Adventures Bodily And Spiritual - 2

Adventures Bodily And Spiritual - 2

 While the chapel bell is ringing other people are hurrying through the sunny Lisbon

streets to Mass at the convent. Among the fashionable throng are two ladies, one young,

one middle-aged; they separate at the church door, and the younger one leaves her mother

and takes her place in the convent choir. This is Philippa Moniz, who lives alone with her

mother in Lisbon, and amuses herself with her privileges as a cavaliera, or dame, in one

of the knightly orders attached to the rich convent of Saints. Perhaps she has noticed the

tall figure of the young Genoese in the strangers' part of the convent, perhaps not; but his

roving blue eye has noticed her, and much is to come of it. The young Genoese continues

his regular and exemplary attendance at the divine Office, the young lady is zealous in

observing her duties in the choir; some kind friend introduces them; the audacious young

man makes his proposals, and, in spite of the melancholy protests of the young lady's

exceedingly respectable and highly-connected relatives, the young people are betrothed

and actually married before the elders have time to recover breath from their first shock

at the absurdity of the suggestion.

There is a very curious fact in connection with his marriage that is worthy of our

consideration. In all his voluminous writings, letters, memoirs, and journals, Columbus

never once mentions his wife. His sole reference to her is in his will, made at Valladolid

many years later, long after her death; and is contained in the two words "my wife." He

ordains that a chapel shall be erected and masses said for the repose of the souls of his

father, his mother, and his wife. He who wrote so much, did not write of her; he who

boasted so much, never boasted of her; he who bemoaned so much, never bemoaned her.

There is a blank silence on his part about everything connected with his marriage and his

wife. I like to think that it was because this marriage, which incidentally furnished him

with one of the great impulses of his career, was in itself placid and uneventful, and

belongs to that mass of happy days that do not make history. Columbus was not a

passionate man. I think that love had a very small place in his life, and that the fever of

passion was with him brief and soon finished with; but I am sure he was affectionate, and

grateful for any affection and tenderness that were bestowed upon him. He was much

away too, at first on his voyages to Guinea and afterwards on the business of his petitions

to the Portuguese and Spanish Courts; and one need not be a cynic to believe that these

absences did nothing to lessen the affection between him and his wife. Finally, their

married life was a short one; she died within ten years, and I am sure did not outlive his

affections; so that there may be something solemn, some secret memories of the aching

joy and sorrow that her coming into his life and passing out of it brought him, in this

silence of Columbus concerning his wife.

This marriage was, in the vulgar idiom of to-day, a great thing for Columbus. It not only

brought him a wife; it brought him a home, society, recognition, and a connection with

maritime knowledge and adventure that was of the greatest importance to him. Philippa

Moniz Perestrello was the daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, who had been appointed

hereditary governor of the island of Porto Santo on its colonisation by Prince Henry in

1425 and who had died there in 1457. Her grandfather was Gil Ayres Moniz, who was

secretary to the famous Constable Pereira in the reign of John I, and is chiefly interesting

to us because he founded the chapel of the "Piedad" in the Carmelite Monastery at

Lisbon, in which the Moniz family had the right of interment for ever, and in which the

body of Philippa, after her brief pilgrimage in this world was over, duly rested; and

whence her son ordered its disinterment and re-burial in the church of Santa Clara in San

Domingo. Philippa's mother, Isabel Moniz, was the second or third wife of Perestrello;

and after her husband's death she had come to live in Lisbon. She had another daughter,

Violante by name, who had married one Mulier, or Muliartes, in Huelva; and a son

named Bartolomeo, who was the heir to the governorship of Porto Santo; but as he was

only a little boy at the time of his father's death his mother ceded the governorship to

Pedro Correa da Cunha, who had married Iseult, the daughter of old Bartolomeo by his

first wife. The governorship was thus kept in the family during the minority of

Bartolomeo, who resumed it later when he came of age.

This Isabel, mother of Philippa, was a very important acquaintance indeed for Columbus.

It must be noted that he left the shop and poor Bartholomew to take care of themselves or

each other, and went to live in the house of his mother-in-law. This was a great social

step for the wool-weaver of Genoa; and it was probably the result of a kind of

compromise with his wife's horrified relatives at the time of her marriage. It was

doubtless thought impossible for her to go and live over the chart-maker's shop; and as

you can make charts in one house as well as another, it was decided that Columbus

should live with his mother-in-law, and follow his trade under her roof. Columbus, in

fact, seems to have been fortunate in securing the favour of his female relatives-in-law,

and it was probably owing to the championship of Philippa's mother that a marriage so

much to his advantage ever took place at all. His wife had many distinguished relatives in

the neighbourhood of Lisbon; her cousin was archbishop at this very time; but I can

neither find that their marriage was celebrated with the archiepiscopal blessing or that he

ever got much help or countenance from the male members of the Moniz family.

Archbishops even today do not much like their pretty cousins marrying a man of

Columbus's position, whether you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a map-maker, or a

bookseller. "Adventurer" is perhaps the truest description of him; and the word was as

much distrusted in the best circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth century as it is to-day.