Chapter 2

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 ofmany 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 refrainedfrom visiting the defiance of his prisoner with stripes or personal indignity. As Cervantes has recorded, in his modest reference to this period of captivity inDon 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 hisTopografia 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 “greatfame, 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

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 hisaffairéwith the unknown Portuguese lady without hysteria, and is not even convinced that Christendom was saved on the great day of Lepanto, by thesingle arm of our hero, he is not lacking in sincere appreciation of the many virtues of the author ofDon 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 nothingmisanthropic 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 chanceMy 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 orrepinings—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

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 makesDon Quixotegive 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 thespringing 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 thetercio 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 flagshipSan 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 itbenefited 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 thisaffairemust 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 thecuriosos impertinentes, the literary ghouls who manifest their interest in high literature by leavingDon Quixoteunread, and striving to discover the name of Cervantes’ mistress.”

But Mr. Kelly, in this part, as in one or two other instances in his scholarlyLife 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 ofDon 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

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.

Between his retirement from the Army and the publication of the first, and only published part, of theGalatea, Cervantes, on the evidence of his petition to the King, conveyed letters and advices from Mostagan, a Spanish possession on the Coast of Barbary, to Philip, and was sent by His Majesty to Oran, where he was employed in affairs of the fleet, under the orders of Antonio de Guevara. But the nature and duration of his employment are matters of conjecture, and we must turn to 1584 for the next authentic details of his career. In that year our author married a wife, and published theGalatea.

TheGalatea, which was not translated into English until 1867, has enjoyed less vogue in thiscountry than in France, where Florian’s translation is still in demand. In Spain, at least half-a-dozen editions were called for during the lifetime of the author, and so great was the esteem in which it was held at the time, that gentlemen from France, affected to letters, had theirGalateaby heart. Cervantes’Eclogue, or, as we should style it, pastoral romance, was not a literary experiment, being an exercise in the manner of Montemayor’sDiana, and having its inspiration in the fashion of the period. This “firstfruits of his poor wit,” as the author calls it in his preface, is concerned with shepherds and shepherdesses, their loves, their longings, and their lassitudes. The fable is artificial, the language is stilted, the passion false, and the whole, to modern eyes and ears, is tedious, and not a little ridiculous. That it appealed to the current fancy in poetry and fiction is its excuse; that it was at least equal in merit, if not superior, to any contemporary effort of the same class, is its only substantial merit. Some personal interest the pastoral has in the introduction of real persons under romantic names. Cervantes’ own love story is rehearsed in the prologue, the poet masquerades as Elicio, and his wife as Galatea, while Tirsi, Timbrio, Damon, and Erasteso are all friends of the author. Twenty years later Cervantes made merry over this class of literature, when inDon Quixotehe makes the Knight, returning vanquished from the Tourney at Barcelona, propose to Sancho Panza that they shall turn shepherds andlead a rural life. He decides to call himself Quixotis, to re-name his Squire, Pansino and Teresa Panza is to be celebrated in the annal of arcady by the style of Teresania. The objects and employment of the shepherds were to consist of poetry and protestation. “For my part,” the Don declared, “I will complain of absence, thou” (his Squire) “shall celebrate thy own loyalty and constancy, the Shepherd Larrascon shall expostulate on his shepherdess’s disdain, and the Pastor Curiambio choose what subject he likes best; and so all will be managed to our hearts’ content”—even as it was managed by Cervantes in theGalatea.

Yet, artificial and uninspiriting as the pastoral appears to-day, it was acclaimed with unstinted praise, both at home and abroad, and caused the author to be classed by Gálvez de Montalvo and by Pedro de Padilla among the most famous poets of Castile. It brought him friends; it gave him enemies; but it was powerless to advance his worldly fortune—the money derived from the sale of the various editions of the book found their way into other pockets.

Of theGalatea, Cervantes has left us his own critical estimate in Chapter iv., Part I., ofDon Quixote. The curate and the barber are overhauling the Don’s library—“those unconscionable books of disventures,” the tales of chivalry over which he would pore for eight-and-forty hours together—and of the hundred large volumes, and a good numberof small ones, only some half-dozen escape the bonfire that has been built of them in the back yard. TheGalateawas one of the exempt. “That Cervantes has been my intimate acquaintance these many years,” cried the curate, “and I know he has been more conversant with misfortunes than with poetry. His book, indeed, has I don’t know what, that looks like a good design; he aims at something, but concludes nothing; therefore, we must stay for the second part, which he has promised us; perhaps he may make us amends, and obtain a full pardon, which is denied him for the present....”

