The Three-Cornered Hat
Page 1
The Three-Cornered Hat
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
Translated by H.F. Turner
ALMA CLASSICS
alma classics ltd
Hogarth House
32-34 Paradise Road
Richmond
Surrey TW9 1SE
United Kingdom
www.almaclassics.com
The Three-Cornered Hat first published in Spanish in 1874
First published by John Calder (Publishers) Limited in 1959
Translation © John Calder (Publishers) Limited, 1959
This edition first published by Oneworld Classics Limited in 2008
First published by Alma Classics Limited in 2015
Front cover image © Nataliya Hora / 123RF
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Grou (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
isbn: 978-1-84749-482-5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.
Contents
Introduction
Chronological Notes about the Author
The Three-Cornered Hat
The Author’s Preface
1 When It All Happened
2 How They Lived in Those ‘Good Old Days’
3 A Sprat for a Mackerel
4 One Glance at a Woman
5 A Glance All Round – and Inside – a Man
6 A Married Couple’s Aptitudes
7 The Foundations of Happiness
8 The Man in the Three-Cornered Hat
9 Get Along, Neddy!
10 From the Trellis
11 The Bombardment of Pamplona
12 Tithes and First Fruits
13 Said the Jackdaw to the Raven
14 Advice from The Weasel
15 A Plain Prose Farewell
16 A Bird of Ill Omen
17 A Homespun Alcalde
18 Which Shows That Tio Lucas is a Light Sleeper
19 Voices Crying in the Wilderness
20 Doubt and Certainty
21 On Guard, My Fine Gentleman!
22 Weasel Plays Many Parts
23 Again the Open Country and Those Voices!
24 A King of the Old School
25 The Weasel’s Star
26 Reaction
27 In the King’s Name!
28 Ave Maria Purissima! Half-past Twelve and All Clear!
29 The Moon Shines through the Clouds
30 A Lady of Quality
31 An Eye for an Eye
32 Faith Moves Mountains
33 How about Yourself?
34 The Governor’s Lady Is Inviting Too
35 Imperial Decree
37 Conclusion, Moral and Epilogue
Notes
Introduction
The three-cornered hat is an elaboration of a time-
honoured Spanish folk tale which has been told and retold a hundred times. Alarcón’s version, so spirited, humorous, and richly coloured, was the first to give world currency to the story. Masters of arts other than literature who have made the story the basis of original works have accepted Alarcón’s inventions as authentic parts of the legend. Thus the nineteenth-century painter Carbonero illustrated the tale with highly finished studies that interpret excellently the racy and picturesque realism of Alarcón’s novel. In the author’s own lifetime two operettas, one by a French and the other by a Belgian composer, were made out of it. But the most celebrated of all the works of art founded on the book is, of course, Manuel de Falla’s ballet. His music has caused the adventure of the Miller and the Corregidor’s Lady to be familiar to thousands who have never heard of Alarcón.
For Alarcón was certainly not one of the big pieces in the artillery of genius made up of great Spanish novelists which bombarded world consciousness in the late nineteenth century. His power fell far short of the serene mastery of Juan Valera, and he could not compare in vigour and knowledge of humanity with Perez Galdos. His taste was notoriously erratic and even to the end his prose style often curiously strained and inflated. All but a few of his books – and the total number is not large – are of minor merit. Only five or six of his many short tales and perhaps one other novel seem really worthy of the hand that wrote The Three-Cornered Hat. Alarcón may fairly be set down as a one-story master, one of an honoured international company to which belong the Abbé Prévost, la Motte Fouqué, and our own R.D. Blackmore, among others. It is a single book that ensures for each of them a permanent niche in fame.
The Three-Cornered Hat first appeared in 1874, its author being forty-one at the time. Before this he had published nothing very considerable. There was his sensational firstborn, The Last Act of Norma (I use the title of the English translation of 1891). This is a novel that to a modern taste seems far-fetched in the extreme. In addition, he had produced one unsuccessful play, one colourful book of war reporting, two travel books, and a volume of miscellaneous verse. He had also written a great number of tales, varied in kind and quality, which he subsequently collected in several volumes. But before 1874 he had not made a lasting impression on the public.
