INDUSTRY AND DEMOCRACY

The bakery has been brandished against me in literature.

When I first wrote, it was said:

"This Baroja is a crusty fellow; naturally, he is a baker."

A certain picturesque academician, who was also a dramatist, and given to composing stupendous quintillas and cuartetas in his day, which, despite their flatness, were received with applause, had the inspiration to add:

"All this modernism has been cooked up in Baroja's oven."

Even the Catalans lost no time in throwing the fact of my being a baker in my face, although they are a commercial, manufacturing people. Whether calico is nobler than flour, or flour than calico, I am not sure, but the subject is one for discussion, as Maeztu would have it.

I am an eclectic myself on this score. I prefer flour in the shape of bread with my dinner, but cloth will go further with a man who desires to appear well in public.

When I was serving upon the Town Council, an anonymous publication entitled "Masks Off," printed the following among other gems: "Pío Baroja is a man of letters who runs a bake-shop."

A Madrid critic recently declared in an American periodical that I had two personalities: one that of a writer and the other of a baker. He was solicitous to let me know later that he intended no harm.

But if I should say to him: "Mr. So and So" is a writer who is excellently posted upon the value of cloth, as his father sold dry-goods, it would appeal to his mind as bad taste.

Another journalist paid his respects to me some months ago in El Parlamentario, saying I baked rolls, oppressed the people, and sucked the blood of the workingman.

It would appear to be more demeaning to own a small factory or a shop, according to the standards of both literary and non-literary circles, than it is to accept money from the corruption funds of the Government, or bounties from the exchequers of foreign Embassies.

When I hear talk nowadays about the dues of the common people, my propensity to laugh is so great that I am apprehensive that my end may be like that of the Greek philosopher in Diogenes Laertius, who died of laughter because he saw an ass eating figs.

THE VEXATIONS OF A SMALL TRADESMAN

The trials and tribulations of the literary life, its feuds and its backbitings are a common topic of conversation. However, I have never experienced anything of the kind in literature. The trouble with literature is that there is very little money in it, which renders the writer's existence both mean and precarious.

Nothing compares for vexation with the life of the petty tradesman, especially when that tradesman is a baker. Upon occasion, I have repeated to my friends the series of outrages to which we were obliged to submit, in particular at the hands of the municipal authorities.

Sometimes it was through malice, but more often through sheer insentient imbecility.

When my brother and I moved to the new site, we drew up a plan and submitted it to the Ayuntamiento, or City Government. A clerk discovered that no provision had been made for a stall for a mule to run the kneading machine, and so rejected it. When we learned that our application had not been granted, we inquired the reason and explained to the clerk that no provision had been made for the mule because we had no mule, as our kneading machine was operated by an electric motor.

"That makes no difference, no difference whatever," replied the clerk with the importance and obtuseness of the bureaucrat. "The ordinance requires that there be a stall for one."

Another of the thousand instances of official barbarity was perpetrated at our expense while Sánchez de Toca was Alcalde. This gentleman is a Siamese twin of Maura's when it comes to garrulousness and muddy thinking, and he had resolved to do away with the distribution of bread by public delivery, and to license only deliveries by private bakeries. The order was arbitrary enough, but the manner in which it was put into effect was a masterpiece. It was reported that plates bearing license numbers would be given out at the Ayuntamiento to the delivery men from the bakeries. So we repaired to the Ayuntamiento and questioned a clerk:

"Where do they give out the numbers?

"There are no numbers."

"What will happen tomorrow then, when we make our deliveries?"

"How do I know?"

The next day when the delivery men began their rounds, a policeman accosted them:

"Have you your numbers?"

"No, sir; they are not ready yet."

"Well, come with me then, to the police station."

And that was the last of our bread.

The Caid of Mechuar in Morocco favoured his subjects in some such fashion several years since, but the Moors, being men of spirit, fell on him one day, and left him at death's door on a dung heap. Meanwhile, Sánchez de Toca continues to talk nonsense in these parts, and is considered by some to be one of the bulwarks of the country.

I could spin many a tale of tyranny in high places, and almost as many, no doubt, of the pettinesses of workingmen. But what is the good? Why stir up my bile? In progressive incarnations, I have now passed through those of baker and petty tradesman. I am no longer an employer who exploits the workingman, nor can I see that I ever did so. If I have exploited workers merely because I employed them, all that was some time ago. I support myself by my writings now, although it is quite proper to state that I live on very little.

XII

AS A WRITER

My pre-literary career was three-fold: I was a student for eight years, during two a village doctor, and for six more a baker.

These having elapsed, being already close upon thirty, I began to write.

My new course was a wise one. It was the best thing that I could have done; anything else would have annoyed me more and have pleased me less. I have enjoyed writing, and I have made some money, although not much, yet it has been sufficient to enable me to travel, which otherwise I should not have been able to do.

The first considerable sum which I received was upon the publication of my novel The Mayorazgo of Labraz. Henrich of Barcelona paid me two thousand pesetas for it. I invested the two thousand pesetas in a speculation upon the Bourse, and they disappeared in two weeks.

The money which I have received for my other books, I have employed to better purpose.

BOHEMIA

I have never been a believer in the absurd myth called Bohemia. The idea of living gaily and irresponsibly in Madrid, or in any other Spanish city, without taking thought for the morrow, is so preposterous that it passes comprehension. Bohemia is utterly false in Paris and London, but in Spain, where life is difficult, it is even more of a cheat.

Bohemia is not only false, it is contemptible. It suggests to me a minor Christian sect, of the most inconsequential degree, nicely calculated for the convenience of hangers on at cafés.