TheGalatea, the second part of which was never written, is not lost to us, though it is little read; but of the rest of the survivors of the curate’s conflagration, and which Cervantes praises through the lips of his character—Amadis de Gaul,Palmerin of England,Ten Books of the Fortunes of Love, by Anthony de Lofraco;The Shepherd of Filida, together with theAraucana, of Don Alonso de Ercilla; theAustirada, of Jean Ruffo, a magistrate of Cordova; and theMonserrato, of Christopher de Virves, a Valentian poet—they are now only known because they are mentioned inDon Quixote. Yet of the last three works Cervantes makes the curate declare: “These are the best heroic poems we have in Spanish, and may vie with the most celebrated in Italy. Reserve them as the most valuable performances which Spain has to boast of in poetry.”

Into the profession of letters Cervantes carried a

LETTER ADDRESSED BY CERVANTES TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF TOLEDO,DATED MARCH 26TH, 1616.

principle and a philosophy as commendable and ennobling as the ambition that had sustained him in the profession of arms. “It is laudable,” he declared, “for a poet to employ his pen in a virtuous cause,” and he preached nothing that he did not practise consistently. “Let him direct the shafts of satire against vice,” he continued, “in all its various forms, but not level them at individuals; like some who, rather than not indulge their mischievous wit will hazard a disgraceful banishment to the Isles of Pontus. If the poet be correct in his morals, his verse will partake of the same purity; the pen is the tongue of the mind, and what his conceptions are, such will be his productions.”

And so, with these high ideals in his mind, and but few pieces in his wallet, he married on 12th December, 1584, with Dona Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, a young lady of good family, and in worldly substance the superior of her husband. The tenth of his fortune, which Cervantes settled upon his wife, amounted to 100 ducats, while an inventory of the bride’s effects include several plantations of young vines in the district of Esquívias, a small town of New Castile; six bushels of meal and one of wheat at eight reals, or 1s. 8d.; some articles of household furniture; two linen and three cotton sheets, a cushion and two pillows stuffed with wool; one good blanket, and one worn; tables, chairs, pots, and pans; a brasier, a grater, several jars, sacred images, in alabaster and silvergilt; a crucifix, two little images of the baby Jesus; four beehives, forty-five hens and pullets, and one cock. The lady who brought these curiously varied articles into the common stock bore Cervantes no children, survived him over ten years, and was buried, at her request, at her husband’s side in the convent of the Trinitarian nuns. And in these few lines, her story, so far as we know it, is told.

For a few months Cervantes continued to live at Esquívias, and in 1585 we find him removed to Madrid, where his household consisted, in addition to his wife and his little daughter, Isabel, his widowed sister, Andrea, and her eight-year-old daughter, Constanza. Letters had not then become a recognised profession, and in the domain of poetry, amateurism was a disease. Tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors—all rhymed unceasingly. Lope de Vega, who was of the number, wrote: “In every street 4,000 poets;” and Cervantes, in hisVoyage around Parnassus, refers to “the vulgar squadron of seven-month poets, 20,000 strong, whose being is a mystery.” Lope de Vega, then, as always, more fortunate than Cervantes, a youth of twenty-three, already famous as a poet and a libertine, was acting as the confidential secretary of the young Duke of Alva. His dissolute life, which occasionally brought him into conflict with the authorities was, on the whole, far more to his advancement than was the virtuous rectitude of Cervantes, and it is possible that the jealousy and rancour with which the

younger dramatist followed his less affluent but more gifted rival was inspired by the knowledge of his purity in his life and his works. Their careers for awhile progressed along the same lines, but with Cervantes always in the van. They were writing innumerable verses at the same period; but while Lope de Vega, following the custom of the day, lampooned his colleagues, and levelled foul and venemous sonnets at his contemporaries, Cervantes steadily set his face against the practice. He had laid down a rule for his own guidance, from which he never diverged. He can jest a brother poet and banter the foibles of the writers of his day with gentle irony and good humour, but he reserves his censure and his sarcasm for the castigation of evil, vice and folly.

If, as seems more than probable, the relations between Cervantes and Vega were strained, their differences could have had no origin in the attitude of the former. It is true that inDon Quixotethe literary artifices and affectations of Lope de Vega are treated with benignant banter, and the bad taste and vulgarity which he indulged in many of his plays came in for some severe and judicious criticism, but in the same place other of his dramas are selected for special praise, and the dramatist is eulogised as “that most happy genius of these kingdoms, who has composed such an infinite number of plays with so much glory, with so much grace, such elegant verse, such choice language, such weighty sentiments—so rich in eloquence and loftiness of style, as that the world is filled with his renown.”

