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Title: Through Portugal
Author: Hume, Martin A. S. (Martin Andrew Sharp)
Language: English
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THROUGH PORTUGAL
[Illustration: FROM A WINDOW, OPORTO.]
THROUGH
PORTUGAL
BY
MARTIN HUME
WITH 32 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY
A. S. FORREST
AND 8 REPRODUCTIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHS
“_Oh Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What heaven hath done for this delicious land;
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree,
What goodly prospects o’er the hills expand._”
BYRON.
NEW YORK
M^cCLURE, PHILLIPS & COMPANY
1907
Printed by
BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh
_This record of
a pleasure journey through Europe’s
“Garden by the Sea”
is dedicated by gracious permission to
His Majesty
The King of Portugal_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
OPORTO 1
CHAPTER II
BRAGA AND BOM JESUS 34
CHAPTER III
CITANIA AND GUIMARÃES 54
CHAPTER IV
BUSSACO 90
CHAPTER V
COIMBRA, THOMAR, AND LEIRIA 122
CHAPTER VI
BATALHA AND ALCOBAÇA 169
CHAPTER VII
CINTRA 199
CHAPTER VIII
LISBON 229
CHAPTER IX
SETUBAL, TROYA, AND EVORA 264
CHAPTER X
HINTS TO TRAVELLERS IN PORTUGAL 308
ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
FROM A WINDOW IN OPORTO _Frontispiece_
EVENING: OPPOSITE OPORTO _To face page_ 8
FROM THE RIBEIRA, OPORTO _To face page_ 16
A SHOP IN OLD OPORTO _To face page_ 28
THE AFTER-GLOW AT BRAGA _To face page_ 40
ON THE TERRACE, BOM JESUS _To face page_ 50
ON THE HOLY STAIR, BOM JESUS _To face page_ 52
ON THE WAY TO MARKET, TAIPAS _To face page_ 58
FROM THE BATTLEMENT, BUSSACO _To face page_ 96
THE HOTEL FROM THE WOODS, BUSSACO _To face page_ 102
IN THE GARDENS, BUSSACO _To face page_ 106
THE PORTA DA SULLA, BUSSACO _To face page_ 108
“BUSSACO’S IRON RIDGE” _To face page_ 112
THE BATTLE MONUMENT, BUSSACO _To face page_ 116
ENTRANCE TO THE CLOISTER, BUSSACO _To face page_ 120
ON THE SUMMIT OF BUSSACO. THE CRUZ ALTA _To face page_ 122
A STREET IN COIMBRA _To face page_ 128
SANTA CLARA, COIMBRA _To face page_ 136
A COUNTRY RAILWAY STATION _To face page_ 142
A CORNER OF THE TOWN HALL AND THE MONASTERY, THOMAR _To face page_ 144
SOME BEAUTIES OF THOMAR _To face page_ 146
CHURCH OF S. JOÃO IN THE PRAÇA, THOMAR _To face page_ 156
THE BRIDGE AT THOMAR _To face page_ 158
IN THE MAIN STREET OF OUREM _To face page_ 160
THE CASTLE, LEIRIA _To face page_ 164
ON THE ALAMEDA, LEIRIA _To face page_ 166
THE ENCARNAÇÃO, LEIRIA _To face page_ 168
ON THE PRAÇA AT ALCOBAÇA _To face page_ 188
UNDER THE ACACIAS, ALCOBAÇA _To face page_ 192
THE OLD PALACE, CINTRA _To face page_ 204
ON THE QUAY, LISBON _To face page_ 234
LISBON, FROM THE NORTH _To face page_ 306
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
MANUELINE ARCHITECTURE AT THE HOTEL, BUSSACO _To face page_ 94
ON THE VIA SACRA, BUSSACO _To face page_ 104
THE CHOIR AND CHAPTER HOUSE, THOMAR _To face page_ 148
THE CLOISTERS, BATALHA _To face page_ 180
THE UNFINISHED CHAPELS, BATALHA _To face page_ 182
MANUELINE WINDOWS IN THE OLD PALACE, CINTRA _To face page_ 224
THE SOUTH DOOR AT BELEM _To face page_ 238
THE “TEMPLE OF DIANA,” EVORA _To face page_ 300
INTRODUCTION
Portugal had been familiar to me from my earliest youth, for my road to
and from Spain had often lain that way, and circumstances had made me
conversant with the language and history of the country; and yet this
book is not the outcome of any such previous knowledge, but mainly of
one short voyage in search of change and health. It happened in this
way. As oft befalls men who in this striving world have to wring their
brains for drachmas, the completion of a particularly arduous book had
left me temporarily a nervous wreck, sleepless and despairing. The first
and most obvious need dictated to me by those who settle such matters,
was to forget for a time that pens, ink, and paper existed, and to seek
relaxation in a clime where printers cease from troubling and reviewers
are at rest. But where? Spain certainly would offer me no such a haven:
France was too near home, Germany I disliked, Switzerland was trite and
overrun, the novelty of Italy I had long before exhausted, and Greece
was too far away. A sea voyage was a desideratum, but it must not be too
long, and as the autumn was already verging towards winter the south
alone was available.
Then in the midst of my perplexity the happy thought suggested itself
that, often as I had passed through Portugal, I had never seen the
country. Why not try Portugal? I had some prejudices to overcome,
prejudices, indeed, which up to that time had prevented me from seeking
a deeper knowledge of the land and people than could be gained by an
incurious glance on the way through. For I had been brought up in the
stiff Castilian tradition that Portugal was altogether an inferior
country, and the Portuguese uncouth boors who in their separation from
their Spanish kinsmen had left to the latter all the virtues whilst they
themselves had retained all the vices of the race. But, withal, I chose
Portugal, and have made this book my apologia as a self-prescribed
penance for my former injustice towards the most beautiful country and
the most unspoilt and courteous peasantry in Southern Europe. Portugal
and the Portuguese, indeed, have fairly conquered me, and the voyage, of
which some of the incidents are here set forth, was for me a continual
and unadulterated delight from beginning to end, bringing to me
refreshment and renewed vigour of soul, mind, and body, opening to my
eyes, though they had seen much of the world, prospects of beauty
unsurpassed in my experience, and revealing objects of antiquarian and
artistic interest unsuspected by most of those to whom the attractions
of the regular round of European travel have grown flat and familiar.
It is impossible, of course, to pass on to others the full measure of
enjoyment felt by an appreciative traveller in a happy trip through an
unhackneyed pleasure-ground; but it has occurred to me that some record
of my impressions on the way may lead other Englishmen to seek for
themselves a repetition of the pleasure and benefit which I experienced
in the course of a short holiday trip through Portugal from north to
south. I am not pretending to write a guidebook: those that exist are
doubtless sufficient for all purposes, although I have intentionally
refrained from consulting any of them, in order that my impressions
might not be biassed, even unconsciously, by the opinions of others; nor
do I claim to speak of Portugal with the fulness of knowledge exhibited
by Mr. Oswald Crawford in his books on the country where he resided so
long. My object is rather to treat the subject from the point of view of
the intelligent visitor in search of sunshine, health, or relaxation; to
suggest from my own experience routes of travel and points of attraction
likely to appeal to such a reader as I have in my mind, and to warn him
frankly of the inevitable small inconveniences which he must be prepared
to tolerate cheerfully if he would enjoy to the full a holiday spent in
a country not as yet overrun by tourists who insist upon carrying
England with them wherever they go. If he will consent to “play the
game,” and not expect the impossible in such a country, I can promise my
traveller a voyage full of colour, interest, and novelty in this “garden
by the side of the sea,” where pines and palms grow side by side, and
the stern north and softer south blend their gifts in lavish luxuriance
beneath the happy conjunction of almost perpetual sunshine and moist
Atlantic breezes.
MARTIN HUME.
THROUGH PORTUGAL
I
OPORTO
I stood in the centre of a daring bridge, spanning with one bold arch of
nigh six hundred feet a winding rocky gorge. Far, far below me ran a
chocolate-coloured river crowded with quaint craft, some with
high-raised sheltered poops and crescent-peaked prows, some low and long
astern with bows like gondolas and bright red lateen sails, upon which
the fierce sun blazed sanguinely. On the right side thickly, and on the
left more sparsely, climbing up the stony sides of the gorge, were piled
hundreds of houses, pink, pale-blue, buff, and white, all with glowing
red-tiled roofs, and each set amidst a riot of verdure which trailed and
waved upon every nook and angle uncovered by buildings. Trellised vines
clustered and flowers flaunted in tiny back-yards and square-enclosed
courts by the score, all on different levels, but all open to the
down-gazing eyes of the spectator on the bridge high above them. Here
and there a tall palm waved its plumes as in unquiet slumber, but
everywhere else was the impression of ardent, throbbing, exuberant life,
such as all organic creation feels under the spur of stinging sunshine
and the salt twang of the sea-breeze. The river gorge winds and turns so
tortuously that the view forward and backward is not extensive, but as
far as the eye reaches on each side of the umber stream the hills of
houses and far-spread terraced vineyards beyond rise precipitously, with
just a quayside at foot on the banks of the stream, thronged now with
folk who swarm, gather, and separate like gaudy ants, and apparently no
bigger, as seen from the coign of vantage on the bridge. To my left, as
I stand looking towards the west, there crowns the summit of the ridge
close by a vast white monastery against a green background; a monastery
now, alas! like all others in this Catholic land, profanated and turned
to purposes of war instead of peace, but, withal, there still rears its
modest rood aloft upon the crest one poor little round chapel where the
sainted image of Pilar of the Ridge stolidly receives the devotion of
the faithful. To the right, the height is crowned by a vast square
episcopal palace, and near it, over all, is the glittering golden cross
that shines upon the city from the summit of the square cathedral
towers. This is Oporto, The Port _par excellence_, which gives its name
to Portugal, seen from the double-decked iron bridge of Dom Luis over
the Douro.
For days I had been striving in vain to get into touch with the psychic
principle of this strange city. I had mixed with the motley multitudes
that lounge and labour upon the quays, I had lingered in the gilded
churches where worshippers were ominously few, and stood for hours
observant in chaffering marketplaces and amidst the crowds of sauntering
citizens in the inevitable Praça de Dom Pedro; but till the revelatory
moment came to me in one enlightening flash upon the Bridge of Dom Luis,
I had always been alone in a foreign throng whose composite inner soul I
could not read. But now all was changed. Thenceforward I saw Oporto
whole and not in disintegrated fragments as before; for I had learnt the
secret of putting the pieces of the puzzle together and the heart of the
city was bared to me, a stranger.
Every large, enduring community comes to attain a distinct character of
its own, which the outlander can only know by long association or
sympathetic insight, sometimes not at all. I had looked for a people
exuberant and gay in outward seeming with an underlying spirit of bitter
mockery, such as I had known in so many other Iberian cities; but
somehow these Oporto people were quite different. Grave and quiet, with
introspective eyes, even the children seemed to take their play soberly.
