Not an image of rural beauty has escaped our divine poet; and how feelingly are they applied from the landscape to the heart! What a fascinating languor, like the last beams of an evening sun, is thrown over the whole composition! If I am any thing, this sonnet has made me what I am; but what am I, compared to Monteiro? Judge,” continued he, putting into my hand some manuscript verses of this author, to whom the Portuguese are vehemently partial. Though they were striking and sonorous, I must confess the sonnet of Camoens, and many of Senhor Manuel Maria’s own verses, pleased me infinitely more; but in fact, I was not sufficiently initiated into the force and idiom of the Portuguese language to be a competent judge; and it was only in fancying me one, that this powerful genius discovered any want of penetration.
Our dinner was lively and convivial. At the dessert the Abadè produced an immense tray of dried fruits and sweetmeats, which one of his hundred and fifty protégés had sent him from, I forget what exotic region. These good things he kept handing to us, and almost cramming down our throats, as if we had been turkeys and he a poulterer, whose livelihood depended upon our fattening. “There,” said he, “did you ever behold such admirable productions? Our Queen has thousands and thousands of miles with fruit-groves over your head, and rocks of gold and diamonds beneath your feet. The riches and fertility of her possessions have no bounds, but the sea, and the sea itself might belong to us if we pleased; for we have such means of ship-building, masts two hundred feet high, incorruptible timbers, courageous seamen. Don Frederic can tell you what some of our heroes achieved not long ago against the gentiles at Goa. Your Joaô Bulles are not half so smart, half so valorous.”
Thus he went on, bouncing and roaring us deaf. For patriotic rodomontades and flourishes, no nation excels the Portuguese, and no Portuguese the Abadè!
At length, however, all this tasting and praising having been gone through with, we set forth on the wings of holiness, to pay our devoirs to the holy crows. A certain sum having been allotted time immemorial for the maintenance of two birds of this species, we found them very comfortably established in a recess of a cloister adjoining the cathedral, well fed and certainly most devoutly venerated.
The origin of this singular custom dates as high as the days of St. Vincent, who was martyrized near the Cape, which bears his name, and whose mangled body was conveyed to Lisbon in a boat, attended by crows. These disinterested birds, after seeing it decently interred, pursued his murderers with dreadful screams and tore their eyes out. The boat and the crows are painted or sculptured in every corner of the cathedral, and upon several tablets appear emblazoned an endless record of their penetration in the discovery of criminals.
It was growing late when we arrived, and their feathered sanctities were gone quietly to roost; but the sacristans in waiting, the moment they saw us approach, officiously roused them. O, how plump and sleek, and glossy they are! My admiration of their size, their plumage, and their deep-toned croakings carried me, I fear, beyond the bounds of saintly decorum. I was just stretching out my hand to stroke their feathers, when the missionary checked me with a solemn forbidding look. The rest of the company, aware of the proper ceremonial, kept a respectful distance, whilst the sacristan and a toothless priest, almost bent double with age, communicated a long string of miraculous anecdotes concerning the present holy crows, their immediate predecessors, and other holy crows in the old time before them.
To all these super-marvellous narrations, the missionary appeared to listen with implicit faith, and never opened his lips during the time we remained in the cloister, except to enforce our veneration, and exclaim with pious composure, “honrado corvo.” I really believe we should have stayed till midnight, had not a page arrived from her Majesty to summon the Marquis of M—— and his almoner away.
My curiosity being fully satisfied upon the subject of the holy crows, I was easily persuaded by the Grand Prior to move off, and drive through the principal streets to see the illuminations in honour of the Infanta, consort to Don Gabriel of Spain, who had produced a prince. A great many idlers being abroad upon the same errand, we proceeded with difficulty, and were very near having the wheels of our carriage dislocated in attempting to pass an old-fashioned, preposterous coach, belonging to one of the dignitaries of the patriarchal cathedral. I cannot launch forth in praise of the illuminations; but some rockets which were let off in the Terreiro do Paco, surprised me by the vast height to which they rose, and the unusual number of clear blue stars into which they burst. The Portuguese excel in fireworks; the late poor, drivelling, saintly king having expended large sums in bringing this art to perfection.
From the Terreiro do Paco we drove to the great square, in which the palace of the Inquisition is situated. There we found a vast mob, to whom three or four Capuchin preachers were holding forth upon the glories and illuminations of a better world. I should have listened not uninterested to their harangues, which appeared, from the specimen I caught of them, to be full of fire and frenzy, had not the Grand Prior, in perpetual awe of the rheumatism, complained of the night, so we drove home. Every apartment of the house was filled with the thick vapour of wax-torches, which had been set most loyally a blazing. I fumed and fretted and threw open the windows. Away went the Grand Prior, and in came Policarpio, the famous tenor singer, who entertained us with several bravura airs of glib and surprising volubility, before supper and during it, in a style equally professional, with many private anecdotes of the haute noblesse, his principal employers, not infinitely to their advantage.
I longed, in return, to have enlarged a little upon the adventures of the holy crows, but prudently repressed my inclination. It would ill-become a person so well treated as I had been by the crow-fanciers, to handle such subjects with any degree of levity.
