Wanderings With An Idea - 6

Wanderings With An Idea - 6

After the failure of Columbus's proposals to the King of Portugal in 1486, and the breakup

of his home there, Bartholomew had also left Lisbon. Bartholomew Diaz, a famous

Portuguese navigator, was leaving for the African coast in August, and Bartholomew

Columbus is said to have joined his small expedition of three caravels. As they neared the

latitude of the Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into a gale which drove him a

long way out of his course, west and south.

The wind veered round from north-east to north-west, and he did not strike the land again

until May 1487. When he did so his crew insisted upon his returning, as they declined to

go any further south. He therefore turned to the west, and then made the startling

discovery that in the course of the tempest he had been blown round the Cape, and that

the land he had made was to the eastward of it; and he therefore rounded it on his way

home. He arrived back in Lisbon in December 1488, when Columbus met his brother

again, and was present at the reception of Diaz by the King of Portugal. They had a great

deal to tell each other, these two brothers; in the two years and a half that had gone since

they had parted a great deal had happened to them; and they both knew a good deal more

about the great question in which they, were interested than they had known when last

they talked.

It is to this period that I attribute the inception, if not the execution, of the forgery of the

Toscanelli correspondence, if, as I believe, it was a forgery. Christopher's unpleasant

experiences before learned committees and commissions had convinced him that unless

he were armed with some authoritative and documentary support for his theories they had

little chance of acceptance by the learned. The, Idea was right; he knew that; but before

he could convince the academic mind, he felt that it must have the imprimatur of a mind

whose learning could not be impugned. Therefore it is not an unfair guess—and it can be

nothing more than a guess—that Christopher and Bartholomew at this point laid their

heads together, and decided that the next time Christopher had to appear before a

commission he would, so to speak, have something "up his sleeve." It was a risky thing to

do, and must in any case be used only as a very last resource; which would account for

the fact that the Toscanelli correspondence was never used at all, and is not mentioned in

any document known to men written until long after Columbus's death.

But these summers and winters of suspense are at last drawing to a close, and we must

follow Christopher rapidly through them until the hour of his triumph. He was back in

Spain in the spring of 1489, his travelling expenses being defrayed out of the royal purse;

and a little later he was once more amid scenes of war at the siege of Baza, and, if report

is true, taking a hand himself, not without distinction. It was there that he saw the two

friars from the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, who brought a message from

the Grand Soldan of Egypt, threatening the destruction of the Sepulchre if the Spanish

sovereigns did not desist from the war against Granada; and it was there that in his simple

and pious mind he formed the resolve that if ever his efforts should be crowned with

success, and he himself become rich and powerful, he would send a crusade for the

rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. And it was there that, on the 22nd of December, he saw

Boabdil, the elder of the two rival Kings of Granada, surrender all his rights and claims to

Spain. Surely now there will be a chance for him? No; there is another interruption, this

time occasioned by the royal preparations for the marriage of the Princess Isabella to the

heir of Portugal. Poor Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these continual delays,

irritated by a sense of the waste of his precious time, follows the Court about from one

place to another, raising a smile here and a scoff there, and pointed at by children in the

street. There, is nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it.

Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited number of

summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks Christopher, and I shall

be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and where there is nothing left to discover!

Something had to be done. In the beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of

at Court—the preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at

all. The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to the westward of

Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year, determined to get a final answer one

way or the other to his question. He made his application, and the busy monarchs once

more adopted their usual polite tactics. They appointed a junta, which was presided over

by no less a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza: Once more the

weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some hopes of success,

since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli correspondence. It was no scruple of

conscience that held him back, we may be sure; the crafty Genoese knew nothing about

such scruples in the attainment of a great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any

means to secure an end which he felt to be so desirable. So it is probable that either he

was not quite sure of his ground and his courage failed him, or that he had hopes, owing

to his friendship with so many of the members of the junta, that a favourable decision

would at last be arrived at. In this he was mistaken. The Spanish prelates again quoted the

Fathers of the Church, and disposed of his proposals simply on the ground that they were

heretical. Much talk, and much wagging of learned heads; and still no mother-wit or

gleam of light on this obscurity of learning. The junta decided against the proposals, and

reported its decision to the King and Queen. The monarchs, true to their somewhat

hedging methods when there was anything to be gained by hedging, informed Columbus

that at present they were too much occupied with the war to grant his requests; but that,

when the preoccupations and expenses of the campaign were a thing of the past, they

might again turn their attention to his very interesting suggestion.

It was at this point that the patience of Columbus broke down. Too many promises had

been made to him, and hope had been held out to him too often for him to believe any

more in it. Spain, he decided, was useless; he would try France; at least he would be no

worse off there. But he had first of all to settle his affairs as well as possible. Diego, now

a growing boy nearly eleven years old, had been staying with Beatriz at Cordova, and

going to school there; Christopher would take him back to his aunt's at Huelva before he

went away. He set out with a heavy heart, but with purpose and determination

unimpaired.