Henri Murger was the son of the wife of a concièrge.

Of course, this would not have mattered had his outlook upon life not been that of the son of the wife of a concièrge.

OUR OWN GENERATION

The beginner in letters makes his way up, as a rule, amid a literary environment which is distinguished by reputations and hierarchies, all respected by him. But this was not the case with the young writers of my day. During the years 1898 to 1900, a number of young men suddenly found themselves thrown together in Madrid, whose only rule was the principle that the immediate past did not exist for them.

This aggregation of authors and artists might have seemed to have been brought together under some leadership, and to have been directed to some purpose; yet one who entertained such an assumption would have been mistaken.

Chance brought us together for a moment, a very brief moment, to be followed by a general dispersal. There were days when thirty or forty young men, apprentices in the art of writing, sat around the tables in the old Café de Madrid.

Doubtless such gatherings of new men, eager to interfere in and to influence the operations of the social system, yet without either the warrant of tradition or any proved ability to do so, are common upon a larger scale in all revolutions.

As we neither had, nor could have had, in the nature of the case, a task to perform, we soon found that we were divided into small groups, and finally broke up altogether.

AZORÍN

A few days after the publication of my first book, Sombre Lives, Miguel Poveda, who was responsible for printing it, sent a copy to Martínez Ruiz, who was at that time in Monóvar. Martínez Ruiz wrote me a long letter concerning the book by return mail; on the following day he sent another.

Poveda handed me the letters to read and I was filled with surprise and joy. Some weeks later, returning from the National Library, Martínez Ruiz, whom I knew by sight, came up to me on the Recoletos.

"Are you Baroja?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I am Martínez Ruiz."

We shook hands and became friends.

In those days we travelled about the country together, we contributed to the same papers, and the ideas and the men we attacked were the same.

Later, Azorín became an enthusiastic partisan of Maura, which appeared to me particularly absurd, as I have never been able to see anything but an actor of the grand style in Maura, a man of small ideas. Next he became a partisan of La Cierva, which was as bad in my opinion as being a Maurista. I am unable to say at the moment whether he is contemplating any further transformations.

But, whether he is or not, Azorín will always remain a master of language to me, besides an excellent friend who has a weakness for believing all men to be great who talk in a loud voice and who pull their cuffs down out of their coat sleeves with a grand gesture whenever they appear upon the platform.

PAUL SCHMITZ

Another friendship which I found stimulating was that of Paul Schmitz, a Swiss from Basle, who had come to Madrid because of some weakness of the lungs, spending three years among us in order to rehabilitate himself. Schmitz had studied in Switzerland and in Germany, and also had lived for a long time in the north of Russia.

He was familiar with what in my judgment are the two most interesting countries of Europe.

Paul Schmitz was a timid person of an inquiring turn of mind, whose youth had been tempestuous. I made a number of excursions with Schmitz to Toledo, to El Paular and to the Springs of Urbión; a year or two later we visited Switzerland several times together.

Schmitz was like an open window through which I looked out upon an unknown world. I held long conversations with him upon life, literature, art and philosophy.

I recall that I took him one Sunday afternoon to the home of Don Juan
Valera.

When Schmitz and I arrived, Valera had just settled down for the afternoon to listen to his daughter, who was reading aloud one of the latest novels of Zola.

Valera, Schmitz and I sat chatting for perhaps four or five hours. There was no subject that we could all agree upon. Valera and I were no sooner against the Swiss than the Swiss and Valera were against me, or the Swiss and I against Valera, and then each flew off after his own opinion.

Valera, who saw that the Swiss and I were anarchists, said it was beyond his comprehension how any man could conceive of a state of general well being.

"Do you mean to say that you believe," he said to me, "that there will ever come a time when every man will be able to set a bowl of oysters from Arcachón upon his table and top it off with a bottle of champagne of first-rate vintage, besides having a woman sitting beside him in a Worth gown?"

"No, no, Don Juan," I replied. "In the eyes of the anarchist, oysters, champagne, and Worth are mere superstitions, myths to which we attach no importance. We do not spend our time dreaming about oysters, while champagne is not nectar to our tastes. All that we ask is to live well, and to have those about us live well also."

We could not convince each other. When Schmitz and I left Valera's house it was already night, and we found ourselves absorbed in his talents and his limitations.

ORTEGA Y GASSET

Ortega y Gasset impresses me as a traveller who has journeyed through the world of culture. He moves upon a higher level, which it is difficult to reach, and upon which it is still more difficult to maintain oneself.

It may be that Ortega has no great sympathy for my manner of living, which is insubordinate; it may be that I look with unfriendly eye upon his ambitious and aristocratic sympathies; nevertheless, he is a master who brings glad news of the unknown—that is, of the unknown to us.

Doctor San Martín was fond of telling how he was sitting one day upon a bench in the Retiro, reading.

"Are you reading a novel?" inquired a gentleman, sitting down beside him.

"No, I am studying."

"What! Studying at your age?" exclaimed the gentleman, amazed.

The same remark might be made to me: "What! Sitting under a master at your age?"

As far as I am concerned, every man who knows more than I do is my master.

