CHAPTER 1
Introduction
David R. George, Jr. and Wan Sonya Tang
In episode 32 “Tiempo de Verbena” of Televisión Española’s sci-f history series El Ministerio del Tiempo (TVE, 2015–2017), the character Angustias (Francesca Piñon) takes a break from her post as secretary in the Ministry of Time to travel back to 1894 in hopes of landing tickets for the premiere of her favorite zarzuela, La verbena de la Paloma. Having missed the show because of her mother’s illness, she is profoundly dismayed to discover upon arriving at the defunct Teatro Apolo in Madrid that the performance has been canceled. Angustias returns to the present and persuades the ministry to send her back in the company of special agents Lola (Macarena García) and “Pacino” (Hugo Silva) to ensure that the show goes on to make history. Within the structure of the series, this particular mission serves as a comic digression from the main plotline, but nonetheless falls within the purview of the government ministry charged with safeguarding the course of Spanish history against the meddling of rival secret societies. The agents initially question the importance of saving a zarzuela
D. R. George, Jr. (*)
Bates College, Lewiston, ME, USA
e-mail: dgeorge@bates.edu
W. S. Tang
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA
e-mail: Wan.tang@bc.edu
© The Author(s) 2018
D. R. George, Jr. and W. S. Tang (eds.), Televising Restoration Spain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96196-5_1
for posterity, yet, following the established pattern of the series that gives equal weight to political and cultural artifacts, fgures and events in the preservation of national heritage, the trio is assigned the task. Through the depiction of the moment of gestation of what remains one of the most popular pieces of the Spanish género chico (light-opera) repertoire, the trope of time-travel consecrates the work, and more important still, the period of the Restoration (1874–1931) in which it was produced, as fundamental in the trajectory of Spain’s past as represented in the series.
El Ministerio del Tiempo traffcs in historical tableaux vivants that entertain and instruct by recreating recognizable episodes of Spanish history for twenty-frst-century audiences (Rueda Laffond et al. 2016, 98). The opening sequence of “Tiempo de verbena” exemplifes the modus operandi of the series: Angustias fnds herself on stage on the night of the opera’s debut improvising the role of Tia Antonia, backed by Lola and “Pacino,” dressed in traditional Madrid garb. The comic sequence recreates a plausible yet irrecoverable moment of cultural history through a medley of the zarzuela’s most familiar scenes and tunes—“Por ser la Virgen de la Paloma,” “Coplas de Don Hilarión,” and “Donde vas con mantón de Manila”—in uncanny fashion that interpolates the audience’s memories of performances preserved and replayed on flm and video. As a result, the historical context becomes available for fabulation: History and fction playfully mix when fctional agents track down the librettist Ricardo de la Vega (Manuel Brun) and composer Tomás Bretón (Bruno oro) in a café conversing with novelists Benito Pérez Galdós (Jorge Basanta) and José Echegaray (Pedro Garcia de las Heras). While the musical fgures are less known, the time-travelers, and viewers of a certain age, recognize the writers as cultural icons whose faces once adorned 1000 pesetas notes issued in the 1970s and 1980s.
Within the scope of the series, this comic episode is loaded with self-referential winks to avid fans, since this is not the only instance in which ministry agents intervene in the period spanning the turn-of-thetwentieth century over the course of three seasons. By and large, more than as history, the Restoration functions as story in El Ministerio del Tiempo, either as a plot point of origin, or as a convenient retreat into the past, as in the case of Angustias’s “vacation” to 1894. Consequently, the epoch appears prominently, and so not insignifcantly, in agent biographies developed both on-screen and in the web of transmedia stories spun on the Internet and social media. Together with Angustias, who was born in the 1870s, all four of the series’ female characters hail from the
years of the Restoration: Amelia Folch (Aura Garrido) was born in 1857; Lola, around 1920; and Irene Larra (Cayetana Guillén), in 1930. This gendered treatment of the Restoration is ftting, as it was during this period that the modern Spanish feminist movement was consolidated. of the four female characters, the popular agent Amelia best embodies the period: Born to an upper-class family in Barcelona, she was supposedly among the frst women to graduate university and became active in the anti-slavery movement of the 1880s before her recruitment to the ministry. Her departure from El Ministerio del Tiempo in episode 27 (“Tiempo de esclavos”) occurs signifcantly after ministry agents foil a wholly fctional plot to assassinate King Alfonso XII in 1881, which would have fundamentally altered the history of the period by leaving the throne without a male heir (Alfonso XIII). Notably, the ministry’s recruitment offcer Irene brushes with death when she travels back to 1918 in episode 13 (“Un virus de otro tiempo”) to assist the birth of historic famenco dancer Carmen Amaya “La Capitana” and becomes a victim of the Spanish fu pandemic; she is rescued by colleagues and returned to the present to be cured. Perhaps the most emblematic historical events of the Restoration fgure in the biography of Amelia’s male cohort Julián Martínez (Rodolfo Sancho): Halfway through season two, he abandons his post and is eventually tracked down in 1898 serving as volunteer feld doctor during the Spanish–American War, frst in Cuba (episode 15 “Tiempo de Valientes I”), and fnally in the Philippines (episode 16, “Tiempo de Valientes II”). True biography also works as an indirect mode of representing the era in the form of references to mostly cultural fgures whose works are emblematic of Restoration Spain as the hatching ground for successive movements of artistic innovation. In addition to the historical characters in “Tiempo de Verbena,” who represent the Realist Generation of 1868, the Generation of 1898, Modernism and the Avant-Garde are evoked in cameo appearances by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, and Ramón del Valle-Inclán, among others.
The recurrence of the Restoration in El Ministerio del Tiempo puts the show in dialogue with various recent costume dramas set in the era, as well as with the longer tradition of literary adaptations that have brought to the small screen numerous works of literature from the time. Whereas the vignettes of the sci-f series transport the agents of the ministry back to the period and engage audiences as voyeuristic spectators who derive pleasure from the characters’ game of dress up, recent series that recreate the age promise to transport viewers themselves through original
fctions that directly involve them in stories that are historically plausible and visually pleasurable. These full-fedged recreations of the Restoration are not incompatible with the brief encounters offered by El Ministerio del Tiempo; on the contrary, both formats complement each other in the production of a more complete rendering of an age that, for all its televisual presence, still remains a largely misunderstood chapter in contemporary Spanish history.
the restorAtion is history
Following the airing of episode 27 “Tiempo de esclavos” on July 7, 2017, Aurelio Pimental posted a feature on TVE’s El Ministerio del Tiempo webpage titled “Las diez cosas que España no tendría si Alfonso XII hubiera muerto en el atentado de El Ministerio del Tiempo” (Pimental 2017). In the introduction to the list, the writer assures fans that, had the mission failed, the course of Spanish history would have been fundamentally altered. The enumeration is little more than a hodgepodge of trivia that at best undermines the historical plausibility of the episode set in 1881; most of the events and outcomes listed predate the supposed setting and so would have happened anyway. This aside, the register of things that would be missed today includes the playground song “¿Dónde vas, Alfonso XII?,” the popular boating pond in Madrid’s Retiro Park and the king’s torrid affair with opera diva Elena Sanz, alongside the 1876 Constitution, the end of the Carlist Wars and the institution of the Bourbon monarchy itself. By referring to random events and outcomes of Alfonso XII’s reign, and more generally, of the Restoration of the monarchy he symbolized, the page and viewers’ commentary and rankings of the items provide insight into the place both the period and the monarch occupy in popular historical imaginary.
For television viewers, part of the appeal of the Restoration as a historical setting is that it constitutes an aesthetically attractive period that is recognizable yet about which audiences retain relatively little real knowledge. In 2014, the online version of conservative newspaper ABC published a short quiz titled “¿Aprobarías un examen de la Restauración borbónica?” (Would you pass an exam on the Bourbon Restoration?). In it, author Manuel Villatoro challenges ABC ’s online readers to outperform high school students, for whom the Restoration comprises a unit of the state-mandated history curriculum, on a ten-question, largely multiple-choice quiz (2014). Villatoro prefaces the questions by stating that
“Su extensión, su cercanía en el tiempo a nuestra época (menos de dos siglos) y sus grandes repercusiones políticas han hecho de este periodo uno de los más reseñables de la Historia de España” (its extension, its temporal proximity to our time [less than two centuries], and its great political repercussions have made of this period one of the most noteworthy in the history of Spain), and yet his challenge to readers seems to suggest that the average Spanish adult will in fact fail to correctly identify key elements, characters, and policies of the Restoration. Ironically, Villatoro himself seems shaky on the period, as his subtitle incorrectly states “En el S.XVIII se instauró en España un sistema basado en el poder de la corona y el ‘turno de partidos’” (In the eighteenth century, a system was established in Spain based on the power of the crown and alternation between parties).