Rambles in the Valley of Collares.—Elysian scenery. Song of a young female peasant.—Rustic hospitality.—Interview with the Prince of Brazil[20] in the plains of Cascais.—Conversation with His Royal Highness.—Return to Ramalhaô.
Oct. 19th, 1787.
MY health improves every day. The clear exhilarating weather we now enjoy calls forth the liveliest sense of existence. I ride, walk, and climb, as long as I please, without fatiguing myself. The valley of Collares affords me a source of perpetual amusement. I have discovered a variety of paths which lead through chesnut copses and orchards to irregular green spots, where self-sown bays and citron-bushes hang wild over the rocky margin of a little river, and drop their fruit and blossoms into the stream. You may ride for miles along the bank of this delightful water, catching endless perspectives of flowery thickets, between the stems of poplar and walnut. The scenery is truly elysian, and exactly such as poets assign for the resort of happy spirits.
The mossy fragments of rock, grotesque pollards, and rustic bridges you meet with at every step, recall Savoy and Switzerland to the imagination; but the exotic cast of the vegetation, the vivid green of the citron, the golden fruitage of the orange, the blossoming myrtle, and the rich fragrance of a turf, embroidered with the brightest-coloured and most aromatic flowers, allow me without a violent stretch of fancy to believe myself in the garden of the Hesperides, and to expect the dragon under every tree. I by no means like the thoughts of abandoning these smiling regions, and have been twenty times on the point this very day of revoking the orders I have given for my journey. Whatever objections I may have had to Portugal seem to vanish, since I have determined to leave it; for such is the perversity of human nature, that objects appear the most estimable precisely at the moment when we are going to lose them.
There was this morning a mild radiance in the sunbeams, and a balsamic serenity in the air, which infused that voluptuous listlessness, that desire of remaining imparadised in one delightful spot, which, in classical fictions, was supposed to render those who had tasted the lotos forgetful of country, of friends, and of every tie. My feelings were not dissimilar, I loathed the idea of moving away.
Though I had entered these beautiful orchards soon after sunrise, the clocks of some distant conventual churches had chimed hour after hour before I could prevail upon myself to quit the spreading odoriferous bay-trees under which I had been lying. If shades so cool and fragrant invited to repose, I must observe that never were paths better calculated to tempt the laziest of beings to a walk, than those which opened on all sides, and are formed of a smooth dry sand, bound firmly together, composing a surface as hard as gravel.
These level paths wind about amongst a labyrinth of light and elegant fruit-trees; almond, plum, and cherry, something like the groves of Tonga-taboo, as represented in Cook’s voyages; and to increase the resemblance, neat cane fences and low open sheds, thatched with reeds, appear at intervals, breaking the horizontal lines of the perspective.
I had now lingered and loitered away pretty nearly the whole morning, and though, as far as scenery could authorize and climate inspire, I might fancy myself an inhabitant of elysium, I could not pretend to be sufficiently ethereal to exist without nourishment. In plain English, I was extremely hungry. The pears, quinces, and oranges which dangled above my head, although fair to the eye, were neither so juicy nor gratifying to the palate, as might have been expected from their promising appearance.
Being considerably
and not recollecting by which clue of a path I could get out of it, I remained at least half-an-hour deliberating which way to turn myself. The sheds and enclosures I have mentioned were put together with care and even nicety, it is true, but seemed to have no other inhabitants than flocks of bantams, strutting about and destroying the eggs and hopes of many an insect family. These glistening fowls, like their brethren described in Anson’s voyages, as animating the profound solitudes of the island of Tinian, appeared to have no master.
At length, just as I was beginning to wish myself very heartily in a less romantic region, I heard the loud, though not unmusical, tones of a powerful female voice, echoing through the arched green avenues; presently, a stout ruddy young peasant, very picturesquely attired in brown and scarlet, came hoydening along, driving a mule before her, laden with two enormous panniers of grapes. To ask for a share of this luxuriant load, and to compliment the fair driver, was instantaneous on my part, but to no purpose. I was answered by a sly wink, “We all belong to Senhor Josè Dias, whose corral, or farm-yard, is half a league distant. There, Senhor, if you follow that road, and don’t puzzle yourself by straying to the right or left, you will soon reach it, and the bailiff, I dare say, will be proud to give you as many grapes as you please. Good morning, happy days to you! I must mind my business.”
Seating herself between the tantalizing panniers, she was gone in an instant, and I had the good luck to arrive straight at the wicket of a rude, dry wall, winding up and down several bushy slopes in a wild irregular manner. If the outside of this enclosure was rough and unpromising, the interior presented a most cheering scene of rural opulence. Droves of cows and goats milking; ovens, out of which huge cakes of savoury bread had just been taken; ranges of beehives, and long pillared sheds, entirely tapestried with purple and yellow muscadine grapes, half candied, which were hung up to dry. A very good-natured, classical-look-magister pecorum, followed by two well-disciplined, though savage-eyed dogs, whom the least glance of their master prevented from barking, gave me a hearty welcome, and with genuine hospitality not only allowed me the free range of his domain, but set whatever it produced in the greatest perfection before me. A contest took place between two or three curly-haired, chubby-faced children, who should be first to bring me walnuts fresh from the shell, bowls of milk, and cream-cheeses, made after the best of fashions, that of the province of Alemtejo.
