Chapter 8

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."