Pepita Read online

  Guerrero with his company, minus Oliva, then went on to Vienna. It must have been annoying for him to find that Pepita had preceded him there, especially as he was at that time much in love with a rival dancer named Petra Camara, a member of his company, ‘who like Pepita was an Andalusian’.fn3 I have in fact been tempted to wonder whether Guerrero’s harsh judgment of Pepita’s performance was not influenced in some degree by his predilection for La Camara? As Pepita was styled the Star of Andalusia, so was La Camara styled the Pearl of Seville. That there was no love wasted between Guerrero and Pepita is apparent from Guerrero’s account, and it is apparent also that there was no love wasted between the two ladies either. Of the two, however, the Camara seems to have been far more civil than Guerrero when it came to the point. Pepita, ‘dressed magnificently’, had arrived ‘in a carriage and pair of the first order’, to call on them.

  This is the account of their interview given in Guerrero’s own words:

  ‘About four or five days after our company had arrived in Vienna and had made a great success, Pepita came to visit Petra Camara. Our company was staying at the Three Crowns Hotel. Pepita was staying at the most expensive hotel in Vienna.

  ‘This was the first time Petra Camara had ever seen Pepita.

  ‘Petra received her courteously in the presence of her mother and her brother. I was in an adjoining room. The brother came to me and said, “Pepita is there and has asked after you; it will look bad if you do not go and say How-do-you-do”. I then entered the room and went up to Pepita and shook hands with her, saying “How-do-you-do, Pepita?” exchanging the usual courtesies. After that I left the room again almost immediately.

  ‘After Pepita had left our hotel Petra Camara came into the room where I was with other members of the corps de ballet, playing cards, and said, “Pepita Oliva has invited you all to lunch with her, saying she would receive you with much pleasure”. I never went, but two of my companions went.

  ‘Petra afterwards told me that Pepita had asked many questions about Juan Antonio [Oliva], such as, how he was, how he was getting on, whether he was stout or thin, and so on.’

  Petra Camara in her own evidence adds something significant to all this, which Guerrero omits: ‘I gathered that the real object of her visit was to get information about Juan Antonio. She asked me whether he had any lovers.’

  Guerrero picks up the story.

  ‘After Vienna I did not see Pepita again until I saw her in Copenhagen. I only heard from the newspapers and in other ways that she was creating a furore in Germany and Austria.

  ‘Petra Camara and I and our company were performing in Vienna at the theatre situated in the Barrio Trieste, outside the fortifications. We left Vienna for Prague and the train was snowed-up during the night and we arrived in Prague the next day, Christmas Eve.’ (This poor Spanish troupe! it had encountered bad luck on its European tour, what with the bitter weather on the Rhine and in Berlin, and then the train snowed-up between Vienna and Prague!)

  Eventually they arrived at Copenhagen.

  ‘When we arrived at Copenhagen, Pepita was not there. She arrived a few days afterwards. I knew of her arrival from seeing posters in the street announcing as a great event the arrival of the famous dancer Pepita Oliva, who was to perform at the theatre called the Casino. We were staying at the Royal Hotel, but Pepita went to stay at the Hotel de Inglaterra, one of the most expensive hotels. (This always seems to have been a grievance, for it recurs over and over again.)

  ‘The first time I saw her there was on one day when I was passing her hotel. I saw a number of persons looking up at the windows, and on investigating the cause I found that Pepita was combing out her hair in sight of them and that they were all astonished at its magnificence and length.’

  This is a generous tribute. But then comes the inevitable row with its concomitant backbiting.

  ‘After we had been at the People’s Theatre for about a month, Pepita offered her services at less remuneration than Petra Camara wished to accept. Accordingly Pepita was engaged and Petra and our company left. I went with Petra and her brother and other members of our company to see Pepita perform there for the first time. We sat in the back row of the stalls so that Pepita should not see us. She danced El Ole for about ten or twelve minutes. I observed that she did not dance any better than when I saw her dance at the Hotel Peninsular.’

