A comparison of the treatment of the lower classes in the novels of Charles Dickens and in those of Pío Baroja

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Authors Schmiedendorf, Isabel Morgan

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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/553341 A CCMPAfllSOJf OF THE TREATMENT OF THE LOWER

CLASSES IN THE NOVELS OF CHARLES DICKENS

AND IN THOSE OF PIO BAROJA

bjr Isabel Morgan Sohmledendorf

A Thesis

submitted to the faculty of the

Department of English

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

in the Graduate College

University of Arizona

1 9 3 7

Approved: Ilajor Professor

£ 979/ 993 7 5-f z~

TABLE OP CONTENTS

Chapter Page

INTHODUCTION ...... 1

I. CHARACTERS ...... 8

II. INCIDENTS ...... 66 III. PLACES ...... 90

IT. IDEAS ON R E P O R K ...... 101 T. STYLE ...... 116 CONCLUSION ...... 122

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 125

11

rv 11174 -w XlfRODUGflOI

A reader who eomparos the works of Charles Dlskens, the English novelist* and the works of Rio Baroja, the

Spanish novelist, oannot but be impressed by the great similarity of the material in whioh they ehoose to work* and by the great difference in the effoots which they produce with that material* Both writers deal with tho lower classes of society; both use a large number of characters many of them unimportant to the pmgross of the story; both use very loose structure, very slender plots; both are fond of describing places at length; both are exceedingly pro- 2 ' . lifio writers. Eere the similarity ends* for in portrayal of character and incident, and in the emotional reaction which they produce* one author is as different from the other as poseible* Hor does the same purpose animate the two.

Share are some three hundred of these memorable personages in Pickwick alone; and, it has been estimated, upward of fifteen hundred in his complete w w k s , ” says Biohard Burton In his Charles Biokens, Bow to Enow Him (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Morrill Company, 1919}* p . E^O. Baroja*s pages are crowded with oharaoters.

^"Apart from hie tales and short stories, Dickens wroto sixteen major pieoos of fiction,” says Burton, in ibid., p. 249. Barojars works number some forty-odd* al­ though him works contain usually some 260 pages* Dickens'# some 800-l

Diokens desoribes his people voluminously; m leave them feeling that they are intimates of ours. We never be­ come sufficiently acquainted with Baroja's oharaoters to think of them as more than aoquaintanoes. In sotting oat his action, Mokens is font of what Hr. Chesterton terms

"the Eogarthlan i n c i d e n t w h i e h "carries on that tradition of startling and shocking platitude,"3 from.which ho ex­ tracts every possible thrill, carrying the reader along with the participants through sash stirring moment. There is no lack of tho startling and the shocking in Baroja, but it is not allied to the platitudinous« With a few de­ tails, he touches upon a dramatic moment and is off to some­ thing else.

^As to their purpose in writing, there is no doubt that

Dickens wished to awaken the English people to a sense of responsibility for existing abases, especially for those perpetrated against children.^ Baroja denies any feeling about the evils of life. He-says:

I am convinced that life is neither good nor bad., It is like nature — necessary. lor is society either good or bad. A man who is too sensitive to the time in whloh he is living finds sooioty bad, but a man in harmony with his surroundings finds it good. .... A negro can walk naked in a jungle where every drop of water is filled with millions of deadly germs, where there are

- Chesterton, Aupcsoiationa and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens. 4th ed. tNew York: E. p. imttan airiJwpu5y7TM117^p7'42-4g . s

inaeots ^h#se sting prodwea an aboees, where the temperature is over a imnared in the shade . A European aeouetomed to the sheltered life ®f cities amdunprotested from the assaults of nature will die in the tropics. A man should possess as much sensibility as he needs to cope with his epoch and his surroundings. If he has too little sensibility, he will lead the life of a moron; if he has the necessary amount of sensibility, he will lead the life of an adult; and if he has too much, he will go read.4

There is also the possibility which occurs to the thought- ful reader, that the very sensitive person may become an artist or a reformer, or a combination of both as in the oaao of tho Englishman under discussion. The tears and the laughter of his pages betray a sensibility to his environ­ ment quite out of proportion to that of the average English­ man of him epooh. As to the sensibility of Baroja, while it is elear that no desire for reform animates him, and no vision of a happier future _enlivens his mind, it must be oonoluded that he is not immune to the appeal of his sur­ roundings, sine# he is pricked at least to the extent of being impelled to set down what he sees.^ Biokens hoped that by revealing the things whieh wounded hie sensibility, he could horrify his world into a desire for improvement^

Baroja has no such hope, but ho drags into the open fully as terrible exhibits and lays them before his public.

The stylo of the two writers is dissimilar, QDleksns uses euphonious words, varied sentences, many modifiers.

4wMyself,w Living Ago. Vol. 337 (Sept. 15, 1929), p. 114. long paragraphs, significant dialogueBaroja, apparently soornlng any attempt at euphony, ms as ordinary words, rather unifora sentences, few modifiers, short paragraphs, dialogue which is often trivial.

The early life of a writer must always be considered in forming an estimate of his work, or searching for the foundation of his philosophy of life. However, tha back­ ground of these two is apparently of little help in de­ termining what causes the difference in their outlook, since ^tokens, the optimist, the reformer^ was roared in poverty and deprivation, while Baroja, the pessimist, the cynic, enjoyed comparative freedom from economic stringency.

Charles Dickens was born in the island of Pertsea,

February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk In the Savy De­

partment , with pay always inadequate for the needs of hie

family of eight children. He went from bad to worse and

finally landed in the prison of the Karshalsea, where his family lived with him for a time, with the exception of

Charles, who was entirely self-supporting at the age of

ten.® Charles had had little schooling, and the foundation

of his later large and colorful vocabulary was very likely v

laid by such books as his father owned: Roderick Bandom.

Peregrine Pickle. Humphrey Clinker. Tom Jones, the Vicar of

^Stephen Leacock, Charles Dickena (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1934), chap. I, "Child­ hood and Youth of Dickens•* 6

Wakefield. Don Quixote. Gil Bias. Robinson C m s o e . .irabian

lights, and 3&lea of the Genii* His father finally earn

into a legally of several hundred pounds; and whan Charles

• was twelve, he w e sent to Wellington House Aeademy, where

he remained for two years. At fourteen,.he became an at­

torney's clerk; and at this time develeped sueh a passion

for the theatre that he went every night; once he decided

to become an actor and learned some parts preparatory, to

this career, but by the time opportunity came for .him to

go forward in this field he had embarked upon the vocation

of shorthand reporter in the old House of Commone, and

upon the avoeation of writer under the name of Bos.

Seacock says:

People w h o .seek for the literary background on which'Diokens's work was based will find it part­ ly in the books he read thus for himself as a child; these books" and presently the streets and sounds of Tendon and the glittering gaslight of the cheap Tendon stage. But the real basis and background was his instinctive observation of the life about him,*7

Pio Baroja was bora in 1872, in a little village in

the Basque country near San Sebastian on the north coast of

Spain• His father was a mining engineer and a poet of some

talent, He began his education at the age of four jears.

After a memorably torturous seoozSary schooling, he studied medicine, failed his fourth-year examinations at the diversity of Valencia, and

^Leacock, op, cit. 7ma., p. 5. - 6 -

finally obtaiaeft his degree in Madrid in 1893. For two years he practiced as the municipal physician in Ge®tona, in the Basque province of Guipaaooa•

But despite the alluring opportunities with widely variod types, and despite the leisure to put his original observations into short sketches which : he later published in his first book (Vidas Sotnbrias, 1900), the profession of medicine was distasteful to hi® and he abandoned it to rent a bakery in T&drid with his brother Ricardo.

Business was bad enough to enable him to continue to write, and particularly to extend his education as a realist by intimacy not only with the working classes of Madrid but with the lowest life of its cafes, back-streets and gutters. His medie&l ^ training led him to regard the innumerable case- histories thus accumulated for future use with an almost sclentiflo objectivity and with a marked preference for abnormal or pathological subjects.

After some seven or eight years of various com­ mercial ventures and economic difficulties, for­ tunate investments enabled him to devote himself exclusively to letters. As he still does, he had for some time been writing for periodicals, but as soon as he could write only to please himself he satisfied his desire for professional and personal freedom by turning to fiction.8

Such, meagerly presented, is the life of these two writers, reared in dissimilar environments which apparently created in each the desire to reproduce the life of the masses; the thief, the prostitute, the beggar, the neglected

child, the vagrant. In the course of that portrayal one

of them produces a literature of warm romanticism; the

8P&> Bareja, Paradox,Bey. Introduction to, by Claude B. Anlbal (Hew York: She Macmillan Company, 1937), p. xv.

' \ . 7

other, a literature of cold realism. Mere environment can­ not account for their difference; it is more fundamental.

It la rooted in the contrast between the man of feeling and

the man of intellect; between the idealist and the realist; between the optimist and the pessimist, each driven on bj

the need to present through the medium of his pen his ©on- oeption of the life about him.

In dealing with the subjeot under discussion, an ef-

fort will be made to examine from each author typical

passages furnishing sufficient elements of similarity in

subject matter to justify the comparison which is the basis

for this thesis. CHAl-fEH I

GHlHlCfSHS

In oomparing the work of these writers, the greatest aifferenee will'he 'fohnd to lie In their portrayal of oharaoter. Diokena found no Interest eomparable with that of human beings, fhelr vlees and their virtues, .their man­ ners and their mannerisms, their phjmleal idlosynorasles and their tastes— all delighted him. Of his method of por­ traying these human beings, Mr. Gisslng says:

It is that of all the. great novelists . To set before his reader the image so vivid in his own mind, he simply describes and reports. We have, in general, a very prooice and complete picture of externals — the face, the gesture, the habit. In this Dickens excels; he proves to us, by sheer foroe of visible detail, how actual was the mental form from whieh he drew. We learn the tone of voioe, the trlok of utterance; he declared that every word spoken by his eharaoters was audible to hlm.l

Dlokens is likely to use not only the picture of "the face, the gesture, the habit*; sometimes ho weaves in a little incident of sharp suggestion, suoh as that In his descrip­ tion of Mr. Hell, the poor usher who plays the flute to the old lady in the almshouse. There is no actual statement that the little pauper is his mother, but the reader re-

■^George Gisslng, Claries Dlokens (Hew York; Dodd, Mead and Company, 1904), p. lit*.

^ 8 ^ V7' ~ 9 -

alizes that A # is, ant a great warmth for poor Me 11 is the result» She final touch, Moll*s broken shoes, is obnvinelog evldenee that the little bid laly is not there through the neglect of her son, but through his poverty. David Copper- field, onhia way to the school where Mr. Murdstene, hi® ' stepfatWr, Is sending him, is met, at one stage of the jour­ ney, by a man from the school.

As 1 went out of the effioe tond-in-hand with this new acquaintance, I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr. Mordetone^a; but there the llkenese ended, for his whiskers were shaved off, and his hair, instead of being glossy, was rusty and dry. He was dressed in a suit of black clothes which were_ rather rusty and dry too, and rather short in.the sleeves and-legs; and he had a white neckerchief on, that was not overoleam. I did not, and do not, suppose that this neckerchief was all the linen he wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.2

The old lady at the almshouse cocks David’s breakfast for

him. While he is dosing over it, Hell plays the flute at

her solicitation — a little touch which so establishes the

usher In the affections of the reader that nothing less would mitigate his resentment @f the poor fellow's poverty

than finding out in the last chapter that Hell became a

prosperous and respectedoitiaeninthe country to which

the Mleawbers migrated. In connection with Mell, Dickens

also points out one of the badges inseparable from such

^Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (New fork: Bigelow, Brown and Company, Inc.), Bk. I, p.> 6 . 10 -

hungry respectability as Moll1 s. When David and he reach the school, they are met by a surly attendant, who informs

Hell that his boots left to be mended were beyond repair.

Sith these words, he threw the boots toward Mr. Mali, who went back a few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very disconsolately, I mis afraid) as we went on together. I observed then, for the first time, that the boots he had on were a good deal the worse for wear, and that his stock-, ing was just breaking out in one place, like a bud.3 Mr. Wackford Squears is a personage who rouses quite different feelings. He is palpably the composite picture of all the cruel schoolmasters whom Dickens wishes to bring to the notice of the public. She unfolding c£ his charac­ ter occupies many pages but his outward appearance is set forth as follows: :

Mr. Squears's appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two. -She eye ho had, was unquestion­ ably useful, but decidedly not ornamental; being of a greenish gre y, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street-door. 2he blank side of his faoe was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner. He was about two or three and fifty* and a trifle below the middle size; he wore a white neckerchief with long ends, and a suit of scholas­ tic black; but his coat sleeves being a great deal too long and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease In his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable.4

3Diokens, David Copperfleld. Bk. I, p . 108. ^Charles Dickens, Wioholaa Hloklaby^ (Hew York; Bigelow, Brown and Company, Inc • J t J3& ♦ JL, pp * 4LL— * - 11

flow truo this unattraotive portrait was is eviaencod hy the storm of protest it eiioitet from 'rarioas quarters. Shore / is aething'--to ■ approach'-it - in. Baroja’s- pagesv • / - • ■ ' - • ■ A e olasstowhioh the famous Doe tor Ilarigold belongs has often appeared in song and story,/but the individual is unique. Describing himself, he sayh: I was born on the Queen’s highway, but it was the King’s at that time. A doetor was fetched to my own mother by my own father; when it took place on a common; and in oonsequenee of his being a vary kind gentleman, and accepting no fee but a tea- tray, I was named Doctor, out of gratitude and compliment to him* there you have m e » Doctor Marigold *

I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadIsh . build, in cords, leggings, and a sleeved waist­ coat the strings of which is always gone behind. Repair them how you will* they go like fiddle- strings* You have been to the theatre, and you have seen one of the wlolln-players screw up hie wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been whispering the scoret to him that it feared it: was out of order, and than you have heard it snap. Shat’s exactly similar to ray waistooast as a waist­ coat and a wiolin can be like one another.

I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck wore loose and easy. Sitting down is my favorite posture. If I have a taste in

Gin the author’s preface to llcholas flickleby (p. xx). he says: “It has afforded the AutSor great amusement and satisfaction, during the progress of this work, to learn from country friends and from a variety of ludicrous state­ ments concerning himself in provincial newspapers, that more than one Yorkshire schoolmaster lays claim to being the original of M r . Squeera. One worthy, he has reason to believe, has actually consulted authorities learned in the law, as to his having geed grounds on which;to rest an ac­ tion for libel; another has meditated a journey to London, for the express purpose.of committing an assault and bat­ tery upon his tradueer • — 12 —

point of personal jewelry, it Is mother-of-pearl - buttons. Shore yon have mo again, as large as

Baroja thus piotnros an old junk dealer for whom the hero of La Buses works; . -

Before him was an old man with a grey board and a stern glanoe, with a sack over his shoulder and a hook in his hand. He wore an old fur oap, a : sort of yellowish overcoat and a reddish muffler, wrapped around his neofc*. ♦ . . • Senor Custodio was an intelligent inan o f naturally go od mental­ ity, very observing and efficient. He did'met know how to read nor write, nevertheless be kept accounts; with crosses and hieroglyphics of his own Invention, he had a substitute for writing,' at least enough for M s own use. He had a yearn­ ing to- improve himself, and exeept for the fact • that it would have made him ridiculous, he would have put himself to the task of edueating himself. In the afternoons, after finishing work, he used to ask Manuel to read the newspapers and illus­ trated reviews that he picked up in the streets, and he and his wife would listen attentively to the reading.7 ~ \ ’

Ho heightening of mental nor of physical pemiliarities!

Ho picking out ©f the colorful features of his existence •

fhe reader learns that ha had a faithful wife, a house made

of the odds and ends of other people *8 lives, a dog, a white oat, but these facts are stated in the most prosaic manner

possible. What would not Dickens have done with this bid

man? --. , - - ~ •. With' all the detail and suggestion so typical of his

^Charles Dickens, "Doctor Marigold.* Christmas Stories (Hew York: Bigelow, Brown and Company, Inc.J, pp. yi-92.

. 7Plo Mroja, Da Busoa (Madrid: Libraria Fernando Po, 1904), p. 148. Translated by the writer of this thesis. method, Blokeas introdaoes us to one of the famous murderer# of literature. As Sikos enters Fagin1^ in the.midst of a lively alteration between the old Jew and the Artful Dodger he reeeives full in his face a pot of beer intended for the young piokpoeket:

"toy, ^ a t the blazes is in the wind now 1" growled a deep voice. "Who pitched that 'ore at me? It's well it's the beer, and not the pot, as hit me, or I *d have settled somebody. I might liave know’d, as nobody but an infernal rioh, plunder­ ing, thundering old Jew could afford to throw ’ away any drink but water — and not that, unless he done the liver Company every quarter. Wot*s it all about. Fag in? D— me, if my neek-hanker- oher an*t lined with beer t Come in, you sneaking warmlnt; wot are you stopping eutside for, as if you was ashamed of your master! Come in i"

fhe man who growled out these words, was a stout­ ly-built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a blaek velveteen ooat, very soiled drab breeches, laoe~up half boots, and grey cotton stockings, which Ineloeed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling ealves; — the kind of legs, which In sueh a costume, always look in an unfinlshod and In- ooapleto state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck: with the long frayed ends of which ho smeared the beer from M s face as he spoke. He disclosed; when he had done so, a bread heavy countenance with a beard of three days1 growth, and two" scowling eyes; one of which displayed various partl-ooloured symptoms of hav­ ing been recently damaged by a blow. ^

"Come in, d*ye hear?" growled this engaging ruffian.

A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places, skulked into the room.8

8Charles Mckens. Oliver Twist fHew York: Bigelow, Brown and Company, Ino.), p . 114. - 14 -

Bie a^nslTQ aispesltion of Sikes is here suggested not only by his language but by hi® black eye; and a few word® anent his calves fixes him in the reader’s mind among those who belong within the eonfinos of prison walla.

An even lower type of criminal* a potential murderer who eventually is executed for the murder of three persons, ie thus described by Baroja: '

There Uanuel met Squinteye, a kind of ohispansee — square, ansmilar, with long arms, twisted legs, and enormous red hands. « « . . Squinteye*s face produced in the beholder the same revulsion as a queer beast or a pathological tic. The nar­ row forehead * the flat nose, the thick lips, the freckled skin, and the hard red hair gave him the appearance of a big, blonde monkey.9

Hie narrow forehead, his heavy jaw, his snout, his fierce glare, all.gave him an aspect of bru­ tality and repellent stupidity. . . . . He sharpened his dagger bought in the Rastrc.lO and guarded it like something sacred. If he caught a dog or a cat, he killed it by stabbing, onjoying the martyrdom of tho animal. Ho taIked stupidly,, larding hie phrases with obscenity and blasphemy.1*

This moron is, of course, below the level of a Sikes; never­ theless, he might be painted with a little more color and detail than Baroja allows him. \

Pickens lavishes description upon s o w comparatively unimportant characters, producing here and there in his novels perfect little pictures which apparently have little

®Baroja, La Busoa. p. 45.

^The Rastro is the great secoMMnt stc^ of Eadrid.

^Baroja. La Busoa. p# 59. 15

parpose except to give pleasure to the reader and variety to his pages. .One of the most enjoyable of such deserlptlons

is the following:

3he artist who had the honor of entertaining Mrs* Gamp as his first floor lodger, united the two pursuits of barberlng and birl-faneylng; . . • • It was not an original idea of hie; but one In whioh he had, dispersed about the bystreets and suburbs of the town, a host of rivals*

She name of this householder was Paul Swoedlopipe . But ho was oomiaonly called Poll sweedlepipe; and was not uncommonly believod to have been so christened, among his friends and neighbors.

With the exception of the staircase, and his lodger's private apartment, Poll Sweedlepipe’s house was one great bird's-nest. Gamecocks re­ sided in the kitchen; pheasants wasted the brightness of their golden plumage on the garret; bantams roosted in the cellar; owls bad posses­ sion of the bedroom; and the specimens of ell the smaller fry of birds -ehirruppod and twittered in the shop. She staircase was sacred to rabbits. There in hatches of all shapes and kinds, made from old packing-oases, boxes, drawers, and tea- chests, they increased in a prodigious degree, and contributed their share towards that■compli­ cated whiff which, quite impartially, and without distinction of persons, saluted every nose that was put into Sweedlepipe's easy shaving-shop*

Many hoses found their way there, for all that, especially on Sunday morning, before ohuroh-time. Even archbishops shave, or must be shaved, on a Sunday, and beards will grow after twelve o 'clock on Saturday night, though it be upon the chins of base mechanics: who, not being able to engage their valets by the quarter, hire them by the job, and pay them — oh, the wickedness of copper coin -- in dirty pence . Poll Sweedlepipo, tho sinner, shaved all comers at a penny each, and out the hair of any customer for two pence; and be­ ing a lone unmarried man, and having some connec­ tion in the bird line. Poll got on tolerably .■ well* . ' . : ’ — 3.6 —

Ha was a little elderly man, with a clammy oold, right han4» from which oven rabbits and birds = oould not remove the smell of shaving-soap. Poll had some thing of the bird in his nature; not of .> the hawk or the eagle, but of the sparrow, that builds in chimney-stacks, and inclines to human company. He was not quarrelsome, though, like the sparrow; but peaceful, like the dove. In him walk he strutted; and. in this respect, he bore a faint resemblance to the. pigeon, as well as in a certain proslness of speech, which might, in its monotony^ be likened to the cooing of that bird. He.v/as very inquisitive; and when he stood at hie shop-door in the evening-tide, watching the neighbours, with his head on one side, and his eye cocked knowingly, there was a dash of the raven in him. Yet, there was no more wickedness in Poll than in a robin. Happily, too, when any of his oralthological properties were on the verge of going too far, they were Quenched, dissolved, melted down, and neutralised in the barber; just as his bald head — otherwise, as the head of a shaved magpie — lost itsolf in a wig of curly black ringlets, parted on one side, and out away almost to the crown, to indicate immense capacity of intellect.

Paul wore in him sporting character, a velveteen coat, a great deal of blue stocking, ankle boots, a nadkerchiof of some bright colour, and a very tall hat. Pursuing his more quiet oooupation of barber, he generally subsided into an apron not over-clean, a flannel jacket, and oorduroy knee- shorts.12

This is a picture of a harmless, well-intentioned lit­

tle man. The picture of Qnilp, in contrast, is not only that of a physical grotesque, but of a being whose spiritual malignancy seems to have distorted his fleshly being. The

text describes Little Sell walking along the street.

