WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means with
which to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the new
King of Portugal. Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; if
he were going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large and
comprehensive way; and all his life he had a way of going to the
fountainhead, and of making flights and leaps where other men would only
climb or walk, that had much to do with his ultimate success. King John,
moreover, had shown himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of
discovery; Columbus, as we have seen, had already been employed in a
trusted capacity in one of the royal expeditions; and he rightly thought
that, since he had to ask the help of some one in his enterprise, he
might as well try to enlist the Crown itself in the service of his great
Idea. He was not prepared, however, to go directly to the King and ask
for ships; his proposal would have to be put in a way that would appeal
to the royal ambition, and would also satisfy the King that there was
really a destination in view for the expedition. In other words Columbus
had to propose to go somewhere; it would not do to say that he was going
west into the Atlantic Ocean to look about him. He therefore devoted all
his energies to putting his proposal on what is called a business
footing, and expressing his vague, sublime Idea in common and practical
terms.
The people who probably helped him most in this were his brother
Bartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientific
navigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whom
Columbus was acquainted. Behaim, who was at this time about forty eight
years of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus,
the great German astronomer. A very interesting man, this, if we could
decipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but a
man of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide and
liberal experience of life. He was not only learned in cosmography and
astronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautiful
instruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business with
his scientific travels. He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting the
astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these
labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty
influence on the career of Columbus--Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,
physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.
There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did
not know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had
been despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun
in Guinea.
Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be
no doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind
he made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his
meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set
forth in a plausible form. In other words, he got up the subject. The
whole of his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this
time had been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others--whose works he
quoted from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name,
if at all. Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the
supposed circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent,
and so on. Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into
the service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a
difference of opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were
most convenient, and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs.
The very word “Indies” was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there
certainly would be riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a
religious man, hit also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual
glory of carrying the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and
making of the heathen a heritage for the Christian Church. So that, what
with one thing and another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged.
Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King,
who could scarcely believe his ears. Here was a man, of whom he knew
nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the
recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the
Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world. Certainly his
proposals seemed plausible, but still--. The earth was round, said
Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from West
to East. The prophet Esdras, a scientific authority that even His
Majesty would hardly venture to doubt, had laid it down that only
one-seventh of the earth was covered by waters. From this fact Columbus
deduced that the maritime space extending westward between the shores of
Europe and eastern coast of Asia could not be large; and by sailing
westward he proposed to reach certain lands of which he claimed to have
knowledge. The sailors’ tales, the logs of driftwood, the dead bodies,
were all brought into the proposals; in short, if His Majesty would grant
some ships, and consent to making Columbus Admiral over all the islands
that he might discover, with full viceregal state, authority, and profit,
he would go and discover them.
There are two different accounts of what the King said when this proposal
was made to him. According to some authorities, John was impressed by
Columbus’s proposals, and inclined to provide him with the necessary
ships, but he could not assent to all the titles and rewards which
Columbus demanded as a price for his services. Barros, the Portuguese
historian, on the other hand, represents that the whole idea was too
fantastic to be seriously entertained by the King for a moment, and that
although he at once made up his mind to refuse the request he preferred
to delegate his refusal to a commission. Whatever may be the truth as to
King John’s opinions, the commission was certainly appointed, and
consisted of three persons, to wit: Master Rodrigo, Master Joseph the
Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta.
Before these three learned men must Columbus now appear, a little less
happy in his mind, and wishing that he knew more Latin. Master Rodrigo,
Master Joseph the Jew, the Right Reverend Cazadilla: three pairs of cold
eyes turned rather haughtily on the Genoese adventurer; three brains much
steeped in learning, directed in judgment on the Idea of a man with no
learning at all. The Right Reverend Cazadilla, being the King’s
confessor, and a bishop into the bargain, could speak on that matter of
converting the heathen; and he was of opinion that it could not be done.
