Several of the scenes and characters had their prototypes in the Diario. General O'Donnell, Duke of Tetuán, was the original of the brusk, impulsive, but genuine captain. For Alarcón says of General O'Donnell: "The man, prosaic and cold, distrustful of lively imaginations, insensible to every art except the art of war, hostile to beautiful phrases... today spoke with the certain emphasis of the best taste; in the style of the old-time general, like Napoleon at the pyramids". Talking to the Moors through an interpreter, his words were "animated by his attitude, his gestures, his looks.... He questioned them with energy; orated and declaimed with eloquence; now he would rail at them, now flatter them. The Moors read in his face the sentiments that animated him, and the degree of truth, of shrewdness, of calculation, or of passion, that each phrase held".
Alarcón tells us that he wrote El Capitán Veneno in eight days, no more or less. There are several places in Guzmán el Bueno that Alarcón must have had in mind, almost to the words: the hand on the heart; the pretended fury of the traitor infante Don Juan; the dying of joy; Guzmán's weeping as he embraces María; when the messenger hesitates, María cries out "Murió"; jewels as a ransom; the appeal "salvad, amparad"; and the "ven, ven, ¿no es verdad que vendrás?"
Alarcón seems to have cherished a rather contemptuous attitude towards the Jews and the poor. In many places in his stories he drops a mean word about the Jews and the Moors. The kindly story of the Moor in the Alhambra, Alarcón tells us himself was pure fiction, from beginning to end.
He tells us that his great models in writing were the great novelists of England and France. He was not unconscious of his fame and high standing; and even as a young man he often called himself "poet", "philosopher", "artist", and a "traveler".
IV. The Time of the Story
The story is set in 1848, and the scene is in Madrid. At that period there was a revival of democratic impulses in the world, on account of what was going on in France. But the unorganized many-headed masses could make only a poor showing against the organized powers of even a contemptible government.
The hero and heroine of the story are of two hostile parties, a thing that often occurs in life as well as in literature.
War conditions are still (1920) so present to our minds that we can easily imagine the situations called for in the story.
P. B. Burnet
Kansas City, Mo. June 24, 1920