"Such the ungentle sport that oft invites
The Spanish maid, and cheers the Spanish swain,
Nurtured in blood betimes, his heart delights
In vengeance, gloating on another's pain."
The attention of the Cardinal Acquaviva was called to him through his
composition of "Filena," and, in 1568 or 1569, he joined the household
of the cardinal and accompanied him to Rome. It is sad to think that
only a few meagre items are all that remain to tell us of his daily life
at this important period of his life. By some of his biographers he is
mentioned as being under the protection of the cardinal; by one as
seeking to better his penniless condition; by another as having the
place of _valet de chambre_; and still again, we find him mentioned as a
chamberlain in the household. Monsignor Guilio Acquaviva, in 1568, went
as ambassador to Spain to offer the king the condolences of the Pontiff
on the death of Don Carlos. The cardinal was a man of high position,
young, yet of great accomplishments, and with cultivated literary
tastes. What then could have been more natural than that he should have
found companionship in Cervantes, and have desired to attach him to
himself as a friend or as a confidential secretary, to be always near
him. It is more than probable that his impressions of Southern France,
which he immortalized in his early pastoral romance of "Galatea" were
imbibed while making the journey to Rome with the cardinal, in whose
service he must have remained three years, as in October 7, 1571, we
find him joining the united Venetian, Papal, and Spanish expedition
commanded by Don John of Austria, against the Turks and the African
corsairs.
In the naval engagement at Lepanto, Cervantes was badly wounded, and
finally lost his left hand and part of the arm. For six months he was
immured in the hospital at Messina. After his recovery, he joined the
expedition to the Levant, commanded by Marco Antonio Colonna, Duke of
Valiano. He joined at intervals various other expeditions, and not till
after his prominence in the engagement at Tunis, did he, in 1575, start
to return to Spain, the land of his heart, the theme of the poet, and
the region supposed by the Moors to have dropped from heaven. Don John
of Austria and Don Carlos of Arragon, Viceroy of Sicily, each bore the
warmest testimony to the bravery and heroism of our poet, and each gave
him strong letters of commendation to the king of Spain.
In company with his own brother Roderigo, and other wounded soldiers
who were returning home, he started in the ship _El Sol_, which had the
misfortune, September 26, 1575, to be captured by an Algerine squadron.
Then it happened that the letters from the two kings, so highly prized
and upon which he had built so many hopes, proved a great misfortune to
him. The pirates cast lots for the captives. Cervantes fell to the share
of the captain, Dali Mami by name, who, in consequence of finding these
two letters, imagined he must be some Don of great importance and worth
a heavy ransom. He was watched and guarded with great strictness, loaded
with heavy fetters, and subjected to cruelties of every kind, till his
captor, not finding him of so much account as he had supposed, and no
money being offered for his ransom, the captain finally sold him for
five hundred escudos to the Dey Azan.
Inasmuch as a change might lead to something better, Cervantes rejoiced.
His gallant spirit, ever hopeful, looked for the open door in
misfortune. But, alas! his increased sufferings with the Dey reached a
climax almost beyond endurance. He made every struggle to escape; but
even in the midst of all his own sufferings, he found ways of aiding his
fellow-victims and inspiring them with the hopes denied to himself.
Roderigo had escaped long before, and from that time was making constant
exertion to raise the needful amount to redeem Miguel from the Dey, but
not till September, 1580, did he succeed in effecting his release; some
biographers making it a still later date.
His father had long been dead, and his mother and sisters gathered what
they could, but the combined family efforts were insufficient. There was
a society of pious and generous monks, who made special exertions to
assist in the liberation of Christian captives, and they finally made up
the amount demanded by Azan for Cervantes' release.
Worn down in spirit, broken in health, crushed at heart, who may venture
to speak of the effect upon him when he once more found himself at home
and in the embraces of his family? He himself says: "What transport in
life can equal that which a man feels on the restoration of his
liberty?" There is probably no more thrilling or exact an account of the
Algerine slavery than he has given in "Don Quixote." Whether his love
for a military life still pursued him, whether he desired an opportunity
for revenge upon his persecutors, or whether it was fatality,--maimed
and ruined as he was he once more entered the army. We cannot analyze
his motive. He makes his bachelor Sampson say, "The historian must pen
things not as they ought to have been but as they really were, without
adding to or diminishing aught from the truth." The lives of literary
men are not always devoid of stirring incidents. M. Viardot says of
him: "Cervantes was an illustrious man before he became an illustrious
author; the doer of great deeds before he produced an immortal book."