  Although out of loyalty to my grandmother I am unable to feel any affection for Guerrero as a character, I am still able to esteem myself fortunate in the possession of his album of newspaper cuttings relating to his professional career. It is by now a shabby volume, cheaply bound, with the word ALBUM printed on it in large and ornate gilt lettering. It seems strange to me to turn over those tattered pages on to which Guerrero himself has pasted those cuttings from El Porvenir de Granada, El Dauro, Die Reform, Le Figaro, Le Courier du Bas-Rhin, Warszawska Gazeta, La Presse, Wiener Theaterzeitung, Le Messager de Genève, Le Nouvelliste Vaudois, l’Indépendance Belge, and many others; old programmes too, even from the Theatre Royal, New Adelphi, London. As the album does not directly concern Pepita, except on one or two pages, I must not dwell on it, but it has its value as showing the kind of life led by these wandering Spanish troupes all over Europe during the winter season.

  VII

  The story of the reconciliation between Catalina and Oliva, however short-lived, had its sequel in a meeting in Madrid between Pepita and Pedrosa, that old friend who had originally arranged for Oliva to give her dancing-lessons; Pedrosa, who might thus in a way consider himself responsible for furthering her disastrous marriage. Pedrosa was sometimes away, dancing in the provinces, but he had frequently to return to Madrid, for he was also a book-binder by trade, and had to look after his book-binding establishment there. It was on such an occasion of his return that Pepita’s message caught him: ‘She sent’, he says, ‘saying that she wished to see me. I went to see her.’

  Like Guerrero, he found her in the Hotel Peninsular. Like Guerrero, he was impressed by the splendour of her jewels. She was not in a dressing-gown that time, but was wearing ‘a very handsome dress’. Like Guerrero, he had luncheon with her, for she was always hospitable. She talked freely about Oliva, speaking of him ‘in a most affectionate way but lamenting that his behaviour prevented them from being together’. (I fail to see how she reconciled this regret with the very intimate and passionate existence she was then leading with Lionel Sackville-West whenever they could seize the opportunity, but one cannot expect the Pepitas of life always to be consistent.) Pedrosa was much surprised by these accounts, which did not at all tally with his conception of his friend Oliva, but Pepita insisted that the letters she received from her mother could leave no doubt that Oliva was leading ‘the same life as ever, a great friend of women and pleasure’. Pedrosa protested that from his knowledge of Oliva there was no truth in the saying, and his private opinion was that Catalina kept them apart by these means for her own purposes. ‘I don’t believe anything of the kind,’ he said; ‘whatever Juan Antonio may have been before marriage, he has been everything that is right since.’ Pepita would not have it. ‘You know very well that I married him for love,’ she said, ‘but my mother has not deceived me. How can it be so when in her letter she said she had to forbid him the house at Passy because he was caught with the servants?’

  I am afraid this shows Catalina in a very sinister light, besides exemplifying the exaggerated influence she exerted over her daughter.

  After luncheon, Pepita gave Pedrosa a portrait of herself,—it was a lithograph, a German production. She signed it for him and wrote what he believed to be ‘a souvenir’ for him at the foot of it, a mi buen amigo, recuerdo carinoso, and added a flourish. When she gave him the portrait he took the opportunity of mentioning Oliva’s name again. Tears, he records, came into her eyes. Next day he called at her hotel, but she had already left. He took the portrait to his house, and took the trouble to have it framed and hung up in his sitting-room. Some months later Oliva retu
rned to Madrid and came as usual to see him. ‘He saw the portrait and immediately exclaimed, “Ah, that is my Pepita,—give it to me.” I would not give it to him and we had words about it. Four or five days afterwards he induced me to give it up to him, after much pressing and imploring on his part, and we being such old friends I consented. I never saw Pepita again, but I frequently saw the portrait hanging up in the sitting-room of the house of Juan Antonio’s parents. It was a very good likeness of her, it is a speaking likeness,—she always wore the sortijilla, that is the lock or ring of hair on the cheek by the ear.’

