THE LIFE OF CERVANTES.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
“IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN.”
“THE ALHAMBRA.”
“THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA.”
“THE EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIA.”
“MY FOURTH TOUR IN AUSTRALIA.”
“BACON AND SHAKESPEARE.”
“THE POLITICAL VALUE OF OUR COLONIES.”
[Illustration: signature: _Miguel Cerbantes Saavedra_]
THE LIFE OF
CERVANTES.
BY ALBERT F. CALVERT.
WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS AND
REPRODUCTIONS FROM EARLY
EDITIONS OF DON QUIXOTE.
THE TERCENTENARY EDITION.
JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD,
LONDON AND NEW YORK, MDCCCCV.
_E. Goodman and Son, Phœnix Printing Works, Taunton._
PREFACE.
Three hundred years ago this month the First Part of _El Ingenioso
Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha_ was published in Madrid, and the world
was made the richer by a book which will last until “the silver chord be
loosed or the golden bowl be broken”; until the earth relapses into its
original silence and language is no more spoken or read. It is somewhat
late to weave new laurels for the brow of Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra--the last word on _Don Quixote_ has been spoken. The great
contemporary of Shakespeare has long since come into his own among the
world’s heroes; no country has forborne to do him honour; no literature
is complete that does not contain a translation of his book.
But while the career of Cervantes forms as eventful and varied a history
as that of the Knight-errant of La Mancha himself--_Don Quixote_ might
even be read as the sequel of its author’s life--the number of
biographies of the Spanish writer in the English tongue is curiously
limited. It is ten years since Mr. Henry Edward Watts--whose recent
demise will be regretted by all Cervantists in this country--issued his
new and revised edition of the _Life and Works of Cervantes_, and the
scholarly and deeply-interesting _Life_ by Mr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly,
Cervantes’ most brilliant and discriminating biographer, is already a
rare and almost unobtainable work.
Several hundred works of biography, commentary, and criticism of
Cervantes’ life and writings have been published in various languages,
yet I am not without hope that this modest contribution may find an
unoccupied niche in the broad gallery of Cervantist literature. I have
no new data to offer, but I have put forward my conclusions, where they
traverse the judgment of other authors, with all reserve; and on points
of fact I have accepted the verdict of the majority of my authorities.
Wherever I have quoted, and I have had much resource to Mr.
Fitzmaurice-Kelly and others, I have acknowledged my indebtedness; and I
have endeavoured to keep always in view my object to present a concise,
accurate, and readable life of Cervantes.
I confess that I have less diffidence in submitting for the approval of
my readers the illustrations which grace this little book. The
reproductions of the title pages of various of Cervantes’ books, and the
original illustrations to _Don Quixote_, will recommend themselves to
lovers of letters and of Cervantes; and, in default of an authentic
likeness of our author, I offer a choice of all the best-known attempts
to repair the omission.
A. F. C.
“ROYSTON,” HAMPSTEAD, N.W.,
JANUARY, 1905.
CONTENTS.
PAGES
THE LIFE OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES 1 TO 87
THE PROVERBS OF CERVANTES 89 TO 97
CHRONOLOGICAL REPERTOIRE OF DOCUMENTS RELATING
TO THE LIFE OF CERVANTES 99 TO 110
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DON QUIXOTE--
SPANISH EDITIONS 111 TO 125
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 125 TO 133
LIST OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF CERVANTES, ARRANGED
CHRONOLOGICALLY 135 TO 138
SYNOPSIS OF THE EDITIONS OF DON QUIXOTE 139
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FACING PAGE
PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, PHOTOGRAVURE _Frontispiece_
PORTRAIT OF THE FIGURE IN PACHECO’S PICTURE AT
SEVILLE, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT CERVANTES 4
CERVANTES 8, 12
PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, MODELLED BY ROSENDO NOBAS,
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF DON LEOPOLD RIUS 16
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 20
PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, PHOTOGRAVURE 24
STATUE OF CERVANTES, AT MADRID 28
FACSIMILE. LETTER FROM CERVANTES TO THE ARCHBISHOP
OF TOLEDO 32
TITLE PAGE. GALATEA. FIRST PART. MADRID, 1585 34
TITLE PAGE. GALATEA, FIRST PART. 1590 36
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE. MADRID, 1605 38
TITLE PAGE. EXEMPLARY NOVELS. MADRID, 1613 40
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE. PARIS, 1614 42
TITLE PAGE. VIAGE DEL PARNASO. MADRID, 1614 44
TITLE PAGE. EIGHT COMEDIES, ETC. MADRID, 1615 46
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE, SECOND PART. MADRID, 1615 48
TITLE PAGE. PERSILES Y SIGISMUNDA. MADRID, 1617 50
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE, SECOND PART. PARIS, 1618 52
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE. BRUSSELS, 1662 54
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE, FIRST PART. LONDON, 1612 56
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA (OLDEST PLATE). PARIS,
1622. _First Edition_ 60
FIGHT BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND THE BISCAYAN. PARIS,
1713. _Fifth Edition_ 62
DON QUIXOTE DISCOURSING ON THE GOLDEN AGE. LONDON,
1738. _Seventh Edition_ 66
DON QUIXOTE TILTING AGAINST THE ARMY OF ALIFANFARON.
EL HAYA, 1746. _Ninth Edition_ 70
SANCHO PANZA TOSSED IN THE BLANKET. BOSTON, 1837.
