Columbus and the Jews
A Dictionnaire des Idles Refuel about Christopher Columbus would make entertaining reading ; for .of the immense Columbus literature purporting to tell the truth about him a vast quantity is occupied with theory, myth and traditional error. Every generation a few more of these are demolished, and a book like Mr. Duff's, which economically restates the known facts and chips away a little of the remaining mystery on its own account, must be welcomed. From the title one feared, it must be confessed, a fresh contribution to myth. The fears are strengthened by a typically facetious preface by Mr. Philip Guedalla, with its talk of the Cohens and the Kellys ; but anxiety turns out to be baseless. Mr. Duff certainly does examine the not impossible theory that Columbus was a Jew or had Jewish blood, but he restrains himself from the claim that Columbus was an Irishman.
Does the title indicate salesmanship or controversial pugnacity ? Both, I think, for Mr. Duff is a lively writer, His narrative is sensible, readable and is done with a refreshing concision. His authorities—with the exception of the delightful General Nogales who is, I should have thought, the expert, ori'friee-land soldiering, but not the foremost figure in early American ethnological science h—are sound. Mr. Duff has. re-translated the Journal which, he says, is often inaccurate and wooden in its English rendering, and comparing his translation here and there with the Spanish, it is certainly close and retains the original's vividness. Apart from this his chief points are the continuity of the tradition of " land to the West" Irons the times of the Norsemen until Columbus, picked it up and turned it to his, own mystical and practical uses ; and an examination of thepart played by the Spanish :Jews in pushing the cause of Columbus at court and in fialinciag his first expedition. This was really worth-while writing, and no popular book has any reference to it as far as I know. In fact only Mr. \'aleriu Mercies excellent little book on the .Jews in Spain has really given this subject the attention it particularly deserves today.
It can be forcefully argued that but for: the Spanish Jews Columbus would • never haye sailed. In . the debates at Salamanca, it was the Jewish Roman catholic Priests who saw the sincerity of Colurabus,- the Seriousness if his-imagination, who sympathised with his mysticism-and *hi divined that he was no mere windbag. At the court. of Isabel; the powerful Jews were again on his side. After Isabel had refused it was an influential Jewish advise. r who persuaded ber to change her mind by pdinting out that she had nothing to Jose .and that,' in any case, he and a fellow Jew would pay for the whole of the expeditioa. ThiS in fact happened, although it the tine' Columbus- sailed Isabel and Fernando had Already' begun to: turn on the mainstays of their State, Isabel oktspf piety and. Fernando froM greed,' and were expropriating Jewish property, starting the stake fires and the expulsions. To argue, however, that becauSe the. Nazis have straightened ColumbUs'-hook'nose in a recent portrait, and because of his frequent and success- fat relations with the Jews, Columbus was ,Jewish is. quite another matter. Mr. Duff does not take it very seriously, but lie does raise the question.
There is a good simple picture of the man in these pages, and it is pleasant to find Mr. Duff is not ingenious about his mysterious traits. Was Columbus so very mysterious? Was he not rather a Mystery maker? A man of one idea carried to mystical lengths---he boasted of virtual certainty about the exact latitude of the Earthly Paradise—simple yet crafty, obstinate, an ov=erbearing diplomat, a bad ruler, a persistent liar, a courageous traveller and a neglectful husband, he is much more concrete to the mind's eye than such mysteries as Shakegpeare and-Cervantes. "The rest -must be speculation, and one doubts if even when scholars have gone over the archives of Seville with a tooth-comb, that they will find very much more. There may be something which will throw light on Professor Jane's interesting theory that Columbus' real and secret objective lay to the South, perhaps towards the Antarctic or the fearsome Terra Australia, and not to the West. Columbus always sailed South, once he had got to the Indies on his later voyages, as Professor Jane pointed out. Mr. Duff does not mention this point, and there is no special reason why he should ; it is part of the Columbus mystery, and Mr. Duff, in his lively way, is concerned only with what we ought to know and not with what we would like to know.
V. S. ParrenETT.
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