Cervantes in his work on _Spain_, “the celebrated Mancha, the immortal
theatre of the adventures of Don Quixote. It is just as I imagined it.
There are broad, bare plains, long tracts of sandy earth, some
windmills, a few miserable villages, solitary paths, and wretched,
abandoned houses. On seeing those places I experienced a feeling of
melancholy which the perusal of Cervantes’ book always rouses; and I
repeated to myself what I always say in reading it: ‘This man cannot
make one laugh; or, if he does, under the smile, the tears are springing
up.’ Don Quixote is a sad and solemn character; his mania is a lament;
his life is the history of the dreams, illusions, disappointments and
aberrations of us all; the struggle of reason with the imagination, of
the true with the false, the ideal with the real! We all have something
of Don Quixote about us; we all take windmills for giants; all are
spurred upward from time to time by an impulse of enthusiasm, and driven
back by a laugh of disdain; are all a mixture of the sublime and the
ridiculous, and feel, with profound bitterness, the perpetual contrast
between the greatness of our aspirations and the weakness of our
powers.”
One reads the opinion of the eminent Italian author, and it but confirms
the opinion that Mr. Watts is doubtless right in his belief that Don
Quixote and the man of Lepanto are one and the same.
From the depositions made at this inquiry into the murder of Ezpeleta,
which have been preserved, we learn that the family, which was at this
time dependent upon Cervantes, consisted of his wife, his natural
daughter Isabel, aged twenty; his widowed sister, Andrea, aged
sixty-one; a cousin, Dona Magdalena de Sotomayor, a lady of forty; and
their servant, Maria. The household followed the Court to Madrid in
1606, where Cervantes found two eminent, if not by any means prodigal,
patrons in Bernardo Sandoval y Rojas, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo,
and the Conde de Lemos, nephew and son-in-law of the Duke de Lerma. But
if the Inquisitor-General, who ranked after the Pope as the most
powerful Prelate in Christendom, was not lavish in his disbursements of
patrimony, his patronage saved the author from molestation at the hands
of the Inquisition, and it was not until the death of Archbishop
Sandoval that the Holy Office cast a censorial eye upon _Don Quixote_,
and expunged certain passages which did not meet with its approval.
For the next seven years Cervantes appears to have published nothing,
and it may be assumed that
[Illustration: FIGHT BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND THE BISCAYAN.
_Paris, 1713._
_5th Edition._]
he eked out a precarious existence by undertaking clerical work, and on
the occasional alms doled out to him by his patrons. We know, from the
evidence given at the inquiry before the Alcade at Valladolid, that he
“wrote and transacted business,” and that his slender means were
augmented by the sale of needlework made by the women of his household.
His fame, as the author of _Don Quixote_, would give him entrance to the
intellectual circle of Madrid, and there seems no reason to doubt the
statement of his biographer, Navarrete, that he joined the Literary
Society, known as the Selvages, which included the most eminent men of
letters of Madrid in its membership. We learn that in 1609 he forearmed
himself against his burial by becoming a lay brother of the Oratory of
the Knights of Grace--a prudent precaution that was customary among men
of letters of the time--where he had, as colleagues, Lope de Vega, and
his good friend, Francisco de Quevedo, one of the few contemporary
writers who never disclosed envy or pretended contempt for the author of
_Don Quixote_.
Of some of Cervantes’ other friends at this time it is not possible to
speak in the same terms. Lope de Vega was always jealous of his genius
and his comparatively limited meed of popularity; Luis de Leon, whom,
Cervantes said, “I revere, adore, and follow,” and Fernando de Herrera
were dead; Luis de Góngora disliked him, and the brothers Lupercio and
Bartolomé Argénsola returned his good-natured eulogies with envy and
evil works, and by their intriguing they prevented the Conde de Lemos
from redeeming the promise of employment he had made Cervantes when that
nobleman was appointed Viceroy of Naples. Cervantes also had friends
among the painters of the period, and was warmly attached to the two
then celebrated artists, Juan de Jaureguy and Francisco Pacheco. Our
author tells us, in his prologue to _Novelas Exemplares_, that Jaureguy
had painted his picture, and he also figured among the 170 portraits of
eminent contemporaries, which Pacheco made in black and red chalk. This
collection, which was presented by the painter to Olivares, the generous
art patron and celebrated minister of Philip IV., was broken up after
his death, and is now reduced to fifty-six portraits, but that of
Cervantes is not among the survivors. Nor has any other pictured
memorial of him been preserved. His good-humoured plaint that his
publishers should have reproduced an engraving of Jaureguy’s picture on
the first leaf of _Novelas Exemplares_ has since been echoed in all
sincerity. Two hundred years after his death it suddenly dawned upon
Spain that no portrait of this, one of her greatest sons, was in
existence, or if such a work existed it has not yet been found.