_Thirty-Eighth Edition_ 72
ADVENTURE WITH THE LIONS. PARIS, 1844. _Fortieth Edition_ 74
DON QUIXOTE ABSORBED IN THE READING OF BOOKS ON
KNIGHT ERRANTRY. PARIS, 1845. _Forty-First Edition_ 76
SANCHO’S DILIGENCE IN ENCHANTING DULCINEA. LONDON,
1858. _Forty-Seventh Edition_ 78
DON QUIXOTE BECOMING AWARE OF THE CURDS IN HIS
HELMET. COPENHAGEN, 1865-1869. _Fifty-Fourth
Edition_ 80
WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE.
MADRID, 1868. _Fifty-Eighth Edition_ 82
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO ON THE ROAD TO TOBOSO.
PARIS, 1868. _Fifty-Ninth Edition_ 84
DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE. PARIS, 1858. _Sixtieth Edition_ 86
THE LIFE OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra occupies an isolated and unique position
among the great ones of Spanish history. As Columbus stands for the
genius of discovery, Cervantes, in the mind of the civilised world, is
analogous with Spanish literature. Mendoza and Lope de Vega, Tirso de
Molina or Calderon are but shadows beside the reality of Cervantes as a
living force in letters. The record of Spain’s military glory is gemmed
with a cluster of such names as those of the Cid and the Duke of Parma,
of Boabdil, and Spinola; its sea fame rests upon the records of a long
roll of mighty admirals. In art, Velasquez shares precedence with
Murillo, and Ribera and Goya are worthy of a place in the same gallery;
and while in song there is no national composer to associate Spain with
the music of Europe, in the literary firmament the star of Cervantes
rises in single splendour, and obscures all lesser luminaries.
Viewed in another and more personal light, Cervantes is still found to
be “without like or similar;” in himself, as in his work, he retains
his peculiar solitariness. He may not rank equal with Shakespeare and
Homer, Dante and Milton, Balzac and Molière, among the giants of
literature; but as soldier and author he has a double claim upon the
admiration and regard of posterity. Edmund Spencer and Walter Raleigh
sustained the dual rôle with distinction; but the one is now only known
for his poetry, and the other lives only by virtue of his military
exploits. If Cervantes had not written _Don Quixote_, his literary worth
would never have been recognised; but his name would yet have been
preserved to us as “the man of Lepanto” and the captive of Algiers. That
he survived his wounds and captivity, his poverty and persecution, to
publish in his fifty-ninth year a work which Dr. Johnson esteemed the
greatest book in the world after the Iliad, is not less remarkable than
the fact that his whole career, with all his varied and unrelieved
vicissitudes, was necessary for its composition.
Under Philip II., Spain was at the zenith of her glory, and her
hardly-won and short-lived supremacy was already on the wane. At a time
when Spain was a nest of singing birds, the youthful Cervantes won his
spurs as a poet--Navarrete regards him as among “the most celebrated
poets of the nation”--and in an era when valour was the profession of
the nation, he was esteemed one of the most valorous soldiers of his
day. Subsequently he became “probably the first man of genius since the
revival of learning who made an attempt to earn a livelihood by his
pen,” and his enterprise was rewarded with penury and imprisonment. The
character of the man, whom we have learnt to revere as an unappreciated
genius, an unhonoured soldier, and an unrecognised martyr for the
Christian faith, has been finely summed up for us by his Spanish
biographer, Aribau, in the following vivid passage: “Fearless in peril,
strong in adversity, modest in triumph, careless and generous in his own
concerns, delighting in conferring favours, indulgent to the well-meant
efforts of mediocrity, endowed with a sound and very clear judgment, of
an imagination without example in its fecundity--he passed through the
world as a stranger whose language was not understood. His
contemporaries knew him not, but regarded him with indifference.
Posterity has given him but tardy compensation. It has recognised him as
a man who went before his age, who divined the tastes and tendencies of
another society; and, making himself popular with his inexhaustible
graces, announced the dawn of a civilisation which broke long
afterwards.”
Miguel de Cervantes came of a good, if not noble family, which traced
its origin back to the tenth century. Poverty, as he himself has said,
may cloud, but cannot wholly obscure nobility; and although his parents
appear to have possessed an indifferent share of this world’s goods,
they ranked among the hidalgos of Alcala de Henares, in New Castile,
where Miguel was born, in 1547. To-day Alcala is a dull, featureless
little town, decaying by the sleepy waters of the Henares, memorable
only by reason of the mighty names which are associated with its
history. Here Charles V. entertained his royal prisoner Francis I.; here
Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, in 1510, founded its university; and, in
1517, superintended the printing of the Complutensian Bible, which was
produced at a cost of 80,000 ducats; and here the body of the great
Cardinal Statesman lies beneath a princely monument in the Colégio
Mayor.
From 1616 until 1748 the identity of Cervantes’ birthplace was lost. The
place of Don Quixote’s nativity, it will be remembered, was obscured by
his inventor, in order that “all the towns and villages of La Mancha
might contend among themselves for the honour of giving him birth and
adopting him for their own, as the Seven Cities of Greece contended for
Homer,” and for over 130 years he was himself the subject of a similar
uncertainty. Until 1748, when the discovery of his baptismal registrar
in the Parish Church of Saint Mary the Creator, at Alcala de Henares,
made an end of the mystery that had existed on the point, seven cities
of Spain contended fiercely for the honour of claiming Cervantes for
their own. But the pretentions of Madrid, Seville, Toledo, Lucena,
Esquívias, Alcazar de San Juan and Consuegra were disposed of by this
documentary evidence, and speculation was shifted from Cervantes’
birthplace to his place of education; indeed the little that is known of
the author’s
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE FIGURE IN PACHECO’S PICTURE AT SEVILLE,
SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT CERVANTES.]
early days leaves ample scope for conjecture. Tradition says that he
spent two years at the University of Salamanca, and the house in which
he is supposed to have resided, in the Calle de Moros, is still regarded
as one of the lions of this once famous seat of learning. The city is
now without learning, society, or commerce--a ruin of its former
greatness. Yet in the fourteenth century its university boasted 10,000
students, and in Cervantes’ youth some 5,000 students resorted thither.
But the University of Alcala was also at that time a famous centre of
learning, and it is unlikely that Cervantes, having regard to the
financial status of his family, would go further afield for his
collegiate course. Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, who does not believe that he
was a student of any university, regards the assumption that he was sent
to the distant University of Salamanca, as something like mockery.
All that we can ascertain, concerning his student life, is that he
learnt grammar and the humanities under Lopez de Hoyos, a man of culture
and a teacher of some distinction in his age and generation. In 1568,
upon the death of Isabel de Valois, the third wife of Philip II.,
Cervantes, among Hoyos’ pupils, won much commendation for some verses
written in commemoration of the national bereavement, and we find his
master alluding to the youthful poet as his “dear and beloved pupil,”
and eulogising the “elegant style,” “rhetorical colours,” and “delicate
conceits” of his literary exercises. These compositions, together with
many other early poetical effusions of the author, are to be found in
some Spanish editions of Cervantes’ works, but the general reader will
be content to take them as read. Their author, in his reference to these
immature effusions in his _Journey around Parnassus_, admits that “from
his tenderest years he had loved the sweet art of poesy,” he volunteers
the information that he had produced an endless variety of ballads and
sonnets of varying degrees of merit, and modestly confesses that “Heaven
had not granted him the poet’s grace.”
Cervantes was still a stripling when he first evinced that interest in
the acted drama, which he never entirely lost. Lope de Rueda, who did so
much to produce order out of chaos in the drama of Spain, was at that
time an actor-manager at the head of his own company of strolling
players. It was this gold-beater of Seville, “admirable in Pastoral
Poetry,” distinguished alike “for his acting and for his intelligence,”
who brought comedies “out of their swaddling clothes and gave them
habitation, and attired them decently and handsomely.” Cervantes must
have attended the performances of the Rueda Company when they were in
the neighbourhood of Segovia, in 1558; and in the preface to his volume
of Comedies and Farces, published a year before his death, he gives us
some interesting particulars of the theatrical impedimenta in use at
that time. The performances were given in the morning and afternoon in
the public square, and the only decoration of the theatre was “an old
blanket drawn aside by two ropes, which made what they call the
green-room; behind which were the musicians, singing some old ballad
without a guitar.” The properties consisted of “four benches arranged in
a square, with five or six planks on top of them, raised but four
handsbreadth from the ground;” while the whole apparatus of a manager of
plays, was contained in a sack, and consisted of “four white sheep-skin
dresses, trimmed with gilt leather, and four beards, wigs, and crooks,
more or less.”
In 1568, an event occurred which altered the trend of Cervantes’ life,
and carried him for a period of twelve years from his native land. In
that year, the young and cultured Cardinal Acquaviva came to the Court
of Philip II. on a ceremonial mission from the Pope. Though received
with scant courtesy by the King, the learned envoy was warmly welcomed
by the men of letters of Madrid. By one of these, it is suggested by
Cardinal Espinosa to whom Cervantes had dedicated some of his verses,
the poet was presented to Acquaviva; and when the Papal legate brought
his visit to an end, Cervantes returned with him to Rome in the capacity
of _camarero_, or page. Mr. Kelly treats at some length, if with scant
credulity, the vague legend, that in his early youth Cervantes held some
minor post at Court; and while he attaches no importance to the
traditions that he left Spain to escape the consequences of having
wounded a courtier in a duel, or of having had some love passages with
a lady about the Court, he takes it for granted that he “fled to Italy
in half-voluntary, half-compulsory exile.” Whether that was so or not,
he only remained for little more than a year in the service of his
ecclesiastical patron, and in the beginning of 1570 he entered the
Spanish Army as a private soldier in the company of the famous captain,
Don Diego de Urbina.
While it is generally recognised that Cervantes, the author and
philosopher, was in advance of his age, Cervantes, the man, was, it
would appear, the natural product of his generation and his environment.
In the university city of Alcala, “in that fruitful harvest-time of
Spanish literature,” he cultivated the muses; in Italy--which, at that
period, was dominated by Spain--surrounded, as he was, on all sides by
the indomitable Spanish infantry, who “made the earth tremble with their
firelocks,” the spirit of Cervantes was fired with military ardour.
Christendom, too, was at perpetual war with the Turks, and to a youth of
Cervantes’ chivalrous temperament the prospects offered by a career
which united the services of both Church and King would prove
irresistible. He was present, in 1570, at the ineffectual attempt to
relieve the Island of Cyprus, a failure which led up to the formation of
the Holy League of Spain, Venice, and Rome against Selim II., and found
its crowning glory in the Battle of Lepanto.