^Charles Dickens. Hartin Ghuzzlewit. B k . II (lew York; Bigelow, Brown and Company, Inc.), pp. 1-3. 17 -

The o M i d was closely followed by an elderly man of remarkably hard features and forbidding aspect, and so low in stature as to bo quite a dwarf, though his head and faos were largo enough for the body of a giant. Hie black eyes were restless* sly, and cunning; his mouth and chin, bristly with the stubble of a eearse hard beard; and his com­ plexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome • But what added most to the , grotesque expression of his face was a ghastly smile, which, appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no eonneetion with any mirthful or complacent feeling, constantly revealed the few discoloured fangs that were yet scattered In his mouth and gave him the aspect of a panting dog. His dress consisted of a largo, high-crowned hat, a worn dark suit, a pair of capacious shoes and a dirty white neckerchief sufficiently limp and crumpled to disclose the greater portion of his wiry throat. Such hair as he had, was of a griz­ zled black, out short and straight upon his temples and hanging in a frowsy fringe about his oars. His hands which were of a rough coarse grain; ; were very dirty; his finger-nails were crooked, long and yellow Some of Bare da's male characters might, conceivably, V ■ V...... - : , ; ■ . have been as alluringly quaint as those of Biokens, but he does not so conceive them. They are handled briefly, pro­

saically, with the result that they take on the value of

passers-by, rather than of friends or enemies. There is, very definitely, the calculating scrutiny of the physician

in his descriptions• This touch of the doctor is quite evident in his de­

piction of Manuel Brail, an anarchist who appears in La

Bama erranta. A physician of Madrid has written a brilliant

ISoharles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop. Bk. I (lew York: Bigelow, Brownand Goffipany,ino.J, pp. 27-28. 18 -

treatise on anarohy which attracts the attention of English and Hnsalan anarohists as well as that of his owi oonntry- men. Flattered at their praise, the physician receives them into him house for a time. Ineluded in the group is Brail, a Catalonian. Brull plans to blow up the wedding party of

Alphonso XIII and his English princess as they pass a cer­ tain point on their way to church. He carries out his pur­ pose with the result that a number of innooont people are killed. The royal pair escape unharmed. When the culprit realizes that flight-' is impossible, he commits suicide, leaving a letter which. In part, follows:

Just before dying^ cool, calm, with the convic­ tion of my superiority over you, I kavo some things I wish to say to you. . . \ ,

During my whole life, society has persecuted me, has shut me up like a beast. Being the most r superior, I have been treated as if I wore the lowest; being the first, I have been treated like the last.

I would leave my plan of my Great Work of Altru­ ism to you but the Spanish people could not under­ stand me. Slaves cannot understand the rebel, and you are all slaves, even those who believe your­ selves emancipated.some of the Xing, others of morality, some of God, others of the army, some of science, others of Kant or Velasquez.

He continues in this strain, and explains that he had re­ solved to bring his Great Work to an end; describes how he had practiced the bombing by standing on a balcony the day before the wedding and hurling an orange to the spot where he intended that the bcab should light. He concludes: 19 -

I am above justloe. My soheme is only this: to hurl the world into ohaos.

I have realized the Great Work alone .. Yea, I was alone, alone, face to face with destiny.

In all Spain, there is not a man to match me. There are no two like me. I am a lion in a barn­ yard full of hens

Here is the Inflated ego of the paranoia, skilfully set down by the pathologist. His previous description shows

Brail ae possessing high cheekbones, a wandering eye, and a bitter and ironic smile, coupled with a desire to talk in a boastful and sarcastic manner.

Another person described at some length is Don Martin, an old money lender, commonly referred to as "Uncle Misery,* who appears in the pages of HI Arbol da la olanoia.

Uncle Misery was an old man very much bent, clean shaven and frowning. He wore a square patch over one eye which made his face still more gloomy. He dressed always in black. In the winter, he wore cloth shoes and a long capo which hung from his shoulders as from a clothes rack.

, - _ Don Martin, the philanthropist, as Andros used to call him, left his house very early and stayed at his shop, always on the match. On cold days, he passed his life over a brazier, continually breath­ ing an atmosphere charged with carbon dioxide.

Besides the shop in this district, he had another, in a wretched quarter also, where his chief busi­ ness consisted in loaning money on the sheets and mattresses of the poor.

He considered that society owed him attentions which it had refused to pay him. A clerk, appar-

14Pio Baroja, La Dama errante (London: Thomas TieIson and Son), pp. 138-141'. " - 80. —

ently a good boy, in whom he had had confidence, had played him a dirty trick. One day this clerk took a hatchet from the pawnshop . . . . and bran­ dishing it above Bon Merlin‘b head, began to pound him with it, not hitting him hard enough,, however, to fracture his skull. Afterwards, believing the old man dead, he teak the cash from the shop to a dive in tho street of San Jose, and hid it there. Bon Martin was wild when he saw that the tribunal, accepting a series of extenuating circumstances, condemned the boy only to a few months in jail.

"It*8 a scandal," the old usurer would ssy,. thoughtfully. "There‘s no protection here for honorable people. There *s no meroy except for criminal#." ■ ' • • ■ Bon Martin was merciless. He forgave nobody. When a vender of asees * milk of the district could not pay hi* interest, he seized the asses, although tho vender explained that if he had not the asses, it would be all the harder for .him to pay the Interest. Bon Martin would not yieldv He was quite capable of eating.the asses to get the bet­ ter of the other Jo

A poor old Spanish gentleman in financial straits is shown, in the person of Ben Oleto Meana, one of the fellow. lodgers of.Andres, the young doctor hero of 51 Arbol de la elencla. irtio takes a practice in the slums of Madrid.

Ben Gleto Means was the philosopher of tho house; ho was a cultivated, educated man who had fallen on evil days. He lived on the" charity of a few friends of his. Ho was a little old man, short and thin, very clean, very orderly, with a well trims d grey board; his clothes were threadbare b u t .spotless, and the collar of his shirt was al­ ways irreproachable. He cut his own hair, he washed his own clothes; ho stained his shoes with ink when they showed a white crack, and he kept15

15P^o Baroja, El Arbol de la cienoia (London: g&omas lelson and Son), p. 126. r— — 8 1 -

the fringes of his trousers trlmmeA. . • • * Don Oleto eas a stole. "With one roll a day, and a few cigarettes, I live as well as a prince," the poor fellow used to say.

Don Oleto used to walk about in the Retire and the Reooletos; he would seat himself on the benches and begin conversations with any one; if nobody saw him, he would pounoe on the stubs of oigars or cigarettes and save them but, as he was a gentleman, he did not fancy being surprised in such a low occupation. Don Oleto enjoyed the spectacles of the street; the arrival of a foreign prince or the funeral of a politician constituted an event for hi®.1®

He finally dies of hanger, saying to the last to some of hie poor neighbors vAo wish to aid him, "Ho, I don't need anything," in a small voice. "Don't bother yourselves; a little weakness, that's all."^ Under the heading "Bines extremes." the author briefly sets out some queer specimens who congregated in the cemetery of Saint Giles in the Field, in London. There is the man with the celluloid eye, that is, a patch of painted celluloid over one eye., which contrasts with the other eye

— blaok, brilliant, and burning. His face is covered with deep soars, and he is so thin that he seems like a mass of bones walking, supported only by his intense pride. There

is also the Chief from the Great Salt hake — an Indian who *1718

^Baro.ja. SI Arbol de la olenoia. p. 125. 17Ibia.. p. 299. 18Tlpos extranos — strange types. Pio Baroja, la Ciudad de la nlebla (London: Thoms Nelson and Son), pp. 2W-8-4. r“ - 22 -

belongs to a gang of anarchists, as well as a tiny little man who. It transpires* has been In his day a famous olown. Little Chip, fhese oharaoters are set out briefly, picked up, then dropped. :- ^

Dickens‘s heroes are highly moral beings. His murder­ ers and thieves may be black as night but his heroes would never take to erime as a result of hunger or cold. If they are temporarily forced to help iu an infringement of the

law, it is through no fault of theirs. Oliver Twist, the

poor, underfed, beaten, maltreated little boy, so dear to

the hearts of the American public since the filming of the

novel by the same name. Is the prime example of the charac­

ter who emerges spotless from the deepest mire. After running

away from his cruel masters to whom toe Work House authori­

ties have apprenticed him, Oliver is picked up by the Art­

ful Dodger, taken to London and introduced to Fagln, a ras­

cally old Jew, who trains and manages a gang of youthful

criminals. After supper, bed, and breakfast in Pagin's

squalid den, the following initiation takes place *

When the breakfast was cleared away; the merry old gentleman and the two .boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was performed in this way. the merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box i n :one poekei of his trousers, a note­ case in the other, and a watch in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and sticking a mook-diamond pin in his shirt; buttoned his ooat tight round him, and putting his speo- taole-oase and handkerchief in his pockets, trot­ ted up and down the room with a stick, in imita­ tion of toe manner in which old gentlemen walk - 25 -

about the streets any hour in the day. Sometimes he stopped at the fire-plaoe, and sometimes at the door, making believe that ho was staring with all his might into shop-windows. At snoh time, he woald look eonstsntly round him, for fear of thieves, and would keep slapping all his pockets, in suoh a funny and natural manner, that Oliver laugh# till the tears ran down his face* All this time, the.two boys followed him olosely about: getting out of his sight, so nimbly, every time ha turned around, that it was impossible to follow their motions. At last, the Dodger trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidentally, while Charley Bates stumbled up against him behind; and In that one moment they took from him, with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box, note­ case, watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-hand­ kerchief, even the spectaole-oase. If the old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his pockets, he orled out where it was; and them the gams began all over again.

At length Charley Bates expressed his opinion that it was time to pad the hoot# Shis, it 00- ourred to Oliver, must be French for going out; for, directly"afterwards, the Dodger, and Charley • « # . went away together, having been kindly furnished by the amiable old Jew with money to spend. - L" v. . : : .

"fher®, ®y dear," said Fagln. "that's a pleasant life, i s n H it? They have gone out for the day."

"Have they done work, sir?" inquired Oliver.

"Yes,” said the Jew; "that is, unless they should unexpectedly come across any, when they are out; and they won11 neglect it, if they do, ay dear, depend upon it. Make ’em your models, my dear. Make 'em your models," tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add fores to his words; "do every­ thing they bid you, and take their advice in all matters— especially the Dodger's, my dear. He'll be a great man himself, and will make you one too. If you take pattern by him. — Is ray handkerchief hanging out of my pocket, ray dear?" said the Jew, stopping short. -• 24 -

"Yes, sir,"'said O l f w .

"See if you can take it out, withomt ay feeiiag it; as you saw them do , when we were at play this : morning." : - . .. , ;; ' - ■ • Oliver heldvup the hottom of the pocket with "on# M h d , as he had seen the Dodger hold it, and drew the handkerohief lightly out of it with the other.

"Is it gone?" or led the' Jew.

"Here it is, sir\" said Oliver, showing it in his hand. ' % ' ■

"You‘ro a olever boy, my dear,"said the playful old gentleman, patting Oliver on th@r Wa d approv­ ingly. "I never saw a sharper lad. Here’s a shilling for you. If you go on, in this way, you *ll be the greatest man of the time). And now , some here, and I'll show you how to take the marks \ out of the handkereMefs."lS I

Eventually Fagin hands the unfortunate Oliver over to

Bill Sike s a rid ^ b y Orueki t t b help rob a house in the country, near Shepertoa. three set out together:

It was now intensely dark. The fog was much heavi­ er than it had been in the early part of the night; and the atmosphere was so damp, that, although no rain fell, Oliver's hair and eyebrows, within a few minutes after leaving the house, lad become stiff with the half-frozen moisture that was float­ ing about. They crossed the bridge, and kept on towards the lights which he had seen before. They were'at no great distance off; and as they walked pretty briskly, they soon arrived at Chertsey.

"Slap through the town," whispered Sikes; "there *11 be nobody in the way, tonight, to see u s ."

Toby aoquiescod; and they hurried through the main street of the little town, which at that, late hour was wholly deserted. A dim light shone at intervals from some bed-room window; and the 19

19Diekens, Oliver Twist, pp. 82-84. hearse barking of dogs oaoaaionally broka the alienee of the night. But there was nobody abroad. They had cleared tho town, as the ohuroh-bell struck two. '

Quickening their pace, they turned up a road on the left hand• After walking about a quarter of a mile, they stopped before a detached house sur­ rounded by a wall: to the top of which, Toby Craokit, scarcely pausing to take breath, climbed in a twinkling.

"fhe boy next," said Toby., "Hoist him up; I 'll catoh hold of him." •

Before Oliver had time to look round, Sikes had caught him under the arms; and in three or four seconds he and Toby were lying on the grass on the other side. Sikes followed directly. And they stole cautiously towards the house•

And now, for the first time, Oliver, well-nigh mad with grief and terror, saw that housebreaking and robbery, if not murder, were the objects of the expedition. Ho clasped his hands together, and involuntarily uttered a subdued exclamation of horror• A mist came before his eyes; the oold sweat stood upon his ashy face; his limbs failed him; and he sank upon his knees*

"Set up!" murmured Sikes, trembling with rage, and drawing the pistol from his pocket; "Set up,, or I'll strew your brains upon the grass."

"Oh 1 for Sod's sake let me go r erlet Oliver; "let me run away and die in the fields. I will never oome near London; never, never ! Oh I pray have merey on me, and do not make me steal. For the leva of all the bri^it.Angels that rest in Heaven, have mercy upon me !"

The man to whom this appeal m s made, swore a dreadful oath, and had cocked the pistol, when Toby, striking it from his grasp, placed his hand upon the boy's mouth, and dragged him to the house.

"Hash r* oried the man; "it won't answer here. Say another word, and I 'll do your business myself with a crack on the head. That.makes no noise, and is quite as certain, and mere genteel. Here, Bill, wrench the shutter cpen. Ho*s game enough now. 1*11 engage. I've''seen older hands of his age took the sane way, for a minute or two, on a oold n i g h t v ' - V: v v •' Sikes, invofcingterrifie impreoations upon Pagin's head for sending Oliver on sn@h an errand, plied the'erowhar vigorously, but with little noiso. After some delay, and some assistance from Toby, the shutter to which ho had referred, swung ©pen on Its hinges. y ■ : ■ .

It was a little lattice window, about five feet arid a half above the ground, at the back of the house: which belonged to a soullery, or small brewing-place, at the end of the passage• The aperture was so email that the inmates had probably not thought it imrth while to defend it more se­ curely; but it was large enough to admit a boy of Oliver's size, nevertheless. A very brief exer­ cise of Mr 2 Sikes's art, sufficed to overcome the fastening cf the lattice; and it soon stood wide open also• , ”iow listen, you young limb," whispered Sikes, drawing a dark lantern from his pocket, and throw­ ing the glare full on Oliver's face; I'm a going to put you through there. Take this light; go softly up the steps straight afore you, and along the little hall, to the street door; unfasten it, arid let us in.* .

^#ere's a bolt at the top, you won’t be able to reaoh," interposed Toby. "Stand upon one of the hall chairs. There are three there. Bill, with a jolly large blue unioorn and gold pitchfork on 'em: which is the old lady's arms."

"Keep quiet, can't you?" replied Sikes, with a threatening look. "The room-door is open. Is it?"

"Wide," replied Toby, after peeping in to satisfy himself. "The game of that is, that they always leave it open with a catch, so that the dog, who's got a bed in here, may walk up and down the pas­ sage when he feels wakeful. Ha I Ha 1 Barney 'tloed him away tonight. So neat 1"

Although Mr. Craokit spoke in a scarcely audible whisper, and laughed without noise, Sikes imperi­ ously commanded him to be silent, and to get to work. Toby compiled, by first producing his lantern, and placing it on tho ground; Slieii Hy planting himself firmly with his head against the wall beneath the window, and his hands apon hie knees, so as to make a step of his back* This was no sooner done, than Sikes, mounting upon him, put Oliver gently through the window with his foot first; and, without leaving hold of his collar, planted him safely on tho floor inside ,

this lantern," said Sikes, looking into the room. "You seo the stairs afore you?"

"Oliver* more dead than alive, gaspad out, "Yes Sikes; pointing to the street-door with the pistol- barrel , briefly advised him to take notice that he was within shot all the way; and that if he faltered, he would fall dead that instant,

"It*s done in a minute," said sikns, in the same low whisper. "Directly I leave go of you, do your work. Hark 1" / : .: . .

"9hat *5 that?" whisperod the other zmn. They listened Intently.

"Hothing," said Sikes, releasing his hold of Oliver. "How l" : • ; ■

In the short time he had had to collect his senses, the boy had f i m l y resolved that, whether he died in the attempt or not, he would make one effort to dart upstairs from the hall, and alarm the family, filled with this idea, he advanced at ones, but stealthily. :... ; - , - ■: . • . - . . : - "Ooee bask 1" suddenly cried Sikes aloud. "Back 1 baok l" : . . :. . ' : . : - , ' . • ' Soared by the sudden breaking of tiie dead still­ ness of the place, and by a loud cry which fol­ lowed it, Oliver let his lantern fall, and know not whether to advance or fly.

The cry was repeated — a light appeared — a vision of two terrified half dressed men at the top of the stairs swam before his eyes — a flash — a loud noise — a smoke — a crash somewhere, but whore he knew not,— and he staggered back.

Sikes had disappeared for an instant; but he was up again, and had him by the collar before the • ES

aeoke had oloared away. He fired hie own pistol after the men, who were already retreating; and dragged the hoy up.

"Clasp your arm tighter," said Sikes, as he drew him through the window. "Give me a shawl here . They've'hit.him. Quick l How the boy bleeds T

Then earns the loud ringing of a ball* mingled with the noise of fire-arms, and the shouts of men, and the sensation of being carried over uneven ground at a rapid pace. And then, the noises grew con­ fused in the distance; and a cold deadly feeling orept over the boy's heart; and ho saw or heard no more .20

So matter to what straits this child had been driven, it

Is impossible to imagine him stealing voluntarily; Con­ trast the picture of Manuel, Petra's son, whose adventures bind loosely together the three novels, la Buses. IJala

Hlerba. and Aurora Ro.ja. Manuel loses his job in a squalid bakery and finds himself without means of subsistence. Els cousin Vidal and Squinteyo urge him to join them. Vidal says:

"What you ought to do is come along with us. Why, it's a fine life 1 A few days ago, Juan the . Burra and Arenaro that live en Casa Blanca found a dead pig in the street. A fellow was taking a herd of them to the slaughterhouse when ho noticed that the animal had died, so he loft it , there, and Juan and the Arenero dragged it home, quartered it, and we've been eating pork for more than a week now. 1*11 tell you, it's a fine life."

Sometimes Bizeo arid Vidal had endured bad times, eating eats and rats, seeking shelter in the caves .... and in the cemetery, but now the two had a way of getting along. :

"By work, I suppose?" asked Manuel.

"Work? Hot on your life," answered Vidal.

20j)iokens, Oliver Twist, pp. 211-216. * *

They didn ^ work* stammored Squinteye: With a knife sharpener in his hand; who was geing to : taekia him? ■■ - v- '; ■ v _

In the train of that heast there never entered even vaguely the least notion of right or duty, neither obligation nor law nor any sueh thing; for him might was right; the world a woods to hunt in. Only poor wreieh®a would observe the law of work. He used to say: Work for the simpletons; ' fear for the cowards. -' ' -; ;v:

While they were talking, the three passed on the " highway a man and a woman with a child in her arms* They had a sad expression as of hungry ill-used people, their glanee timid, shy.

^There*s some people that work for a living exolaimed Tidal. n93iatfs what I M y look like.n21

So Manuel, not without ooneiderable misgiving * Joins the t w .

They oa11 themselvos, "The Soeiety of the Three," and they live by their wits. %uinteye lives with an old woman, at times, who steals for him. They filsh olothes from lines, articles of apparel from public washrooms.

Another means of subsistence of the Society was the oat hunt, squinteye, who possessed no talent whatsoever, his head, according to Vidal, being a hollow melon, nevertheless had great talent for catching cats. With a sack and a club, the trick was admirably done. once seen, a beast was lost.

The partners did not disoriainate against a lean oat, nor a eensraaptlve cat, nor a pregnant oat; all t M t foil were devoured with equal appetite. They sold the skins in the Bastro; the tavern of 2ioo . . . .trusted # e m for bread and wine when no funds were available to pay for them, and the Society enjoyed the feasts of Sardanapolis.22 *22

glBaroja. la Busoa. p. 109. 22Ibid., pp. 132-135• Evantoally they rob an empty hemso, and for their paina ob­ tain a copper, oloek, an Imitation silver eandlsstiok, a broken eleotrio bell, a barometer, and a toy pistol, inonr- rlng the risk of robbery and receiving pitifully inadequate reward. Clearly this is not the portrayal of a highly moral being butof a boy of average ability drifting along into a life of crime, carried by the strong current of neeesaity,

Biekens enlivens the dark environs of hie boarding houses and offices with nimbie youths. One of thorn, Bailey, the young porter at Todger16 Commercial Boarding House, is eharaoteristioally shown by means of his antics and his mischievous activity: Rodgers's was in a great bustle that evening, I^irtly owing to some additional domestic prepara­ tions for the morrow, and partly tothe excitement always inseparable in that house from Saturday night, when every gentleman*s linen arrived at a different hour In its own little bundle, with his private aceount pinnod on the outside.There was always a great clinking of pattens downstairs, too, until midnight, or so, on i^turdays; together with a frequent gleaming of mysterious light in ths area; muoh working at the pump; and a constant janglii^r of the iron handle of the pail. Shrill altercations from time to time arose between Mrs. fodgers and unknown females in remote, back- kitchens; and sounds were occasionally heard indica­ tive of small articles of ironmongery and hardware being thrown at the boy. It was the custom of that youth on Saturdays, to roll up his shirt sleeves to his shoulders, and pervade all parts of the house in an apron of coarse green baise; moreover, he was more strongly tempted on Satur­ days than on other days (it being a busy time), to make excursive bolts into the neighbouring alloys when he answered the door, and there to play at leap-frog and other sports with vagrant lads, until pursued and brought back by the’hair of his a -

heat6 or the lobe of his ear; thus, ho was quite a conspicuous feature among the peculiar incidents of the last day in the week at Todgers’s*

"I say," he whispered, stopping in one of his journeys to and fro, "young ladies, there's soup tomorrow, she's a making it now. An't she a put­ ting in the water? Oh I not at all neither !"

