Presently I went for a trip on horseback. At that time the only means of communication between one region and another was the railway, for the roads were impassable to wheeled traffic, and if you wanted to see places that were not on the line you had to ride. When I came back I thought it would be a good exercise to write an account of the excursion. In fiction the manner of your writing is conditioned by your matter. You cannot write in the same way if you are describing an incident as if you are analysing a state of mind; dialogue, which you aim at making as natural as possible, breaks the pattern; it is only in the essay or in the book of travel that you can attempt a sustained effect. It is very good for the novelist now and again to try his hand at something of the sort.
But when I had done this as best I could I did not know what to do with it. I was never the sort of writer who is content to shut up his work in a drawer. I fell very pleasantly in love while I was in Seville and the possibility had been running in my mind of turning this experience to account by writing a novel in which I might give a romanticised, but ironic, account of it. For even then, not slow to see my own absurdity, I was conscious that I had been made a very pretty fool of. It offered me an opportunity of describing the cathedral, certain pictures, a bull-fight and the easy, attractive life of Seville. But I hesitated, thinking people would say it was merely an imitation of Pierre Loti (which indeed it would have been) who was then very much read and who had done that sort of thing very delightfully and in exquisite French This was foolish of me. I did not know that in the next thirty years no less than three English writers (and several American) were going to achieve eminence by imitating Anatole France I might safely have written this book, and had it proved a success I could have followed it up with agreeably humorous and sentimental accounts of an affair of the heart in every country in Europe. I might now enjoy a great reputation as a writer of charm, sensibility and discrimination. I refrained. But sooner than waste the narrative I had written of my ride I wrote a description of Seville and what I had seen there, added to it, to give it a sort of completeness, sketches of other places in Andalusia and in this way got together enough material to make a little book.
It was crude and gushing. Thinking it over as the years went by I was persuaded that I could do better and each time I went to Spain I was tempted to try again. But I did not want to write another book of travel. Too many travellers already have travelled in Spain. All the writer can do is to describe his own sensations and there little likelihood that his descriptions will call up sensations that represent with any exactness the objects he has tried to depict.
The streets of Santiago de Compostela are narrow, paved with great blocks worn smooth by the tread of generations; and they go up and down and wind this way and that. But in the end they all lead to the Cathedral which was the goal for so many centuries of innumerable pilgrims. Now, the façade of this is one of the great sights of the world. It is of grey stone, but here and there yellow with lichen, and in some places re patches of green where a hardy little shrub has managed to attach itself. It is wonderfully impressive against dark and threatening clouds (it rains a great deal in Santiago) but when the sun shines and the sky is blue it has the colour of honey. The architecture is luxuriant, but its heroic grandeur prevents it from being tiresome and the perfect balance of the decorative motives gives an impression of an almost classic severity. It is like a purple patch in Chapman's Homer. I cannot but think that the architect must have felt a pang at his heart when he looked at the finished façade and knew that it was magnificent. It is not one of those sights that insinuate their charm and captivate you only after long acquaintance: it takes you by storm. It remains in the mind as a permanent possession and the spirit is enriched by the recollection of it. But words cannot reproduce the splendour of those towers and the satisfactoriness of that opulent symmetry. A glance at a photograph is more likely to give you its peculiar thrill than half a dozen pages of careful description. No, I did not want to write a book of travel.
Several subjects floated about in my mind and I amused myself by considering what I could make of them. For some time I was attracted by Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida; for the conquistadores set out on their perilous journeys to the new-discovered lands on the other side of the Atlantic to acquire wealth, but he, more romantically, to find the spring of eternal youth. I invented a story that I liked. Its disadvantage was that it led me overseas, and I wanted to stay in Spain. Then my fancy was taken with the little court that the Dukes of Alba held at Alba de Tormes. They lived magnificently, cultivating the arts; and here, under their protection, the valorous and charming poet Garcilaso de la Vega spent some part of his short and glorious life. I went to Alba. The town runs up the hill by the side of the river. The streets are deserted and chickens run about them; they are paved with rough cobbles so that walking is painful. The houses are small and plain, whitewashed or mud-coloured, and on one or two of the better ones is a coat of arms over the door. But it gives you an odd thrill to catch sight of the name of the street you are walking through; it is called Calle de los Pages. Nothing remains of the great villa decorated by painters and sculptors from Italy and furnished with the spoils of conquered countries, but a sombre tower that stands on the top of a hill. I suppose the gardens, famous in their day, the scene of poetic contests, where the Italianate writers conversed of their art and musicians played the viol and the lute, stretched down to the quiet, winding river; but I could find no trace of them and such of the inhabitants as I asked knew nothing of them. My imagination rebelled against the labour of reconstructing that past life and those dead glories from materials so scanty.