In comparison with the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s dictatorship and the Transition to democracy, which are still heatedly discussed in public fora, the Restoration is studied in schools, only to be relegated to the recesses of memory. Thus, whereas Spanish history post1931 remains mired in political controversy and debates over historical memory, the Restoration appears to be a safe, relatively peaceful and uneventful period, in spite of the localized violence of the fnal Carlist civil war, spurts of anarchist terrorism and colonial conficts in the Caribbean, Philippines and North Africa that marked the 1874–1931 period. As a result, the Restoration becomes a foating signifer of sorts, onto which television producers and viewers might project presentday social concerns such as class confict, gender norms and political divides. Working-class struggles, restrictive models of masculinity and especially femininity, and polarized political ideologies are common threads running through the majority of the series discussed in Televising Restoration Spain . To be sure, these issues likewise permeated the public consciousness during the Restoration itself, particularly toward its end, when public fgures like politician Clara Campoamor clamored for women’s suffrage, and the 1909 Tragic Week in Catalonia pitted striking workers against the Spanish Civil Guard in violent confrontation. Like Victorian England, then, Restoration Spain can be considered a birthplace of modernity, both in terms of the political and social problems that came to the fore, and the scientifc and technological advances that were implemented. As Iris Kleinecke Bates states in Victorians on Screen: The Nineteenth Century on British Television, 1994 – 2005 ,
The period is both close to our own and associated with a perceived loss, a fall from grace, while the technological advances that mark the period and signal the birth of the modern industrial world create an ongoing affnity which denies the satisfaction of a clearly defned boundary between past and present. The resulting blurring of the margins of either means that the period is perceived as at once distant and modern. (2014, 5–6)
Although Bates speaks here of England’s Victorian period, the Spanish Restoration could be described in similar terms. It, too, is perceived as simultaneously remote and proximate, such that audiences of Restoration period dramas can both recognize their roots in the society portrayed on-screen and appreciate how far Spain has come, particularly in terms of questions of social justice. This joint dynamic of audience identifcation and separation applies to many of the series we analyze here.
restoring the restorAtion
The Restoration as a historical setting and a source of adaptable stories for series and teleflms has been present on TVE almost from the moment public broadcast television was launched in Spain in 1956. By the end of the 1960s, as José Carlos Rueda Laffond and María del Mar Chicharro Merayo observe, TVE had become “una verdadera factoria de adaptaciones y traslaciones teatrales” (a veritable factory of adaptations and theatrical revivals) based on works of classic and contemporary literature (2006, 201). In program spaces reserved for fction, most prominently Estudio 1 (TVE 1965–1984) and Novela (TVE 1962–1979), the Golden Age fgures large for obvious reasons, yet there is also an overwhelming presence of works by writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, including Benito Pérez Galdós, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Pío Baroja and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. Cervantes and the authors of the comedia clearly fulflled the requisites of heritage and the didactic mission of the public service broadcaster, whereas fgures like Galdós, Juan Valera and Leopoldo Alas (“Clarín”) more often than not offered stories suited for melodrama, which were readily made visually appealing through inexpensive costuming and set designs. over the course of the decade, production values increased thanks to the incorporation of multiple cameras, more sophisticated mise-en-scène and the introduction of videotape editing, yet remained defcient by international standards (Rueda Laffond et al. 2006, 202). Indeed, as Luis Miguel Fernández notes, by the early 1970s the
proliferation of series based on nineteenth-century novels with little technical innovation would contribute to the crisis experienced by Spanish television producers, who were unable to compete with the superior quality of offerings arriving from the USA and the UK (2014, 126).
The miniseries La saga de los Rius (TVE), flmed in 1975 but aired in 1976–1977, and based on Falangist writer Ignacio Agustí’s pentalogy La ceniza fue árbol, established the paradigm for television serials in the 1970s and 1980s. Filmed in color and with high production values, the program continued the reliance on the format of the nineteenth-century novel established in the previous decade, as Fernández observes (2014, 194). Even so, Rueda Laffond suggests that, in the context of the Transition, the Restoration was evoked in television series as a generic setting for exploring the values of participative democracy (2009, 99). Between 1976 and 1982, television in Spain underwent a fundamental transformation in terms of mission, function and fnancing that parallels the vast political and social changes wrought by the transition to democracy. Changes in administration and legislation of TVE, Palacio points out, aligned the medium with the political process and positioned the entity to play an active role in the democratic socialization of the Spanish population (Palacio 2001). Citing the success of Los gozos y las sombras (TVE, 1982) and La plaza del Diamante (TVE, 1982), Palacio goes on to highlight the importance of productions that treat themes of the Civil War as evidence of TVE’s explicit pedagogical mission to cement political cohesion and “incidir en el imaginario de hechos constitutivos de la vida colectiva contemporánea de los españoles” (Palacio 2002; infuence the imaginary of constitutive acts of the Spaniards’ contemporary collective life). While the predilection for the war and postwar period is undeniable in adaptations made for TVE after 1982, in the prime time slot reserved for miniseries, it is the Restoration that is revisited with the most consistency (Rueda Laffond 2009, 99). La saga de los Rius, along with adaptations of Vicente Blasco Ibañez’s Cañas y barro (TVE, 1978) and La barraca (TVE, 1979), Galdós’s Fortunata y Jacinta (TVE, 1980), Juan Valera’s Juanita la larga (TVE, 1982) and Emilia Pardo Bazán’s Los Pazos de Ulloa (TVE, RAI, 1985), comprise a cycle of high-quality miniseries that, under the guise of bringing to life some of the great works of Spanish literature, recreate in a visually pleasing manner the sociopolitical milieu of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For Palacio, the primary contribution of these programs is the cultivation of a broader sense of the national past that resides
primarily in the prestige of the original works and their authors in the literary heritage of the nation. However, as Carmen Peña Ardid and David George have studied, notwithstanding the consistency of the cycle and the types of novels chosen, these adaptations offered television viewers from the Transition through the 1980s something more than simply a dose of culture in the dulcifed form of visually pleasing costume dramas (Peña Ardid 2010; George 2009, 2011). Under the guise of popularizing literary classics, these miniseries restore the social consciousness of the original Realist and Naturalist texts with the result of projecting the Restoration, in spite of its shortfalls, within a prehistory of liberalism and constitutional government in Spain.
From the second half of the 1980s to the early 2000s, the Restoration, in the form of literary adaptations and otherwise, disappeared from the small screen in the same measure that TVE lost audience share to regional broadcasters, private national channels and most recently streaming services. Certainly, the drift away from Realist novels as a source of history tracks political and social changes in the period: Rueda Laffond notes that, while the nineteenth century had served the purposes of the Transition by projecting pertinent issues of political socialization, following the electoral victory of the PSoE in 1982, attention progressively shifted to deal with more recent history, frst the Civil War and then the Franco dictatorship and the process of democratization itself, as material for television historical fctions (2009, 98). No doubt, throughout the period of TVE’s hegemony from 1956 until 1990, the treatment of history on television was in almost all cases an indirect effect of the public entity’s foundational pedagogical mission. Yet, according to Palacio and Carmen Ciller, in the present context, television’s mode of looking to the past is determined as much by altruistic goals as by the demands of the market, brand image, fnancing and ever-shifting patterns of consumption (2010, 38).
Changes in Spanish period dramas, indeed, refect the global move away from the classic adaptation in the 1990s and the emergence of “quality” original series in the mid-2000s (De Groot 2016, 225). With certain exceptions, most notably the miniseries based on Alas’s La Regenta (TVE, 1995) and Blasco Ibáñez’s Arroz y tartana (TVE, Intercartel, 2004), the Restoration disappears as a setting for costume dramas until the 2008 premiere of La señora (Diagonal, TVE, 2008–2010). The aspiration to “quality,” which historian Jerome De Groot deciphers as a generic “air of the adaptation,” distinguishes the various telenovelas,
miniseries and made-for-TV movies set in the Restoration that have debuted on Spanish television over the past ten years (2016, 235). The original teleplays produced by private producers Diagonal, Bambú and Boomerang in collaboration with national broadcasters TVE and Antena 3, as well as streaming services, purport to offer an authentic recreation of the past, yet because their primary goal is frst and foremost to entertain, the treatment of history and historical detail are almost always a function of melodrama, as argued in many of the essays that follow.