In the course of answering another knock, he thrust in his head again. "I say ! fhere's fowls tomorrow, Sot skinny ones. * Oh no 1" presently he called through the key-hole --

"there's a fish tomorrow. Just oomo. Don't eat none of him!" And, with tills special warning, vanished again.

By and by he returned to lay the cloth for supper, it having been arranged between Mrs. lodgers and the young ladies that they should par­ take of an exclusive veal-outlet together in the privacy of that apartment. He entertained them on this occasion by thrusting the lighted candle into his mouth, and exhibiting his face in a state of transparency; after the performance of which feat, he went on with his professional duties: brighten­ ing every knife as he laid it on the table, by breathing on the blade and afterwards polishing the same on the apron already mentioned. When he had completed his preparations, he grinned at the sisters, and expressed his belief that the approach­ ing collation would be of "rather a spicy sort."

"Will it be long before it's ready, Bailey?" asked Meroy.

"Ho," said Bailey, "it is cooked. When I oome up, she dodging among the tender pieces with a fork, and eating of 'em."

But he had soaroely achieved the utterance of these words, when he received a manual compliment on the head, which sent him staggering against the wall, and Mrs. M g e r s , dish in hand, stood indignantly before him. 32 -

"Oh you little Tlllaiiil* said that lady* "Oh you had, fala® boy l*2S Baroja taaorlhos the servitude of Manuel in the board­

ing house in whioh his mother works, but there is nothing

bright or noteworthy; life moves along, drab, monotonous, until the moment when a eontroveray;with a boarder compels

him to leave• Successful as Diokenc is with male characters, Mr.

dlasing feels that his ©speeial genius for portraying faith­

fully the life he knew was proved by " M s Hilary of foolish,

ridiculous, or offensive women" belonging to the lower mid­

dle olaaa* In the chapter devoted to "Women and Children,*

Giaalng cltea their "acidity of temper and the boundless

lloense of queralcua or insulting talk,"* 24 menticning Mrs.

Tarden, Mrs. Snagsby, Mrs. Gargery, Mrs. teller, Mrs. Sower-

by, Mrs. Bumble, and the spinster Miggs, as well as the loss

acidulous but lachrymose and bibulous Sairy Gamp. Cer­

tainly in all the pages of fiction, there is no more richly

entertaining old woman. She is first brought to the notice

of the reader as she is on hor way to a house of mourning to

"lay out" the deceased: She was a fat old woman, this Mrs; Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a re­ markable power of turning up, and only showing the white of it. Having very little neok, it cost her

^Dickens. Martin Chuzzleult. Bk. I. pp. 194-198.

24Gissing, Charles Dickens, p. 172. - m -

some trouble to look over horseIf, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. . She wore a very rusty blaok gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to oorrespond. In these dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, on such occasions as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of ven­ eration for the deceased and invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit of weeds; an appeal so frequently successful that the very fetch and ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up, any hour of the day, in at least a dozen of the seuond hand elethes shops about Holbora. The face of Mrs. Gamp -- the nose in particular — was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society without be­ coming conscious of a smell of spirits*

"Ah i” repeated Mrs. Gamp; for it was always a safe sentiment in oases ef mourning. "Ah dear 1 When Gamp was summoned to his long home and I see him a lying in Guy's Hospital with a penny-pieoe on each eyeand his wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should have fainted away* But I bore

■ ■■■ - ' If certain whispers current in Kingsgate Street circles had any truth in them, she had Indeed borne up surprisingly; and had exerted such uncom­ mon fortitude, as to dispose of Hr* Gamp's remains for the benefit of science . But it should be added, in all fairness, that this had happened twenty years before; and.that Mr* and Mrs. Gamp had long been separated on the ground_of.incom­ patibility of temper in their drink*25

Standing on the wharf watching the steam paekets depart, she sighs so incessantly that a lady standing nearby asks her kindly if some child of hers is going abroad that morning, or perhaps her husband, to which the dear old thing replies:

"Which shows," said Mrs. Gamp, casting np her *

^Dickens, Martin Ohuzzlewit. Bk. I, pp. 427-428. 34 -

ey##," what a little way you’ve travolled into this wale of life * my dear young orootur i As a good friend of mine haa frequent made remark to me, which l»r name, my love is Barrie• I2rs. Harris . through-the square and up the steps a turninf round by the tobaoker shop, *0h Sairey, Sairey, little do we know wot lays afore us i* 'Mrs. Harris, ma'm, * I safe, 'mot much, it's true* but more than you euppoge« Our oalcilations, ma'am,* I says, 'respeetin* wot tiie number of a family will be, comes moat times within one, and ofter than you would suppoge, exact.' 'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, in an awful way, 'Tell me wot is my . indlwidgle number.' 'Ho, Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'excuge me, if you please. My owni* Isays, 'has fallen out of three-pair backs, and had damp doorsteps Settled -on their laags, and one was V turned up, smilin' in a bedstead, unbeknown. Therefore, ma'am,* I says, 'seek not to protioi- pato but take 'em as they come and as they gow' Mine," said Mrs. Gamp, "mine is all gone, my dear young ehlok. And as to husbands, there's a wooden leg gone likoways home to its account, which in its constancy of walkin' into wine vaults, and never cornin' out again till fetched by force, was quite as weak as flesh, if not weaker•"26

Again, .she la shorn in happy vein as she soothes with delightful and airy flattery the undertaker. Mould, and hie

Wife: ^ • "There are some happy creature," Mrs. Gamp ob­ served , "as time runs baek'ards with, and you are one, Mrs. Mould; not that he need do nothing ex­ cept use you in his most owldacious way for years to come, I'm sure: for young you are and will be. I says to Mrs. Harris," Mrs. Gamp continued, " 'only tether day; the last Monday evening fort­ night as ever dawned upon this Piljian'a Progisa of a mortal wale; 1 says to Mrs. Harris when she says to me, ‘Years and our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us all.'-- 'Say not the words, Mrs. Harris, if you and me is to be continual friends, for seoh is not the case. Mrs• Mould,* I says, making so free, I will confess, as to use . the name,11 (she ourtsied here) ;f is one of them that 26

26Diokena, Martin Ohuzglewit. Bk, II, p. 277. 35 *■*

goes again the ofceermtion straight; and never, Mrs.Harris, mhllet I've a drop of breath to draw will set by; and not stand up, don't think it.* — *1 ast your pardon ma'am,* says Mrs. Harris, 'and 1 huiably grant your graoe; for if ever a. woman lived as would see her feller-creeturs into fits to serve her friends* well do I know that woman’s name is Sairoy Gamp.’^ ^ ;

At this point she was fain to stop for breath; and advantage may b® taken of the dlroumstanoe, to state that a fearful mystery surroamded this lady of the name of Harris* whom no one in the circle of Mrs. Gamp's aoqualntanoe had ever seen; neither did any human being know her place of residence,. though Mrs. Gamp appeared on her own showing to be in constant oomsunioat ion with her. There were conflicting rumours on the subject; but the pre­ vailing opinion was that she was a phantom of Mrs. • Gamp's brain — as Messrs. Doe and Hoe are fic­ tions of the law — oreated for the express pur­ pose of holding visionary dialogues with her on all manner of subjeots, and invariably winding up __ with a o cxapliment to: the excellence of her nature .e 1

Talesdia is an old woman of the same social status as

Sairey Gamp, and Baroja time pictures her:

fenancia’s ideas of the world were a little whim­ sical. For her, the rich, and above all the aristocracy belonged to a speoies superior to the : human. ? ;;; .v :../v/ An aristocrat had a right to vice, immorality, selfishness. Ho was above common morality. One of the poor like herself, fickle, selfish or adulter­ ous, seemed to her a monstrous thin#; but the same vices in a great lady she found a blameless thing

A philosophy so extraordinary astonished Andres; that he who possessed health, strength, beauty and privileges had more right te other advantages than

^^Dlokens. Martin Chuzzlewlt. Ik. I, pp. 560-561. 2^Baroja, 21 Arbol do la oienoia. p• Ilf• m -

the one who was ill, ugly, and dirty. Ae r o is in the Gathollo heavon; apeording to tradition, a saint, Baaquale Ballon, who dances hefore the Most High, and who keeps saying, "More, more, more!" If one has luck, he gives -'him more luck, if one has misfortune, ho gives him also more misfortune, more, more, more. Shat dancing philoso­ phy was that of the. Sefiora Valenoia.29 '

She goes on to recount at length shocking reminiscences of

some of her former mistresses, most of them great ladies, the vioes, the weaknesses* the hahIts of the - aristo­ crats that she knew through the actual seeing of them.30 , -

Andres affirm#d that such people wore dirty trash, unworthy of sympathy or pity; but the senora fenanoia with her strange philosophy did not ac­ cept his judgment; on the contrary, she used to say that they were good hearted, very charitable, that they gave a great deal to the unfortunate and relieved a great deal of misery.

Sometimes Andres tried to convince the laundress that the money that the rl#h possessed came from the work and the sweat of wretched laborers in the country, the pastures and the farms. Andres stated that suoh a state of injustice ought to be changed; but Valencia considered that a dream.

"We find the world the way-it is, and that's the way w e *11 have to leave it," the old woman said, convinced that there was no reply to her argu- • .• ■ - ■ ■ - . A e reader never learns whether or not this old woman

had a short neck or a long neck, whether she had a moist and

29Baroja, El Arbol de la ciencia. p . 118. 80 Ibid,, p, 129.

8% ibid., p. 1 2 1 . .'V'/ V * 9? *

upturning eye or an eye that was suite steady. Her philoso­ phy of life is-.quite.-as vicious as that of Mrs . Gamp but there le no enlarging upon any of her eharaoteristios, per­ sonal or moral . . Another queer old wcrom of the distriot m s tlis Sonora BenJamina# . . . . She was a little e M thing with a crooked nose, lively eyes and a sunken mouth.

She used to beg at the Ghareh of Jesus and at that of Montserrat; sho always affirmed that she bad had many family misfortunes and losses; perhaps she felt thatthat justified her affection for brandy. . . . < Often, at twilight, she sta­ tioned herself at a street corner with a blaok veil over hor face and surprised the passerby with a tragic story expressed in theatrical tones. She would say that she was the widow of a general; that her son of twenty years had just died, the only support of her life; and that she had not a oent to bury him with, hor to burn a candle at the corpse. Sometimes the one accosted would ahi’ver; sometimes he replied that she must have a lot of sons twenty years old since they diod so often,32

there are in the pages of Mroja no Gamps or Maggies.

fo offset the nagging, querulous females so irritating

to Mr. Gissing, Diokens's books contain many normal, cheery

women much as £it rs mother in little Dorrlt. Mrs. Peery-

bingle In 'the'Oricket on the Hearth and the irrepressible

Peggoty in David Oopperfleld. Baroja's women are sometimes

ill tempered; but, oharaeteristi^illy, their ill temper is

sot emphasised and there is little dialogue to stamp them

with the mannerisms of ill temper.

fhe following is the description of leandra, the mother

32Baroj&, B1 Arbol de la cienoia. p. 125. 1 # of Manuel'a oouslns Vidal and Leandro, and Salom

Salomef resemble4 her sister • * # . * The two were of medium height, had a short sauoy nose, and beautiful blaek eyes. In spite of their physical similarity, their aspect was entirely different.

Isaadra, the mother of Tidal, was dirty, uncombed, dishevelled, with traces of ill humor; she seamed much older than Salome' although she was not more than three or four years her sealer . Salome' ex­ hibited in her appearance a happy, determined air. 7/hat a thing is fate l Leandra, in spite of her . laxity, her ill temper sad her love of brandy, was married to an industrious, honorable man; on the contrary, Salome, endowed with the excellent traits of industry and amiability had burdened hersolf with a low fellow something between a swindler, a sloven and a bully, by whom she had two shil- dren. ©trough a spirit of humility or of elavlsh- nees, coupled with a natural independence and valor, Salom^ adored her man and through some self- deception, looked upon him as imposing and ener­ getic although he was a coward and a loafer. The rascal had a sharp appreciation of the situation; when it seemed good to him, ho put in his appear­ ance at home with a terrible disdain, demanding the money that Salomd’ earned sewing on the machine at five centimes for two pieces. She willingly handed over the result of her arduous labor, and often he was dissatisfied with the amount and drubbed her well in the bargain.3®

In Little Dorrit. one of the types of deficiency in — 1 ... which the slums abound is shown by Sickens in Maggy, the

protege of Little Dorrit:

She was about eight-ani-twenty, with large bones, large features, large feet and hands, large eyes and no hair. Her large eyes were limpid and almost colourless; they seemed to bo vary little affect­ ed by light, and to stand unnaturally still. There was also that attentive listening expression in her face, which is seen in the fades of the

'SSBaroja. La Busca. p. 41. 3» -

Ullnd; but she -was not blind, having one tolerably serviceable eye. Her face was not exceedingly ugly, though it was only redeemed from being so by a smile; a good-humoured sailo, and pleasant in itself, but reMered pitiable by being con­ stantly there • A great v/hite oap, with a quantity of opaque frilling that was always flapping about, apologised for Maggy's baldness, and made it so very difficult for her old black bonnet to retain its place upon her head, that it held bn round her neck like a gipsy's baby. A commission of haber­ dashers could alone have reported what the rost . of her poor dress was made of; but it had a strong general resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her shawl looked par­ ticularly like a tea-leaf, after long infusion.

"Zhis is Maggy, air." "Maggy, sir," echoed the personage presented. "little mother i"

"She is the grand-daughter — " said Borrit.

"©rand-daughter," echoed Saggy.

"Of ray old nurse, who has been dead a long time• M&ggy, how old are you?"

"fen, mother," said Maggy.

"You can’t think how good she is, sir," said Dor- rlt, with.infinite tenderness.

"Good she is," eohoed Maggy, tMmsferrlz^ the pro­ noun in a most expressive way from herself to her little mother.

"Oh how olever," said Borrit* "She goes on er­ rands as well as any oneMaggy laughed. "And is as trustworthy as the Bank of England•" Maggy laughed. "She earns her own living entirely. Entirely, sir 1 said Borrit in a lower and triumphant tone. "Really does 1"

"that is her history?" asked Clennara.

"Think of that, Maggy?" said Borrit^ taking her - 40 -

two largo bands and clapping the® together. gentleman from thonmnaa of miles away, wanting to know, your Ma t o r y ln

"My history?" cried Maggy, "little mother."

"She means me," said Porrlt, rather confused; "she is very much attached to me. Her old grand­ mother was not so. kind to her as she should have been; was she, Maggy?"

Maggy shook her head, made a drinking vessel of her olenohod left hand, -drank out of it, and said, "Gin." then she boat an imaginary; child, and said, "Broom-handles and pokers."

"When Maggy was ten years old," said Dorrlt, wtohlng her faoe while she spoke, "she had a feverj sir, and she has never grown any older ever since: \

"Ten years old," said Maggy + nodding her head. "But what a nice hospital! So comfortable, wasn’t it? Oh so nice it was. Such a Sv’nly place I"

"She had never been at peace before, sir," said Borrit, turning towards Arthur for an instant and speaking low, "and she always runs off upon that." "Such beds there is there 1" cried Maggy. Such lemonades 1 Suoh oranges i Such d'lioious brotii and wine l Suoh Chicking r. (&, AIH’T it a delightful plaoe to go and stop at i"

’ "So Maggy stopped there as long as she mould," said Dorrit, in her former tone of telling a child’s story; the tone designed for Saggy's ear, "and at last when she could stop there no longer, she came 1 out. Then, because she was never to be more than ten years old, however long she lived — "

"However long aha lived," echoed Maggy.

"ind because she was very weak; indeed was so ; weak that when she began to laugh she oouldn’t stop herself — which was a groat ^pity — "

(Maggy mighty grave of a sudden.)

"Her grandmother did not know what to do with her. - 41

and far some years m s very unkind to her Indeed. At length* in course of time, Maggy began to take pains to improve herself, and to be very at­ tentive and very industrious; and by degrees m s allowed to oome in and out as often as she liked, and got enough to do to support herself, and she does support herself. And that," said little Dorrit, clapping the two great hands together again, "is Maggy's -Metery^ history, as Maggy knows l"34 . ■ ■ , :•; ..

A more amusing grotesque is the capable Hiss Mowoher, whom David Cepperfleld met at the rooms of Steerforth.

We were sitting ever ear decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened, and Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, announced —

"Miss Mowoher I" I looked at the doorway and saw nothing* I was still looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowoher was a long while making her appearance, when, to ray infinite astonishment, tharo came waddling round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a finger archly against her snub-nose as she ogled Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way and lay her nose against it. Her chin, which was what is called a double-shin, was so .fat that it entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she had none; waist she had none; legs she had none worth mentioning; for though she was more than full-sized down to where her waist would have been if she had had any, and though she terminated, as human beings generally do, in a pair of feet, she was so.short that she stood at a oocmion-sized chair as at a table, rest­ ing a bag she carried on the seat. This lady; dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her forefinger, with the diffieulty I have described; standing with her head necessarily on one side, and with one of her sharp eyes shut

^Dickens. Little Dorrit. Bk. I, pp. 154-135-156-137. - 42 -

ap, making an tmeoaoionly knowing face; after ogling Steerforth for a few moments, broke into a torrent of words. ■■ • - / .

’’Wliat t My flower irt she pleasantly began, shaking ' her 3arg® head at him*. “Ten*re there, are y o u ! Oh, yon naughty boy, fie for shame, what do yon do so far away from homo? Up to mioohlof. I'll he bound* Oh, you're a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I'm another, ain't I? Ha, ha, ha V Ton'd have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn't have soon me here, wouldn't you? Bless you, man alive, I'm everywhere* I'm here, and there, and where not, like the conjuror's half crown in the lady's hankeroher. Talking of hankerohere — and talking of ladies — what a com­ fort you are to your blessed mother, ain't you, my dear boy, over one of my shoulders, and I don't say which?”

Miss Mowoher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her disoours®, threw baok the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of the fire— making a kind of arbour of the dining- table, whioh spread the mahogany shelter above her head* -■■; '■ ; -" .

"Oh my stars and what's-their-names 1" she went on, olapping a hand on each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at m e . ”I'm of too full a habit, that's the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives me as trouble to draw ovary breath I want, as if it was a buoket of water• If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you'd think I was a fine wsman, wouldn't you?"

"I should think that, wherever I saw you," re­ plied Steerforth.

"Go along, you dog, do^ 1" eried the little creature, making a whisk at him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, "and don't be impu­ dent l But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers ’s last week — there's a w o m n l How she weaxs i — and Hi there himself came into the room where I was waiting for her — there's a man ! How he wears 1 and.his wig too, for he's had it these ten years — and he went on at that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I shonia ba obliged to ring tho ball* Ba I ha 2 Iia2 H e ’s a pleasant T/retch, bat ha wants prin­ ciple.”35

Baroja gives us gllmpsas of human deficiency that are terrible rather than amusing. Bare -is a description of some girls seed by Manuel when he accompanies his cousin

Leandro So a lew tavern Is Madrid, where Leandro is taking a painter on a Mslumming" expedition:

. Shore were some ugly old women, dishevelled, dressed in ragged skirts and blouses held together at the waistline by some cord.

"Who are those women?” asked the painter.

"Some abandoned eld wretches," Leaader replied.

Two or three of those miserable creatures were carrying in their arms children who belonged to ' other women. * . . .Some were sleeping with the stub of a cigarette stuck in the side of their mouth. Between the lines of old women there were young girls of thirteen or fourteen years, mon­ strous , deformed, bleary-eyed; one of them had her nose completely eaten away and in its place there was a hole like an ulcer; another was hydrocephalic with a neck so thin that it seemed the least move­ ment would send her head rolling' off her shoul­ ders.®^ ' ' V

The tendency towards idealisation which Dickens exhibits

In many of Ms characterizations is apparent in the following

presentation of the woman of the streets whom Little Dorrit and Maggy meet on® night when they are shut out of the

Marahalsea prison and are compelled to roam about until morning: '■ 36

36ilekens, David Copperfleld. m . I, pp. 425-454-436. ®®Baroja. La Busoa. p. 6 6 . Ehough evorjmhsre the leader mi. # e guide. Lit- tie Dorrit, teappy for onoo in her youthful appear- anee, feigned to cling to and rely upon I^aggy. i M sore t M n onee some voio®, from among a knot of brawling or prowling figures in their path, had oalleft out to the rest, to "let the woman and the ohildgd by l"

8 0 , the woman and the child had gone by, and gone on, and five had sounded from tiie steeples. Siey were walking slowly towards the east, already looking for the first pale streak of day, when a womaricame after them. "What are you doing with the child?" she said to Maggy. ; v,. v V She was young — far too young to be there, Season knows l — and neither ugly nor wieked-looking . she spoke coarsely, but with no naturally ooaree voice; there was even something musical in its sound. . ■ ...... •

"What are you doing with yourself?” retorted Mag­ gy, for want of a better answer.

"GanH you see, without my tolling you?"

"I don't know as I can,” said 'Mdggy.

"Killing myself. Now 1 have answered you, answer me • Shat are you doing with the child?" — ....

37h® supposed child kept her head drooped down, and kept her form close at Maggy's side.

"Poor thing 1* said the w w a n . "Have you no feel­ ing, that you keep her out in the cruel streets at such a time as this? #iv@ you no eyes that you don't see how delicate and slender ^ie is? Have ... you no sens® (you don't look as If you M d much) that you don't take more pity on this cold and trembling little hand?"

She had stepped across to that side, and held the hand between her own two, chafing it. "Kiss a poor lost creature, dear,* she said, bending her face, "and tell me where she's taking you.”

Little Dorrit turned towards her. "Why, ray Go t !" she said recoiling, "you’re a woman l"

"Don’t rnina that I" said little Dorrit, clasping one of the hands that hat suddenly released hers. "I am not afraid of you."

"3h@n yen had hotter be," she answered. "Haio you mo mother?"

"So." ; ^ - : '

"So father?" "TWs, a very dear one."

"Go home to him, and be afraid of me. let mo go* Geet-nlght 1" - ; ' > • ' - : ' ■ ; ' "I must thank you first; let me speak to you as if I really wezo a ©hilt." - . ' , : • ' • "You can’t do it," said # e woman. "You aro kind and ianooent; but you can’t look at me out of a child’a.eyes. I mover should have touched you* but I thought that you wore a child." And with a strange„ wild cry, sho-went away.

