Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby; Dorothea Ponsonby

Meanwhile, in Spain more active steps were taken to collect sufficient money for his ransom. His father had died, but his mother and sister managed to raise a considerable sum, and money came in from other sources. Messengers were despatched to Africa, and after a long dispute over the bargain with the Turkish Pasha, Cervantes, who had actually embarked on a ship bound for Constantinople, was at last set at liberty.

It is not from the boasting of Cervantes himself that we have the particulars of his behavior during these five years of captivity. Blanco de Paz circulated malicious reports about him, and this led to an investigation. It is, therefore, on the authority of his fellow-captives that the story comes down to us. They witnessed to his good-temper and cheerfulness, for he had an overpowering sense of humor which must have saved his companions from depression and despair; they tell of his courage in danger, his resolution under suffering, his patience in trouble, and his daring and cleverness in action.

Had he lived in the days of newspapers, the fame of his exploits would have been proclaimed to all the world. He would have been petted and spoilt as a hero, and all the empty flattery and cheap advertisement which is heaped on any one in our day who appeals for the moment to the popular imagination would have been loaded upon him without stint. As it was, he arrived to find his family impoverished and in trouble, his patron, Don John of Austria, dead, and no one to say a good word for him in high quarters. He had been away ten years and was now only thirty-three.

In 1580, the year of Cervantes’ return to his native land, Spain was at the very height of her power. Philip II ruled not only over Spain but over Portugal and the Netherlands: more than half Italy belonged to him, as well as Oran and a considerable territory on the African shore of the Mediterranean, and in addition all that was European in Southern Asia. In the New World, from Chile to Florida, three-quarters of the known continent came under his rule.

By sea and by land Spain was predominant and was the envy and admiration of her neighbors. But with all this greatness, which was only the greatness of size, decay was present in the heart of the Empire. Under Philip, the rot spread further.

Lust for gold, which poured into the country from her rich colonies, and rage for dominion absorbed every wholesome passion in Spain, and gradually she fell away from her position of domination. It is one of the many instances which show how Imperial ambition and the worship of force can bring about a country’s ruin. Men begin to boast about the number of square miles and the number of million souls that come under their flag. Their minds become occupied with material ends: the Government pursues a policy of aggression and aggrandizement: and the urgent needs of improvement in the social and economic condition of the common people are neglected. To wring as much as possible from the people at home and to acquire as much secret influence as possible in the affairs of other nations was the rule of Philip’s conduct and the object of his life.

There were wars without number, and Cervantes seems to have found a fresh opportunity of serving his country as a soldier in Portugal, but the evidence for this is doubtful. But, what is more important, he now became more active with his pen, and wrote a number of poems and plays. The most famous of these was “Galatea,” a poetical romance which brought him to the front. Nevertheless, he found he could not get enough money by writing to keep his home—in fact, to the end, his life was a perpetual struggle with poverty.

At the age of thirty-seven he married a lady who rejoiced in the high-sounding name of Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazan y Vezmediano. Hardly anything is known of her, except the dowry which she brought with her, which consisted amongst other things of plantations of vines, household furniture, two linen sheets, three of cotton, a cushion stuffed with wool, one good blanket and one worn, garments, four beehives, forty-live hens and pullets and one cock. Her neighbors considered that so rich a young woman was throwing herself away on the obscure maimed soldier who was many years her senior. She survived her husband by ten years.

Cervantes began now to work at his writing very seriously, but he was quite unable to compete with the principal Spanish dramatist of the time, Lope de Vega, who was a great popular favorite, and, though the younger of the two, outstripped his rival easily in his powers of production, which were prodigious. But he was known as “the universal envier” of the applause given to others. In his lifetime Lope is said to have written one thousand eight hundred plays, not to mention innumerable poems and stories. He was a dissolute character, with great energy, boundless invention, and considerable wit. But few of his plays have survived, and outside Spain the name of Lope de Vega is but little known to-day. The Spanish drama of this period was the model copied by other countries. The bustling farce originated in Spain, and Elizabethan and Jacobean writers took many of the plots for their plays from Spanish dramatists.

But Cervantes could not make a living out of writing; unlike Lope, he had no powerful and influential friends. He had therefore to look for other employment. The Invincible Armada was just then being fitted up, and he got a post as agent for collecting provisions, and afterwards he was appointed to the very humble position of tax-collector—an occupation he must have hated, as he got into trouble more than once, having to pay the debts of people whom he had trusted too much. He applied for a higher post in the Government service, but his petition was dismissed and he was forced to continue the distasteful work at a reduced salary, falling into such extreme poverty at one time that he actually was in need of common cloth to cover his nakedness. His unbusinesslike habits made people suspect his honesty. He drifted lower and lower, until at last he was imprisoned in Seville for mistakes in his accounts. From the court he could expect nothing. Philip was not likely to be sympathetic to a struggling writer or even grateful to an old soldier, and prayers from Cervantes were set aside unanswered. Nor when Philip’s son, Philip III, succeeded to the throne did any crumb of royal favor fall his way.