In Portugal - 2

In Portugal - 2

This, so far as can be ascertained, is the truth about the arrival of Columbus in Portugal.

The early years of an obscure man who leaps into fame late in life are nearly always

difficult to gather knowledge about, because not only are the annals of the poor short and

simple and in most cases altogether unrecorded, but there is always that instinct, to which

I have already referred, to make out that the circumstances of a man who late in life

becomes great and remarkable were always, at every point in his career, remarkable also.

We love to trace the hand of destiny guiding her chosen people, protecting them from

dangers, and preserving them for their great moment. It is a pleasant study, and one to

which the facts often lend themselves, but it leads to a vicious method of biography

which obscures the truth with legends and pretences that have afterwards laboriously to

be cleared away. It was so in the case of Columbus. Before his departure on his first

voyage of discovery there is absolutely no temporary record of him except a few dates in

notarial registers. The circumstances of his life and his previous conditions were supplied

afterwards by himself and his contemporaries; and both he and they saw the past in the

light of the present, and did their best to make it fit a present so wonderful and

miraculous. The whole trend of recent research on the subject of Columbus has been

unfortunately in the direction of proving the complete insincerity of his own speech and

writings about his early life, and the inaccuracy of Las Casas writings his contemporary

biographer, and the first historian of the West Indies. Those of my readers, then, who are

inclined to be impatient with the meagreness of the facts with which I am presenting

them, and the disproportionate amount of theory to fact with regard to these early years of

Columbus, must remember three things. First, that the only record of the early years of

Columbus was written long after those years had passed away, and in circumstances

which did not harmonise with them; second, that there is evidence, both substantive and

presumptive, that much of those records, even though it came from the hands of

Columbus and his friends, is false and must be discarded; and third, that the only way in

which anything like the truth can be arrived at is by circumstantial and presumptive

evidence with regard to dates, names, places, and events upon which the obscure life of

Columbus impinged. Columbus is known to have written much about himself, but very

little of it exists or remains in his own handwriting. It remains in the form of quotation by

others, all of whom had their reasons for not representing quite accurately what was, it

must be feared, not even itself a candid and accurate record. The evidence for these very

serious statements is the subject of numberless volumes and monographs, which cannot

be quoted here; for it is my privilege to reap the results, and not to reproduce the material,

of the immense research and investigation to which in the last fifty years the life of

Columbus has been subjected.

We shall come to facts enough presently; in the meantime we have but the vaguest

knowledge of what Columbus did in Lisbon. The one technical possession which he

obviously had was knowledge of the sea; he had also a head on his shoulders, and plenty

of judgment and common sense; he had likely picked up some knowledge of cartography

in his years at Genoa, since (having abandoned wool-weaving) he probably wished to

make progress in the profession of the sea; and it is, therefore, believed that he picked up

a living in Lisbon by drawing charts and maps. Such a living would only be intermittent;

a fact that is indicated by his periodic excursions to sea again, presumably when funds

were exhausted. There were other Genoese in Lisbon, and his own brother Bartholomew

was with him there for a time. He may actually have been there when Columbus arrived,

but it was more probable that Columbus, the pioneer of the family, seeing a better field

for his brother's talent in Lisbon than in Genoa, sent for him when he himself was

established there. This Bartholomew, of whom we shall see a good deal in the future, is

merely an outline at this stage of the story; an outline that will later be filled up with

human features and fitted with a human character; at present he is but a brother of

Christopher, with a rather bookish taste, a better knowledge of cartography than

Christopher possessed, and some little experience of the book-selling trade. He too made

charts in Lisbon, and sold books also, and no doubt between them the efforts of the

brothers, supplemented by the occasional voyages of Christopher, obtained them a

sufficient livelihood. The social change, in the one case from the society of Genoese

wool-weavers, and in the other from the company of merchant sailors, must have been

very great; for there is evidence that they began to make friends and acquaintances

among a rather different class than had been formerly accessible to them. The change to a

new country also and to a new language makes a deep impression at the age of twentyfive;

and although Columbus in his sea-farings had been in many ports, and had probably

picked up a knowledge both of Portuguese and of Spanish, his establishment in the

Portuguese capital could not fail to enlarge his outlook upon life.

There is absolutely no record of his circumstances in the first year of his life at Lisbon, so

we may look once more into the glass of imagination and try to find a picture there. It is

very dim, very minute, very, very far away. There is the little shop in a steep Lisbon

street, somewhere near the harbour we may be sure, with the shadows of the houses lying

sharp on the white sunlight of the street; the cool darkness of the shop, with its odour of

vellum and parchment, its rolls of maps and charts; and somewhere near by the sounds

and commotion of the wharves and the shipping. Often, when there was a purchaser in

the shop, there would be talk of the sea, of the best course from this place to that, of the

entrance to this harbour and the other; talk of the western islands too, of the western

ocean, of the new astrolabe which the German Muller of Konigsberg, or Regiomontanus,

as they called him in Portugal, had modified and improved. And if there was sometimes

an evening walk, it would surely be towards the coast or on a hill above the harbour, with

a view of the sun being quenched in the sea and travelling down into the unknown,

uncharted West.