| "En el monte Calvario | En el monte Calvario |
| Las golondrinas | Los jilgueritos |
| Le quitaron á Cristo | Le quitaron á Cristo |
| Las cinco espinas. | Los tres clavitos." |
The serpent according to Spanish lore, went proudly erect after his success with Eve, until down in Egypt one day, he tried to bite the little Infant Jesus, whereupon St. Joseph indignantly rebuked him and ordered him never to rise again. The rosemary is loved and given away as presents because when formerly a common plant, once the Blessed Virgin hung out on it to dry the clothes of her divine Infant, and it became forever green and fragrant. The children at play sing these legends and folk-songs; on Christmas eve they dance their "Alegría! Alegría! Alegría!" A suggestive young writer of Granada, Angel Ganivet, says that in Spain Christian philosophy did not remain hidden in books, but worked its way into the very life of the people, where it is found in the popular songs and customs: "Nuestra 'Summa' teológica y filosófica está en nuestro 'Romancero.'"
Fernán Caballero started the revival of the novel and its flowering soon followed. Don Juan Valera, though always interested in literature, had been prevented by his active life from himself writing till middle age. When in 1874 "Pepita Jiménez" appeared, it took his countrymen by storm, and this first novel, written by chance, was soon followed by others; a true creative artist had tardily discovered his genius. I cannot speak of Don Juan Valera without an admiration which to those who do not know his works may seem extreme. From his books his personality stands out as clearly as that of Cervantes, equable, high-minded, with that mellow wisdom which has gleaned the best from a life full of opportunities. In his "Discursos Academicos," two volumes that make enchanting reading—enchanting and academical do not often go together—he disclaims the title of thinker, yet he was a profound observer. His satire is of that kindly quality that leaves no sting. He has charm, that salt of the writer; he is never exaggerated nor embittered. This quality of amenity he shares too with his master, whom he can write of with an absolute comprehension just as Cervantes himself could make a Quixote because he was akin. It was a happy chance that the last words of the modern novelist (over eighty and blind, yet alert in mental interests) should have been the unfinished paper for the Royal Academy, to celebrate in 1904 the three hundredth anniversary of "Don Quixote." His Spanish blood let Valera understand the heights of mysticism, skeptic though he was by force of circumstances; he could write with enthusiasm of St. Teresa. On woman he held advanced ideas, he advocated her highest education, especially the cultivation of letters, for he said that if man alone wrote half the knowledge of the human soul would be lost; civilizations where women are not given education and knowledge never arrive at their full flowering; it is as if the collective soul of the nation had clipped one of its wings. His own culture was an all-round one. He had the intimate knowledge that residence in foreign lands gives: English thought, German, Italian, Austrian, American north and south, the Orient and its religions, in every country his literary interests had been alert. Thus he had a curiously minute knowledge of the North American poets. Of his own race essentially, he yet was cosmopolitan in the higher meaning of the word. All that went to make up dislike and division between nations he deplored as ignorance of man's higher destiny of brotherhood. It is not hard to read between the lines sometimes of his sensitive shrinking in his travels under the uncomprehending criticism of his native land; the world, especially the English-speaking world, has but a veiled contempt for things Spanish. He has righted his country in his books without a touch of aggressive impatience, by simply describing things as they are.
Valera has set his romances in the Andalusia he knew best. He was born at Cabra in the province of Cordova in 1824, the son of a naval officer and the Marquesa de Paniega. He received the best of educations and when twenty-two accompanied the Spanish ambassador, the poet-duke de Rivas to Naples. Then followed half a life-time of diplomatic posts: Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, Dresden, St. Petersburg, as Minister Plenipotentiary to Washington in 1883 and later to Brussels, finally as Ambassador to Vienna. He was also a member of the Cortes, a Councilor of State, and was one of the embassy sent to Florence to offer the Crown to Amadeus I. During the two years of the Republic he retired, but returned to active life on the advent of Alfonso XII. Although a man of the world Valera was a born artist. Only in his first romance did he show the hand of the novice. His literary style is a simple and limpid medium that leaves behind unfading pictures of country and town; he has done what Balzac calls adding new beings à l'état civil.