Look at the slim slip of a boy who gravely walks at the head of this
team of enormous fawn-coloured oxen, toilsomely dragging their ponderous
load up a hill so steep as almost to need a ladder to ascend. The urchin
cannot be more than ten or eleven, and in any other country would
alternately skip and idle, or at least allow his attention to wander
with every fresh object that struck his fancy. Here he stalks along for
hours at a time, without lingering or straying, always calm and patient,
whilst his soiled and hardened bare feet plod on, heedless both of the
white mire and sharp stones of the way. Over his shoulder he carries a
long lithe wand, double as tall as himself, with which he directs the
course of the great wide-horned bullocks. A mere turn of the wand is
sufficient to indicate the way, and with low bowed heads beneath the
heavy yoke the dull beasts plod slowly onward as long-suffering as their
guide. The whole equipage might belong to the times when the world
itself was young, so idyllic is it in form. The wain is narrow and
high-set upon two wheels, like an ancient chariot, with boards or high
rods to form its sides; the wheels are built up ponderously of solid
wood, the two thick spokes that connect the heavy tire with the hub
filling up most of the circle, and the axle, a heavy log of wood, itself
turns with the wheels. In this part of Portugal there stands erect upon
the neck of the team an adornment which is usually the pride of the
owner’s heart, and the one superfluous article of luxury he possesses.
It is a thick board of hardwood, about eighteen inches high and some
five feet broad, intricately and beautifully carved in fretted open-work
arabesques. The patterns are traditional, handed down from time
immemorial, and usually consist of involved geometrical and curvilinear
designs; sometimes, but not often, with a cross introduced in the
centre, and with a row of little bristle brushes as an extra adornment
along the top. A glance at this elaborate piece of ox furniture will
show that its decoration is of Moorish origin, and the _canga_ itself
may be the survival of the high ox yoke still seen in some oriental
countries. To complete the quaint picture of the universal ox team, for
this part of Portugal is not a country of horses or mules, the dress of
the small teamster must be described. The boy’s breeches usually do not
reach below the knee, the rest of the legs and feet being bare; a jacket
of brown homespun is slung upon one shoulder, except at night or during
the cold winter days of December and January, when it is worn, and the
shirt, open at the neck and breast, leaves much of the upper part of the
body exposed. The headgear is peculiar. It is nearly always a knitted
stocking bag cap, something like an old-fashioned nightcap, with a
tassel at the end of the bag which hangs down the back or upon the
shoulder of the wearer, its colour being sometimes green and red, but
more frequently black.
The boy, like his similarly garbed elders, takes life very seriously,
but neither he nor they seem sad or depressed. There is here none of the
squalid misery or whining mendicancy that are so distressing to
strangers in Spain and Southern Italy, for the Portuguese of the north
is a sturdy, self-respecting peasant, who works hard and lives frugally
upon his three testoons (1_s._ 3_d._) per day; and so long as he can
earn his dried stockfish, his beans, bread, and grapes, with a little
red wine to drink, he scorns to beg for the indulgence of his idleness.
These are the people, and their social betters of the same race, whom a
sudden flash of sympathy brought closer to me, as in the pellucid golden
sunlight all Oporto was spread before and beneath me, palpitating with
life. The absence of vociferation and vehemence in the people did not
mean sulkiness or stupidity, but was the result of the intense
earnestness with which their daily life was faced; their unregarding
aloofness towards strangers was not rudeness, but the highest courtesy
which bade them avoid obtrusive curiosity; and soon I learnt to know
that their cold exterior barely concealed a disinterested desire to
extend in fullest measure aid and sympathy to those who needed them. In
all my wanderings I have never met, except perhaps in Norway, a
peasantry so full of willingness to show courtesy to strangers without
thought of gain to themselves as these people of north Portugal, almost
pure Celts as they are, with the Celtic innate kindliness of heart and
ready sympathy, though, of course, with the Celtic shortcomings of
jealousy, inconstancy, and distrust.
I know few more characteristic thoroughfares than the road by the
river-side at Oporto, called the Ribeira, which is the centre of
maritime activity of the port. The path runs beneath what was the
ancient river-wall, now pierced or burrowed out to form caverns of
shops, where wine and food, cordage and clothing are sold to sailor men.
Many of the open doors have vine trellises before them, in the shade of
which quaintly garbed groups forgather, and a constant tide of men and
women flows along the path, eddying into and out of the cavernous
recesses in the ancient wall. Colour, flaring and fierce in the sun,
flaunts everywhere; for the multi-tinted rags of the south festoon and
flutter from every door and window and deck the persons of all the
womankind. Swinging along, with peculiar and ungainly gait, go the women
with prodigious burdens upon their heads. Everything, from babies to
bales of merchandise, is borne upon the female head in Portugal; and
these women of the north wear a peculiar headgear adapted to this
custom. It is a round, soft, pork-pie hat of black cloth or velveteen,
fitting well upon the top of the head, the upper rim being adorned with
a sort of standing silk fringe. Such a hat, especially when surmounted
by a knot, suffers no damage from a burden placed upon it; but the
constant carrying of tremendous weights upon the head of females, even
of little girls, quite spoils the figures of the women, thrusting the
hips and pelvis forward inordinately, and rendering the movements in
walking most ungraceful. The women and girls almost invariably go
barefooted, whilst the men, except the fishermen, usually are shod; and
the females of a family share to the full the work and hardships which
are the common lot.
[Illustration: EVENING OPPOSITE OPORTO.]
Along the shore of the busy Ribeira lie ships unloading, small craft
they usually are, for the bar of the Douro is a terrible one, and the
big ships now enter the harbour of Leixões, a league away. In a constant
stream the men and women pass across the planks from ship to shore,
carrying the cargo upon their heads or shoulders in peculiar boat-shaped
baskets, which are the inseparable companion of the Oporto workers. Here
is a smart schooner hailing from the Cornish port of Fowey, from which
stockfish from Newfoundland is being landed on the heads of women, flat
salt slabs as hard and dry as wood, but good nutritious food for all
that; and farther along, with their prows to the shore, rest a dozen
un-ladened wine and fruit boats from up the Douro, and flat-bottomed
passenger skiffs into which women and men with baskets and bundles,
representing their week’s supplies purchased in Oporto, are crowding to
be carried back to their homes in the rich vineyard villages miles up
the river. One by one the quaint craft hoist their crimson sails, and
struggle out from the tangle of the bank, until the breeze catches them,
and in a shimmer of red gold from the setting sun they hustle through
the brown tide until a projecting corner hides them from view. It is a
scene never to be forgotten.
The centre of the Ribeira is the Praça called after it, where a sloping
square facing the water opens out. The scene is picturesque in the
extreme. The space is thronged by men, either sleeping in their baskets
or carrying them filled with fish or merchandise upon their heads: a
motley, water-side crowd, men of all nations, pass to and fro, or gossip
under the vine trellis before the wine shop overlooking the square, and
as the observer casts his eyes upwards he sees the gaily coloured houses
piled apparently on the top of one another, until at the top of all, as
if overhead, is the glaring white palace of the bishop, and the
glittering cathedral cross, standing out hard and clear against a sky of
fathomless indigo.
This busy river-side way of the Ribeira is, so to speak, a street of two
storeys. Below is the walk I have described, with the cavernous shops in
the face of the old river-wall, and on the top of the wall is another
path reached by occasional flights of steps, and also bordered by the
squalid medley of dark shops in which strange savoury-odoured victuals
are washed down by strong red wine, and quiet brown men and women, and
grave-eyed swarthy babies are inextricably mixed up with brown
merchandise in the gloom beyond the glaring sunlight. Unexpected steep
alleys, arched and mysterious, lead to the thoroughfares higher up the
precipitous slope, and the next storey, a parallel narrow street, the
Rua do Robelleiro, narrow, dark, and ancient, is almost as picturesque
as the Ribeira itself.
A slab let into the river-wall by the beach commemorates one of the most
terrible days in Oporto’s history. The English army had been chased to
its ships at Corunna, and the Spanish levies scattered: the Peninsula
seemed to be at the mercy of the French legions, which, under Napoleon’s
greatest marshals, held the richest provinces of Spain in the name of
King Joseph Bonaparte. But 9000 English troops remained in Lisbon, and
with Portugal in the hands of his enemies Napoleon knew that he would
never be master of Spain. So the word went forth that Soult was to march
down with a great army from Galicia, and sweep the English out of
Portugal. It seemed easy, and authorities even in England believed that
Portugal was untenable and should be evacuated. All but one man, Arthur
Wellesley, whose victory at Vimeiro in the previous year had been wasted
by the inept old women who were his superior officers. With 20,000 men,
said Wellesley, he would hold Portugal against 100,000 French, the
marshals notwithstanding; and the great Englishman had his way.
Beresford was sent out to reorganise the scattered Portuguese fighting
men, and Arthur Wellesley sailed from England with his little army to
face Soult in Portugal. Before he arrived in Lisbon the French had swept
down from Galicia, and on the 27th March 1809, Soult summoned Oporto to
surrender. The warlike Bishop of Oporto was heading the hastily
organised defence; his forces were undisciplined and badly armed, but
their hearts were stout, and behind their poor earthworks the citizens
of Oporto and their bishop bade defiance to Soult and his invading army.
On the 29th March at dawn the devoted city was stormed by Napoleon’s
veterans, who swept all before them. There was no quarter, no mercy, and
the steep streets of the city were turned to blood-smeared shambles.
Down to the river bank flocked the affrighted people, falling as they
ran under the rain of bullets that pursued them. Over the river from the
Ribeira was a bridge of boats, and upon this the crowd of panic-stricken
fugitives poured. The weight sank it, and thousands were drowned in the
Douro, or struggled ashore only to be despatched by the French, whilst
many of those who had been in arms deliberately drowned themselves
rather than surrender. Eighteen thousand Portuguese perished on that
awful day, without counting the drowned who were never recovered; whilst
of the whole Portuguese host only two hundred live prisoners were taken.
Six weeks afterwards the tables were turned; six weeks spent by Soult in
intrigues for his own advancement, and by his officers in discontented
idleness. On the 12th May Wellesley and his army from Lisbon surprised
him at Oporto in broad daylight, crossing the river a few miles above
the city by a brilliant piece of daring, and Soult ignominiously fled
north, leaving impedimenta and baggage behind him, harassed and
scattered by the Portuguese peasants in arms, until a mere remnant of
his force finally found refuge in Spain. The very dinner to which he was
about to sit down at Oporto when he was surprised regaled Sir Arthur
Wellesley instead, and the victor took up his residence in that big
white monastery on the Serra de Pilar, which from the height on the left
of the bridge affords a panorama of unequalled beauty of the city
opposite on its amphitheatre of hills, shining white and stately against
the dark background of the sky.
However you go from the lower level by the river-side to the main
streets of the city the climb is a severe one, for in this town of
precipitous hills the gradients are startling, even for the electric
trams which of late years have completely taken possession of the
streets. But we will leave the electric trams on this peregrination, and
face the ascent on foot from the lower level of the bridge on the
Ribeira itself to the upper town. First some toilsome flights of steps
which have taken the place of the lower end of a precipitous alley, cut
away to make the approach to the bridge, lead you up about two hundred
feet to an ancient winding lane which itself is almost a flight of
steps. Quaint foreign interiors are disclosed through the open doors of
the dark humble abodes that line the way, and poor little home
industries are carried on _coram populo_; half-way up the ladder-like
ascent there is a ruined church, and by-and-by on the right we skirt the
great battlemented wall of the vast disestablished monastery of Santa
Clara. At a turn in the wall the corner of the grim old edifice itself
appears, fortress-like and looming here as built for defence in the
fierce times of long ago. Through the doubly-grated windows, a few feet
above our heads, brown paws are thrust out, and a hoarse murmur from
within takes form, by-and-by, as a demand for alms in the name of God. A
glance inside makes one start back in horror, almost in disgust, though
the sorry spectacle unfortunately soon becomes familiar to those who
sojourn in any large Portuguese town. Huddled in squalor and filth
together are half-naked, savage-looking criminals, old men, sturdy
vagabonds, and youths almost children, staring out from the gloom of the
prison-house through the unglazed barred windows, with whining prayer
for charity, ribald jest, or explosive curses. These gaol-birds, herded
publicly in their unutterable degradation behind the gratings, form the
blackest spot visible in Portuguese life. Even Spain for the most part
has brought her prisons into some semblance of civilised order, but
Portugal in this one respect lags inexplicably behind.
[Illustration: FROM THE RIBEIRA, OPORTO.]
A few yards distant, through a little maze of mediæval streets, is the
cathedral, the Sé, with a quiet little courtyard before it, from the
parapet of which the red roofs and abundant verdure of the city spread
downward in waves to the water-side. These north Portuguese cathedrals
are marvellously alike; sharing the early beauties and later barbarities
of their successive generations of masters. This of Oporto is a good
specimen. The sturdy warrior kings who wrested Portugal, bit by bit,
from Castilian and from Moor, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
were true crusaders. Where they set their foot sprang up the Christian
church, to testify for ever their gratitude for victory vouchsafed to
the Cross that symbolised their faith. Solid and staidly devotional were
the edifices they raised; and wherever their work remains unconcealed by
the scrolly banalities of a later age, it bears still the impress of
simple faith and unostentatious grandeur. Here on the hill crest at
Oporto stand two massive low towers, one still crowned by the pointed
Morisco machicolations of the twelfth century, whilst its fellow, partly
rebuilt, is spoilt by the addition of a trivial eighteenth-century
parapet, with urns as an adornment. Still, the massive solidity of the
towers remains, which is something to be thankful for when we regard the
hideous top-heavy early eighteenth-century façade that connects them.
The south door, of majestic romanesque, is similarly marred. Around it
has been built a barbarous porch, overloaded with meaningless ornament,
which not only obscures the serious work of the early builder, but half
covers and cuts in two a lovely old round window above the door which
lights the transept inside. But, however much these curly horrors of the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries may distract the eye,
they do not destroy what is still visible of the old edifice. The double
flight of low steps, for instance, which leads to this south door has
for handrails two ancient stone serpents, so simple in design, yet so
effective and perfectly adapted for their purpose, as to prove the
unaffected but consummate artistry of the designer, whose taste must
have been formed whilst yet the Byzantine traditions were strong in the
stern romanesque.
One is struck at once in entering any of these cathedrals, and more
particularly that of Oporto and its close congener Braga, with the vast
difference between them and the pompous, splendid Spanish cathedrals. In
the latter the span of the nave is usually tremendous, the church is
plunged in tinted gloom, and the whole of the centre of the nave is
blocked by an immense choir. Here in North Portugal the note struck in
the cathedrals is not mystery richly dight, as in Spain, but sincere
austerity, and a simple faith so essential in the edifice that the grave
granite columns and arches appear as unaffected by the heaps, and piles,
and masses of curly carved gilt wood around them as a monolith might be
by the lizards that bask and slither round its base. Here in Oporto, for
instance, the low, massive, granite pillars that line the narrow nave,
and support the round romanesque arches, seem sullenly to bid defiance
to time and decay; such is their prodigious solidity. And yet even these
a later age has surmounted, if not adorned, with curly Corinthian
capitals of carved gilt wood! Every altar here, and indeed nearly all
over Portugal, is an overloaded mass of this particular barbaric style
of decoration dear to the Portuguese since the seventeenth century. The
skill in its production is undeniably great, especially in the chapel of
St. Vincent in Oporto Cathedral; and in moderation the employment of
richly painted, carved, and gilded wood generally may be advantageous
where the light is low and the architectural style ornate. But here,
where the simple romanesque prevails and the churches are flooded with
light, it overwhelms one. In this low, old, plain Sé, either gilded wood
or high-relief designs in beaten gold or silver in endless intricacy
strike the eye unmercifully at every turn. On one of these ornate
altars, screened by a curtain which a fee will raise, stands the ancient
effigy, which those who still hold the simple faith of their fathers
venerate so devoutly—Our Lady of Alem. Ages ago, so the story runs, when
this old fane was yet a-building in the twelfth century, some Douro
fishermen found their nets heavy with an unusual burden, and raising
them, found this image, a miraculous gift vouchsafed them from the sea.
Since then the prayers of those who win their living on the deep have
been ceaselessly offered to the Lady of Alem for safety and good luck,
and simple offerings of gratitude for boons thus gained—for sickness
healed or safe return—hang thickly round the shrine.
The beautiful little cloisters of the cathedral are of a later date than
the church—grave and simple Gothic of the late fourteenth century, with
three small pointed lancet arches in each span, and a plain round light
in the tympanum above. But even here the eighteenth century has done
some damage by building out highly ornamental buttresses between the
main spans. All around on the inner wall of the cloister is a decoration
which abounds in nearly every Portuguese church that has lived through
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—namely, large pictorial
representations in blue and white tiles, like those commonly connected
with the town of Delft. In the churches these tile pictures usually
represent scenes from Scripture history, with a large admixture of
heathen mythology or ordinary emblematic fancies, as here in Oporto, and
the effect is quaint and not unpleasing. One of the things indeed which
most strongly strike a stranger in Portugal, in the north especially, is
the almost universal employment of glazed tiles, _azulejos_, both inside
and outside buildings of all kinds, the majority of the better sort of
dwelling-houses being entirely covered outside by tile designs in
colours, sometimes very elaborate and beautiful. The custom exists to
some extent in Spain, but is not so common there as in Portugal. In each
case, however, the taste and original manufacture, like the name of
these tiles, are clearly Moorish, and in some of the older edifices, to
be mentioned later, the tiles themselves date from a period when Moors
or Mudejares produced them.
In the sacristy of Oporto Cathedral they will show you a painting on
terra-cotta of the Virgin and Child, backed by St. Joseph and angels
bearing a cross, which is asserted to be a Raphael. The composition and
drawing are clearly the work of a disciple of his school, but the
colouring is dull and grey, such as the great one of Urbino would never
have produced. Not this so-called Raphael, but another picture of the
highest interest and beauty, is the principal artistic treasure of the
city. In the board-room of Oporto’s most cherished and beneficent
institution, the vast charitable organisation called the Misericordia,
there hangs a painting that has few, if any, equals in Portugal. It is
claimed for Jan Van Eyck, who is known to have been in Portugal for two
years at about the period (1520) represented by the work, though
personally I could see but slight traces of the peculiar quality of
either of the brothers Van Eyck. Certainly it is broader in style than
anything I have seen from the brush of the younger brother Jan, and may
well be the work of Hubert Van der Goes or Hans Memling. But, whoever
may be the painter, the picture is a magnificent one. Against a
background representing a typical Flemish landscape and walled town,
such as Memling loved to paint, there is a highly ornamented font filled
with a pool of blood replenished from the stream that issues from the
Saviour’s side, as He hangs upon the cross rising from the centre of the
pool. Upon the edge of the font, on each side of the cross, in attitudes
of prayer, stand two lovely life-size figures of the Virgin and St.
John, whilst in the foreground there kneel, in regal robes of crimson,
ermine, and gold brocade, the figures of the founder of the Misericordia
in 1499, King Manuel the Fortunate and his wife. Kneeling behind them in
decreasing size are members of their family, and on the farther side
beyond the font are groups of ecclesiastics and laymen, all evidently
life-like portraits of prominent courtiers, or benefactors of the
institution. The colouring of the picture is glowing and gorgeous in the
extreme, and the loving care expended upon the details is such as only
the early Flemings had patience to exercise, accompanied by a breadth
and boldness unusual in most of them. Fons Vitæ, as the painting is
called, from an inscription on the edge of the font, is emblematical of
the foundation of the home of mercy it adorns. Nor is it the only art
treasure the Misericordia possesses, apart from the hundreds of awful
daubs representing dead and gone benefactors that crowd every inch of
wall-space. There is to be seen a beautiful Gothic gold chalice of
fifteenth-century Portuguese work, some fifteen inches high, a specimen
of the famous handicraft of the city, of great interest, the work being
of the most intricate and elaborate description, and the condition of
the jewel perfect.
Away from the river-side and the immediate surroundings of the
cathedral, Oporto has little to show in the form of architectural
quaintness. A busy, bustling place of modern-looking houses for the most
part, the streets dominated by the indispensable electric tramways,
casting scorn upon the lumbering ox wains that alone compete with them.
Yet the city has some striking points that should not be missed. The
view is very fine, for instance, from the top of the main modern
shopping thoroughfare, the Rua de S. Antonio, which swoops down suddenly
like a giant switchback to the Praça de Dom Pedro, the centre of the
city, and then as the Rua dos Clerigos soars aloft again as suddenly to
another eminence crowned by the extraordinary tower of the Church of the
Clerigos, one of the loftiest spires in Portugal. The effect, looking up
on either side from the Praça de Dom Pedro, is as curious as any
streetscape of its kind in Europe. The Praça de Dom Pedro itself,
crowded almost day and night with people, busy and idle, is a typical
Portuguese “place,” paved, as most of them are, by the strange wave
pattern in black and white stone mosaic that gives to the Praça de Dom
Pedro in Lisbon (the Rocio) the English name of “rolling motion square.”
From the Praça de Dom Pedro in Oporto, leading downward towards the
river-side, is the famous street of the old city called Rua das Flores,
where now, as for centuries past, the gold and silver filigree jewelry
for which Oporto is famous is made and sold in a score of dark
old-fashioned little shops; and still farther down is the Praça do
Comercio, with a striking statue amidst the flower-beds of Portugal’s
national hero, Prince Henry the Navigator. In this square stands, too,
the principal architectural boast of modern Oporto, the Exchange, of
which the interior is really grandiose in the florid style so beloved by
the Portuguese. The elaborate high-relief carvings prevalent in Portugal
are usually executed in soft marble-like limestone, which hardens with
exposure to the air; but here in the Bolsa of Oporto the intricate
festoons and ingenious caprices that stand out everywhere in relief on
walls, pillars, and staircases are carved out of the solid grey granite
of which the edifice is built, as if out of defiance the most difficult
material had been sought. Some of the fine apartments, especially the
Tribunal of commerce, are beautifully decorated in frescoes by Salgado,
in style much resembling those of Lord Leighton; and the great ballroom
is a gorgeous hall in the brilliant gold and coloured arabesques of the
Alhambra.