Joseph the Jew, having made voyages, and worked with Behaim at the
astrolabe, was surely an authority on navigation; and he was of opinion
that it could not be done. Rodrigo, being also a very learned man, had
read many books which Columbus had not read; and he was of opinion that
it could not be done. Three learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea
is bound to go. They would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific
aspect of the matter, and would soon discover his grievous lack of
academic knowledge. They would quote fluently passages from writers that
he had not heard of; if he had not heard of them, they seemed to imply,
no wonder he made such foolish proposals. Poor Columbus stands there
puzzled, dissatisfied, tongue-tied. He cannot answer these wiseacres in
their own learned lingo; what they say, or what they quote, may be true
or it may not; but it has nothing to do with his Idea. If he opens his
mouth to justify himself, they refute him with arguments that he does not
understand; there is a wall between them. More than a wall; there is a
world between them! It is his ‘credo’ against their ‘ignoro’; it is, his
‘expecto’ against their ‘non video’. Yet in his ‘credo’ there lies a
power of which they do not dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note
across the centuries, saluting the life force that opposes its
irresistible “I will” to the feeble “Thou canst not” of the worldly-wise.
Thus, in about the year 1483, did three learned men sit in judgment upon
our ignorant Christopher. Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the
Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta; three risen,
stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning; stuffed so full indeed that
eyes and ears are closed with it. And three men, it would appear, wholly
destitute of mother-wit.
After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to
Columbus. It was not his only trouble, moreover. During the last year
he had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of
the Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to
which he hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at
his humble task of making maps and charts. The result was that he got
into debt, and it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.
But a darker trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this
time. Neither the day nor the year of Philippa’s death is known;
but it is likely that it occurred soon after Columbus’s failure at the
Portuguese Court, and immediately before his departure into Spain. That
anonymous life, fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and
motherhood, as softly as it floated upon the page of history, as softly
fades from it again. Those kind eyes, that encouraging voice, that
helping hand and friendly human soul are with him no longer; and after
the interval of peace and restful growth that they afforded Christopher
must strike his tent and go forth upon another stage of his pilgrimage
with a heavier and sterner heart.
Two things are left to him: his son Diego, now an articulate little
creature with character and personality of his own, and with strange,
heart-breaking reminiscences of his mother in voice and countenance and
manner--that is one possession; the other is his Idea. Two things alive
and satisfactory, amid the ruin and loss of other possessions; two
reasons for living and prevailing. And these two possessions Columbus
took with him when he set out for Spain in the year 1485.
His first care was to take little Diego to the town of Huelva, where
there lived a sister of Philippa’s who had married a Spaniard named
Muliartes. This done, he was able to devote himself solely to the
furtherance of his Idea. For this purpose he went to Seville, where he
attached himself for a little while to a group of his countrymen who were
settled there, among them Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini, and made such
momentary living as was possible to him by his old trade. But the Idea
would not sleep. He talked of nothing else; and as men do who talk of an
idea that possesses them wholly, and springs from the inner light of
faith, he interested and impressed many of his hearers. Some of them
suggested one thing, some another; but every one was agreed that it would
be a good thing if he could enlist the services of the great Count
(afterwards Duke) of Medini Celi, who had a palace at Rota, near Cadiz.
This nobleman was one of the most famous of the grandees of Spain, and
lived in mighty state upon his territory along the sea-shore, serving the
Crown in its wars and expeditions with the power and dignity of an ally
rather than of a subject. His domestic establishment was on a princely
scale, filled with chamberlains, gentlemen-at-arms, knights, retainers,
and all the panoply of social dignity; and there was also place in his
household for persons of merit and in need of protection. To this great
man came Columbus with his Idea. It attracted the Count, who was a judge
of men and perhaps of ideas also; and Columbus, finding some hope at last
in his attitude, accepted the hospitality offered to him, and remained at
Rota through the winter of 1485-86. He had not been very hopeful when he
arrived there, and had told the Count that he had thought of going to the
King of France and asking for help from him; but the Count, who found
something respectable and worthy of consideration in the Idea of a man
who thought nothing of a journey in its service from one country to
another and one sovereign to another, detained him, and played with the
Idea himself. Three or four caravels were nothing to the Count of Medina
Eeli; but on the other hand the man was a grandee and a diplomat, with a
nice sense of etiquette and of what was due to a reigning house. Either
there was nothing in this Idea, in which case his caravels would be
employed to no purpose, or there was so much in it that it was an
undertaking, not merely for the Count of Medina Celi, but for the Crown
of Castile. Lands across the ocean, and untold gold and riches of the
Indies, suggested complications with foreign Powers, and transactions
with the Pope himself, that would probably be a little too much even for
the good Count; therefore with a curious mixture of far-sighted
generosity and shrewd security he wrote to Queen Isabella, recommending
Columbus to her, and asking her to consider his Idea; asking her also,
in case anything should come of it, to remember him (the Count), and to
let him have a finger in the pie. Thus, with much literary circumstance
and elaboration of politeness, the Count of Medina Celi to Queen
Isabella.