Lord Carteret, who brought out his handsomely-printed and bound edition
of _Don Quixote_ in 1738, was arrested in his efforts on the eve of
publication by the discovery that the engraving of Cervantes, which he
desired to make his frontispiece, could not be reproduced for want of
an original likeness from which to make a copy. The British Ambassador,
at Madrid, instituted an energetic search in Spain, but he could find no
trace of the pictures which it was known had been painted, and Lord
Carteret commissioned William Kent to execute the necessary portrait.
Kent followed faithfully the details which the author had revealed of
his features and outward appearance in the preface to _Novelas
Exemplares_; and in order to fend himself from any charge of deception
he labelled it, “Portrait of Miguel de Cervantes by Himself.” William
Kent’s imaginary portrait--a three-quarter length painting of a man in
the prime of life of the stately and ultra-Spanish type of countenance,
splendidly attired in ruffs and frills to resemble an exquisite of the
period, has been used as the basis of all subsequent portraits of
Cervantes. It is fanciful, somewhat ridiculous--since Cervantes never
boasted purple and fine linen for his adornment--incorrect,--for the man
of Lepanto’s maimed hand is represented as amputated--and generally
misleading. But the conventional portrait and fanciful invention of
Kent--the hooked nose, large moustache, round eyes and baby
mouth--appealed to the Spanish imagination; and when, in 1780, the
Spanish Academy published their own first classical edition of _Don
Quixote_, a variant of Kent’s portrait graced the work. They declared,
in the first place, that their discovery was from the brush of Alonso
del Arco, but when it was pointed out that the deaf and dumb painter
was not born until nine years after the death of the author, they
declared it a copy of an original painted by one of Cervantes’
contemporaries. When the strong family resemblance between the Alonso de
Arco portrait and that of William Kent was insisted upon, the Spanish
Academy decided that the English picture was a copy of their discovered
prize, and with that explanation they professed themselves entirely
contented.
What is probably an equally unauthentic portrait of Cervantes, but one
based upon a more ingenious and plausible theory, was unearthed by the
energies of Don José Maria Asensio of Seville, who, in an anonymous
manuscript, happened upon a note to the effect that in one of six
pictures, painted by Pacheco for a convent at Seville, there was a
portrait of Cervantes. Armed with this clue, Señor Asensio went to the
Provincial Museum of Seville, and made a careful inspection of the
pictures which were painted to commemorate the effective labours of the
Redemptorist brethren in releasing captives from Algiers. In one of
these, entitled “St. Peter of Nola, in one of the Passages of his Life,”
the saint is represented as superintending the launching of a boat.
Among the half-dozen figures in the foreground, which are declared to be
all portraits, is a man under middle age, with a striking head set upon
a strong neck and shoulders, and with the defect of the left hand
seemingly disguised by obscure
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE DISCOURSING ON THE GOLDEN AGE.
_London, 1738._
_7th Edition._]
painting. The fine eyes are set beneath a broad forehead, the nose is
prominent and well defined, while the weakness in the chin and jaw are
not uncharacteristic of the general character of Cervantes. These
features are, moreover, in keeping with the description which the author
has given us of himself in the prologue of _Novelas Exemplares_, already
referred to, and which, of course, was followed by William Kent. Thus he
presents himself to his readers: “He, whom you see here, of aquiline
feature, with chestnut hair, a smooth, unruffled forehead, with
sparkling eyes, and a nose arched though well proportioned; a beard of
silver, which, not twenty years since, was of gold; great moustaches, a
small mouth, the teeth of no account, for he has but six of them, and
they in bad condition and worse arranged, for they do not hold
correspondence one with another; the body between two extremes, neither
great nor little; the complexion bright, rather white than brown,
somewhat heavy in the shoulders. This, I say, is the aspect of the
author of _Don Quixote of La Mancha_.” With this detailed description we
must be content; and if it is not a portrait, it is sufficient to afford
us material for recreating a picture of Cervantes according to our
individual tastes.
