II: ABOUT CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE
Don Quixote
Part II
Four
generations had laughed over "
Don Quixote" before it occurred to anyone to ask, who and what
manner of man was this
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra whose name is on the title-page; and it was too late for a
satisfactory answer to the question when it was proposed to add a
life of the author to the
London edition published at Lord Carteret's instance in
1738. All traces of the
personality of
Cervantes had by that time
disappeared. Any floating traditions that may once have existed, transmitted from men who had known him, had long since died out, and of other record there was none; for the
sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were incurious as to "the men of the time," a reproach against which the nineteenth has, at any rate, secured itself, if it has produced no
Shakespeare or
Cervantes. All that
Mayans y Siscar, to whom the task was entrusted, or any of those who followed him, Rios, Pellicer, or Navarrete, could do was to eke out the few allusions
Cervantes makes to himself in his various prefaces with such pieces of documentary evidence bearing upon his life as they could find.
This, however, has been done by the last-named biographer to such good purpose that he has superseded all
predecessors.
Thoroughness is the
chief characteristic of
Navarrete's work. Besides sifting, testing, and methodising with rare patience and judgment what had been previously brought to light, he left, as the saying is, no stone unturned under which anything to illustrate his subject might possibly be found. Navarrete has done all that industry and acumen could do, and it is no
fault of his if he has not given us what we want. What Hallam says of
Shakespeare may be
applied to the almost parallel case of
Cervantes: "It is not the register of his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the
orthography of his name that we seek; no letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character of him drawn
... by a
contemporary has been produced."
It is only
natural, therefore, that the biographers of
Cervantes, forced to make
brick without straw, should have recourse largely to conjecture, and that
conjecture should in some instances come by degrees to take the place of established fact. All that I propose to do here is to separate what is matter of fact from what is matter of
conjecture, and leave it to the reader's judgment to decide whether the data
justify the inference or not.
The
men whose names by common consent stand in the front rank of
Spanish literature,
Cervantes,
Lope de Vega,
Quevedo,
Calderon,
Garcilaso de la Vega, the
Mendozas,
Gongora, were all men of ancient families, and, curiously, all, except the last, of families that traced their origin to the same
mountain district in the North of
Spain. The
family of
Cervantes is commonly said to have been of
Galician origin, and
unquestionably it was in possession of lands in
Galicia at a very
early date; but I think the balance of the evidence tends to show that the "solar," the original site of the
family, was at
Cervatos in the north-west corner of
Old Castile, close to the junction of
Castile,
Leon, and the
Asturias. As it happens, there is a complete history of the
Cervantes family from the tenth century down to the seventeenth extant under the title of "
Illustrious Ancestry, Glorious Deeds, and Noble Posterity of the Famous Nuno Alfonso, Alcaide of Toledo," written in
1648 by the industrious
genealogist Rodrigo Mendez Silva, who availed himself of a manuscript genealogy by Juan de Mena, the
poet laureate and historiographer of
John II.
The origin of the name
Cervantes is
curious.
Nuno Alfonso was almost as
distinguished in the struggle against the
Moors in the reign of
Alfonso VII as the
Cid had been half a
century before in that of
Alfonso VI, and was rewarded by divers grants of land in the
neighbourhood of
Toledo. On one of his acquisitions, about two leagues from the city, he built himself a
castle which he called
Cervatos, because "he was lord of the solar of
Cervatos in the
Montana," as the
mountain region extending from the Basque Provinces to Leon was always called. At his death in
battle in
1143, the castle passed by his will to his son
Alfonso Munio, who, as
territorial or local
surnames were then coming into vogue in place of the simple
patronymic, took the additional name of
Cervatos. His eldest son
Pedro succeeded him in the
possession of the castle, and followed his example in adopting the name, an
assumption at which the younger son,
Gonzalo, seems to have taken
umbrage.
Everyone who has paid even a flying visit to
Toledo will remember the ruined castle that crowns the hill above the spot where the bridge of
Alcantara spans the
gorge of the
Tagus, and with its broken outline and crumbling walls makes such an admirable pendant to the square
solid Alcazar towering over the city roofs on the
opposite side. It was built, or as some say restored, by
Alfonso VI shortly after his occupation of
Toledo in
1085, and called by him
San Servando after a
Spanish martyr, a name subsequently modified into San Servan (in which form it appears in the "Poem of the Cid"),
San Servantes, and
San Cervantes: with regard to which last the "Handbook for
Spain" warns its readers against the supposition that it has anything to do with the author of "
Don Quixote." Ford, as all know who have taken him for a companion and counsellor on the roads of
Spain, is seldom wrong in matters of
literature or history. In this instance, however, he is in error. It has everything to do with the author of "
Don Quixote," for it is in fact these old walls that have given to
Spain the name she is proudest of to-day.
Gonzalo, above mentioned, it may be readily conceived, did not relish the appropriation by his brother of a name to which he
himself had an
equal right, for though
nominally taken from the castle, it was in reality derived from the ancient
territorial possession of the
family, and as a set-off, and to distinguish himself (diferenciarse) from his brother, he took as a
surname the name of the castle on the bank of the
Tagus, in the building of which, according to a
family tradition, his
great-grandfather had a share.
Both brothers founded families. The
Cervantes branch had more
tenacity; it sent offshoots in various directions,
Andalusia,
Estremadura,
Galicia, and
Portugal, and produced a goodly line of men distinguished in the service of
Church and State.
Gonzalo himself, and apparently a son of his, followed Ferdinand III in the great campaign of
1236-
48 that gave
Cordova and
Seville to
Christian Spain and penned up the Moors in the kingdom of
Granada, and his descendants intermarried with some of the noblest families of the Peninsula and numbered among them
soldiers, magistrates, and
Church dignitaries, including at least two
cardinal-archbishops.
Of the line that settled in
Andalusia, Deigo de
Cervantes,
Commander of the Order of Santiago, married
Juana Avellaneda,
daughter of
Juan Arias de Saavedra, and had several
sons, of whom one was
Gonzalo Gomez,
Corregidor of Jerez and ancestor of the
Mexican and
Columbian branches of the
family; and another,
Juan, whose son
Rodrigo married
Dona Leonor de Cortinas, and by her had
four children,
Rodrigo,
Andrea,
Luisa, and
Miguel,
our author.
The pedigree of
Cervantes is not without its bearing on "Don Quixote." A man who could look back upon an ancestry of
genuine knights-errant extending from well-nigh the time of
Pelayo to the siege of Granada was likely to have a strong feeling on the subject of the sham chivalry of the romances. It gives a point, too, to what he says in more than one place about families that have once been great and have tapered away until they have come to nothing, like a pyramid. It was the case of his own.
He was born at
Alcala de Henares and
baptised in the church of
Santa Maria Mayor on the 9th of
October,
1547. Of his
boyhood and youth we know nothing, unless it be from the glimpse he gives us in the preface to his "Comedies" of himself as a boy looking on with delight while
Lope de Rueda and his company set up their rude plank stage in the plaza and acted the rustic farces which he himself afterwards took as the model of his interludes. This first glimpse, however, is a significant one, for it shows the
early development of that love of the drama which
exercised such an influence on his life and seems to have grown stronger as he grew older, and of which this very preface, written only a few months before his death, is such a striking proof. He gives us to understand, too, that he was a great reader in his youth; but of this no assurance was needed, for the
First Part of "
Don Quixote" alone proves a vast amount of
miscellaneous reading, romances of
chivalry, ballads, popular poetry, chronicles, for which he had no time or opportunity except in the first twenty years of his life; and his
misquotations and mistakes in matters of detail are always, it may be noticed, those of a man recalling the reading of his boyhood.
Other things besides the drama were in their infancy when
Cervantes was a boy. The period of his boyhood was in every way a
transition period for
Spain. The old
chivalrous Spain had
passed away. The new
Spain was the mightiest power the world had seen since the
Roman Empire and it had not yet been called upon to pay the price of its greatness. By the policy of
Ferdinand and
Ximenez the
sovereign had been made absolute, and the
Church and
Inquisition adroitly adjusted to keep him so. The nobles, who had always resisted absolutism as strenuously as they had fought the
Moors, had been divested of all
political power, a like fate had befallen the cities, the free
constitutions of
Castile and
Aragon had been swept away, and the only function that remained to the
Cortes was that of granting money at the King's
dictation.