Follows an interval of suspense, the beginning of a long discipline of
suspense to which Columbus was to be subjected; and presently comes a
favourable reply from the Queen, commanding that Columbus should be sent
to her. Early in 1486 he set out for Cordova, where the Court was then
established, bearing another letter from the Count in which his own
private requests were repeated, and perhaps a little emphasised.
Columbus was lodged in the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, Treasurer to
the Crown of Castile, there to await an audience with Queen Isabella.
While he is waiting, and getting accustomed to his new surroundings, let
us consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear,
and upon whose decision hangs some part of the world’s destiny. Isabella
first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano
that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time. We discern in her a
very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and
exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for “doing good” that marks
the virtuous lady of station in every age. This, however, was a woman
who took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in
perilous situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in
other ways made good her claim to be a ruler. The consent and the will
of her people were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece
and ascended the throne of Castile. She had the misfortune to be at
variance with her husband in almost every matter of policy dear to his
heart; she opposed the expulsion of the Jews and the establishment of the
Inquisition; but when she failed to get her way, she was still able to
preserve her affectionate relations with her husband without disagreement
and with happiness. If she had a fault it was the common one of being
too much under the influence of her confessors; but it was a fault that
was rarely allowed to disturb the balance of her judgment. She liked
clever people also; surrounded herself with men of letters and of
science, fostered all learned institutions, and delighted in the details
of civil administration. A very dignified and graceful figure, that
could equally adorn a Court drawing-room or a field of battle; for she
actually went into the field, and wore armour as becomingly as silk and
ermine. Firm, constant, clever, alert, a little given to fussiness
perhaps, but sympathetic and charming, with some claims to genius and
some approach to grandeur of soul: so much we may say truly of her inner
self. Outwardly she was a woman well formed, of medium height, a very
dignified and graceful carriage, eyes of a clear summer blue, and the red
and gold of autumn in her hair--these last inherited from her English
grandmother.
Ferdinand of Aragon appears not quite so favourably in our pages, for he
never thought well of Columbus or of his proposals; and when he finally
consented to the expedition he did so with only half a heart, and against
his judgment. He was an extremely enterprising, extremely subtle,
extremely courageous, and according to our modern notions, an extremely
dishonest man; that is to say, his standards of honour were not those
which we can accept nowadays. He thought nothing of going back on a
promise, provided he got a priestly dispensation to do so; he juggled
with his cabinets, and stopped at nothing in order to get his way; he had
a craving ambition, and was lacking in magnanimity; he loved dominion,
and cared very little for glory. A very capable man; so capable that in
spite of his defects he was regarded by his subjects as wise and prudent;
so capable that he used his weaknesses of character to strengthen and
further the purposes of his reign. A very cold man also, quick and sure
in his judgments, of wide understanding and grasp of affairs; simple and
austere in dress and diet, as austerity was counted in that period of
splendour; extremely industrious, and close in his observations and
judgments of men. To the bodily eye he appeared as a man of middle size,
sturdy and athletic, face burned a brick red with exposure to the sun and
open air; hair and eyebrows of a bright chestnut; a well-formed and not
unkindly mouth; a voice sharp and unmelodious, issuing in quick fluent
speech. This was the man that earned from the Pope, for himself and his
successors, the title of “Most Catholic Majesty.”
The Queen was very busy indeed with military preparations; but in the
midst of her interviews with nobles and officers, contractors and state
officials, she snatched a moment to receive the person Christopher
Columbus. With that extreme mental agility which is characteristic of
busy sovereigns all the force of this clever woman’s mind was turned for
a moment on Christopher, whose Idea had by this time invested him with a
dignity which no amount of regal state could abash. There was very
little time. The Queen heard what Columbus had to say, cutting him
short, it is likely, with kindly tact, and suppressing his tendency to
launch out into long-winded speeches. What she saw she liked; and, being
too busy to give to this proposal the attention that it obviously
merited, she told Columbus that the matter would be fully gone into and
that in the meantime he must regard himself as the guest of the Court.
And so, in the countenance of a smile and a promise, Columbus bows
himself out. For the present he must wait a little and his hot heart
must contain itself while other affairs, looming infinitely larger than
his Idea on the royal horizon, receive the attention of the Court.
It was not the happiest moment, indeed, in which to talk of ships and
charts, and lonely sea-roads, and faraway undiscovered shores. Things at
home were very real and lively in those spring days at Cordova. The war
against the Moors had reached a critical stage; King Ferdinand was away
laying siege to the city of Loxa, and though the Queen was at Cordova she
was entirely occupied with the business of collecting and forwarding
troops and supplies to his aid. The streets were full of soldiers;
nobles and grandees from all over the country were arriving daily with
their retinues; glitter and splendour, and the pomp of warlike
preparation, filled the city. Early in June the Queen herself went to
the front and joined her husband in the siege of Moclin; and when this
was victoriously ended, and they had returned in triumph to Cordova, they
had to set out again for Gallicia to suppress a rebellion there. When
that was over they did not come back to Cordova at all, but repaired at
once to Salamanca to spend the winter there.
At the house of Alonso de Quintanilla, however, Columbus was not
altogether wasting his time. He met there some of the great persons of
the Court, among them the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza,
Archbishop of Toledo and Grand Cardinal of Spain. This was far too great
a man to be at this time anything like a friend of Columbus; but Columbus
had been presented to him; the Cardinal would know his name, and what his
business was; and that is always a step towards consideration. Cabrero,
the royal Chamberlain, was also often a fellow-guest at the Treasurer’s
table; and with him Columbus contracted something like a friendship.
Every one who met him liked him; his dignity, his simplicity of thought
and manner, his experience of the sea, and his calm certainty and
conviction about the stupendous thing which he proposed to do, could
not fail to attract the liking and admiration of those with whom he came
in contact. In the meantime a committee appointed by the Queen sat upon
his proposals. The committee met under the presidentship of Hernando de
Talavera, the prior of the monastery of Santa Maria del Prado, near
Valladolid, a pious ecclesiastic, who had the rare quality of honesty,
and who was therefore a favourite with Queen Isabella; she afterwards
created him Archbishop of Granada. He was not, however, poor honest
soul! quite the man to grasp and grapple with this wild scheme for a
voyage across the ocean. Once more Columbus, as in Portugal, set forth
his views with eloquence and conviction; and once more, at the tribunal
of learning, his unlearned proposals were examined and condemned. Not
only was Columbus’s Idea regarded as scientifically impossible, but it
was also held to come perilously near to heresy, in its assumption of a
state of affairs that was clearly at variance with the writings of the
Fathers and the sacred Scriptures themselves.
This new disappointment, bitter though it was, did not find Columbus in
such friendless and unhappy circumstances as those in which he left
Portugal. He had important friends now, who were willing and anxious to
help him, and among them was one to whom he turned, in his profound
depression, for religious and friendly consolation. This was Diego de
DEA, prior of the Dominican convent of San Estevan at Salamanca, who was
also professor of theology in the university there and tutor to the young
Prince Juan. Of all those who came in contact with Columbus at this time
this man seems to have understood him best, and to have realised where
his difficulty lay. Like many others who are consumed with a burning
idea Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming
possessed with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he
were to make any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to
which a decision in such matters was always referred he must have some
opportunity for friendly discussion with learned men who were not
inimical to him, and who were not in the position of judges examining a
man arraigned before them and pleading for benefits.
When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, DEA arranged that
Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called
Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and
the city. Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing
with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with
Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious,
communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a
scientific point. There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in
the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus.
It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of
d’Ailly’s ‘Imago Mundi’, which little volume contained a popular resume
of the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was
from this time forth Columbus’s constant companion.
Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the
Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the “De Profundis” hall, where
the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of Columbus was
ventilated and examined. He heard what friendly sceptics had to say
about it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose to the
existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography. There is
no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more important even
than this, he got his project known and talked about; and he made
powerful friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him. The
Marquesa de Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to him;
and as she was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it is
likely that she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella’s ear.
By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once
more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing. He followed the Court to
Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the
effect that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military
preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into
his proposals. In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and
received a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis. It seemed as though the
unfavourable decision of Talavera’s committee had been forgotten.