I found myself so abstracted from the world in this retirement, so perfectly transported back some centuries into primitive patriarchal times, that I don’t recollect having ever enjoyed a few hours of more delightful calm. “Here,” did I say to myself, “am I out of the way of courts and ceremonies, and commonplace visitations, or salutations, or gossip.” But, alas! how vain is all one thinks or says to one’s self nineteen times out of twenty.
Whilst I was blessing my stars for this truce to the irksome bustle of the life I had led ever since her Majesty’s arrival at Cintra, a loud hallooing, the cracking of whips, and the tramping of horses, made me start up from the snug corner in which I had established myself, and dispelled all my soothing visions. Luis de Miranda, the colonel of the Cascais regiment, an intimate confidant and favourite of the Prince of Brazil, broke in upon me with a thousand (as he thought) obliging reproaches, for having deserted Ramalhaô the very morning he had come on purpose to dine with me, and to propose a ride after dinner to a particular point of the Cintra mountains, which commands, he assured me, such a prospect as I had not yet been blessed with in Portugal. “It is not even now,” said he, “too late. I have brought your horses along with me, whom I found fretting and stamping under a great tree at the entrance of these foolish lanes. Come, get into your stirrups for God’s sake, and I will answer for your thinking yourself well repaid by the scene I shall disclose to you.”
As I was doomed to be disturbed and talked out of the elysium in which I had been lapped for these last seven or eight hours, it was no matter in what position, whether on foot or on horseback; I therefore complied, and away we galloped. The horses were remarkably sure-footed, or else, I think, we must have rolled down the precipices; for our road,
led us by zigzags and short cuts over steeps and acclivities about three or four leagues, till reaching a heathy desert, where a solitary cross staring out of a few weather-beaten bushes, marked the highest point of this wild eminence, one of the most expansive prospects of sea, and plain, and distant mountains, I ever beheld, burst suddenly upon me, rendered still more vast, aërial, and indefinite, by the visionary, magic vapour of the evening sun.
After enjoying a moment or two the general effect, I began tracing out the principal objects in the view, as far, that is to say, as they could be traced, through the medium of the intense glowing haze. I followed the course of the Tagus, from its entrance till it was lost in the low estuaries beyond Lisbon. Cascais appeared with its long reaches of wall and bomb-proof casemates like a Moorish town, and by the help of a glass I distinguished a tall palm lifting itself above a cluster of white buildings.
“Well,” said I, to my conductor, “this prospect has certainly charms worth seeing; but not sufficient to make me forget that it is high time to get home and refresh ourselves.” “Not so fast,” was the answer, “we have still a great deal more to see.”
Having acquired, I can hardly tell why or wherefore, a sheep-like habit of following wherever he led, I spurred after him down a rough declivity, thick strewn with rolling stones and pebbles. At the bottom of this descent, a dreary sun-burnt plain extended itself far and wide. Whilst we dismounted and halted a few minutes to give our horses breath, I could not help observing, that the view we were now contemplating but ill-rewarded the risk of breaking our necks in riding down such rapid declivities. He smiled, and asked me whether I saw nothing at all interesting in the prospect. “Yes,” said I, “a sort of caravan I perceive, about a quarter of a mile off, is by no means uninteresting; that confused group of people in scarlet, with gleaming arms and sumpter-mules, and those striped awnings stretched from ruined walls, present exactly that kind of scenery I should expect to meet with in the neighbourhood of Grand Cairo.” “Come then,” said he, “it is time to clear up this mystery, and tell you for what purpose we have taken such a long and fatiguing ride. The caravan which strikes you as being so very picturesque, is composed of the attendants of the Prince of Brazil, who has been passing the whole day upon a shooting-party, and is just at this moment taking a little repose beneath yonder awnings. It was by his desire I brought you here, for I have his commands to express his wishes of having half-an-hour’s conversation with you, unobserved, and in perfect incognito. Walk on as if you were collecting plants or taking sketches, I will apprize his royal highness, and you will meet as it were by chance, and without any form. No one shall be near enough to hear a word you say to each other, for I will take my station at the distance of at least one hundred paces, and keep off all spies and intruders.”
I did as I was directed. A little door in the ruined wall, against which an awning was fixed, opened, and there appeared a young man of rather a prepossessing figure, fairer and ruddier than most of his countrymen, who advanced towards me with a very pleasant engaging countenance, moved his hat in a dignified graceful manner, and after insisting upon my being covered, began addressing himself to me with great precipitation, in a most fluent lingua-franca, half Italian and half Portuguese. This jargon is very prevalent at the Ajuda[22] palace, where Italian singers are in much higher request and fashion than persons of deeper tone and intellect.
The first question his royal highness honoured me with was, whether I had visited his cabinet of instruments. Upon my answering in the affirmative, and that the apparatus appeared to me extremely perfect, and in admirable order, he observed, “The arrangement is certainly good, for one of my particular friends, a very learned man, has made it; but notwithstanding the high price I have paid, your Ramsdens and Dollonds have treated themselves more generously than me. I believe,” continued his royal highness, “according to what the Duke d’Alafoens has repeatedly assured me, I am conversing with a person who has no weak, blind prejudices, in favour of his country, and who sees things as they are, not as they have been, or as they ought to be. That commercial greediness the English display in every transaction has cost us dear in more than one particular.”
