Toro, was an influential presence in the capital. But María Teresa had never experienced the colonies for herself and so her first sight of the tropical city with its exotic races, riotously colored birds, and rich women trailed by retinues of slaves must have made a striking impression.

  Bolívar had hoped to take her to one of the family haciendas—the estate at San Mateo, perhaps—where he might show her, for a fleeting glimpse at least, his childhood idyll: the sugar fields, the orchards and gardens, the charmed country life they had so often envisioned together. But he never accomplished this. She felt too weak to travel, too frail to undertake the long carriage ride on rutted roads. There, in the city where his father had died too soon, where his mother had died young, María Teresa grew gravely ill with yellow fever. Whether she had contracted it in Caracas or in La Guaira, or even on board the San Ildefonso, will never be known, but there is no doubt that the disease came over her quickly, surprising her frantic husband with its virulence. Within five months of their joy-filled arrival in Venezuela, she was dead.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Innocent Abroad

  I was suddenly made to understand that men were made for other things than love.

  —Simón Bolívar

  María Teresa’s body, jaundiced and emaciated by disease, was laid to rest in an open coffin for all Caracas to see. She was dressed in a richly decorated gown of white silk brocade. Her head rested on a pillow that held her husband’s baptismal garments; no child would ever wear them again. A cloth covered her face. When the funeral was over, the mourners gone, her casket was nailed shut and slipped into the family crypt to await eternity with the Bolívars.

  Simón’s grief was so extreme that, according to his brother, Juan Vicente, he veered into a kind of madness, alternating between fury and despair. Had Juan Vicente not spent each waking minute caring for him, he might have lost his will to live. “I had thought of my wife as a personification of the Divine Being,” Bolívar later told one of his generals. “Heaven stole her from me, because she was never meant for t
his earth.” Spiritually depleted, physically exhausted, he tried to manage his cacao and indigo estates, but the work failed to distract him; everywhere he looked, there were only shards of an imagined life. “May God grant me a son,” he had once written to his uncle Pedro when he was seventeen and deeply in love, but he had been stripped of that dream for now, forced to rethink every ambition of his hope-filled youth. He could hardly go on living alone in his immense mansion next to the cathedral, its yawning rooms a reminder of his lost, irrecoverable bliss. He could take no comfort from the parlors of Caracas society. He could no longer look forward to a tranquil life in his haciendas with a doting wife and a spirited brood of children. As he later recounted: