The Names of the “Toads”—The Director of _Los Debates_ and His
Editorial Staff
Sánchez Gómez the printer, who was also known by the nickname Plancheta,
was a wealthy man, though he toiled away daily like a common workman. He
was a person of diabolically uneven temper, of corrosive joviality and,
at bottom, good-hearted.
He was the most picturesque and versatile printer in Madrid, and his
business was likewise the most complicated and interesting.
One thing alone was sufficient to give the measure of the man: with a
single press, run by a gasoline engine of the old type, he published nine
newspapers, the titles of which no one could call insignificant.
_Los Debates_ (Debates); _El Porvenir_ (The Future); _La Nación_ (The
Nation); _La Tarde_ (Afternoon); _El Radical_ (The Radical); _La
Mañana_ (Morning); _El Mundo_ (The World); _El Tiempo_ (The Times);
and _La Prensa_ (The Press); all these important dailies were born in
the basement of the printery. To any ordinary man this would appear
impossible; for Sánchez Gómez, that Proteus of Typography, the word
impossible existed only in the dictionary.
Each of these important newspapers had a column of its own; all the rest,
news, literary articles, advertisements, feuilletons, announcements, was
common to them all.
Sánchez Gómez, in his newspapers, paired individualism and collectivism.
Each of his organs enjoyed absolute autonomy and independence, and yet,
each resembled the other as closely as two drops of water. The lame
fellow thus realized in his publications unity and variety.
_El Radical_, for example, a rabidly Republican paper, devoted its first
column to attacking the Government and the priesthood; but its news items
were the same as those of _El Mundo_, an impenitently conservative daily
which employed its first column in defense of the church, that Holy Ark
of our traditions; the Monarchy, that glorious institution, symbol of
our Fatherland; the Army, most powerful bulwark of our nationality; the
Constitution, that compendium of our public liberties....
Of all the newspapers printed there, _Los Debates_ alone constituted
a profitable venture for its proprietor, Don Pedro Sampayo y Sánchez
del Pelgar. _Los Debates_—using the figures of speech employed in the
daily—was a terrible battering-ram against the purse of the politicians,
an inexpugnable fortress for the needs of the creditors.
Blackmail, in the hands of the newspaper director, was converted into a
terrible weapon; neither the ancient catapult nor the modern cannon could
be compared with it.
The newspaper owned by Don Pedro Sampayo y Sánchez del Pelgar had three
columns of its own.
These columns were written by a huge, thick-set Galician of most uncouth
appearance, named González Parla, who wielded a pen that went straight
to the point, and by a certain Señor Fresneda, as thin as a rail,
exceedingly delicate, well dressed and always starving.
Langairiños, the Superman, was on the staff of _Los Debates_, but only as
an aliquot part, since his works of genius were printed in the nine toads
that were born daily in Sánchez Gómez’s printery.
It is high time that we introduced Langairiños. The newspaper-men called
him Superman in jest,—Super for short—, because he was forever prating
about the coming of Nietzsche’s superman; they did not realize that, jest
or no jest, they but did him justice.
He was the highest, the loftiest of the editorial staff; sometimes he
signed himself Máximo, at others, Mínimo; but his name,—his real name,
that which he immortalized daily, and increasingly every day, in _Los
Debates_, or in _El Tiempo_, _El Mundo_ or _El Radical_, was Ernesto
Langairiños.
Langairiños! A sweet, sonorous name, somewhat like a cool zephyr in a
summer twilight. Langairiños! A dream.
The great Langairiños was between thirty and forty; a pronounced abdomen,
aquiline nose and a strong, thick black beard.
One of the imbeciles among his enemies, seeing him so vertebrate and
cerebral,—one of those vipers who try to sink their fangs into the armour
of great personalities,—asseverated that Langairiños’s appearance was
grotesque. A false statement whichever way you look at it, for, despite
the fact that his attire did not respond to the requirements of the most
foppish dandyism; despite the fact that his trousers were always baggy
and frayed, and his sack-coats studded with constellations of stains;
despite all this, his natural elegance, his air of superiority and
distinction erased these minor imperfections, even as the waves of the
sea wipe out tracks upon the sand of the beach.
Langairiños practised criticism, and a cruel criticism it was. His
articles appeared simultaneously in nine newspapers. His impressionistic
manner scorned such banal phrases as “La Señorita Pérez rose to great
heights,” “the characters of the work are well sustained,” and others of
the same class.
In two apothegms the Superman concentrated all his ideas as to the world
that surrounded him. They were two terrible sentences, in a bitter,
lacerating style. If any one asserted that such and such a politician or
journalist had influence, money or ability, he would reply: “Yes, yes, I
know whom you mean.” And if another announced that a certain novelist or
dramatist was at work upon a new book or piece, or had just finished one,
he would answer: “Very good; very good. Through the other door.”
Langairiños’s superior type of mind did not permit him to suppose that
any man other than himself could be any better than another.