He then ran over the ground Pombal had so often trodden bare, both in his state papers and in various publications which had been promulgated during his administration, and I soon perceived of what school his royal highness was a disciple.
“We deserve all this,” continued he, “and worse, for our tame acquiescence in every measure your cabinet dictates; but no wonder, oppressed and debased as we are, by ponderous, useless institutions. When there are so many drones in a hive, it is in vain to look for honey. Were you not surprised, were you not shocked, at finding us so many centuries behind the rest of Europe?”
I bowed, and smiled. This spark of approbation induced, I believe, his royal highness to blaze forth into a flaming encomium upon certain reforms and purifications which were carrying on in Brabant, under the auspices of his most sacred apostolic Majesty Joseph the Second. “I have the happiness,” continued the Prince, “to correspond not unfrequently with this enlightened sovereign. The Duke d’Alafoens, who has likewise the advantage of communicating with him, never fails to give me the detail of these salutary proceedings. When shall we have sufficient manliness to imitate them!”
Though I bowed and smiled again, I could not resist taking the liberty of observing that such very rapid and vigorous measures as those his imperial Majesty had resorted to, were more to be admired than imitated; that people who had been so long in darkness, if too suddenly broken in upon by a stream of effulgence, were more likely to be blinded than enlightened; and that blows given at random by persons whose eyes were closed were dangerous, and might fall heaviest perhaps in directions very opposite to those for which they were intended. This was rather bold, and did not seem to please the novice in boldness.
After a short pause, which allowed him, at least, an opportunity of taking breath, he looked steadily at me, and perceiving my countenance arrayed in the best expression of admiration I could throw into it, resumed the thread of his philosophical discourse, and even condescended to detail some very singular and, as they struck me, most perilous projects. Continuing to talk on with an increased impetus (like those whose steps are accelerated by running down hill) he dropped some vague hints of measures that filled me not only with surprise, but with a sensation approaching to horror. I bowed, but I could not smile. My imagination, which had caught the alarm at the extraordinary nature of the topics he was discoursing upon, conjured up a train of appalling images, and I asked myself more than once whether I was not under the influence of a distempered dream.
Being too much engaged in listening to himself to notice my confusion, he worked as hard as a pioneer in clearing away the rubbish of ages, entered minutely and not unlearnedly into the ancient jurisprudence and maxims of his country, its relations with foreign powers, and the rank from whence it had fallen in modern times, to be attributed in a great measure, he observed, to a blind and mistaken reliance upon the selfish politics of our predominant island. Although he did not spare my country, he certainly appeared not over partial to his own. He painted its military defects and priest-ridden policy in vivid colours. In short, this part of our discourse was a “deploratio Lusitanicæ Gentis,” full as vehement as that which the celebrated Damien a Goes, to show his fine Latin and fine humanity, poured forth some centuries ago over the poor wretched Laplanders.
Not approving in any degree the tendency of all this display, I most heartily prayed it might end. Above an hour had passed since it began, and flattered as I was by the protraction of so condescending a conference, I could not help thinking that these fountains of honour are fountains of talk and not of mercy; they flow over, if once set a going, without pity or moderation. Persons in supreme stations, whom no one ventures to contradict, run on at a furious rate. You frequently flatter yourself they are exhausted; but you flatter yourself in vain. Sometimes indeed, by way of variety, they contradict themselves, and then the debate is carried on between self and self, to the desperation of their subject auditors, who, without being guilty of a word in reply, are involved in the same penalty us the most captious disputant. This was my case. I scarcely uttered a syllable after my first unsuccessful essay; but thousands of words were nevertheless lavished upon me, and innumerable questions proposed and answered by the questioner with equal rapidity.
In return for the honour of being admitted to this monological dialogue, I kept bowing and nodding; and towards the close of the conference, contrived to smile again pretty decently. His royal highness, I learned afterwards, was satisfied with my looks and gestures, and even bestowed a brevet upon me of a great deal more erudition than I possessed or pretended to.
The sun set, the dews fell, the Prince retired, Louis de Miranda followed him, and I remounted my horse with an indigestion of sounding phrases, and the most confirmed belief that “the church was in danger.”
Tired and exhausted, I threw myself on my sofa the moment I reached Ramalhaô; but the agitation of my spirits would not allow me any repose. I swallowed some tea with avidity, and driving to the palace, evocated the archbishop confessor, who had been locked up above half-an-hour in his interior cabinet. To him I related all that had passed at this unsought, unexpected interview. The consequences in time developed themselves.
Convent of Boa Morte.—Emaciated priests.—Austerity of the Order.—Contrite personages.—A nouveau riche.—His house.—Walk on the veranda of the palace at Belem.—Train of attendants at dinner.—Portuguese gluttony.—Black dose of legendary superstition.—Terrible denunciations.—A dreary evening.
Nov. 9th, 1787.
M—— and his principal almoner, a renowned missionary, and one of the most eloquent preachers in her Majesty’s dominions, were at my door by ten, waiting to take me with them to the convent of Boa Morte. This is a true Golgotha, a place of many skulls, for its inhabitants, though they live, move, and have a sort of being, are little better than skeletons. The priest who officiated appeared so emaciated and cadaverous, that I could hardly have supposed he would have had strength sufficient to elevate the chalice. It did not, however, fall from his hands, and having finished his mass, a second phantom tottered forth and began another. From the pictures and images of more than ordinary ghastliness which cover the chapels and cloisters, and from the deep contrition apparent in the tears, gestures, and ejaculations of the faithful who resort to them, I fancy no convent in Lisbon can be compared with this for austerity and devotion.
M—— shook all over with piety, and so did his companion, whose knees are become horny with frequent kneelings, and who, if one is to believe Verdeil, will end his days in a hermitage, or go mad, or perhaps both. He pretends, too, that it is this grey-beard that has added new fuel to the flame of M——’s devotion, and that by mutually encouraging each other, they will soon produce fruits worthy of Bedlam, if not of Paradise. To be sure, this father may boast a conspicuously devout turn, and a most resolute manner of thumping himself; but he must not be too vain. In Lisbon there are at least fifty or sixty thousand good souls, who, without having travelled so far, thump full as sonorously as he. This morning, at Boa Morte, one shrivelled sinner remained the whole time the masses lasted with outstretched arms, in the shape and with all the inflexible stiffness of an old-fashioned branched candlestick. Another contrite personage was so affected at the moment of consecration, that he flattened his nose on the pavement, and licked the dirt and dust with which it was thickly encrusted.
I must confess that, notwithstanding this very superior display of sanctity, I was not sorry to escape from the dingy cloisters of the convent, and breathe the pure air, and look up at the blue exhilarating sky. The weather being delightful, we drove to several distant parts of the town, to which I was yet a stranger. Returning back by the Bairro Alto, we looked into a new house, just finished building at an enormous expense, by Joaô Ferreira, who, from an humble retailer of leather, has risen, by the archbishop’s favour, to the possession of some of the most lucrative contracts in Portugal. Uglier-shaped apartments than those the poor shoe-man had contrived for himself I never beheld. The hangings are of satin of the deepest blue, and the fiercest and most sulphureous yellow. Every ceiling is daubed over with allegorical paintings, most indifferently executed, and loaded with gilt ornaments, in the style of those splendid sign-posts which some years past were the glory of High-Holborn and St. Giles’s.
We were soon tired of all this finery, and as it was growing late, made the best of our way to Belem. Whilst M—— was writing letters, I walked out with Don Pedro on the verandas of the palace, which are washed by the Tagus, and flanked with turrets. The views are enchanting, and the day being warm and serene, I enjoyed them in all their beauty. Several large vessels passed by as we were leaning over the balustrades, and almost touched us with their streamers. Even frigates and ships of the first rate approach within a quarter of a mile of the palace.
There was a greater crowd of attendants than usual round our table at dinner to-day, and the huge massy dishes were brought up by a long train of gentlemen and chaplains, several of them decorated with the orders of Avis and Christ. This attendance had quite a feudal air, and transported the imagination to the days of chivalry, when great chieftains were waited upon like kings, by noble vassals.
The Portuguese had need have the stomachs of ostriches to digest the loads of savoury viands with which they cram themselves. Their vegetables, their rice, their poultry, are all stewed in the essence of ham, and so strongly seasoned with pepper and spices, that a spoonful of peas, or a quarter of an onion, is sufficient to set one’s mouth in a flame. With such a diet, and the continual swallowing of sweetmeats, I am not surprised at their complaining so often of head-aches and vapours.
Several of the old Marquis of M——’s confidants and buffoons crept forth to have a peep at the stranger, and hear the famous missionary descant upon martyrdom and miracles. The scenery of Boa Morte being fresh in his thoughts, his descriptions were gloomy and appalling: Don Pedro, his sisters, and his cousin, the young Conde d’Atalaya,[23] gathered round him with all the trembling eagerness of children who hunger and thirst after hobgoblin stories. You may be sure he sent them not empty away. A blacker dose of legendary superstition was never administered. The Marchioness seemed to swallow these terrific narrations with nearly as much avidity as her children, and the old Abade, dropping his chin in a woful manner, produced an enormous rosary, and kept thumbing his beads and mumbling orisons.
M—— had luckily been summoned to the palace by a special mandate from his royal mistress. Had he been of the party, I fear Verdeil’s prophecy would have been accomplished, for never did mortal hold forth with so much scaring energy as this enthusiastic preacher. The most terrible denunciations of divine wrath which ever were thundered forth by ancient or modern writers of sermons and homilies recurred to his memory, and he dealt them about him with a vengeance. The last half hour of the discourse we were all in total darkness,—nobody had thought of calling for lights: the children were huddled together, scarce venturing to move or breathe. It was a most singular scene.
Full of the ghastly images the good father had conjured up in my imagination, I returned home alone in my carriage, shivering and shuddering. My friends were out, and nothing could be more dreary than the appearance of my fireless apartments.
Rehearsal of Seguidillas.—Evening scene.—Crowds of beggars.—Royal charity misplaced.—Mendicant flattery.—Frightful countenances.—Performance at the Salitri theatre.—Countess of Pombeiro and her dwarf negresses.—A strange ballet.—Return to the Palace.—Supper at the Camareira Mor’s.—Filial affection.—Last interview with the Archbishop.—Fatal tide of events.—Heart-felt regret on leaving Portugal.
Sunday, November 25th, 1787.
WHAT a morning for the 25th of November! The sun shining most brilliantly, insects fluttering about, and flowers expanding—the late rains having called forth a second spring, and tinted the hills round Almada, on the opposite shore of the Tagus, with a lively green.
I breakfasted alone, Verdeil being gone to St. Roch’s, to see the ceremony of publishing the bull of the Crusade, which allows good Christians to eat eggs and butter during Lent, upon paying his holiness a few shillings. I stayed at home, hearing a rehearsal of Seguidillas, in preparation for a new intermez at the Salitri theatre, till the hour of mass was over, then getting into the Portuguese chaise, drove headlong to the palace in the Placa do Commercio, and hastened to the Marquis of M——’s apartments. All his family were assembled to dine with him.
Had it not been for the thoughts of my approaching departure, I should have felt more comfort and happiness than has fallen to my lot for a long interval. M——, whose attendance on the Queen may be too justly termed a state of downright slavery, had hardly taken his place at table, before he was called away. The Marchioness, Donna Henriquetta, and her little sister, soon retreated to the Camareira-Mor’s apartments, and I was left alone with Pedro and Duarte. They seized fast hold, each of a hand, and running like greyhounds through long corridors, took me to a balcony which commands one of the greatest thoroughfares in Lisbon.
The evening was delightful, and vast crowds of people moving about, of all degrees and nations, old and young, active and crippled, monks and officers. Shoals of beggars kept pouring in from every quarter to take their stands at the gates of the palace and watch the Queen’s going out; for her Majesty is a most indulgent mother to these sturdy sons of idleness, and scarcely ever steps into her carriage without distributing considerable alms amongst them. By this misplaced charity, hundreds of stout fellows are taught the management of a crutch instead of a musket, and the art of manufacturing sores, ulcers, and scabby pates, in the most loathsome perfection. Duarte, who is all life and gaiety, vaulted upon the railing of the balcony, and hung for a moment or two suspended in a manner that would have frightened mothers and nurses into convulsions. The beggars, who had nothing to do till her Majesty should be forthcoming, seemed to be vastly entertained with these feats of agility.
They soon spied me out, and two brawny lubbers, whom an unfortunate combination of smallpox and king’s-evil had deprived of eye-sight, informed, no doubt, by their comrades of what was going forward, began a curious dialogue with voices still deeper and harsher than those of the holy crows:—“Heaven prosper their noble excellencies, Don Duarte Manoel and Don Pedro, and all the Marialvas—sweet dear youths, long may they be blessed with the use of their eyes and of all their limbs! Is that the charitable Englishman in their sweet company?”—“Yes, my comrade,” answered the second blind.—“What!” said the first, “that generous favourite of the most glorious Lord St. Anthony? (O gloriosissimo Senhor Sant-Antonio!)”—“Yes, my comrade.”—“O that I had but my precious eyes, that I might enjoy the sight of his countenance!” exclaimed both together.
By the time the duet was thus far advanced, the halt, the maimed, and the scabby, having tied some greasy nightcaps to the end of long poles, poked them up through the very railing, bawling and roaring out charity, “charity for the sake of the holy one of Lisbon.” Never was I looked up to by a more distorted or frightful collection of countenances. I made haste to throw down a plentiful shower of small copper money, or else Duarte would have twitched away both poles and nightcaps, a frolic by no means to be encouraged, as it might have marred our fame for the readiest and most polite attention to every demand in the name of St. Anthony.
Just as the orators were receiving their portion of pence and farthings, a cry of “There’s the Queen, there’s the Princess!” carried the whole hideous crowd away to another scene of action, and left me at full liberty to be amused in my turn with the squirrel-like gambols of my lively companion; he is really a fine enterprising boy, bold, alert, and sprightly; quite different from most of his illustrious young relations.
Don Pedro by no means approved my English partiality to such active feats, and after scolding his cousin for skipping about in so hazardous a style, entreated me to take them to the Salitri theatre, where a box had been prepared for us by his father’s orders. Upon the whole, I was better entertained than I expected, though the performance lasted above four hours and a half, from seven to near twelve. It consisted of a ranting prose tragedy, in three acts, called Sesostris, two ballets, a pastoral, and a farce. The decorations were not amiss, and the dresses showy. A shambling, blear-eyed boy, bundled out in weeds of the deepest sable, squeaked and bellowed alternately the part of a widowed princess. Another hob-e-di-hoy, tottering on high-heeled shoes, represented her Egyptian majesty, and warbled two airs with all the nauseous sweetness of a fluted falsetto. Though I could have boxed his ears for surfeiting mine so filthily, the audience were of a very different opinion, and were quite enthusiastic in their applause.
In the stage-box I observed the mincing Countess of Pombeiro, whose light hair and waxen complexion was finely contrasted by the ebon hue of two little negro attendants perched on each side of her. It is the high tone at present in this court to be surrounded by African implings, the more hideous, the more prized, and to bedizen them in the most expensive manner. The Queen has set the example, and the royal family vie with each other in spoiling and caressing Donna Rosa, her Majesty’s black-skinned, blubber-lipped, flat-nosed favourite.
