Part 2

[Footnote 1: The complete title of the work is _Historia de los Templos de España, publicada bajo la protección de SS. MM. AA. y muy reverendos señores arzobispos y obispos--dirigida por D. Juan de la Puerta Vizcaino y D. Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. Tomo I, Madrid, 1857. Imprenta y Estereotipia Española de los Señores Nieto y Compañía._]

Essentially an artist in temperament, he viewed all things from the artist's standpoint. His distaste for politics was strong, and his lack of interest in political intrigues was profound. "His artistic soul, nurtured in the illustrious literary school of Seville," says Correa, "and developed amidst Gothic Cathedrals, lacy Moorish and stained-glass windows, was at ease only in the field of tradition. He felt at home in a complete civilization, like that of the Middle Ages, and his artisticopolitical ideas and his fear of the ignorant crowd made him regard with marked predilection all that was aristocratic and historic, without however refusing, in his quick intelligence, to recognize the wonderful character of the epoch in which he lived. Indolent, moreover, in small things,--and for him political parties were small things,--he was always to be found in the one in which were most of his friends, and in which they talked most of pictures, poetry, cathedrals, kings, and nobles. Incapable of hatred, he never placed his remarkable talent as a writer at the service of political animosities, however certain might have been his gains."[1]

[Footnote 1: Ramón Rodriguez Correa, _Prólogo_, in _Obras de Becquer_, vol. I, xvi.]

Early in his life in Madrid, Gustavo came under the influence of a charming young woman, Julia Espín y Guillén.[1] Her father was director of the orchestra in the Teatro Real, and his home was a rendezvous of young musicians, artists, and _littérateurs_. There Gustavo, with Correa, Manuel del Palacio, Augusto Ferrán, and other friends, used to gather for musical and literary evenings, and there Gustavo used to read his verses. These he would bring written on odd scraps of paper, and often upon calling cards, in his usual careless fashion.

[Footnote 1: She later married Don Benigno Quiroga Ballesteros, an illustrious engineer, congressman, minister of state, and man of public life, who is still living. She died in January, 1907.]

His friends were not slow in discovering that the tall, dark, and beautiful Julia was the object of his adoration, and they advised him to declare his love openly. But his timid and retiring nature imposed silence upon his lips, and he never spoke a word of love to her. It cannot be said, moreover, that the impression created upon the young lady by the brilliant youth was such as to inspire a return of his mute devotion. Becquer was negligent in his dress and indifferent to his personal appearance, and when Julia's friends upbraided her for her hardness of heart she would reply with some such curt and cruel epigram as this: "Perhaps he would move my heart more if he affected my stomach less."[1]

[Footnote 1: Facts learned from conversation with Don Manuel del Palacio, since deceased.

The editor of this sketch is indebted to the courtesy of the Exc^{mo}. Sr. D. Benigno Quiroga Ballesteros and to his lately deceased wife, Doña Julia, the muse of at least some of Becquer's _Rimas_, for an opportunity to examine a couple of albums containing some of the poet's verse and a most interesting collection of pencil sketches, which but confirm his admiration for Becquer's artistic talent. Here is a list of the sketches:

_First Album:_

Lucia di Lamermoor--Eleven sketches, including frontispiece.

A dream, or rather a nightmare, in which a man is pictured in a restless sleep, with a small devil perched upon his knees, who causes to fly as a kite above the sleeper's head a woman in graceful floating garments.

A fat and jolly horned devil in the confessional box, with a confessor of the fair sex kneeling at one side, while at the extreme right two small acolytes point out to each other a suspicious looking tail that protrudes from beneath her skirts, thus stamping her as Satan's own.

A belfry window with a swinging bell, and bestriding the bell a skeleton tightly clutching the upper part of it--ringing the _ánimas_ perhaps.

Gustavo himself seated smoking, leaning back in his chair, and in the smoke that rises a series of women, some with wings.

A nun in horror at discovering, as she turns down the covers of her bed, a merry devil.

A woman's coffin uncovered by the sexton, while a lover standing by exclaims, "¡¡Cáscaras!! ¡cómo ha cambiado!"

A scene at the _Teatro Real_ with Señor Espin y Guillén in a small group behind the scenes, and a prima donna singing. Actors standing apart in the wings.

A visit to the cemetery. A skeleton thrusting out his head from his burial niche, and a young man presenting his card. "DIFUNTO: No recibo. VISITANTE: Pues hai (_sic_) queda la targeta (_sic_)."

A fine sketch of "Eleonora," a stately form in rich fifteenth-century garb.

A number of sketches of women, knights, monks, devils, soldiers, skeletons, etc.

_Second Album: Les morts pow rire, Bizarreries dédiées à Mademoiselle Julie, par G. A. Becker (sic)_.

Fantastic frontispiece of skulls, bones, and leafy fronds, and two young lovers seated, sketching.

Skeletons playing battledore and shuttlecock with skulls.

A tall slim skeleton and a round short one.

Skeletons at a ball.

A skeleton widow visiting her husband's grave.

The husband returning her visit, and coming to share her lunch in the park.

A circus of skeletons, in two scenes: (1) Leaping through the hoop. (2) One skeleton balancing himself, head downward, on the head of another who is standing.

A skeleton singer on the stage.

A skeleton horse leaping a hurdle.

A skeleton drum-major with his band.

A skeleton bull-fight.

A duel between skeletons.

A tournament on skeleton horses.

A woman recently deceased, surrounded by skeletons offering their compliments. They are presented by one of their number, with hat in hand.

A balcony courting scene between skeleton lovers.

The word _FIN_ in bones concludes the series of grotesque and uncanny sketches, which but emphasize a fact ever present in the poet's mind--that while we are in life we _are_ in death.]

Finding his devotion to Julia unrequited, Becquer, in a rebellious mood, and having come under the influence of the charms and blandishments of a woman of Soria, a certain Casta Estéban y Navarro, contracted, in or about the year 1861, an unfortunate marriage, which embittered the rest of his life and added cares and expenses which he could ill support. He lived with his wife but a short time, during which period two sons were born to them--Gustavo, whose later career was unfortunately not such as to bring credit to the memory of his illustrious father, and, Jorge, who died young. Becquer was passionately fond of his children, and succeeded in keeping them with him after the separation from his wife. They were constantly the objects of his affectionate solicitude, and his last thoughts were for them.

About 1858 the newspaper _El Contemporáneo_ had been founded by the able and broad-minded Jose Luis Albareda, and Correa, who was associated with the management, succeeded in obtaining for his friend a position on its staff. Becquer entered upon his new labors in 1861, and was a fairly regular contributor until the suppression of the paper. Here he published the greater part of his legends and tales, as well as his remarkable collection of letters _Desde mi Celda_ ("From my Cell"). The following year his brother Valeriano, who up to that time had exercised his talents as a genre painter in Seville, came to join him in Madrid. He too had been unfortunate in his domestic relations, and the brothers joined in sympathy to form a new household. A period of comparative comfort seemed to open up before them. This period was of short duration, however; for Gustavo (who was never strong) soon fell ill, and was obliged to withdraw from the capital, in search of purer air, to the historic monastery of Veruela, situated on the Moncayo, a mountain in northern Spain. His brother Valeriano accompanied him, and there they passed a year in complete isolation from the rest of the world. The spur of necessity, however, compelled them both to keep to their work, and while Gustavo was writing such legends as that of _Maese Pérez_, and composing his fascinating _Cartas desde mi Celda_, Valeriano was painting Aragonese scenes such as La _Vendimia_ ("The Vintage") or fanciful creations such as _El Barco del Diablo_ or La _Pecadora_.

The next year the two brothers returned to the capital, and Gustavo, together with his friend D. Felipe Vallarino, began the publication of _La Gaceta literaria_, of brief but brilliant memory. During this same year and during 1863 Gustavo continued on the staff of _El Contemporáneo_, enriching its pages with an occasional legend of singular beauty.

At the Baths of Fitero in Navarre, whither, with his inseparable brother, he had gone to recuperate his health in the summer of 1864, Gustavo composed the fantastic legend of the _Miserere_, and others no less interesting. On his return from Fitero he continued in _El Contemporáneo_, and shortly after entered a ministerial daily, the irksome duties of which charge he bore with resignation.

At this time Luis Gonzalez Bravo, a man of _fine_ literary discrimination, whatever may be thought of him politically, was prime minister under Isabel II. He had become interested in the work of Gustavo, and, knowing the dire financial straits in which the young poet labored, he thought to diminish these anxieties and thus give him more time to devote to creative work by making him censor of novels. A new period of calm and comparative comfort began, and for the first time in his life Becquer had the leisure to carry out a long-cherished project, at once his own desire and the desire of his friends: that of gathering together in one volume all his scattered verse and of adding to the collection other poems as well that had not yet seen the light. This he did, and the completed volume so charmed his friend and patron, Gonzalez Bravo, that he offered of his own accord to write a prologue for the work and to print it at his own expense. But in 1868 came the revolution which dethroned Isabel II, and in the confusion that followed the downfall of the ministry and the hasty withdrawal of Gonzalez Bravo to the French frontier the volume of poems was lost. This was a sad blow to Becquer, but he courageously set to work to repair the loss, and with painful effort succeeded in recalling and rewriting his _Rimas_, which were published after his death in the third volume of his works by his friend Correa.

Becquer, with extreme punctiliousness, tendered his resignation as censor of novels. A pension of 10,000 reals that the government had assigned to Valeriano for the study of national customs was withdrawn, and both brothers were again deprived of permanent employment. They joined forces, and while the one sketched admirable woodcuts for the _Almanac Anual_ of Gaspar y Roig, the other wrote such original articles as _Las Hojas Secas_, or chafed under such hack work as the translation of popular novels from the French, which language he read with ease, though he did not speak it well. Gustavo had already felt and described the charm of the old Moorish city of Toledo in his _Historia de los Templos de España_, and in 1869 he and Valeriano moved their little household temporarily to the city of their dreams, with a view to finding inspiration for their pens and brushes, and thus subsistence for their joint families.[1]

[Footnote 1: It was at this time that Gustavo wrote the letter which is published for the first time on page xxxix.]

An amusing account is given by Correa of an adventure that befell the two brothers one night in Toledo as they were wandering about its streets. He says: "One magnificent moonlight night both artists decided to contemplate their beloved city bathed in the fantastic light of the chilly orb. The painter armed with pencils and the writer with his souvenirs had abandoned the old city and on a ruined wall had given themselves up for hours to their artistic chatter ... when a couple of _Guardias civiles_, who had doubtless those days been looking for marauders, approached them. They heard something of apses, squinches, ogives, and other terms as suspicious or as dangerous ... and observing the disarray of those who thus discoursed, their long beards, their excited mien, the lateness of the hour, the solitude of the place, and obeying especially that axiomatic certainty of the Spanish police to blunder, they angrily swooped down upon those night birds, and, in spite of protests and unheard explanations, took them to continue their artistic themes in the dim and horrid light of a dungeon in the Toledo jail.... We learned all this in the office of _EC Contemporáneo_, on receiving from Gustavo an explanatory letter full of sketches representing the probable passion and death of both innocents. The staff _en masse_ wrote to the mistaken jailer, and at last we saw the prisoners return safe and sound, parodying in our presence with words and pencils the famous prisons of Silvio Pellico."[1]

[Footnote 1: Correa, _op. cit._, pp. xxi-xxiii.]

In this same year, 1869, we find the brothers housed in modest quarters in the Barrio de la Concepción in the outskirts of Madrid. Here Adolfo wrote some new poems and began a translation of Dante for a _Biblioteca de grandes autores_ which had been planned and organized by _La Ilustración de Madrid_, founded by Gasset in 1870. The first number of this noteworthy paper appeared on January 12 of that year, and from its inception to the time of his death Gustavo was its director and a regular contributor.[1] His brother Valeriano illustrated many of its pages, and here one can form some idea of his skill as a portrayer of Spanish types and customs. "But who could foretell," says their friend Campillo, "that within so short a time his necrology and that of his beloved brother were to appear in this same paper?"[2]

[Footnote 1: These articles of Gustavo's have not, for the most part, been published elsewhere. There remains for the future editor of his complete works a large number of such articles, which it would be well worth while to collect.]

[Footnote 2: _La Ilustración Artística_, p. 360.]