The transition extended to
literature. Men who, like
Garcilaso de la Vega and
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, followed the
Italian wars, had brought back from
Italy the products of the post-
Renaissance literature, which took root and flourished and even threatened to extinguish the native growths.
Damon and
Thyrsis,
Phyllis and
Chloe had been fairly naturalised in
Spain, together with all the devices of pastoral poetry for investing with an air of novelty the idea of a dispairing shepherd and inflexible shepherdess. As a set-off against this, the old
historical and traditional ballads, and the true
pastorals, the songs and ballads of peasant life, were being collected assiduously and printed in the
cancioneros that
succeeded one another with increasing rapidity. But the most notable consequence, perhaps, of the spread of printing was the flood of romances of chivalry that had continued to pour from the press ever since
Garci Ordonez de Montalvo had resuscitated "
Amadis of Gaul" at the beginning of
the century.
For a youth fond of reading, solid or light, there could have been no better spot in
Spain than
Alcala de Henares in the middle of the sixteenth century. It was then a busy, populous university town, something more than the enterprising rival of Salamanca, and altogether a very different place from the melancholy, silent, deserted Alcala the traveller sees now as he goes from Madrid to Saragossa. Theology and medicine may have been the strong points of the university, but the town itself seems to have inclined rather to the humanities and light
literature, and as a producer of books Alcala was already beginning to compete with the older presses of Toledo, Burgos, Salamanca and Seville.
A pendant to the picture
Cervantes has given us of his first
playgoings might, no doubt, have been often seen in the streets of
Alcala at that time; a bright, eager, tawny-haired boy peering into a book-shop where the latest volumes lay open to tempt the public, wondering, it may be, what that little book with the woodcut of the blind beggar and his boy, that called itself "
Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, segunda impresion," could be about; or with eyes brimming over with merriment gazing at one of those
preposterous portraits of a
knight-errant in outrageous
panoply and plumes with which the publishers of chivalry romances loved to embellish the title-pages of their folios. If the boy was the father of the man, the sense of the incongruous that was strong at fifty was lively at ten, and some such reflections as these may have been the true genesis of "Don Quixote."
For his more solid
education, we are told, he went to
Salamanca. But why
Rodrigo de Cervantes, who was very poor, should have sent his son to a university a
hundred and fifty miles away when he had one at his own door, would be a
puzzle, if we had any reason for supposing that he did so. The only evidence is a
vague statement by
Professor Tomas Gonzalez, that he once saw an old entry of the
matriculation of a
Miguel de Cervantes. This does not appear to have been ever seen again; but even if it had, and if the date corresponded, it would prove nothing, as there were at least two other
Miguels born about the middle of the century; one of them, moreover, a
Cervantes Saavedra, a cousin, no doubt, who was a source of great embarrassment to the
biographers.
That he was a student neither at
Salamanca nor at
Alcala is best proved by his own works. No man drew more largely upon experience than he did, and he has nowhere left a single reminiscence of student life- for the "
Tia Fingida," if it be his, is not one- nothing, not even "a
college joke," to show that he remembered days that most men remember best. All that we know positively about his education is that Juan Lopez de Hoyos, a professor of humanities and belles-lettres of some eminence, calls him his "dear and beloved
pupil." This was in a little collection of verses by different hands on the death of Isabel de Valois, second queen of
Philip II, published by the professor in
1569, to which
Cervantes contributed four pieces, including an elegy, and an
epitaph in the form of a
sonnet. It is only by a rare chance that a "Lycidas" finds its way into a
volume of this sort, and
Cervantes was no
Milton. His verses are no worse than such things usually are; so much, at least, may be said for them.
By the time the book appeared he had left
Spain, and, as fate ordered it, for
twelve years, the most eventful ones of his life.