I know very well that philosophy and metaphysics are nothing to the great mass of physicians who pick up their science out of foreign reviews, adding nothing themselves to what they read; nor, for that matter, are they to most Spanish engineers, who are skilled in doing sufficiently badly today what was done in England and Germany very well thirty years ago; and the same thing is true of the apothecaries. The practical is all that these people concede to exist, but how do they know what is practical? Considering the matter from the practical point of view, there can be no doubt but that civilization has attained a high development wherever there have been great metaphysicisms, and then with the philosophers have come the inventors, who between them are the glory of mankind. Unamuno despises inventors, but in this case it is his misfortune. It is far easier for a nation which is destitute of a tradition of culture to improvise an histologist or a physicist, than a philosopher or a real thinker.

Ortega y Gasset, the only approach to a philosopher whom I have ever known, is one of the few Spaniards whom it is interesting to hear talk.

A PSEUDO-PATRON

Although a man may never have amounted to anything, and will probably continue in much the same case, that is to say never amounting to anything, yet there are persons who will take pride in having given him his start in the world—in short, upon having made him known. Señor Ruiz Contreras has set up some such absurd claim in regard to me. According to Ruiz Contreras, he brought me into public notice through a review which he published in 1899, under the title Revista Nueva. Thus, according to Ruiz Contreras, I am known, and have been for eighteen years! Although it may seem scarcely worth while to expose such an obvious joke, I should like to clear up this question for the benefit of any future biographers. Why should I not indulge the hope of having them?

In 1899, Ruiz Contreras invited my co-operation in a weekly magazine, in which I was to be both stockholder and editor. Those days already seem a long way off. At first I refused, but he insisted; at length we agreed that I should write for the magazine and share in meeting the expenses, in company with Ruiz Contreras, Reparaz, Lassalle and the novelist Matheu.

I made two or three payments, and moved down some of my pictures and furniture to the office in consequence, until the time came when I began to feel that it was humorous for me to be paying for publishing my articles, when I was perfectly well able to dispose of them to any other sheet. Upon my cutting off payments, Ruiz Contreras informed me that a number of the stockholders, among whom was Icaza, who had replaced Reparaz, took the position that if I did not pay, I should not be permitted to write for the magazine.

"Very well, I shall not write." And I ceased to write.

Previous to my connection with the Revista Nueva, I had contributed articles to El Liberal, El Pais, El Globo, La Justicia, and La Voz de Guipúzcoa, as well as to other publications.

A year after my contributions to the Revista Nueva, I brought out Sombre Lives, which scarcely sold one hundred copies, and, then, a little later, The House of Aizgorri, the sale of which fell short of fifty.

At this time, Martínez Ruiz published a comedy, The Power of Love, for which I provided a prologue, and I went about with the publisher, Rodríguez Serra, through the bookshops, peddling the book. In a shop on the Plaza de Santa Ana, Rodríguez Serra asked the proprietor, not altogether without a touch of malice:

"What do you think of this book?"

"It would be all right," answered the proprietor, who did not know me, "if anybody knew who Martínez Ruiz was; and who is this Pío Baroja?"

Señor Ruiz Contreras says that he made me known, but the fact is that nobody knew me in those days; Señor Ruiz Contreras flatters himself that he did me a great favour by publishing my articles, at a cost to me, at the very least, of two or three duros apiece.

If this is to be a patron of letters, I should like to patronize half the planet.

As for literary influence, Ruiz Contreras never had any upon me. He was an admirer of Arsène Houssage, Paul Bourget, and other novelists with a sophisticated air, who never meant anything to me. The theatre also obsessed him, a malady which I have never suffered, and he was a devotee of the poet, Zorrilla, in which respect I was unable to share his enthusiasm, nor can I do so today. Finally, he was a political reactionary, while I am a man of radical tendencies.

XIII

PARISIAN DAYS

For the past twenty years I have been in the habit of visiting Paris, not for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the city—to see it once is enough; nor do I go in order to meet French authors, as, for the most part, they consider themselves so immeasurably above Spaniards that there is no way in which a self-respecting person can approach them. I go to meet the members of the Spanish colony, which includes some types which are most interesting.

I have gathered a large number of stories and anecdotes in this way, some of which I have incorporated in my books.

ESTÉVANEZ

Don Nicolás Estévanez was a good friend of mine. During my sojourns in
Paris, I met him every afternoon in the Café de la Fleur in the
Boulevard St. Germain.

When I was writing The Last of the Romantics and Grotesque Tragedies, Estévanez furnished me with data and information concerning life in Paris under the Second Empire.

When I last saw him in the autumn of 1913, he made a practice of coming to the café with a paper scribbled over with notes, to assist his memory to recall the anecdotes which he had it in mind to tell.

I can see him now in the Café de la Fleur, with his blue eyes, his long white beard, his cheeks, which were still rosy, his calm and always phlegmatic air.

Once he became much excited. Javier Bueno and I happened on him in a café on the Avenue d'Orleans, not far from the Lion de Belfort. Bueno asked some questions about the recent attempt by Moral to assassinate the King in Madrid, and Estévanez suddenly went to pieces. An anarchist told me afterwards that Estévanez had carried the bomb which was thrown by Morral in Madrid, from Paris to Barcelona, at which port he had taken ship for Cuba, by arrangement with the Duke of Bivona.

I believe this story to have been a pure fabrication, but I feel perfectly certain that Estévanez knew beforehand that the crime was to be attempted.

MY VERSATILITY ACCORDING TO BONAFOUX

Speaking of Estévanez, I recall also Bonafoux, whom I saw frequently. According to González de la Peña, the painter, he held my versatility against me.

"Bonafoux," remarked Peña, "feels that you are too versatile and too volatile."

"Indeed? In what way?"