The Exchange is built upon the site of a disestablished Franciscan
monastery, and cowering under the shadow of its modern magnificence
there still stands the convent Church of St. Francis. The seventeenth
century has left little of the original fifteenth-century church
standing, and the interior is a mass of extravagantly rococo carved and
gilt wood and other monstrosities; but in an ancient south transept
chapel there is an altar-piece of interest in the style of Mantegna,
though the sacristan ascribes it to some impossible artist of another
school and century. Nothing, indeed, can equal the ignorance of, and
apparent indifference to, antique and artistic objects in Portugal by
the persons in charge of them. Even in national museums and historic
buildings belonging to the Government, the guardians appear to have been
chosen without the slightest regard to their fitness for understanding
or describing the objects in their care, and the demeanour of the
Portuguese people generally towards such objects is such as to force the
conviction that, however proud they may be that their country has
produced gems of art admired by strangers, they themselves have but a
vague appreciation of their beauties or their merit.
The precipitous street leading up from the Praça de Dom Pedro to the
conspicuous Church of the Clerigos is gay with a line of the drapers’
shops, with the gaudy wares aflaunt, which appeal specially to the
country folk who flock in with their produce to the picturesque market
of the Anjo behind the church. Red and yellow, blue and green, strive
for mastery from street kerb to parapet, for the stock is as much
outside the shops as in; and under the blazing sun, with the eternally
deep azure sky overhead, the feast of colour in the clear air is so
lavish as to dazzle eyes accustomed to the low tones and soft outlines
of England. But relief is near. Through the chaffering market, with its
piles of luscious fruit and all the bounteous gifts of earth and sea
spread temptingly before brightly clad country wenches with flashing
black eyes, the wayfarer may pass but need not tarry; nor is it worth
his while to penetrate into the over-florid eighteenth-century churches
of the Clerigos and the Carmo, which lie in his way—for just beyond them
is a beautiful sub-tropical garden where shady groves of palms invite to
repose, and towering planes temper the glare with a soft haze of
sea-green. Seated in a quiet nook, with leisure now to watch the
passers-by closely, one is struck by the prosperous busy look of the
working people. There is no undue noise, and a stranger is allowed to go
his way without unwelcome attention; above all, marvellous to relate,
beggars are rare, whilst the persistent, offensive, mendicancy,
amounting often to sheer blackmail, which is a perfect plague in Spain,
is here quite unknown.
[Illustration: A SHOP IN OLD OPORTO.]
The manners of these people of North Portugal, indeed, are
irreproachable. So courteous are they that it seems almost rude of the
stranger to note too closely the quaint garb of the working people
around him. The peasant women especially keep their ancient costume
unchanged. Barefoot they go, old and young, with their heavy burdens
piled in their boat-shaped baskets upon the black, pork-pie hats they
wear. Their skirts, usually black but often with a broad horizontal
stripe of colour round the bottom, are very short, and gathered with
great fulness at the waist and over the hips. Upon the shoulders there
is almost invariably a brilliantly coloured handkerchief, and sometimes
another upon the head beneath the hat; and long, pendant, gold earrings
shine against their coarse jet-black hair. It is evident that for the
most part they work quite as hard as the men, but they have no
appearance of privation or ill-treatment, except that their habit of
carrying heavy weights upon their heads has the effect of ruining their
figures in the manner already described. There are no indications
anywhere of excessive drinking, and even smoking is not conspicuous
amongst the working men and boys in the streets; they seem, indeed, too
seriously busy for that, except on some feast day, when, with their best
clothes on, they are gay enough, though not vociferous even then, as
most southern peoples are.
There is an ancient little church in the northern suburb of Oporto,
which will be of some interest to students of architecture. It is little
more than a fragment now, but represents the earliest orthodox Catholic
foundation in the city, and indeed in this part of the Peninsula. In the
clashing of creeds in the early centuries of Christianity, Visigothic
Spain had been officially Arian, whilst orthodox trinitarianism was the
creed of the great churchmen, and the majority of the Romanised people.
In 559 Mir, King of the Suevians, who ruled in the north-west corner of
the Peninsula, was distracted by the imminent danger of his son, who was
ill apparently to death. He was an Arian, but the priests of the
orthodox Church assured him that safety to his son might be gained by
the aid of certain relics of St. Martin of Tours, and Mir swore that if
the relics worked the miracle he and all his people would join the
Catholic communion, and he would build a church to St. Martin within a
year in his capital city. The prince recovered, and Mir was as good as
his word. To the dismay of the Gothic monarchs of Spain, Suevia joined
the orthodox fold, and in hot haste this Church of St. Martin was built;
“Cedofeita,” “soon done,” being its name to this day. The upper part of
the little cruciform church has been restored and the inner walls have
been lined with the universal blue and white picture tiles; but the
pillars and arches are pure romanesque, with capricious carvings on the
capitals, and the charming little cloister is entered by a romanesque
doorway of great beauty. The capitals, too, of the north doorway of the
church are very curious, though apparently later than the cloister door,
one of the carvings representing a man in a long gown being devoured by
an animal’s head, doubtless an allegory of which the significance is
lost to us.
Another church of some interest is that of Mattosinhos, a large and
prosperous village adjoining the harbour of Leixões, where those who
come by sea to Oporto land. The way thither from the city by the
electric tramway lies along the river-side, and past the charming
tropical-looking public gardens at the Foz de Douro, where in the summer
heat the citizens of Oporto idle, flirt, and disport themselves in the
surf that breaks upon the sandy beach. The Church of Mattosinhos is a
great place of pilgrimage, for it possesses amongst other attractions a
miraculous image of Christ, which is venerated throughout Portugal, and
the shrine is a famous one. The church lies on a gentle eminence, and is
approached by a beautiful, wide, mosaic pavement, bordered by avenues of
planes and cork trees, under the shadow of which are six chapels
containing life-sized groups representing scenes in the passion of Our
Lord. The soft warm air from the sea comes heavy-laden with the scent of
flowers, and on one side of the church a grove of orange trees shelters
a merry school of boys, who do not even pause in their games to glance
at the curious stranger peering about amongst them. The outside of the
church, somewhat squat and solid eighteenth-century work, presents a
fair specimen of a style of which we shall see much later; a style not
at all ineffective, although its description may not sound attractive.
Its peculiarity consists in the admixture of brownish-grey granite, of
which all the architectural lines and salient points consist, with
panels or spaces of snow-white plaster between. In this pure air, under
a brilliant sun, the subdued colour of the granite softens the outlines,
whilst the white spaces prevent an appearance of gloom or heaviness.
Inside, the Church of Mattosinhos is grave and simple in its
architectural features, but, as usual, the altars, and especially the
chancel, are a riotous mass of gilt wood carving, without repose or
restraint.
Down by the shore the great Atlantic rollers are thundering upon the
beach, as if hungering to devour the crescent-shaped sardine boats drawn
higher up for safety; and a long mail steamer, in the little harbour of
Leixões, has its blue peter flying and its funnel smoking ready to sail
for England. It is autumn there, no doubt, for the calendar tells us so
and cannot lie; but here it is glorious summer still, for the palms and
planes wave softly green in the languorous air, and the flowers, in
great white and purple masses, hang over every wall and wrestle with the
blue-black grapes that deck the trellises before the cottage doors.
Everywhere is vivid colour and sharp outline in an atmosphere of
marvellous clarity, and as we are carried rapidly through the balmy,
voluptuous breeze to the city, we feel that life under such conditions
is indeed worth living.
II
BRAGA AND BOM JESUS
The famous port-wine is grown upon a well-defined region nearly sixty
miles up the river from Oporto, and, interesting as the manufacture is,
the arid and inhospitable-looking land of terraced hillsides, where the
glorious grape grows upon the loose, stony soil, offers little
attraction to the seeker after the picturesque. To the north of Oporto,
and indeed in most of the province of Minho, the wine produced, though
varying in excellence, is generally of stout claret character, not
unlike the Rioja wine grown in the north of Spain. But North Portugal,
though cultivated like a garden wherever possible by a peasantry
probably unequalled in Europe for self-respecting independence and
laboriousness, thanks largely to causes that have made them practically
owners as well as tillers of the soil, does not strike a cursory
observer as being naturally fertile. For miles together, and as far as
the eye reaches, pine-clad hillsides stretch: beautiful straight pines,
rising in huge forests or isolated clumps, the light-green feathery
foliage shining against the clear indigo background of the sky, high
above the sandy soil carpeted with a thick soft cushion of pine-needles.
But closer view shows that down in the sheltered valleys between the
hills and on the lower slopes there nestle hundreds of little vineyards
and fields of maize and rye, the staple breadstuffs of the people.
The peasantry live well in their way, and are not content with inferior
food. Not for them is the poor makeshift of white bread and the fat cold
bacon of the English farm hand. The bread of rye with an admixture of
maize flour, the _broa_ or _brona_, as it is called in north-western
Spain, is dark in colour and coarse in texture; but it is a fine
sustaining food, upon which, in Galicia, I have often made a good meal.
The ever-present dried codfish, _bacalhau_, cooked with garlic and oil,
and sometimes with rice, flavoured with saffron, is also not by any
means a food to be contemned, unpalatable as it is to those who taste it
for the first time. But this, although forming the staple fare of the
Minho peasant and small farmer, does not exhaust his _menu_. There is
for high days and holidays the savoury _estofado_ of stewed meat and
vegetables, of which the Portuguese peasant housewife is pardonably
proud; there are olives, onions, and fruit _ad libitum_, and good,
sound, new wine, tart, but not unpleasant, at the price of the cheapest
small beer in England.
But the foreign visitor who comes simply for a short pleasure trip on
the more or less beaten tracks will not be expected to regale himself
upon this peasant fare, good as it is in its way. Of mutton he will find
little or none, but veal, especially in the national stew, he will see
at most meals, and ox-tongue, with a rich sauce, will appear on the
table more frequently than is usual elsewhere. A thin, and, it must be
confessed, usually tough steak, to which the adopted English name of
beef (spelt _bife_) is given, will be placed before him pretty often,
and he will find both the thing and the word omelette—which is never
used in Spanish—universal in Portuguese dining-rooms.
Through a glorious country of pine-clad uplands and sheltered vineyards
the railway runs from Oporto to the former great city of Braga, in Roman
times _Bracara Augusta_, and capital of the whole north-western part of
the Iberian Peninsula. Its position on a slight elevation in the midst
of a vast undulating plain or _cuenca_, surrounded by mountains, has
made of Braga the natural emporium of the province, and in each
succeeding racial dispensation a royal seat and capital; and it remains
to-day, though shorn of its splendour, the ecclesiastical capital of the
Spains, claiming precedence over imperial Toledo for its archbishopric
and primacy. It is a busy, prosperous place, humming with little
spinning and weaving factories, where woollen and cotton fabrics are
turned out in great quantities, and hold their own not only here in
Minho, but in the rest of Portugal and far Brazil and Portuguese Africa.