Don Lope de Figueras then commanded a regiment of tried and veteran
soldiers in the army of the Duke of Alva, in Portugal. His brother
Roderigo was serving in it when he joined it; and as Figueras had known
Cervantes in former campaigns, it is most probable he was in his
regiment. Later on, we find Cervantes accompanying the Marquis de Santa
Cruz on an expedition to the Azores, serving long and bravely under him.
The conquest of the Azores is described as a fiercely won but brilliant
victory over all the islands; and Cervantes immortalized the genius and
gallantry of the admiral in a sonnet.
The spirit of adventure ran high among the Castilians, while the whole
nation was at the same time in course of mental as well as moral
development. We are obliged to acknowledge that Spain in many ways was
far behind Italy, though hardly as some would have it, at the distance
of half a century. We must remember that, in 1530, there were only two
hundred printing-presses in the whole of Europe, and that when the first
one was set up in London, the Westminster abbot exclaimed, "Brethren,
this is a tremendous engine! We must control it, or it will conquer us."
The first press in Spain was set up in Valencia, in 1474, and Clemencin
says that more printing-presses in the infancy of the art were probably
at work in Spain than there are at the present day.
A change seemed to have crept gradually over the whole national
character of Spain after the brilliant and prosperous reign of Ferdinand
and Isabella, commencing with the severity of the Inquisition and
continuing under the tyranny of Philip II., predisposing the army to
savage deeds, till even the women and children were infected and the
literature of the period slightly tinged.
Cervantes is too often merged into Don Quixote as if he had no separate
existence. He accomplished more for the improvement of Spanish
literature with his well-timed satire than all the laws or sermons could
effect. His remarkable mind seems to have escaped the influence of the
times, unless we make an exception of his drama "Numancia," which, while
it excites the imagination, fills us with horror at its details, and
fails to touch our hearts, but is full of historical truths. Schlegel,
however, reviews it with enthusiasm. He calls his "Life in Algiers" a
comedy, but undoubtedly it is a true picture of his own captivity. We
are touched and filled with gloom at its perusal, and only remember it
as a tragedy. These two dramas were lost sight of till the end of the
eighteenth century, and they are superior to later dramatic efforts. He
was proud of his original conception of a tragedy composed of ideal and
allegorical characters which he permitted to have part in the "Life in
Algiers," as well as in "Numancia." Of the thirty plays spoken of as
given to the stage but few now remain; but others may yet be found. The
Spaniards say the faults of a great writer are not left in the
ink-stand. Spain, in Cervantes' day, had passed the chivalric age,
though many relics of it still remained in its legends, songs, and
proverbs. Cervantes becomes his own critic in his "Supplement to a
Journey to Parnassus," and speaking of his dramas, says: "I should
declare them worthy the favor they have received were they not my own."
Unfortunately, his comedy of "La Confusa" is among the lost ones. He
alludes to it as a good one among the best.
We have known Cervantes as a student, a soldier, a captive, and an
author, and now we have to imagine our maimed and bronzed soldier-poet,
after his many fortunes of war, in the new character of a lover. In
thought we trace his noble features, his intelligent look and expressive
eye, combined with his dignified bearing and thoughtful manner, and in
so tracing we find it congenial to imagine him as being well dressed and
enveloped in the ample Spanish cloak thrown gracefully over his breast
and left shoulder, concealing the poor mutilated arm, and at the same
time making it all the more difficult to believe that the right one had
ever wielded a "Toledo blade" or sworn that very strongest vow of
loyalty, "A fe de Rodrigo."[1]
We find him much interested in the quaint old-fashioned town of
Esquivias, making many friends therein, and sometimes gossiping with the
host of the _fonda_, so famed for the generous wines of Esquivias that
it needed no "bush;" and while enjoying his cigarito and taking an
occasional morsel from the dish of _quisado_ before him, he is learning
from the same gossiping host many items of interest about the very
illustrious families of Esquivias,--for it was famed for its chivalrous
prowess and its "claims of long descent." He had commenced his
"Galatea," and in it he was painting living portraits, and with great
delicacy he was, as the shepherd Elicio, portraying his passion for
Catalina, the daughter of Fernando de Salazar y Voxmediano and Catalina
de Palacios, both of illustrious families. Her father was dead, and she
had been educated by her uncle, Francisco de Salazar, who left her a
legacy in his will.
