El Sombrero de tres picos was written and published in 1874. It made its first appearance on August 2, 9, 16th of that year, in numbers 23, 24, 25, of the Revista Europea, was issued in book form immediately, and has passed through thirteen editions. Alarcón has given two accounts of its genesis—one in the original form of the preface to the book, and the other in his Historia de mis libros. They are not mutually exclusive, though the second mentioned, which the author has allowed to stand, forgets much that is confided in the first.[3]
The success of the story was immediate and deserved. The pseudo-modest praise, "the least bad of my books," applied by Alarcón to El Escándalo, might be transferred and made positive here. The skill of construction, the exact sense of propriety that preserves every decency while yielding no shred of the interest, the really admirable dialogue, and the beautifully Spanish atmosphere of it all, make us wish that the author's judgment had led him oftener into these ways, where alone his desire fails to outrun his performance. Alarcón has written sensational sermons—witness El Escándalo; psychological romance, with the psychology left out, as in La Pródiga; infantile melodrama, in El Niño de la Bola; and utter balderdash, as El Final de Norma; but El Sombrero is not like any of these. It is worthy of the rank it holds among the longer short stories of literature, a strong, objective piece of work, without shade of self-consciousness; a fine story, in short, admirably told. Aside from its purely æsthetic value, the book is a precious document to the student of the history of manners and customs in Spain, both in its lines and in the much that is to be read between them.
Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín has recently published a short account of the sources of El Sombrero.[4] He takes it back to a well-known story of the Decameron (day 8, novel 8), and reprints two popular ballads, to one of which, already published by Agustín Durán in his Romancero General (Vol. 2, p. 409), Alarcón in his preface acknowledges his indebtedness. The other ballad seems from language and form to be younger; the content of the two is almost identical. It is not my purpose in the present place to enlarge on Bonilla's article, though I suspect that the theme in its cruder forms is considerably older than Boccaccio; he has given us all that served as the first-hand sources of our story, and more, and he seems to me beyond any doubt to be in the right in holding that the differences to be noted between these sources and the novel are Alarcón's own, not the product of some other model, to him (Bonilla) unknown. To my mind this conclusion should be more strongly put. In his preface Alarcón tells us where he found the story, and makes direct reference to the Durán Romancero; had he had another, more strictly decorous, version at hand, one in short better suited to his need, he had surely mentioned it. Bonilla seems to me to take far too seriously the closing lines of the preface, which, to one without the pale, seem simply a graceful confession of faith in the basic decency of Spain. For the sources of the book, then, Alarcón's preface and Bonilla's essay must seem a sufficient guide.
The text here printed is that of the thirteenth Spanish edition. Two passages have been omitted; one (after page 6, line 28 of this text) touching taxes and imposts, as being unduly difficult, and of no help to the story: the curious may find it in the notes. The other, a bare two lines, had too much local color for dignified appearance in the American classroom. The only other changes the editor has allowed himself are occasional deviations from the somewhat arbitrary system of capitalization followed in the model.
My friend Professor De Haan, of Bryn Mawr College, did me the favor of making a collation of this text with that of the first edition in book form, which, as it appeared so promptly after the other, is probably to all intents and purposes identical with that of the serial. The differences to be noted between the first and thirteenth editions are altogether matters of style, except in the preface, where, as noted, the end is very different in the two. As I have not had access to all the editions, I cannot say with certainty when the revision was made: it is likely that it came when Alarcón prepared the definitive edition of his works for the Colección de Escritores Castellanos: in which case the first revised edition would be the eighth or ninth. The changes are often interesting as showing the working of the better second thought;—here the flow of the syntax is made a little smoother, there a harsh word has been suppressed. In general the text has gained by the author's later attention, though there is an occasional spot where the style seems fresher and more vigorous in the older form.
El Sombrero de tres picos has been much translated and has been used as material for at least four comic operas. Alarcón mentions two, one French, one Belgian, in Historia de mis Libros (page 247); I have been unable, so far, to find out anything about these. A third, by M. Giró, is spoken of by Albert Soubies, Histoire de la Musique, Espagne, XIX siècle, Paris, 1900, page 54. The title of this one is El Sombrero de tres picos, and it was brought out at Madrid. The fourth, Der Korregidor, music by Hugo Wolff, libretto by Rosa Mayreder, was first given at Mannheim in 1896.
IV. Bibliographical Note
The biographical matter of this introduction is taken from two short lives of Alarcón, one by José Calvo y Teruel, prefixed to the 1870 edition of Poesías serias y humorísticas; and the other by Mariano Catalina, written after Alarcón's death (1905) and published with volume I (Cuentos Amatorios) of the Novelas Cortas.
Of serious critical matter concerning Alarcón, I have seen, besides what is in the usual histories of Spanish Literature, only the essay on El Sombrero de tres picos by Luis Alfonso, prefixed to the book, in the Colección de Escritores Castellanos, and what is given by Padre Francisco Blanco García, in his Literatura Española en el Siglo XIX, 2d edition, Madrid, 1903, vol. II, pp. 452-467. Both seem unscientific, and not useful, though both have very good will; and Luis Alfonso's essay has a certain value as an historical document. [p. xvii]