In the meantime he was to have a change of scene. Isabella followed
Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as
there were intervals in which other than military business might be
transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs
should come up for consideration. They did not; but the man himself had
an experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too
much on his unfulfilled ambition. Years afterwards, when far away on
lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets
of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his memory a brightly
coloured picture of this scene in the fertile valley of Malaga: the
silken pavilions of the Court, the great encampment of nobility with its
arms and banners extending in a semicircle to the seashore, all
glistening and moving in the bright sunshine. There was added excitement
at this time at an attempt to assassinate Ferdinand and Isabella, a
fanatic Moor having crept up to one of the pavilions and aimed a blow at
two people whom he mistook for the King and Queen. They turned out to be
Don Alvaro de Portugal, who was dangerously wounded, and Columbus’s
friend, the Marquesa de Moya, who was unhurt; but it was felt that the
King and Queen had had a narrow escape. The siege was raised on the 18th
of August, and the sovereigns went to spend the winter at Zaragoza; and
Columbus, once more condemned to wait, went back to Cordova.
It was here that he contracted his second and, so far as we know, his
last romantic attachment. The long idle days of summer and autumn at
Cordova, empty of all serious occupation, gave nature an opportunity for
indulging her passion for life and continuity. Among Christopher’s
friends at Cordova was the family of Arana, friendly hospitable souls,
by some accounts noble and by others not noble, and certainly in somewhat
poor circumstances, who had welcomed him to their house, listened to his
plans with enthusiasm, and formed a life-long friendship with him. Three
members of this family are known to us--two brothers, Diego and Pedro,
both of whom commanded ships in Columbus’s expeditions, and a sister
Beatriz. Columbus was now a man of six-and-thirty, while she was little
more than a girl; he was handsome and winning, distinguished by the
daring and importance of his scheme, full of thrilling and romantic talk
of distant lands; a very interesting companion, we may be sure. No
wonder she fell in love with Christopher; no wonder that he, feeling
lonely and depressed by the many postponements of his suit at Court, and
in need of sympathy and encouragement, fell in these blank summer days
into an intimacy that flamed into a brief but happy passion. Why
Columbus never married Beatriz de Arana we cannot be sure, for it is
almost certain that his first wife had died some time before. Perhaps he
feared to involve himself in any new or embarrassing ties; perhaps he
loved unwillingly, and against his reason; perhaps--although the
suggestion is not a happy one--he by this time did not think poor Beatriz
good enough for the Admiral-elect of the Ocean Seas; perhaps (and more
probably) Beatriz was already married and deserted, for she bore the
surname of Enriquez; and in that case, there being no such thing as a
divorce in the Catholic Church, she must either sin or be celibate. But
however that may be, there was an uncanonical alliance between them which
evidently did not in the least scandalise her brothers and which resulted
in the birth of Ferdinand Columbus in the following year. Christopher,
so communicative and discursive upon some of his affairs, is as reticent
about Beatriz as he was about Philippa. Beatriz shares with his
legitimate wife the curious distinction of being spoken of by Columbus to
posterity only in his will, which was executed at Valladolid the day
before he died. In the dry ink and vellum of that ancient legal document
is his only record of these two passions. The reference to Beatriz is as
follows:
“And I direct him [Diego] to make provision for Beatriz Enriquez,
mother of D. Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live
honestly, being a person to whom I am under very great obligation.
And this shall be done for the satisfaction of my conscience,
because this matter weighs heavily upon my soul. The reason for
which it is not fitting to write here.”
About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual, there has been
much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible
it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which
Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life. “Acquainted with
poverty” is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come down to us;
acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem, as many poor
persons undoubtedly are. Enough for us to know that in the city of
Cordova there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble, married or
not married, who brought for a time love and friendly companionship into
the life of Columbus; that she gave what she had for giving, without
stint or reserve, and that she became the mother of a son who inherited
much of what was best in his father, and but for whom the world would be
in even greater darkness than it is on the subject of Christopher
himself. And so no more of Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, whom “God has in
his keeping”--and has had now these many centuries of Time.
Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious months, precious
years slipping by, and the great purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly
no nearer to fulfilment. It is likely that Columbus kept up his
applications to the Court, and received polite and delaying replies.
The next year came, and the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from
Murcia to Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo. Columbus
attended it in one or other of these places, but without result. In
August Beatriz gave birth to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who
lived to be a great comfort to his father, if not to her also. But the
miracle of paternity was not now so new and wonderful as it had been; the
battle of life, with its crosses and difficulties, was thick about him;
and perhaps he looked into this new-comer’s small face with conflicting
thoughts, and memories of the long white beach and the crashing surf at
Porto Santo, and regret for things lost--so strangely mingled and
inconsistent are the threads of human thought. At last he decided to
turn his face elsewhere. In September 1488 he went to Lisbon, for what
purpose it is not certain; possibly in connection with the affairs of his
dead wife; and probably also in the expectation of seeing his brother
Bartholomew, to whom we may now turn our attention for a moment.
