Chapter I: Introduction

According to the Spanish critics, the novel has flourished in Spain during only two epochs--the golden age of Cervantes and the period in which we are still living. That unbroken line of romance-writing which has existed for so long a time in France and in England, is not to be looked for in the Peninsula. The novel in Spain is a re-creation of our own days; but it has made, since the middle of the nineteenth century, two or three fresh starts. The first modern Spanish novelists were what are called the _walter-scottistas_, although they were inspired as much by George Sand as by the author of _Waverley_. These writers were of a romantic order, and Fernan Caballero, whose earliest novel dates from 1849, was at their head. The Revolution of September, 1868, marked an advance in Spanish fiction, and Valera came forward as the leader of a more national and more healthily vitalised species of imaginative work. The pure and exquisite style of Valera is, doubtless, only to be appreciated by a Castilian. Something of its charm may be divined, however, even in the English translation of his masterpiece, _Pepita Jimenez_. The mystical and aristocratic genius of Valera appealed to a small audience; he has confided to the world that when all were praising but few were buying his books.

Far greater fecundity and a more directly successful appeal to the public, were, somewhat later, the characteristics of Perez y Galdos, whose vigorous novels, spoiled a little for a foreign reader by their didactic diffuseness, are well-known in this country. In the hands of Galdos, a further step was taken by Spanish fiction towards the rejection of romantic optimism and the adoption of a modified realism. In Pereda, so the Spanish critics tell us, a still more valiant champion of naturalism was found, whose studies of local manners in the province of Santander recall to mind the paintings of Teniers. About 1875 was the date when the struggle commenced in good earnest between the schools of romanticism and realism. In 1881 Galdos definitely joined the ranks of the realists with his _La Desheredada_. An eminent Spanish writer, Emilio Pardo Bazan, thus described the position some six years ago: "It is true that the battle is not a noisy one, and excites no great warlike ardour. The question is not taken up amongst us with the same heat as in France, and this from several causes. In the first place, the idealists with us do not walk in the clouds so much as they do in France, nor do the realists load their palette so heavily. Neither school exaggerates in order to distinguish itself from the other. Perhaps our public is indifferent to literature, especially to printed literature, for what is represented on the stage produces more impression."

This indifference of the Spanish reading public, which has led a living novelist to declare that a person of good position in Madrid would rather spend his money on fireworks or on oranges than on a book, has at length been in a measure dissipated by a writer who is not merely admired and distinguished, but positively popular, and who, without sacrificing style, has conquered the unwilling Spanish public. This is Armando Palacio Valdes, who was born on the 4th of October, 1853, in a hamlet of Asturias, called Entralgo, where his family had at one time a mansion which has now disappeared. The family spent only the summer there; the remainder of the year they passed in Aviles, the maritime town which Valdes describes under the name of Nieva in his novel _Marta y Maria_. From Asturias he went, when still a youth, up to Madrid to study the law as a profession. But even in the lawyer's office, his dream was to become a man of letters. His ambition took the form of obtaining at some university a chair of political economy, to which science he had, or fancied himself to have, at that time, a great proclivity.

Before terminating his legal studies, the young man published several articles in the _Revista Europea_ on philosophical and religious questions. These articles attracted the attention of the proprietor of that review, and Valdes presently joined the staff. Next year he became editor. He was at the head of the _Revista Europea_, at that time the most important periodical in Spain from a scientific point of view, for several years. During that time he published the main part of those articles of literary criticism, particularly on contemporary poets and novelists, which have since been collected in several volumes--_Los Oradores del Ateneo_ ("The Orators of the Athenaeum"); _Los Novelistas Espanoles_ ("The Spanish Novelists"); _Un Nuevo Viaje al Parnaso_ ("A New Journey to Parnassus"), sketches of the living poets of Spain; and, in particular, a very bright collection of review articles, published in conjunction with Leopoldo Alas, _La Literatura_ en 1881 ("Spanish Literature in 1881"). These gave Valdes a foremost rank among the critics of the day. He wrote no more criticism, or very little; he determined to place himself amongst those whose creative work demands the careful consideration of the best judges.

Soon after he took the direction of the _Revista_, Valdes wrote his first novel, _El Senorito Octavio_, which was not published until 1881. In 1883 he brought out his _Marta y Maria_, a book which, I know not why, is called "The Marquis of Penalta" in its English version. This novel enjoyed an extraordinary success, and had more of the graphic and sprightly manner by which Valdes has since been distinguished, than the books which immediately followed it. Spanish critics, indeed, remembering the wonderful freshness of _Marta y Maria_, still often speak of it as the best of Valdes' stories. In this same year, 1883, he married, on the day when he completed his thirty years, a young lady of sixteen. His marriage was a honeymoon of a year and a half, of which _El Idilio de un Enfermo_ ("The Idyl of an Invalid"), a short novel of 1884, portrays the earlier portion. His wife died early in 1885, leaving him with an infant son to be, as he says, "my illusion and my fascination." His subsequent career has been laborious and systematic. He has published one novel every year. In 1885 it was _Jose_, a shorter tale of sea-faring life on the stormy coast of the author's native province. About the same time appeared a collection of short stories, called _Aguas Fuertes_ ("Strong Waters").