"Pepita Jiménez" came out in 1874, "Doña Luz" in 1879, two vignettes of Andalusian women immortalizing two very different types; Pepita of grace, passion, charm, compact, of the very heart of femininity, adorable despite her failings, achieving her own happiness against all odds; Doña Luz, idealistic, dignified in mind and manner, of the type of a Vittoria Colonna, proudly bearing the heart-outrage fate sent her, since her soul, for her the essential, had found its mystic way out. I do not think that in any fiction there is a more subtly given relationship than that of this noble creature Luz and the Dominican missionary from the Philippines, Padre Enrique, scholar and dumb poet. What with a Zola had been revolting, with Valera is humanly heart-breaking and spiritually ennobling, it could shock no piety; only a man of elevated character and the most sensitive discernment could so touch on undefined emotions. The friendship of Doña Luz and the doctor's captivating daughter is a warm-hearted relationship of two young and pretty women declared impossible by many novelists. This tale of beautiful and tragic sincerity had been preceded by another, also set in one of the smaller Andalusian towns, and written with the lightness of manner and seriousness of matter that show the master hand: "El Comendador Mendoza," I cannot help feeling veils much of the author's own self. These stories show the soundness of the simple people. Swift marriages are looked on with disapproval; how, they ask, can esteem or true knowledge of character be gained in a few months.[33] So in Spain the opportunities allowed the novios, the young people who choose each other from mutual attraction, are unheard of in France or Italy. High-born or lowly, a Spanish girl can savor the romance of life, without disrepute, by talking at the reja during the midnight hours; before marriage she is allowed a freedom of speech, a sal, a self-development, denied her sisters in other Latin countries.
It is not possible to touch on all of Valera's stories, for his vein once discovered, proved a rich one. His longest novel has a poorly-chosen name, "Las Ilusiones del Doctor Faustino" and is not very well constructed, not enough is eliminated for art; but always there is the charm of the south, the midnight talking at the reja—those happy novios of Spain!—the drowsiness of the noontime siesta, the vivacity of the evening tertulia, that innocent way of diverting themselves every night from nine to twelve, the same group of friends meeting year after year. Constantly, as I read Spanish novels, I say a people that get so much out of so little are a lovable people, wholesome and of vigorous promise.
It was indeed with very different eyes that I looked out on the distant towns as we passed in the train, they were peopled now with living people, a Pepita, a high-minded Luz, a philosophic Don Fresco, a kindly Doña Araceli, I felt that I was not quite a stranger here, now that Don Juan Valera had lifted from me the curtain of ignorance and prejudice that hides the everyday life of Spain.
The same year that saw the appearance of "Pepita Jiménez" brought to light another tale that will last as long, it does not seem too much to say, as the "Quixote" itself. In "El Sombrero de Tres Picos," Alacón has achieved a masterpiece. It is a slight tale of a few hundred pages, in the genre style, a picture of the old régime before the French invasion of 1808 broke down the Chinese wall of the Pyrenees. No description can do justice to its crisp, sparkling charm, to Frasquita, beautiful as a goddess, Eve herself, with a laugh like the repique de Sábado de Gloria; to her ugly, ironical, adorably malicious and sympathetic husband Lucas, the vibrant note of whose voice won all hearts, to whom his Frasquita was más bueno que el pan. Lucas and his wife are Shakespearean creations. Then there is that pompous vanity, the Corregidor, Don Eugenio de Zúñigo y Ponce de León, in his red cape, gold shoe buckles, and hat of three peaks. What a scene is that of the Bishop's visit to the miller's garden! And in what country but democratic Spain would a bishop stroll out with canons and grandees to while away a friendly hour with a miller? Inimitable tale, Spanish to the core, it is this that make a nation's glory, a "Don Quixote," a "Sotileza," a "Doña Luz," a "Sombrero de Tres Picos."
