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Page 5
We have information that in London Espronceda became a fencing-master,
as many a French _�migr�_ had done in the century before. This calling
brought him in very little. He may have profited by the charity
fund which the Duke of Wellington had raised to relieve the Spanish
_emigrados_. His more pressing needs were satisfied by Antonio Hern�iz,
a friend with whom he had made the journey from Lisbon; but the
remittances from home came promptly and regularly, and Espronceda must
have been one of the most favored among the refugees of Somers Town. If
we may take as autobiographical a statement in "Un Recuerdo," he was
entertained for a time at the country seat of Lord Ruthven, an old
companion-in-arms of his father's. Ruthven is not a fictitious name,
as a glance into the peerage will show. During all this time he was
improving his acquaintance with Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and other
English poets. What is more surprising is that, if we may judge from
his subsequent speeches as a deputy, he gained at least a superficial
acquaintance with English political thought and became interested in
economics. He was a convert to the doctrine of free trade.
Meanwhile the parents, who appear to have formed a bad opinion of a land
where a suit of clothes cost seventeen pounds, were urging the son to
go to France. He himself thought of Holland as a land combining the
advantages of liberty and economy. But before leaving London he required
a remittance of four thousand reales. This bad news was broken to the
family bread-winner, not by Jos� himself, but by his banker Orense. The
debt, it was explained, had been incurred as the result of a slight
illness. The four thousand reales were duly sent in December, but
Espronceda lingered in London a few months longer; first because he was
tempted by the prospect of a good position which he failed to secure,
and second on account of the impossibility of obtaining a passport to
France direct. He finally made his way to Paris via Brussels, from which
city he writes, March 6, 1829. All this effectually dispels the legend
that he eloped from England with Teresa by way of Cherbourg. The arrival
in Paris of the revolutionary fencing-master put the Madrid police in a
flutter. On the seventeenth of that same month the consul in Lisbon had
reported that Espronceda was planning to join General Mina in an attack
upon Navarra; and by the middle of April the ambassador to France had
reported his arrival in Paris. It was then that the brigadier's papers
were seized. Measures were taken to prevent Espronceda's receiving
passports for the southern provinces of France, and for any other
country but England. The friendly offices of Charles X, who had
succeeded Louis XVIII on the throne of France, checked for a time the
efforts of the patriotic filibusters. The latter, therefore, must have
felt that they were aiding their own country as well as France when they
participated in the July revolution of 1830. Espronceda fought bravely
for several days at one of the Paris barricades, and wreaked what
private grudge he may have had against the house of Bourbon. After the
fall of Charles X, Louis Philippe, whom Espronceda was in after years to
term _el rey mercader_, became king of France. As Ferdinand refused to
recognize the new government, the designs of Spanish patriots were
not hindered but even favored. Espronceda was one of a scant hundred
visionaries who followed General Joaqu�n de Pablo over the pass of
Roncevaux into Navarra. The one hope of success lay in winning over
recruits on Spanish soil. De Pablo, who found himself facing his old
regiment of Volunteers of Navarra, started to make a harangue. The reply
was a salvo of musketry, as a result of which De Pablo fell dead. After
some skirmishing most of his followers found refuge on French soil,
among them Espronceda. De Pablo's rout, if less glorious than that of
Roland on the same battlefield, nevertheless inspired a song. Espronceda
celebrated his fallen leader's death in the verses "A la Muerte de D.
Joaqu�n de Pablo (Chapalangarra) en los Campos de Vera." This poem,
which purports to have been written on one of the peaks of the French
Pyrenees which commanded a view of Spanish soil, and when the poet was
strongly impressed by the events in which he had just participated,
is nevertheless a weak performance; for Espronceda in 1830 was still
casting his most impassioned utterances in the classic mold. Ferdinand
had now been taught a lesson and lost little time in recognizing the new
r�gime in France. This bit of diplomacy was so cheap and successful
that Louis Philippe tried it again, this time on Russia. His government
favored a plot, hatched in Paris, for the freeing of Poland. Espronceda,
who had not yet had his fill of crack-brained adventures, enlisted in
this cause also, desiring to do for Poland what Byron had done for
Greece; but the czar, wilier than Ferdinand, immediately recognized
Louis Philippe. The plot was then quietly rendered innocuous. Espronceda
must have felt himself cruelly sold by the "merchant king."
Espronceda's literary activity was slight during these events, but his
transformation into a full-fledged Romanticist begins at this time.
Hugo's "Orientales," which influenced him profoundly, appeared in 1829,
and the first performance of "Hernani" was February 25, 1830. There
is no record that he formed important literary friendships in either
England or France, but, clannish as the _emigrados_ appear to have
been, an impressionable nature like Espronceda's must have been as much
stirred by the literary as by the political revolution of 1830; the more
so as the great love adventure of his life occurred at this time. The
Mancha family followed the other _emigrados_ to London, just when
we cannot say. In course of time Teresa contracted a marriage of
convenience with a Spanish merchant domiciled in London, a certain
Gregorio de Bayo. Churchman has discovered the following advertisement
in _El Emigrado Observador_, London, February,1829: "The daughters of
Colonel Mancha embroider bracelets with the greatest skill, gaining by
this industry the wherewithal to aid their honorable indigence." From
this it is argued that the marriage to Don Gregorio and the consequent
end of the family indigence must have come later than February, 1829.
Espronceda had met the girl in Lisbon, he may later have resumed the
acquaintance in London. She may or may not be the Elisa to whom Delio
sings in the "Serenata." According to Balbino Cort�s in an interview
reported by Sol�s, Teresa and her husband, while on a visit to Paris in
October, 1831, happened to lodge at the hotel frequented by Espronceda.
Shortly afterwards Teresa deserted her husband and an infant son and
eloped with Espronceda. She followed him to Madrid in 1833, where
a daughter, Blanca, was born to them in 1834. Within a year Teresa
abandoned Espronceda and her second child. She sank into the gutter and
died a pauper in 1839. This sordid romance occupied only about three
years of Espronceda's life, a much shorter time than had been supposed.
Churchman was the first to break the long conspiracy of silence which
withheld from the world Teresa's full name. Cascales y Mu�oz has since
thrown more light upon this episode. But these gentlemen have done
nothing more than to tell an open secret. Escosura, long ago, all but
betrayed it in the following pun: "Tendamos el velo de olvido sobre
esa lamentable flaqueza de un gran coraz�n," he says, referring to the
affair with Teresa, "y recordemos, de paso, que el sol mismo, ese astro
de luz soberano, tan sublimemente cantado por nuestro vate, _manchas_
tiene que si una parte de su esplendor anublan, a eclipsarlo no bastan."
Se�or Cascales publishes a reproduction of Teresa's portrait. We see
a face of a certain hard beauty. We are struck with the elaborate
coiffure, the high forehead, the long nose, the weak mouth. The
expression is unamiable. It is the face of a termagant ready to abandon
husband and child. Espronceda seems to have returned to England for a
brief period in 1832, as we may infer from the fact that the poem
"A Matilde" is dated London, 1832. Corroboration of this belief was
discovered by Churchman, who found that the paper on which "Blanca de
Borb�n" was written shows the water-mark of an English firm of that
date.
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