At the railway station at Braga, in the outskirts of the city, a noisy,
assertive little steam-train of several carriages is waiting in the
street, and with much puffing and whistling, it carries the travellers
up the slope into the narrow thoroughfares of the town. It is Sunday,
and the streets are thronged with gaily-dressed people, the women,
heavily decked with the ancient gold jewellery, long earrings, heavy
neck chains, and crosses upon the white shirt that covers the bosom.
Across the shoulders of most of them there is a brilliantly coloured
silk handkerchief, whilst their full-pleated short skirts are usually of
some thick dark-coloured cloth, and upon their heads here in Braga they
often wear, like their sisters in Oporto, the peculiar round cloth
pork-pie hat, with the curling silk fringe on the top of the rim. The
men are less picturesque in their Sunday trim, for many of them wear
felt wide-brimmed hats instead of the workaday bag cap; but even they
have usually added a bit of colour to their sombre masculine garb in the
form of a bright scarf encircling their waists to do the duty of braces.
Under the Porta Nova the fussy little train rushes, and up the narrow,
picturesque street, the top-heavy stone scutcheon upon the
eighteenth-century gate striking at the very entrance the dominant note
of the ancient city. Here and everywhere the archiepiscopal insignia,
the tasselled hat and mitre, and the Virgin and Child on the city arms,
tell that the place from the earliest Christian times has been an
ecclesiastical seignory. Churches, too, greet the eye at every turn;
most of them massive seventeenth and eighteenth century structures in
the peculiar style mentioned in the description of the Church of
Mattosinhos in the last chapter: brownish grey granite outlines and
salient points, with dazzling white plaster spaces between. Opposite one
such church, in a tiny praça leading off from the main square of the
city, the Largo da Lapa, I came across a picturesque scene worthy of the
brush of John Philip. In a corner of the little square of San Francisco
was an ancient recessed fountain in the wall, and around it, with water
jars high and graceful like Roman amphoræ, there fluttered a group of
women waiting their turn at the jet. Moving to and fro and clustering in
the deep shadow contrasting with the blinding sunlight, these
full-bosomed, black-haired women, with fine Roman heads and flashing
eyes, were so many points of glaring colour, forming a brilliant giant
kaleidoscope, whilst the chattering of many tongues, the jest and taunt
thrown over the shoulder to rival or to swain, the careless laughter,
seemed to blend and fill the languid air with a vague harmony to the
ear, such as the mixed discordant colours in their aggregation produced
to the eye. By the side of the gay fountain stood the contrast that
heightened its effect. A frowning monastery with heavily grated windows
high upon the wall, from which glowered evil faces and thrust thievish
hands. For here, again, on this happy holiday afternoon in Braga, the
gaol-birds held their levee. Beneath their bars stood their womenkind
and children, consoling or grieving; and little bags hung down at the
end of strings from the windows to receive the gifts it pleased their
friends to send up to the sinister rascals, whose hoarse ribaldry or
whining appeal broke in ever and anon upon the gay chatter of the
fountain. As if in irony, the church that faced the monastery prison
bore upon its front the name the “Temple of the Sacred Order of
Penitence.” Of contrition one saw little sign on the part of those who
from behind their bars looked for all their weary day upon the church
commemorating the unmerited self-reproach of the “Seraphic Father St.
Francis.”
[Illustration: THE AFTER-GLOW AT BRAGA.]
There is one thing throughout Portugal that may be unhesitatingly
condemned, and here in Braga the evil is as patent as elsewhere. The old
traditional and, in many cases, historical names of the praças and
streets have been changed wholesale and wantonly for those of passing
and second-rate celebrities, political and otherwise. In Braga the
ancient Largo da Lapa has been turned into Largo de Hintze Ribeiro,
after the leader of the Liberal party in the Cortes, and there is hardly
a town in Portugal in which the principal squares and thoroughfares do
not bear the name of Hintze Ribeiro, or of his rival politician,
Conselheiro João Franco. Serpa Pinto and Mouzinho de Albuquerque, two
fire-eating African explorers, who in the jingo colonial fever of a few
years ago, when the feeling against England ran high, were made heroes,
are commemorated in streets innumerable throughout Portugal, to the
exclusion of names which were often quaint and significant landmarks of
long ago.
The palace of the Archbishops of Braga hardly corresponds in appearance
with the high claims of the primate, for the church in Portugal is sadly
shorn of its splendour, and part of the rambling palace is a ruin; but
the cathedral offers many points of interest. Enthusiastic local
antiquarians are confident that the first edifice was raised by Saint
James himself in the lifetime of the Holy Virgin. But, however that may
be, the present church certainly dates from the twelfth century; and
though, as usual, the seventeenth century did its best to spoil and
smother its primitive simplicity; yet, as in the case of Oporto
Cathedral, which that of Braga much resembles, the stern solidity of the
original work stands out clear from the frippery by which it is
overlaid.
The narrow nave is divided from the aisles by massive low clustered
granite pillars supporting slightly pointed arches, above which spring
the simple groins that form the vaulted roof. At the west end the church
is darkened by the gilt wooden ceiling that supports the choir and the
great gilded organ with spread trumpet pipes that is the pride of the
cathedral. The choir itself, raised upon a loft and occupying the whole
west end of the church, is of surprising magnificence; carving and
gilding have run wild; cupids, cherubim, angels, musicians, and fabulous
monsters jostle each other exuberantly upon choir stalls, lecterns, and
panels: all the caprice, skill, and invention of sixteenth and
seventeenth century Portuguese art have been lavished upon the work. And
the effect is rich in the extreme, but utterly incongruous with the
sober early ogival of the church itself. Even in the nave the massive
granite pillars have been crowned by later vandals with florid capitals
of carved gilt wood. The walls, too, are much covered with pictorial
blue and white tiles, and the effect of this, though inartistic, is
quaint and not displeasing. From the tiny cloister of plain romanesque
there opens the chapel of St. Luke, where in two splendid sepulchres lie
the bodies of the Leonese princess, Teresa, and her Burgundian husband,
Count Henrique, to whom she brought the county of Portugal in the late
eleventh century. These are the progenitors of the Kings of Portugal,
the parents of Affonso Henriques, of whom we shall hear much later; and
to Donna Teresa is owing the re-foundation of the Cathedral of Braga. In
the side chapels, in the cloisters, and in the sumptuous chapel of St.
Gerald, the patron saint, there lie dead and mouldering archbishops not
a few; one of them, it is said, incorrupt after eight centuries, though
in consequence of the flesh having been varnished he has the appearance
of a mulatto, and shows to this day the honourable scar across his cheek
that the warrior archbishop gained whilst fighting valiantly by the side
of the Master of Avis at the ever-memorable battle of Aljubarrota, that
gave the regal crown of Portugal to the illegitimate scion of the House
of Burgundy. Another coffin there is, just inside the west door, that
has for most people a still more human interest. It is of gilt copper,
apparently French in design, bearing upon its lid an effigy of a pretty
boy of ten, the little Prince Affonso, whose bones lie within, and who
died at Braga in the year 1400.
The exterior of the cathedral has, like the interior, been much spoilt
by later builders, the little square towers having been crowned by a
mean-looking balustrade and crockets; but the exterior of the
sixteenth-century Lady Chapel is a favourable specimen of the peculiar
florid Portuguese renaissance style called Manueline, of which I shall
have more to say later. Here at the Lady Chapel at Braga it is more
restrained and presents fewer daring departures from the Gothic canons
than elsewhere, though the surprising intricacy of the parapet and
pinnacles show that the new spirit was strongly moving when it was
built. That the artists who executed the work were Spaniards from Biscay
is probably the reason why in this instance the peculiar and more
questionable features of the style are less conspicuous than in the
productions of native Portuguese craftsmen of the same period. The other
churches of Braga have little show. They are mostly rococo
seventeenth-century structures, granite and plaster outside, and
nightmares of carved gilt wood inside; but almost under the shadow of
the overloaded rococo façade of Santa Cruz there is a lovely little
early ogival votive chapel standing by itself, and containing a
characteristically Portuguese group of the dead Christ, infinitely
touching and beautiful.
And so through the quaint old streets the stranger finds his way,
passing by a house here and there whose balconies and windows are
covered with the intricate wooden jalousies that linger still as a
tradition of oriental civilisation. The whole place is bathed and
flooded with vivid sunlight, except where the lengthening shadows fall
almost purple in their depth; and wandering without special aim, past
the public garden called the Campo de Sant’ Anna, towards the outskirts
of the city, I found myself at the foot of a steep hill rising suddenly
on the left of the walk. Climbing it, I found a little plateau on the
top with a tiny quaint seventeenth-century hermitage chapel, the
Guadalupe I learned was its name, under a clump of shady planes and
chestnut trees. Around the plateau was a dwarf parapet upon which two
lovers were sitting, oblivious to all around save each other; but as I
reached the parapet, and my eyes took in the prospect spread before me,
a cry of wonderment at its marvellous beauty sprang involuntarily from
me, and aroused for a moment the attention of the youth and the girl,
who sat with their backs to the landscape, caring nothing for such
things. It was but a glance they gave me, and I could enjoy
thenceforward without interruption or notice the rapture I felt from the
scene, the first of many such peculiarly Portuguese prospects of rolling
valleys and soaring mountains to be gained from comparatively low
elevations; scenes such as in other countries can only be attained after
long and arduous climbs up high mountains. I soon found, it is true,
that this view from the Guadalupe in Braga was but a trifle in
comparison with many others to be encountered in the course of a few
weeks’ travel; but when it first burst unexpectedly upon me it filled me
with an ecstasy that no subsequent prospect, however fine, could
produce.
Just below me was a tangle of vines, and then a mass of oaks, planes,
cork-trees, and acacias, with their fluttering light foliage, descending
in a gracious ocean of greenery of every shade across a broad valley
till they climbed half up the glowing red mountains miles away. White
houses gleamed amidst the trees, and upon every hill-top a hermitage or
shrine stood out with its shining cross above it. But that which
attracted the eye most was what looked like a giant white marble
staircase of immense width, leading right up the side of a wooded
mountain spur opposite, upon the summit of which, at the head of the
stupendous stair, set deep in the verdure of woods, stood a huge white
temple. Seen from the Guadalupe, the architectural approach up the
mountain side to the place of pilgrimage above looked almost too vast to
be made by man. Beyond, on the right, rose a majestic range of granite
peaks, bare of vegetation, and scattered to the summit with tremendous
boulders; and over all the setting sun threw a glow of golden light that
tipped the grey granite with crimson, orange, and purple, and deepened
the shadows of the climbing woods to umber and to black. The light fell,
and by-and-by only the crests of the red and grey mountains glowed, for
the woods across the vast plain lay in the black shadow of the peaks.