Don Pedro Antonio de Alacón belonged, like Valera, to an old family of Andalusia, but not in the elder novelist's fortunate circumstances; one of ten sons, he had more or less to place himself in life. He was born in Gaudix in 1833; studied law at the University of Granada; and naturally gravitated toward Madrid, the center of political and literary interests. He flung himself headlong into the republican anti-clerical ideas of that troubled time, but in later life his theories toned down so that he ended as a believer and a liberal conservative. Throughout a long political career Alacón kept his honor unstained; although often with friends in power, it was only after twenty-one years of politics that he accepted a post, on the advent of Alfonso XII, whose return he had advocated long before it came about. He had begun writing when very young, thus "El Clavo," a powerful sketch, was done when barely twenty. Like many of Spain's authors, he turned soldier when the call came, and served in the 1860 campaign in Africa of which he has left a vivid chronicle, "Diario de un Testigo de la Guerra en Africa." "El Sombrero" was followed by "El Escándalo," a novel widely discussed in Spain. The story opens strongly, but it scatters toward the end; Alacón is better in the tale than in sustained work. He can snap his fingers at our criticism, his Corregidor and his Molinera have made him one of the immortals.
To another modern novelist, to Pérez Galdós, I feel I am not fair, but I find so much of his work antipathetic that, as he has not a good style and often offends good taste, I cannot force a liking. Brunetière speaks of the intolerance of the naturalist school of novelists, the intolerance of the free-thinker. Those who advocate the extreme republican, anti-clerical theories in Spain have this intolerance to a marked degree. Pérez Galdós is so biassed that he distorts his characters from their natural evolution by making them voice his own ideas. The "roman à thèse" may win a greater fame for the first hour, but it is sure to pass with the changing questions of the time. The much-praised "Doña Perfecta" struck me as absurdly untrue to human nature. The heroine is presented as a not uncommon type of religious development, naturally where there is intense religious feeling there is a bigot here and there, but this Lady Perfection is not a consistent human being, but a monster. While anxious for her nephew to leave she yet urges him to stay, no reason why; she could easily have rid herself of him yet she brings about his death. Her character of the beginning does not match with her character of the end (the novelist offends several times in this way). The thin-visaged, oily priest-villain gives an aside over the footlights: "I have tried tricks, but there is no sin in tricks. My conscience is clear": evidently old-fashioned melodramatics are not yet extinct. It is quite impossible for a well-bred Spaniard to have insulted his kind hosts, as does Pepe, by telling them crudely that their Christian belief is a fable as past as paganism, "all the absurdities, falsities, illusions, dreams, are over," to-day there is no more multiplication of bread and fishes, but the rule of industry and machines. I think most people will feel that the characters of this book can intrigue and murder and throw in realistic asides as much as they will, we do not hate them because they fail to convince us that they ever really existed. They are just mouthpieces for their author's theories. In another novel, "Gloria," a beautiful passionate girl of sixteen is incapable of being the pedantic prig Galdós makes her in the opening chapters. Happily for the romance and for the weary reader, once the novelist warms to his story, religious discussions go to the wall and he presents a moving tragedy. Would that he could have kept up to the level of parts of this novel, that which presents Gloria's uncles, for instance, but he is very unequal. After scenes so true to life that they are a joy, he will indulge in the pseudo-giantesque of some of Hugo's purple patches, and only high genius can take such liberties. Thus in a tempest a church lamp falls; it breaks the glass of the urn in which lies the Dead Christ, it slaps St. Joseph in the face, it knocks the sword from the hand of St. Michael, and finishes its zig-zag career by crashing into a confessional. Lamps of anti-clerics only seem to act in this all-round, satisfying way; realists, like Pereda and Valera, are incapable of such exaggeration. Some critics hold "Angel Guerra" and "Fortuna y Jacinta" to be the best of Galdós. His "Episodios Nacionales" are a series of novels on the events of the past century in Spain. In spite of vivid scenes, they seemed to me long-winded and confusing; one must be Spanish, they say, to appreciate them.