Bill Sikes’s girl, Barney, also shows symptoms of shame on account of her way of living. When little Oliver Twist is brought babk to Fag in’s after having been kidnapped by herself and Bill Sikes from the kindly old gentleman who had decided to oaro for him, the old ram begins to beat him; she springe to his defense, hurling the club into the fire. A. quarrel ensues in which she threatens Pag in with

violence if he touches the boy. Finally Sikes Intervenes,

railing at her and concluding!

"Barn my bodyVdo you know who you are, and what

^Dickens, little Borrlt. Bk. I. no. 235-236-257. ~ 46 -

are?" - - - , - . -.v , ...

"Oh, yea, I knew all about it," replied the girl, laughing hyaterieally; and sinking her head from a ids to side, wi th a poor assumption of Jtod iff®r- enoe • . ■> ...

"Well, then, keep quiet," rejoined Sikes, with a growl like that he was aoeustoised to use when addressing his dog, "or I'll quiet you for a good long time to oome•"

She girl laughed again: even less composedly than before; and darting a hasty look at Sikes, turned. her face aside, and bit her lip till the blood ease •

"You*re a nice one," added Sikes, as he surveyed her with a contemptuous air, "to take up the humane and gen— “teal side ! a pretty subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of l"

"God Almighty help me, I am iR cried the girl pas­ sionately; "and I wish I had been struck dead in the street • . « before I had lent a hand in bringing him hero♦ He *s a thief, a liar, a devil, all that,s bad, from this night forth. Isn*t that enough for the old wreteh; without blows?"

"Oome, oome, Sikes," said the Jew appealing to him in a remonetratory tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were eagerly attentive to all that passed; "we must have civil words; civil words. Bill." . : :

"Oivil words I" cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see* "Civil words, you villain V Yes, you deserve ,om from me. I thieved for you when I was a child not half as old as this I" pointing to Oliver. I have been in the same trade, and in the same serf lee for twelve years since.* Don't you know it? Speak out i Don't you know it?"

"Well, well," replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification; "and. If you have, it's your living *"

"Aye, it is 1" returned the girl; not speaking, but pouring out the words in one continuous and vehe­ ment scream. "It is my living; and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you're the wretch 47

that drovo me to them long ago, and that*11 keep me there, day and might, day and night, till I

"I shall to yon a misehief i" interposed the Jew, goaded by these reproaehes; "a mischief worse t M n that, if you say mueh more I"

The girl said nothing more; bat, tearing her hair and dress -in a transport of passion, made such a rush at the Jew as would probably have left signal narks of her revenge upon him, had not. her wrists been seised by Slices at the right moment; upon which, she made a-few ineffeotual straggles, and . fainted.58 ; ^ : : ■

Thus his unhappy creatures demonstrate their oonsoious- mess of their unhappy condition. BaroJa shows them as growing naturally in their native soil, blitted, horrid pSLants in a malignant atmosphere.

ISanuel and his oousin Tidal meet several girls from twelve to eighteen years old, eho make their living on the streets^ their one fear being that they may be seised by the police and confined in a convent.

The police perseputed them more than other women of that life because they paid nothing to the inspectors.- They wore always fleeing from the guards and agents who, if they caught them, would take them to Court, and from there 1c the convent of the Trinitarians.

The idea of being shut up in the convent produced real terror In them.

The four of them used to coma into the populous part,of Madrid at night in company with an old whitehaired beggar, holding copies of newspapers under their arms in order to appear like

^Dickens, Oliver Twist, pp. 153-154^165, ** 48 •?

newspaper vendors.

Of the four girls, tt® ugliest was Malla; with her thiok shapeloss head, her hlaek eyes, her big month with broken teeth, her ohnbby body, she seeaeft like the feel of some medisTal princess• She had been at the point of entering the ehorms at the theatre ^ but she could not get in because, in spit# of her excellent voice, and her good ear for music, she could met enunciate distinctly be­ cause of her missing teeth*

Bella was always happy, singing and laughing continually; she carried in, her pookotbook a lit­ tle vanity ease with a mirror in the lid, and gas- ing at herself "under-the light of the street lamps^ she powdered her face every few minutes.

Goyal was, prettier and consequently had a greater number of oust mere; she turned her money over to a lover whom she supported and who watched her closely so that she should not cheat him by keeping any of it.

Babanitos seemed a woman in miniature. a little white face with blue stains air round ing the nose and month, a riekety, weedy little body; thin lips, and big eyes of sclerotic blue; in M r dress, she was like an old woman with her dark little ' shawl and her black skirt. Sooh was 3abamttes. She coughed up blood repeatedly. She talked with affectation, making many gestures. A% 1 her money she spent on salt fish, on earamels and o t M r sweetmeats.

Grace was the typical inmate of the brothel; her face was whit© with rice powder; her eyes, black and brilliant, had an expression of purely animal melancholy; upon talking, she revealed teeth-with a bluish cast which contrasted with the white of her powdered face. Without any transition, she passed from happiness to anger, she did not know how to smile. Her express!on ’ wavered stupidity and a currish gaiety, insulting and cynical*

Grace spoke seldom, and when she did, it was to utter something beastly and filthy, something at once cynical and pornographic. She had an » 49 -»

jbmgiBslioQ mastroms ana fertile. . • . . She was sereateen and had been miming the streets for eight years. She lamented the fact that she had grown tip, as she used to make more money.39

Another little glimpse of smeh women is given In the de- eeriptlon of the painter's visit to the tavern:

fhey all looked attentively at the Dove; she had a huge soft face with, here and there * penohee ef purplish skin, and a timid glance like.an animal. She represented at least forty years of prosti­ tution with it# consequent infirmities * forty years of nights without sleep, wandering around har- raoks, sleeping In sheds or in nauseating lodging house#.40

In the presentation of these poor wretches,- there is nothing of the tender idealisation so apparent in the Englishman.

Che pathos of the homeless child was keenly felt by

Dickens. -One of the most striking examples found in his pages is the lad in Bleak House, young Joe:

Joe sweeps his crossing all day long. . . . . , He. earns up his mental condition, whoa asked a question, by replying that "he don't know a©thing." He knows that it's hard to keep-the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still tc ■ live by doing it. Hohody taught hin, even that much; he found it out.

Joe lives — that is to say, Joe has not yet diet — in a ruinous place, known to the like of him by the name of Soa-all-alone*s. It Is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all docent people; , where the orazy houses were seised upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their own possessions, took to letting them out in lodgings. How, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of4 *

SSBaroja, LaJBusoa, pp, 137-138-139.

4^Ibld.. p. 67. 50'-

ml##ry. As , on the mi n e d human wretoh, vermin parasites appear, so, these m ined shelters have bred a orowd of foul axisten®# that orawls in and out of gaps in mils and hoards• and soils Itself to sleep, in maggot numhers, whore the.rain drips in; and dames and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in.its every footprint than lord Goodie and Sir Bioraas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodie, and all the fine gentlemen in offloe, down to Zoodlo, shall sot right in five hundred years though born expressly to do it*

It m s t he a strange state to he like Jo l shuffle through the streets, unfmiiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning of those mysterious symbols, so ah undent o m r the shops, and at the c omer of streets and on the doors, and in the windows ! $® see people read, and to see people write, and to see tiie postman deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that language — to he, to every.scrap of it, stone blind and dumb ! It must be very pussling . to see the good eompany going to the ohurohes on Smdays with their hooks in their hands, and to think.(for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all moan, and if it means anything to anybody, how mes it that it means nothing to me? To he hustled, and Jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to he j^r- feotly true that I M v e no business, hare, or there, or anywhere; and yet to he perplexed by the consideration that I am here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked mo until I heease the ereature that I am %A1 the homeless children in the following description by

Baroja are soaroely less pitiable, hut Baroja presents them with the glane® of an observer, rather than with the pity of a friend, as in the oase of Dickens;

Manuel hag. left the boarding house after the death of

^Charles Diokena, BleakHouse (Boston: Houghton* Mifflin and Company,18?f), pp, 229-230. - 61 -

Petra, his mother*

After roam ing ah out all morning, Lianne 1 found himself at midday in the Honda of Toledo, lean- . ing against a wall, without knowing what to do. At one side, also seated on the ground, there was a loathsome little holy, horribly ugly and flat- nosed, with one eye clouded, hare feet, and torn jacket through the holes of which showed the skin tanned black by the sun and the inclement weather. From his neck hung a bag for gathering butts of cigars and cigarettes*

"Where do you live?^ asked Manuel.

"I haven't got any father or mother," answered the boy, indirectly.

"What's your name?"

"Foundling."

"Why do they call you Foundling?"

"So on t Because I am a foundling."

"Haven't you got a home?" '■ - - • ■ ■ : . . - - -• "Hot me."

"Where do you usually sleep?"

"Well, in the summer in the oaves and the stable- yards; in the winter, in the asphalt boilers." "And when there isn't any asphalt?"

"I find some shelter."

"Bui how do you eat?"

"What anybody gives me

"And you get along all right that way?"

the foundling probably did not understand the ques­ tion or it seemed to him too foolish, for he shrugged his shoulders. Manuel went on questioa- i ^ him with curiosity* "Aren’t your feet cold?" — 68

.saw*** Huuuwva*. wwiuao c*a.w**Qt j . j **.w** **y a «%*. u o e I sell sand; whan I can*t make anything at all, I ge to the harraoks of Maria Cristina♦n

"What for?”

"Go on l To eat*"

"Where is that Mrraeksf"

"Bear the Atooha station* Why? Do yon want, to go there too?" -

"Yes, me too."

"Well, ooae on, for we don’t want to miss stew time."

The two got up and began to go through the byways. The Foundling entered the stores by the way to beg, and they.gave him two pieces of bread and a file 'bent-, piece.

They join some vagrants in the line at the barraoks and are fed. Then it begins to rain and they dooido to seek the oaves. • :-v

The ragged band began to run, and Manuel with them. Drops of rain were falling in oblique lines :the color of steel; in the sky, some rays of the sma shone brilliantly through the violet olouds dark and swollen, like big stationary fishes.

When they arrive at the oaves, t M y find them all oooupied, and they go to the Observatory where they huddle in the portico. :

That afternoon .and part of the night.it rained, and they passed it.talking of women, and of robberies and other crimes. Two or three of the hoys had a home but they did not want to go home. One who was named Marine recited a list of swindles and m

notable cheats; • . , • Ehis theme exhausted, some of thorn began to play oane, and one with black looks over his ears, whom they called Oanoo, sang com® low songs In a vroman *8 vb ice.

That night, as It was cold, they lay close to­ gether on the pavement, and went on talking. Manuel was appalled by the evil Intention* of all of them. One of them told about ah old man eighty years old who used to sleep, surreptitiously, in a little don formed by four pieces of matting in the washroom of the lanzanares .... and how he and some others opened up two of the mattings © w night when a cold wind was blowing; the next day the old man was found dead from cold. The Marine recounted that onoe when he had been in a house of ill fame with his cousin, a sergeant of cavalry, the latter had jumped eh the shoulders of a naked woman and had torn M r flanks with M s

- ' - ; : ' : • ■ - - . ; " : "Nothing like making women suffer to keep them happy," the Marino ©Med by saying#

ManuelgMard this piece of wisdom with astonleh-

The same differenee in describing # @ poor en masse is apparent in tbs two. In plotaring sono. people passing in and out of the Mrehalsea i^ison, BioMns says:

There was a string of people already straggling in, whom it was not difficult to identify as the nondescript messengers, go-betweens, and errand- bearers of the place * Some of them had been lounging in the rain until the gate should ©pen; others, who had timed their arrival with greater nleety, were coming up now, and passing in with damp whitey-brown paper bags from tho grocers, leaves of bread, lumps of butter, eggs, milk, and the like. The shabbiness Of those attendants upon shabbineas, the poverty of these insolvent waiters upon insolvency, was a sight to see. such threadbare coats and trousers, such fusty gowns and shawls, suoh squashed hats and bonnets * such boots and shoes, suoh umbrellas and walking sticks. 42

42Baroja, La Busoa. pp• 113-117. 54 -

never were seen In„ Bag Fair. All of them ware the oast-off clothes of other men an& women; were maie up of patches ana pieces of other people rs individuality, and had no sartorial existence of their own proper. Their walk was the walk of a rase apart ♦ They had a peculiar way1 of doggedly slinking round the corner, as if they were eter­ nally , go ing to the pawnbroker * e. When the y ooughe d, they coughed like people accustomed to be forget- ten bn doorsteps and in draughty passages, waiting for answers to letters in faded ink, which gave the recipients of these manuscripts great montal disturbance and no satisfaction. As they eyed the stranger in passing, they eyed him with borrowing eyes — hungry, sharp, speculative as to hie soft­ ness if they were accredited to him, and the like­ lihood of his standing something handsome. Xen* dielty on commission stooped in their high shoul­ ders , shambled in their unsteady legs, buttoned and pinned and darned and dragged their clothes, frayed their button-holes, leaked out of their figures in dirty little ends of tape, and issued, from their mouths in alcoholic breathings.45

He projects himself into their sordid lives, as he dees even more imaginatively in the following;

The crowds for ever passing and repassing on the bridges (on those which arc free of toll at least), where many stop on fine evenings looking listlessly down upon the water, with some vague idea that by-and-by it runs between green banks which grow wider and wider until at last it joins the bread vast sea — where some halt to rest from heavy loads, and think, as they look over the parapet, that to smoke and lounge away ©no *s life, and lie sleeping in the sun upon a hot tarpaulin, in a dull, slow, sluggish barge, must be happiness un­ alloyed— and whore some, and a very different olass, pause with heavier loads than they, remem­ bering to have heard or read in some old time that drowning was not a hard death, but of all means of suicide the easiest and best.44

S i c k e n s , Little Dorrit. Bk. I, pp. 121-122.

44x)|.q |»^|8> oxd Quriosity Shop, p. 2. 56

Baroja's crov/ds are made up of very much the same sort of people, viewed with a leas sympathetic eye: The day was dry, dusty. Sie south wind* suffocat­ ing* tossed about mouthfulls of heat and sand; some flashes of lightning illuminated the olouds; afar off one heard the sound of thunder; the coun­ try grew yellow, covered with dust.

Over the bridge of Toledo, a procession of beggars was passing, eaoh member vying with the other in wretchedness and dirt. • . . • Over the bridge of Toledo they went, and followed the high road of San Isidro to. stop before a red house.

Their destination is a building near the end of the bridge, surrounded by a courtyard with a figure of Christ in the middle. - ■ ' ■ ' - " ' - : : ; - ' - . -

Almost the entire courtyard was occupied by the women; in one end, near a chapel, the men were gathered; there wore swollen.faces there of stupid appearance; inflamed noses and twisted mouths; old women, fat and ponderous as whales, melancholy; bony little old women with sunken mouths and noses like a bird of prey; shamefaced beggars, their warty chins full of hairs.and their glance divided between irony and eringing; young women, thin and attenuated, dishevelled and dark; and all of them, old and young, enveloped in clothes that were frayed, darned, patched, and re-patohed until there was net an inoh without some patchwork. Their eloaks green with age, the sober dress of the oitydweller alternated with the short balse skirts, yellow and red, of the rustle.

• • • ...... * * • • • • • • • • • Among the beggars, a great number were blind; there were the orippled, the lame, the one-araedisome of a priestly appearance, grave and silent; others restless, shifting about. Long dark ooats mixed with short ragged jaekets and dirty blouses. Some of the tatterdemalions carried bags and dark knap­ sacks on their backs; others, enormous bludgeons in their hands. A big negro with deep stripes tattooed on his faoe, doubtless a slave in another — 56 —

epooh, leaned against the wall with dignified inaifferenee, wrapped in rags. Between the men and women, barefoot children and squalid degs roved about; and the entire mass of beggars, restless, agitated, palpitating, writhed about like a mass of maggots. ^

"Some on," m i d Bebert to Llanuel. ”Therers nobody here that I*m looking for. Have you ever notleed," he added, "how few human faces there are among men? . > . . Every oat.has a cat‘s face; every ox has an

They formed groups around the trees of the court­ yard on each one of which he hung a big placard with an image and a number in the middle.

"here's the marehioneeaes," said one*

"Well, they're not very geedloeking," m i d Manuel. . . . . "iTlmt do they oome here for?"

"Biey're the ones that teach the catechism," answered the follow. "From time to time they give away sheets and shirts to the women and the men. low they’re going to oall the roll."

A bell began to ring. The gates were closed. They formed circles and in the middle of each of them stood a lady. .

The. lesson afV the do a tr i m commenced. Out of the courtyard roso a murmur of prayer, slow and monotonous.

Manuel stretched himself on his W o k on the ground. * • . . . - v - -

• ' - • , The noise of tho beggars 'reciting the doctrine went on. An old woman with a red handkerchief on her head and a black shawl that v/as growing green with age, sat down in the Blearing. . "What's the matter, granny? Won't they open the gate for you?" ,

"Ho . . . the old witches i" 57 -

"Donrt worry yourself r for today they won't give anything -away* Hext Friday ,s the distribution, they'll give you at least ono sheet," he added sisehlevouBly• - •; - ■ : - v -

"If t M y don't give me mere than ene sheet," soreeohed the old woman, twisting her snout, "I'll tell them they,can stick it in their to] knot. The old foxes 1"

"They've treated you already, granny," exclaimed on® of the ragamuffins stretched on the ground. "What an old greedygut yon are I"

She bystanders applauded the phrase which canto out of an operetta, and the fellow with the cap went ®n explaining to Manual the details of the Boutrins.

"A lot of them register themselves in two or three seetions in order to get more of what fs given a^ay," he said. My father and I registered once in four sections under different names. It's a fine; mess. ± stingy bargain we get with the marchionesses

"What do you want so many sheets for?" asked Manual. "Go on 1 To polish yourself l Why you can sell them right here at the gate for two ohales."

"I'm going to buy one of them," said a cab driver coming up to them. "1*11 grease it with some lin­ seed oil and give it a coat of varnish and 1*11 have a waterproof cape

"But don't the marshlonesees notice that the people sell what they give thorn, right away?"

"How are thoy going to notice it?"

For the rabble the whole ,thing was nothing but a pious entertainment for the devout ladles. They talked about them with eondesoending irony.

The time of devotions lasted less than an hour.

A bell sounded. The gate in the railing opened. Tho groups dissolved and dispersed. Everybody sto©t up ana the women began to leave with their ehairs balaneed on their heads, jrelling ana push­ ing each other roughly. Two or throe peddlers began,crying their wares while the ragged throng trove on, BereechiBg, as though thoy were escap­ ing from some dire peril• Some old women went runniis heavily down the road; others squatted Sown ana began to urinate, and all of them gab­ bled, fooling the urgent aeoossity of insulting the ladies of the Doctrine as if they Instinctively divined the utter futility of a dream of charity that remedied nothing. Ho sound was heard but pro­ tests and expressions of hatred and scorn.

*#ho's going to confess now?"

"!Eia old drunkards l51 : .

"lot thorn do the confessing, and the mothers that* bore them 1" ■ -■: : ■ , ‘ . ''. - ., ■

"They all ought to be gagged I" • m La Ciudad da la niebla Baroja describes some homeless wretches who frequent an old churchyard, somewhat more sympa­ thetically: . : ; - ' .-x-.:-.-' . - ■■■

There is a garden In the ohurch of St. Siles, an old cometory to judge by the graves sunken in the grass. This garden, tucked away betimen high MLaek houses, hasitsentranoe through High stroot and its exit through a passage way that ends in Hew Compton Street* :

. In the garden of St. Giles* in the fresh green grass* between the trees, in eld sepulchres with inscriptions on thorn sleep some very respectable dead people, and on the, benches ait decrepit men and women, almost as dead as the others, ragged waifs whose instinots of freedom choose the life • of intemperance in the fog, in the raw air* to the uniformity and discipline of an asylum.

The world was not made for these men, nor the palaces of the world, nor the gardens; for them was created Police Courts, and jails, the oataa that they pick with their hands in prisons and the - 59 -

oakum that enoireles their necks sometimes, in the form of a cord.

But these anfortunates hate to he resigned to a . • tihlmcioal society srhi®ht heeause from time to time it exalts a charlatan, an opera singer, or a sol­ dier of ihr lane, considers itself just . 0?hey have to be convinced willingly or by force that, if they have not prospered, -it has been threugh their o m , defeeta and never through the fault of the social machine. v .■ " . v-.v-..-. ' v

% o s e men are so old, so decrepit, that it seem# as If they would end their existence by unjoint- ing themselves, dividing themselvee into pieces, and laying themselves carefully away in the old graves. fho women seem to have no human form; their very bones lack the substanoe to hold them erect like human beings, their Cheeks are clays©lorai, their eyes sunken, the lide violet. These hags might once have been graeious and beautiful; today they have no expression, or if they have, it is the cleverness of the fox, the hunger of the wolf, the ferocity of the hyena, w the malevolenee of the 'serpent .

torribie and molanchely beings, enveloped in their rags, their old greateoats. their torn shawls, covered with battered hats, they rest from the exertion of living without hoping for anything from anybody, staring down at the damp soil greasy with organic substance, soil that soon will gather them into its bosom.45

Bare, in Dickenses own oity, Baro ja shows some trace of Biokens's pity, some human feeling however hopeless, for these apathetic wretches whom Bickens loved. V

She poor of the English qountryaide are shown by

Biokens as cleanV decent, huaM.® . The followii^ fro®

Oliver Twist shows a little of his life after he is rescued

^ B l o Baroja, La Ciudad do la niebla (Bondon: Thomas lelson and Son), pp.l98-l99." , - 60 -

and nursed /back to health hy inhabitants of the house in which Sikes, Craekit, and he were attempting to commit a burglary: : . - _ ;

And when Sunday came, how differently the day was spent, from any way in which ha had ever spent it yet i and how happily too; like all the other Says in that most happy time 1 -.'-Thare was the little church in the morning* with the green 1 eavoe flut­ tering at the windows: the birds singing withouts and the sweet-smelling air stealing in at the lew poroh, and filling the homoly building with its fragrance. 5h® poor people wore so neat and clean, and knelt so reverently in prayer, that it seemed a pleasure, not a tedious duty, their assembling there together; and though the singing might be rude, it was real, and sounded more musical (to Oliver *s ears at least) than any ho had ever beard in church before. Then, there wore the walks as usual, and many eallc at the clean houses of the labouring men; and at night, Oliver read a chapter or two from the, Bible, which be had been studying all the week, and in the performance of which duty he felt more proud and pleased, than if he had been the clergyman himself,46

In Cricket on the Hearth. Biokens gives a scene of homely happiness in the return of the Carrier to his wife and haby:

fhe kettle and the Cricket, at one and” the. same moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window^- and a long way down ., the lane. And this light bursting upon a certain person who, on the instant, approached towards it through, the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, "Welcome home, old fellow! Welcome home, my boy r Shis end attained, the kettle being dead beat, ‘ boiled over, and was taken off the fire. Sirs'. ^erybIngle / then went running to the door, where

46B. 318. 61 -

what with the wheels of a oart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and mys- . terlone appearance of a hafcy, there was soon the very lhat•s-his-name to pay.

Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in that flash of time, _! don't know. But a live baby there was, in Mrs. Peery- binglo's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed t o have in it when she was drawn gently to the fire by a sturdy figure of a man.47 Baroja gives, in his first book, an episode from the lives of a ooupl® of the same station in life as Dlokens *s

Beer#ingles: * . . . , ; ...... : . ■ . ..

this couple have moved, with their little household goods, from one part of Madrid to another. Wight corns on; the house is gloomy and untidy. Ihe child clings to the woman's skirts as she tries to put things in order; she stops and heats some soup saved from lunch, gives it to him, and puts him to sleep. Both the man and woman are too tired to want sapper; they go to the plaza to get water, eaoh carry­ ing a jar. On the way to the fountain, they pass groups of men sleeping in the street. The April might is eold, dis­ agreeable. They go to bed. The man cannot sleep. He is sensitive to the slight noisesof the house.

Before his eyes appeared the men sleeping in the street, before his imagination the abandonment and helplessness of a large part of the human family. Black thoughts agonised him and filled . him with a great fear. He made efforts not to waken his wife by tossing about. .She must be : 47

47P. 169. - 62 —

slaepiug, the poor thing, tired out with the fatigue of th® daf. Bat no, mhe groaned and whispered faintlj, faintly* ”Vhat'a the matter?” ho asked*

”®te ohlld. she muncured, sohhing.* -

"What ails him?" he asked in alarm# ”She other ohild — Pepito* Don*t you know? It will he two years tomorrow, since we hurled him*? ; . _ : V ^ _ "My Sod, ay God ! Y/hy is our life so hard?"48

In this little story, a feeling of sympathy on the part of

the author is apparent, which does not appear in his later works * The couple have no names, they arc presented color­

lessly; nevertheless, there is some tendency, not found in his later works, to identify himself with their sor­

rows*

From the foregoing, it is evident that in Dickens’s

descriptions of his people there is the. compassionate under­ standing ©f a friend, in the strict sense of the deflnitlim

of that child who felt that a friend was somehody who know

all about you and liked you just the same*

In Baroja's assentations, there is little humor and, *49

49Plo Baroja. Vidas Sombrjas (Madrid: Caro Baggio). P* 81* ■

49$hls first:Wo k obntalns stories in whioh is evident the influence of Poe, Dostoievsky, and Dickens, and was ap­ parently written while Baroja was casting about in the ef­ fort to find his ehosen medium and method. The influence @f Dickens is a parent in* the specimen given* - 63

if there is eompassioa, it Is the professional feeling of

the physician whoso sadness is dulled by the fact that he has seen so much of this kind of thing;before.

M o k e n s ’sm e n are huaxan beings with their aost salient

characteristics picked out here and there, as a theatrical make-up man touohes up those features which he wishes to im­

press upon his audience. Boroja’s men are good untouched

photographs of such people as may be seen everyday in a

great city. The grotesques of Biekens are laughable, usu­

ally; those of Baroja are likely to bo appalling. Biekens1s

good women are oheery; Baro ja fs are prosaio / For the peer

creatures of the street, Biekens feels a paternal compas­

sion; he brings to one’s mind their f&raer purity in contrast

\to the depths to which they have fallen. It is as though

thoy struggle forever in a gloomy pit from which they gaze

upwards at the blue sky far above, and wail continually

for shat they have lost. )

Baro ja,s prostitutes are poor physical specimens, inade­

quate in all their fibres, to measure up to the demands of

normal life, and so adapted to their own existence that it

seems the natural thing: sad beings, diseased and ragged,

powdering their faces under the dim light; of street lamps

and devoting the fruits of their sin to the purehsse of sweetmeats. ' : _

In his deseription of groups of the poor, Biekens still 64

betrays tenderness. He uses such powerfully suggestive phrases.as ; v.-x:? -

When they soughed* they coughed like people ae« ouetomed to be forgotten on doorsteps and in draughty passages. ' - : = '

SBiey eyed the stlinger with ^borrowing eyes — hungry* sharp, speculative." It is as though he insinuates himself inside their skins and feels the repeated rebuffs of lifo through their nerves; the neglect and the dearth of kindly interest through their sensibilities.'

Solentifioally, Baro ja understands better than

Dickens the physical elements sAioh have gone to make up the condition of these people. The beggars of the Dootrlna, the crowd in the portico of the Observatory, the idlers in the churchyard of St. Giles: all of them are as pitiable as Dickens's people. But with a manner of description that betrays his physician's eye, he particularises their defects. The face partly eaten away by the ulcer; the great head and tiny neck of the hydrocephalic child are as conspicuous as the rags; the reader is not allowed to forget the long years of malnutrition which have sapped the strength from their bones and the heat from their blood. He portrays such .deficiency as could not result merely from one lifetime

of deprivation, but with a sharp gesture, points to the line

of wretches who begot them, stretching back, back, until they are lost in the mists of legendary grief and famine. 65

( The poor of Dickens are usually well IntentionadV The picture of those at worahip in the oemntry church is touch­ ing aha admirable. Says Siesing: "The enviously discon­ tented seldom come forward in his pages," 0 Not so Barojai

Side by side with the sufferings of the poor stands forth their loering malice: the evil that could let in the north wind to do the ancient mendicant to death; the enjoyment of the brutality of the sergeant as his spurs tear the flanks of the poor'harlot; the Imprecations of the beggars of the

Doctrine when the attempt to aid them spiritually is unat­ tended by material gain; not a pleasant nor a sympathetic ploture, surely, which this writer provides.

V i s a i n g . Charles Dlokens. p, 121. OEiPMB 11

H c m r a s

In setting out the incidents in his novels f Dickens is meticulous in his portrayal: he spreads before the reader the horror of the victim and the fury of the murderer; the amusement of the participant in a new set of circumstances and thevbenevolent attitude of the benefactor who has in­ sinuated the participant into such circumstances; and he does it all so sympathetically that the reader finds himself

Identifying himself with the actors in the scene.

Baroja describes what he sees. In his relation of a thrilling event, we are only faintly interested, in the people who are laughing, dancing, traveling, struggling, dying. They are as remote as the beluga whoso actions are reported in the newspapers of a foreign community. Anibal

He rarely takes pains to build up to a big scene or aroUee his reader to a penetrating sense of overwhelming passion or pathetic tragedy.1

As to their choice of what to sot down. H r . Gissing says that Dickens plans his narrative as though plotting for the theatre; that "Dickens*# love for the stage was

^Zio Baroja. BaradoXv Hey. Introduction to. Claude E. Anibal, p. xvi.

66 assuredly a misfortune to him ."* 2 Yet this instinct to the dramatic has led him to enliven his pages with see] 9 that stick in the reader’s memory eithdr for ,their gay fuality, or for their power to produce an atmosphere of ter­ ror.

Of Barova’s choice, Anibal says:

Perhaps his basic fault, his capital offense, le that he is deficient in the instinct of selection.

Again and again:on® is left with the impression of having read only a novelist’s notebook, a mere skeleton draft whose innate vitality has not yet been given body and substance :

Certainly the reader feels that Dickens has a keener valu­ ation of the significant situation than Baroja, and a more patient and sympathetic artistry in developing such a situation# His emotional treatment rouses emotion in the reader.

Consider Sikes *s murder of Haney, after he learns that she has betrayed his associates. She blind animal rage of the man, the love and fear of the girl are terrible:

Without one pause, or moment’s consideration, without once turning his head to the right or left, or raising his eyes to the sky, or lowering them to the ground, but looking straight before him with savage resolution: his tooth so tightly compressed that the strained jaw seemed starting

®Gisslng, Charles Bioken#. p . §5#

2Baroja, Paradox. Hey. Introduction to, Claude B. Anibal, p. xyii. 68 -

through his skin; the robber held on his headlong oourae, nor Buttered a word, nor relaxed a masole, until he reached his own door. He opened it, softly, with a key; strode lightly up the stairs; and entering his own room, double-locked the door, and lifting a heavy table against it, drew back the eurtain of the bed.

Tho girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it.- He had roused her from her sleep, for she raised her­ self with a hurried and startled look.

"Get up 1" said the men. ;

"It Is you. Bill t" said the girl, with an expres­ sion of pleasure at M s return.

"It is,” was the reply. "Get up.n

fhero was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the eandlestiok, and hurled it under the grate. Seeing the faint light of early day without, the girl rose to undraw the ourtain.

"lot it be," said Sikes, thrusting his hand be­ fore her. "fhero *b light enough for wot I've got to do

"Bill," said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, "why do you look like that at mo 1*

The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated nostrils and heaving breast; and then, grasping her by tho head and throat, dragged her into th® middle of the room, and looking once towards the door, placed his heavy hand upon her month. ^

"Bill, Bill 1" gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of mortal fear, — "I — I won't scream or cry — not once — hear me — speak to ma — tell me what I have done 1"

"You know, you she devil I" returned the robber, suppressing his breath. "You were watched tonight; every word you said was heard."

"Sian spare my life for tho love of Heaven, as I. spared yours," rejoined the girl, clinging to him. "Bill, dear Bill, you oannot have the heart to kill ae. Oh l think of all I havo given up, only this one night, for you. You shall have time to think, and. save yourself thin crime; I will not loose my hold, you cannot throw mo off. Bill, Bill, for dear Goi‘a sake, for your own, for nine, stop before you spill my blood 1 I have been true to-you, upon my guilty soul I have irt

She man struggled violently, to release his arms; but those of the girl were clasped round his, and tear her as he would, he oould not toar them away.

"Bill," cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast, "the gentleman and that dear lady, told me tonight of a home in some foreign country where I ©ould end my days In solitude and peaoe. let me see them again, and bog them, on my knees, to show the same meray and goodness to you; and let us both leave this dreadful place, and far apart lead better lives, and forgot how we have lived, except in prayers, and never see ea@h other more. It is never too late to repent. They told me so — I feel it now — but we must have time — a little, little time J"

The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol* The certainty of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind even in the midst of his fhry; and ho beat it twice with all the for09 he could summon upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.

She staggered and fell: nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a doop gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with difficulty, on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handker­ chief — Rose Maylie ’s own — and holding it up, in her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would allow, breathed one prayer for mercy.to her Maker.

It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murder­ er staggering backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seised a hoavy club - and struck her down

A terrible account, somewhat needlessly dwelt upon, yet car- 4

4Diokens, Oliver Twist* pp. 470-471-472. 70 -

tainly prodaeiag in the reader a profound emotional reae- tion. ' ' . ■ ■ . : ■. ' ' - ■ - \ " ■ ■

A similar eria® Is thus described by Baroja:

Manuel was nearing the Ease© of the Aoaoias when he heard two old women who were talking of a crime that had just been committed at the corner of the street of the Aaparo•

’’When they went to take him, he killed himself," said one.

Manuel quickened his pace from curiosity and ap­ proached a group of people at the entrance of the Corralon«

HWhere -ms that follow from that killed himself?" Manuel asked Aristas.

"Why, it's Leandro 1" "Leandro l”

"Yes; Leandro. Be killed Milagros, and then killed himself•"

"But . • . is it true?"

“Yes, man. Just a moment ago.”

"Hero, at home?" "Bight here

Manuel, aghast, climbed the staircase to the gal­ lery. There was still the pool of blood on the floor. SefSor Zurro, the,only spectator of the drama, was relating the occurrence to a group of neighbors.

"I was here, reading the newspaper,” said the old clothes dealer,” and Milagros, with her mother, was talking with the leehuguino. The two sweet­ hearts wore joking together when up came Leandro on the gallery; he was going to open the door of his place and, before he went in, he turned around suddenly and said to Milagros: »Is that fellow 71

jonr flweethoart?' ‘Yes,’ she answorod. ‘Well then; I'm liere to finisli It onoe for all,1 he yelled • ’WM e h one of the two do you love, him or me?* ‘Him,* Milagros screamed. ‘Then it's all over,* leandro cried in a rough voice. ‘I'm going to kill you.' Than I can't tell you what happened; it was all as quick as a thunderbolt; when I got to her the girl was spouting blood from her mouth, the Corretor's wife, was screaming, and Leandro was chasing tho leohuguino with an open knife.* -- : . :

“I saw him come out of the house," added an o M woimn, I'oarrying an open knife in his hand, cov­ ered with blood. My husband tried to stop him , hut he oheoked him like a bull, ho struck him down and came near to killing him."

"My aunt and undo, where are they?" asked Manual.

“At the Emergency Hospital. They followed the stretcher•* .. Manuel went down into the courtyard.

"Were are you going?" Ariston asked M a *

"I'm going to the Emergency Hospital•"

"I ' m go with y*m."

They wero Joined by a machiniat'e apprentice who used to live in the Oorrala.

"I saw him when he killed himself," said the apprentice. They were running after him, yelling "Catch him 1 Catch him I" when two police showed up in the street of the Amparos; they drew their sabres and jumped in front of him: then Leandro gave a leap back, made a way through the people and came back here again; he went to go down through the Easeo of tte Acacias, when he met the Muerte who began to call him names. Leandro ; made a lunge at him and looked all around; nobody dared to get near him; there was fire in hie eye. All at onoe, he jammed the knife into his left side, I don11 know how many times. When erne of the guards grabbed him by the arm, he fell like a sack ,n - . - ■ ! ' - The comments of the apprentice and of; Aria ton were Interminable, fb® bejs arrived at the Hospital and there they learned that tha two bodies, that ®£ Hilagroe and of Idandro, had been taken to the lergae..:.. ^

Shore was a window wide open and they looked in. Stretched on a marble table was leandro; he was the color of wax, and on his face one read an ex­ pression of arrogance and defiance. Beside him, hie mother was weeping and clamoring; his father, with the hand of M s sea between his own, was weep­ ing silently* On another table was the body of Milagros eurroundod by a group of people. The employee of the Morgue ordered them all out. Upon meetiz^ each other in the doorway, the Corretor (Milagros’ father) and Ignacio (leandro*s father) looked at each other and averted their glance; the two mothers, on the contrary, launched at eaoh other looks of terrible hatred.

Ignacio deoided that they should not sleep at the Oorralon, but at the street of the Eagle• Here in the house of Jaeoba, there was a horrifying din of lamentation and imprecation. Hie three women throw the blame of everything bn Milagros who was a low creature, a bad, loose woman, selfish and contemptible*

One o f , the neighbors of the Corrala related a strange detail: upon the coroner's examination of Milagros, he found, when he removed her corset, a little locket with a picture of leandro, worn between some scapularlee. \ . . -- .; ; . ■ - - . - - ■. . ,- BWh@se picture is this?" he asked.

"The man who killed her," they answered.

It was a strange thing and it fascinated Manuel. He had often thought that Milagros loved leandro and that almost corroborated it.

All night, sitting in a chair, Ignacio wept with­ out ceasing; Tidal was frightened, and.Manuel also• The presence of death seen at suoh close range, terrorised the two of them. And while they were weeping inside, the children in the streets were singing together. That con­ trast, of anguish ana choerfulnoss, of pain and serenity* gave Manuel a confused foeling-about life; so«s of it, he thought, is very sad; some of it strange and Incomprehensible.*

Even more matter of fact is the account of the murder of Vidal, Manuel*8 cousin» by Squinteye. They grew to hate each other during their partnership in "The Society of the

Three," Vidal taking b o pains to conceal hie scorn for the beast. Several years afterward Manual and Vidal, with some girls and men, are having a picnic, when they notice that

Vidal is missing. They wish to leave the grounds but do not want to go without him. One of them is playing the guitar.

Vidal came out of the shed.

"Here I come," he said • :

A moment and a cry of anguish was heard.

"Was that Vidalf" flora asked.

"I don’t know," said Calatrava, laying his guitar on the table•

A confusion of voices sounded down by the river. They looked from the balcony* . . > v On one of the little green islands two mbn were struggling, hand to hand. One of them was Vidal;, they knew him by. his white Cordovan hat. Upon seeing him, flora gave a cry of terror. An instant afterward, the two men drew apart and Vidal fell to the ground, face down, silentv The other throw himself on his knees on the fallen figure and dealt him ten or twelve blows with his dagger. Then he leaped into the river, reached the opposite bank, and disap- , , poured.6 . .: . • ■ ' - •- - 6

6Baroja, la Busoa. pp. 9B-96-97. ®pfo Bare ja. 2lala Hie rba f Madrid; Libre ria Fernando Ftf, 1904), pp. 305^04. - 74

This sceno is typical of Baroja *8 dry; objective maimer of presenting a dramatic eveat. v f

Sickens/s method of enlarging upon a situation gives a sense of leisurely enjoyment to the reading of such

am t W following: . : - - , : - :

After running away with Suits tiroa Sotheboys Baill,

Sicholas liskleby meets a gentleman in an inn near Ports- m w # , and in t M course of a friendly conversaticm concern­ ing Nicholas's future, the gentleman, Mr. Tinoent Crummies9 suggests a possible means of livelihood:

’’Does no other profession ooour to you, whioh a young man of your figure and address oould take up easily and see the world to advantage in?” asked the.manager*

"So,"said Nicholas, shaking his head.

”@hy, then, I 'll tell you one,” said Mr. Crummies, throwing his pipe into tho fire ^ and raising his voice. ”Che stage." ;

"The stage i” cried Nicholas * in a voice almost as loud.

”@ie theatrical profession," said Mr. Vincent Crummies. "I am in the theatrical profession myself, my wife is in the theatrioal professlorn^ my children are in the theatrioal profession. I had a dog that lived and died in it from a puppy; and my chaise-pony goes on, in fimon the Tartar. 1*11 bring you out, and your friend too. say . the word. I want a novelty.”

”1 don't know anything about it,” rejoined Nicho­ las , whose breath had boon almost taken away by - this sudden proposal* "I never acted a part in my life, except at school*”

"There's genteel oomedy in your walk and.manner, juvenile tragedy in year eye, and toueh-and-go — _ TB w

faroo in your larngh," said Hr, Vinoent Grmnmles. "Yen'll do as well as if yon had thought of nothing else but thelampsy from your birth downwards."7

Hioholas aooepts hie offer and they start off in a pony-

Ohaise, . -

the m n a g o r and hlaselt oooupying the front seat; and the iSastor Onuranloaes and ^aiko being packed together behind, in-company v/ith a wiokor basket defended from wot by.a stout oilskin, in which were the broadswords, pistols, pigtails, nautical costumes^ and other professional neces­ saries of tho aforesaid young gentlemen.8

.# " e - -♦ - # e: '* " ""# e # . # e . ♦ " * -.• /■#--,*' * # # e

"He'e a good pony at bottom," said Hr* Crummies,. turning to Hioholas*. •

He might have boon at bottom, but he certainly was not at top, seeing that his coat was of the rough­ est and most ill-favoured kind * : So, Nicholas • merely observed that he shouldn't wonder if he was.

"Many and many is tho circuit this pony has gone," said Mr. Crummies, flicking him skilfully on the eyelid for old acquaintance' saka. "He is quite one of us. His mother was on the stage.". :

"Was she?" rejoined Nicholas.

"She ate apple-pie at a circus for upwards of fourteen years," said the manager; "fired pistols and went to bed in a night-cap; and, in sort, took the low comedy entirely. His father was a dancer."

"Was he at all distinguished?"

"lot very," said the manager. "He was rather a • low sort of pony. Yh® fact ,1s, he had been originally jobbed out by the day, and he never quite got over his old habits. Be was clever in melodrama too, but too broad -- too bread♦ When *8

^lokans. Nicholas liokloby. Bk. I, p. 579.

8Ibid.. PP.581-582. ?« -

the mother died, he took the port-wine business

"She port-wine b u s i n e s s e r i e d Hiehelsse ; "teinking port-wine with the clown,” said the mana­ ger; ’’but he was greedy, and one night bit off the bowl of the glass, and sheked himself, so his vul­ garity mas the death of him at last

"Hero we are;” said.Sir. Crummies. .

It was not very light, but Moholas found himself close to the first satranee oh the prompt side* among bare walls, dusty scenes, mildewed clouds, heavily daubed draperies, and dirty floors. He:, looked about him; celling, pit. boxes* gallery* orchestra, fittings, and decorations of every k i M — all looked coarse, oold, gloomy, and wretched.

The manager's voice recalled him from a more oarefhl inspeotion of the building, to the oppoaite side of the proscenium, where, at a small mahogany table with rickety legs, and of an oblong shape, sat a stout, portly female, apparently between forty and fifty, in a tarnished silk cloak, with her bonnet dangling b y :the strings in her hand, and her hair {of which she had a great quantity) braided in a large festoon over each temple.

"Mr* Johnson,” said the manager (for Mieholas had given the name which Bowman Hoggs had bestowed upon him in - his conversation with. Mrs . Eenwigs), ’’let me introduce Mrs. Vimoent Crummies

■"I am glad to see you, sir;" said Mrs. Vincent Crummies, in a sepulchral voice. "1 am very glad to See you, and still more happy to hall you as a promising member of our corps ."i0

As Mrs. Vincent Crummies recrossed back to the

^Dickens, Bloholaa Ilokleby. Bk. I, pp. 38.2-383. IQlbld,. p. 384. #» w **

taMe, there boasted on to the stage from some mysterious inlet, a little girl in a dirty white froofc with tuoks up to her knees, short trousers, sandaled shoes, white spenoer, pink gauee bonnet, green w i l ant curlpapers; who turned a pirouette, out twice in the air, turned another pirouette, then, looking off at the opposite wing, shrieked, bounded forward to within six inehes of the foot­ lights, and fell into a. beautiful attitude of ter­ ror, as a shabby gentleman in an old pair of buff slippers came In at one powerful slide, and chatter­ ing him teeth, fiereely brandished a walking stiek.