His masterpiece was an article entitled “They’re All Ragamuffins.” It was
a conversation between a master of journalism—himself—and a cub reporter.
This avalanche of Attic salt concluded with the following gem of humour:
_The Cub Reporter_: One must have principles.
_The Master_: At table.
_The Cub Reporter_: The country should be told things straight from the
shoulder.
_The Master_: It would get indigestion. Remember the boarding-house peas.
That was the Superman’s regular style, a terrible, Shakesperian manner.
As a result of the cerebral exhaustion produced by these intellectual
labours, the Super was troubled with neurasthenia, and as a cure for
his ailment he took glycerophosphate of lime with his meals and did
gymnastics.
Manuel recalled having often heard in Doña Casiana’s boarding-house a
sonorous voice bravely and untiringly counting the number of leg and arm
flexions. Twenty-five ... twenty-six ... twenty-seven, until a hundred
or more was reached. That Bayard of Callisthenics was none other than
Langairiños.
The other two editors could not be likened unto Langairiños. González
Parla, with that porter’s face of his, looked like a barbarian. He was
brutally frank; he called a spade a spade, politicians leeches and the
newspapers printed by Sánchez Gómez, _the toads_.
The other editor, Fresneda, outrivalled in finesse the most tactful and
effeminate man that could be found in Madrid. He experienced a veritable
delight in calling everybody Señor. Fresneda managed only by a miracle to
keep alive. He spent his whole life starving, yet this roused no wrath in
his soul.
In order to get Sampayo, proprietor of _Los Debates_, to pay them a
few pesetas, González Parla and Fresneda were compelled to resort to
all manner of expedients. The hope harbored by the pair, which was a
credential obtained through the proprietary director, was never realized.
Manuel had heard so much talk about Sampayo that he was curious to make
his acquaintance.
He was a tall, erect gentleman, of noble appearance, about sixty-odd
years old; various times he had filled the office of Governor, thanks to
his wife, a fine-looking female who in her halcyon days had been able
to wheedle anything out of a Minister. Wherever this couple had passed
through in the course of the husband’s official duties, not a nail was
left in the wall.
Sampayo’s wife was very friendly with certain wealthy gentlemen, but
in just reciprocity, so super-womanly and tolerant she was, she always
picked out good-looking, obliging maids, so that her husband should have
no cause for complaint.
And what a human spectacle their home presented! At times, when Señora de
Sampayo returned somewhat weary after one of her little adventures, she
would find her noble-looking husband dining hand in hand with the maid,
if not embracing her tenderly.
The couple squandered their entire income; but Sampayo was so skilful in
the art of making creditors and then fighting them off, that they always
managed to raise a few coins.
Once when González Parla, who was in an ugly mood, and Fresneda, as
amiable as ever, called on Sampayo, addressing him every other moment
as the Director Señor Sampayo, and explained to him the dire straits in
which they found themselves, the director gave Fresneda a letter to a
South American general, asking for some money. Sampayo imposed upon his
editor the condition that all over ten duros should go to the newspaper
cash-box.
When the two editors reached the street, González Parla asked his
companion for the letter, and the spectral journalist handed it to him.
“I’ll go to see this knave of a general,” promised González Parla, “and
I’ll get the money from him. Then we’ll divide it. Half for you and the
other half for me.”
The skinny editor accompanied the corpulent to the general’s house.
The general, a little Mexican, dressed like a macaw, read the director’s
letter, looked at the journalist, readjusted his spectacles and eyed him
from top to bottom, asking:
“Are you _Señó_ Fresneda?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I’m the man.”
“But you’re consumptive, aren’t you?”
“I? No, sir.”
“Well, that’s what they tell me in this letter, understand?... That you
have seven children and that from your looks I can understand that you’re
in the final stage of consumption, see?”
González Parla was non-plussed. He confessed that it was true he did not
have consumption; but he had had a consumptive father, and since his
father had suffered from tuberculosis, the doctors had told him that he,
too, would contract it,—that, indeed, he was already in the early stages,
so that if he were as yet not really consumptive, it was almost the same
as if he were.
“I don’t understand all this, see?” said the general, after listening to
so defective an explanation. “I do gather, though, that this is a hoax.
How can a fellow be so fat and yet be sick, hey? But, anyway,” and he
handed out a bill folded between his fingers, “take this and be off with
you, and don’t be such a faker.”
“This corpulency is misleading,” replied González Parla humbly, accepting
the bill. “It’s due to all the potatoes I eat.” And he disappeared in
shame, as fast as he could.
The note was for a hundred pesetas, and the skinny editor divided it with
the corpulent, to the great indignation of Sampayo. The director vowed
that he would not pay them a céntimo for months and months.
Once, Fresneda reduced to the final gasps of hunger, uttered the sole
energetic sentence of his entire career.
“I’ll write you a recommendation to the Ministry,” the director had said
to him, in answer to a request for money.
“To die of hunger, Señor de Sampayo,” Fresneda had replied, with a flash
of independence not devoid of his proverbial finesse, “one does not
require letters of recommendation.”