The troops went into Winter quarters on their return from Cyprus, and
Cervantes trod the streets
[Illustration: CERVANTES.]
of Naples for more than a year, while the allied fleets were being
mobilised. On September 15th, Don Juan of Austria found himself in
command of the squadron of 208 galleys, 7 galleons, and 24 sailing
ships, which sailed from Messina with a complement of 26,000 soldiers to
give battle to the Turkish fleet. The enemy were discovered within the
Gulf of Lepanto, where, on October 7th, was fought one of the greatest
sea-actions of all times. The Turkish ships, though more numerous than
those of the allies, were smaller in design, inferior in their
armaments, and less skilfully navigated, while the wind, veering
suddenly at the crisis of the struggle, gave the advantage to the united
fleet. Though the result was not the beginning of the end of Moslem
supremacy, the victory of the Holy League was complete and emphatic. The
power of the Turk was arrested, and all Christendom rang with the glory
of the achievement.
The story of the Battle of Lepanto does not call for special description
in these pages; its personal and peculiar interest for us lies in the
fact that the two names that are associated with the victory in the most
notable prominence are those of Don Juan of Austria, the generalissimo
of the forces, and Miguel de Cervantes, the private soldier on the
_Marquesa_--the one for his skill and generalship, the other for his
personal heroism. Of Cervantes’ share in the battle, we have ample and
detailed evidence. On the morning of the action he was, according to
Martin Fernández de Navarrete, stricken with fever, and ordered to
remain in the safety of his cabin. But on the representations of the
young soldier, who protested that he would rather die fighting for God
and his King than tend his health in security, his captain gave him a
command of twelve men, and stationed him in a boat on the fighting side
of the galley. Opposed to the _Marquesa_ was the flagship of the Turkish
right squadron, commanded by the Captain-Pasha of Alexandria, and
floating the royal standard of Egypt. The duel between the two galleys
was fought with the utmost gallantry on both sides, but the Turk was
captured after the loss of 500 of her crew, and her surrender involved
the rout of the entire right squadron.
That Cervantes’ share in this encounter was of material service in
contributing to its successful issue, is evidenced by the fact that in
an army of 26,000 soldiers and sailors he won the most distinguished
measure of individual renown. That he held the post of greatest danger,
that he was the first to board the galley, and bore himself with
intrepid gallantry, we know on the sworn testimony of Mateo de
Santisteban and others of his comrades. The evidence is supported by the
unusual interest and concern that Don Juan evinced in him, raising his
pay by five or six _escudos_, and visiting him in the Hospital of
Messina. For Cervantes had not come through the battle unscathed. In his
breast he received two arquebus wounds, while his left hand was injured
by a ball, which rendered it useless for the remainder of his life. In
Sola’s bronze statue of Cervantes, at Barcelona, “El manco de Lepanto,”
as his countrymen have proudly styled him, is represented with his
maimed hand hidden beneath his cloak; although, during his lifetime, he
carried with pride the wounds received in “the most memorable of all
occasions past, present, or to come”--“wounds that show like stars,
lighting us on to heaven and to fame”--and declared that his useless
left hand was crippled “for the greater glory of the right.”
Between 1571 and 1575 Cervantes lived the strenuous life of a private
soldier, taking part in two campaigns, fighting with enthusiasm,
enduring wounds and hardships with stoical fortitude, and acquiring that
knowledge of men and things which he was afterwards to employ to such
good purpose. His injuries were tended at Messina, but he returned to
his duties before they were properly healed; and two years later, when
he went to Tunis in the army of Don Juan, he writes to Mateo Vasquez
that his wounds were “yet dripping with blood.” After his discharge from
the hospital, he was transferred to the _tercio de Figueroa_, commanded
by Don Manuel Ponce de Leon; and, as a _soldado aventajado_, or select
soldier, in the most famous infantry regiment of Spain, he was on the
high road to promotion and a distinguished career. In the story of “The
Captive,” in _Don Quixote_ (Part I., Chapter xxxix.), Cervantes has left
us a graphic account of the ineffective and inglorious second campaign
of the allies in the Levant, which was followed by the dissolution of
the Holy League. Cervantes repaired with his regiment to Naples, and,
after the Tunis expedition, he was for some time in garrison in the
Island of Sardinia, before being sent to Genoa by the order of Don Juan.
The inadequacy of the Spanish garrison left for the protection of Tunis,
and the growing boldness and activity of the combined Moors and Turks,
called for prompt measures; and, in 1574, Don Juan held himself in
readiness with a fleet to restore Spanish prestige in Africa. But the
delays, caused by the procrastination of Philip, proved fatal. Before
the squadron received the supplies and materials required for the
expedition, the allies, after a desperate military and naval engagement,
captured the Goletta, and obtained possession of Tunis. With this last
prospect of active service dispelled, Cervantes, weary of inaction,
disgusted with the unchivalrous termination of the Crusade which had
commenced so gloriously at Lepanto, and eager for the sight of his
native land, obtained leave to return to Spain. The high opinion in
which he was held by “men of state and of might” with whom he had come
in contact, is shown by the fact that this private soldier received from
the Commander-in-Chief, Don Juan, a letter to the King, strongly
recommending him as “a man of valour, of merit, and of many signal
services,” while the Viceroy of Sicily, the Duke of Sessa, provided him
with letters to Philip, and to his Council, in
[Illustration: CERVANTES.]
which he speaks of him as “a soldier as deserving as he was unfortunate;
who, by his noble virtue and gentle disposition, had won the esteem of
his comrades and his chiefs.” In August, 1575, he set sail for Naples on
board the galley _El Sol_, but five years more were to elapse before he
was again to tread the shores of Spain.