After the failure of Columbus’s proposals to the King of Portugal in
1486, and the break-up of his home there, Bartholomew had also left
Lisbon. Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was leaving for
the African coast in August, and Bartholomew Columbus is said to have
joined his small expedition of three caravels. As they neared the
latitude of the Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale
which drove him a long way out of his course, west and south.
The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not
strike the land again until May 1487. When he did so his crew insisted
upon his returning, as they declined to go any further south. He
therefore turned to the west, and then made the startling discovery that
in the course of the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that
the land he had made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded
it on his way home. He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when
Columbus met his brother again, and was present at the reception of Diaz
by the King of Portugal. They had a great deal to tell each other, these
two brothers; in the two years and a half that had gone since they had
parted a great deal had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal
more about the great question in which they, were interested than they
had known when last they talked.
It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the
execution, of the forgery of the Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I
believe, it was a forgery. Christopher’s unpleasant experiences before
learned committees and commissions had convinced him that unless he were
armed with some authoritative and documentary support for his theories
they had little chance of acceptance by the learned. The, Idea was
right; he knew that; but before he could convince the academic mind, he
felt that it must have the imprimatur of a mind whose learning could not
be impugned. Therefore it is not an unfair guess--and it can be nothing
more than a guess--that Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid
their heads together, and decided that the next time Christopher had to
appear before a commission he would, so to speak, have something “up his
sleeve.” It was a risky thing to do, and must in any case be used only
as a very last resource; which would account for the fact that the
Toscanelli correspondence was never used at all, and is not mentioned in
any document known to men written until long after Columbus’s death.
But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close,
and we must follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his
triumph. He was back in Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling
expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse; and a little later he was
once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report is
true, taking a hand himself, not without distinction. It was there that
he saw the two friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem, who brought a message from the Grand Soldan of Egypt,
threatening the destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish sovereigns
did not desist from the war against Granada; and it was there that in his
simple and pious mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts
should be crowned with success, and he himself become rich and powerful,
he would send a crusade for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. And it was
there that, on the 22nd of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two
rival Kings of Granada, surrender all his rights and claims to Spain.
Surely now there will be a chance for him? No; there is another
interruption, this time occasioned by the royal preparations for the
marriage of the Princess Isabella to the heir of Portugal. Poor
Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these continual delays, irritated
by a sense of the waste of his precious time, follows the Court about
from one place to another, raising a smile here and a scoff there, and
pointed at by children in the street. There, is nothing so ludicrous as
an Idea to those who do not share it.
Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited
number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks
Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and
where there is nothing left to discover! Something had to be done. In
the beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court--the
preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at
all. The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to
the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year,
determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question.
He made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their
usual polite tactics. They appointed a junta, which was presided over by
no less a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once
more the weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some
hopes of success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli
correspondence. It was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we
may be sure; the crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the
attainment of a great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any
means to secure an end which he felt to be so desirable. So it is
probable that either he was not quite sure of his ground and his courage
failed him, or that he had hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of
the members of the junta, that a favourable decision would at last be
arrived at. In this he was mistaken. The Spanish prelates again quoted
the Fathers of the Church, and disposed of his proposals simply on the
ground that they were heretical. Much talk, and much wagging of learned
heads; and still no mother-wit or gleam of light on this obscurity of
learning. The junta decided against the proposals, and reported its
decision to the King and Queen. The monarchs, true to their somewhat
hedging methods when there was anything to be gained by hedging, informed
Columbus that at present they were too much occupied with the war to
grant his requests; but that, when the preoccupations and expenses of the
campaign were a thing of the past, they might again turn their attention
to his very interesting suggestion.
It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down. Too many
promises had been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too
often for him to believe any more in it. Spain, he decided, was useless;
he would try France; at least he would be no worse off there. But he had
first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible. Diego, now a
growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at
Cordova, and going to school there; Christopher would take him back to
his aunt’s at Huelva before he went away. He set out with a heavy heart,
but with purpose and determination unimpaired.