151
Pozas was apparently the district of Madrid where Galdós most frequently went on his afternoon «misterious missions», see II. Berkowitz, Pérez Galdós, Spanish liberal crusader, Wisconsin, 1948, p. 434.
152
One can only speculate what these ideas were. Possibly Sitges believed that Concha-Ruth's father was not Morell, but a wealthy Latin American Jew who had kept her mother. This theory would at least tally with the rather novelesque circumstances of the «canastilla» and the mother's prosperity after her first return to Córdoba.
153
This article was probably one entitled «Canto de Triunfo» which appeared in El Siglo Futuro of 1st February, 1896. It is an intemperate attack on Galdós' «irreligiousness» occasioned by the performance of the dramatised version of Doña Perfecta. Like the novel the play is «un esperpento que no se puede aguantar». The work is a «caricatura infame del espíritu católico». Galdós does not realise or does not care that the final consequences of the «libre examen» and «barbarie protestante» he advocates are «los espantos y horrores del socialismo y del anarquismo».
154
Now Plaza Tirso de Molina.
155
See my conclusions below.
156
This couple were plausibly Don Ignacio Bauer and his wife, who were, according to J. Caro Baroja, distinguished figures in Madrid society at the time. See Los judíos en la España moderna y contemporánea, Madrid, 1961, vol. III, p. 192 et passim.
157
Jewish dietary laws prohibit the eating of unscaled fish as well as pork.
158
It is not unlikely that Concha-Ruth or the Jewish community in Bayonne should have hoped to arrange a civil marriage; on the other hand, it seems highly improbable that Galdós should ever have entertained the idea of such a marriage.
159
The suspicions of the Fayonne Jewish community were natural in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, but Galdós would hardly have needed to go to such lengths to obtain information on Judaism. One has the impression, furthermore, that Concha-Ruth would have made neither a docile nor a particularly reliable research-assistant. Galdós may well, however, have used the information that did come his way through her. On this point see my conclusions.
160
I was not aware that tea-drinking was part of Jewish ritual except in England. The other details are accurate, however. The feast referred to is the Sukkot, that is the festival of Tabernacles or Booths, when the pious spend seven nights sleeping out in huts made of branches and foliage.