A tall, broad-shouldered, bony man, with high cheeks,
a beak-like nose, pointed grey beard, and a complexion the colour of the
red hematites on which Bilbao, his native town, is built, and which
Bilbao ruthlessly plucks from its very body to exchange for gold in the
markets of England--and in the deep sockets under the high aggressive
forehead prolonged by short iron-grey hair, two eyes like gimlets
eagerly watching the world through spectacles which seem to be purposely
pointed at the object like microscopes; a fighting expression, but of
noble fighting, above the prizes of the passing world, the contempt for
which is shown in a peculiar attire whose blackness invades even that
little triangle of white which worldly men leave on their breast for the
necktie of frivolity and the decorations of vanity, and, blinding it,
leaves but the thinnest rim of white collar to emphasize, rather than
relieve, the priestly effect of the whole. Such is Don Miguel de
Unamuno.
Such is, rather, his photograph. For Unamuno himself is ever changing. A
talker, as all good Spaniards are nowadays, but a talker in earnest and
with his heart in it, he is varied, like the subjects of his
conversation, and, still more, like the passions which they awake in
him. And here I find an unsought reason in intellectual support of that
intuitional observation which I noted down in starting--that Unamuno
resembles the Welsh in that he is not ashamed of showing his
passions--a thing which he has often to do, for he is very much alive
and feels therefore plenty of them.
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