Don Quixote | Page 7

occupation of
Toledo in 1085, and called by him San Servando after a Spanish martyr,
a name subsequently modified into San Servan (in which form it
appears in the "Poem of the Cid"), San Servantes, and San Cervantes:
with regard to which last the "Handbook for Spain" warns its readers
against the supposition that it has anything to do with the author of
"Don Quixote." Ford, as all know who have taken him for a companion
and counsellor on the roads of Spain, is seldom wrong in matters of
literature or history. In this instance, however, he is in error. It has
everything to do with the author of "Don Quixote," for it is in fact these
old walls that have given to Spain the name she is proudest of to-day.
Gonzalo, above mentioned, it may be readily conceived, did not relish
the appropriation by his brother of a name to which he himself had an
equal right, for though nominally taken from the castle, it was in reality
derived from the ancient territorial possession of the family, and as a
set-off, and to distinguish himself (diferenciarse) from his brother, he
took as a surname the name of the castle on the bank of the Tagus, in
the building of which, according to a family tradition, his
great-grandfather had a share.
Both brothers founded families. The Cervantes branch had more
tenacity; it sent offshoots in various directions, Andalusia, Estremadura,
Galicia, and Portugal, and produced a goodly line of men distinguished
in the service of Church and State. Gonzalo himself, and apparently a

son of his, followed Ferdinand III in the great campaign of 1236-48
that gave Cordova and Seville to Christian Spain and penned up the
Moors in the kingdom of Granada, and his descendants intermarried
with some of the noblest families of the Peninsula and numbered
among them soldiers, magistrates, and Church dignitaries, including at
least two cardinal-archbishops.
Of the line that settled in Andalusia, Deigo de Cervantes, Commander
of the Order of Santiago, married Juana Avellaneda, daughter of Juan
Arias de Saavedra, and had several sons, of whom one was Gonzalo
Gomez, Corregidor of Jerez and ancestor of the Mexican and
Columbian branches of the family; and another, Juan, whose son
Rodrigo married Dona Leonor de Cortinas, and by her had four
children, Rodrigo, Andrea, Luisa, and Miguel, our author.
The pedigree of Cervantes is not without its bearing on "Don Quixote."
A man who could look back upon an ancestry of genuine knights-errant
extending from well-nigh the time of Pelayo to the siege of Granada
was likely to have a strong feeling on the subject of the sham chivalry
of the romances. It gives a point, too, to what he says in more than one
place about families that have once been great and have tapered away
until they have come to nothing, like a pyramid. It was the case of his
own.
He was born at Alcala de Henares and baptised in the church of Santa
Maria Mayor on the 9th of October, 1547. Of his boyhood and youth
we know nothing, unless it be from the glimpse he gives us in the
preface to his "Comedies" of himself as a boy looking on with delight
while Lope de Rueda and his company set up their rude plank stage in
the plaza and acted the rustic farces which he himself afterwards took
as the model of his interludes. This first glimpse, however, is a
significant one, for it shows the early development of that love of the
drama which exercised such an influence on his life and seems to have
grown stronger as he grew older, and of which this very preface,
written only a few months before his death, is such a striking proof. He
gives us to understand, too, that he was a great reader in his youth; but
of this no assurance was needed, for the First Part of "Don Quixote"

alone proves a vast amount of miscellaneous reading, romances of
chivalry, ballads, popular poetry, chronicles, for which he had no time
or opportunity except in the first twenty years of his life; and his
misquotations and mistakes in matters of detail are always, it may be
noticed, those of a man recalling the reading of his boyhood.
Other things besides the drama were in their infancy when Cervantes
was a boy. The period of his boyhood was in every way a transition
period for Spain. The old chivalrous Spain had passed away. The new
Spain was the mightiest power the world had seen since the Roman
Empire and it had not yet been called upon to pay the price of its
greatness. By the policy of Ferdinand and Ximenez the sovereign had
been made absolute, and the Church and Inquisition adroitly adjusted to
keep