Besides, I wanted a subject that gave me elbow room. I did not want to be confined to the palace of a great nobleman and the doings of cultured persons. I wanted a theme that gave me the opportunity to show the rich and varied life that you read of in the picaresque novels. I wanted to deal with the theatre, for the drama in Spain's golden age, the short period that began with Lazarillo de Tormes and ended with Calderon, was not only the national passion but the most characteristic expression of the nation's artistic endeavours. For a little while I played with the notion of writing a novel bout Agustin de Rojas, an actor who has left in El Viage Entretenido, not only a graphic account of the stage in his day and the life of a strolling player, but in his devil-may-care account of his own affairs a very sufficient portrait of himself. Even in the Spain of that period it would be difficult to find a man who led a more picturesque life. The son of Diego de Villadiego, a gentleman of birth, and of Luisa de Rojas, whose name, following a Spanish custom not uncommon at the time, he generally used, Agustin was born in Madrid about 1577. At nine years old he was a page in an illustrious house and at fourteen, desiring to see the world and enjoy adventure, he ran away to Seville to become a soldier. He was in garrison for a while at Castilleja de la Cuesta and then set sail for France. He landed in Brittany. For two years he was engaged in various warlike operations, gaining for himself much glory and some profit, and then, sailing for Nantes on a French ship, was taken prisoner. He was brought to La Rochelle and there put to serve a certain Monsieur de Fontena till he was exchanged with his companions in slavery for natives of La Rochelle who were rowing in the Spanish galleys. He spent two years more privateering against English ships and at last landed in Santander. He made his way to Madrid where he contracted an illness from which he nearly died.
On his recovery he seems to have gone to sea again in the royal galleys and eventually took his discharge at Malaga. He entered the service of a paymaster and went with him to Granada. He was then twenty-two. He had already seen the chief cities of Italy. In Granada things went well with him and he provided himself with fine clothes and chains of solid gold. But losing his place he returned to Malaga and here had the strangest of his adventures. Having killed a man in a brawl he sought sanctuary in the church of St. John. The police surrounded it and he stayed there for two days. He was starving with hunger. Then, since the watch was somewhat relaxed, risking everything and determined on any extremity, he made a bolt for it. But by good fortune he stumbled upon a very beautiful woman who, carried off her feet by his handsome face and gallant bearing, when she heard of his intention persuaded him to return to the safety of the church. It cost her three hundred ducats to get him out of his scrape, but the payment of such a sum left her destitute. Rojas took her to his lodgings and to get her food begged for alms at night, wrote sermons for a friar of the Monastery of St. Augustine (for each of which he was paid with a dish of meat and a pound of bread) stole capes and robbed orchards and vineyards. How the affair ended is uncertain, for at this point of his story the narrator's emotion very unfortunately prevented him from continuing.
But it seems to have been then that he decided to go on the stage. He wandered with one company and another through Spain, accompanied possibly by the beautiful woman who had saved him from the gallows. It happened not infrequently that the theatres were closed, either on account of the pestilence or the death of a royal personage, and on one such occasion, being then in Granada, he opened a haberdashery which was highly successful. He led this life for three years and then a catastrophe befell him. His mistress left him. 'At length,' he wrote later to some friends in Seville, 'I was abandoned by the most lovely angel in the world and the unkindest shepherdess that heaven ever created. Wretched at her cruelty I confess that I was beset by such sore pain that I was on the point of killing myself.' He calls the traitress Elisa, but whether it is the heroine of the adventure at Malaga or another there is no knowing. One hopes it was, for it makes a better story. Heartbroken, Rojas repaired to the mountains of Cordova, where he joined himself to the hermits who inhabited their caves, and with penance and prayer sought to wean himself from the vanity of the world. But he was not of a temper to spend his life in such mortification and after a time he returned to the world that had, all in all, not treated him too badly. He married presently, and since as an actor he could not have saved money and he had some, he must very prudently have chosen a wife with means. But an unfortunate lawsuit deprived him of a considerable part of his fortune, whereupon he entered the service of a Genoese, merchant or banker, who robbed him of the rest. He was for a short time in prison, was attacked and nearly killed by ruffians in Seville, and is last heard of as a scrivener and notary to the Bishop of Zamora. He was then thirty-three.
