Legends, Tales and Poems. Bécquer Gustavo Adolfo
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