In return for this eulogy, and many other flattering references, Lope de Vega has mentioned Cervantes’ name exactly four times in print, and then only in cold and restrained terms; and in a letter written to his late patron, the Duke of Sessa, he disclosed his animus in the following item of news: “Of poets I speak not. Many are in the bud for next year, but there are none so bad as Cervantes, or so foolish as to praiseDon Quixote.” It was inevitable that a man of the disposition of Vega, whom his friend, Alarcon, has described as “the universal envier of the applause given to others,” should have envied the fame and genius of Cervantes, who, as Mr. Watts has written, was “of a temper the sweetest among men of genius, who had come through the fiery ordeal of a life of hardship with a heart unsoured as with honour unblemished.” As poet and novelist, Cervantes outdistanced the younger writer in public estimation, and as the author ofDon Quixote, he soared to a height which has been unattained by any other Spanish novelist; in the realm of the drama alone Lope de Vega was paramount.

It has been seen that Cervantes early acquired a taste for theatrical representations, and at the close of the sixteenth century he doubtless turned to this style of composition as offering the only available means of making an income. Between 1585 and 1588 he wrote and produced between twenty and

thirty plays, and claimed, on insufficient grounds, to have introduced several important changes in the material of stage representations. The trick of introducing allegorical characters among the sublunary personages, which Cervantes assumes as one of his improvements, was in practice in the old miracle plays, and his further pretention to having reduced the number of acts from five to three had been done long before by Avendano. Indeed it is possible that Cervantes produced no more than a number of respectable pieces which gained their full mead of popularity; and we know that his rate of payment, which averaged 800 reals per play, was equal to that received by Vega at any period of his career. But of his dramas only two have outlived their day—La NumanciaandEl Trato de Argel.

La Numancia, a play dealing with the famous siege of Numantia by the Romans, was subsequently acted at Zaragoza, in 1808, to inspire the besieged inhabitants to a last desperate effort, a device which succeeded so well that the French were driven from the battlements in the very moment of victory, and the city was saved.El Trato de Argel, in which Cervantes stages episodes in his captivity in Algeria, is a poorly-constructed, ineffective, and tedious piece of work, which gives one furiously to think that if the plays of our author won favour, it could only have been at a time when competition was weak or non-existent. Matos Fragoso, a dramatist who flourished a century later, alludes to the “famous comedies of the ingenious Cervantes,” but of contemporary criticism we have none; and Cervantes, in his prologue to hisEight Comedies and Eight Interludes, published in 1614, claims for his plays, with characteristic reticence: “They all ran their course without hisses, cries, or disturbances. They were all repeated without receiving tribute of cucumbers or any other missiles.” Of the lostLa Confusa(The Perplexed Lady), the dramatist speaks with particular satisfaction as ranking “good among the best of the comedies of the Cloak and Sword, which had been, up to that time, acted.” Well, the Spaniards are a conservative people, and to-day one may witness in that country, performances of stage plays that are listened to without the disconcerting accompaniment of the hurtling cucumbers, but which in an English theatre would be received with all manner of unfriendly disapprobation.

As a playwright, Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly refuses to take Cervantes seriously, and he asserts that it “requires the eye of faith to see any high form of dramatic talent in the examples which have come down to us.” But even as Richilieu plumed himself more upon his small gift as a poet than his genius as a statesman, and as Napoleon turned from the planning of world conquests to revise the regulations of the Theâtre Française, so Cervantes appears to have been observed with an ambition to shine in the realms of theatrical art. He was, as his biographer points out, ready at the invitation of

the manager to supply “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral ... and so contagious, so irresistible was his sublime self-confidence, that he actually persuaded managers into a belief in him.” And, despite the modesty of his prefaces there is no grounds for challenging the truth of Mr. Kelly’s conclusion that Cervantes was immensely proud of his dramatic work. “No man,” says this writer, “was more sublimely confident of the sincerity of his own mission; no man more certain that he deserved success. Years afterwards, when he had found his true way, when the fame of the author ofDon Quixotewas gone abroad in every land, he still turned his wistful eyes to the memory of the days when he had hoped to win immortality upon the stage. Nor does he ever seemed to have imagined that the cause of failure lay in himself. Even his hopeful spirit was a little staggered by the knowledge that his plays could get no hearing. That was a fact which no amount of self-delusion could blink; and Cervantes accounted for it by assuming, not that his plays were poor, but that he had fallen on evil days.”