The fair Catalina, like other Spanish senoritas, was under the espionage
of a strict duena, and his opportunities of seeing her were very
limited. Sometimes we fancy him awaiting the passing of the hour of the
siesta and knocking at the grating of the heavy door of the house of the
Salazars, and in reply to the porter's question of _Quien es_?
answering, in his melodious tones, _Gente de paz_ (literally, "a
friend"),--a precaution which still continues in Spain. Meanwhile, his
romance of "Galatea" and of his own life are both growing. The occasion
inspires him. He is still in Esquivias, wandering through the olive
groves and by the river side, sometimes resting, and drinking in the
fragrance from an orange-tree while his untold wealth of brain was
seeking for its exit. Sometimes he had Catalina for a companion, the
duena lingering slightly behind. Sometimes he saw her at the church like
a fair saint, kneeling; but oftener he wandered alone with his now happy
thoughts, scarce knowing that the night was closing about him, or scarce
heeding the watchman who cried, "All hail, Mary, mother of Jesus! half
past twelve o'clock and a cloudy morning!" and thus, to this day, are
the Spaniards warned of the hour and the weather. His "Galatea" remains
unfinished. He had not meant that all this song should be for the public
ear. The end was for his love alone!
On the 12th of December, 1584, he was married to Catalina. Not many
years ago, the marriage contract was found in the public registry of
Esquivias. It contains an inventory of the marriage-dowry promised by
the bride's mother, of "lands, furniture, utensils, and live-stock."
Then follows the details, "several vineyards, amounting to twelve acres,
beds, chairs, brooms, brushes, poultry, and sundry sacks of flour." It
is spoken of as a very respectable dowry at a time when sacks of wheat
were worth eight reals. Then follows, in the same document, his own
settlement upon his wife, which is stated to be one hundred ducats. By
the custom of the time that was one-tenth of his whole property, or to
quote again, which "must have amounted to a thousand ducats, which at
present would be equivalent to about four hundred and fifty pounds
sterling." Gladly would we find some pleasant items of happy home life,
though, for the next four years, he lived quietly at Esquivias, and
cared for the vineyards like any landholder, till, perhaps, he tired and
went on to Seville, where he took up some mercantile business, though
never entirely giving up the pen; but from 1598 till 1605, there are no
real traces of him, when it would appear that he had removed to
Valladolid.
There is little doubt but that he suffered both in purse and feeling
from want of appreciation; but the Spanish proverb says, "An author's
work who looks to money is the coat of a tailor who works late on the
vespers of Easter Sunday." He had too noble a mind to harbor so mean a
sentiment as jealousy, and was far in advance of his age. His
countrymen, with characteristic indolence, were ready to cry, _manana,
manana_ (to-morrow, to-morrow), and so it was left for later generations
to honor his memory, for his power of invention and purity of
imagination can never be rivalled. While acting as clerk in Seville to
Antonio de Guevara, the Commissary-General to the Indian and American
dependencies, he must have been sadly disappointed, particularly as,
during that time, he had been unjustly thrown into prison on the plea of
not accounting for trust-money with satisfaction. Mr. Ticknor gives the
following interesting account: "During his residence at Seville,
Cervantes made an ineffectual application to the king for an appointment
in America, setting forth by the exact documents a general account of
his adventures, services, and sufferings while a soldier in the Levant,
and of the miseries of his life while a slave in Algiers; but no other
than a formal answer seems to have been returned to his application, and
the whole affair leaves us to infer the severity of that distress which
could induce him to seek relief in exile to a colony of which he has
elsewhere spoken as the great resort for rogues." The appointment he
desired was either corregidor (or mayor) of the city of Paz or the
auditorship of New Grenada, the governorship of the province of
Socunusco or that of the galleys of Carthagena. His removal to
Valladolid seems to have been by command of the revenue authorities,
where he still collected taxes for public and private persons. While
collecting for the prior of the order of St. John, he was again
ill-treated and thrown into prison.
Not till he was fifty-eight years old did he give to the world his
master-piece, and thus immortalizes La Mancha, in return for his
inhospitable and cruel treatment. "Don Quixote" was licensed at
Valladolid in 1604, and printed at Madrid in 1605. Its success was so
great that, during his lifetime, thirty thousand volumes were printed,
which in that day was little short of marvellous. Four editions were
published the first year, two at Madrid, one at Valencia, and one at
Lisbon. Byron says: "Cervantes laugh'd Spain's chivalry away!" So
popular was it, that a spurious second part, under the fictitious
authorship of Avellanada was published. Cervantes was furious, and
called him a blockhead; but Germond de Lavigue, the distinguished
Spanish scholar, rashly asserts that but for this Avellanada, he would
never have finished "Don Quixote." Even before it was printed, jealousy
evidently existed in the hearts of rival writers, for in one of Lope's
letters he refers to it, and spitefully hints that no poet could be
found to write commendatory verses on it.