It was not until 1886, however, that Valdes began to rank among the foremost novelists of Europe. In that year he published his great story, _Riverita,_ one of the characters in which, a charming child, became the heroine of his next book, _Maximina,_ 1887. Of this character he writes to me: "My Maximina in these two books is but a pale reflection of that being from whom Providence parted me before she was eighteen years of age. In these novels I have painted a great part of my life." A Sevillian novice, who has helped to care for Maximina in Madrid, reigns supreme in a succeeding novel, _La Hermana San Sulpicio_ ("Sister San Sulpicio"), 1889. But between these two last there comes a massive novel, describing the adventures of a journalist who founds a newspaper in the provincial town of Sarrio, by which Santander seems to be intended. This book is called _El Cuarto Poder_ ("The Fourth Power"), and was published in 1888. To these must now be added _La Espuma_ ("Froth"), of which a translation is here given. When these words are published, the original will just have appeared in Madrid. It is by the kindness of the author, in supplying us with a set of proof-sheets, that I am able to speak of a book which even the critics of Madrid have not yet seen in Spanish.

In _La Espuma_ Valdes has reverted from those country scenes and those streets of provincial cities which he has hitherto loved best to paint, and has given us a sternly satiric picture of the frothy surface of fashionable life in Madrid. From the illusions of the poor, pathetic and often beautiful, he has turned to the ugly cynicism of the wealthy. With his passion for honesty and simplicity, his heart burns within him at the parade and hollowness which he detects in aristocratic and bureaucratic Madrid. One conceives that, like his own Raimundo, he has been invited to enter it, has taken his fill of its pleasures, and has found his mouth filled with ashes. His talent for portraiture was never better employed. If he is occasionally tempted to commit the peculiarly Spanish fault of exaggeration--scarcely a fault there, where the shadows are so black and the colours so flaring--he has resisted it in his more important characters. The brutality of the Duke de Requena, the sagacity and urbanity of Father Ortega, the saintly sweetness of the Duchess, the naivete of Raimundo, the sphinx-like charm of Clementina de Osorio, with her mysterious sweetness and duplicity, these are among the salient points of characterisation which stand out in this powerful book. _La Espuma_ is a cry from the desert to those who wear soft raiment in kings' palaces. It is the ruthless tearing aside of the conventions by a Knox or a Savonarola. It is stringent satire, yet tempered with an artist's moderation, with a naturalist's self-suppression.

Those exquisite descriptions of Nature in which Valdes sparingly illuminates the pages of his country-novels, must not be looked for here. There is nothing in _La Espuma_ like the splendid approach to Seville in _La Hermana San Sulpicio_, or the noble picture of the Asturian sea-board, ravaged by the ocean, in _Jose_. The desolation of the mining district, at the close of the book, is all that we can compare with these. But one descriptive gift of Valdes, his power of rendering with sustained vivacity a varied social scene, was never better exemplified than by the dinner-party at the Osorios', by Salabert's ball to Royalty, in which Clementina ejects the _demi-mondaine_, or by the scene in Pepe's dressing-room when the mad Marquis wants to shoot him. The absence of sensational emphasis of every kind is notable. This is the result of severe self-training on the novelist's part. He has confessed himself displeased with the end of his own _Riverita_ as too theatrical, and in the prologue to _La Hermana San Sulpicio_, he wears a white sheet, and holds a penitential candle for a too stagey episode in _El Cuarto Poder_. No charge of this kind can be brought against _La Espuma_. It is closely studied from life, and is careful not to affront the modesty of nature, which loves an occasional tragic catastrophe, but loathes the artifice of a smartly constructed plot.

Of the author of so many interesting books but little has yet been told to the public. In a private letter to myself, the eminent novelist gives a brief sketch of his mode of life, so interesting that I have secured his permission to translate and print it here:--"Since my wife died," Senor Valdes writes, "my life has continued to be tranquil and melancholy, dedicated to work and to my son. During the winters, I live in Asturias, and during the summers, in Madrid. I like the company of men of the world better than that of literary folks, because the former teach me more. I am given up to the study of metaphysics. I have a passion for physical exercises, for gymnastics, for fencing, and I try to live in an evenly-balanced temper, nothing being so repugnant to me as affectation and emphasis. I find a good deal of pleasure in going to bull-fights (although I do not take my son to the Plaza dressed up like a miniature _torero_, as an American writer declares I do), and I cultivate the theatre, because to see life from the stage point of view helps me in the composition of my stories."

EDMUND GOSSE.

FROTH