The image of the Restoration resulting from the cycle of classic adaptations in the 1980s is tethered to the perceived pedagogical value of the source texts, but at the same time, these works and their authors represented a cultural heritage that begged to be recovered following 40 years of dictatorship. The act of vindication in the form of commemoration is a further determining factor of how the period has been re-presented on Spanish television. While it is true that the taste and marketability for literary adaptations of Realist novels has waned, the shift toward original scripts also refects a progressive interest in the events of a century ago, based on the “centenary” as a generic commemorative marker. To a certain extent, what historian William Johnston describes as Europe’s “cult of anniversaries” drives this recent television production in as much as it participates in a larger “commemoration industry” that coordinates across various entertainment and cultural sectors the events and fgures of the past to be revisited as part of local, regional or national identitybuilding initiatives (1991, 63). For the most part, producers and writers of these recent television fctions have not ventured into the temporal territory already covered and recovered by the classic adaptations in the 1980s given that they fall outside the limits of the commemorable. The tendency, instead, has been to focus on the turn of the century, the reign of Alfonso XIII, and in particular, the decade of the 1920s. This is clearly refected in the programs studied in the present volume: With the exception of Bandolera (Diagonal TV, 2011–2013) and Víctor Ros (New Atlantis, Telefónica Studios, TVE 2014–2016), all are set in the twentieth century and deal with aspects of the Restoration that have remained heretofore unknown and unfamiliar to audiences because they have yet to be the subject of commemoration.
Palacio and Ciller are correct to caution against the pitfalls of reading too much into the versions of the past offered by television when they affrm, “todo programa televisivo histórico es antes que nada televisión” (2010, 39). Even so, as Samuel Raphael posits, “television ought to have pride of place
in any attempt to map the unoffcial sources of historical knowledge” (1994, 15). Fictionalized histories on television, for all of their potential shortcomings, impact the popular imagination, determining the ways in which we think and learn about the past, as well as how “history” itself is constructed as a cultural production (De Groot 2016, 4). The prevalence of representations of the Restoration in programs like El Ministerio del Tiempo confrms that the period still matters, if only as a consumable object. The programs examined here refect the fundamental paradigm shifts that have reconfgured the past as a commodity in a globalized entertainment industry. Great works of nineteenth-century literature have given way to intimate stories of everyday life in the past, and the authors of these texts are now more apt to appear on-screen as characters themselves.
nAtionAl television in A globAl debAte
In his recent volume Dramatized Societies: Quality Television in Spain and Mexico, Paul Julian Smith contends that “over the last decade Spain and Mexico have both produced an extraordinary wealth of television drama and are among the leaders in their respective continents” (2017, 1), yet most Hispanists at home and abroad have failed to recognize “that television has displaced cinema as the creative medium that shapes the national narrative” (3). Generally speaking, cinema still maintains an aura of cultural prestige denied to television production in the Spanish context, despite the fact that “the nightly audience for a single Spanish show. .. is greater than the annual audience for all Spanish feature flms” (Smith 2007, 1). While Smith was thinking of the Spanish series El comisario (Bocaboca, Estudio Picasso, Telecinco, 1999–2009), his comments could well be generalized to many of the Restoration period dramas discussed in the present collection, which have ranged from moderately to spectacularly successful in terms of audience share. The relatively scant amount of academic publications dedicated to Spanish television series thus belies both the quantity and quality of programs on offer.
The essays collected in Televising Restoration Spain, then, seek to help address the critical silence surrounding Spanish television products, particularly period dramas. Within Spain, Manuel Palacio pioneered television studies with his Historia de la television en España (2001), but it is only in the past decade or so that the analysis of television content
has provoked sustained interest in Spanish researchers, as evidenced by the 2006 creation of the research group Televisión y Cine: Memoria, Representación e Industria (TECMERIN). Led by Palacio, and based at the University of Carlos III in Madrid, the TECMERIN research group has examined such topics ranging from on-screen gender representations to Spain’s audiovisual diversity (Grupo de Investigadores TECMERIN 2015). Nevertheless, this important body of work has largely been published in Spanish, thus limiting its audience and ability to enter into dialogue with media scholars elsewhere in Europe, the Americas and beyond.
As Smith notes in the introduction to Dramatized Societies, “even outside the US, TV studies and criticism are overwhelmingly biased toward US and English-language production” (2). In contrast, Spanish television is hardly referenced in English-language television studies, with Smith’s work standing out as a notable exception. The general silence surrounding Spanish television becomes increasingly problematic in consideration of the growing international popularity of Spanish series. Broadcasting rights to the shows discussed in this volume have been sold around the globe, not to mention their success on international streaming services such as Netfix. Notably, of the twelve Spanish television series currently available on Netfix, three are set in Restoration Spain: Gran Hotel (Grand Hotel; Bambú, 2011–2013), Las chicas del cable (Cable Girls; Netfix, Bambú, 2017–) and Tiempos de Guerra (Morocco: Love in Times of War; Bambú, 2017–). As previously discussed, recent Netfix acquisition El Ministerio del Tiempo likewise engages episodically with the 1874–1931 period. This Netfix sampling is indicative of the plethora of recent original television offerings that depict the Restoration period, a corpus that has remained largely ignored in scholarly circles.
televising the restorAtion
As Villatoro’s ABC quiz suggests, the Restoration has been ignored for too long. In Spain, it has been overshadowed by discussions of the Civil War and postwar society, and outside of Spain, non-Hispanists often have no concept of the Restoration at all. This volume then plays an important pedagogical role in introducing English-speaking audiences both to an important period of Spanish history and to the series that represent it on-screen. As such, it complements the furry of recent publications
centered around the televisual depiction of Victorian or Edwardian England (see, for instance, Bates 2014 or Byrne 2015) and allows for comparative study and discussion. This volume aids particularly in introducing Spanish-language series into the college classroom, whether it is in the context of Hispanic or media studies. In Spanish literature and culture courses, the series under study allow students to improve their listening comprehension skills while immersing themselves in the world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain. Because so many Restoration-era authors are canonical staples of Spanish literature (such as the aforementioned Pérez Galdós, Pardo Bazán and Alas), assigning students episodes of television series set in the period can be an invaluable tool in promoting a more complete vision and comprehension of the Restoration as sociohistorical context. Additionally, these series, many of which are available with English subtitles, can be introduced into English-language courses on television or heritage cultural production to broaden the predominantly Anglo-centered focus of media studies and provide material for a more comprehensive, comparative analysis. For classroom usage, the essays collected in the present volume aid in focusing the study of each series, drawing out relevant aesthetic and cultural issues and questions for further debate.
To facilitate comparative discussions of the series studied in Televising Restoration Spain, chapters are divided into fve parts that refect similar themes and shared historical and theoretical concerns. Under the heading of “Producing Heritage,” the two chapters of Part I discuss how diverse television programs designate the Restoration period and its posterior televisual depictions as “heritage.” In “Fortunata’s Long Shadow: the Restoration as Televisual Heritage in Acacias 38 and El secreto de Puente Viejo,” David George proposes a reading of afternoon costume serials Acacias 38 (Boomerang TV, 2015–) and El secreto de Puente Viejo (Boomerang TV, 2015) as “heritage revival” in the sense that both bring the past back to life in a format that substitutes surface spectacle for historical knowledge. Understanding the possible signifcance of the late Restoration for contemporary audiences, he argues, involves a consideration of how Acacias and Puente Viejo revivify the period as televisual heritage. His “close-reading” of storytelling and historical references reveals how these daily serials appeal to collective memories of depictions of the period as preserved not only in canonical literary works, but also in their television adaptations created for TVE during the Transition and PostTransition. In George’s reading, the series of the late twentieth century,
including Mario Camus’s adaptation of Fortunata y Jacinta (TVE, 1980) and Fernando Méndez-Leite’s La Regenta (TVE, 1995), ultimately comprise a televisual heritage that confers a seal of quality upon the twenty-frst-century shows that reference them in terms of narrative or production.
In Chapter 2, “Profane Unions: Constructing Heritage from Anarchist-Bourgeois Romances in Ull per ull and Barcelona, ciutat neutral,” Elena Cueto Asín turns to look at the construction of heritage in Catalonia. She critically examines the integration of anarchist history into Catalan heritage through the trope of anarchist-bourgeois romances in two Televisió de Catalunya (TV3) miniseries: Ull per ull (TVE, TV3, Roda y Rodar Cine y Televisión, 2010) and Barcelona, ciutat neutral (TV3, Radio e Televisão de Portugal, Stopline Films, 2011). In both dramas, set in 1919 and 1914, respectively, a rebellious child of Barcelona’s industrial bourgeoisie renounces money and privilege to identify with the circumstances and ideology of an anarchist ennobled by a strong work ethic and flial piety. Although the two miniseries differ in their presentation of political and social struggles, Cueto proposes that both programs participate in a shared project of uncovering a heritage of social cohesion based on the union between two diametrically opposed forces in Catalan society of the late Restoration period. Cueto ultimately argues that these narratives mark anarchism as a historically defned and “museumizable” ideology, conveniently absorbed as national heritage, and so as available for incorporation into contemporary concepts of class and Catalan identity.
Similarly concerned with the way in which the past is packaged for present-day consumption, Part II “Imagining Technologies” examines the use of period technologies and modern-day media platforms to connect twenty-frst-century viewers to on-screen depictions of the Restoration period. First, Mónica Barrientos Bueno and Ángeles
Martínez García explore the Internet and social media’s role in attracting, maintaining and educating audiences in “New Technologies and Transmedia Storytelling in Víctor Ros: Captivating Audiences at the Turn of the Century.” From the authors’ perspective, Víctor Ros stands out among other Restoration period dramas for its multimedia strategy. They argue that the series’ creative team strategically deploys different media platforms such as Twitter or interactive websites to expand the world of protagonist Víctor and connect him to contemporary audiences by immersing viewers in the show’s setting of turn-of-the-century
Madrid and Andalusia. Barrientos Bueno and Martínez García observe in particular the mix of authentic and fctional period materials featured across the various media, which they contend invites viewers to actively participate not only in following Víctor Ros on his adventures, but also in reconstructing Restoration history.
Technology is likewise the focus of Wan Sonya Tang’s chapter, “From Photos to Forensics: Technology, Modernity, and the Internationalization of Spanish History in Gran Hotel.” Here, she looks at the prominent role played by turn-of-the-century technologies within the narrative and staging of the international hit series Gran Hotel (Grand Hotel; Bambú Producciones, 2011–2013). From its initial episode, Tang observes that Gran Hotel is steeped in period-specifc technology: Viewers are privy to the arrival of electricity to the hotel and later witness such developments as cinematography, psychoanalysis and the use of forensics in law enforcement. As she argues, the prominent role played by these advances within the series extends beyond that of the plot device. Instead, period technology serves to familiarize global audiences with Restoration Spain in three key ways: frstly, by refuting the long-standing stereotype of Spain as a historically backward nation; secondly, by highlighting universally familiar themes of Restoration society, such as class confict or the modernizing impulse; and fnally, by appealing to twenty-frst-century technophiles who recognize the indispensable role played by technological innovation in our everyday lives. Tang ultimately concludes that through these three functions, the technology featured in Gran Hotel serves to present the Restoration period as a universally appealing setting, particularly in visual terms.
Turning from the material advances of the period and their consumption in the present, the chapters in Part III “Constructing Genders” look at the way in which series set in the Restoration represent the era’s shifting gender dynamics from a contemporary perspective. Both authors concur that the period is largely characterized by gender inequity, but nevertheless recognize that it marks the birth of Spain’s modern feminist movement. In “Dresses, Cassocks, and Coats: Costuming Restoration Gender Fantasies in La Señora,” Nicholas Wolters analyzes the wardrobe used to “dress up” the protagonists and narrative of TVE’s award-winning series La Señora (2008–2010). As Wolters argues, the show reanimates the 1920s in the form of well-established gender tropes like the fashionable heiress and the enamored priest canonized in texts like Leopoldo Alas’s novel La Regenta. By focusing on mise-en-scène and dialogues with Restoration texts, Wolters concludes that the TVE period drama
candidly transforms nineteenth- and early twentieth-century aesthetics to satisfy the expectations of its twenty-frst-century audiences. However, as the author contends, even while La Señora revises and reimagines stereotypical Restoration gender tropes, the show’s creators still nostalgically embrace their literary–visual precedents.
Linda Willem also explores the tensions between historical accuracy and presentism in “‘Las normas son para romperlas’: Emilia Pardo Bazán, Carmen de Burgos, and the Unruly Women of Seis Hermanas.” In this chapter, Willem examines how the daily serial Seis hermanas (Bambú Producciones, 2015–2017), set in Madrid from 1913 through 1916, draws on the lives and writings of two of the era’s strongest proponents of women’s rights, authors Emilia Pardo Bazán and Carmen de Burgos, to explore the social and legal situation of women in Restoration society, and to raise such issues as gender and class barriers, spousal abuse, infdelity, divorce and lesbianism. Exploring this intertextuality, she contends that the writings of Pardo Bazán and Burgos justify the transgressive actions of the fctional sisters as they defy social and legal norms in pursuit of personal freedom and self-actualization. She furthermore argues that these women writers serve as a bridge to today’s television viewer whose twenty-frst-century perspective validates Pardo Bazán and Burgos’s feminist ideas that were once considered radical but are now accepted.
The two contributions gathered in Part IV “Restoring the Telenovela” examine the generative potential of the Restoration as a period to which producers turn in an effort to renew, reinvigorate and nationalize the formulaic Latin American genre of the telenovela. In “Bandolera: Limits and Possibilities of Period Telenovelas,” Francisca López establishes connections between Bandolera (Diagonal TV, 2011–2013), set in late nineteenth-century Andalusia, and the evolution of the telenovela genre within the global entertainment market of the twenty-frst century. She identifes the ideological thrust—liberal social politics—driving the story as well as conspicuous thematic parallels between the time represented (1882–1887) and that of the show’s broadcast (2011–2013). López demonstrates that while the Restoration setting provides a credible background for the bandolero theme and drives some narrative arcs, Bandolera does not engage the past signifcantly. Instead, she argues, the past functions mostly as a visually appealing backdrop for traditional telenovela conficts that draw large audiences, securing marketability for the product.
In “Creating Locally for a Global Audience: Seis hermanas and the Costume Serial Drama as Quality Television,” Concepción Cascajosa Virino concurs with López’s assessment of the visual appeal of the Restoration as a contributing factor to the marketability of period serials. Like Willem, Cascajosa also studies Seis hermanas (Bambú Producciones, 2015–2017) with an eye on gender issues, but considers the program more broadly as a case study of a new kind of “quality” daily serial that looks to British heritage dramas as a reference for fusing the conventions of melodrama with the production values of a prime-time series, largely contingent upon historically accurate mise-en-scène. She additionally examines how the local production context determines its treatment of the historical period, altering British models to refect a progressive vision of social change, which contributed to the show’s popularity among the LGBTQ community.
In Part V, “Sensing the Ending,” the fnal three chapters of the volume evaluate how series have depicted the end of the Restoration by refecting on the progress (or lack thereof) made during the period in terms of political and social change. In “Commercializing Nostalgia and Constructing Memory in As leis de Celavella,” María Gil Poisa discusses a Galician production set in a rural town in the 1920s during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera. The series As leis de Celavella (TVG, Voz Audiovisual, 2003–2004) deploys the tropes of the detective, fantastic and period drama genres to construct a nostalgic vision of the late Restoration that, according to Gil Poisa, resonates with modern Galician audiences through an appeal to regional identity. Focusing on the portrayal of a typical Galician community as immutable in spite of changing times and technologies, Gil Poisa further analyzes the appearance of a sympathetic young Francisco Franco on the show, concluding that the series establishes a fctitious continuum between the late Restoration and Francoism, building a new, manipulated collective memory for television audiences.
Leslie Harkema’s chapter, “‘Felices años veinte?’: Las chicas del cable and the Iconicity of 1920s Madrid,” likewise examines the televisual representation of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. However, rather than a regional production with a rural setting, Harkema delves into the frst Spanish Netfix original series, set on the bustling streets of Madrid. In her analysis, Harkema compares Las chicas del cable (Bambú Producciones, Netfix, 2017–) with the dominant image of 1920s Madrid preserved in Spanish cultural memory as associated with the mostly male Generation of 1927 and the ideas of modernity, experimentation, liberation and transgression. Harkema argues that, unlike other recent Spanish
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be an object worth living for I was losing time and money at an appalling rate; I was getting worse rather than better; and I therefore gave up resistance. It seemed better to die easy than to die hard. I put it all in the past tense, because within these three days I've become quite another man."
"I wish to Heaven I could have heard of you," said Knight. "I would have made you come home with me, if I could have done nothing else. It was certainly not a rose-colored prospect; but what do you say now?" he continued, looking around the room. "I should say that at the present moment rose-color was the prevailing hue."
Mason assented with an eloquent smile.
"I congratulate you from my heart. Mrs. Mason—if you don't mind my speaking of her—is so thoroughly (and, I should suppose, incorrigibly) good-natured, that it's quite a surprise to find her extremely sensible."
"Yes; and so resolute and sensible in her better moments," said Ferdinand, "that it's quite a surprise to find her good-natured. She's a fine woman."
"But I should say that your especial blessing was your servant. He looks as if he had come out of an English novel."
"My especial blessing! You haven't seen Miss Hofmann, then?"
"Yes: I met her in the hall. She looks as if she had come out of an American novel. I don't know that that's great praise; but, at all events, I make her come out of it."
"You're bound in honor, then," said Mason, laughing, "to put her into another."
Mason's conviction of his newly made happiness needed no enforcement at the Doctor's hands. He felt that it would be his own fault if these were not among the most delightful days of his life. He resolved to give himself up without stint to his impressions,—utterly to vegetate. His illness alone would have been a sufficient excuse for a long term of intellectual laxity; but Mason had other good reasons besides. For the past three years he had been stretched without
intermission on the rack of duty. Although constantly exposed to hard service, it had been his fortune never to receive a serious wound; and, until his health broke down, he had taken fewer holidays than any officer I ever heard of. With an abundance of a certain kind of equanimity and self-control,—a faculty of ready self-adaptation to the accomplished fact, in any direction,—he was yet in his innermost soul a singularly nervous, over-scrupulous person. On the few occasions when he had been absent from the scene of his military duties, although duly authorized and warranted in the act, he had suffered so acutely from the apprehension that something was happening, or was about to happen, which not to have witnessed or to have had a hand in would be matter of eternal mortification, that he can be barely said to have enjoyed his recreation. The sense of lost time was, moreover, his perpetual bugbear,—the feeling that precious hours were now fleeting uncounted, which in more congenial labors would suffice almost for the building of a monument more lasting than brass. This feeling he strove to propitiate as much as possible by assiduous reading and study in the interval of his actual occupations. I cite the fact merely as an evidence of the uninterrupted austerity of his life for a long time before he fell sick. I might triple this period, indeed, by a glance at his college years, and at certain busy months which intervened between this close of his youth and the opening of the war. Mason had always worked. He was fond of work to begin with; and, in addition, the complete absence of family ties had allowed him to follow his tastes without obstruction or diversion. This circumstance had been at once a great gain to him and a serious loss. He reached his twenty-seventh year a very accomplished scholar, as scholars go, but a great dunce in certain social matters. He was quite ignorant of all those lighter, more evanescent forms of conviviality attached to being somebody's son, brother, or cousin. At last, however, as he reminded himself, he was to discover what it was to be the nephew of somebody's husband. Mrs. Mason was to teach him the meaning of the adjective domestic. It would have been hard to learn it in a pleasanter way. Mason felt that he was to learn something from his very idleness, and that he would leave the house a wiser as well as a better man. It became probable, thanks to that quickening of the faculties which
accompanies the dawning of a sincere and rational attachment, that in this last respect he would not be disappointed. Very few days sufficed to reveal to him the many excellent qualities of his hostess, —her warm capacious heart, her fairness of mind, her good temper, her good taste, her vast fund of experience and of reminiscence, and, indeed, more than all, a certain passionate devotedness, to which fortune, in leaving her a childless widow, had done but scant justice. The two accordingly established a friendship,—a friendship that promised as well for the happiness of each as any that ever undertook to meddle with happiness. If I were telling my story from Mrs. Mason's point of view, I take it that I might make a very good thing of the statement that this lady had deliberately and solemnly conferred her affection upon my hero; but I am compelled to let it stand in this simple shape. Excellent, charming person that she was, she had every right to the rich satisfaction which belonged to a liberal—yet not too liberal—estimate of her guest. She had divined him,—so much the better for her. That it was very much the better for him is obviously one of the elementary facts of my narrative; a fact of which Mason became so rapidly and profoundly sensible, that he was soon able to dismiss it from his thoughts to his life,—its proper sphere.
In the space of ten days, then, most of the nebulous impressions evoked by change of scene had gathered into substantial form. Others, however, were still in the nebulous state,—diffusing a gentle light upon Ferdinand's path. Chief among these was the mild radiance of which Miss Hofmann was the centre. For three days after his arrival Mason had been confined to his room by the aggravation of his condition consequent upon his journey. It was not till the fourth day, therefore, that he was able to renew the acquaintance so auspiciously commenced. When at last, at dinner-time, he reappeared in the drawing-room, Miss Hofmann greeted him almost as an old friend. Mason had already discovered that she was young and gracious; he now rapidly advanced to the conclusion that she was uncommonly pretty. Before dinner was over, he had made up his mind that she was neither more nor less than beautiful. Mrs. Mason had found time to give him a full account of her life. She had lost her mother in infancy, and had been adopted by her aunt in the
early years of this lady's widowhood. Her father was a man of evil habits,—a drunkard, a gambler, and a rake, outlawed from decent society. His only dealings with his daughter were to write her every month or two a begging letter, she being in possession of her mother's property. Mrs. Mason had taken her niece to Europe, and given her every advantage. She had had an expensive education; she had travelled; she had gone into the world; she had been presented, like a good republican, to no less than three European sovereigns; she had been admired; she had had half a dozen offers of marriage to her aunt's knowledge, and others, perhaps, of which she was ignorant, and had refused them all. She was now twenty-six years of age, beautiful, accomplished, and au mieux with her bankers. She was an excellent girl, with a will of her own. "I'm very fond of her," Mrs. Mason declared, with her habitual frankness; "and I suppose she's equally fond of me; but we long ago gave up all idea of playing at mother and daughter. We have never had a disagreement since she was fifteen years old; but we have never had an agreement either. Caroline is no sentimentalist. She's honest, good-tempered, and perfectly discerning. She foresaw that we were still to spend a number of years together, and she wisely declined at the outset to affect a range of feelings that wouldn't stand the wear and tear of time. She knew that she would make a poor daughter, and she contented herself with being a good niece. A capital niece she is. In fact we're almost sisters. There are moments when I feel as if she were ten years older than I, and as if it were absurd in me to attempt to interfere with her life. I never do. She has it quite in her own hands. My attitude is little more than a state of affectionate curiosity as to what she will do with it. Of course she'll marry, sooner or later; but I'm curious to see the man of her choice. In Europe, you know, girls have no acquaintances but such as they share with their parents and guardians; and in that way I know most of the gentlemen who have tried to make themselves acceptable to my niece. There were some excellent young men in the number; but there was not one—or, rather, there was but one—for whom Caroline cared a straw. That one she loved, I believe; but they had a quarrel, and she lost him. She's very discreet and conciliating. I'm sure no girl ever before got rid of half a dozen suitors with so little offence. Ah,
she's a dear, good girl!" Mrs Mason pursued. "She's saved me a world of trouble in my day. And when I think what she might have been, with her beauty, and what not! She has kept all her suitors as friends. There are two of them who write to her still. She doesn't answer their letters; but once in a while she meets them, and thanks them for writing, and that contents them. The others are married, and Caroline remains single. I take for granted it won't last forever. Still, although she's not a sentimentalist, she'll not marry a man she doesn't care for, merely because she's growing old. Indeed, it's only the sentimental girls, to my belief, that do that. They covet a man for his money or his looks, and then give the feeling some fine name. But there's one thing, Mr. Ferdinand," added Mrs. Mason, at the close of these remarks, "you will be so good as not to fall in love with my niece. I can assure you that she'll not fall in love with you, and a hopeless passion will not hasten your recovery. Caroline is a charming girl. You can live with her very well without that. She's good for common daylight, and you'll have no need of wax-candles and ecstasies."
"Be reassured," said Ferdinand, laughing. "I'm quite too attentive to myself at present to think of any one else. Miss Hofmann might be dying for a glance of my eye, and I shouldn't hesitate to sacrifice her. It takes more than half a man to fall in love."
At the end of ten days summer had fairly set in; and Mason found it possible, and indeed profitable, to spend a large portion of his time in the open air. He was unable either to ride or to walk; and the only form of exercise which he found practicable was an occasional drive in Mrs. Mason's phaeton. On these occasions Mrs. Mason was his habitual companion. The neighborhood offered an interminable succession of beautiful drives; and poor Ferdinand took a truly exquisite pleasure in reclining idly upon a pile of cushions, warmly clad, empty-handed, silent, with only his eyes in motion, and rolling rapidly between fragrant hedges and springing crops, and beside the outskirts of woods, and along the heights which overlooked the river. Detested war was over, and all nature had ratified the peace. Mason used to gaze up into the cloudless sky until his eyes began to water, and you would have actually supposed he was shedding sentimental
tears. Besides these comfortable drives with his hostess, Mason had adopted another method of inhaling the sunshine. He used frequently to spend several hours at a time on a veranda beside the house, sheltered from the observation of visitors. Here, with an armchair and a footstool, a cigar and half a dozen volumes of novels, to say nothing of the society of either of the ladies, and sometimes of both, he suffered the mornings to pass unmeasured and uncounted. The chief incident of these mornings was the Doctor's visit, in which, of course, there was a strong element of prose,—and very good prose, as I may add, for the Doctor was turning out an excellent fellow. But, for the rest, time unrolled itself like a gentle strain of music. Mason knew so little, from direct observation, of the vie intime of elegant, intelligent women, that their habits, their manners, their household motions, their principles, possessed in his view all the charm of a spectacle,—a spectacle which he contemplated with the indolence of an invalid, the sympathy of a man of taste, and a little of the awkwardness which women gladly allow, and indeed provoke, in a soldier, for the pleasure of forgiving it. It was a very simple matter to Miss Hofmann that she should be dressed in fresh crisp muslin, that her hands should be white and her attitudes felicitous; she had long since made her peace with these things. But to Mason, who was familiar only with books and men, they were objects of constant, half-dreamy contemplation. He would sit for half an hour at once, with a book on his knees and the pages unturned, scrutinizing with ingenious indirectness the simple mass of colors and contours which made up the physical personality of Miss Hofmann. There was no question as to her beauty, or as to its being a warm, sympathetic beauty, and not the cold perfection of poetry. She was the least bit taller than most women, and neither stout nor the reverse. Her hair was of a dark and lustrous brown, turning almost to black, and lending itself readily to those multitudinous ringlets which were then in fashion. Her forehead was broad, open, and serene; and her eyes of that deep and clear sea-green that you may observe of a summer's afternoon, when the declining sun shines through the rising of a wave. Her complexion was the color of perfect health. These, with her full, mild lips, her generous and flexible figure, her magnificent hands, were charms enough to occupy Mason's
attention, and it was but seldom that he allowed it to be diverted. Mrs. Mason was frequently called away by her household cares, but Miss Hofmann's time was apparently quite her own. Nevertheless, it came into Ferdinand's head one day, that she gave him her company only from a sense of duty, and when, according to his wont, he had allowed this impression to ripen in his mind, he ventured to assure her that, much as he valued her society, he should be sorry to believe that her gracious bestowal of it interfered with more profitable occupations. "I'm no companion," he said. "I don't pretend to be one. I sit here deaf and dumb, and blind and halt, patiently waiting to be healed,—waiting till this vagabond Nature of ours strolls my way, and brushes me with the hem of her garment."
"I find you very good company," Miss Hofmann replied on this occasion. "What do you take me for? The hero of a hundred fights, a young man who has been reduced to a shadow in the service of his country,—I should be very fastidious if I asked for anything better."
"O, if it's on theory!" said Mason. And, in spite of Miss Hofmann's protest, he continued to assume that it was on theory that he was not intolerable. But she remained true to her post, and with a sort of placid inveteracy which seemed to the young man to betray either a great deal of indifference or a great deal of self-command. "She thinks I'm stupid," he said to himself. "Of course she thinks I'm stupid. How should she think otherwise? She and her aunt have talked me over. Mrs. Mason has enumerated my virtues, and Miss Hofmann has added them up: total, a well-meaning bore. She has armed herself with patience. I must say it becomes her very well." Nothing was more natural, however, than that Mason should exaggerate the effect of his social incapacity His remarks were desultory, but not infrequent; often trivial, but always good-humored and informal. The intervals of silence, indeed, which enlivened his conversation with Miss Hofmann, might easily have been taken for the confident pauses in the talk of old friends.
Once in a while Miss Hofmann would sit down at the piano and play to him. The veranda communicated with the little sitting-room by means of a long window, one side of which stood open. Mason would move his chair to this aperture, so that he might see the music
as well as hear it. Seated at the instrument, at the farther end of the half-darkened room, with her figure in half-profile, and her features, her movements, the color of her dress, but half defined in the cool obscurity, Miss Hofmann would discourse infinite melody. Mason's eyes rested awhile on the vague white folds of her dress, on the heavy convolutions of her hair, and the gentle movement of her head in sympathy with the music. Then a single glance in the other direction revealed another picture,—the dazzling midday sky, the close-cropped lawn, lying almost black in its light, and the patient, round-backed gardener, in white shirt-sleeves, clipping the hedge or rolling the gravel. One morning, what with the music, the light, the heat, and the fragrance of the flowers,—from the perfect equilibrium of his senses, as it were,—Mason manfully went to sleep. On waking he found that he had slept an hour, and that the sun had invaded the veranda. The music had ceased; but on looking into the parlor he saw Miss Hofmann still at the piano. A gentleman was leaning on the instrument with his back toward the window, intercepting her face. Mason sat for some moments, hardly sensible, at first, of his transition to consciousness, languidly guessing at her companion's identity. In a short time his observation was quickened by the fact that the picture before him was animated by no sound of voices. The silence was unnatural, or, at the least, disagreeable. Mason moved his chair, and the gentleman looked round. The gentleman was Horace Knight. The Doctor called out, "Good morning!" from his place, and finished his conversation with Miss Hofmann before coming out to his patient. When he moved away from the piano, Mason saw the reason of his friends' silence. Miss Hofmann had been trying to decipher a difficult piece of music, the Doctor had been trying to assist her, and they had both been brought to a stop.
"What a clever fellow he is!" thought Mason. "There he stands, rattling off musical terms as if he had never thought of anything else. And yet, when he talks medicine, it's impossible to talk more to the point." Mason continued to be very well satisfied with Knight's intelligence of his case, and with his treatment of it. He had been in the country now for three weeks, and he would hesitate, indeed, to affirm that he felt materially better; but he felt more comfortable. There were moments when he feared to push the inquiry as to his
real improvement, because he had a sickening apprehension that he would discover that in one or two important particulars he was worse. In the course of time he imparted these fears to his physician. "But I may be mistaken," he added, "and for this reason. During the last fortnight I have become much more sensible of my condition than while I was in town. I then accepted each additional symptom as a matter of course. The more the better, I thought. But now I expect them to give an account of themselves. Now I have a positive wish to recover."
Dr. Knight looked at his patient for a moment curiously. "You are right," he said; "a little impatience is a very good thing."
"O, I'm not impatient. I'm patient to a most ridiculous extent. I allow myself a good six months, at the very least."
"That is certainly not unreasonable," said Knight. "And will you allow me a question? Do you intend to spend those six months in this place?"
"I'm unable to answer you. I suppose I shall finish the summer here, unless the summer finishes me. Mrs. Mason will hear of nothing else. In September I hope to be well enough to go back to town, even if I'm not well enough to think of work. What do you advise?"
"I advise you to put away all thoughts of work. That is imperative. Haven't you been at work all your life long? Can't you spare a pitiful little twelve-month to health and idleness and pleasure?"
"Ah, pleasure, pleasure!" said Mason, ironically.
"Yes, pleasure," said the Doctor. "What has she done to you that you should speak of her in that manner?"
"O, she bothers me," said Mason.
"You are very fastidious. It's better to be bothered by pleasure than by pain."
"I don't deny it. But there is a way of being indifferent to pain. I don't mean to say that I have found it out, but in the course of my illness I have caught a glimpse of it. But it's beyond my strength to
be indifferent to pleasure. In two words, I'm afraid of dying of kindness."
"O, nonsense!"
"Yes, it's nonsense; and yet it's not. There would be nothing miraculous in my not getting well."
"It will be your fault if you don't. It will prove that you're fonder of sickness than health, and that you're not fit company for sensible mortals. Shall I tell you?" continued the Doctor, after a moment's hesitation. "When I knew you in the army, I always found you a step beyond my comprehension. You took things too hard. You had scruples and doubts about everything. And on top of it all you were devoured with the mania of appearing to take things easily and to be perfectly indifferent. You played your part very well, but you must do me the justice to confess that it was a part."
"I hardly know whether that's a compliment or an impertinence. I hope, at least, that you don't mean to accuse me of playing a part at the present moment."
"On the contrary. I'm your physician; you're frank."