He recognized the fact of universal selfishness when he makes Sancho
Panza refuse to learn the Don's love-letter and say, "Write it, your
worship, for it's sheer nonsense to trust anything to my memory."
Spain is so full of rich material for romance that from it his mature
mind seemed to inaugurate a new age in Spanish literature. After the
gloomy intolerance of Philip II., the advent of Philip III. added much
to the literary freedom of Spain, which still belonged to the "Age of
Chivalry," and to this day the true Spaniard nourishes the lofty and
romantic qualities which, combined with a tone of sentiment and gravity
and nobility of conversation, embellishes the legitimate grandee.
Sismondi de Sismondi says the style of "Don Quixote" is inimitable.
Montesquieu says: "It is written to prove all others useless." To some
it is an allegory, to some a tragedy, to some a parable, and to others a
satire. As a satirist we think him unrivalled, and this spirit found a
choice opportunity for vent when the troops of Don Carlos I. marched
upon Rome, taking Pope Clement VII. prisoner, while at the same time the
king was having prayers said in the churches of Madrid for the
deliverance of the Pope, on the plea that "he was obliged to make war
against the _temporal_ sovereign of Rome, but not upon the spiritual
head of the Church!" No wonder the king, after proving himself so good a
Catholic, should end his days in a monastery, or that he should mortify
himself by lying in a coffin, wrapped in a shroud, while funeral
services were performed over him. What, again, could have appealed more
to his sense of the ridiculous than the contest between the priests and
the authorities over the funeral obsequies of Philip II., so intolerant
a tyrant that he caused every Spaniard to breathe more freely as he
ceased so to do. He used his people as
"Broken tools, that tyrants cast away
By myriads, when they dare to pave their way
With human hearts."
We can easily believe in the greater freedom during the reign of Philip
III. "Viva el Rey."
The Count de Lemos was his near friend and protector when he brought out
the second part of "Don Quixote," and ridiculed his rival imitator. He
was a pioneer of so elevated a character as to preclude the possibility
of followers. Every one is familiar with it as a story, and the mishaps
of the gentle, noble-minded, kind-hearted old Don, as well as the
delusions, simplicity, and selfishness of the devoted squire, will never
lose their power to amuse. It may be extravagant, but it is not a
burlesque. The strong character painting, the ideas, situations, and
language, clothed in such simplicity that at times it becomes almost
solemn, give it a grandeur that no other book, considered as a romance,
possesses. The old anecdote of the king observing a student walking by
the river side and bursting into involuntary fits of laughter over a
book, exclaiming, "The man is either mad or reading 'Don Quixote,'" is
well preserved. One peculiar feature of the book is that, even now, for
some places, it would be a useful guide, many of the habits and customs
of Spain three hundred years ago being still the same. What a volume of
wit and wisdom is contained in the proverbs and aphorisms. One might
quote from it indefinitely had he not told us that "without discretion
there is no wit." His own motive in writing it we find in the last
paragraph of the book, namely, "My sole object has been to expose to the
contempt they deserved the extravagant and silly tricks of chivalry,
which this my true and genuine 'Don Quixote' has nearly accomplished,
their worldly credit being now actually tottering, and will doubtless
soon sink, never to rise again."
Now, all languages have it. There are eight translations into English
alone; but it is always impossible for the translator to render its true
spirit or to give it full justice. With all its vivacity and drollery,
its delicate satire and keen ridicule, it has a mournful tinge of
melancholy running through, and here and there peeping out, only to have
been gathered from such experience as his. He wrote with neither
bitterness nor a diseased imagination, always realizing what is due to
himself and with a full appreciation of and desire for fame. Many scenes
of real suffering appear under a dramatic guise, and here and there
creep out bits of personal history. His nature was chivalrous in the
highest degree. His sorrows were greater than his joys. Born for the
library, he prefers the camp, and abandons literature to fight the
Turks. Does he not make the Don say, "Let none presume to tell me the
pen is preferable to the sword." Again he says: "Allowing that the end
of war is peace, and that in this it exceeds the end of learning, let us
weigh the bodily labors the scholar undergoes against those the warrior
suffers, and then see which are the greatest." Then he enumerates:
"First, poverty; and having said he endures poverty, methinks nothing
more need be urged to express his misery, for he that is poor enjoys no
happiness, but labors under this poverty in all its guises, at one time
in hunger, at another in cold, another in nakedness, and sometimes in
all of them together." Later on he makes him say: "It gives me some
concern to think that powder and lead may suddenly cut short my career
of glory."