"They are going through the Indian Savage and the Maiden," said Mrs. dmmmles* "Ch 5" said the manager, "the lit tie, ballot inter-, lude. Tery good, go on. A little this way, if you please, Mr. Johason. That*11 do .”11

A lively description of the rest of the dance is given, ffleholas meets the other members:of the company who are described in detail as to. hair, dress, and behavior, in­ cluding the delightful Miss Snevellloel

who could do anything from a motley dance to lady Macbeth j and also always played some part in blue silk knee-smalls- at her benefit*12 • •

#. * * * e * * # * » * * » # * # * # * * * * # - # e *

d3iere was Miss Belvawney — who seldim aspired to speaking |»rts, and usually went on as a page in white silk hose, to stand with .one leg bent and . contemplate the audience, or to go in and out , after Mr. Crawles in' stately tiagedy -- twisting up the ringlets of the beautiful Miss Bravassa, who had once had her likeness taken "in character” by an engraver *s apprentice, whereof impressions were hang up for sale in the pastry-cook's window, , and the greengrocer's, arid at the circulating . library, and the box-office, whenever the announce

u aiok»na. Hlaholas Hlatlrtr, p. 388. 18Ibia.. p. m . 78

M i l s came @ut for her annual night and other memhers of that colorful troupe» !l?h9 theatrical aaventores n m on .throagh seventy diverting pages /before they are Interrupted by the return to another part of the 14 story. In a single paragraph Barojadisposos of a llhe experi­ ence when Juan, Manuel’s brother, becomes a m a b e r of a group of actors some time after running away from tho semi­ nary:

In Barazona, l became a member of a band of traveling players^ composed of the individuals of a single family. The director and leading actor was named Iton Beefilo Garcia:.his. brother, who . played the lover or the gallant youth, Maximiano Gar­ cia; and the father, of the two, who played old men’s parts, Simaoo Garcia. Everybody there was a Garcia. - That was the most orderly, eeonomloal and bourgeois family that you can Imagine. The character woman, Donna Celsa, who was Don Samaoo's wife, used to loarn her %%rts while she was doing the cooking. Toofilo was the agent for a line of neckties and boots; Don Simaoo sold books. Maxlmlano earned a few pesetas playing billiards; and the four girls, Teodolinda, Berenguela, Monoia, and sol, each one of them uglier than the others^ put in their time making lace. Siey took me on as a prompter, and I traveled in many villages of Aragdn and Data- Ionia. 1° v.-- /' ■ . ;V'

What delightful experiences are thus disposed of the reader will never know.

In dealing with the universal olimax of life, Dickens

^Dlokens. ITicholas Biokleby. Bk, I, p. 392.

' 14tIbid.

^•^Baro ja, Aurora Ro ,1a. pp . 69rSO. . 79 -

shows the Influeme rot o b !y of his optlmistie mture hut of the belloving age in which he lived* For him, death was

poetlo, beautiful, and he has glvea us some admirable death­ bed floenes. Ihe ploture of Barkis '’going out with the tide”

Is unforgettable. Mr. Chesterton thinks # a t the death

of Mrs* Weller la greater than any other death whieh this

w i t e r deplots. : V' .. . : y - ; " Old *ft»nj Weller does not tell hie shrewish wife that she is already a white-winged angel; he speaks to her with an admirable good nature and good sense;

•’Susan,1’ i says, "^>u’ve been a wery good v-lfe to me altogether; keep a good heart, my dear, and r you’ll live to see me punch that ’ere Stiggins’s *ead yetShe sailed at this Saalvel . . . . but she died after a l l . ^

Shis is a satisfactory death bed scene for the passing of a

shrew but it oan scarcely oompare with that of the school

master’s little pupil, delicately and tenderly presented:

He was a very young boy; quite a little child. His hair still hung in curls about his face, and his eyes were very bright; but their light was of Heaven, not earth. She schoolmaster took a seat beside him, and stooping over the pillow, whispered his name. She boy sprung up, stroked his face with his hand, and threw his wasted arms around his neck, crying out that he was his dear friend...... - ' - ■ • : .- - ^

”1 hope I always was. I meant to b e , God knows," said the poor schoolmaster.

"Who is that?” said the boy, seeing Sell. ”1 am afraid to kiss her lost I make her ill. Ask her 16

16J)lekens. David Oopporfield. Bk. II. p. 11. ^ G . K. Chesterton. Appreciations and,-Criticisms of the Work of Charles_Dickens (Hew York; IS. P. Dutton & Co., 1 1 2 1 pp. 2ii-24. ~ . to shako hands, with me.”

The sobbing child case closer up, and took the little Xangait hand in hors * -Releasing his again, after a time, the sick boy laid him gently down, "J

The boy smiled faintly — so very, very faintly — and put his hand upon his friend's grey head. He moved hi# lips too, but no voice came from them; no, not a sound. ' • • . .. -• ■ • In the silence that ensued, the hum of distant voices borne upon the evening air cane floating through the open window. "What's that?" said the slok child, opening his eyes.

"The boys at play upon the green.”

& took a handkerchief from his pillow, and tried to wave it above his head. But the feeble arm dropped powerless down.

"Shall I do it?" said the schoolmaster.

"Please wave; it at the window," was the faint reply. "Tie it to the lattice. Some of them may see it there. Perhaps they'll think of me and look this way." - ' - He raised him head, and glanced from the fluttering signal to his idle bat, that lay with slate and book and other, boyish property upon a table in . the room. And then he laid him softly down ones more, and asked if the little girl were there, for he could not see her.

She stepped forward, and pressed the passive hand that lay upon the coverlet. The two old friends and companions — for such they were, though they were man and child — held each other in a long 81 -

embrace ana then the little aoholar turned his face towards the wall and fell asleep#

She peer sehoolmaster sat in the same place, hold­ ing the small cold hand in his, and chafing it. It was but the hand of a dead ehild. He felt that; and yet. he chafed it still, and could not lay it d ow.2-®

She scene is typical of the delieaey and tenderness of

Biekens’s portrayals of children. Sypioal also is the description of the dead lell;

She was dead, lo sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived - and suffered death.

Her oouoh was dressed with here and there some winter berries and green leaves, gathered in a spot she had been used to favor.

'’When I die, put near mo something that has loved the light ." Biose were her words.- /

She was dead.Dear, gentle, patient, noble Well was dead. Her little bird — a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed — was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child mistress was mute and motion­ less for ever.

Where were the traces of her early cares, her suf­ ferings, and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow was dead indeed in her, but peace and perfect happi­ ness were born; Imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose

Baroja narrates the death of Petra, mother of Manuel

and Juan, which occurs in the boarding house of Donna

Casiana. At the head of the chapter, the sub-title applying *19

1®Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop. Bk. I, pp. 247-248-249. 19Ibid., Bk. II, pp. 333-534. to this Inoident a?ea<*s thus i;. '-"Om' of. the many disagfwahito . * 'r " • "T- • ' *" - mya of dying that Madrid affords.'* , .

I&mael learns that his mother is ill.

- ' - ■ : ‘ " ... : ' ' ■ . . - ■ - ' • ^ e had boon getting up blood throughher mouth for some time but ho didn*t attach any importanse to that. Manuel presented himself humbly at the house and the landlady, instead of reproaching him, made him go in and see his mother. She complained of nothing but a great soreness through all her frame and pain in the back. Day after day passed thus; sometimes she was bet­ ter, sometimes worse, until she began to have a great deal of fever and had them call the doctor; the landlady said that they would have to take the slok woman to the hospital, but as she had a good heart she never same to the point of compel­ ling them to do it. .

Petra had confessed to the priest in the house a good many times. . . . . One Sunday night, Petra became steadily worse. All afternoon, she had been talking animatedly with her son; but new that animation had disappeared and she seemed at the point of dissolution.

That Sunday night, Donna Casiana’s boarders had had a more suooulent supper than usual, and after supper some fine oakes for dessert, accompanied by the purest brandy of Prussian distillery. At twelve o'olook, the spree began. Petra said to Manuel.

"Call Don Jacinto (the priest) and toll him I*m worse." ' • ■■■ ' : ,

Manuel went into the diningroom. In the smoke- filled air. the congested faces of the guests wore hardly visible. Upon Manuel’s entrance, somebody said, "Beep quiet for a minute; somebody's sick."

Manuel gave the message to the priest.

"Your mother has just got am apprehension. I'll corns, later." - 83 «

"Isn’t he enmlng?" asksdtha *i#k woman.

"Ha *8 ooaing now; he says that yon‘re just got an apprehension."

"Yes; a good apprehension i" she murmured sadly. "Stay here

Manuel sat down on a trunk. He was so sleepy that he couldn't see. He was going to sleep when his mother called him*

"Look," she said. "Bring the picture of the Vir­ gin of Sorrows that is in the hall."

Manuel took down the picture, a cheap chromo, and brought it into the bedroom.

"Put it at the foot of the bed so that I can see it." The noise of singing, slapping and casta­ nets went on in the dining room.

Suddenly, Manuel, who was half asleep heard a loud rattle, that came from his mother's cheat and, at the same time, he saw that her face, paler than ever, was working in strange contraction#.

"What's the matter with you?" -

The sick woman did not answer. Than Manuel went to inform the priest who abandoned the dining room, gruablingly, looked at the Invalid, and said to the boy.

"Your mother's dead. Stay here for I'll come right away with the Unction."

The priest ordered quiet in the dining room, and the whole' house suddenly became hushed. There was a sudden silence through the house.20

Almost as bald and free from idealization is Baroja's account of the death of Juan, the gentle anarchist of Aurora

Boja. The police appear in the middle of a street demonstra- 20

20Baro5at LaBusca, pp. 111-112. 84 -

tion and in the attempt to prevent them from cutting down am aged asa 00 la to of his, Jtian 1# injured; the injury is too much for his feeble constitution and he succumbs. As he lies dying, his sister, Ignaeia, sends for a priest.

His sister-in-law, Salvadors, protests.

Ignaoia approached the bed.

"Ho, don't wake him up."

"le.t mo ." At that moment the doorbell rang.

"Here he is," said Ignaeia.

At the noise of the door opening and shutting, Juan opened his eyos, and upon seeing salwdera sailed.

"I feel a great weakness but I*m contented. Did I sleep long?" he asked.

"Yes, all day. You gave us an awful fright," said Salvadorav "Ignaoia, being what she is, called a priest, and he's here

. Juan's face changed.

"He is, ©h?" he asked uneasily.

"Yes." 1 • . .

"Don't let him come in. Protect mo, sister. They want to disturb my last moments. Protect me." And Juan reached for Salvadors1s hand.

"Don't worry," she saidP "If you don't want him, he shan't come in."

"Ho, no, never."

"Wait a minute, I'm going to see that he goes away."

Salvadors went into the dining room. A priest, tall, lean, bony, with a threadbare oossaok, was 86

pacing up and dona •

"Excuse me, Seiior Priest," said Salvadora.

"What do you want, my child?"

"Look, aehor, my brother-in-law gave us a fright, te thought that he was going to dio, and on that, account, his sister notified you; but now, the danger’s'paased,-..and we.don’t want to alarm him."

"Alarm:-him?", replied the priest, "no; on the contrary, it will calm him."

"dho.fact is that h e ’s taken some medicine a few minutes ago and he’s light-headed."

"Slat doeen*t matter, that doesn’t matter. They say that he’s a good lad but he's got advanced atheistic ideas; besides, he used to be a seminar­ ist and he has to retract," and the priest trie* to go into the bedroom.

"Don't go in there, Se2or Priest," said Salvador# in a low voice.

"My duty is to save his soul, my daughter."

" % C n wait a minute; I’ll talk to him again," she replied, and going into the bedroom, she locked the door.

"las he gone away?" asked Juan, weakly* - "Yea." ' ‘ • - - '

"Protect me* sister," groaned the sick man. "Don’t let anybody come in but my friends." .

"lobody’s going to oome in," she replied.

"Thank®, thanks," he murmured; and, turning on his side, he added, "I’m going to" go on sleeping.

From time to time, Ignaoia called to them iaperi- ously from the door, but Juan scarcely heard her, and Salvadora did not answer♦

"If you could see the things that I have dreamed1 about tonight," whispered the invalid• "Oh, what ' . 1 . .. lovely dreams l"

At that moment there was a sound of voices; then loud knocks on the hedroora door.

"Open,Salvadora," said Manuel's voice* She opened the door and Manuel came into the room on tiptoes.

"He's gone away now," he said in a low voioe* "Your wife's a hrave woman," murmured Juan, smil­ ing; "she dismissed the priest who was going to confess me." Juan stretched out one hand to Manuel and the other to Salvadora.

"I've never felt so happy," he said. "It seems that approaching death ought to he terrible, doesn't it? Well, I see it coming as a.thing so indefinite, so sweet . . .

All day, Juan talked to his brother and his wife about his childhood, his ideas, hi# dreams. . . * .

Some of his friends among the anarohists come to see him hut do not coma into the bedroom. They advise Manuel that the old man whom he attempted to save from the soldiers is dy­ ing at the hospital, two sabre outs on hie head and one on M s shoulder, and concussion of the brain. Prom time to time, various members of the anarchist group to which Juan belonged called up from the street to learn how he was.

The night passed. Manuel and Salvadora sat with him; his mind wandered. He had a longing to see dawn once more and asked continually if it was not daylight.

At four o ’clock it began to damn; the cold light of the morning filtered through the room* Juan slept a little and when ho woke it was day. 87

In the blue sky, with crystal clearness, the rosy clouds of dawn were floating.

"Open the haleony,” said Juan.

Manuel did so.

"How raise my head up a little.”

Salvadors put her arm under the pillow and raised his head, arranging the pillow so that he was more comfortable.

”Ifine now,” murmured the sick man.

She rosy light of the morning shone on his pallid fade. Suddenly there was a glazing of the eyes and a contraotion of the mouth.

Ha ms aoadX \

Ipthir^ oould more plainly mark the difference between these writers than the following scenes, the one the burial of Little Well, by Diekens; the other, the burial of Juan, by Baroja* And now the bell --the boll she had so often heard, by night and day, and listened to with solemn pleasure almost as a living voice — rung its remorseless toll, for her so young, so beauti­ ful, so good. Decrepit age, and vigorous life, and blooming youth, and helpless infancy, poured forth — on orutohes, in the pride of strength and health, in the full blush of promise, in the mere dawn of life — to gather round her tomb. Old men were there, whose eyes were dim and senses falling -- grandmothers, who might have died ten years ago, and still been old --the deaf, the blind, the lame, the palsied, the living dead in many shapes and forms, to see the closing of that early grave. i7hat was the death it would shut in, to that which still could crawl and creep above it7 . : , - ' 8

8^BaroJa," Aurora Eoja. pp. 3S7-gS8. 88 **

Along the crowded path they boro her now; pare as the newly-fallen snow that covered It; whose day on earth had been as fleeting. Under the poreh, where she had sat when Heaven in its neroy brought her to that peaceful spot, she passed again; and the old ohureh received her in its quiet shade.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, duet to dust! Many a young hand dropped in its little wreath, many a stifled soh was heard. Some — and they were not a few— - knolt down. All were sincere and truthful in their sorrow.

Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature corns. In the Destroyer‘s steps there spring up bright creations that defy hia power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to'Heaven.22 . Bareja thus desoribes the burial of Juan:

!Ehey placed the ocffin cn the edge of the grave and those accompanying it gathered round it.

light was coming on; a ray of the sun rested for an Instant on the tablet of a mausoleum, fbe Liber­ ator approaohed, took a handful of earth and cast it into the hole; the others did the same.

’’Speak," said Prats to the Liberator.

The Liberator concentrated for a moment. Then, slowly, with a voice choked and trembling, he said:

"Comrades, we treasure in cur hearts the memory of the friend that we have lust Interred, He was a man, a strong man with the soul of a child. He might have attained the glory of a great artist, and he preferred the glory of a human being. Ho might have astonished the rest of ns and he preferred to aid us. Among us, full of hatred, he alone was af­ fectionate; among us, discouraged, ho alone was hopeful. He had the serenity of those who are

^Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, Bk. II, pp. 338-359-340. b o m to face groat tempeete. He was a great heart, noble, loyal. Ho was a rebel because he wished to be a just being. Let us conserr® In our ssmories the friend whom wo have buried here, and nothing more. How comrades let us go" home and go on work­ ing. . ; : ; : In Dickens's work shines faith, the hope beyond the grave* In Baroja's, the earth rattling upon the ooffin, descending night.

The reader is foroed to the realisation that one of these writers throws himself into the persons of the aotors in eaoh seen®, suffers and exults with them, dies and, dy­ ing, glows with the hope of immortality. The other is a spectator• If there is a ory of horror, it is not his horror but that of the individual whom he is observing. One novel­ ist lives what he describes and, in so doing, makes the reader live it too,ardently. The other looks on, and the reader looks on with him, coolly. GJEAPTBR III

PUOBS

(In desoriblng plaoes, Dickens idantifies them so close­ ly with the people who inhabit t W m that it is hard to think of them as so many foot of paving stones or of lumbar; so many walls or pieces;,of furniture. They take on the quality of the pooplo whom lthey surround. / (hie of his typical de­ scriptions , that of "Todgor’o" is given below:

Mr« Pecksniff looked about him for a moment and. then knocked at the door of a vary clingy edifice, even ‘among the choice.collection of dingy edifices at hand, on tfio front of which was a little oval board like a tea-tray, with this inscription: 80ommeroial Boarding-House * M. Todgera *"

It seemed that M. ledgers was not up yet, for Mr. Pecksniff knocked twice and rang thrice, without making any impression on anything but a dog over the way. .At last a chain and soma bolts were withdrawn with a rusty noise, as if the weather had made the very fastenings hoarse, and a snail boy with a large red head, and no nose to speak of, and a very dirty Wellington boot on his left arm, appeared who (being surprised) rubbed the nose just mentioned with the back of a shoe­ brush, and said nothing.

"Still abed, my man t* asked Mr . Pecksniff.

"Still abed 1" replied the boy. "i wish they woe still abed. They’re very noisy abed; all calling for their boots at once. I thought you was the Paper, and wondered why you didn’t shove yourself through the grating as usual. What do you want?*

Considering his years, which were tender, the youth . ' ' - 90 - 91

may be said to have preferred this qeeetlem stern­ ly, and In something of a defiant Banner. But Mr. Peekanlff without taking umbrage at his bearing, put a card in his hand, and bade him take that up­ stairs and show them in the meanwhile into a room whore there was a fire.

H. ledger's Commercial Boarding-House was a house of that sort which is likely to be dark at any time; but that morning it was especially dark. Share was an odd smell in the passage, as if the oeneentrated essence of all the dinners that had been cooked in the kitchen since the house was built, lingered at the top of the kitchen-stairs to that hour, and, like the Black Friar in Don Joan, nwouldn’t be driven away." In particular, there was a sensation of cabbage; as if all the greens that had ever been boiled there, were ever­ greens and flourished in immortal strength. fh@ parlour was wainscoted, and communicated to strangers a magnetic and instinctive consciousness of rats and mice. The staircase was very gloomy and very broad, with balustrades so thick and heavy that they would have served for a bridge . In a sombre corner on the first landing, stood a gruff old giant of a clock, with a preposterous coronet of three brass balls on his head; whom few had ever seen — none ever looked in the face — and who seemed to continue his heavy tick for no other reason than to warn heedless people from running into him accidentally. It had not boon papered or painted, hadn *t lodgers's, within the memory of man. It was very black, begrimed, and mouldy. And, at the top of the staircase, was an old, dis­ jointed, rickety, ill-favoured skylight, patched and mended in all kinds of ways, which leaked distrustfully down at everything that passed be­ low, and covered lodgers’s up as if it were a sort of human ououmber-frame, and only people of a peculiar growth were reared there.

Mrs. lodgers was a lady, rather a bony and hard- featured lady, with a row of curls in front of her head, shaped like little barrels of beer; and on the top of it something made of net — you couldn’t m

call it a cap exactly — which looked like a black cobweb * she had a little basket on her arm, and in it a bunch of keys that Jingled as she came * In her other hand she bore a flaming tallow candle, . which, after surveying Hr. Pecksniff for c m instant by its:light, she put down upon the table,to the end that she might receive him with the greater cordiality.

Pecksniff i" cried Mrs. ledger*. ?Welcome, to London I Who would have thought of such a visit as this after so — dear, dear! — so many years 1 low do yen do; Mr. Pecksniff?*

’’As well as ever; and as glad to see you as ever*; Mr. Pecksniff made response. "Why, you are younger than you used to be I*

"You are. I am sure i" said Mrs. lodgers. "You’re not a bit changed." .

"What do you say to this?" cried Hr. Pecksniff, stretching out his hand towards the young ladies# "Does this make me no older?"

"lot your daughters t" exclaimed the lady, raising her hands and clasping them. "Oh, no. Hr. Peck­ sniff ! Your second, and her bridesmaid 1"

Mr. Pecksniff smiled complacently: shook his head; and said, "My daughters, Mrs. Todgers. Merely my daughters." •

"Ah.I" sighed the good lady. "I must believe you, for now I look at ’em I think I should have known ’em anywhere. Hy dear Miss. Peoksniffs, how happy your pa has mad# me 1"

Mrs. fodgors embraces them several times, observing that she could not decide which was most like their poor mother (which was highly probable, seeing that she had never beheld that lady), but she rather thought the youngest was; and then she said that as the gentlemen would be down directly, and the ladies were, fatigued with, travelling, would they step into her room at once? It was on the same fleer; being, in fact, the back-parlour; and had, as Mrs. fodgors said, the • ts - -

great advantage (in Ionian) of not being over­ looked; as they would see when the fog cleared off. Hor was this a vainglorious boast, for it commanded at a perspective of two feet, a brown wall with a black cistern on the top« She sleep­ ing apartment, designed for the young ladles was approached from this chamber by a mightily con­ venient little door, which would only open when . fallen against by a strong person. It commanded from a similar point of sight another angle of the wall, and another side of the cistern. "lot the damp, side," said Mrs. Tod germ. "That is Mr. Jinkins*®." . In the first of these sanctuaries, a fire was speedily kindled by the youthful porter, who, whistling at his work in the absence of Mrs. Todgers (not to mention his sketching figure® on his corduroys with burnt firewood), and being after­ wards taken by that lady in the act, was dismissed with a box on his ears.

