Lovers' Tech Skirt's Etiquette

How the newest technological marvel aided in elminating the Spanish royal court etiquette of the era, and romance flourished...

The modern, 19th century technology allowed a Spanish King to get the better of the traditional and implacable etiquette of a court where he couldn't get an egg boiled without 6 successive messengers and 10 pairs of hands.

The Telephone for Love Making

“The King,” writes a correspondent from Madrid, “spends with his bride all the time allowed him by etiquette and public affairs. He hastens to Aranjuez, where she is staying, and during the journey the royal Leander will sometimes look out at the carriage window to see on the horizon the bare trees under which Philip II conspired against the conscience of the world.”

When he returns from Aranjuez, his impatience leads him to a part of the palace where modern science has placed its latest discovery at the service of the royal lover, and annihilates the space which for two days longer separates him from his bride. A telephone, in fact, has been fitted up, connecting one of the King’s rooms with that of Princess Mercedes, and enabling them to converse together, free from indiscreet eyes and ears.

Strange to think that the telephone should thus get the better of the traditional and implacable etiquette of a court where the King cannot get an egg boiled without 6 successive messengers and 10 pairs of hands. Yet more strange is a love so rarely found in the loftiest stations, and which could only spring up and gain strength because two hearts met in the solitude of exile, far from the factitious pomp of courtly constraint. — The Daily Alta, 1878

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia