Youth and Egolatry Part 13

THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

When I turned to the composition of historical novels, I desired to ascertain if the historical method had been reduced to a system. I read Lucian's _Instructions for Writing History_, an essay with the same t.i.tle, or with a very similar one, by the Abbe Mably, some essays by Simmel, besides a book by a German professor, Ernst Bernheim, _Lehrbuch der historischen Methode_.

I next read and re-read the Roman historians Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Sall.u.s.t and Suetonius.

_Sall.u.s.t_

All these Roman historians no doubt were worthy gentlemen, but they create an atmosphere of suspicion. When reading them, you suspect that they are not always telling the whole truth. I read Sall.u.s.t and feel that he is lying; he has composed his narrative like a novel.

In the _Memorial de Sainte Helene_, it is recorded that on March 26, 1816, Napoleon read the conspiracy of Catiline in the _Roman History_. The Emperor observed that he was unable to understand what Catiline was driving at. No matter how much of a bandit he may have been, he must have had some object, some social purpose in view.

The observation of this political genius is one which must occur to all who read Sall.u.s.t's book. How could Catiline have secured the support of the most brilliant men of Rome, among them of Julius Caesar, if his only plan and object had been to loot and burn Rome? It is not logical.

Evidently Sall.u.s.t lies, as governmental writers in Spain lie today when they speak of Lerroux or Ferrer, or as the republican supporters of Thiers lied in 1871, characterizing the Paris Commune.

_Tacitus_

Tacitus is another great Roman historian who is theatrical, melodramatic, solemn, full of grand gestures. He also creates an atmosphere of suspicion, of falsehood. Tacitus has something of the inquisitor in him, of the fanatic in the cause of virtue. He is a man of austere moral att.i.tude, which is a pose that a thoroughgoing scamp finds it easy to a.s.sume.

A temperament such as that of Tacitus is fatal to theatrical peoples like the Italians, Spaniards, and French of the South. From it springs that type of Sicilian, Calabrian, and Andalusian politician who is a great lawyer and an eloquent orator, who declaims publicly in the forum, and then reaches an understanding privately with bandits and thugs.

_Suetonius_

Suetonius, although deficient both in the pomp and sententiousness of Tacitus, makes no attempt to compose his story, nor to impart moral instruction, but tells us what he knows, simply. His _Lives of the Twelve Caesars_ is the greatest collection of horrors in history. You leave it with the imagination perturbed, scrutinizing yourself to discover whether you may not be yourself a hog or a wild beast.

Suetonius gives us an account of men rather than a history of the politics of emperors, and surely this method is more interesting and veracious. I place more faith in the anecdotes which grow up about an historical figure than I do in his laws.

Polybius is a mixture of scepticism and common sense. He is what Bayle, Montesquieu and Voltaire will come to be centuries hence.

As far as Caesar's _Commentaries_ are concerned, in spite of the fact that they have been manipulated very skilfully, they are one of the most satisfying and instructive books that can be read.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS

I have very little knowledge of the historians of the Renaissance or of those prior to the French Revolution. Apart from the chroniclers of individual exploits, such as Lopez de Ayala, Brantome, and the others, they are wholly colourless, and either pseudo-Roman or pseudo-Greek.

Even Machiavelli has a personal, Italian side, which is mocking and incisive--and this is all that is worth while in him--and he has a pretentious pseudo-Roman side, which is unspeakably tiresome.

Generally considered, the more carefully composed and smoothly varnished the history, the duller it will be found; while the more personal revelations it contains, the more engaging. Most readers today, for example, prefer Bernal Diaz del Castillo's _True History of the Conquest of New Spain_ to Solis's _History of the Conquest of Mexico_. One is the book of a soldier, who had a share in the deeds described, and who reveals himself for what he is, with all his prejudices, vanities and arrogance; the other is a scholar's attempt to imitate a cla.s.sic history and to maintain a monotonous music throughout his paragraphs.

Practically all the historians who have followed the French Revolution have individual character, and some have too much of it, as has Carlyle.

They distort their subject until it becomes a pure matter of fantasy, or mere literature, or sinks even to the level of a family discussion.

Macaulay's moral pedantry, Thiers's cold and repulsive cretinism, the melodramatic, gesticulatory effusiveness of Michelet are all typical styles.

Historical bazaars _a la_ Cesare Cantu may be put on one side, as belonging to an inferior genre. They remind me of those great nineteenth century world's fairs, vast, miscellaneous and exhausting.