Whoever climbed to the observatory, was stunned at first from having knocked M s head against the little door in coming out; and after that, was for the moment ohoked from having looked, perforce, straight down the kitchen chimney; but these two stages over, there were things to gaze at from the top of Todgers, well worth your seeing too. For first and foremost upon the housetops, stretch­ ing far away, a long dark path: the shadow of the Monument: and turning round,-the tall original was close beside you, with every hair erect upon his. golden head, as if the doings of the City fright­ ened him. Then there were steeples, towors, bel­ fries, shining vanes, and masts of ships: a very forest. Cables, housetops, garret-windows, wilderness upon wilderness• Smoke and noise enough for all the world at once.1

It is noteworthy that even in his description of the top of the house, a place hardly associated with human habitation, ha provides an imaginary visitor whose head

^Dickens, Martin Ohuzzlewlt. Bk. I, pp. 170-180. - 94 -

is bumped, whose Image are choked with smoke, and who is finally rewarded hy a glorious view.

fh® deserlption of the boarding house in la Buses opens the novel. There is something slightly reminisoent of

Dickens himself in the first paragraph, which reads thus:

In a manner deliberate, measured, and respectable, the sleek in the corridor finished striking twelve• It was the habit of that old clock, high and narrow, to rum to© fast or too slow, putting forward or backward according to its pleasure the uniform and monotonous series of the hours that encompass our life until they are wrapped up and left, like a child in the cradle, in the dark bosom of time.

It was, then, the hour of mystery, the hour of , evil, the hour in which the poet think# of im­ mortality and rhymes hi3os with prolijos and amor with dolor: the hour when the swindler comes out of his lair and the gambler enters it; the hour ©f the adventures that are sought and never found; the hour. In short, of tho dreams of the chaste maiden and tho venerable old man. And while this hour of romance was gliding along, the erlee stopped In. the street, the songs and the quar­ reling; in the balconies, the lights went out and the porters and the shopkeepers carried their chairs in from the pavements in order to abandon them­ selves to the arms of sleep.

In the pure and blameless abode of Donna Gaslana, the, boarding house keeper, a soothing quiet reigned broken only by the far off murmur of the carriages and the song of some cricket in the vicinity that scraped on the equeaklng oord of his instrument with disagreeable persistence.

At that time of night . . . .there was in the house only one old gentleman, an inveterate early riser; the mistress. Dona Casiana, also inveterate, unhappily for the boarders; and Petra, the servant.

At the moment, the landlady was sleeping, seated in a roeklx& chair on the open balcony; Petra, in the kitchen, was doing the same, with her head oh the windowsill; and the old early riser was divert­ ing himself by coughing in bed. Petra had finished scouring, and sleepiness, heat and weariness had overcome her. By the light of the little lamp hung on the kitchen range she was vaguely visible. She was a thin, withered woman with sunken sheet * her arms lean , her hands large, rad and her M i r gray. She slept with her mouth open, seated in a chair, with labored and tired breathing.

At the sound of the clock striking, she wakened suddenly; closed the window through which was an ter in§ the sickening odor of the cows table on the ground floor; folded up her wash cloths; brought out a pile of plates and left them in the dining room; laid the trays, the tablecloth mad the bread in the cupboard; blow out the light and went into the room in the balcony of which the mistress was sleeping.' . y -- v :

"Senora 1 Sefiora t*’ she called several times.

*Eh? Y/hat’s.the matter?® murmured Donna Oasiana . sleepily. " ' % - ; . .

"Is there anything you want?®

"Ho* nothing. Oh, yes ! M l the baker tomorrow that when tie comes next Monday I ’ll pay him.®

"All right. Good night."

The servant left the room, e&tn the balcony of the house opposite wai lighted up; afterwards it was thrown wide open and the sound of a soft pre­ lude on the guitar was heard. .:;

r,Petra 1 Potra i oriedDorma Gasiana. "Come her a. Eh? In the house of Big Isabel . • . . it's plain that some people have come.®

# e servant peeked from the balcony indifferently at the house opposite• "That affair — that *s plain," the landlady went on; "that dirty business is not for boarding houses*®

At that m o w n t , on one of the balconies of the *» 96 •

Belghboring hcmee appeared a woman wrapped In an ample negligee, with a red flower in her hair, clasped tightly around the waist by a young gentle­ man very correctly dressed in a frock eoat and white waisteoat .... .

"Shat, that'a plain,* the landlady repeated several times.

Then this idea must have diverted her bile for she added in an irritated voice:

"Tomorrow I*m going to throw out the.little priest and those gutter sweepings of daughter# of Bona Violant®, and all the rest of them that don’t pay me. How you have to fight with that eoum ! No; they’re not going to laugh at me any more. ' . . . ' Without replying, Petra .said goodnight again and went out of the room* Donna Gasiana went on nurs-r ing her wrath; afterwards she stretched out her thick body on the rocking chair and dreamed of an establishment similar to the one across the, way; but of a model establishment with luxuriously furnished rooms, with a continuous procession of scrofulous young gentlemen of the clubs and the brotherhoods, religious and worldly, to the point that she was,forced to establish an office at the doorway and give out tickets to the patrons.

While the landlady Indulged her imagination in this sweet dream of a monstrous brothel, Petra went into an. old dark room, full of rubbish; put the light on a ©hair, laid a greasy box of matches on-the bowl of the lamp; read for a minute in a book of prayers, grimy and dirty, repeated several prayers, casting her eyes up towards the celling, and began to undress* ®he night was suffocating; in that hole the heat was terrible• Petra got into bed, crossed herself, put out the lamp, which smoked for a long time, stretched out and laid her head on the pillow. A boring worm in some of the old rubbish made a rustling noise in the wood in an isochronous manner.2

The placing of the characters within their habitat here, as

gBaro3a. La Buses. p p . 5-6-7 * #v -

ta Di0lE®ns‘s work, pistwres the habitat.

Graphic ana characteristic is the following description of one of the poor quarters of Madrid, where the presence

of people is taken for granted, but not made manifest# . It

is like a photograph taken.at a time when the inhabitants are all absent.

The facade of this house, low, narrow, whitewashed, gave no indication ef its size and depth; in this front various window spaces and holes sjnnmetrioally combined, and an aroh without a doer gave aooess to an alley paved with stones, which afterward widened to form a courtyard bounded by some black­ ish walls •

On two aides of the alley entrance, staircases led up to open galleries which ran the length of the house on three floors. Opening at intervals on these galleries, there were rows of doors paint­ ed blue with a black number in the lintel of each one. : / / . : ' : ' - -

• : * The court yard was always filthy; in a corner was a heap of worthless old rubbish covered with plates of zinc; there were dirty pieces of cloth, worm- eaten planks,- bricks, tiles, and baskets: like a tangle of a thousand imps. Every aftemeen, some of the residents of the court did their wash­ ing there; when they got through they emptied their tubs on the ground; and the big puddles, upon drying, left white stains and blue trickles from the bluing water» They all threw their garbage there, tee, and v&en it rained it nearly always plugged up the mouth of the drain and produced an unbearable stench from the putrifying black liquid that flooded the courtyard upon which cabbage leaves swam, and greasy bits of paper.

Each inhabitant used for his needs the length of gallery that his dwelling occupied; by the aspect of that space one might judge the degree of misery or comparative comfort of each family, its tastes and its diversions. Here was apparent a certain cleanliness and taste; the wall white, a bird­ cage, flowers in clay pots; there a certain utili­ » 98 -

tarian instinot m s apparent in the strings of garlic drying, tranches of grapes hanging up. In soother place a carpenter beach* a box of tools, indicated the induatribuB man who worked in his spare time. . . . . But in general there was nothing visible but dirty clothes thrown over the railings; curtains made of matting, mattresses full of variegated patches, black rags thrown over broomsticks or stretched on lines tied from one post to the other in order to intercept still farther the entrance of light and air.

Each portion of the gallery was a separate mani­ festation of an existence inside the communism of hunger• There were In that tenament all degrees and shades of deprivation, from the heroic, dressed in clean and decent rags, to the most sickening and repulsive.

In the greater part of the rooms and dene of the Oorrala, languid and hopeless misery greeted the oye, allied to organic and moral impoverishment,3

A typically fanciful description of a house, entitled

"A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss fox's Dwelling-Plaoe;" whloh begins Chapter Sevan in Doabey and Son reads;

Miss Tox Inhabited a dark little house that had been squeesed, at some remote i^rlod history, into a fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of the town, where it stood in the shade like a poor relation of the great street round the corner, coldly looked down upon by mighty man­ sions. It was not exactly in a court,' and it was not exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of Ho-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knoeks. The name of this re­ tirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pavement, was Princess*s Place; and in Brincess *8 Place was Princess fs Chapel, with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as many as five- end- twenty peeple attended service on a Sunday. The ITinoess's Arms was also there, and much re­ sorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the Princess's

^Baroja. La Busoa. pp. 46-47. 99

Arms, but it had never c o m out within the memory of man; and on fine mornings* the top of ever j rail (there were eight-&nft»f©rty, as Hiss fox had often counted) m s decorated with a pewter-pot.

There was another private hense beside Mies fox's in Princess's Place: not to mention an immense pair of gates, with an immense pair of lion-headed knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance, and were supposed to constitute a disused entrance to somebody's stables. Indeed, there was. a smadk of stabling in the air of Princess's Place; and Miss fox's bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a vista of mews, where hostlers* at whatever sort of work engaged, were continually accompanying themselves with effervescent noise#; and where the most domestic and confidential gar­ ments of ooaohaen and their wives and families, usually hung, like Macbeth's banners, on the out­ ward walls

Sounds* odors, and sights — all are utilized in the descriptions of Dickens, fleeting Impressions as well as

stationary objects, so that the reader is entertained, not merely with a picture, but with a piece of cinema film.

His objects are endowed with feeling. fhe old clock: on the

stairs at fodgera is "gruff"; it "warns" people not to

run into. it. The skylight "looks down distrustfully."

Bareja is as fond of dwelling upon places as Dickens. I. A. Wright, in the Literary Be view for February 10, 1923,

says;

Bareja exhausts his reader's utmost patience with photographic descriptions of persons who appear upon the scene for a moment only and of places never revisited by the story. Sven were it ex-

*Charles Dickens, Bombey and son (Few fork: Bigelow, Brown and Go., Ino.}, B k ; f, pp. 112-113. - 100 -

oellontly done, this sort.of thing can please only a poople with infiiilte tine to "waste*®

Mr* John Doe Passos finds that his hooka "led you through all the haek lots and oabbago patches that filled the valleys round the city,R6 Indeed, it is prineiially with such scenes that he is occupied* Interspersedwith scenes of squalor in the books of Dlokene, there are sueh scenes as the following %

The kitchen fire burnt clear and red, the table was set out, the kettle boiled; the slippers were there, the boot-jaek too, sheets of ham were there, hooking on the gridiron; half a dozen eggs were there, poaching in the frying-pan; a plethoric cherry-brandy bottle was there, winking at a foaming jug of beer upon the table; rare provlaiena ware there, dangling from the rafters as if you had only to open your mouth, and something ex- ... quisitely ripe and good would be glad of the ex­ cuse for tumbling into it.7

Shore is nothing cosy in Baroja. Sand, wind, heat, rain; all the discomforts of life; rags, dirt, disease; but never the sheltered nook, the clear bright fire♦ perhaps such cosiness is a purely English condition and could not truthfully be depleted within the pages of a Spanish novel*

Gf. 4S3.

^Weeds,n Nation. Tel. 118 (January, 1924), p.s y .

^Dickens, Martin Ghuzslewit, Bk* II, p* 521. CHAPTER 17

IDEAS OF HBfOBM

In oonaiderlng th® $mrpose of both these writer®w there Is little doubt that Diatoms was, as has been so often pointed out, first of all a reformer. Even in a porfeot world, that fertile brain and rioh imagination must have gone on creating different forms of perfection to set down in hi® pages; but his works so definitely exhibit the evil that cried to heaven for help that a thoughtful reader can­ not fail to discern a great plan behind the delightful pre­ cession of people and events that issued from his pen.

It is all very well for Ur. Chesterton to account for

Dickens's scenes of pathos and horror by glibly stating;

There was in Diokens this other kind of energy, horrible, uncanny, barbarie, capable in another age of coarseness, greedy for the emblems of es­ tablished ugliness, the coffin, the gibbet, the bones, the bloody knife.

Tim strain existed in Diokens alongside of his happy laughter; both were allied to the same robust romance.1

If this barbaric kind of energy had not been directed to- wards shocking and wakening the English people to the full

^Cheeterton. Criticisms and Appreciations, p. 40.

- 101 - falfvity ®f the abuses existing among them, Dlefcens might well have booome a somewhat later writer ®f Gothio romances.

^ut allied to this energy was a great,'yearning compassion for the hungry, the cold, the beaten, the degraded, the lost, which lifts his work above that of those writers who use the emblems of ugliness merely to embellish their pages and vide a slightly more picturesque atmosphere*) Says Cavanaugh:

let it not bo forgotten that Dickens started the . agitation which abolished public hangings in Eng­ land; which rased to the ground the Harahalsea and the Fleet Prisons where thousands languished / for debt. It has been well said that Diokens ro- v garded himself not merely or primarily as a novol- \lst, but as a social force.% ' x ' ' . " - Oliver Twist's terrible place of refuge, with tlto amiable plan whereby they oontraeted with the wator-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a com-factor to eapply periodically small quantities of oat­ meal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twine a week and a roll on Sun- daye,3 must have caused at least an uncomfortable feeling in the breasts of the well fed British upper classes.

The picture of little children growing up in the shadow

of prison walls, as described in Little Dorrlt. must havo disturbed British equanimity, phe picture of Tom-all-

80ortes \7. Cavanaugh, Charles Dickens._His Life as Traced by his Works (Hew York: Mew fork Public library, 1924). p. 4. —

®Dleken«, Ollvar Wist, p. 16. Alone/s, with Its hoeeless wratohes clustering about% must

have etirrst many a sweet lady, to w

oould be such a plaee is Christian England.) Sfhe inoessant : . " . . J. ... j hammering away at the custom of making learning a painful

cramming, as in Hard Times and some ether books, must have .

. . ' had its effect on the old school systems. Mr. Hiehard Bur­

ton gaotes William T. Harris as "deolaring that no man of

English race has done so much fer the right understanding

of child psychology as this same teller of stories.n

He was not pessimistic; ’’That the world progressed, he

n e w r for a moment held in doubt,but to uncover the

wickedness of apparently respectable institutions was, in

his mind, one way to help the world to progress a little

faster . He had me ready made scheme for making mankind good;

ho felt that all that was necessary was to apply to life

in general the law of kindness, eometimes spoken of as

the Selden Bale.

"X exhort my dear children" — thus runs a pas- .. sage at the close of Dickens *s will — humbly to try to guide themselvoe by the teaching of the Hew Tastamnt in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow oonstraetion of its let­ ter, here and there."6

Hothlng roused his ire more completely than the abuse of

^Burton, Dio kens and How to znow Him. p« 871*

^Gisslmg. Charles Dickens, p. 261. - 1 0 4 -

children,and many of his pages arc devoted to bringing out gsoh abase into the glaring light of pabllal tjr •

The notorious Dotheboys Ball, surely the composite picture of all wretched travesties on schools, as ^queers la the composite picture of all cruel and ignorant school­ masters , Is thus described:

The school was a long, oold-looking house, one story high, with a few straggling outbuildings behind, and a barn and stable adjoining. After the lapse of a minute or two, the noiso of somebody unlock­ ing the yard-gate was heard and presently a tall lean boy, with a lantern in his hand, issued forth.

"Is that you, Smlke?” cried Squeers.

"Tee, sir,” replied the hoy.

"Then Why the devil didn *t you come be fore f®

"Please, sir, I fell asleep over the fire," answered Smlke, with humility.

"Fire I What fire? Where's there a fire?" de­ manded the sehoelaas ters sharply.

"Only in the kitchen, sir," replied the boy. "Missus said as I was sitting up, I might go in there for a warm."

"Year missus is a fool,” retorted Squeers. "You'd have been a deuood deal more wakeful in the cold. I'll engage."

By this time, Mr. Squeers had dismounted; and after ordering the hoy to see to the pony, and. to take oare that he hadn't any more corn that night, he told Nicholas to wait at the front door a minute while he wont around and let him in.

The fact was, that both Hr. and Mrs. Squeers viewed the boys in the light of their proper and natural enemies; or, in other words, they held and -10#

considarsd that their business and profession was to get as much from every boy as could by possi­ bility be screwed out of him. On this point they were both agreed, and behaved in unison accordingly. She-only difference between them was, that Mrs. Squeers waged war against the enemy openly and fearlessly, and that Squeers covered his rascal­ ity, even at home, with a spice of M s habitual deceit; as if he really had a notion of some day or other being able to take himself in, and per­ suade his own mind that he was a very good fellow.

"there,11 said the echeclmaster as they stepped in together; "this is our shop, Uieklehy $" It was such a crowded scons, and there were so many objects to attract attention, that, at first, Nicholas stared about him, really without seeing anything at all. By degrees, however, the place resolved itself into a bare and dirty room, with a couple of windows, whereof a tenth part might be of glass, the remainder being stopped up with old copybooks and paper. There were a couple of long old rickety desks, cut and notched, and inked, and damaged, in every possible way; two or three forms; a detachable desk for Squeers; and another for his assistant. The celling was supported, like that of a barn, by cross beams and rafters; and the walls were so stained and discoloured, that It was impossible to tell whether they had ever been touched with paint or whitewash.

But the pupils — the young noblemen! How the last faint traces of hope, the remotest glimmerings of any good to bo derived from his efforts in this den, faded from the mind of Hioholas as ho looked in dismay around 1 Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs could hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together; there wore the bleared eye, the hare-lip, the ©rooked foot, and every ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural aversion conoelved by their parents for their offspring, or of young lives which, from their earliest damn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect. There - 106 -

were little faeee wiitek should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; there was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining; there were vieious-faced boys, brooding, with leaden eyas, like malefactors in a jail; and there were young creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents had descended, weep­ ing even for the mercenary nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneliness* With every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its birth, with every young and healthy feeling flogged and starved down, with every revengeful passion that can fester in swollen hearts, eating Its evil way to their oore in silence, what an incipient Bell was breeding here '

And yet, this scene, painful as it was, bad its grotesque features, which, in a less interested observer than Nicholas, might have provoked a smile* Mrs. Squeers stood at one of the desks, presiding over an immense basin of brimstone and treacle, of which delicious compound she adminis­ tered a large installment to each boy in succes­ sion: using for the purpose a common wooden spoon which might have been originally manufactured for some gigantic top, and which widened every young gentleman's mouth considerably: they being all obliged under heavy corporal penalties, to take in the whole of the bowl at a gasp • In another corner, huddled together for companionship, were the little boys who had arrived on the preceding night, three of them in very large leather breeches, and two in old trousers, a somewhat tighter fit than drawers are usually worn; at no great dis­ tance from these was seated the juvenile son and heir of Mr* Squeers — a striking likeness of his father — kicking, with great vigour, under the hands of Smike, who was fitting upon him a pair of hew boots that bore a most suspicious resemblance to those which the least of the little boys had worn on the journey down — as the little boy him­ self seemed to think, for he was regarding the _appropriation with a look of most rueful amazement. Besides these, there was a long row of boys wait­ ing, with countenances of no pleasant anticipation, to be treacled; and another file, who had just escaped from the affliction, making a variety of wry mouths indicative of anything but satisfac­ tion. Yhe whole were attired in such motley, ill- - 107 -

assorted extraordinary garments as would have been Irresistibly ridiculous, but for the foul appearance of dirt, disorder, and disease with which they were associated.7

Baroja, in distinction to this, touches very lightly on the subject of life at school, and the evil which he speaks of is hot one which has its rocts in greed or oru-

. ■ ' ■■ ■ V ' - - ■ . elty. However, in the few words that do bear upon the dis­ graceful feature which, apparently, ho is bent upon adver- timing, one sees clearly a reason for his unpopularity in a Catholic country:

fh® two boys had come out of the village to walk about the outskirts, and upon returning sat down on a bank by the road* exchanging some trivial sentence at long intervals.

The two, one beardless* the other shaved, were dressed in black and had the air of theological students. The tall one was cutting with a pen­ knife on the bark of a pole some sketches and orna­ ments; the other with his hands on his knees, in a melancholy attitude, was contemplating, half absorbed, half distracted, the landscape. ■

It was an autumn day, damp and gloomy. In the dis­ tance, settled on a hill, the village might he seen, with its dark houses and its towers still more dark. Into the gray sky, like a dull sheet of steel, the tenuous columns of smoke rose slow­ ly from the village chimneys. The air was silent; the river, hidden behind the trees, resounded vaguely in the solitude*

"let’s go," said the taller of the boys.

7Diokonst Nicholas Bjekleby. Bk. X, pp. 102-118. ' - loe •

n0omo on,"replied the other.

# #-#.,#"*.# #.-# * * *.# * #".* # # *"+ * * # # #

"Bay after tomorrow, w e *11 be there again,” said the big boy happily.

"Who knows?" said tee other.

"What do you mean, who knows? I know and so do

' " ' ' ' ' " ' ' ' "

"You probably know that you're going; on the eon- trary, I know that I'm not."

"You're not going?" "Ho." ' ■ ■ •' ' ■ ' . '■■■ '

"And why not?"

"Because I've deeided not to be a priest

Bie boy tossed away the stick that he had been carving and looked at hi® friend with surprise.

" M t you 're orazy, Juan i* "Ho, I'm not orazy, Martin."

"You don't Intend to go baok to the seminary?"

"Ho."

"What are you going to do?"

"Anything else. Anything except to be a priest; I haven't got the vocation."

"do on! Vocation I Vocation l Heitiier have I."

"It's because I don't believe in anything."

The other shrugged his shoulders. ' . • • • - - * ' - "Father Pulpon; does he believe in anythin?"

"Father Pulpon's a villain, an impester," said the shorter of the two, vehemently, "and I don't want to swindle people, like him." - 109 -

"Bmt ^a'T® got to IIt ®, boy I If I had money, would I he a priest? Ho, I ’d go to the country and live the rustle life and till the soil with my own oxen, as Horace says: Patorna rura hobus. exoroot spia: hut I haven't a cent and my mother and my sisters are waiting for me to finish my oouro® . What 'll I do? She same thing that you*11 do, too."

"Ho, mo. I've decided firmly, irrevocahly, not to go haok to the seminary."