But still, white and gleaming, like a stupendous staircase of shining
silver, there shone, clear from the surrounding gloom, the great
pilgrimage of Bom Jesus do Monte. And so in the gathering twilight,
sated with the beauty of the inanimate world, I slowly wandered down
into the pulsing city again, leaving the lad and his lass still
whispering on the parapet, alone in their happy blindness.
From the door of the hotel in the Campo Sant’ Anna the tyrannical little
street train that bullies Braga several times a day carries us to the
foot of the Bom Jesus on the spur of Mount Espinho. For nearly two miles
of continuous gentle ascent the road passes through a long stretching
suburb of humble houses; and then a quarter of a mile through a close
grove of shady trees brings us to the outer portico of the sanctuary, a
white gateway at the head of a flight of steps, backed apparently by a
dense luxuriant wood. Hard by the portico is the starting platform of an
elevator railway, by which pilgrims may, if they please, dodge the
rigours of the penance, and arrive at the summit without exertion. This
course, on my arrival, commended itself to me, and I left until the next
day a full exploration of the place. On the summit of the spur, by the
side and behind the great church, white outlined by brown granite as
usual, there lies a land of enchantment. Vegetation of surprising
luxuriance is everywhere, giant trees full of verdure nearly all the
year round, mosses, ferns, and flowers in every crevice. Gushing
fountains and cascades, rustic bridges, and sweet winding paths through
the woods, everything that can conduce to tranquil repose and comfort is
here, with air so pure and exhilarating at this great elevation as to
raise the most depressed to vivacity. On a picturesque little clearing
on the summit there are two or three hotels, the principal of which, the
Grand Hotel, a long one-storey wooden building overhung by great trees,
I can vouch for as excellent.
The sanctuary is naturally a great resort amongst the people of Braga in
the hot summers on the plain, and I cannot conceive a more agreeable
place to pass a few days for rest at any time of the year; but the
special religious element draws many devotees who conscientiously go
through the pilgrimage to the shrines, and on the 3rd of May and Whit
Sunday especially many hundreds of pilgrims flock to the sanctuary for
devotion as well as for pleasure. The astonishing feature of the place
is, of course, the devotional approach to the church up the side of the
mountain, and it is difficult in a few words to give an idea of the
eccentricity of the structure. It may be admitted at once that the taste
displayed is atrociously bad, for it belongs to that eighteenth century
which has loaded Portugal with rococo monstrosities; but the very
vastness of Bom Jesus, and its exquisite position, save it from
triviality; and looked at as a whole, either from above or below, the
effect is grandiose in the extreme.
[Illustration: ON THE TERRACE, BOM JESUS.]
Some sort of sanctuary had existed here from the fifteenth century, but
it was not until the middle of the seventeenth that a miraculous figure
of Christ drew to the hermitage large numbers of pilgrims, and gradually
in the later eighteenth century the present structures grew under the
care of successive archbishops of Braga. Standing upon the spacious open
terrace before the church on the summit I looked down soon after sunrise
upon the scene spread before me. If the view hitherward from the
Guadalupe was fine this was more striking still. Wreaths of grey mist
still floated in the valley far below, and the vast plain with Braga in
its centre embosomed amongst trees, and surrounded as far as the eye
reached with red-roofed hamlets, still lay in grey shadow. But ridge
over ridge, crag beyond crag, in the background rose the mountains all
tipped with shining gold with chasms of tender heliotrope; and then,
before the mind had well realised the beauty of the contrast, the whole
plain woke and smiled with sunshine.
The platform or terrace upon which I stood with my back to the church
was flanked with granite obelisks and statues, and fronted by a wide
stone parapet with a beautiful stone fountain above it. By two broad
flights of steps at the sides a lower landing, or platform, was reached
with an arched fountain set in the face of the wall, then by steps down
to a similar platform, whence a pair of flights led to yet another, and
so on, the parapets and balustrades in each case being surmounted by
obelisks and statues, the fountains on the wall-faces being, like the
figures, an extraordinary mixture of sacred and mythological art. Each
alternate pair of platforms, after the first six, extending right across
the structure and paved with the favourite black and white stone mosaic,
was flanked by two shrines or little open chapels, each with a beautiful
life-sized coloured group of figures representing scenes in the passion
of our Lord. Half-way down there was an entrance from one of the
platforms into a lovely old-world terraced garden, overflowing with
flowers, palms, and sweet-scented verdure, and overhung by the dark yews
and pines that bordered the graded descent from top to bottom. At length
after descending many flights of steps and passing many terraced
platforms with fountains, figures, and obelisks, a large mosaic-paved
semicircular space was reached, ending in a stone parapet. Turning and
looking upwards from here an extraordinary effect was presented. The
alternate zigzags of the stairs and the faces of the walls, indeed all
the architectural features, were outlined, like the great church
towering far overhead, with brown grey granite, and faced with perfectly
white plaster. Stage upon stage the great staircase rose, its parapets
at the side and the centre line being marked by statues rising
alternately one over the other at each successive stage of the ascent.
Dark greenery, palms, yews, acacias, orange trees, and trailing flowers
overhung the ascent on each side, and it was not difficult to understand
the devotional fervour of pilgrims, who with tears and contrition toil
up this vast _viâ dolorosa_ by the hundred on the special anniversary,
worshipping at the affecting shrines on the landings, and ending in an
agony of remorse at the foot of the miraculous Christ which is the main
attraction of the Sanctuary. Nor is the scene looking down over the
parapet at the bottom of the main flight less striking. Sheer over the
precipice you see the billowy masses of dark thick woods far below. On
one side of the wide mosaic landing is a stair leading to another
chapel, and so down by a succession of zigzag flights, bordered by thick
greenery, to the porch, set in its grove of yews, and leading to the
outer world. But mere words are weak to describe the charm and beauty of
the Bom Jesus. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else in Europe,
and as sanctuary, health resort, and architectural curiosity it deserves
to be better known than it is.
[Illustration: ON THE HOLY STAIR, BOM JESUS.]
III
CITANIA AND GUIMARÃES
I drove out of Braga in the early morning. Passing over the ancient
bridge spanning the little stream, at which lines of women knelt and
washed their household linen, we left the city behind us and faced the
mountain range beyond which lay my goal. Far above reared the grey crest
of Mount Picoto, with a gilt cross dominating its highest point; and as
the road wound upwards and ever upward in zigzags, at each turn of the
path Braga, white and shining, set in its bed of verdure, receded far
below. All around were glorious sun-kissed peaks scattered to the summit
with huge granite boulders, as if the youthful Titans had there indulged
in the sport of stone-throwing. Then over a hill pass, we dipped into a
valley with the Falperra range clear before us, and beautiful St. Marta,
with its crown of woods and its gleaming hermitage in the foreground,
almost, as it seemed, over our heads. Maize fields spread across the
valley and on the hill slopes all around us; and on the wayside, and
dividing the fields, rows of oaks, chestnuts, planes, and, above all,
white poplars, ran, every tree covered to the top by a trailing vine,
loaded with purple grapes. The effect produced is most extraordinary,
and the practice of thus utilising timber trees is peculiar to this part
of the country.
For many miles, as we drove over valley and hill, tall poplars by the
thousand, their light green leaves blending with the bronze, served as
vine poles; and every white cottage had its shady trellis pergola before
its open doorway, the great luscious bunches of fruit hanging temptingly
over the heads of the women busy spinning, surrounded by quiet, brown,
barefooted children.
The prevalence of granite is noticeable everywhere. The fields are
divided from the path by granite walls, gate-posts, trellis standards,
and even telegraph poles are slender granite monoliths, and the cottages
themselves are granite built, solid and weather-proof. Many people meet
us on their way to Braga: men in velvet jackets, wide, brown, homespun
trousers, often with inserted patterns of other coloured cloth, and
broad brimmed hats; the women, gay with bright kerchiefs over head and
shoulders, but all barefooted, and many carrying poised upon their heads
the slender red water jars, the fashion of which has known no change
since the time when the legions of Augustus ruled the Celts and Suevians
with iron hand from Bracara Augusta. Ox-carts slowly toil along, the
bowed necks of the bullocks bearing above them the elaborately carved
_canga_, here seen at its best. And still the road lies mainly upward
through the keen pure air, the mountain slopes below and around us green
with pine forests, and above us the eternal grey granite boulders. The
land is bathed in a flood of sunlight, with here and there upon the
widespread slopes and valleys the dark shadow of a passing cloud. Even
up here amidst the masses of granite the fruit-laden vine persists,
covering and embracing with its reaching tendrils poplars, oaks, and
olives on the sheltered slopes, whilst the proud pines alone, towering
on the exposed surfaces, defy the creeper’s insidious caress.
At length the high pass of the Falperra range is crossed, and before us
spreads a vast fertile plain, with villages and homesteads scattered
across its bosom. Soon the grey boulders disappear from around us, and
the air grows softer, though granite still supplies the place of wood by
the roadside. The fields of maize are usually not above an acre in
extent, and are bordered everywhere by vine-clad poplars. It is clear to
see that the little farms are for the most part cultivated by the owners
and by hand labour, for no yard of tillable soil is left to waste. It is
market day at Taipas, and flocks of picturesque husbandmen and their
womenkind are wending their way into the village from distant hillside
hamlets and lonely granite granges. It is a gaily clad and
prosperous-looking crowd that chaffer and bargain for their herds of
thin porkers, their vegetables, fruit, red clay pottery, and flaring
textiles; all spread out to the best advantage beneath the trees of the
market-place and by the shady wayside. The women almost invariably carry
upon their heads in long spacious baskets the merchandise they buy or
sell, be it live-stock, produce, yarn for weaving, or household stuff;
and as invariably is the burden covered with a snowy cloth, and the
woman herself is clean, well-fed, and upstanding.
Taipas, the famous thermal mineral baths of the Romans, did not detain
me except to order lunch to be ready when I should return a few hours
later to the primitive inn attached to the ancient baths, for I was
bound for a place still more ancient than Roman Taipas, the mysterious
buried city of Citania, the Portuguese Pompeii.
A few miles’ drive upon an excellent road and through a prosperous
smiling country of maize, vines, and olives, brought me to the tiny
hamlet of São Estevão de Briteiros, just a humble little grey church, a
large farmhouse, an inn, a few cottages and a school. The road had led
almost at right angles to that by which we had reached Taipas, and the
Falperra range, which we had crossed earlier in the day, again loomed
nearer; the nearest spur, a bold hill of nine hundred or a thousand feet
high at some distance from the range, projecting far out into the plain,
and rising precipitously from the little village of Briteiros, which was
the present limit of my drive. Long before we reached it the abrupt hill
with its tiny white hermitage chapel of São Romão on the highest point
had stood out conspicuously, and seen from below looked impossible of
ascent. From Briteiros, however, the climb was seen to be not so
formidable; for a rough path started from behind the humble schoolhouse,
through little farmsteads, gradually winding and zigzagging up the
precipitous slope through the trees and brushwood that clothed the lower
portion of the hill. The population of Briteiros were mostly at Taipas
for the market, and a demand for the services of _um rapaz_, a boy, to
guide the stranger to the lost city of long ago met with the reply that
no man nor boy was readily available.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO MARKET, TAIPAS.]