  From this evidence it is, I think, clear that Oliva and Pepita had been really fond of one another once. Otherwise tears would not have come into Pepita’s eyes (even making allowance for her natural emotionality), nor would Oliva have had words with his best friend trying to get her portrait away from him, so long after their marriage and their mysterious quarrel. He always grew indignant with those who attempted to criticise her in his presence, as he did with Guerrero for saying that he considered her dancing inartistic; ‘I taught her myself,’ he exclaimed, ‘so I ought to know’. When once he missed her in Granada, he became ‘very furious and much upset’. Pepita, for her part, never forgot him, and never concealed from Lionel Sackville-West that she corresponded with him, sent him money sometimes, and received his replies. I wonder how the English lover relished the constant allusions he says she made to the Spanish husband? It is true that she told him she sent the money to keep Oliva quiet, because she always dreaded his claiming some rights over her or her children.

  What a queer pair they were! How strange that Oliva should ever have consented to go back and live with Catalina, or that Pepita should ever have written saying that Catalina must look after him well, until such time as she herself could arrive in Paris to meet him! What on earth was Pepita thinking about, when she made such a suggestion? She must have known quite well that he and Catalina could never come to terms; and besides, she was herself deeply involved with Lionel Sackville-West at the moment. Still, she seems to have preserved that lingering affection for the young man she had married,—a protective affection, which tried hopelessly to establish a home for him with his mother-in-law where he would be well looked after. A case of conscience? Perhaps. She had treated him badly, whether her mother or herself was to blame. She had found another love, of whom her mother knew nothing. I wonder, I continue to wonder, whether it was not some instinct of self-preservation that made her conceal the existence of Lionel Sackville-West from her mother? She was older now, less of a child. She may well have feared lest her mother should wreck her romance as well as her marriage. Tender and passionate by turns, she had swum out into the great world of success and love, leaving all her early youth behind her; she had known both public applause and personal passion; she was a full woman now, as she had not been when the Teatro del Príncipe refused to engage her and she had married her dancing-master as an inexperienced girl. It stands to her credit that she retained even some affection for and some sense of responsibility towards the Juan Antonio Oliva who represented her first essay in the difficult art of love and life. But Oliva and Pepita were now irrevocably parted; neither conscience nor sentiment could heal such a breach; Pepita had passed far beyond the reach of a mere bolero; she had passed even beyond the reach of the mother who had originally brought her from Malaga up to Madrid, with unspecified parentage behind her. She was in a position to send for ballet-masters and their impresarios, and to get them to agree to her proposals. She was triumphing in Europe, with contracts in her pocket and villas of her own in Germany and Italy, while Catalina at Buena Vista awaited her return with such loving impatience as she could control.

  fn1 The glass dish, the jewel stand, and one candlestick are shown in the photograph here. Unfortunately I possess no photograph of the ring.

  fn2 I cannot quite make out when this odd incident took place, but it appears to have been two or three years after the marriage. Many of the witnesses were unable to read or write, and some of them could not estimate the years with any accuracy (e.g. ‘she knows she is 63, but cannot count back to the year in which she was born’), so I have sometimes found it a little difficult to arrive at the correct chronology in the whole story.

  fn3 It may be worth noting that the letter from Alexandre Dumas quoted here refers to this Petra Camara.

  5

  El Lord y la Bailarina

  I

  Catalina had not so very long to wait. Scarcely had she finished building the entrance gateway at Buena Vista with the date above it, than she received word that Pepita was on her way to Granada. There is a noticeable contrast between this occasion and Pepita’s gay, light-hearted arrival at Albolote three years earlier. Even the accounts given by the country-people differ; we no longer find young men enchanted and bewildered by her vitality; there are no goldfish to be caught or flowers to be picked; the piebald pony remains idle in the stable; the carriage is never taken out. A grave and silent Pepita wanders alone about the grounds of her new property, watches the men at their work without talking to them, and returns to the house again. The labourers themselves record it; ‘Every day Pepita used to stroll down to the vineyard. I recollect her very well, for I looked at her with admiration. I had every opportunity of observing her. She came alone and walked about looking at the work going on, but did not speak to any of the men. It was a small vineyard and she kept near to where we were working. She generally stayed about half an hour and then walked back alone.’

