Christopher Columbus

FROM a reader’s point of view, this is to be regarded as a mystery story rather than as a biography, for Columbus is second only to Shakespeare as the most unapproachable and mysterious figure in the whole history of the Western world. Good mystery stories run to two patterns. Some show no clues, and the story is made up out ot the gradual transformation ot ingenious guesswork into clues and finally into a solution. Others show many clues, each one canceling out two or three of the rest in such a way as to make a solution apparently impossible. The mystery of Shakespeare is in the first pattern. That of Columbus, on the other hand, is in the second pattern. There is so much evidence for and against everything that it is impossible for anyone really to know anything about anything. A reader who enjoys a first-class high-grade mystery story will have a rare treat in seeing what M. de Madariaga does with the first great question, Who and what was Columbus? Was he a Genoese, a Catalan, a Gallegan, a Portuguese, or what? Nobody knows. There is plenty of evidence pointing any way you like. The author produces all of it, balances it point against point, makes all the obvious and necessary cancellations, and finally builds up and presents his own interesting and plausible solution of the mystery.

No less fascinating are the many minor mysteries which surround the life and doings of Don Cristóforo from the very outset of his career. How, at nineteen, did he get the wherewithal to come forward and see his father through financial difficulties involving quite a bit of money? The author has an answer, very plausible, rather grim. How did he come by Toscanelli’s map, and why did he not produce it to back his plea before the Talavera commission? Why was he kept hanging about so long, in receipt of living expenses from the king and queen, instead of being promptly dismissed when the commission reported unanimously ‘that it was impossible that what the Admiral said should be true’? The whole story is speckled with such odds-and-ends of mystery as these, and the author’s way of dealing with them is as fascinating as the mysteries themselves.

Notwithstanding his great qualities, Don Cristóforo emerges from the author’s pages as a rather unlovely figure. In his relations with others, even with those who befriended him and advanced his cause, he seldom appears quite worthy of complete respect. He was disingenuous, egocentric, arrogant, exacting, a very close bargainer, curiously irresolute and shifty, and as curiously showing streaks of petty meanness. These last traits seem curious because as a rule they do not go with the character of a great adventurer, which Columbus unquestionably was. In fact, if the author’s understanding of Columbus’s nature is as nearly correct as it appears to be, the wonder is that his friends and patrons, especially the king and queen, put up with him as long as they did.

For the roval couple did put up with him nobly through thick and thin. Ferdinand and Isabel are presented here as models of statesmanship and of personal loyalty. They showed endless patience with Columbus, yielded to his exorbitant demands, overlooked his usurpations of power, his treasonable insubordination, and remained considerate and friendly towards him to the end.

Ferdinand and Isabel come out well. Their reign was marked by the great dispersion of the Jews in 1492, and this has a considerable bearing on the course of the narrative. The present plight of the Jews in various countries gives a special point to the author’s candid and thorough examination of the Jewish problem in Spain at that period. It is most impressive and instructive, and should be read with great care.

This book is scholarly to the utmost, thoroughly documented, the fruit of exhaustive research. Written by a Spaniard, it exhibits the native sense and feel towards the materials it weighs; and written by a scholar, it is the acme of disinterestedness. With all this, it is done in the style of a first-class storyteller, and in the impeccable taste of a gentleman.