One of the ballets was admirably got up; upon the rising of the curtain, a strange cabalistic apartment is discovered, where an astrologer appears very busy at a table covered with spheres and astrolabes, arranging certain mysterious images, and pinking their eyes with a gigantic pair of black compasses. A sort of Pierrot announces some inquisitive travellers, who enter with many bows and scrapings. One of them, the chief of the party, an old dapper beau in pink and silver, reminded me very much of the Duke d’Alafoens, and sidled along and tossed his cane about, and seemed to ask questions without waiting for answers, with as good a grace as that janty general. The astrologer, after explaining the wonders of his apartment with many pantomimical contortions, invites his company to follow him, and the scene changes to a long gallery, illuminated with a profusion of lights in gilt branches. The perspective ends in a flight of steps, upon each of which stands a row of figures, pantaloons, harlequins, sultans, sultanas, Indian chiefs, devils, and savages, to all appearance motionless. Pierrot brings in a machine like a hand-organ, and his master begins to grind, the music accompanying. At the first chord, down drop the arms of all the figures; at the second, each rank descends a step, and so on, till gaining the level of the stage, and the astrologer grinding faster and faster, the supposed clock-work-assembly begin a general dance.
Their ballet ended, the same accords are repeated, and all hop up in the same stiff manner they hopped down. The travellers, highly pleased with the show, depart; Pierrot, who longs to be grinding, persuades his master to take a walk, and leave him in possession of the gallery. He consents; but enjoins the gaping oaf upon no account to meddle with the machine, or set the figures in motion. Vain are his directions! no sooner has he turned his back than Pierrot goes to work with all his strength; the figures fall a shaking as if on the point of disjoining themselves; creak, crack, grinds the machine with horrid harshness; legs, arms, and noddles are thrown into convulsions, three steps are jumped at once. Pierrot, frightened out of his senses at the goggle-eyed crowd advancing upon him, clings close to the machine and gives the handle no respite. The music, too, degenerates into the most jarring, screaking sounds, and the figures knocking against each other, and whirling round and round in utter confusion, fall flat upon the stage. Pierrot runs from group to group in rueful despair, tries in vain to reanimate them, and at length losing all patience, throws one over the other, and heaps sultanas upon savages, and shepherds upon devilkins. Most of these personages being represented by boys of twelve or thirteen were easily wielded. After Pierrot has finished tossing and tumbling, he drops down exhausted and lies as dead as his neighbours, hoping to escape unnoticed amongst them. But this subterfuge avails him not; in comes the astrologer armed with his compasses; back he starts at sight of the confounded jumble. Pierrot pays for it all, is soon drawn forth from his lurking-place, and the astrologer grinding in a moderate and scientific manner, the figures lift themselves up, and returning all in status quo, the ballet finishes.
Shall I confess that this nonsense amused me pretty nearly as much as it did my companions, whose raptures were only exceeded by those of madame de Pombeiro’s implings. They, sweet, sooty innocents, kept gibbering and pointing at the man with the black compasses in a manner so completely African and ludicrous, that I thought their contortions the best part of the entertainment.
The play ended, we hastened back to the palace, and traversing a number of dark vestibules and guard-chambers, (all of a snore with jaded equerries,) were almost blinded with a blaze of light from the room in which supper was served up. There we found in addition to all the Marialvas, the old marquis only excepted, the Camareira-mor, and five or six other hags of supreme quality, feeding like cormorants upon a variety of high-coloured and high-seasoned dishes. I suppose the keen air from the Tagus, which blows right into the palace-windows, operates as a powerful whet, for I never beheld eaters or eateresses, no not even our old acquaintance madame la Présidente at Paris, lay about them with greater intrepidity. To be sure, it was a splendid repast, quite a banquet. We had manjar branco and manjar real, and among other good things a certain preparation of rice and chicken, which suited me exactly, and no wonder, for this excellent mess had been just tossed up by Donna Isabel de Castro with her own illustrious hands, in a nice little kitchen adjoining the queen’s apartment, in which all the utensils are of solid silver.
The number of lights upon the table, and of attendants and pages in rich uniforms around it, was prodigious; but what interested me far more than all this parade, was the sportive good-humour and frankness of the company. How it happened that the presence of a stranger failed to inspire any reserve, is one of those odd circumstances I can hardly account for; especially as the higher orders of the Portuguese are the farthest removed of all persons from admitting any but their nearest relations to these family parties; but so it was, and I felt both flattered and gratified at being permitted to witness the ease and hilarity which prevailed.
The dutiful, affectionate attention of the younger part of the company to their parents was truly amiable; nor do I believe that, at this day in any other realm in Europe, the sacred precept of honouring your father and your mother is so cordially observed as in Portugal. Happy if, in our intercourse with that nation, we had profited in that respect by their example; the peace of so many of our noblest families would not have been disturbed by the lowest connexions, nor their best blood contaminated by matches of the most immoral, degrading tendency. We should not have seen one year a performer acting the part of lady this or lady t’other upon the stage, and the next in the drawing-room; nor, upon entering some of our principal houses, have been tempted to cry out—“Bless me! that lovely countenance is the same I recollect adoring by moonlight on the fine broad flagstones of Bond Street or Portland Place!”[24]
It was now after two in the morning, and I must own, notwithstanding the good cheer of which I had participated, and the kind entertainment I had received, I began to feel a little tired. The children were in such spirits, so full of frolic, and her sublimity, the Camareira-mor, so unusually tolerant and condescending, that there was no knowing when the party would break up. Taking, therefore, my leave in due form, I made my retreat escorted by half-a-dozen torch-bearers.