Giulio, afterwards
Cardinal,
Acquaviva had been sent at the end of
1568 to
Philip II by the
Pope on a mission, partly of
condolence, partly
political, and on his return to
Rome, which was somewhat
brusquely expedited by the
King, he took
Cervantes with him as his
camarero (chamberlain), the
office he himself held in the
Pope's household. The post would no doubt have led to
advancement at the
Papal Court had
Cervantes retained it, but in the summer of
1570 he resigned it and enlisted as a private soldier in
Captain Diego Urbina's company, belonging to
Don Miguel de Moncada's
regiment, but at that time forming a part of the command of
Marc Antony Colonna. What
impelled him to this step we know not, whether it was distaste for the career before him, or purely military
enthusiasm. It may well have been the latter, for it was a stirring time; the events, however, which led to the alliance between
Spain,
Venice, and the
Pope, against the common enemy, the Porte, and to the victory of the combined fleets at
Lepanto, belong rather to the history of
Europe than to the life of
Cervantes. He was one of those that sailed from Messina, in
September 1571, under the command of
Don John of
Austria; but on the morning of the 7th of
October, when the
Turkish fleet was sighted, he was lying below ill with fever. At the news that the enemy was in sight he rose, and, in spite of the
remonstrances of his
comrades and
superiors, insisted on taking his post, saying he preferred death in the service of
God and the
King to
health. His galley, the
Marquesa, was in the thick of the fight, and before it was over he had received three gunshot wounds, two in the breast and one in the left hand or arm. On the morning after the battle, according to
Navarrete, he had an interview with the commander-in-chief,
Don John, who was making a personal
inspection of the wounded, one result of which was an addition of
three crowns to his pay, and another, apparently, the friendship of his
general.
How severely
Cervantes was wounded may be inferred from the fact, that with youth, a
vigorous frame, and as cheerful and buoyant a
temperament as ever
invalid had, he was seven months in
hospital at
Messina before he was discharged. He came out with his left hand
permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as Mercury told him in the "
Viaje del Parnaso" for the greater glory of the right. This, however, did not absolutely unfit him for service, and in
April 1572 he joined
Manuel Ponce de Leon's company of
Lope de Figueroa's
regiment, in which, it seems probable, his brother
Rodrigo was serving, and shared in the operations of the next three years, including the capture of the
Goletta and
Tunis. Taking advantage of the lull which followed the recapture of these places by the Turks, he obtained leave to return to
Spain, and sailed from Naples in September 1575 on board the
Sun galley, in company with his brother
Rodrigo,
Pedro Carrillo de Quesada, late
Governor of the Goletta, and some others, and furnished with letters from
Don John of
Austria and the
Duke of Sesa, the
Viceroy of
Sicily,
recommending him to the
King for the command of a
company, on account of his services; a dono infelice as events proved. On the
26th they fell in with a squadron of
Algerine galleys, and after a stout resistance were overpowered and carried into
Algiers.
By means of a ransomed fellow-captive the brothers contrived to inform their
family of their condition, and the poor people at Alcala at once strove to raise the
ransom money, the father disposing of all he possessed, and the two sisters giving up their marriage portions. But Dali Mami had found on
Cervantes the letters addressed to the King by Don John and the
Duke of Sesa, and, concluding that his prize must be a pers
on of great
consequence, when the
money came he refused it scornfully as being altogether
insufficient. The owner of Rodrigo, however, was more easily satisfied; ransom was accepted in his case, and it was arranged
between the brothers that he should return to
Spain and procure a vessel in which he was to come back to
Algiers and take off
Miguel and as many of their comrades as possible. This was not the first attempt to escape that
Cervantes had made.
Soon after the
commencement of his
captivity he induced several of his companions to join him in trying to reach Oran, then a
Spanish post, on
foot; but after the first day's journey, the Moor who had agreed to act as their guide deserted them, and they had no choice but to return. The
second attempt was more disastrous. In a garden outside the city on the sea-shore, he constructed, with the help of the gardener, a Spaniard, a hiding-place, to which he
brought, one by one, fourteen of his fellow-captives, keeping them there in secrecy for several months, and supplying them with food through a renegade known as
El Dorador, "
the Gilder." How he, a captive
himself, contrived to do all this, is one of the mysteries of the story. Wild as the project may appear, it was very nearly
successful. The vessel procured by Rodrigo made its appearance off the coast, and under cover of night was proceeding to take off the refugees, when the crew were alarmed by a passing fishing boat, and beat a hasty retreat. On renewing the attempt shortly afterwards, they, or a
portion of them at least, were taken prisoners, and just as the poor fellows in the garden were exulting in the thought that in a few moments more freedom would be within their grasp, they found themselves surrounded by
Turkish troops, horse and foot. The Dorador had revealed the whole scheme to the
Dey Hassan.
Don Quixote
Part II