An adventurous and romantic life. It provided me with pretty well everything I needed; Rojas had charm, humour and a pretty gift for writing light verse. He was brave. He was of notable beauty. He loved fine clothes and splendid ornaments; and on account of this foible was known to his friends as the Cavalier of the Miracles, since without a penny to bless himself with he never wanted for rich apparel. He had the deep, religious sense that was characteristic cf the Spaniard of the, day, and when misfortunes fell upon him he welcomed them as a bounty granted by the hand of God for the good and glory of his soul.
But I was a little afraid of Agustin de Rojas. He was somewhat too much a man of action for my purpose. When a writer falls into the hands of so vivid personality as this, he can never be sure that he will not be led along paths he has no wish to tread. A fellow of this sort can very well take things into his own control and give occasion to a book quite different from that which the author had proposed to write. Nor, with my long experience, did I fail to notice that in the love affair which seems to have been the culminating point of Agustin's life, it was the woman who was the more interesting party. If it was one and the same woman who ruined herself to save his life, lived with him in miserable poverty, and then left him and nearly broke his heart, a singular story emerges. Only a very dull novelist could fail to be taken by this woman of swift passion and reckless temper. Generous and impulsive, she was willing for love's sake to abandon the security which they say women seek above all else and she was indifferent to the extreme of poverty. She was gallant, determined and adventurous. She found the love that had seemed worth every sacrifice die in her heart; and ruthlessly, with the decision that must have characterised her, she left her lover for another. Tender and cruel, faithful and fickle, self-possessed and unrestrained, she must have been an amazing creature.
That was not the subject I wanted. I wanted a freer hand. I thought I should be much better off with a character of my own invention. I did not see why I should not make my hero a young Catholic Scot, who had come to seek his fortune under the King of Spain, or the kinsman to an ambassador accredited to the Court of Madrid by the aged Queen Elizabeth. Such a one I could conduct with verisimilitude through the different worlds that interested me. I wished to concern myself not a little with my hero's spiritual adventures, and it seemed to me that if I made him a reflective, observant youth, well furnished with the culture of the day, I should have a very good opportunity to study the various aspects of the Spanish mind at the moment I proposed to deal with. This was the beginning of the reign of Philip III. Lope de Vega was the idol of the Spanish stage. He ruled his pasteboard kingdom despotically and brooked no rivals. Cervantes had not published Don Quixote, but much of the first part was written and he had read some chapters to his friends. El Greco, living in Toledo with no little splendour, had freed himself at last from his long bondage to the Venetians, and in his old age returning to the inspiration of his Cretan youth, was painting the most extraordinary of his pictures. Mateo Aleman had written Guzman de Alfarache, the most popular of the picaresque novels, and Vicente Espinel was turning over in his cynical old head the charming Life of Marcos de Obregon. You might still meet learned men and great ladies who had talked with the Blessed Teresa de Jesus and there were students in Salamanca who had listened to the lectures of Fray Luis de Leon. The Spaniards were the proudest people in the world. Though ruined and starving they thought themselves still as powerful as when Charles V took the King of France prisoner at Pavia, and though bled white to crush the heretic and keep the faith unsullied they looked upon the sacrifices their foolish kings demanded of them as no more than their due. Noblesse oblige.
I did not dislike my idea. I thought I could make something of it and so set to work. I had read a good deal of Spanish literature in the many years that had passed since first I crossed the Pyrenees, but I had read only for my amusement. Now I started on it again after a more systematic fashion.
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