Cervantes, according to Mr. Watts’s computation, was writing for the stage two years before Lope de Vega made his appearance as a dramatist. But the younger man carried everything in the theatrical world before him from the first. He came, and saw, and conquered, and Cervantes was swept from thearena by his triumphant onrush. “I gave up the pen and comedies,” Cervantes admits, “and there entered presently that prodigy of nature, the great Lope de Vega, and assumed the dramatic throne. He subjected all the actors, and placed them under his jurisdiction. He filled the world with comedies—suitable, felicitous, and well-worded—and so many that those in writing exceeded 10,000 sheets, all of which have been represented.” Cervantes scarcely overstated the fecundity of his rival. Vega flooded the theatres of Spain with an unending stream of plays of every description, and Montalvon records of this prodigy that he could turn out a comedy of more than 2,400 lines, complete with plot, dialogue, and stage directions, in twenty-four hours. In forty years he wrote upwards of eighteen hundred three-act comedies, besides poems, stories, and other literary exercises, of which, outside the little circle of savants and students, not half-a-dozen are to-day remembered even by name. Unless he was really the author of the false second part ofDon Quixote, it may be said that not a line of Lope de Vega’s prodigious output is now either read or discussed.

With the star of Lope de Vega in the ascendant Cervantes found his stage occupation gone, and he appears to have cast about for some other employment that would enable him to support his household. While he was turning out plays at the rate of eight to ten a year, his income, if not large, was at least sufficient for his modest requirements; but the

possibility of being able to make a competence by his pen in any other branch of letters impressed him so little that he removed his family to Seville, and re-entered the king’s service in a civil capacity. The next twenty years were to be the hardest and the leanest in his hard, lean life, and during all this time he wrote little and published nothing. His appointment as a commissary is signed 12th June, 1588, and by virtue of his office he was engaged in the purchase of grain and oil for the provisioning of the fleets and armaments of the Indies. Many receipts, invoices, and official papers written out by Cervantes in a clear, bold hand are in existence, though not a line of his other manuscripts has been preserved. His official duties were uncongenial and poorly paid, and in 1590 he addressed the memorial to the king, which amplifies and confirms our record of his military service. In this memorial, he “prays and beseeches humbly, so far as he can, that your Majesty should bestow on him the favour of a place in the Indies, of the three or four which are now vacant, one of them the accountantship of the new kingdom of Granada, or the governorship of the province of Soconuso in Guatemala, or treasurer of the galleys of Carthagena, or magistrate of the city of La Paz.” If the king considered this petition seriously, and examined the qualifications that Cervantes possessed for the discharge of treasury or accountancy duties, and if he came to the conclusion that such offices could be more capably filled by otherand less deserving men, the world will scarcely question his judgment. For although our author emerged from all his misfortunes with an honourable name and an unblemished reputation, it must be confessed that the incapacity he betrayed in the execution of his official tasks proved him unequal to the responsibilities of a more exalted official position. His naturally liberal disposition, his unmethodical habits, and his quixotic confidence in his fellow-men, were so many disabilities in the equipment of a commissary and tax-collector under Philip II.

The good nature and bad luck which at all times militated against the success of Cervantes, thwarted his civil aspirations; but his first incarceration, which occurred in 1592, arose from an excess of zeal on behalf of the Royal Treasury. He overlooked the important fact that the clergy were exempt from taxation, and for the heinous offence of laying an embargo on wheat belonging to a priest, he served a term of three months in the prison of Castro del Rio, of Ecija. In 1595 he won the prize of three silver spoons for the best set of verses written in honour of San Jacinto on the occasion of his canonisation at Zaragoza; and in the following year he was again thrown into prison, this time through the defalcation of an agent, by whom he remitted a sum of 7,400realsfrom Seville to Madrid. As his official salary was only 3,000realsa year, such a liability must have appeared to him to be practically indischargeable. But by the recovery of 2,600reals

from the estate of his defaulting agent, Cervantes obtained his liberty; and although he was re-arrested at a later period for delay in his repayments of the balance, his personal rectitude was in no way impugned.