"One day you entered the bar and said to Bonafoux that a testimonial banquet ought to be organized for Estévanez, enlarging upon it enthusiastically. Bonafoux answered: 'Go ahead and make the preparations, and we will all get together.' When you came into the café a few nights later, Bonafoux asked: 'How about that banquet?' 'What banquet?' you replied. It had already passed out of your mind. Now, tell me: Is this true?" inquired Peña.

"Yes, it is. We all have something of Tartarin in us, more or less. We talk and we talk, and then we forget what we say."

Other Parisian types return to me when I think of those days. There was a Cuban journalist, who was satisfactorily dirty, of whom Bonafoux used to say that he not only ate his plate of soup but managed to wash his face in it at the same time. There was a Catalan guitar player, besides some girls from Madrid who walked the tight rope, whom we used to invite to join us at the café from time to time. And then there was a whole host of other persons, all more or less shabby, down at the heel and picturesque.

XIV

LITERARY ENMITIES

Making our entrance into the world of letters hurling contradictions right and left, the young men of our generation were received by the writers of established reputation with unfriendly demonstrations. As was natural, this was not only the attitude of the older writers, but it extended to our contemporaries in years as well, even to those who were most modern.

THE ENMITY OF DICENTA

Among those who cherished a deadly hatred of me was Dicenta. It was an antipathy which had its origin in the realm of ideas, and it was accentuated subsequently by an article which I contributed to El Globo upon his drama Aurora, in which I maintained that Dicenta was not a man of new or broad ideas, but completely preoccupied with the ancient conceptions of honesty and honour. One night in the Café Fornos—I am able to vouch for the truth of this incident because, years afterwards, he told me the story himself—Dicenta accosted a young man who was sitting at an adjacent table taking supper, and attempted to draw him into discussion, under the impression that it was I. The young man was so frightened that he never dared to open his mouth.

"Come," shouted Dicenta, "we shall settle this matter at once."

"I have nothing to settle with you," replied the young man.

"Yes, sir, you have; you have stated in an article that my ideas are not revolutionary."

"I never stated anything of the kind."

"What is that?"

"No, sir."

"But aren't you Pío Baroja?"

"I am not, sir."

Dicenta turned on his heel and marched back to his seat.

Sometime later, Dicenta and I became friends, although we were never very intimate, because he felt that I did not appreciate him at his full worth. And it was the truth.

THE POSTHUMOUS ENMITY OF SAWA

I met Alejandro Sawa one evening at the Café Fornos, where I had gone with a friend.

As a matter of fact, I had never read anything which he had written, but his appearance impressed me. Once I followed him in the street with the intention of speaking to him, but my courage failed at the last moment. A number of months later, I met him one summer afternoon on the Recoletos, when he was in the company of a Frenchman named Cornuty. Cornuty and Sawa were conversing and reciting verses; they took me to a wine-shop in the Plaza de Herradores, where they drank a number of glasses, which I paid for, whereupon Sawa asked me to lend him three pesetas. I did not have them, and told him so.

"Do you live far from here?" asked Alejandro, in his lofty style.

"No, near by."

"Very well then, you can go home and bring me the money."

He issued this command with such an air of authority that I went home and brought him the money. He came to the door of the wine-shop, took it from me, and then said:

"You may go now."

This was the way in which insignificant bourgeois admirers were treated in the school of Baudelaire and Verlaine.

Later again, when I brought out Sombre Lives, I sometimes saw Sawa in the small hours of the morning, his long locks flowing, and followed by his dog. He always gripped my hand with such force that it did me some hurt, and then he would say to me, in a tragic tone:

"Be proud! You have written Sombre Lives."

I took it as a joke.

One day Alejandro wrote me to come to his house. He was living on the Cuesta de Santo Domingo. I betook myself there, and he made me a proposition which was obviously preposterous. He handed me five or six articles, written by him, which had already been published, together with some notes, saying that if I would add certain material, we should then be able to make up a book of "Parisian Impressions," which could appear under the names of us both.

I read the articles and did not care for them. When I went to return them, he asked me:

"What have you done?"

"Nothing. I think it would be difficult for us to collaborate; there is no possible bond of unity in what we write."

"How is that?"

"You are one of these eloquent writers, and I am not."

This remark gave great offence.

Another reason for Alejandro's enmity was an opinion expressed by my brother, Ricardo.

Ricardo wished to paint the portrait of Manuel Sawa in oils, as Manuel had marked personality at that time, when he still wore a beard.

"But here am I," said Alejandro. "Am I not a more interesting subject to be painted?"

"No, no, not at all," we all shouted together—this took place in the
Café de Lisboa—"Manuel has more character."

Alejandro said nothing, but, a few moments later, he rose, looked at himself in the glass, arranged his flowing locks, and then, glaring at us from top to toe, while he pronounced the letter with the utmost distinctness, he said simply:

"M…." and walked out of the café.

Some time passed before Alejandro heard that I had put him into one of my novels and he conceived a certain dislike for me, in spite of which we saw each other now and then, always conversing affectionately.

One day he sent for me to come and see him. He was living in the Calle del Conde Duque. He was in bed, already blind. His spirit was as high as before, while his interest in literary matters remained the same. His brother, Miguel, who was present, happened to say during the conversation that the hat I wore, which I had purchased in Paris a few days previously, had a flatter brim than was usual. Alejandro asked to examine it, and busied himself feeling of the brim.

"This is a hat," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "that a man can wear with long hair." Some months subsequent to his death a book of his, Light Among the Shadows, was published, in which Alejandro spoke ill of me, although he had a good word for Sombre Lives.