Just as I had gotten about half-way on my journey through what appeared to me interminable passages, I was arrested in my progress by a pair of dominicans, father Rocha, and his scarecrow satellite frè Josè do Rosario. A person less accustomed than I had lately been to such apparitions would have been startled; especially, too, if he had found himself like me between the most formidable living pillars of the holy inquisition.
“What are you doing here so very late,” I could not help exclaiming, “my reverend fathers? What’s the matter?”
“The matter is,” answered Rocha, with a voice of terrific hoarseness, “that we have caught cold waiting for you in these confounded corridors. The archbishop, above half-an-hour ago, commanded us to bring you to him dead or alive; but a rascally jackanapes in waiting upon her excellency the Camareira-mor would not let us in to deliver our message, so we have been airing ourselves hitherto to no purpose.”
“Do you know,” said Rocha, taking me into a little room where a lamp was still burning, “that affairs do not go on so smoothly as they ought? The archbishop seems to have lost both time and temper since he has been pressed into the cabinet; and, as for the Prince of Brazil and his consort, God forgive me for wishing their advisers and all their intrigues in the lowest abyss of perdition. How can you be scheming a journey to Madrid at this season? The floods are out, and the robbers also, and I tell you what, as the archbishop says twenty times a day, if you do go you deserve to be drowned and murdered.”
“The die is cast,” I replied, “and I must take my chance; but really I wish you would have the goodness to bid the archbishop a very good night in my name, and let me put off asking his benediction till to-morrow, for I am quite jaded.”
“Jaded or not,” answered the monk, “you must come with me; the wind is up in the archbishop’s brain just at this moment, and by the least contradiction more would become a hurricane.”
Finding resistance vain, I suffered myself to be conducted through two or three open courts, very refreshing at this hour you may suppose, and up a little staircase into the archbishop’s interior cabinet. All was still as death—no lay-brother bustling about—no sound audible but a low breathing, which now and then swelled into a half suppressed groan, from the agitated prelate, whom we found knee-deep in papers, immersed in thought.
“So,” said he, “there you are at last. What have you been doing all this while? Who but a brute of an Englishman would have kept me waiting. Ay, ay, you told me how it would be, and you are right. They plague my soul out. We have twenty rascals pulling as many ways. Your people too are not what they used to be, though Mello would make us believe to the contrary. One thing I know for certain, some infernal mischief is afloat, and unless God’s grace is speedily manifested, I see no end to confusion, and wish myself anywhere but where I am. These smooth-tongued, Frenchified, Italian, Voltaireists and encyclopedians have poisoned all sound doctrine. Ay,” continued he, rising up, with an expression of indignation and anger I never saw before on his countenance, “somebody’s ears[25] are poisoned whom I could name.... But where is the use of talking to you? You are determined to leave us, be it so. God’s providence is above all. He knows what is best for you, and for me, and for these kingdoms. There is your passport, countersigned by your friend Mello; and here is a letter for Lorenzana, and another for his catholic majesty’s confessor, in which I tell him what an amazing fool you are, and unless you continue one without any remission, we shall soon have you back again. Tell Marialva,” he added, addressing himself to Rocha (for the other father had not been admitted), “tell Marialva and all his friends that I have dried up my tongue almost more times than one, in attempting to argue a thousand silly whimsies and crotchets out of his harum-scarum English brain; but come,” said he, extending his arms, “I bear no malice, I pity, I do not condemn. Let me give you an embrace, and pray God it may not be the last you will receive from me.”
It was, alas! the last I ever received from him, poor, honest-hearted, kind old man! A sort of melancholy foreboding which seemed to pervade all he said in this interview was too soon realized. The fatal tide of events flowing on as it were with redoubled, tremendous velocity, swept away in the course of a few short months from this period the Prince of Brazil, the lovely and amiable infanta his sister, her husband Don Gabriel of Spain, and the good old King Charles the Third. Not long after, the archbishop-confessor himself was called from the plenitude of power and the enjoyment of unrivalled influence to the presence of that Being in whose sight “no man living shall be justified;” but as in many trying and peculiar instances he had shown the tenderest mercy, it may tremblingly be hoped that mercy has been shown to him. Notwithstanding the bluntness of his manner, the kindness of his heart, so apparent in his good-humoured, benevolent eye, found its way, almost imperceptibly to himself, to the hearts of others, and tempered the despotic roughness he sometimes assumed both in voice and gesture.
I still seem to behold the last, earnest, solemn look he gave me when, the door closing, he retired to the cares of state, and I with my escort of torch-bearers and dominicans hastened forth to breathe the open air, of which I stood greatly in need. Many things I had heard, and many others I conjectured, above all, the reluctance I felt at the bottom of my heart to leave a country in which I had received such uncommon marks of friendship, bore heavily upon me. When I got home, scarcely two hours before daybreak, and tried to compose myself to sleep, I was neither refreshed nor recruited, but experienced the agitation of feverish and broken slumbers.