The Home In Genoa - 1

The Home In Genoa - 1

It is often hard to know how far back we should go in the ancestry of a man whose life
and character we are trying to reconstruct. The life that is in him is not his own, but is
mysteriously transmitted through the life of his parents; to the common stock of his
family, flesh of their flesh, bone of their bone, character of their character, he has but
added his own personality. However far back we go in his ancestry, there is something of
him to be traced, could we but trace it; and although it soon becomes so widely scattered
that no separate fraction of it seems to be recognisable, we know that, generations back,
we may come upon some sympathetic fact, some reservoir of the essence that was him, in
which we can find the source of many of his actions, and the clue, perhaps, to his
character.
In the case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma. The past is reticent enough about
the man himself; and about his ancestors it is almost silent. We know that he had a father
and grandfather, as all grandsons of Adam have had; but we can be certain of very little
more than that. He came of a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting the Apennine valleys; and
in the vale of Fontanabuona, that runs up into the hills behind Genoa, the two streams of
family from which he sprang were united. His father from one hamlet, his mother from
another; the towering hills behind, the Mediterranean shining in front; love and marriage
in the valley; and a little boy to come of it whose doings were to shake the world.
His family tree begins for us with his grandfather, Giovanni Colombo of Terra-Rossa,
one of the hamlets in the valley—concerning whom many human facts may be inferred,
but only three are certainly known; that he lived, begot children, and died. Lived, first at
Terra Rossa, and afterwards upon the sea-shore at Quinto; begot children in number
three—Antonio, Battestina, and Domenico, the father of our Christopher; and died,
because one of the two facts in his history is that in the year 1444 he was not alive, being
referred to in a legal document as quondam, or, as we should say, "the late." Of his wife,
Christopher's grandmother, since she never bought or sold or witnessed anything
requiring the record of legal document, history speaks no word; although doubtless some
pleasant and picturesque old lady, or lady other than pleasant and picturesque, had place
in the experience or imagination of young Christopher. Of the pair, old Quondam
Giovanni alone survives the obliterating drift of generations, which the shores and brown
slopes of Quinto al Mare, where he sat in the sun and looked about him, have also
survived. Doubtless old Quondam could have told us many things about Domenico, and
his over-sanguine buyings and sellings; have perhaps told us something about
Christopher's environment, and cleared up our doubts concerning his first home; but he
does not. He will sit in the sun there at Quinto, and sip his wine, and say his Hail Marys,
and watch the sails of the feluccas leaning over the blue floor of the Mediterranean as
long as you please; but of information about son or family, not a word. He is content to
have survived, and triumphantly twinkles his two dates at us across the night of time.
1440, alive; 1444, not alive any longer: and so hail and farewell, Grandfather John.
Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know next to nothing.
Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa, Aunt Battestina was married in the
valley; and so no more of either of them; except that Antonio, who also married, had
sons, cousins of Columbus, who in after years, when he became famous, made
themselves unpleasant, as poor relations will, by recalling themselves to his remembrance
and suggesting that something might be done for them. I have a belief, supported by no
historical fact or document, that between the families of Domenico and Antonio there
was a mild cousinly feud. I believe they did not like each other. Domenico, as we shall
see presently, was sanguine and venturesome, a great buyer and seller, a maker of
bargains in which he generally came off second best. Antonio, who settled in Terra-
Rossa, the paternal property, doubtless looked askance at these enterprises from his
vantage-ground of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion of visits exchanged
between the two families, he would comment upon the unfortunate enterprises of his
brother; and as the children of both brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate,
as children will, this settled difference between their respective parents. This, of course,
may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely; for Columbus in after life
displayed a very tender regard for members of his family, but never to our knowledge
makes any reference to these cousins of his, till they send emissaries to him in his hour of
triumph. At any rate, among the influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may reckon
this uncle and aunt and their children—dim ghosts to us, but to him real people, who
walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved their limbs, like the men and
women of our own time. Less of a ghost to us, though still a very shadowy and doubtful
figure, is Domenico himself, Christopher's father. He at least is a man in whom we can
feel a warm interest, as the one who actually begat and reared the man of our story. We
shall see him later, and chiefly in difficulties; executing deeds and leases, and striking a
great variety of legal attitudes, to the witnessing of which various members of his family
were called in. Little enough good did they to him at the time, poor Domenico; but he
was a benefactor to posterity without knowing it, and in these grave notarial documents
preserved almost the only evidence that we have as to the early days of his illustrious son.
A kind, sanguine man, this Domenico, who, if he failed to make a good deal of money in
his various enterprises, at least had some enjoyment of them, as the man who buys and
sells and strikes legal attitudes in every age desires and has. He was a wool-carder by
trade, but that was not enough for him; he must buy little bits of estates here and there;
must even keep a tavern, where he and his wife could entertain the foreign sailors and
hear the news of the world; where also, although perhaps they did not guess it, a sharp
pair of ears were also listening, and a pair of round eyes gazing, and an inquisitive face
set in astonishment at the strange tales that went about.