In the following month, _El Sol_ was attacked within sight of the
Spanish coast by a squadron of Algerine pirates. In the unequal contest
which followed, Cervantes is reported to have borne himself with
characteristic gallantry, but such an encounter could have but one
issue, and the captured Spaniards were divided up among the Moors as
spoils of victory. Cervantes became the prize of a Captain, named Delí
Mamí, a renegade Greek, who had earned the distinction of being one of
the most ferocious of that notoriously savage and revengeful race of
corsairs. For the following five years Cervantes endured a tyranny of
serfdom as rigorous and unrelaxing as ever slave suffered in the mines
of Spain. He was already known as _el manco de Lepanto_; he was now to
earn, if not to wear, the title of _el manco de Argel_.
It is not our purpose here to give a detailed description of the
sufferings he bore with knightly fortitude and undaunted spirit for
those long five years. The particulars are preserved to us in official
documents, but a brief summary must find a place in our sketch.
According to the testimony of Father Haedo, in whose _Topography of
Algiers_, published in 1612, we have the most valuable authority for
this period of Cervantes’ life, and who was an eye-witness to the
cruelties practised upon the Christian slaves, the captivity of
Cervantes was one of the hardest ever known in Algiers. Mr. Watts has
given us an eloquent account of our hero in this bondage. It was borne,
he says, with a courage and constancy which, had there been nothing else
to make his name memorable, must have sufficed to rank Cervantes among
the heroes of his age and country. No episode more romantic is contained
in the books of chivalry. No adventures more strange were encountered by
any knight-errant. Not Amadis nor Esplandian, nor any of those whose
fabled deeds had kindled his youthful imagination, displayed a loftier
spirit of honour, or more worthily discharged his knightly devoir, than
did Miguel de Cervantes when in duress in Algiers. A slave in the power
of the bitter enemy of his creed and nation, cut off in the heyday of
his fame from the path of ambition which fortune seemed to have opened
to him; no lot could be more cruel than that which, in the fulness of
his manhood and genius, fell to his share.
Nor is there any chapter of his life more honourable than that record of
the singular daring, fortitude, patience and cheerfulness with which he
bore his fate during this miserable period. With no other support than
his own indomitable spirit, forgotten by those whom he had served,
unable to receive any help from his friends, subjected to every kind of
hardship which the tyranny or caprice of his masters might order,
pursued by an unrelenting evil destiny, which seemed in this, as in
every other passage of his career, to mock at his efforts to live that
high heroic life which he had conceived to himself; this poor maimed
soldier was looked up to by that wretched colony of Christian captives
(including among them many men of higher birth and rank) as their chief
counsellor, comforter, and guide. In his formal information, laid before
the commissary of the Spanish Government at Algiers, Father Juan Gil, of
the Order of the Redemptorists, very particular testimony is borne by
Cervantes’ fellow-captives to his character and conduct, as one who bore
himself always as a faithful Christian, who cheered those who were
despondent, who shared with the poor the little that he possessed, who
helped the sick in their necessities, who risked every danger in the
cause of the faith, behaving himself always like a true soldier of the
King and a noble gentleman--all of which good record is confirmed by the
honest Father himself of his own personal knowledge.
The daring escapes that Cervantes planned, the intrepid courage with
which he set himself to invent new schemes when the old ones miscarried;
the indomitable cheerfulness he always maintained, and especially the
spell he exercised over his master, the brutal Hassan Pasha of evil
memory, are sufficient to mark him as a man of extraordinary resource,
magnetism, and force of character. Delí Mamí, misled by the letters
which were found upon the person of his captive, regarded Cervantes as a
man of position and substance, and the treatment meted out to him was
the more severe, in order that his family would the more speedily effect
his release. These Algerine pirates lived upon the ransoms which they
extorted from the friends of their captives; and at the time of
Cervantes’ bondage, no fewer than 25,000 Christians, including many men
of rank and fortune, were waiting the arrival of the price of their
freedom, and frequently enlivening the monotony of their servitude by
attempting to escape. Cervantes earned a peculiar celebrity among this
army of captives by the ingenuity and persistence of the plans he put
into practice in order to achieve the ambition of every bondman. But
while his courage became proverbial, and his craft amazed both his
captors and his fellow-prisoners, his ill-luck ever intervened to
frustrate his best-laid plans.