He called me a country-man, said that my bones were misshapen, and then stated that glory does not go hand in hand with tuberculosis. Poor Alejandro! He was sound at heart, an eloquent child of the Mediterranean, born to orate in the lands of the sun, but he took it into his head that it was his duty to make himself over into the likeness of one of the putrid products of the North.

SEMI-HATRED ON THE PART OF SILVERIO LANZA

A mutual friend, Antonio Gil Campos, introduced me to Silverio Lanza.

Silverio Lanza was a man of great originality, endowed with an enormous fund of thwarted ambition and pride, which was only natural, as he was a notably fine writer who had not yet met with success, nor even with the recognition which other younger writers enjoyed.

The first time that I saw Lanza, I remember how his eyes sparkled when I told him that I liked his books. Nobody ever paid any attention to him in those days.

Silverio Lanza was a singular character. At times he seemed benevolent, and then again there were times when he would appear malignant in the extreme.

His ideas upon the subject of literature were positively absurd. When I sent him Sombre Lives, he wrote me an unending letter in which he attempted to convince me that I ought to append a lesson or moral, to every tale. If I did not wish to write them, he offered to do it himself.

Silverio thought that literature was not to be composed like history, according to Quintilian's definition, ad narrandum, but ad probandum.

When I gave him The House of Aizgorri, he was outraged by the optimistic conclusion of the book, and advised me to change it. According to his theory, if the son of the Aizgorri family came to a bad end, the daughter ought to come to a bad end also.

Being of a somewhat fantastical turn of mind, Silverio Lanza was full of political projects that were extraordinary.

I remember that one of his ideas was that we ought all to write the King a personal note of congratulation upon his attaining his majority.

"It is the most revolutionary thing that can be done at such a time," insisted Lanza, apparently quite convinced.

"I am unable to see it," I replied. Azorín and myself were of the opinion that it was a ridiculous proceeding which would never produce the desired result.

Another of Lanza's hobbies was an aggressive misogyny.

"Baroja, my friend," he would say to me, "you are too gallant and respectful in your novels with the ladies. Women are like laws, they are to be violated."

I laughed at him.

One day I was walking with my friend Gil Campos and my cousin Goñi, when we happened on Silverio Lanza, who took us to the Café de San Sebastián, where we sat down in the section facing the Plazuela del Angel. It was a company that was singularly assorted.

Silverio reverted to the theme that women should be handled with the rod. Gil Campos proceeded to laugh, being gifted with an ironic vein, and made fun of him. For my part, I was tired of it, so I said to Lanza:

"See here, Don Juan" (his real name was Juan Bautista Amorós), "what you are giving us now is literature, and poor literature at that. You are not, and I am not, able to violate law and women as we see fit. That may be all very well for Caesars and Napoleons and Borgias, but you are a respectable gentleman who lives in a little house at Getafe with your wife, and I am a poor man myself, who manages as best he may to make a living. You would tremble in your boots if you ever broke a law, or even a municipal ordinance, and so would I. As far as women are concerned, we are both of us glad to take what we can get, if we can get anything, and I am afraid that neither of us is ever going to get very much, despite the fact"—I added by way of a humorous touch—"that we are two of the most distinguished minds in Europe."

My cousin Goñi replied to this with the rare tact that was characteristic of him, arguing that within the miserable sphere of tangible reality I was right, while Lanza moved upon a higher plane, which was more ideal and more romantic. He went on to add that Lanza and he were both Berbers, and so violent and passionate, while I was an Aryan, although a vulgar Aryan, whose ideas were simply those which were shared by everybody.

Lanza was not satisfied with my cousin's explanation and departed with a marked lack of cordiality.

Since that time, Silverio has regarded me with mixed emotions, half friendly, half the reverse, although in one of his latest books, The Surrender of Santiago, he has referred to me as a great friend and a great writer. I suspect, however, that he does not love me.

XV

THE PRESS

OUR NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

I have always been very much interested in the newspaper and periodical press, and in everything that has any connection with printing. When my father, my grandfather, and great grandfather set up struggling papers in a provincial capital, it may be said that they were not printers in vain.

Because of my fondness for newspapers and magazines, it is a grief to me that the Spanish press should be so weak, so poor, so pusillanimous and stiff-jointed.

Of late, while the foreign press has been expanding and widening its scope, ours has been standing still.

There is, of course, an economic explanation to justify our deficiency, but this is valid only in the matter of quantity, and not as to quality. Comparing our press with that of the rest of the world, a rosary of negation might easily be made up in this fashion:

Our press does not concern itself with what is of universal interest.

Our press does not concern itself with what is of national interest.

Our press does not concern itself with literature.

Our press does not concern itself with philosophy.

And so on to infinity.

Corpus Barga has told me that when Señor Groizard, a relative of his, was ambassador to the Vatican, Leo XIII once inquired of him, in a jargon of Italo-Spanish, in the presence of the papal secretary, Cardinal Rampolla:

"Does the Señor Ambasciatore speak Italian?"

"No, not Italian, although I understand it a little."

"Does the Señor Ambasciatore speak English?"

"No, not English, I do not speak that," replied Groizard.

"Does the Señor Ambasciatore speak German?"

"No German, no Dutch; not at all."

"No doubt then the Señor Ambasciatore speaks French?"

"French? No. I am able to translate it a little, but I do not speak it."

"Then what does the Señor Ambasciatore speak?" asked Leo XIII, smiling that Voltairian smile of his at his secretary.

"Then Señor Ambasciatore speaks a heavy back-country dialect called
Extramaduran," replied Rampolla del Tindaro, bending over to His
Holiness's ear.