  This was very unlike her, but the reason for this unwonted seriousness and retirement was soon apparent to all. Her first child was born at Buena Vista on May 20th, 1858.

  The baby was a boy, and Catalina instantly began to spread extravagant rumours about his parentage. The Emperor of 94 Germany reappears in Catalina’s saga, this time as the baby’s father and also as Pepita’s husband. Catalina carne downstairs immediately after the birth, which happened at mid-day, and told her servant Ana to run up and look at the new baby, who was then lying in the bed with his mother. This Ana, who had had ten children herself and several miscarriages, and was therefore a woman of some experience, had recently given birth to her eleventh baby, so was asked to suckle the child as Pepita herself was unable to do so. This duty she obligingly undertook for nineteen days.

  During that time she slept in another bed in Pepita’s room. She records that Pepita had brought all the baby’s clothes with her from Germany. She records also that Pepita confirmed her mother’s statement that the baby’s father was Emperor of Germany, whereas in fact, Pepita must have known perfectly well that the baby’s father was Lionel Sackville-West. There are facets in Pepita’s character which still baffle me….

  The baptism was celebrated with a display which must thoroughly have gratified the heart of Catalina as a grandmother. For one thing they had the priest of San Ildefonso from Granada to officiate, and that was very grand. For another thing, His Royal Highness Maximilian Duke of Bavaria, father of the Empress of Austria, stood sponsor and was represented by proxy by Don Manuel Lopez and Doña Catalina Ortega, those two adventurers who had never except in saga approached so near to royalty before. The nurse Ana remembered the christening very well, though she evidently did not remember enough to satisfy the examining lawyers. ‘I can’t tell you the name of every priest of that church for the last fifty years,’ she retorted indignantly when they pressed her; ‘that is quite impossible. Nor can I say whether or not I held the child in my arms during the whole ceremony—who would think I was going to be asked about such details?’ But she remembered well enough that Catalina gave her three dollars and the present of a dress to wear at the ceremony, and that they all drove to the church in the galera with Lopez on the box. As the baby was only three days old, Pepita was of course not present, but Catalina’s sister remained at home to look after her. The church was decorated as for a grand baptism. When they came out, they found a large crowd, mostly boys, surrounding the carriage, and this crowd foll
owed them, pressing and shouting round them, so that two mounted Civil Guards rode up to escort the carriage, one on each side, all the way back to Buena Vista. For the whole length of the three kilometres, Catalina kept scattering money to the people; this was the usual thing to do, but instead of bringing pence Catalina had brought two straw baskets, one filled with dollars, and the other with pesetas. El Defensor de Granada was much impressed: ‘There was present an immense assemblage who were attracted by the merry pealing of the bells, the cracking of sky-rockets, and the gay tunes of a military band which made pleasant the occasion at the door of the church. Causing much comment amongst the merry gathering that filled the nave of San Ildefonso, was the presence of a foreign gentleman of very distinguished appearance, whom no one knew and who after the ceremony was lost in the crowd and not seen again. (I am afraid this is only a picturesque addition on the part of El Defensor, much as I should like to believe that Lionel Sackville-West had slipped away from his diplomatic duties in order to catch a glimpse of his son.) The street boys shouted vigorously the usual “rona, rona”, and received a veritable rain of pesetas and napoleons in place of the customary farthings.’

  The child had been given the names of Maximiliano Leon Jose Manuel Enrique Bernardino, and was known as Max. Catalina was careful to explain that Maximiliano was the name of his father the Emperor; she did not add, probably because she did not know, that Leon was the Spanish equivalent of Lionel.

  Pepita adored her baby, but could not nurse it. When Ana’s nineteen days came to an end, it became necessary to obtain another nurse, and one was found at the neighbouring village of Santa Fé by Catalina, who drove out with Lopez in the galera to bring her back to Buena Vista. This woman, who was a simple peasant, ‘had much to relate of the grandeur of her sojourn on her return to Santa Fé. It was gathered that she had lived in a palatial house where there was great luxury and many servants.’ She stayed with Pepita for two years, and reported that she had seen many marvellous things in foreign countries.