"And how are you going to live?"

"I don't know. She world is wide."

"Shut's ohildlah. You're doing well, you've got a fellowship in the seminary. You haven't any family • . . . the teachers have been good to you . . . . you can teach . . * . mayho preach . . . . you'll he a oanon . • * . maybe a bishop." - , ■ 7.';., .■ .■ • : ■. . ■. . . 7. 7 ; Even if they'd promise me that I'd get to be Pope, .1 wouldn't go baok to the seminary."

"But why?"

"Because I don't believe; because I don't be-? lieve. Because I don't believe any longer."

Shey bqth foil silent, and went along the road side by side.

"I'll bet it was that thing that you told me about Father Pulpon that decided you."

"Ho; all that had been rousing me; I saw the m a t i m s s there was in the seminary; at first what I saw astonished me and nauseated me; then every­ thing became clear to me; It Isn't the priests that are bad; it's that religion's bad."

"You don't know what you're saying, Juan."

"Believe what you please. I'm convinced that re­ ligion's bad because it's a lie." nBojr, you astonish m o . I that always thought you a saint . Why, you tho host; pupil in the oourse . Tho only one that held the true faith, as Father MoSesto.said.” .^Father Modesto’s a man with a good heart but h e ’s deluded.”

"So you don’t believe in him either? But how have you changed se?” ■: • ^ . - - • ' • -v.. ■ •

"Slinking, lad. I hardly know myself how it’s happened. When I began to study the fourth year with Bon Tirso Bilpon, I still had some faith. That m.a t W year of the scandal about Father Pul- pon and one of the boys of the first course, and to tell you the truth, I felt as though somebody had struck me a terrible blow. At the same time, I was-studying with. Father Belda who, as the prebend says, is an Ignorant monk. Father Belda ' hates Father Pul pon because Pnlpon knows more than he does and he ordered another boy and myself that we should find out what was going on. It was like going into a privy. When I had to suspect what was going on 1 I suppose you know this, but if you don’t know it. I ’ll toll you: The seminary is a complete mass of filth.

"Yes, I know it is."

"A horror. From the time that I found out about those things, I don't know what happened to mo. At first, I felt a great indignation against these licentious priests who were desecrating their profession• Then I read some books and I thought, and I suffered a good deal; from then on I wasn't a believer." "Prohibited books?”

"Yes.”

"At last. In examination time, I drew a vile^ hideous earioature of Father P ul^n and some nice little friend of his gave it to him. Me. were, stand ing at the entrance of the seminary talking when he appeared. rWho did this?’- he said pointing at the sketch. Everybody kept still. 'Bid you do it?1" he said to me. ’Yes, senor. ’ 'Well, we ’ll - Ill -

take some time to look Into this*1 With that threat, I tall you tho first few days I was here I couldn’t even sleep. I kept thinking up a lot of things to elude his vengeance until it oc­ curred to me that the most simple thing wasn't to go hack to tho seminary.8

Accordingly, when his uncle puts him on the train to return

to school, he leaves the train at a little cross roads, makes a bundle of his seminarist habit and throws it into a

stream, and goes on his way* "Forward always," he said.

"One mustn't go back.”

There is in this incident none of the appeals to pity

and rage which must inevitably grip the reader of Rleholae Jfiekleby. / ' In Vidas Soabriaa. Barova's first book, there is a

story, "Hidden Good," which shows that, even at that time

when he had more feeling for his characters, he had no hope

that conditions could be changed, or that the one who tried

to change then would meet with anything but scorn* This

story relates the gradual transformation ef the superin­

tendent of a lead mine from a merciless driverof labor,

respected by his employees and valued by his employers, into

a merciful and paternal benefactor. The change is wrought

by the influence of his mistress, a careless, tender­

hearted creature whose interest is awakened by an epidemic

of smallpox in the village. The change of attitude and

O- ", - Baro ja, Aurora Ho,1a. pp. 1-16. subsequent relaxing of discipline in the superintendent re­ sults in his eventually losing his position; He and the woman go down the mountainside together at night-fall, hap- ' ‘ ' 1 ' ' Q py in timir regeneration, but poor and friendless.

This is the portion of the reformer, he concludes, and nearly all his works show a certain lack of sympathy with those who try to impose their ideas or their help upon an indifferent world. In la Dama erranto. ho pictures the anarchist Brail and his associates as abnormal types,

Aurora Ro.la is filled with the foolish quarrels of anarchists and their impractical ideas; and Juan— the gentle, unselfish artist, whose death ends the book— is depicted as rather weak. His decision to leave the seminary is formed as much

because he fears the vengeance of Father Pulpon as because

he has become a freethinker. "Of such stuff are reformers

made," he implies. Says Claude Anlbal in his preface to Paradox. Hey:

Baroja is quite willing to take men as he finds them. He accepts their foibles and shortcomings, and even their crimes, as matter of fact. He makes no attempt to reform them and even allows virtue to be victimised by triumphant vice or wickedness. To Baroja, a novelist who assumes that human nature ©an be turned from its time-worn ways by either preaching or force, violates re­ ality .10

^Baroja, Vidas Sombrlas. pp. 7-15.

l°Baroja, Paradox. Bey. Introduction to, Claude S. Anlbal, p. xxvi. L^r. Anibal believes, however, that Baroja does feel keen disapproval of society, bnt, says he:

It is the smog bourgeois, and the olorgy, army, and inefficient government officials who are the real enemies of society and whose hypocrisy, ignorance, and futile ineptitude® Baroja hates and decries above all e l s e A 1

A disinterested perusal of the pages of this novelist will hardly support Mr. Anlbalrs theory. tDhere is, in them^ nd sign ef hatred of one class 'of scciety more than nf another.

It is true that he pletures the dreadful results of poverty but he pictures also the unworthiness of the poor. He touches upon the immorality existing in church Institutions and the slack indifference of the priest* generally, but he paints in the darkest colors the vilenses and the callous insensibility of the riff raff of the world. His conoluding paragraph of the article, “Myself," published in the

Grande Revue] reads:

The strong man who oontemplates the sovereign people oan follow one of only two courses: he can dominate the mass and subject it . . . . or ho can inspire it with him ideas and thoughts. . . . . I, who am not strong enough to take either course, avoid the sovereign poople so as not to feel its col­ lective brutality and its evil characteristics at close range.12

There•is no doubt that this writer realizes the con­ dition of the poor generally, and of the poor of his own

Baroja. Paradox. Hey. Introduction to, Claude E. Anibal, p. xxvil.

12“Myself,N living Ago. 7ol. 357 (Sept. 15, 1929), p. 118• - 114

country particularly* but his realization Is not aooompanled by any hope or desire to effect a change. There is an incident In La Bueca which is significant: Manuel-and a crowd of other vagrants are lying about the asphalt caldrons for warmth when an old gentleman comes by, talking with a police­ man. He looks pityingly at the poor wretches:

She gentleman lamented the neglect of the children and said that in other countries, they provided . schools and asylums and many such things , she' policeman shook hia head doubtfully. At last he took up the conversation, saying in the even tones of the Galician:

"Believe me, those fellows are no good.t^3

In a nutshell, this is Baroja’s idea, as set forth in his novels: "Yes," ho says, "it is true, quite true; our poverty is dreadful, and we have not even the means of;alleviating

it that exist in other countries. But what's the use of struggling with such things? In common with the rest of . humanity, great and small, those fellows are no good."

In short, far from having any plan for reform, ho is imbued with a pessimism which precludes even the hope for better­ ment . ■ , .. ; :

13BaroJa, La Busoa. p * 163 # CHAP2ER V - sms '

The.difference achieved by these two writers with

Identical material and similar structure may be attributed largely to the difference in their styles: Sickens chesses warm, picturesque, colorful words; an examination will show that the bright quality of his writing is due in part to the employment of words which, in one sentence, provide many vowel sounds. Consider such a sentence as this:

Of the geese outside the side-gate who come wad­ dling after me with their long seeks stretched out when I go by that way, I dream at night, as a . man environed by wild beasts might dream of l i o n s A Then there is the safe expedient of the short sentence inter­ spersed to avoid monotony; and the employment of the semi­ colon to provide a pause in compound sentences. Indeed, in some of his work, notably the description of Miss Qrummleds dance, he employs a semi-colon between the noun and the adjective clause which modifies it, apparently because a number of adjective phrases are used before he reaches the clause. Be uses commas in a peculiar manner also, as in the description of Sikes* beginning: "%he man.who growled out

Ipiokens. David Copperfield. Bk. I, p. 18. - 115 - - 116 -

these words, was a . . . «w8 His manner of selecting just - ■ ■ . ■ . the right combination ef words to describe some element of his subject’s, appearance is arresting• How else could he have fixed so firmly Poor Mr. Moll in his vise of want as by the little piece of information that TThis stocking was just breaking ont in one place, like a bud”?

In his portrayal of character# or of places, verbs and participles come tumbling over each other to form a picture of a living thing; his people move and breathe, and his places are seen as the environment of their Inhabitants•

Characters, places, and actions are so mingled in his de­ scriptions that, as in life, the reader is conscious only of the progress of the happening, a good example of this may be noted in the scene where Nicholas Miokleby becomes a member of Mr. Vincent Crummiesrs theatrical troupe, or in

Oliver Twist when the Artful Dodger arrives at Paginfs room with Oliver.® fbe reader is introduced into the dirty room by means of a pair of dark and broken stairs and finds the old man cooking sausages before the fire. He sees the whole

thing through Oliver's eyes, receiving, blended, the impres­

sion of the dim room, the glow of the fire, the smell of

the sausages, the crowding about of the grinning boys, and

the sardonic visage of the Jew. She soene, the characters,

^Dickons. Oliver feist, o. 114. ®P. 75. - 117 -

the action, all move forward together in a powerful surge of action* The description of the storm in David dopper- field, where "the people came to their doors oil-aslant, and with streaming hairis. tremendous. T M linos in Little

Dorrit. wherein 1m describes the frightened face of the villainous Higaud as he leaves his cell to go "before the

Tribunal, and hears outside the crowd clamoring for his blood, ave intensely suggestive:

There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like the whiteness of Mon­ sieur Higaud‘s face as it was then* neither is there any expression of the human countenance at all like that express ion in every little line of which the frightened -heart is seen to beat. Both are conventionally compared with death; but the difference Is the whole deep gulf between the struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate extremity.6 ' -. In describing a storm, or in describing the fright on a human countenance, he uses words which suggest motion*

His dialogue is plentiful and Interesting • His

pages are enlivened by long stretches of conversation which have the virtue ef seeming like actual talk between actual

people without losing any of the seat which makes' it worthy

of being immortalized in print*

As to his grammar, Alice Meynell says:

Those critics who find what they call vulgarisms think they may safely go on to accuse Dickons of 4*

4Bk. II, p. 467. .

Spiokene. Little Dorrit. Bk. I, pp. 17-18. — 118 —

bad grammar • The truth is that hie grammar is not only good but strong; it is far better in con- struction than fhaokaray’s, the ease of whose phrase sometimes exceeds and is slack. lately, during the recent centenary time, a writer averred that Dickens "might not always be parsed," but that we loved him for his, &o., &o., &c. Dickens*s page is to be parsed as strictly as any man's. It is, apart from the matter of grammar, a wonder­ ful thing that ho, with his little education, should hare so excellent a diction.6

Many examples of bad grammar are found in his pages, but most of them are in dialogue, as in the case in The Old Curiosity

Shop, where Well's grandfather bids her brothers

"You hare chosen your own path," said the old man. "Follow it. leave Hell and I to toil and work."

"Take care that the day don't cone when you walk barefoot in the streets, and she rides by in a gay carriage of her own."7 Mr. Oissing is most annoyed by his habit of falling

into rhythmical prose. He says: The gravest of his faults, from Oliver Twist onwards— and he never wholly overcame it — is the habit of writing metrically.8

This is hardly the place to enter into a discussion of much

a moot Question as the merits or iniquities of metrical

prose, but there can be little doubt that the rise and fall

of Dickens’s prose in presenting scenes of strong feeling

6Alioe Meynell, "Dickens as a Man of Letters," English Critical Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 1935).

7P. P6.

' ' . " ' - , • ■ ' ■ ' ' . Glsslng. Charles Diokens, p. £42. - ns

does heighten tho affect on tho emotions of the reader.

Sueh descriptions as that of the dead Hell would he robbed of half their force without the rhythmical aoeompanlnent*'

Baroja’s language is matter-of-fmot, many of his words being below the level fixed as scholarly by the loyal

Aoaderay. Perhaps no language eon tains words more distin­ guished for beauty of sound than Spanish, yet B a m ja seldom uses such words. He employs dialsot sometimes, and Madrid argot, yet only oocaslonally does he distinguish his charac­ ters by the use of some distinctive form of speech, as does

Dickens, notably, with his Mrs. Gamp. Here and there in his descriptions are words like escrofulose. Isoorone. hydrocefallao, which remind the reader that he was a physician and practiced his profession for two years. There are gypsy words, too, like chala (woman) and chipen&l

(luxury), and many others not found in the dictionaries. His dialogue is the dead level of everyday and, usually,

is not extended beyond a few sentences. It is unimaginable

that Dickens should have confined himself for even a para­ graph to suoh grey utterance as this of which Baro jafs

people are guilty. Tho following are typical:

"Hello, Manuel l"

"Hello, Don Sober to L"

"You're working, eh?" . "Sit down," said Ignacio, offering him a

"Ion are the tmole of Manuel?"

"To serve you." (Tho customary Spanish response.)9

"Do you know where the Doctrine is?" . - . • _ . "lhat Doctrine?"

"Aplaoewhere a lot of beggars gather«"

"I don't know whero it Is."

"Do you know where the hl#iroad of Isidro is?"

"Yes."10

This is like life, hut surely it.might he dispensed with.

In comparison, the unctuous meandarings ot'Vre. Oamp appear doubly rich.

Baroja‘s sentences are rather monotonous; no attempt

is made to provide variety, and rare are the occasions,

since his first hook, when he swings into the rhythm which

is so marked in Dickens. In the original Spanish the rhythm

is more or less noticeable in tho passages describing the boarding house and the churchyard at Saint ..Giles.- Baro ja,

too, carries on M s descriptions by means of a series of motions, but sometimes the human element disappears and the

reader goes up one street and down the other, impatiently noting the faithful details of the surroundings.

9Baroia. La Busoa. p . 51. 1QIbia.. p. 52. 181 -

All In all, BaroJa* *s style is loss vivid than that of

Diokens, whioh fact probably Is partly responsible for hie . unpopularity, for he is a &eol4e&ly unpopular writer.

Beverthelees Pio Baroja's position In ourrent Spanish literature is aa assured as it is unwar­ ranted. He writes, everybody reads what he writes, and nobody likes it.^ B e writes mere, again every­ body reads It, and nobody likes It any bettor than before. He Is therefore a successful contemporary novelist and a figure In modern Spanish literature not to be ignored.11

Share is, of course, merit in an author who has published be­ tween forty and fifty novels . People read him because, un­ questionably, he has something to say; they dislike him be­ cause, aside from the fact that he offends the devout and the delicate-minded, he says what he has to say in a color­ less manner. In a few words, Mr. Jaime Fitsmaurioe Kelly, although commending the laek of affectation in Baro ja‘s pages, sets down the ooDelusion of the average reader:

"She simplicity of his prose is converted into aridity.n^2

Eloquence may be out of style; nevertheless, it is a pleas­ ing accompaniment to a story; the constant narration of facts without the adornment of warm suggestive words must eventually weary even the most eager reader.

1:LI. A. Wright, literary Review (fob. 10, 192S), p. 463.

*2la literature Bepahola (Madrid: Buis Hormanos, 1926), p. 367. , .. CONCLUSION

Prom the foregoing ehapters, it may be oonoloAed thatt while their material and their struetura are very similar, these two writers produee entirely different results, the * one provoking tears and laughter in his reader; the other, keen interest and, at times, a sort of admiring impatience at his clear prolixity. What produces the difference is not so easy to descry. It might be argued that Dickens came to his maturity in the romantic era of the great Victoria, and that Baroja is a modernists, one of that group of intel­ lectuals called "the generation of 1898." However, this same

Victorian era brought forth excellent novelists who were neither idealists nor reformers; and this same group of modernlstas stimulated the creative faculties of idealistic reformers like Peres Galdoe, surely a novelist with a pur­ pose. Doubtless the times in which they developed had their effect upon both the Englishman and the Spaniard. Chester­ ton says that "Dickens sums up seollet and Goldsmith and

Baroja might be said to sum up Zola and Goncourt; yet each of them is greater than the sum of the two whom each epitomises and some factor greater than predecessors enters

^Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticisms, p. 38.

- 122 - 123 -

into the results.

Is it not the difference between the taBanlterisnt the wara-hearted romanticist who mingles his blood and tears with the blood and tears of his brother, and the intellectu­ al — the cool observer who, while evading the crowd, yet s tands by and focuses upon it a scrutiny sharpened by his medical training? One feels; the other does not. Baroja himself, apparently has some inkling of this, for in an article entitled nShe Making of Hovels," he says:

A writer, and above all a novelist, possesses a definite stock of sentiment and emotion which forms his personal capital. . . . . Some writers have a very large emotional stook-in-trade — for in­ stance, Diokens and Dostoievskli.

He goes, on to say that, when this capital is exhausted, all the experiences that an author may undergo remit only in a sort of photographic recital of M s impressions.2 Does not this exactly describe the situation? Diokens, indeed, pos­ sessed an enormous stock-in-trade. All through his life, he poured out through the pages of his works his sentiment and emotion. He was a man oapable of prolonged tears and laughter. BaroJa, for a brief period, notably represented in the little collection of his early writings, exhibited : some tenderness; it was soon exhausted and, since that time; he has been turning out brilliantly kaleidoscopic views of life r- Views which arouse in the reader exactly what such

2Living Age. Vol. 526 (May 23, 1926), p. 423. - 124

mechanical presentation might bo expeeted. to arouse — the beholder Is ever coneolons of the oamera. Baro ja knows that life is hard. One of his novels, entitled B1 Mando ea ansi

(The World is like ghat), contains the paragraph:

The world.is like that 1 It is true. Everything Is hard, cruel, selfish. In the life of the least cruel, what injustice, what ingratitude l The world is like that Is

^Dickens fought for better oonditicme. With his great pity for the forlorn and the unhappy, he hurled onto his pages characters and situations to fix In the minds of hie public the pitiable condition of a part of their family.)

Baroja realizes quite as fully that the earth is crowded with the forlorn and the unhappy; he sots them down just as they are, forlorn arid unhappy, indeed. But he cannot dilate upon their condition. "There it is i" his attitude says. "Take it or leave it." "Reform 1" eries Bloke ns . "These horrors need not be. Let us be kind t" And well is he called "the crier-up of human kindness.1,4 "Reform?" says Baroja with a shrug. "Ho import*" f It doesn*t matter), and adds with a wry smile of hopeless resignation: % 1 aundo os ansi."

3Pio Baroja, El Llundo es ansi (Madrid: Rafael Garo Baggio, 1919), p. 183.

^Burten. Mokena. How to Bnow him. Title of Chapter Till, p. 282. BIBLIOGHAJPHY

^ferenees on Biokens Diokens, Charles. Bleak Bouse. Boston: Bomghton, Mifflin and Company, 1877. '

_ '’Crloket on the Hearth.tt Christmas Books. Boston: Houghton# Mifflin and Company, 1876.

. David Copporflold. national library Ed., ?ol. B C Kov/ York: Bigalou, Brown and Company, Ine.

. "Doctor Marigold,” Christmas Stories, national library M . , W l . XIII. I^ow York:- Bigelow, Brown and Company, Inc. .

. Dombey and Son, national library Ed., Tol. Till, llow^York: Bigelow, Brown and Company, Ino.

_ little Dorrit. national library Ed., Tol. XI. Mew forks fiigelow, Srown and Co., m @ .

. Martin Ohnzzlewlt. national library Ed., Tol. " Titlow fork: Mgelow, Brown and Company, In®.

. Nicholas Hiokloby. National library M . , Voir Ifl Mew fork: Dig®low. Brown and Company, Ino.

. Old Cariosity Shop, national library Ed., 7517 T. Hew York: Bigelow, Brown and Company, Ino.

. Olivor Twist. Ifeitional library Id., Tol. III. Sow^York; Bigaiow, Brown and Company, Ino.

Barton, Biohard. Diokens. How to Know Him. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrlll Company. 1914.

Cavanaugh, Certos W. Charles Diokona as graood by his Works. Hew York: Mew York Public library, 1929.

Chesterton, G . X . Appreoiations _and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Diokens. 4th ocU Mew fork; E. p. Button ~ and Company, 19kl. - 126 - - 126 -

Cro tilers, Samuel He Chord. nBie Obviousness of Dickens,n Humanly Speaking. Boston: Beughten, Mifflin and Company; 1912.

Qlsslng, George. GWirlem Dickons. Hew York: Dodd, Head and Company, 1004. ■■■ * . ' leynell. Alio®. HDiokens as a Man of Letters,’* English Critical Essays. London: Oxford University Press, 193S. r .. . ,

References on Baroja

Baroja y Heesi. Plo. Aurora Ro,1a. IStdrid: Lihrerla ' Fernando Fe, 1904.

. El Arhol do la clenoia. London: Thomas Helson and. Son.

. ' » El Hundo ea anal ♦. Madrid: Rafael Caro Itetggio , 1919* - - : - '

' » La Busca. Madrid,: Llbroria Fernando Fd-, 1904. la Ciudad de la niobla. London: Thomas Helson andSon.

* la Dama errante* London: thorns Helson and Son.

. Hierba. Madrid: Llbroria Fernando pd'.

■ ' ‘ * Paradox, asy.3ey. nacmnianMacmillan mHispanic Series. Hew York: Macmillan Coapany,mpany, 1937.1937 •

▼Idas Somhrlas. I^adrld: Rafael Caro Baggio.

Baroja y Hessl, Plo. "Making a Hovel." Living Age. Vol. 325. Fay, 1925*

. "Myself." Living Age. Vol. 337, Septiwber, 1929.

Dos Bassos, John. "Weeds." Hation. Vol. 118, January, 1924.

Goldberg, Isaac. Drama of Transition. Cinelanatl: Stewart Eidd Company, 1922. Kelly, Jaime Fitzmaurice. La Literature Espanola. Madrid: Ruiz Hermanos, 1926. 127

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