The Spanish press has made a resolution, now of long standing, to speak nothing but a back-country dialect called Extramaduran.

Our Journalists

Our journalists supply the measure of our journals. When the great names are those of Miguel Moya, Romeo, Rocamora and Don Pío, what are we to think of the little fellows?

Speaking generally, the Spanish journalist is interested in politics, in theatres, in bull fights, and in nothing else; whatever is beyond these, does not concern him. Not even the feuilleton attracts his attention. A wooden, highly mannered phrase sponsored by Maura, is much more stimulating to his mind than the most sensational piece of news.

The Spanish newspaper man is endowed with an extraordinary lack of imagination and of curiosity. I recall having given a friend, who was a journalist, a little book of Nietzsche's to read, which he returned with the remark that he had not been able to get through it, as it was insufferable drivel. I have heard the same opinion, or similar ones, expressed by journalists of Ibsen, Schopenhauer, Dostoievsky, Stendhal and all the most stimulating minds of Europe.

The wretched Saint Aubin, wretched certainly as a critic, used to ridicule Tolstoi and the illness which resulted in his death, maintaining that it was nothing more than an advertisement. The most benighted vulgarity reigns in our press.

Upon occasion, vulgarity goes hand in hand with an ignorance which is astounding. I remember going to a café on the Calle de Alcalá known as la Maison Dorée one afternoon with Regoyos. Felipe Trigo, the novelist, sat down at our table with a friend of his, a journalist, I believe, from America. I have never been a friend of Trigo's, and could never take any interest either in the man or his work, which to my mind is tiresome and commercially erotic, besides being absolutely devoid of all charm.

Regoyos, who is effusive by nature, soon became engaged in conversation with them, and the talk turned upon artistic subjects, in which he was interested, and then to his travels abroad.

Trigo put in his oar and uttered a number of preposterous statements. In particular, he described a ship which had unloaded at Milan. When Regoyos pointed out that Milan was not a seaport, he replied:

"Probably it was some other place then. What is the difference?"

He continued with a string of geographical and anthropological blunders, which were concurred in by the journalist, while Regoyos and I sat by in amazement.

When we left the café, Regoyos inquired:

"Could they have been joking?"

"No; nonsense. They do not believe that such things are worth knowing. They think they are petty details which might be useful to railway porters. Trigo imagines that he is a magician, who understands the female mind."

"Well, does he?" asked Regoyos, with naïve innocence.

"How can he understand anything? The poor fellow is ignorant. His other attainments are on a par with his geography."

The ignorance of authors and journalists is accompanied as a matter of course by a total want of comprehension. A number of years ago, a rich young man called at my house, intending to found a review. During the conversation, he explained that he was a Murcian, a lawyer and a follower of Maura.

Finally, after expounding his literary ideas, he informed me that Ricardo León, who at that time had just published his first novel, would, in his opinion, come to be acknowledged as the first novelist of Europe. He also assured me that Dickens's humour was absolutely vulgar, cheap and out of date.

"I am not surprised that you should think so," I said to him. "You are
from Murcia, you are a lawyer and a Maurista; naturally, you like
Ricardo León, and it is equally natural that you should not like
Dickens."

Persons who imagine that it is of no consequence whether Milan is a seaport or not, who believe that Nietzsche is a drivelling ass, and who make bold to tell us that Dickens is a cheap author—in one word, young gentlemen lawyers who are partisans of Maura, are the people who provide copy for our press. How can the Spanish press be expected to be different from what it is?

AMERICANS

Unquestionably, Spaniards suffer much from the uncertainty of information and narrowness of view inevitable to those who live apart from the main currents of life.

In comparison with the English, the Germans, or the French, whether we like it or not, we appear provincial. We are provincials who possess more or less talent, but nevertheless we are provincials.

So it is that an Italian, a Russian, or a Swede prefers to read a book by a mediocre Parisian, such as Marcel Prévost, to one by a writer of genuine talent, such as Galdós; it also explains why the canvases of second rate painters such as David, Gericault, or Ingres are more highly esteemed in the market than those of a painter of genius like Goya.

To be provincial has its virtues as well as its defects. At times the provincial are accompanied by universal elements, which blend and form a masterpiece. This was the case with Don Quixote, with the etchings of Goya and the dramas of Ibsen. Similarly, among new peoples, provincial stupidity will often form a blend with an obtuseness which is world-wide. The aridness and infertility characteristic of the soil combine with the detritus of fashion and the follies of the four quarters of the globe. The result is a child-like type, petulant, devoid of virtue, and utterly destitute of a single manly quality. This is the American type. America is par excellence the continent of stupidity.

The American has not yet outgrown the monkey in him and remains in the imitative stage.

I have no particular reason to dislike Americans. My hostility towards them arises merely from the fact that I have never known one who had the air of being anybody, who impressed me as a man.

You frequently meet a man in the interior of Spain, in some small village, perhaps, whose conversation conveys the impression that he is a real man, wrought out of the ore that is most human and most noble. At such times one becomes reconciled to one's country, for all its charlatans and hordes of sharpers.

An American never appears to be calm, serene and collected. There are plenty who seem to be wild, impulsive creatures, driven on by sanguinary fury, while others disclose the vanity of the chorus girl, or a self-conceit which is wholly ridiculous.

My lack of sympathy for Spanish-Americans extends to their literary productions. Everything that I have read by South Americans, and I bear in mind the not disinterested encomiums of Unamuno, I have found to be both poor and deficient in substance.