After some short delay an aged woman produced a substitute in the form
of an elfin little maiden of ten or eleven, with great black eyes,
half-bashful, half-bold, and jet black hair floating unrestrained over
her shoulders. With her bare feet and scanty floating raiment she
skipped like a dryad from stone to stone over the rugged pathway,
looking back now and again as if in wondering contempt at the lumbering
stranger slipping and floundering after her upon the thick carpet of
pine needles that clothed the spaces between the boulders forming the
track. Track it was and no more, scarped on the hillside, and evidently
had been made by hands; for the stones still showed some signs of
regularity and the larger masses had been removed to the side, whilst
those which stood upon the causeway itself proved by their flat and
polished surfaces that ages of human feet had passed over them up and
down the hill. As the weird little damsel sprang with the free action of
a wild thing from stone to stone, her black hair floating in the
pine-scented breeze, it was easy for me to imagine how the people who
long, long ago, before history records, had dwelt upon this hill and
made this causeway had looked and moved. Racial inundations had passed
over the land since then, leaving traces perhaps in this or the other
type of the countryside, but the girl’s far-off ancestors, dwelling
always upon the same spot, had struck deeper and more lasting root than
their stone walls and causeways, and as the little guide flittered up
the rough climb before me, the ages seemed to fall away and the dim past
to grow in clearness.
Half up the hill the trees cease, and the stony causeway rises
precipitously through a region of purple heather, broom and yellow
gorse, thickly strewn with giant granite boulders. Presently the ruins
of a wall of rough stones cemented together stretch across right and
left; and running parallel, and just inside of it, a dry water channel
well made of hewn stones. The ground-plans and walls a yard or two high,
of houses are on all sides of us; and climbing a little higher and
turning the shoulder of the hill we see spread before us, covering the
whole of the south upper slopes of the declivity, a vast stretch of
uncovered ruins—a once-populous town of the unrecorded past.
Before describing in detail these, by far the most complete and
interesting Celtiberian remains in the Peninsula, a few words may be
said with regard to the discovery and exploration of them, as well as to
the theories as to their origin. For reasons which need not be re-stated
here the Celtic element was less intimately mixed with the Iberian in
the north-western part of the Peninsula than elsewhere, and the tribes
in this part of the country were those which withstood longest the
imposition of the Roman bureaucratic system after the assassination of
the patriot Viriatus, and the fall of Numancia in the second century
B.C. Not till the time of the great Julius did the legionaries,
stationed then permanently at Braga, sweep all this province clean of
revolt, and bring the tribesmen to their knees after dire slaughter and
destruction. The Celtiberian tribes in this remote corner had lived
their simple pastoral lives from time unrecorded in small family clans,
each independent, with its own law and its own gods; but for purposes of
mutual defence in later times confederations of many clans were formed,
_mòr thuatha_, as in Ireland. Each of these confederations possessed a
fortified centre or stronghold as a place of assembly and refuge,
usually upon an eminence, wherein the scattered clans might meet for
defence or in council to treat of common interests. The Roman historian,
Valerius Maximus speaks especially of some such fortress upon a mountain
in Lusitania, and praises its inhabitants for their stubborn bravery. He
calls it by the name of Citania, and antiquaries have given to the
extensive ruins now before us that name during the last few years, on
the assumption that this may be the place referred to by the Roman
chronicler.
Vague stories had always pervaded the countryside of buried ruins, with
the accompanying legends of witches, warlocks, and enchanted Moors
existing upon the hill of São Romão; and in the eighteenth century the
curate of São Estevão de Briteiros at the foot of the hill had brought
down from the hill-top and placed in his church porch a great mysterious
slab of stone covered with mystic devices and of strange fashioning. But
not until our own times did a man come with public spirit enough to
devote his life and small fortune to the exploration of this city of the
past, for in Portugal public encouragement of any such objects is rare
indeed. This man was Dr. Sarmento, who for many years until his death
recently, made a labour of love in uncovering systematically the
vestiges of the prehistoric city.
All over the plain, for many miles around, the ruins of Celto-Roman
villages have been found, and in many cases partially explored by Dr.
Sarmento and others; the objects discovered, like those found in
Citania, having been deposited in the museum at Guimarães belonging to
the explorer, but in consequence of his death henceforward to be a
public institution subsidised by the State. As I shall point out when I
describe my visit to the museum, the objects unearthed at Sabroso, St.
Iria, and other neighbouring places are immensely more numerous than
those from Citania itself; great masses of coins, personal ornaments,
arms, inscriptions, and utensils in the museum proving that these places
existed far into Roman times, and perhaps much later. The chaotic
condition of the Sarmento collection at present, and the apparent
absence of any skilled and enthusiastic guardianship, have probably been
a reason why certain investigators have attributed to Citania many
objects discovered elsewhere, and have founded upon them theories which
must necessarily be misleading. Dr. Hübner, who did not see the place
personally, aroused the wrath of Dr. Sarmento in this way, and other
archæologists have spoken somewhat loosely as to the nature of the finds
in the Citania excavations. The great interest of the hill stronghold,
indeed, consists in the fact that we have here practically an unspoilt
Celtic or Celtiberian town, in which Roman civilisation had but little
part. It will be seen by the objects actually unearthed that the place
was inhabited after the Roman influence and language had dominated the
district, as late, indeed, as the time of Hadrian; but of purely Roman
remains, so plentiful elsewhere in the district there are in Citania
hardly any; the construction and plan of the houses having much in
common with the Irish and Scotch Celtic _cashels_, and the absence of
all indications of Christianity being complete.
Following a well-paved causeway of some seven or eight feet wide, the
flat stones of which have been worn smooth by countless generations of
forgotten footsteps, we can perceive perfectly the ground plan of the
houses on each side. In most cases Dr. Sarmento has excavated down to
the stone-laid flooring of the houses inside, and to the base of the
masonry outside; and it is possible to wander through the main lanes or
streets of the town, crossing each other at right angles here and there,
and interspersed by little circular paved open spaces, and to
reconstruct in the mind’s eye the primitive life of this city of long
ago. Here, for instance, just inside the wall by which we entered is a
little square house, some twelve feet wide, containing two rough
millstones, of which many have been found. The walls are of huge, rough
stones, evidently taken as they came and fitted together with small
stones where necessary to fill in interstices, the whole cemented
together by some hard rubbly compost. Running past this building and
through the town (in one or two cases, indeed, through the houses
themselves) is one of the several stone water channels protected by low
walls on each side, and supplied in ancient times by the springs that
still gush out plentifully on the hillside.
Some of the houses are much larger, and must have contained two or more
apartments. But what strikes the eye of the observer most is the
relatively large number of purely circular edifices, and this it is that
has mainly attracted the speculations of archæologists. Mr. Oswald
Crawford, who went over the place whilst the excavations were in their
earlier stages many years ago, was mistaken in his estimate that the
round buildings were eight or nine times more numerous than the square,
and he founded upon this and other data the opinion that the whole place
was a great granary, where the food of the tribes might be stored in
safety. So far from the round houses being eight times as numerous as
the square, found at least four square houses to every one round; but
that which struck me as most curious, and so far as I could learn, it
had not specially attracted the attention of previous visitors, was that
in a large number of cases the round houses were enclosed in a square or
angular walled space, not very much larger than the circle, but leaving
a passage of some two feet wide, in most cases on the right-hand side,
between the two walls, leading to a space at the back between the
circular wall and the wall of the square enclosure, the left-hand side
of the circular wall being mostly built to touch the square wall on that
side. Dr. Sarmento was of opinion that the space thus formed was for the
purpose of sheltering cattle and domestic animals, and says that he had
found some rough stone excavations like troughs in them, with, in one or
two cases, a ring in the wall as if to tether beasts. The width of the
entrance passage and the extent of the enclosed space in the rear of the
circle would be too small to admit any large animal; but probably goats
would be housed in them easily. In one or two cases I noted that the
stone post forming a jamb to the entrance to the passage between the
round house and the square enclosure was grooved on the inner surface.
This in Dr. Sarmento’s opinion proved that the entrance to the passage
was closed by a lifting hatch of wood, which to some extent confirms the
idea that the back space was intended to shelter animals such as goats,
as a lifting door set in a groove would be much less likely to be forced
by them than a swing door turning, as the house door did, on wooden
pegs.
There are very few instances of party walls being utilised for two
adjoining houses, though the buildings are often only a few inches
apart. Even in the case of the round houses enclosed in square spaces
and touching the square wall, the circular structure is quite complete
at the point of contact. In one instance I measured a large walled
parallelogram fronting on the principal causeway, seventeen yards in
length, enclosing within it one square house of nine yards wide, and two
circular houses, one on each side, the structures in each case being
complete, but the circular walls in this instance merged for a few
inches only at the point of contact with the square outer wall at the
side. Whether these square or outer enclosures were tiled or were merely
enclosed yards it is difficult to say, but that the houses themselves
were so covered is evident from the immense number of well-made red
shards scattered everywhere, and particularly inside the houses, the
tiles being turned up at each end, so that a concave tile to cover over
the joint between them would make a roof covered with them quite
watertight. A door jamb and lintel in one house showed a well-carved
rope moulding, but in most cases they were plain, the lintels and
doorsteps containing, however, at the side a square-cut hollow, in which
a block of wood was apparently inserted to receive the wooden peg or
pivot which formed a sort of hinge for the door, an arrangement still
adopted for the doors of barns, &c., in the neighbourhood; though Dr.
Sarmento was of opinion that no wood was employed in the construction of
the houses themselves, the polished rounded stones fixed to the walls in
some of the houses, which Dr. Hübner considered to be bases of pillars,
being in the opinion of the Portuguese archæologist seats for the
inhabitants.
The round houses are usually about fourteen feet in diameter, and the
walls remaining rarely rise above four or five feet from the surface.
The doorstep is usually raised a foot or so above the level of the
ground. One round house has been tentatively rebuilt by Dr. Sarmento on
the level space on the top of the hill, an unattractive beehive-looking
structure without windows, but later investigation convinced him that he
had built it too high; and that it should not be of so great an
elevation as the measure of its diameter. The principal thoroughfares
running transversely on the slope of the hill are carefully walled upon
the scarped inner side, and in some cases the stone water channel runs
alongside of it.
On reaching the bare space at the very summit of the hill, upon which
the little modern Christian chapel stands, a good idea may be formed of
the whole plan of the place. The town, covering perhaps five or six
acres, all lies over the crest and down the south and south-west slopes.