"It's not because you're my physician that I'm frank," said Mason. "I shouldn't think of burdening you in that capacity with my miserable caprices and fancies;" and Ferdinand paused a moment. "You're a man!" he pursued, laying his hand on his companion's arm. "There's nothing here but women, Heaven reward them! I'm saturated with whispers and perfumes and smiles, and the rustling of dresses. It takes a man to understand a man."
"It takes more than a man to understand you, my dear Mason," said Knight, with a kindly smile. "But I listen."
Mason remained silent, leaning back in his chair, with his eyes wandering slowly over the wide patch of sky disclosed by the window, and his hands languidly folded on his knees. The Doctor examined him with a look half amused, half perplexed. But at last his face grew quite sober, and he contracted his brow. He placed his hand on Mason's arm and shook it gently, while Ferdinand met his gaze. The Doctor frowned, and, as he did so, his companion's mouth
expanded into a placid smile. "If you don't get well," said Knight,—"if you don't get well—" and he paused.
"What will be the consequences?" asked Ferdinand, still smiling.
"I shall hate you," said Knight, half smiling, too.
Mason broke into a laugh. "What shall I care for that?"
"I shall tell people that you were a poor, spiritless fellow,—that you are no loss."
"I give you leave," said Ferdinand.
The Doctor got up. "I don't like obstinate patients," he said.
Ferdinand burst into a long, loud laugh, which ended in a fit of coughing.
"I'm getting too amusing," said Knight; "I must go."
"Nay, laugh and grow fat," cried Ferdinand. "I promise to get well." But that evening, at least, he was no better, as it turned out, for his momentary exhilaration. Before turning in for the night, he went into the drawing-room to spend half an hour with the ladies. The room was empty, but the lamp was lighted, and he sat down by the table and read a chapter in a novel. He felt excited, light-headed, lighthearted, half-intoxicated, as if he had been drinking strong coffee. He put down his book, and went over to the mantelpiece, above which hung a mirror, and looked at the reflection of his face. For almost the first time in his life he examined his features, and wondered if he were good-looking. He was able to conclude only that he looked very thin and pale, and utterly unfit for the business of life. At last he heard an opening of doors overhead, and a rustling of voluminous skirts on the stairs. Mrs. Mason came in, fresh from the hands of her maid, and dressed for a party.
"And is Miss Hofmann going?" asked Mason. He felt that his heart was beating, and that he hoped Mrs. Mason would say no. His momentary sense of strength, the mellow lamp-light, the open piano, and the absence, of the excellent woman before him, struck him as so many reasons for her remaining at home. But the sound of the young lady's descent upon the stairs was an affirmative to his
question. She forthwith appeared upon the threshold, dressed in crape of a kind of violent blue, with desultory clusters of white roses. For some ten minutes Mason had the pleasure of being witness of that series of pretty movements and preparations with which women in full dress beguile the interval before their carriage is announced; their glances at the mirror, their slow assumption of their gloves, their mutual revisions and felicitations.
"Isn't she lovely?" said Miss Hofmann to the young man, nodding at her aunt, who looked every inch the handsome woman that she was.
"Lovely, lovely, lovely!" said Ferdinand, so emphatically, that Miss Hofmann transferred her glance to him; while Mrs. Mason goodhumoredly turned her back, and Caroline saw that Mason was engaged in a survey of her own person.
Miss Hofmann smiled discreetly. "I wish very much you might come," she said.
"I shall go to bed," answered Ferdinand, simply.
"Well, that's much better. We shall go to bed at two o'clock. Meanwhile I shall caper about the rooms to the sound of a piano and fiddle, and Aunt Maria will sit against the wall with her toes tucked under a chair. Such is life!"
"You'll dance then," said Mason.
"I shall dance. Dr. Knight has invited me."
"Does he dance well, Caroline?" asked Mrs. Mason.
"That remains to be seen. I have a strong impression that he does not."
"Why?" asked Ferdinand.
"He does so many other things well."
"That's no reason," said Mrs. Mason. "Do you dance, Ferdinand?"
Ferdinand shook his head.
"I like a man to dance," said Caroline, "and yet I like him not to dance."
"That's a very womanish speech, my dear," said Mrs. Mason.
"I suppose it is. It's inspired by my white gloves and my low dress, and my roses. When once a woman gets on such things, Colonel Mason, expect nothing but nonsense.—Aunt Maria," the young lady continued, "will you button my glove?"
"Let me do it," said Ferdinand. "Your aunt has her gloves on."
"Thank you." And Miss Hofmann extended a long, white arm, and drew back with her other hand the bracelet from her wrist. Her glove had three buttons, and Mason performed the operation with great deliberation and neatness.
"And now," said he, gravely, "I hear the carriage. You want me to put on your shawl."
"If you please,"—Miss Hofmann passed her full white drapery into his hands, and then turned about her fair shoulders. Mason solemnly covered them, while the waiting-maid, who had come in, performed the same service for the elder lady
"Good by," said the latter, giving him her hand. "You're not to come out into the air." And Mrs. Mason, attended by her maid, transferred herself to the carriage. Miss Hofmann gathered up her loveliness, and prepared to follow. Ferdinand stood leaning against the parlor door, watching her; and as she rustled past him she nodded farewell with a silent smile. A characteristic smile, Mason thought it,—a smile in which there was no expectation of triumph and no affectation of reluctance, but just the faintest suggestion of perfectly good-humored resignation. Mason went to the window and saw the carriage roll away with its lighted lamps, and then stood looking out into the darkness. The sky was cloudy. As he turned away the maid-servant came in, and took from the table a pair of rejected gloves. "I hope you're feeling better, sir," she said, politely.
"Thank you, I think I am."
"It's a pity you couldn't have gone with the ladies."
"I'm not well enough yet to think of such things," said Mason, trying to smile. But as he walked across the floor he felt himself attacked by a sudden sensation, which cannot be better described than as a general collapse. He felt dizzy, faint, and sick. His head swam and his knees trembled. "I'm ill," he said, sitting down on the sofa; "you must call William."
William speedily arrived, and conducted the young man to his room. "What on earth had you been doing, sir?" asked this most irreproachable of serving-men, as he helped him to undress.
Ferdinand was silent a moment. "I had been putting on Miss Hofmann's shawl," he said.
"Is that all, sir?"
"And I had been buttoning her glove."
"Well, sir, you must be very prudent."
"So it appears," said Ferdinand.
He slept soundly, however, and the next morning was the better for it. "I'm certainly better," he said to himself, as he slowly proceeded to his toilet. "A month ago such an attack as that of last evening would have effectually banished sleep. Courage, then. The Devil isn't dead, but he's dying."
In the afternoon he received a visit from Horace Knight. "So you danced last evening at Mrs. Bradshaw's," he said to his friend.
"Yes, I danced. It's a great piece of frivolity for a man in my position; but I thought there would be no harm in doing it just once, to show them I know how. My abstinence in future will tell the better. Your ladies were there. I danced with Miss Hofmann. She was dressed in blue, and she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Every one was talking about it."
"I saw her," said Mason, "before she went off."
"You should have seen her there," said Knight. "The music, the excitement, the spectators, and all that, bring out a woman's beauty."
"So I suppose," said Ferdinand.
"What strikes me," pursued the Doctor, "is her—what shall I call it?—her vitality, her quiet buoyancy. Of course, you didn't see her when she came home? If you had, you would have noticed, unless I'm very much mistaken, that she was as fresh and elastic at two o'clock as she had been at ten. While all the other women looked tired and jaded and used up, she alone showed no signs of exhaustion. She was neither pale nor flushed, but still light-footed, rosy, and erect. She's solid. You see I can't help looking at such things as a physician. She has a magnificent organization. Among all those other poor girls she seemed to have something of the inviolable strength of a goddess;" and Knight smiled frankly as he entered the region of eloquence. "She wears her artificial roses and dew-drops as if she had gathered them on the mountain-tops, instead of buying them in Broadway. She moves with long steps, her dress rustles, and to a man of fancy it's the sound of Diana on the forest-leaves."
Ferdinand nodded assent. "So you're a man of fancy," he said.
"Of course I am," said the Doctor.