Almost at once The Three-Cornered Hat was a resounding success. It has remained so ever since with readers of Spanish in and beyond its land of origin. The adroitness of narrative, the rapid and vivid characterisation, the lively down-to-earth dialogue, the pervading flavour of robust, mischievous gaiety, and the profound delight in Spanish life and things which every page breathes – these qualities deeply impress the reader’s imagination and, if he is a foreigner, become part for ever of his mental picture of Spain.
It is a short novel, but then it is in short works that the edge of Alarcón’s power is felt keenest. Nearly all his life he was a busy man of affairs and moved in high society; for half of it he was a well-known public figure. Politics, the press, diplomacy, travel, made great demands upon his time. He began as a very young man in political journalism, first in his beloved Guadix, the Granadan town where he was born, and afterwards in Madrid where he edited a radical paper called significantly The Whip. As an insistent and outspoken critic of Queen Isabella II he became involved in a duel with a Catholic and Royalist writer who rejoiced in the great name of Quevedo. At the rendezvous Alarcón found himself quite deserted by all his radical friends who at the last minute, perhaps, grew cautious. At any rate, their defection had a disillusioning, as well as a damping, effect upon Alarcón. Quevedo noticed this, and when the duel reached a critical point and Alarcón, novice that he was, had missed with his shot, Quevedo deliberately fired into the air. The contestants then shook hands, honour satisfied. This incident, not unnaturally, started Alarcón’s gradual retreat from radicalism and crossing-over into the camp of Rome and traditionalism.
Some years afterwards Spain embarked upon war in Morocco. Alarcón hurried to enlist and in the course of the campaign was wounded. His experiences inspired him to write his Eye-Witness’s Diary of the War in Africa, published in 1860. This brought him a small fortune and a considerable reputation. He now had the means to make writing tours in Spain, Africa, and Italy, and then launch into an active political career. For years he sat as a deputy in the Cortes, and later served his country abroad as Minister Plenipotentiary to Denmark an
d Norway.
All the time he went on practising fiction and journalism, but it was naturally short works that most fitted the fragmentary leisure that his busy public life allowed him. The Three-Cornered Hat was written in about ten days, and only received its final length and elaboration by a kind of accident. Its author tells us about it in one of his last published writings, The Story of My Books. It began as a tale of a few pages intended for a popular monthly magazine in Cuba. A fellow writer and friend heard him read an enlarged second draft of the story and encouraged him to work it up into a complete novel.
Afterwards, Alarcón published several more books, including two novels and two or three collections of his tales. He continued his busy career of miscellaneous literature and journalism till 1887 when an attack of hemiplegia left him half-paralysed. Thenceforth he had to stay at home – a great deprivation for a man who gloried in a brilliant social life. He now rarely saw anybody outside his own family and household, and died near Madrid in 1891.
The testimony of writers who knew him well shows that in private life Alarcón was a charming man, high-spirited, the liveliest of talkers and the warmest of friends. All his life he had a singular delight in writing fiction. ‘Oh inefable dicha la de creer seres con la pluma!’ (‘Oh happiness beyond words – to create living beings with the pen!’) – these words of his, so very characteristic, are strangely affecting. It was in writing about The Three-Cornered Hat that Alarcón used them.
– H.F.T.
Chronological Notes about the Author
1833Pedro Antonio de Alarcón y Ariza is born at
Guadix in Granada on 10th March.
1847He begins the practice of Law in Granada but
soon gives it up.
1853He makes his first trip to Madrid.
1855He settles permanently in Madrid, publishes his
sensational and preposterous first novel El Final de Norma, and edits the firebrand republican review El Látigo (The Whip).
1857His play El Hijo Prodigo is performed.