A further reference may be permitted here to the influence which
Cervantes exercised upon his barbarous gaoler, Hassan Pasha, who had
purchased him from Delí Mamí for the sum of 500 gold crowns. The author
of _Don Quixote_ has told us (Part I., Chapter xi.) of “the unheard-of
and unseen cruelties which my master practised on the Christians. Every
day he hanged a slave; impaled one; cut off the ears of another; and
this upon so
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, MODELLED BY ROSENDO NOBAS, UNDER
THE DIRECTION OF DON LEOPOLD RIUS.]
little occasion, or so entirely without cause, that the Turks would own
he did it merely for the sake of doing it, and because it was his
nature.” This “homicide of all human kind,” as Cervantes stigmatises him
in another place, was so inexplicably dominated by fear and respect of
his slave that he was wont to declare that, “if he had this maimed
Spaniard in safe keeping, he would reckon as secure his Christians, his
ships, and his city.” But the most difficult feat of his
governorship--Hassan Pasha was at this period Viceroy and virtual King
of Algeria--was to retain his intrepid prisoner in custody. Twice the
hangman’s rope was drawn upon his neck, and twice his head was, at the
last moment, taken from the noose. On one occasion he was ordered 2,000
blows with a stick by “the most cruel tyrant of all those who have been
kings of Algiers,” but the rod never descended upon his body. Yet it is
known that he did not volunteer one word on his own behalf, or urge a
single plea in extenuation of his designs. When the viceroy’s soldiers
captured a little band of Christians, on the eve of their embarkation on
a frigate sent to their relief, it was Miguel de Cervantes who went
forward alone to meet the captors, declaring that he alone was the
instigator of the whole plot, and that none of his companions had any
part or blame in the business. He repeated his statement in the presence
of Hassan Pasha, and although “threatened with torture and instant
death, with the spectacle of many of his companions hanged or mutilated
before his eyes, Cervantes refused to implicate any one in his schemes
of flight.”
In 1577, Cervantes, recognising the unpreparedness of the Algerians, the
weakness of the city’s fortifications, and the numerical superiority of
the Christian population to support from within a systematic scheme to
capture the city, made an ineffectual appeal to the king to come to the
rescue of his captive subjects. The petition, if ever it came to Philip,
fell upon deaf ears; and the arch-plotter, disappointed but undeterred,
sent a secret message to Don Martin de Cordova, the Governor of Oran,
praying him to provide men to assist in a general escape. The
miscarriage of this adventure, through the capture and death of the
messenger, brought Cervantes once more within an ace of the rod and the
halter, but the irrepressible schemer was presently surprised in
hatching still another device to obtain his liberty, and had to seek
refuge with a friend from the rage of the viceroy. A proclamation,
threatening instant death to anyone sheltering the fugitive, was
published in Algiers, and rather than expose his concealer to this
danger, Cervantes voluntarily presented himself before Hassan Pasha, who
vainly endeavoured, by threats of torture and death, to extort from him
the names of his accomplices.
Loaded with chains, and guarded with unceasing vigilance, he was now
kept for five months in the closest confinement, but the viceroy still
refrained from visiting the defiance of his prisoner with stripes or
personal indignity. As Cervantes has recorded, in his modest reference
to this period of captivity in _Don Quixote_: “The only one who held his
own with him (Hassan Pasha) was a Spanish soldier, called De Saavedra,
to whom, though he did things which will dwell in the memory of those
people for many years, and all for the recovery of his freedom, his
master never gave him a blow, nor bade anyone to do so, nor even spoke
to him an ill word, though for the least of the many things he did we
all feared he would be impaled, as he himself feared more than once.”
This story is confirmed by Father Haedo, who says that while the
captivity of Cervantes was “one of the worst ever known in Algiers,” he
was never beaten, or hurt, or abused in his person; and the worthy
Benedictine monk, in his _Topografia e Historia General de Argel_
(1612), further declares that “had his (Cervantes’) fortune corresponded
to his intrepidity, his industry, and his projects, this day Algiers
would belong to the Christians; for to no other end did his intents
aspire.”
While we must deplore the wounds which Cervantes received in the wars,
and sorrow over the duress he suffered in Algiers, it must be always
remembered with pride that it was to his personal valour, and nobility
in adversity, that we owe the full and particular account that we have
of these years of his career. As he gained the commendation of Don Juan
in action, he won in adversity “great fame, praise, honour, and glory
among the Christians” in Algiers. And that the record of his unswerving
loyalty to creed and country, his “mingled genius and greatness,” and
his magnanimous refusal to inculpate anyone in his many attempts to
escape, should not be lost, a base Dominican, one Blanco de Paz,
circulated such calumnies against Cervantes that he demanded the charges
should be investigated before Father Juan Gil. Cervantes had, at this
time, been ransomed by the efforts of his family and the generosity of
the local merchants, who supplemented the 600 ducats his mother and
sister had managed to raise by a contribution of a further 400 ducats,
with which Hassan Pasha was satisfied. The inquiry lasted for twelve
days, and ended in the complete acquittal of Cervantes, who was declared
to be deserving, for his conduct in captivity, of all the praises which
he had received. The abstract of these proceedings, signed by Father
Juan Gil, are still reserved in the archives of Simancas, and from these
we obtain the materials for the biographical account of Cervantes’
career during his Algerine captivity. “Had there survived no other
record than this of the life of Cervantes,” Mr. Watts justly remarks,
“had he not written a line of the books which have made him famous, the
proofs we have here of his greatness of soul, constancy, and
cheerfulness under the severest of trials which a man could endure,
would be sufficient to ensure him lasting fame. The enthusiasm, the
alacrity, and
[Illustration: MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA.]
the unanimity with which all the witnesses--including the captives of
the highest rank and character in Algiers--give their testimony in
favour of their beloved comrade, are quite remarkable, and without
precedent. They speak of him in terms such as no knight of romance ever
deserved; of his courage in danger; his resolution under suffering; his
patience in trouble; his daring and fertility of resource in action. He
seems to have won the hearts of all the captives, both laymen and
clerics, by his good humour, unselfish devotion, and kindliness of
heart.” His liberation was effected on the 19th September, 1580; the
inquiry held by Father Gil was concluded on the 22nd October; and in the
last days of the same year he landed in Spain, and learned from
experience the truth of his confident declaration: “There is not a
satisfaction on earth equal to that of recovered liberty.”
Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, whose study of Cervantes’ life and character is
instinct with a wholesome sanity and a freedom from all sentimental
adulation, does not fail to detect the extravagant sanguineness which
inspired many of these attempts at escape. To him, “the whole story of
this captivity reads like a page from some wild impossible romance;” but
while his judicious biographer can smile at Cervantes’ “sublime
self-confidence,” and regard his _affairé_ with the unknown Portuguese
lady without hysteria, and is not even convinced that Christendom was
saved on the great day of Lepanto, by the single arm of our hero, he is
not lacking in sincere appreciation of the many virtues of the author of
_Don Quixote_. Cervantes was not a great poet, or a great dramatist, or
a great man of business; viewed in the light of the age in which he
lived, and Mr. Kelly never fails to bear this fundamental condition in
mind, he was an honourable, right-living man, who made no pretentions to
being an ascetic or a saint. Mr. Kelly can detect the minor blemishes of
a nature which had the defects of its own virtues; he realises that his
frequent and fruitless dashes for liberty, which only intensified the
severity of his captivity, were inspired by a reckless, uncalculating
optimism; but he is not blind to the sympathetic, generous spirit which
not even malignant oppression could imbitter, or to the buoyant
temperament which the sternest fates could not deaden.
“To say that when Cervantes left his home of servitude,” Mr. Kelly
writes, “he was in every respect the same man as when he entered it,
would be to say that he was deaf to the voice of wisdom, and blind to
the disillusioning teaching of experience. He had had borne in on him
‘the sense that every struggle brings defeat,’ and had realised the
width and depth of the vast abyss which yawns between the easy project
and the painful, nebulous, far-off achievement. Something of the
invincible confidence, the early ardour, the unquestioning trustfulness
of youth had passed with the passing years, and melted into the grey,
sombre ether of the past; but nothing misanthropic mingled with his
splendid scorn, his magnificent disdain for the base and the ignoble;
nothing of the cruel, fierce indignation of Swift gleamed from those
quiet, searching eyes, which watched the absurdities of his fellow-men
with a humorous, whimsical, indulgent smile. In the squalid prison life
his strenuous courage, his iron constancy and self-sacrificing devotion
had drawn every heart towards him with one exception--that of the
scandalous, shameless friar, Blanco de Paz.”
After seven years of intermittant activity, and yet another five of
terrible captivity, in the service of Spain, we find Cervantes, at the
age of thirty-three, the “captain of his fate,” but attached to no
regiment; the “master of his soul,” but master of nothing else. He
carried his honourable wounds and the traces of his duress with pride,
but so far as worldly advancement went, they did not serve him. He might
well have cried, in the spirit and words of W. E. Henley:
“Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed;”
but the king, for whom he had shed his blood, was unmindful of him; his
patron, Don Juan of Austria, was dead, and he had perforce to commence
the business of life over again, without a friend and with a financial
liability in the matter of his ransom, which was to take him four years
to pay off. But he would appear to have been without regrets or
repinings--he had regained his liberty, and we know in what measure he
prized it. He must have been re-living the emotions he experienced on
his return to his native land, when he made Don Quixote declare to his
faithful squire: “Liberty ... is one of the most valuable blessings that
heaven has bestowed upon mankind. Not all the treasures concealed in the
bowels of the earth, nor those in the bosom of the sea can be compared
with it. For liberty a man may--nay, ought--to hazard even his life, as
well as for honour, accounting captivity the greatest misery he can
endure.”
History tells us that even in the comparatively brief period of
Cervantes’ captivity the decline of the mighty Empire of Spain had
commenced. The inherent meanness of Philip’s spirit, his religious
intolerance, his incompetence as both statesman and soldier, and the
dominant power of the priests, had sapped the nation’s energy, and
crushed national ambition. The character of the king set the seal on the
country’s destiny. He abhorred letters, and was jealous of intellectual
eminence; he was feeble and timorous in his foreign policy, and starved
the soldiers upon whom the burden of maintaining the Empire rested; his
one love and ambition was for the Church, which was sapping the life
blood of the nation. Of the 50,000,000 people who constituted the
population of his dominions, no fewer than a million persons were in the
service of the Church. There were archbishops by the score, bishops by
the
[Illustration]
hundred, and lesser ecclesiastes by the hundreds of thousands. The Holy
Office alone offered a sure road to advancement and position, and many
there were that walked therein.
