A Christian Woman. condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán
To make short work with her domestic life, let it be added, that her husband’s name is Don José Quiroga, and that three children have been born to them. During the troublous times that came in with the Revolution of 1868, and throughout the reign of Amadeus, her family was in political eclipse, and with her father she traveled extensively in France and southern Europe, learning English and Italian, and from her industrious practice of keeping a diary acquiring the writing habit. On her return to Spain, she found the German philosophical influence in the ascendant, and to put herself abreast of the intellectual movement of the time, read deeply in philosophy and history. By this time she had come fully to perceive the defective nature of her education, and set herself rigorously to correct it, for some years devoting herself to the severest studies. At a literary contest in Orense, in 1876, she carried off the first prize both in prose and verse, though for three years after that she wrote nothing except occasional articles for a Madrid periodical. Finally, as a relaxation from her strenuous historical studies, she began reading novels again, beginning with contemporary English, French, and Italian writers; for in her provincial home, and in her absorption in philosophical and historical reading, she had never heard of the splendid development of the novel in her own country. At last a friend put her on the track, and then she read with deepening delight.
To her it was the chance magic touch that finally gave her genius its full vent. If a novel was thus a description of real life, and not a congeries of wild adventures, why could she not write one herself? That was the question she put to herself, and the answer came in the shape of her first novel, “Pascual López,” published in the Revista de España, and afterward separately. She began her biography of Francis de Assisi in 1880, but a temporary failure of health sent her off to Vichy. Of this journey was born her “Un Viaje de Novios,” the first chapters of which she wrote in Paris, and read to such distinguished auditors as Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Daudet. Fully conscious now of the place and method of the realistic novel, and of the high value of its development in Spain, her course was clear. Since then her novels have appeared with surprising rapidity. She has all along kept her feet on the earth, writing of what she knows, and thus it happens that most of her scenes are laid in Galicia. As a preparation for writing “La Tribuna,” a study of working women, she went to a tobacco factory for two months, morning and afternoon, to listen to the conversation and observe the manners of the women employed there. Her work has been steadily broadening, and “A Christian Woman,” with its sequel, is the largest canvas she has filled.
Though now definitely and mainly a novelist, her literary activity has been highly varied. Her letters on criticism, published in La Epoca in 1882, evoked the widest discussion, and her lectures on “The Revolutionary Movement and the Novel in Russia,” delivered before the most brilliant literary circle of Madrid, have already been given an English dress. Articles from her pen are a frequent attraction in the leading magazines, and her vivacious series of letters about the Paris Exposition won much attention. As might be inferred from her unflagging productiveness, she is possessed of as much physical as mental vigor. She is of winning appearance and unaffected manners. Since the death of her father, in 1888, she has been entitled as his sole heir to be called a countess; but she does not use the title. “Who would know me as a countess?” she asks. “I shall be simply Pardo Bazán as long as I live.”
Rollo Ogden.
A CHRISTIAN WOMAN.
CHAPTER I.
You will see by the following list the course of studies that the State obliged me to master in order to enter the School of Engineering: arithmetic and algebra as a matter of course; geometry equally so; besides, trigonometry and analytics, and, finally, descriptive geometry and the differential calculus. In addition to these mathematical studies, French, only held together with pins, if the truth must be told, and English very hurriedly basted; and as for that dreadful German, I would not put tooth to it even in jest—the Gothic letters inspired me with such great respect. Then there was the everlasting drawing—linear, topographic, and landscape even, the latter being intended, I presume, to enable an engineer, while managing his theodolite and sights, to divert himself innocently by scratching down some picturesque scene in his album—after the manner of English misses on their travels.
After entrance came the “little course,” so called, in order that we might not be afraid of it. It embraced only four studies—to wit, integral calculus, theoretical mechanics, physics, and chemistry. During the year of the “little course,” we had no more drawing to do; but in the following, which is the first year of the course properly speaking, we were obliged, besides going deep into materials of construction, applied mechanics, geology, and cubic mensuration, to take up new kinds of drawing—pen-drawing, shading and washing.
I was not one of the most hard-working students, nor yet one of the most stupid—I say it as shouldn’t. I could grind away when it was necessary, and could exercise both patience and perseverance in those branches where, the power of intellect not being sufficient, one must have recourse to a parrot-like memory. I failed to pass several times, but it is impossible to avoid such mishaps in taking a professional course in which they deliberately tighten the screws on the students, in order that only a limited number may graduate to fill the vacant posts. I was sure of success, sooner or later; and my mother, who paid for the cost of my tuition, with the assistance of her only brother, was as patient as her disposition would allow her to be with my failures. I assured her that they were not numerous and that, when I finally emerged a full-fledged civil engineer, I should have in my pocket the four hundred and fifty dollar salary, besides extras.
Nor were all my failures avoidable, even if I had been as assiduous as possible in my studies. I was all run down and sick for one year, finally having an attack of varioloid; and this reason, with others not necessary to enumerate, will explain why at the age of twenty-one I found myself still in the second year of the course, although I enjoyed the reputation of being a studious youth and quite well informed—that is to say, I yet lacked three years.
The year before, the first year of the course strictly speaking, I was obliged to let some studies go over to the September examinations. I attribute that disagreeable occurrence to the bad influence I was under, in a certain boarding-house, where the evil one tempted me to take up my abode. The time I passed there left undying recollections in my memory, which bring a smile to my lips and indiscreet joy to my soul whenever I evoke them. I will give some idea of the place, so that the reader may judge whether Archimedes himself would have been capable of studying hard in such a den.
There are several houses in Madrid at the present date—for example, the Corralillos, the Cuartelillos, the Tócame Roque—all very similar to the one I am about to describe. Within that abode dwelt the population of a small-sized village; it had three courts with balconies, on which opened the doors of the small rooms—or pigeon-holes one might call them—with their respective numbers on the lintels. There was no lack of immodest and quarrelsome inmates; there were street musicians singing couplets to the accompaniment of a tuneless guitar; cats in a state of high nervous excitement scampering from garret to garret, or jumping from balustrade to balustrade—now impelled by amorous feelings, now by a brick thrown at them full force. Clothes and dish-cloths were hung out to dry; ragged petticoats and patched underwear, all mixed up pell-mell. There were pots of sweet basil and pinks in the windows; and in fact, everything would be found there that abounds in such dens in Madrid—so often described by novelists and shown forth by painters in their sketches from real life.
The third suite on the right had been hired by Josefa Urrutia, a Biscayan, the ex-maid of the marchioness of Torres-Nobles. At first her business was pretty poor, and she sank deeper and deeper in debt. At last she got plenty of boarders, and when I took up my abode in the “dining-room bed-room,” the place was in its glory; she had not a single vacant apartment. All the boarders paid their dues honestly, if they had the money, with certain exceptions,