But while his days were full of petty duties and financial troubles, he appeared to have found leisure for literary exercises, and there can be no doubt but that during these dead years he wrote the majority of his novels. If, however, he attempted to find a publisher for his work his efforts were ineffectual, and his fortunes fell to such a low ebb that he was dependant at times upon the benevolence of his friends for the necessities of life. Two sonnets, which he wrote about this period, are considered the best examples of his skill in this style of composition that have come down to us. In the one he ridicules the incredible delay of the great Duke of Medina Sidonia in coming to the relief of Cadiz after that city had been destroyed by the English, under Lord Howard of Effingham and the Earl of Essex, and in the other he satirises the extravagant splendour and “profane magnificence” which was lavished on the catafalque of Philip II. in Seville.

The exact date on which Cervantes made his home in La Mancha, and the circumstances which governed his change of habitation, are unknown. That he had resigned, or lost, his post of commissary is evident, since we find him employed by the Grand Priory of San Juan, in the collection of overduerents in the neighbourhood of Argamasilla. The exercise of such a calling would naturally make him unpopular with the local community; but whether his duties would in themselves bring him under the notice of the authorities, or whether, as it is said, he supplemented his unwelcome office by satirising the chief citizens, it is practically certain that he was seized and imprisoned for several weeks. In a letter he wrote to an uncle praying for assistance in this new affliction, he says, “Long days and troubled nights are wearing me out in this cell, or I should say cavern”; and if the underground cellar in theCasa de Medrano, which is still pointed out to visitors, was the scene of his durance, his condition was not overstated.Don Quixotewas, it is generally believed, “engendered in this prison,” but since the cell is too dark for the exercise of penmanship, it may be presumed that the author whiled away his solitude by moulding and rehearsing the scenes in his mind. But it is as well to bear in mind that Mr. Kelly has cast grave doubts upon the authenticity of this letter. The original is unknown; Sánchez Liaño himself, who is responsible for the story, states that he only had a copy of it; the fact that it was written from Argamasilla is unsupported; and his biographer asserts that there is not a jot of absolute evidence to prove that Cervantes ever suffered imprisonment at Argamasilla at all. But though the story rests chiefly upon tradition, it has a savour of veracity about it; and while it neither adds to or detracts

from the fame of Cervantes, it is one of those stories which the public will not lightly relinquish.

Near by the house in theCasa de Medranostands the parish church of Argamasilla, where, in one of the side chapels, hangs a picture, representing a lady and gentleman kneeling devoutly before a vision of the Virgin. The gentleman has a typical Spanish caste of countenance, with high cheek bones and lantern jaws, a dust complexion, wandering eyes, and large moustachios. The inscription beneath the portraits explains that the gentleman had been cured by Our Lady of a mental affliction, and that the young, and not uncomely, lady by his side was his niece. The donor of the picture, whose lineaments are portrayed therein, was one, Rodrigo Pacheco, who was the owner of the house in theCasa de Medranoat the time that Cervantes sojourned in La Mancha. It was probably by Pacheco’s order that Cervantes was lodged in the dungeon beneath his house. Upon these traditional particulars the good people of Argamasilla have based their legend, which identifies Cervantes with their city, and makes one of their leading citizens the original ofDon Quixote. If the legend be true, and there would appear to be no substantial reason for doubting it, we may dismiss the idea that the author had departed from the principles he laid down as worthy of adoption by all writers. Supposing that he selected this individual as the victim of his satirical bent, we may learn from the affection with which he develops thecharacter of the afflicted knight, how little of rancour and uncharitableness had place in his heart. It must be conceded that he made merry at the expense of the Manchegans and their customs, but he did it with so glad a humour, and such gentle sarcasm, that La Mancha to-day is proud of the fame it has achieved in his immortal pages, and reveres the memory of their adopted townsman as piously as if he were their patron Saint. But if, as internal evidence gives some excuse for believing,Don Quixotewas commenced before the death of Philip II., this interesting and circumstantially-proved legend becomes no more than a literary tradition, since that monarch had died before Cervantes quitted Seville.

The only authenticated detail that we have of Cervantes’ career between 1598 and 1602 is this incident of his imprisonment at Argamasilla. When next we hear of him, in 1603, he is among the unrewarded soldiers and unrecognised men of letters who crowded the outer precincts of the Court of Philip III., at Valladolid. The king, though priest-ridden, and lacking in force of character, was not devoid of a kindly tolerance for learning, but the crumbs of royal favour were distributed by the ostentatious and uncultured Duke of Lerma, who despised literature, and had his own ends to serve by the allocation of the kingly bounty. From Lerma, as far as his biographers can discover, Cervantes received nothing; but in the Duke of Béjar—a nobleman, distinguished in arms and in poesy, and in his

Back to Index Next