But Cervantes, undashed by ingratitude and undaunted by hardship,
retained his loyalty, and relinquished not a tittle of his chivalrous
conceptions and aspirations. He was still desperately sincere in the
convictions, which never left him, that “there is nothing in the world
more commendable than to serve God in the first place, and the King in
the next, especially in the profession of arms, which, if it does not
procure a man so much riches as learning, may at least entitle him to
more honour.” As the profession of arms had won him no honour, so he was
to learn by experience that learning would deny him riches; but the
knowledge that he had deserved the one, and had been instrumental in the
accumulation, if not in the participation, of the other, may have
afforded him some slight comfort. That he revelled in the desperate
chances, as well as in the prospect of winning honour, which the
soldiers’ life had to give, may be gathered from the exhortation which
he makes _Don Quixote_ give to the young soldier: “I would not have you
be uneasy with thoughts of what misfortunes may befall you; the worst
can be but to die, and if it be a good, honourable death your fortune is
made, and you are certainly happy.... For suppose you should be cut off
at the very first engagement by a canon ball, or the springing of a
mine, what matters it? it is but dying, and there is an end of the
business.”
We may be sure that some such reflections filled the mind of Miguel de
Cervantes when he rejoined his old regiment, now known, from its
exploits in the Low Countries, as the _tercio de Flandes_, and marched
under his old commander, Lope de Figueroa, to the subjugation of
Portugal. He was serving God in the first place, and his King in the
next, believing that at the worst he would find fortune and happiness in
“a good, honourable death.” His lifetime rival and disparager, “that
prodigy of Nature,” Lope de Vega, has told us that he carried a musket
in the same campaign; but it is unlikely that he was animated by the
same honourable philosophy.
The conquest of Portugal was a simple undertaking, the land forces of
Don Antonio making but a feeble show of resistance; but with the aid of
France, the illegitimate son of Luis, the brother of Joam III., made a
more formidable opponent on the seas. His fleet, which had its base in
the Azores, was joined by some sixty French ships, under Philippo
Strozzi, and six English privateers, and this flotilla gave battle to
the Spanish squadron, commanded by the Marquess of Santa Cruz, off
Terceira, in the Summer of 1582. Cervantes was serving on the flagship
_San Mateo_, which was opposed to three of the enemy’s vessels, and
again our hero failed to obtain advancement, or achieve a good,
honourable death. The engagement ended in a signal victory for the
Spaniards, but it benefited Cervantes not at all, and he left his
regiment (probably in the late Autumn of 1582) as poor and unfavoured as
he had rejoined it. Many years afterwards, in May, 1590, in his petition
addressed to Philip II., praying for one of the offices then vacant in
America, as a compensation for his sufferings, and in acknowledgment of
his services on behalf of the King, he recapitulates his engagements at
Lepanto and Tunis, alludes to his period of captivity, and refers to his
campaign “in the Kingdom of Portugal and in the Terceiras with the
Marquess of Santa Cruz.”
This Portuguese campaign is interesting, so far as Cervantes is
concerned, as recording the only instance of a liason that is known in
his career. Most of his biographers have either glossed over the fact,
or declined to believe it, but it is a matter that calls for neither
apology nor incredulity. We know that he entertained a very favourable
opinion of the Portuguese, and was loud in his appreciation of the
beauty and amiability of the Portuguese ladies. The identity of the
fair, frail one who won his good will is wrapped in mystery; but the
memory of this _affaire_ must have been with him when he wrote, nearly a
quarter of a century later, “the passion of love is to be vanquished by
flight alone, and that we must not pretend to grapple with so powerful
an adversary since, though the force be human, Divine succours are
necessary to subdue it.” The fruit of this amour was a daughter, called
Doña Isabel de Saavedra, who became his life companion, and who, after
his death, entered the convent of the barefooted Trinitarian nuns at
Madrid.
All sorts of conjectures as to the identity of the lady have been made;
but, as Mr. Kelly, with his characteristic common-sense declares,
“nothing whatever is known of her; nothing at this day is likely to be
discovered about her; and the whole question might be passed over were
it not for the _curiosos impertinentes_, the literary ghouls who
manifest their interest in high literature by leaving _Don Quixote_
unread, and striving to discover the name of Cervantes’ mistress.”
But Mr. Kelly, in this part, as in one or two other instances in his
scholarly _Life of Cervantes_, is inclined to claim less for his hero
than he is entitled to. He says here that, “so far as Cervantes himself
is concerned in this matter, his biographer must be content to admit
that his subject was no saint, but an impetuous man of genius, with
quite as full a share of frailty as though he had been a peer.” Yet a
study of the career of Cervantes discloses him, if not a saint, at least
a man of less frailty than the majority of the world’s great ones; and
to suppose him habitually frail because one indiscretion can be
attributed to him, seems scarcely generous. Again, in dealing with that
period of Cervantes’ life in Valladolid, after the publication of _Don
Quixote_, Mr. Kelly says, “He probably had a little money at this time,
and, though it would seem that he spent some of it in very undesirable
ways, it may be hoped that
[Illustration: STATUE OF CERVANTES AT MADRID.]
the woman of the family no longer needed to take in the sewing from the
Marques de Villafranca”; and, in another place, he refers to the
“supererogatory folly” which misled him in Valladolid. He bases this
supposition on the evidence on a MS., entitled, _Memorias de
Valladolid_, now in the British Museum, in which the name of Cervantes
is put into the mouth of a woman in a gambling house. As the author was
not the only bearer of the name of Cervantes in Spain in that day, and
as none of his candid friends refer to his vices or immoralities, either
in prose or verse, one might, I think, regard this piece of evidence
with more than usual suspicion. Mr. Watts dismisses the charge as
unworthy of any credence, and most Cervantists will, doubtless, treat
the imputation in the same fashion.