1859He enlists in the army and fights in the campaign
in North Africa. He wins the San Fernando Cross for bravery.
1860His account of his wartime experiences Diario de
un testigo de la guerra en Africa brings him fame.
1861He publishes a travel book De Madrid a Nápoles.
1868A Liberal Spanish government appoints him
Minister Plenipotentiary to Norway and Sweden, but he does not take up the appointment.
1874In July he publishes El Sombrero de Tres Picos.
1875He publishes El Escándalo, a novel advertising
his conversion from a liberal radical and republican to a supporter of the Catholic Church.
1877He is elected to the Spanish Academy.
1880He publishes another novel El Niño de la Bola.
1881He publishes his short romance El Capitán
Veneno.
1881–1882He publishes his tales Novelas Cortas in three
editions.
1882He publishes La Prodiga, his last novel. Its
reception is disappointing. He renounces novel-writing, but continues journalism and other kinds of writing.
1891He dies on the 10th June at Valdemoro near
Madrid.
The Three-Cornered Hat
The Author’s Preface
Few spaniards, not excluding the least learned or well-read, are unfamiliar with the popular tale on which the present book is based. A rough goatherd, who had never set foot outside the remote hamlet where he was born, was the first whom we ever heard tell it. He was one of those rustic types, quite illiterate but with a natural acumen and gift of comedy, who figure so prominently in our national literature under the name of ‘picaros’. Whenever a fiesta was held in the hamlet by reason of a wedding or christening or ceremonial visit by the gentry, it fell to him to be leading jester and mime, to play the buffoon and recite the old ballads and tales. On one such occasion – it was almost a whole lifetime ago or, to be precise, more than thirty-five years – he happened one evening to bemuse and beguile our innocent self (for innocent we were then, in a relative sense) with the verse narrative of The Corregidor and the Miller’s Lady or, conversely, The Miller and the Corregidor’s Lady, which we now present to the public under the more transcendental and philosophical title, such as the graver modern taste demands, of The Three-Cornered Hat.
We well remember that when the goatherd was in this way so delightfully entertaining us the marriageable lasses present turned several shades pinker – by which sign their fond mamas learnt that the story was slightly on the raw side, and started to give the storyteller the rough side of their tongues. But little Repela (that was his name) spoke up boldly for himself, maintaining that there was nothing to be shocked at – his narrative told of nothing that a nun herself or a little girl of four was not well aware of.
“See here now,” he contended. “What is the plain upshot of the story of The Corregidor and the Miller’s Wife? That a man and his wife lie in the one bed, and that no husband feels easier for another’s sleeping with his wife! There’s startling news!”
“Hum, that’s true enough,” the matrons conceded, while the high laughter of their daughters rang in their ears.
“The proof that our friend Repela is in the right” – here the father of the bridegroom broke in – “is that all of us here, grown-ups and children too, are well aware that this very night, as soon as the dancing is over, our Juan and his sweet Manuela are – so to speak – to house-warm that lovely bride-bed which old Gabriela has been showing the girls for them to admire the embroidery on the pillowcases.”
“And don’t forget,” said the bride’s grandfather, “in the Book of Scripture itself, and in sermons too, these natural facts are set down for the very children to read, so that they may understand all about the long barrenness of Our Lady Mary, the goodness and chastity of Joseph, and about the trick played by Judith,* and – and many other wonderful things which I don’t at this moment recall. And so, my friends…”
“Never mind! Never mind!” boldly cried the girls. “Do tell us the story again, Tio Repela – it is so amusing!”
“And, in fact, most edifying!” added grandfather. “Why, it prompts no one to wickedness, much less teaches any, and none who are wicked in the story go unpunished…”
“Come, begin it again!” the committee of mothers says at last.
So Tio Repela repeats the story; and, his version being judged in the light of the ingenuous criterion just referred to, nobody found anything to demur at – which is as much as to say that he was granted “due licence to promulgate the same”.