Beginning with Sarmiento's Facundo, which is heavy, cheap, and uninteresting, and coming down to the latest productions of Ingenieros, Manuel Ugarte, Ricardo Rojas and Contreras, this is true without exception.

What a deluge of shoddy snobbery and vulgar display pours out of
America!

It is often argued that Spaniards should eulogize South Americans for political reasons. This is one of many recommendations which proceed from the craniums of gentlemen who top themselves off with silk hats and who carry a lecture inside which is in demand by Ibero-American societies.

I have no faith that this brand of politics will be productive of results.

Citizens of old, civilized countries are still sensible to flattery and compliment, but what are you to tell an Argentine who is fully convinced that Argentina is a more important country than England or Germany, because she raises a large quantity of wheat, to say nothing of a great number of cows?

Whenever Unamuno writes he decries Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and then promptly eulogizes the mighty General Aníbal Pérez and the great poet Diocleciano Sánchez, who hail from the pampas. To these fellows, such praise seems grudging enough. Salvador Rueda himself must appear tame to these hide-stretchers.

XVI

POLITICS

I have always been a liberal radical, an individualist and an anarchist. In the first place, I am an enemy of the Church; in the second place, I am an enemy of the State. When these great powers are in conflict I am a partisan of the State as against the Church, but on the day of the State's triumph, I shall become an enemy of the State. If I had lived during the French Revolution, I should have been an internationalist of the school of Anacarsis Clootz; during the struggle for liberty, I should have been one of the Carbonieri.

To the extent in which liberalism has been a destructive force, inimical to the past, it enthralls me. The fight against religious prejudice and the aristocracy, the suppression of religious communities, inheritance taxes—in short, whatever has a tendency to pulverize completely the ancient order of society, fills me with a great joy. On the other hand, insofar as liberalism is constructive, as it has been for example in its advocacy of universal suffrage, in its democracy, and in its system of parliamentary government, I consider it ridiculous and valueless as well.

Even today, wherever it is obliged to take the aggressive, it seems to me that the good in liberalism is not exhausted; but wherever it has become an accomplished fact, and is accepted as such, it neither interests me nor enlists my admiration.

VOTES AND APPLAUSE

In our present day democracy, there are only two effective sanctions: votes and applause.

Those are all. Just as in the old days men committed all sorts of crimes in order to please their sovereign, now they commit similar crimes in order to satisfy the people.

And this truth has been recognized from Aristotle to Burke.

Democracy ends in histrionism.

A man who gets up to talk before a crowd must of necessity be an actor. I have wondered from time to time if I might not have certain histrionic gifts myself; however, when I have put them to the test, I have found that they were not sufficient. I have made six or seven speeches during my brief political career. I spoke in Valencia, in a pelota court, and I delivered an address at Barcelona in the Casa del Pueblo, in both of which places I was applauded generously. Nevertheless the applause failed to intoxicate me; it produced no impression upon me whatever. It seemed too much like mere noise—noise made by men's hands, and having nothing to do with myself.

I am not good enough as an actor to be a politician.

POLITICIANS

I have never been able to feel any enthusiasm for Spanish politicians. We hear a great deal about Cánovas. Cánovas has always impressed me as being as bad an orator as he was a writer. When I first read his Bell of Huesca, I could not contain myself for laughing. As far as his speeches are concerned, I have also read a few, and find them horribly heavy, diffuse, monotonous and deficient in style. I hear that Cánovas is a great historian, but if so, I am not acquainted with that side of him.

Castelar was unquestionably a man of exceptional gifts as a writer, but he failed to take advantage of them, and they were utterly dissipated. He lacked what most Spaniards of the 19th Century lacked with him; that is, reserve.

When Echegaray was made Minister of Finance, he was already an old man. A reporter called one day to interview him at the Ministry, and Echegaray confessed that he was without any very clear idea as to just what the duties of his office were to be. When the reporter took leave of the dramatist, he remarked:

"Don José, you are not going to be comfortable here; it is cold in the building. Besides, the air is too fresh."

Echegaray replied:

"Yes, and your description suits me exactly."

This cynically cheap joke might have fallen appropriately from the tongues of the majority of Spanish politicians. Among these male bailarinas, nearly all of whom date back to the Revolution of September, we may find, indeed, some men of austere character: Salmerón, Pí y Margall and Costa. Salmerón was an inimitable actor, but an actor who was sincere in his part. He was the most marvellous orator that I have ever heard.

As a philosopher, he was of no account, and as a politician he was a calamity.

Pí y Margall, whom I met once in his own home where I went in company with Azorín, was no more a politician or a philosopher than was Salmerón. He was a journalist, a popularizer of other men's ideas, gifted with a style at once clear and concise. Pí y Margall was sincere, enamoured of ideas, and took but little thought of himself.

As to Costa, I confess that he was always antipathetic to me. Like Nakens, he was a man who lived upon the estimation in which he was held by others, pretending all the while that he attached no importance to it whatever. Aguirre Metaca once told me that while he was connected with a paper in Saragossa, he had solicited an interview with Costa, and thereupon Costa wrote the interview himself, referring to himself here and there in it as the Lion of Graus. I cannot accept Costa as a modern European, intellectually. He was a figure for the Cortes of Cadiz, solemn, pompous, becollared and rhetorical. He was one of those actors who abound in southern countries, who are laid to rest in their graves without ever having had the least idea that their entire lives have been nothing but stage spectacles.

