THE ALVAREDA FAMILY.*

THE writings of the lady who has chosen to assume for literary purposes the name of Fernan Caballero have had but little oppor- tunity of becoming known in England. As far as we know, the only specimens of her work to be found in English, besides the volume now before us, are a translation of La Gaviota and some ex- tracts given in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1861. We do not see, however, why her tales should not become popular with English readers. They are more capable of translation than French novels, and more in harmony with the tastes and sympathies of average English readers than German, if we except a certain profuseness of Roman Catholic sentiment which judicious translators and editors would find no difficulty in retrenching without interfering with the substantial merits of the original.

• The Aleareda Family: a Novelette. Translated from the Spanish of Fenian Csbalisro. By Viscount Pollington. London: Newby. 1872. La Familia de Alvarala was the earliest written of Fern= Caballero's novels. The title in the original bears the addition Novels de Costumbres ; the persons of the story are all Andalusian peasants, and the scene is almost entirely laid within the bounds prescribed by the rustic life of an Andalusian village. The plot is simple and tragic, too tragic, perhaps, for the re- quirements of a novel-reading and melodrama-seeing public, which has become inveterately accustomed to happy termina- tions, brought about by doing desperate violence to all real and artistic probabilities about the middle of the third act or the third volume. We affect to shudder in this generation at the sacrilegious improvements made by Tate and Cibber in Shakespeare's tragedies, and maintained on the stage until the days of Macready, but the spirit of Nahum Tate's Lear is by no means extinct. Within the last month we have seen persons presumably of average intelligence and edu- cation take refuge in a forced and idiotic giggle rather than avow themselves moved by the genius of the one Englishman who is now capable of acting tragedy. Such being the turn of the public mind, we fear that the gloomy complexion of Fernan Caballero's stories (for La Familia de Alvareda is by no means alone in this respect) may be a serious obstacle to their general reception in this country. Their real artistic defect is of a very different kind, though it happens also to be calculated to exasperate respectable British Protestants. It is an overwrought display of moral and religious purpose : the morality being all but swallowed up in the religion, and the religion (as is natural in Spain) being that of the Church of Rome ; and this will no doubt be disagreeable to many readers who see nothing absurd in Evangelical or Anglican novelettes. For our own part, we find marked Catholic tendencies in a work of art generally more graceful than any other dogmatic tendencies. But though legends and miracles are preferable to experiences and conversions, Fernan Caballero has not escaped the usual penalty of novelists who must needs moralise. The heroine, who is intended for a model of all the virtues, is a very uninteresting person, and we are neither surprised nor sorry when, after the proper amount of misfortune and desertion, she pines and dies as all good heroines ought to do. And the anti-heroine, so to call her, who is to be held up as a monster of levity and infidelity, is by far the most living, amusing, and loveable character in the book. The virtuous and tiresome young woman is called Elvira, the naughty and charming one is Rita. Their first introduction to the reader is as follows:— " When the two young men arrived, they found Elvira and Rita standing one on either aide of the doorway, leaning against it ..... . . After wishing each other good evening, Parise began talking with his sister. Elvira,' he said, 'do you know this bird wants to fly away? Mind you shut up the cage well; an' you believe it, he is dying to be off after those rascally foreigners who want to invade our country.'—' Yes, and they say,' added Ventura, that they are approaching Seville, and shall we stand here looking on with our arms folded, without saying them nay ?'—' Oh, Lord Jesus ! exclaimed Elvira, hope to God that may not be the case. Pray don't tell me it is ! Oh! my patroness, Santa Ana, if you deliver us from this misfortune, I will offer you what I prize most, my hair, which I will lay on your altar in a tress with a sky-blue ribbon around.'—' And I,' said Rita, 'offer her two vases fall of pinks to decorate her chapel on her name-day, provided that you leave us soon and come back quickly.'—' Oh! don't say that even in jest!' exclaimed Elvira.—

Bah ! never mind, let her say on ; the saint will surely prefer a tress of your beautiful hair to her pinks !' Ventura observed. At this moment good old dame Maria came up 'Children !' she exclaimed, when she saw them leaning against the doorway in the street, 'night is fast killing the day, what are you doing standing there, except, indeed,

freezing? How freezing? 'replied Ventura, unbuttoning the silver stud on his shirt, 'I am quite hot; the cold is in your bones, Mistress Maria.'— Don't play with your health, my child,' rejoined the good woman, nor confide in the small number of your years, for death does not examine our baptismal certificates. This north wind cuts like a knife, and I can tell you you will much sooner get a consumption here than a legacy from India.'"

The evening breeze in certain parts of Spain, it must be re- membered, is proverbially deadly. At Madrid there is a saying to the effect, "Not enough to put out a candle, enough to put out a man's life." Shortly after this we have a discussion between the parents to settle the terms of the marriage between Ventura and Elvira. This conversation is full of the characteristic Anda- lusian humour, and one of the most amusing in the book. Pedro announces his mission with an amount of circumlocution which we doubt not is copied from the life, and which goes to increase the evidence that our so-called refinements of diplomacy are in truth relics of savagery :—

" Gossip," he said, "I am here because I have come !" "May it be for our good, Gossip!"