With the passing of years we have heard many varying versions of that same adventure of the Miller and the Corregidor’s Lady, always from the lips of some country-bred wit of the same kidney as the late lamented Repela, and, what is more, we have read it in print in different collections of The Blind Man’s Tales and even in the famous Ballad of the never-to-be-forgotten Don Agustin Duran.
The crux of the story was always the same – tragicomical, facetious, fearsomely epigrammatic like all the dramatic moral sermons beloved by the common people; nevertheless, the form, the machinery of incident, the circumstantial development differed a great – a very great – deal from our friend the goatherd’s narrative. So much so indeed that Repela would never have recited to a village audience any of the said variations on the theme, not excluding the printed ones, without making every proper young miss stop up her ears in horror and exposing his eyes to the nails of their outraged mothers. So far had the insensitive boors of other provinces exaggerated and distorted the traditional theme which in Repela’s classic version issues forth so full of taste, proportion and beauty.
For a long time now we have harboured the plan of reviving the plain truth of the story
, of restoring to this rare old tale its original character which was one, there can be no doubt, in which the proprieties met a better fate. And this is not at all surprising. This kind of tale, far from changing for the better, lovelier, and chaster, never circulates among the herd without suffering disfigurement and taint by contact with the vulgar and the makeshift.
So much for the story of the present work. Now let us take the plunge; I mean, of course, make a start on the tale of The Corregidor and the Miller’s Lady, in the modest hope that your sound judgment, most worthy public, ‘after reading it and crossing yourselves more abundantly than if you had seen the Devil’ (as Estebanillo Gonzalez says in the opening pages of his book), may deem it a fit and proper matter to be set down in black and white.
1
When It All Happened
It was at the beginning of this long century now past its maturity. The exact year is not known, but it was between 1804 and 1808.
Still on the Spanish throne at that time was Charles IV of the House of Bourbon, ‘by the grace of God’ – so ran the coins – and by the oversight, or special clemency, of Bonaparte – so ran the French dispatches. All the other European sovereigns who sprang from Louis XIV had already lost their crowns (the chief of them his head too) in the violent storm that swept this ancient corner of the globe after 1789.
Nor was this the only way in which our country was singular in those days. The Soldier of the Revolution, the son of an obscure Corsican attorney, the victor of Rivoli, the Pyramids, Marengo, and a hundred other battles had just assumed the crown of Charlemagne; he had utterly changed the face of Europe, creating nations, destroying nations, effacing frontiers, founding dynasties, transforming in form, name, position, and even dress the communities through which he galloped his charger like a human earthquake, or indeed like that very Antichrist with whose name and attributes the northern powers freely invested him. Nevertheless, our forbears – whom God bless in their innocence – far from hating or fearing him delighted in the contemplation of his amazing exploits just as if these had been the feats of some old hero of chivalric romance or happenings in another planet, with not so much as the merest hint of a suspicion that he would ever dream of coming their way to perpetrate among them the same atrocities he had committed in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere. Once a week, or twice at most, the post would arrive from Madrid at the important towns in the Peninsula, bringing a new number of the Gazette – not then a daily publication. By this means the leading citizens would learn – if the Gazette condescended to bother itself with such details – whether any more battles had been fought with seven or eight kings and emperors as participants, and whether Napoleon was to be found in Milan, Brussels, or Warsaw. For the rest, our fathers went on living in the good old Spanish way at a consummately leisured pace, wedded to their well-seasoned customs in the peace and the grace of God, with their Inquisition and their Friars, their inequality before the Law, their privileges, rights, and exemptions, with absolutely no municipal or political freedom, governed simultaneously by illustrious Bishop and powerful Corregidor (whose powers were indistinguishable, since each was concerned with the temporal as well as with the spiritual), paying tithes, first-fruits, rates, subsidies, levies, loans of all kinds, capitation dues, royal tithes, salt-tax, ‘civil fruits’, to say nothing of fifty more kinds of tribute the very names of which are now forgotten.