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 Ma?ana (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.
[139]
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[140] 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 Se?or Fresneda, as thin as a rail, exceedingly delicate, well dressed and always starving.
Langairi?os, 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 Langairi?os. 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 Langairi?os.
Langairi?os! A sweet, sonorous name, somewhat like a cool zephyr in a summer twilight. Langairi?os! A dream.
The great Langairi?os 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[141] great personalities,—asseverated that Langairi?os’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.
Langairi?os practised criticism, and a cruel criticism it was. His articles appeared simultaneously in nine newspapers. His impressionistic manner scorned such banal phrases as “La Se?orita 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.”
Langairi?os’s superior type of mind did not permit him to suppose that any man other than himself could be any better than another.
[142]
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............