Their life of hardship and anxiety was tearing to shreds the delicate health of the two young artists, and on September 23, 1870, Valeriano breathed his last in the arms of Gustavo. His death was a blow from which Gustavo never recovered. It was as though the mainspring was broken in a watch; and, though the wheels still turned of their own momentum, the revolutions were few in number and soon ceased. "A strange illness," says Correa, "and a strange manner of death was that! Without any precise symptom, that which was diagnosed as pneumonia turned to hepatitis, becoming in the judgment of others pericarditis, and meanwhile the patient, with his brain as clear as ever and his natural gentleness, went on submitting himself to every experiment, accepting every medicine, and dying inch by inch."[1]

[Footnote 1: Correa, _op. cit._, p. xix.]

Shortly before the end he turned to his friends who surrounded his bed, and said to them, "Acordaos de mis niños."[1] He realized that he had extended his arm for the last time in their behalf, and that now that frail support had been withdrawn. "At last the fatal moment came, and, pronouncing clearly with his trembling lips the words 'Todo mortal!', his pure and loving soul rose to its Creator."[2] He died December 22, 1870.

[Footnote 1: This fact was learned from a conversation with Don Francisco de Laiglesia, who, with Correa, Ferrán and others, was present when the poet breathed his last.]

[Footnote 2: Correa, _op. cit._, p. xx.]

Thanks to the initiative of Ramón Rodriguez Correa and to the aid of other friends, most of the scattered tales, legends, and poems of Becquer were gathered together and published by Fernando Fe, Madrid, in three small volumes. In the Prologue of the first edition Correa relates the life of his friend with sympathy and enthusiasm, and it is from this source that we glean most of the facts that are to be known regarding the poet's life. The appearance of these volumes caused a marked effect, and their author was placed by popular edict in the front rank of contemporary writers.

Becquer may be said to belong to the Romantic School, chief of whose exponents in Spain were Zorilla and Espronceda. The choice of mediaeval times as the scene of his stories, their style and treatment, as well as the personal note and the freedom of his verse, all stamp him as a Romanticist.

His legends, with one or two exceptions, are genuinely Spanish in subject, though infused with a tender melancholy that recalls the northern ballads rather than the writings of his native land. His love for old ruins and monuments, his archaeological instinct, is evident in every line. So, too, is his artistic nature, which finds a greater field for its expression in his prose than in his verse. Add to this a certain bent toward the mysterious and supernatural, and we have the principal elements that enter into the composition of these legends, whose quaint, weird beauty not only manifests the charm that naturally attaches to popular or folk tales, but is due especially to the way in which they are told by one who was at once an artist and a poet.

Zorilla has been said to be Becquer's most immediate precursor, in that he possesses the same instinct for the mysterious. But, as Blanco Garcia observes, "Becquer is less ardent than Zorilla, and preferred the strange traditions in which some unknown supernatural power hovers to those others, more probable, in which only human passions with their caprices and outbursts are involved."[1] Correa says of his legends that they "can compete with the tales of Hoffmann and of Grimm, and with the ballads of Rückert and of Uhland," and that "however fantastic they may be, however imaginary they may appear, they always contain such a foundation of truth, a thought so real, that in the midst of their extraordinary form and contexture a fact appears spontaneously to have taken place or to be able to take place without the slightest difficulty, if you but analyze the situation of the personages, the time in which they live, or the circumstances that surround them."[2]

[Footnote 1: _La Literatura Española en el Siglo XIX_, Madrid, 1891, vol. II, p. 275.]

[Footnote 2: Correa, _op. cit._, p. xxx.]

The subtle charm of such legends as _Los Ojos Verdes_, _La Corza Blanca_, _Maese Pérez el Organista_, etc., full of local color as they are, and of an atmosphere of old Spain, is hard to describe, but none the less real. One is caught by the music of the prose at the first lines, enraptured by the weird charm of the story, and held in breathless interest until the last words die away. If Becquer's phrase is not always classic, it is, on the other hand, vigorous and picturesque; and when one reflects upon the difficult conditions under which his writings were produced, in the confusion of the printing-office, or hurriedly in a miserable attic to procure food for the immediate necessities of his little family, and when one likewise recalls the fact that they were published in final book form only after the author's death, and without retouching, the wonder grows that they are written in a style so pleasing and so free from harshness.