As for the German historians, they are not translated, so I do not know them. I have read only a few essays of Simmel, which I think extremely keen, and Stewart Chamberlain's book upon the foundations of the nineteenth century, which, if the word France were to be subst.i.tuted for the word Germany, might easily have been the production of an advanced nationalist of the _Action Francaise_.

VII

MY FAMILY

FAMILY MYTHOLOGY

The celebrated Vicomte de Chateaubriand, after flaunting an ancestry of princes and kings in his _Memoires d'outre-tombe_, then turns about and tells us that he attaches no importance to such matters.

I shall do the same. I intend to furbish up our family history and mythology, and then I shall a.s.sert that I attach no importance to them.

And, what is more, I shall be telling the truth.

My researches into the life of Aviraneta [Footnote: A kinsman of Baroja and protagonist of his series of historical novels under the general t.i.tle of _Memoirs of a Man of Action_.] have drawn me of late to the genealogical field, and I have looked into my family, which is equivalent to compounding with tradition and even with reaction.

I have unearthed three family myths: the Goni myth, the Zornoza myth, and the Alzate myth.

The Goni myth, vouched for by an aunt of mine who died in San Sebastian at an age of ninety or more, established, according to her, that she was a descendant of Don Teodosio de Goni, a Navarrese _caballero_ who lived in the time of Witiza, and who, after killing his father and mother at the instigation of the devil, betook himself to Mount Aralar wearing an iron ring about his neck, and dragging a chain behind him, thus pilloried to do penance. One day, a terrible dragon appeared before him during a storm.

Don Teodosio lifted up his soul unto G.o.d, and thereupon the Archangel Saint Michael revealed himself to him, in his dire extremity, and broke his chains, in commemoration of which event Don Teodosio caused to be erected the chapel of San Miguel in Excelsis on Mount Aralar.

There were those who endeavoured to convince my aunt that in the time of this supposit.i.tious Don Teodosio, which was the early part of the eighth century, surnames had not come into use in the Basque country, and even, indeed, that there were at that time no Christians there--in short they maintained that Don Teodosio was a solar myth; but they were not able to convince my aunt. She had seen the chapel of San Miguel on Aralar, and the cave in which the dragon lived, and a doc.u.ment wherein Charles V.

granted to Juan de Goni the privilege of renaming his house the Palace of San Miguel, as well as of adding a dragon to his coat of arms, besides a cross in a red field, and a _broken_ chain.

The Zornoza myth was handed down through my paternal grandmother of that name.

I remember having heard this lady say when I was a child, that her family might be traced in a direct line to the chancellor Pero Lopez de Ayala, and, I know not through what lateral branches, also to St.

Francis Xavier.

My grandmother vouched for the fact that her father had sold the doc.u.ments and parchments in which these details were set forth, to a t.i.tled personage from Madrid.

The Zornozas boast an escutcheon which is embellished with a band, a number of wolves, and a legend whose import I do not recall.

Indeed, wolves occur in all the escutcheons of the Baroja, Alzate and Zornoza families, in so far as I have been able to discover, and I take them to be more or less authentic. We have wolves pa.s.sant, wolves rampant, and wolves mordant. The Goni escutcheon also displays hearts.

If I become rich, which I do not antic.i.p.ate, I shall have wolves and hearts blazoned on the doors of my dazzling automobile, which will not prevent me from enjoying myself hugely inside of it.

Turning to the Alzate myth, it too runs back to antiquity and the primitive struggles of rival families of Navarre and Labourt. The Alzates have been lords of Vera ever since the fourteenth century.

The legend of the Alzates of Vera de Navarra relates that one Don Rodrigo, master of the village in the fifteenth century, fell in love with a daughter of the house of Urtubi, in France, near Urruna, and married her. Don Rodrigo went to live in Urtubi and became so thoroughly gallicized that he never cared to return to Spain, so the people of Vera banded together, dispossessed him of his honours and dignity, and sequestrated his lands.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, my great-grandfather, Sebastian Ignacio de Alzate, was among those who a.s.sembled at Zubieta in 1813 to take part in the rebuilding of San Sebastian, and this great-grandfather was uncle to Don Eugenio de Aviraneta, a good relative of mine, protagonist of my latest books.

St. Francis Xavier, Don Teodosio de Goni, Pero Lopez de Ayala, Aviraneta--a saint, a revered worthy, an historian, a conspirator--these are our family G.o.ds.

Now let me take my stand with Chateaubriand as attaching no importance to such things.