REVOLUTIONISTS

Whether politicians or authors, the Spanish revolutionists always smack to my mind of the property room, and especially is this true of the authors. Zozaya, Morote and Dicenta have passed for many years now as terrible men, both destructive and great innovators. But how ridiculous! Zozaya, like Dicenta, has never done anything but manipulate the commonplace, failing to impart either lightness or novelty to it, as have Valera and Anatole France, succeeding only on the other hand in making it more plumbeous and indigestible.

Speaking of Luis Morote, against whom I urge nothing as a man, he has always been a bugbear to me, the personification of dullness, of vulgarity, of everything that lacks interest and charm. I can conceive nothing lower than an article by Morote.

"What talent that man has! What a revolutionary personality!" they used to say in Valencia, and once the janitor at the Club added: "To think I knew that man when he was only this high!" And he held out his hand about a metre above the ground.

Spain has never produced any revolutionists. Don Nicolás Estévanez, who imagined himself an anarchist, would fly into a rage if he read an article which concealed a gallicism in it.

"Do not bother your head about gallicisms," I used to say to him. "What do they matter, anyway?"

No, we have never had any revolutionists in Spain. That is, we have had only one: Ferrer.

He was certainly not a man of great mind. When he talked, he was on the level of Morote and Zozaya, which is nothing more nor less than the level of everybody else; but when it came to action, he did amount to something, and that something was dangerous.

LERROUX

My only experience in politics was gained with Lerroux.

One Sunday, seven or eight years ago, on coming out of my house and crossing the Plaza de San Marcial, I observed that a great crowd had gathered.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"Lerroux is coming," they told me.

I delayed a moment and happened on Villar, the composer, among the crowd. We fell to talking of Lerroux and what he might accomplish. A procession was soon formed, which we followed, and we found ourselves in front of the editorial offices of El Pais.

"Shall we go in?" asked Villar. "Do you know Lerroux?"

I had met Lerroux in the days when El Progreso was still published, having called once with Maeztu at his office; afterwards I saw him in Barcelona in a large shed, which, if I recall rightly, went by the name of "La Fraternidad Republicana," and then I was accompanied by Azorín and Junoy.

Villar and I went upstairs and greeted Lerroux in the offices of El
Pais.

"Estévanez has spoken of you to me," he said. "Is he well?"

"Yes, very well."

A few days later, Lerroux invited me to dinner at the Café Inglés. Lerroux, Fuente and I dined together, and then fell to talking. Lerroux asked me to join his party, whereupon I pointed out the qualifications which were lacking in me, which were necessary to a politician. Shortly after, I was nominated as a candidate for the City Council, and I addressed a number of meetings, although always coldly, and never at high tension.

While I was with Lerroux, I was never treated save with consideration.

Why did I leave his party? Chiefly because of differences as to ideas and as to tactics. Lerroux wished to organize his party into a party of law and order, so that it might be capable of governing, and also to have it friendly with the Army. I was of the opinion that it ought to be a revolutionary party, not in the sense that I was thinking of erecting barricades, but I wished it to contest, to upset things, and to protest against injustice.

What Lerroux wanted was a party of orators who could speak at public meetings, a party of office-holders, councillors, provincial deputies and the like, while I held, and still hold, that the only efficacious revolutionary weapon is the printed page. Lerroux was anxious to transform the radical party into something aristocratic and Castilian; I desired to see it retain its Catalan character, and continue to wear blouses and rope-soled shoes.

I withdrew from the party for these reasons, to which I may add Lerroux's attitude of indifference upon the occasion of the execution of the stoker of the "Numancia."

Not many months after, I met him on the Carrera de San Jerónimo, and he said to me:

"I have read your diatribes."

"They were not directed against you, but against your politics. I shall never speak ill of you, because I have no cause."

"Yes," he replied, "I know that at heart you are one of my friends."

AN OFFER

A number of years ago, when the Conservatives were in power and Dato was President of the Ministry, Azorín brought me word that Sánchez Guerra, then Minister of the Interior, wished to see me and to have a little talk, as perhaps some way might be arranged by which I might be made deputy. During the afternoon, I accompanied Azorín to the Ministry, and we saw the Minister.

He informed me that he would like to have me enter the Congress.

"I should like to myself," I replied, "but it would appear to me rather difficult."

"But is there not some town where you are well known, and where you have influence?"

"No, none whatever."

"How would you like then to be deputy to represent the Government?"

"As a regular?"

"Yes."

"As a Conservative?"

"Yes."

I thought a moment and said: "No, I can never be a Conservative, however it might suit my interest to be so. Try as hard as I might, I should never succeed."

"That is the only way in which we can make you deputy."

"Well, it cannot be helped! I must resign myself then to amount to nothing."

Thanking the Minister for his kindness. Azorín and I walked out of the
Ministry of the Interior.

SOCIALISTS

As for Socialists, I have never cared to have anything to do with them. One of the most offensive things about Socialists, which is more offensive than their pedantry, than their charlatanry, than their hypocrisy, is their inquisitorial instinct for prying into other people's lives. Whether Pablo Iglesias travels first or third class, has been for years one of the principal topics of dispute between Socialists and their opponents.

Fifteen years ago I was in Tangier, where I had been sent by the Globo, and, upon my return, a newspaper man who had socialistic ideas, reproached me:

"You talk a great deal about the working man, but I see you were living in the best hotel in Tangier."

I answered: "In the first place, I have never spoken of the workingman with any fervour. Furthermore, I am not such a slave as to be too cowardly to take what life offers as it comes, as you are. I take what I can that I want, and when I do not take it, it is because I cannot get it."