"Bat I have come became I have something to say to yen." "Say on, Gossip, and the more the better."

Pedro establishes himself in the great leathern chair, and pro- ceeds :—

" 'Gossip,' he began then, using the profusion of synonymous phrases common to all great talkers, 'I hate all prefaces, which are of no use, and only make one dry ; things must be discussed in a few clear words ; out with it, or keep it to yourself, that's my way. Why take an hour to say what you can say in five minutes? Why leave till to-morrow what you can do to-day ? Of all roads the shortest is the best ; but now to the point, as I don't care about beating about the bush, or—'

Really, Gossip,' said Ana, interrupting him, 'you give me reason to think the contrary."

Pedro does come to the point at last, and they talk of the settle- ment. Ana makes her proposals :—

." The eldest son has always had this house, the vineyard goes by right to Perico because he has improved it, and replanted a great por- tion Of it; I will give him my cows, because he has to provide for me as

long as I live ; the donkey he has need of.'—' Will you oblige me, Gossip of my sins,' here put in Pedro, by telling me what is left for Elvira ? According to the arrangement you have just now made, it seems to me that she will come out of your hands in about the same state as our mother Eve, (God rest her !) came out of the hands of her Maker.'—'Elvint shall have the olive-yard,' said Ana.—' Which is really a dowry for a princess,' said old Pedro. 'Go along with you,—an olive-yard about the size of my pocket-handkerchief, which does not produce enough oil to fill the lamp of the Santisimo Twenty years ago,' observed Ana, it used to yield one hundred measures of Gossip,' replied Pedro, that which was

and is not is the same as if it had never been. Twenty years ago all the girls in the country were dying for me.'—' You mean forty years ago, Gossip,' interposed Ana.—'Now, how very nice that is of you, Gossip,' Pedro retaliated. ' But let us consider the point. There are fewer olive trees in the yard than hairs on Saint Peter's head ; and those there

are, are as doleful-looking as tapers at a funeral.' Thus fighting a wordy warfare, they settled the principal points of the marriage con- tract, remaining all the while and afterwards the best friends in the world."

This old Pedro is full of jokes and stories of all kinds. He has a donkey so old that she has forgotten which-leg to go lame upon, and so goes lame on all fours. He has one tale of a miracle which is ludicrous enough to a Northern reader. It is of a profane per- son who constantly took down a lamp burning before a consecrated picture to light his cigarette. At last the lamp resented his con- duct, and went out as he took it down. But after he had put it up again and walked on, he looked back and saw it burning as bright as ever. It is left doubtful how far this is meant to be taken seriously ; there could be no doubt if the passage occurred in any other novelist, but Fernan Caballero's Catholic zeal knows no bounds. One of the incidents brought in to show Rita's desperate levity and prepare us for her misconduct which is to bring about the catastrophe consists in her appearing indifferent, not to say a little bored, when her two children suddenly both volunteer at once to repeat the catechism, thd seven deadly sins, and other spiritual exercises. But it would be unjust to the author to let it be supposed that the religious sentiment which, overflowing as it does at times into what seem to us childish details and irrelevant declamations, certainly detracts from the artistic value of her work, is not also capable of inspiring her with a true and noble eloquence. The following description, beautiful in the translation, is still more so in the melodious language of the original :—

" What a lofty, sublime, and tremendous spectacle an empty church

presents at the unaccustomed hour of night t How immense and terrible appear those dark naves! How lofty those arches which, sustained by giants of stone, lose themselves in the mysterious obscurity of a heaven without stars. There from a deep and funereal chapel the cold statue which sleeps over a sepulchre fascinates and terrifies the observer, and although its outlines are scarcely visible, it appears that the obscurity itself gives it motion. The high altar, still perfumed with the incense and flowers of the morning, its half-seen outline glimmering in the darkness ; the altar,—the universal centre of faith, the throne of charity, the refuge of hope, the prodigal dispenser of the most sweet consolations, the shield of the weak, attracts the eyes, the steps, and the heart towards it. Before the tabernacle burns the soli- tary lamp, the guardian of the sanctuary, whose only duty is to shine, since light is the knowledge of God ; lamp, holy and mysterious, a sweet and constant sacrifice, a flame everlasting as eternal mercy, which burns like love, is silent like respect, and cheerful and tranquil like hope Thus nothing distracts the mind ; that complete immo- bility, that uninterrupted silence, form, as it were, a suspension of life, which is not death, which is not sleep, but which partakes of the solemnity of the one and the sweetness of the other."

We have altered a few words which seem to be slips or misprints. These extracts, although we have given considerable space to them, are inadequate to represent the power and variety of Fernan Caballero's writing ; but the .book is a short one, and those who wish to know more will find the time given to reading it through not ill spent.

The translator's part of the work calls for no special criticism. Sometimes involved sentences are needlessly substituted for the direct and simple construction of the Spanish ; but the version has, on the whole, a spirit and freedom which outweigh minor defects.