The world can only be grateful that "his career of glory" did not end in
the military advancement he had the right to expect. Had he been a
general, his Rozinante might still have been wandering without a name,
and Sancho Panza have died a common laborer. Again he says: "Would to
God I could find a place to serve as a private tomb for this wearisome
burden of life which I bear so much against my inclination." Surviving
almost unheard-of grievances only to emerge from them with greater
power; depicting in his works true outlines of his own adventures,
sometimes by a proverb, often by a romance, he never loses one jot of
his pride, giving golden advice to Sancho when a governor, and finishing
with the expression, "So may'st thou escape the PITY of the world." In
May, 1605, he was called upon as a witness in a case of a man who was
mortally wounded and dragged at night into his apartment, which almost
accidentally gives us his household, consisting of his wife; his natural
daughter Isabel, twenty years of age, unmarried; his sister, a widow,
above fifty years; her unmarried daughter, aged twenty-eight; his
half-sister, a religieuse; and a maid-servant. His "Espanola Inglesa"
appeared in 1611. His moral tales, the pioneers in Spanish literature,
are a combination without special plan of serious and comic, romance and
anecdote, evidently giving, under the guise of fiction, poetically
colored bits of his own experience in Italy and Africa. In his story of
"La Gitanilla" (the gipsy girl) may be found the argument of Weber's
opera of "Preciosa." "Parnassus" was written two years before his death,
after which he wrote eight comedies and a sequel to his twelve moral
tales. In his story of "Rinconete y Cortadilla" he evidently derives the
names from _rincon_ (a corner) and _cortar_ (to cut). His last work was
"Persiles and Sigismunda," the preface of which is a near presentiment
of his closing labors. He says: "Farewell, gayety; farewell, humor;
farewell, my pleasant friends. I must now die, and I desire nothing
more than to soon see you again happy in another world." His industry
was wonderful. We can but have a grateful feeling towards the Count de
Lemos for adding to his physical comfort for the last few years, and
feel a regret that the Count, who had lingered in Naples, could not have
arrived in time to see him once more when he so ardently desired it. In
a dedication to the Count of his final romance, written only four days
before his death, he very touchingly says: "I could have wished not to
have been obliged to make so close a personal application of the old
verses commencing 'With the foot already in the stirrup,' for with very
little alteration I may truly say that with my foot in the stirrup,
feeling this moment the pains of dissolution, I address this letter to
you. Yesterday I received extreme unction. To-day I have resumed my pen.
Time is short, my pains increase, my hopes diminish, yet I do wish my
life might be prolonged till I could see you again in Spain." His wish
was not to be gratified; the Count, unaware of the near danger of his
friend, only returned to find himself overwhelmed with grief at his
loss.
After sixty-nine years of varied fortunes and many struggles, Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra breathed his last, unsoothed by the hands he had
loved, for even this privilege seems to have been denied to him. At the
near end of his life he had joined the kindly third order of the
Franciscan friars, and the brethren cared for him at the last. His
remarkable clearness of intellect never failed him, and on April 23,
1616, the very day that Shakspeare died at Stratford, Cervantes died at
Madrid. Unlike the great English contemporary, whose undisturbed bones
have lain quietly under peril of his malediction, the bones of the great
Spanish poet were irrevocably lost when the old Convent of the Trinity,
in the Calle del Humilladero, was destroyed. Ungrateful Spain! the spot
had never been marked with a common tombstone.
The old house[2] in the Calle de Francos, where he died, was so
dilapidated that, in 1835, it was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and a
marble bust of Cervantes was placed over the entrance by the sculptor,
Antonio Sola.
The "Madrid Epoca," under the heading of "The Prison of Cervantes,"
calls attention to the alarming state of decay of the house in
Argamasilla del Alba, in the cellar of which, as an extemporized
dungeon, tradition asserts that Cervantes was imprisoned, and where he
penned at least a portion of his work. It was in this cellar that, a few
years since, the Madrid publishing house of Rivadeneyra erected a press
and printed their edition _de luxe_ of "Don Quijote." The house was,
some years since, purchased by the late Infante Don Sebastian, with a
view to a complete and careful restoration; but political changes and
his death prevented a realization of his project. The "Epoca" now calls
public attention to the state of decay of the house, with a view to an
immediate restoration.
In the Plaza de las Cortes, the city of Madrid has placed a beautiful
bronze statue of Cervantes upon a square pedestal of granite. Upon the
sides are bas-reliefs representing subjects taken from "Don Quijote de
la Mancha."
The present time honors his memory; and for all time he will live in the
hearts of all true lovers of genius.