It is generally agreed that the novels which Cervantes published in
1613, under the title of _Novelas Exemplares_--because “there is not one
of them from which some profitable example cannot be drawn”--were
written many years before, but there seems equally as good reason for
supposing that they were the results of his last seven years residence
in Madrid. In variety of subject and manner, in the extraordinary
knowledge of life that they reveal, in the mature art with which they
are told, they exhibit the hand of the experienced craftsman, and
warrant the eulogy of the author, who wrote of them that “had they not
been turned out of the workshop of his wit, he might presume to place
them by the side of the best ever designed.” After _Don Quixote_, they
are reckoned in Spain amongst the best stories of their kind in the
language; but they have achieved little popularity out of the Peninsula.
Yet they have not been without their fervent admirers in this country,
and amongst them Sir Walter Scott must be acknowledged the chief, since
Lockhart declares that it was these stories of Cervantes that inspired
the author of the Waverley novels to his first essay in fiction.
In the following year, 1614, Cervantes published two volumes of his
writings, _Viaja del Parnaso_ and a collection of plays. The poem,
though based on an ingenious idea, and containing some of the best verse
which the poet has given us, justifies the contemporary verdict upon his
compositions, which was, as Cervantes himself tells us, that “of his
prose much was to be expected, but of his verse nothing.” The _Journey
Around Parnassus_ is written in imitation of a poem, now forgotten, by
the Italian author, Cesare Caporali, and it serves as a record of the
names of a string of Spanish minor poets whom Cervantes praises with
more credit to his heart than his discrimination. His own generation
allowed the book to fall still-born from the press, and its one interest
to modern Cervantists lies in the autobiographical details which are to
be found in the prose prefix. We read here that he is residing in the
_Calle de las Huertas_, in a house “over against the mansion where the
Prince of Morocco used to live;” we are introduced to the beruffled,
exquisite, and would-be poet (by the correction of whose verses
Cervantes doubtless derived part of his slender income); we learn that
his niece paid a _real_ for postage on a letter which contained nothing
more valuable than an anonymous, defamatory sonnet upon the author of
_Don Quixote_; and, finally, we are told that the writer has in hand a
dozen comedies and farces in equal proportions, which, having been
rejected of theatre-managers, he proposes to present to the world in
book form.
The volume of eight comedies and eight farces here referred to was
published in the same year. A bookseller, being found, willing to take
the risks of publishing them, Cervantes tells us in his preface that he
“made the venture and sold them to the bookseller, who sent them to the
Press. He paid me a reasonable sum for them; I took the money meekly,
without making account of the quirks and quibbles of the players. I
would they were the best in the world, or, at least, of fair worth.” But
the pieces fared no better at the hands of the public than they had
with the theatre-managers. Nor did they deserve a better fate, being
unworthy of the author of _Don Quixote_, or even of the _Numancia_ of
his earlier days. Cervantes, rendered desperate by want, has in these
pages deviated from the principles that he had laid down for his own
guidance, and his object would appear to be to woo the public by
pandering to their debased taste. But as he had before been compelled to
give place, as a playwright, to men who possessed a greater share of
dramatic sense and fitness, so now he was competing vainly with men,
less gifted than himself, who had more accurately gauged the public
taste, and were more dexterous in catering for it. In letters, more
often than in any other branch of the arts, the man of genius who writes
down to his public falls short of success. It is the second-rate writers
who undertake seriously the task which the master attempts, with his
tongue in his cheek and contempt for his output in his heart, who
achieve their object. So Cervantes failed again as a playwright, and he
failed so conspicuously that Blas de Nasarre, who republished these poor
farces and more inferior comedies in 1749, claimed that the author had
written them in ridicule of Lope de Vega, just as he had written _Don
Quixote_ in ridicule of the books of chivalry; while his always
appreciative biographer, H. E. Watts, concludes that Cervantes “intended
them as specimens of the drama which was in vogue in his day, rather
than as
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE TILTING AGAINST THE ARMY OF ALIFANFARON.
_El Haya, 1746._
_9th Edition._]
models of that true art of which we know he had grasped the principles.”
Cervantes had, we must suppose, been wrenched from his artistic
principles and ideals by the pinch of poverty; yet at this late period
of his life, his fame as an author was spread not only throughout Spain,
but in France, Italy, Germany, and Flanders. When Francisco Marquez
Torres, Chaplain to the Archbishop of Toledo, was interrogated by some
members of the French Embassy in Madrid, as to the age, profession,
quality, and fortune of the celebrated author of _Don Quixote_, Señor
Torres found himself “compelled to say that he was an old man, a
soldier, a gentleman, and poor.” The chaplain, who tells this story in
the approbation prefixed to the Second Part of _Don Quixote_, continues:
“To which one of them responded in these precise words: ‘But does not
Spain keep such a man rich, and supported out of the public Treasury?’
Another of these gentlemen broke in with this idea, saying, with much
acuteness, ‘If it is necessity compels him to write, may God send he may
never have abundance; so that, poor himself, he may make the whole world
rich.’”
Cervantes, in his long and varied career, had suffered much from the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but in the last months of his
life he was to endure the most cruel and malignant hurt that the envy
and enmity of man could inflict on an author. In the summer of 1614,
just two years before his death, when Cervantes was leisurely
completing the second part of the work, which was to make his name
immortal, there appeared at Tarragoza a work entitled, “_The Second Part
of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, containing his
Third Sally_.” This work, vulgar, lewd and malicious, purposed to be the
continuation and the end of the story which Cervantes had published ten
years before. The name of the author was given as Alonso Fernandez de
Avellaneda, of Tordesillas; the book was dedicated to the “Alcade,
Regidors, and Hidalgos of the noble city of Argamasilla,” &c.; the
licensing for printing was in the handwriting of Doctor Francisco de
Torne, of Liori, Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Tarragona, and the
publication was justified by the contention of one Dr. Rafael Orthoneda,
who declared that it “ought to be printed, because it seemed to him to
contain nothing immodest or forbidden.”
If this publication had revealed no more than a mean and avaricious
desire to profit by the popularity of the First Part of _Don Quixote_,
and to defraud Cervantes by forestalling him in the demand which was in
waiting for the completion of the work; if the author had imitated the
style and spirit of the great original with the sole thought of skimming
Cervantes’ market--even so the outrage would have been almost
unparalleled at that period in the history of letters. But the
conspiracy, for conspiracy it was beyond doubt, was deeper, more subtle
and diabolical
[Illustration: SANCHO PANZA TOSSED IN THE BLANKET.
_Boston, 1837._
_38th Edition._]
in its inspiration and execution. Avellaneda, whoever the man was who
clothed his identity beneath this sobriquet, was a person of some
literary talent, but his malice outstripped his wit, and his humour is
choked with lewdness. The aim and purpose of the book is deliberately
divulged in the prologue, which is nothing less than a savage revilement
of Cervantes. His literary defects are assailed with ungovernable fury;
his age, his poverty, even the wounds, of which he was so proud, are
hurled in his teeth. He is described as having “more tongue than hands;”
his impediment in his speech is made matter for mockery; his state is
compared with the ruined castle of San Cervantes; and his person,
temperament, and condition are summarised in a venemous sentence, in
which he is called “a cripple, a soldier old in years, though youthful
in spirit; envious, discontented, a back-biter, a malefactor, or, at
least, a jail-bird.” It is curious and characteristic of the tone of
this attack that Cervantes, the gallant soldier who had won his wounds
in the service of his country, but who had not allowed his buoyant
spirit or kindliness of heart to be conquered by hardship, penury, and
suffering, should be villified for the very things for which the world
now holds him in love and esteem. Finally, having attempted to belittle
his achievements, and blast his character, his assailant acknowledges
that his book is a deliberate attempt to deprive Cervantes of the profit
expected from his labours.
In the false _Don Quixote_ thus thrust upon the public the whole design
of the original is studied only for the purpose of destroying it; it is
written with the set and determined idea of making the name of the
Knight of La Mancha stink in the nostrils of the admirers of Cervantes.
Here the Don is represented as a common lunatic, who disappears from the
story into an asylum for the insane. Sancho Panza is transformed into a
gluttonous, vulgar, ignoramus. Dorothea, whose grace and daintiness add
fragrance and wit to the original story, becomes a mere wanton. The
whole story reeks of obscenity, vulgarity, and dullness, yet an eminent
cleric licensed it; Le Sage professed to see in it merits equal to the
true history; and the Spanish Academy has preserved the work as being
worthy a place in the national collection of classics. Not a detail is
wanting to detract from the enormity of the outrage, to give Cervantes
the unenviable distinction of being the most basely treated man among
the many unfortunates in literature; for surely, never before or since,
was an author so villainously used.
Nearly three centuries have elapsed since Cervantes laid aside his pen
and rested from the indignities which his generation piled upon him, but
the identity of the author of the crowning indignity of his career is
still to be revealed. Cervantes himself must have had a shrewd suspicion
of the author of this conspiracy, but he either refrained from
publishing his name, or felt too insecure in his facts, to be
[Illustration: ADVENTURE WITH THE LIONS.
_Paris, 1844._
_40th Edition._]
able to prove the charge; or, as his first biographer asserts, his
assailant was so powerful as to defy accusation. The secret was kept, at
the time, with a success that to us seems incomprehensible, and has
created controversy and speculation which has not decreased with years.
But it would appear that until the ploughshare of accident shall turn up
from the fallow earth of the literary past, or until the jealous guard
which is posted over the letters in the _Biblioteca Nacional_ shall be
relaxed, speculation and conjecture are vain. Luis de Aliaga, the King’s
Confessor, Alarcon the Dramatist, Bartolomé de Argénsola, Cervantes’
one-time friend; the monk Perez, who wrote _La Picara Justina_; and the
great Lope de Vega himself have all been laid under the suspicion of
being the writer of the false _Don Quixote_. The weight of
circumstantial evidence bears hardest upon Vega, whose private letters
have disclosed his ill-will and envy towards Cervantes; whose life and
character--despite the arguments urged by his apologists--convict him,
at least, of being capable of committing so foul a deed; and whose
method of waging literary warfare was quite in the manner of the false
Prologue. A man of his arrogant disposition would resent bitterly the
criticism which Cervantes applied to his plans in the First Part of his
_magnum opus_, and we can believe of him that he would stop at nothing
to be revenged upon his critic. A jealous, unscrupulous, intolerant man,
confident of the protection of friends in high places; a libertine who
acted as procurer for the Duke of Sessa; an officer of the Holy
Inquisition; and the only real rival to Cervantes in the arena of
letters--if Lope de Vega did not himself pen the false _Don Quixote_, he
will go down to posterity as the suspected inspirer of the basest
literary atrocity that has ever been perpetrated.
On this point, as on most details affecting Cervantes, Mr.
Fitzmaurice-Kelly is emphatic in his conclusion, and he accepts the
decision by Máinez, that if the hand is the hand of Avellaneda, the
voice is the voice of Lope de Vega. He finds in the character of the
celebrated dramatist the temperamental fitness for such a task, and he
locates the incentive in his unsupportable jealousy. “Till _Don Quixote_
appeared no rival had ever dared to come within the shadow of his
throne, and its lasting success was torment to his soul. It was too
plain that the world had gone stark mad, captivated by the book of the
poverty-stricken, maimed wanderer who, after a life of squalid failure,
had had the assurance to produce a masterpiece. It was no longer
possible to kill _Don Quixote_ by the cheap sneer that no one was such
an ass as to praise it. Lope had played that card, and no longer
cherished any such delusion.... But it was still possible to injure;
still possible to defame; still possible to rob the old man of a few
doubloons; still possible to deride him, to wound his pride, to
forestall his market by writing a continuation of the accursed volume
which had dared to thrust itself
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE ABSORBED IN THE READING OF BOOKS ON KNIGHT
ERRANTRY.
_Paris, 1845._
_41st Edition._]
between Lope and the public;” and so, though other biographers may
canvass every contemporary writer and weigh the relative qualifications
and provocations of envious poets and resentful prelates, Mr. Kelly
refuses to look beyond Lope de Vega for the author of the false Second
Part of _Don Quixote_.