Ferdinand was not inclined to question his friend's estimate of Miss Hofmann, nor to weigh his words. They only served to confirm an impression which was already strong in his own mind. Day by day he had felt the growth of this impression. "He must be a strong man who would approach her," he said to himself. "He must be as vigorous and elastic as she herself, or in the progress of courtship she will leave him far behind. He must be able to forget his lungs and his liver and his digestion. To have broken down in his country's defence, even, will avail him nothing. What is that to her? She needs a man who has defended his country without breaking down,—a being complete, intact, well seasoned, invulnerable. Then,—then," thought Ferdinand, "perhaps she will consider him. Perhaps it will be to refuse him. Perhaps, like Diana, to whom Knight compares her, she is meant to live alone. It's certain, at least, that she is able to wait. She will be young at forty-five. Women who are young at fortyfive are perhaps not the most interesting women. They are likely to have felt for nobody and for nothing. But it's often less their own fault than that of the men and women about them. This one at least can
feel; the thing is to move her Her soul is an instrument of a hundred strings, only it takes a strong hand to draw sound. Once really touched, they will reverberate for ever and ever."
In fine, Mason was in love. It will be seen that his passion was not arrogant nor uncompromising; but, on the contrary, patient, discreet, and modest,—almost timid. For ten long days, the most memorable days of his life,—days which, if he had kept a journal, would have been left blank,—he held his tongue. He would have suffered anything rather than reveal his emotions, or allow them to come accidentally to Miss Hofmann's knowledge. He would cherish them in silence until he should feel in all his sinews that he was himself again, and then he would open his heart. Meanwhile he would be patient; he would be the most irreproachable, the most austere, the most insignificant of convalescents. He was as yet unfit to touch her, to look at her, to speak to her. A man was not to go a wooing in his dressing-gown and slippers.
There came a day, however, when, in spite of his high resolves, Ferdinand came near losing his balance. Mrs. Mason had arranged with him to drive in the phaeton after dinner. But it befell that, an hour before the appointed time, she was sent for by a neighbor who had been taken ill.
"But it's out of the question that you should lose your drive," said Miss Hofmann, who brought him her aunt's apologies. "If you are still disposed to go, I shall be happy to take the reins. I shall not be as good company as Aunt Maria, but perhaps I shall be as good company as Thomas." It was settled, accordingly, that Miss Hofmann should act as her aunt's substitute, and at five o'clock the phaeton left the door. The first half of their drive was passed in silence; and almost the first words they exchanged were as they finally drew near to a space of enclosed ground, beyond which, through the trees at its farther extremity, they caught a glimpse of a turn in the river. Miss Hofmann involuntarily pulled up. The sun had sunk low, and the cloudless western sky glowed with rosy yellow. The trees which concealed the view flung over the grass a great screen of shadow, which reached out into the road. Between their scattered stems gleamed the broad, white current of the Hudson. Our friends both
knew the spot. Mason had seen it from a boat, when one morning a gentleman in the neighborhood, thinking to do him a kindness, had invited him to take a short sail; and with Miss Hofmann it had long been a frequent resort.
"How beautiful!" she said, as the phaeton stopped.
"Yes, if it wasn't for those trees," said Ferdinand. "They conceal the best part of the view."
"I should rather say they indicate it," answered his companion. "From here they conceal it; but they suggest to you to make your way in, and lose yourself behind them, and enjoy the prospect in privacy."
"But you can't take a vehicle in."
"No: there is only a footpath, although I have ridden in. One of these days, when you're stronger, you must drive to this point, and get out, and walk over to the bank."
Mason was silent a moment,—a moment during which he felt in his limbs the tremor of a bold resolution. "I noticed the place the day I went out on the water with Mr. McCarthy. I immediately marked it as my own. The bank is quite high, and the trees make a little amphitheatre on its summit. I think there's a bench."
"Yes, there are two benches," said Caroline.
"Suppose, then, we try it now," said Mason, with an effort.
"But you can never walk over that meadow. You see it's broken ground. And, at all events, I can't consent to your going alone."
"That, madam," said Ferdinand, rising to his feet in the phaeton, "is a piece of folly I should never think of proposing. Yonder is a house, and in it there are people. Can't we drive thither, and place the horse in their custody?"
"Nothing is more easy, if you insist upon it. The house is occupied by a German family with a couple of children, who are old friends of mine. When I come here on horseback they always clamor for 'coppers.' From their little garden the walk is shorter."
So Miss Hofmann turned the horse toward the cottage, which stood at the head of a lane, a few yards from the road. A little boy and girl, with bare heads and bare feet,—the former members very white and the latter very black,—came out to meet her. Caroline greeted them good-humoredly in German. The girl, who was the elder, consented to watch the horse, while the boy volunteered to show the visitors the shortest way to the river. Mason reached the point in question without great fatigue, and found a prospect which would have repaid even greater trouble. To the right and to the left, a hundred feet below them, stretched the broad channel of the seaward-shifting waters. In the distance rose the gentle masses of the Catskills with all the intervening region vague and neutral in the gathering twilight. A faint odor of coolness came up to their faces from the stream below.
"You can sit down," said the little boy, doing the honors.
"Yes, Colonel, sit down," said Caroline. "You've already been on your feet too much."
Ferdinand obediently seated himself, unable to deny that he was glad to do so. Miss Hofmann released from her grasp the skirts which she had gathered up in her passage from the phaeton, and strolled to the edge of the cliff, where she stood for some moments talking with her little guide. Mason could only hear that she was speaking German. After the lapse of a few moments Miss Hofmann turned back, still talking—or rather listening—to the child.
"He's very pretty," she said in French, as she stopped before Ferdinand.
Mason broke into a laugh. "To think," said he, "that that little youngster should forbid us the use of two languages! Do you speak French, my child?"
"No," said the boy, sturdily, "I speak German."
"Ah, there I can't follow you!"
The child stared a moment, and then replied, with pardonable irrelevancy, "I'll show you the way down to the water."
"There I can't follow you either I hope you'll not go, Miss Hofmann," added the young man, observing a movement on Caroline's part.
"Is it hard?" she asked of the child.
"No, it's easy."
"Will I tear my dress?"
The child shook his head; and Caroline descended the bank under his guidance.
As some moments elapsed before she reappeared, Ferdinand ventured to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. She was sitting on a rock on the narrow margin of sand, with her hat in her lap, twisting the feather in her fingers. In a few moments it seemed to Ferdinand that he caught the tones of her voice, wafted upward as if she were gently singing. He listened intently, and at last succeeded in distinguishing several words; they were German. "Confound her German!" thought the young man. Suddenly Miss Hofmann rose from her seat, and, after a short interval, reappeared on the platform. "What did you find down there?" asked Ferdinand, almost savagely.
"Nothing,—a little strip of a beach and a pile of stones."
"You have torn your dress," said Mason.
Miss Hofmann surveyed her drapery. "Where, if you please?"
"There, in front." And Mason extended his walking-stick, and inserted it into the injured fold of muslin. There was a certain graceless brusquerie in the movement which attracted Miss Hofmann's attention. She looked at her companion, and, seeing that his face was discomposed, fancied that he was annoyed at having been compelled to wait.
"Thank you," she said; "it's easily mended. And now suppose we go back."
"No, not yet," said Ferdinand. "We have plenty of time."
"Plenty of time to catch cold," said Miss Hofmann, kindly.
Mason had planted his stick where he had let it fall on withdrawing it from contact with his companion's skirts, and stood leaning against it, with his eyes on the young girl's face. "What if I do catch cold?" he asked abruptly.
"Come, don't talk nonsense," said Miss Hofmann.
"I never was more serious in my life." And, pausing a moment, he drew a couple of steps nearer. She had gathered her shawl closely about her, and stood with her arms lost in it, holding her elbows. "I don't mean that quite literally," Mason continued. "I wish to get well, on the whole. But there are moments when this perpetual selfcoddling seems beneath the dignity of man, and I'm tempted to purchase one short hour of enjoyment, of happiness, at the cost— well, at the cost of my life if necessary!"
This was a franker speech than Ferdinand had yet made; the reader may estimate his habitual reserve. Miss Hofmann must have been somewhat surprised, and even slightly puzzled. But it was plain that he expected a rejoinder.
"I don't know what temptation you may have had," she answered, smiling; "but I confess that I can think of none in your present circumstances likely to involve the great sacrifice you speak of. What you say, Colonel Mason, is half——"
"Half what?"
"Half ungrateful. Aunt Maria flatters herself that she has made existence as easy and as peaceful for you—as stupid, if you like—as it can possibly be for a—a clever man. And now, after all, to accuse her of introducing temptations."
"Your aunt Maria is the best of women, Miss Hofmann," said Mason. "But I'm not a clever man. I'm deplorably weak-minded. Very little things excite me. Very small pleasures are gigantic temptations. I would give a great deal, for instance, to stay here with you for half an hour."
It is a delicate question whether Miss Hofmann now ceased to be perplexed; whether she discerned in the young man's accents—it was his tone, his attitude, his eyes that were fully significant, rather