The wall by which we entered from the south is apparently the inner wall
of three, and practically encloses the top of the hill and the centre of
the town on the slope. The second wall, which shows signs of a moat, is
of greater extent, following the irregular contour of the hill, whilst
the third or outer defence extends far down almost to the plain on the
west and south-west side; traces of buildings, although but little
explored, being very abundant between the two inner walls on the south
and south-west, and clearly defined paths leading down from the main
city to the outer defences and the suburbs. In consequence of the
formation of the ground, attack was to be looked for mainly from the
most accessible point, namely, the north-east; for here the three lines
of defences are almost close together, and each of the walls is here
brought to a rough angle. From the apex of the outer wall on this side
there are indications of another defence running straight out at right
angles along the saddle which connects the hill with an outlying spur
easy of approach, and at the end of this long projection there appears
to have been two parallel horizontal outworks running across the end of
the saddle, this being the vulnerable point of the fortress.
It is easy to imagine how almost impregnable such a place could be made.
The hill at any other point than this could only be scaled, if at all,
with the greatest difficulty, and the huge boulders on its side would
enable even weak defenders under their cover to hurl down stones or
spears upon an advancing foe. The south side of the hill is the least
accessible of all for any considerable body, and there the defences are
the most distant and the weakest.
In the midst of the ruined town I found a bright intelligent peasant
lad, busy arranging fragments of pottery upon a stone for the later
inspection of some one in authority; and from him I heard much quaint
and simple local folklore. His own interest was greatest in what he
called the cemetery, four or five small grave-like troughs, about three
or four feet long and a foot deep, neatly made and lined with dressed
stone slabs. The so-called graves lie close to the causeway and amongst
the houses, in an irregular group, and can hardly have been sepulchral,
considering their size and position; Dr. Sarmento inclining to the
belief that they were troughs for feeding cattle. The cemetery, if there
be any, would probably lie far down the slope outside the second,
perhaps outside the outer, wall, but here no excavation of any
importance has been executed. At some little distance down have been
found three perfectly plain dolmens of the usual shape, which are
usually sepulchral; and doubtless extensive exploration around them
would reveal human remains. My peasant friend was also much concerned in
a mysterious “mine,” as it is called, from which he assured me, in
awe-stricken tones, that enchanted Moors came at night and carried evil
over the plain. It is supposed that this cave, which is of no great
extent, some two yards in diameter at the mouth, and a few yards deep,
was adjoining or under the place where the great slab which the
country-people call _Pedra Formosa_, the handsome-stone, to which I
shall revert presently, was found.
I have mentioned that Mr. Crawford was of opinion that the round houses
were granaries, but seeing that the Celts of Ireland and Scotland
frequently built and lived in round houses within their _cashels_, and
bearing in mind the existence of the spaces for animals, which I have
described as attached to those of Citania, I am strongly of opinion
that, comfortless as they appear, these were the veritable dwellings of
many of the neolithic folk who for centuries held their foes at bay upon
this headland jutting out upon the rich plain of Guimarães. Still
another solution of the round-house problem is, as I understand his
words, suggested by my friend Professor Altamira in his _Historia de
Espana y de la Civilization espanõla_. The earlier generations of this
people, he says, buried their dead under dolmens which when covered were
circular; and later generations retained the tradition of circular
sepulchres. “They were built round,” he says, “with a sort of domed
roof, the middle of which was supported by a pillar of wood or stone.
Some of such tombs had passages (or galleries) to enter by—which was
frequently the case also with the dolmens—and some had lateral
chambers.... Of this class are those discovered at Citania, on the hill
of San Roman in Portugal.” Apart from the fact that no human remains
have been found in these round houses at Citania, there is no sepulchral
suggestion about them. They are, it is true, if Dr. Sarmento be right,
windowless and rough, but the comparison must not be made with the
dwellings of to-day, but with the haunts of cave men, who had been the
progenitors of the early settlers of Citania; and judged by that
standard, these stout, weather-proof, stone houses, with doors and an
enclosed separate space behind for cattle, were almost luxurious. In any
case, a close examination of them left in my mind no doubt at all that
they had been the dwellings of human creatures in the earlier stages of
civilisation.
It required no great effort of the imagination to people the narrow
paved paths on the hillside and the little round central spaces with the
dwellers in these rough abodes: wild-looking, shaggy men, with long
hair, and clad in skin or rough woollen garments, going about their
daily toil as hunters, husbandmen, potters, or smiths, to paint to
oneself the alarm of an approaching foe, the savage warfare to repel
attack, and finally the victorious host of Roman legionaries of Augustus
levelling the poor homes, slaughtering, ravishing, destroying, until the
poor remnant of the vanquished knelt in the dust and bowed their necks
evermore to the yoke of discipline and civilisation.
The place continued to be the abode of men long afterwards, for Latin
became the speech of some people who lived there, and coins as late as
Tiberius and one of Hadrian (117 A.D.) have been unearthed at Citania;
but with the Roman officers supreme at Braga, and the whole plain
prospering and smiling under the arts of peace and Roman luxury, poor
Citania on its bold hill-top lost its reason for existence, and must
have dwindled, until long before the time of the Goths and Suevians all
men forgot it, and the ages covered it with the mantle of earth,
undisturbed till now.
But whilst I am thus speculating, my little girl guide is getting
restless, and the westerly tending sun tells me that I have long
outstayed the appointed time when I was to return to Taipas. So,
reluctantly, and with my brain full of idle fancies which made me dream
of creatures such as those I have pictured lurking behind the
thick-strewn boulders, and challenging my intrusion upon their
stronghold, I slowly paced the paved lanes again through the lines of
stark ruined walls, and so out upon the precipitous hillside down to
Briteiros, where the carriage awaited me in the grateful shade.
The market people were homeward bound from Taipas now; the women with
their purchases or unsold wares swaying rhythmically upon their heads as
they walked, and the men leading live stock or bent beneath burdens, but
never too heavily laden to prevent them from courteously saluting the
passing stranger. The inn, nearly empty of bathing visitors now that the
summer was past, was feverishly anxious to do its best; and, though
Citania had detained me for hours longer than I had reckoned, Taipas
contrived to offer me a tolerable lunch, the first meal I had eaten in
that long day of delight. Upon a wall of the open courtyard before the
inn is an ancient fountain with a pompous poetical inscription, setting
forth that John I. of Portugal, _Para que a morte mais tropheos não
conte_, “that death should no more trophies boast,” had raised this
miraculous fountain of healing water. But John I. was a mere modern in
these ancient _thermes_; for here the great Hadrian was cured of his
malady, and founded the sumptuous baths, of which extensive remains have
in recent times been discovered, but not explored to any extent. In a
field nearly opposite the inn is an enormous block of granite, upon
which a long Roman inscription tells that this work was erected by the
orders of the Imperial Cæsar Trajan, son of Nerva, conqueror of the
Germans, and much more to similar effect; whilst upon another face of
the block an interminable list of modern Portuguese names of gentlemen
interested in the rehabilitation of the baths in recent times shows the
universal hankering after immortality in company with the great felt by
the little men of the world.
The bathing establishment itself is primitive enough, consisting of
about twenty baths large and small, in separate wooden compartments,
built round three sides of a square, the temperature of the water being
about 85° Fahr., very abundant, clear, and bright, and with a strong
sulphureous taste and smell. The waters are said to be extraordinarily
efficacious in cutaneous affections, maladies of the mucous membranes,
laryngitis, bronchitis, and rheumatism, and as many as 1500 patients
visit them from May to September every year, the flow of water being a
quarter of a million litres a day.
All the way from Taipas to Guimarães the road lay through maize fields
bordered thickly by vine-covered poplars; a prosperous land of well-fed,
laborious people. Near the ancient city, the birthplace of the
Portuguese monarchy, the ground rises, and the pine forests spread for
miles on the uplands all around, the fresh sweet scent of the woods
adding one more sensuous joy to a closing day of incomparable
loveliness. As the carriage clattered over the cobble stones, through
the narrow streets of the town, and so into the beautiful alameda and
the public garden, in which the principal hotel stands, there rose as if
from the end of the alameda the giant granite peak of the Penha, all
glorified and transfigured by the setting sun. The mountain, almost
sheer as seen from this side, seemed to tower right overhead: green
woods clothed its sides up the greater part of its height, and then,
like a wall, sprang a precipice of bare scarred rock, now orange and
purple against a violet sky. On the summit of the apparently
inaccessible saw edge of the peak stood out the white walls of a
building, which may have been a hermitage, but I am told is now a
guest-house, where in the most torrid summer the citizens of Guimarães
find cool breezes and refreshment. As I gazed, entranced at the changing
colours of the sunset on the peak—orange deepening to crimson and to
bronze, purple fading by soft degrees to slaty-blue, and the rose-pink
of the growing after-glow softening the rugged outlines with tender
light—there came the clanging of an acolyte’s bell, and across the
alameda there wound a devout little procession bearing the Host, with
flaring tapers, swinging censers, priests, and choristers. It was the
one note needed to complete the picture. Guimarães in the gathering
twilight took me back in one happy moment to the ages long ago, when
simple faith unbroken reigned, and all was beautiful and all was true.
Guimarães has a proper pride in itself, and boldly asserts its claim to
be not only one of the most ancient, but the most glorious and
prosperous city in Portugal.
“A nobre Guimarães tem por brazão
Ser Corte primeira Portugueza,”
sings the poet, but the pride of Guimarães extends far beyond this
boast. Seated in the centre of the province of Minho, in the very garden
of Portugal, with abundant streams and fertile valleys for miles round,
protected by the mountains on each side that enclose the plain from
inclement winds, the town is in an ideal situation. Forming, as it did
in old times, one of the fiefs of the left-handed royal house of
Braganza, that made the dukes richer than the king, one of the
legitimate Infantes is said to have exclaimed jealously, as he looked
down upon the rich domain, _Quem te deu não te via; se te vira não te
dera_, “he who gave thee never saw thee; if he had seen thee he would
not give thee,” and one of the greatest of Portuguese writers, Manoel de
Faria, speaking of Guimarães said: “If the Elysian fields ever existed
on earth it must have been here, and if they did not exist they should
have been created in order to place them here.” But another subject of
pride, and an article of faith with all good citizens of the town, is
that Guimarães possesses the most beautiful women in Europe. Personally
I must confess that they did not strike me as being more comely than
their sisters of the rest of North Portugal, especially of Braga and
Coimbra, but from ancient times the women of Araduca, the modern
Guimarães, were held to be pre-eminent, and it is too late now to
gainsay it, confirmed as it is by writers Portuguese and French
innumerable.
In any case, the city is as beautiful as it is historically interesting.
Here on the site of the ruined ancient town of Celts and Romans, a
Leonese princess, in the tenth century, founded the great Benedictine
house, around which the mediæval town gradually grew. But its principal
glory began when Count Henrique of Burgundy and his royal Leonese bride,
Teresa, came to govern Portugal as Count, for his father-in-law, Alfonso
VI., the friend and foe of the Cid. Here at Guimarães in the splendid
castle, even now sturdy in its dismantlement, the first Count of
Portugal held his court, and here his great son, Affonso Henriques, the
national hero and first king, was born in 1109 and passed his youth.
It is impossible to imagine a ruin more stately than that of the grand
mediæval castle which, upon a gentle eminence on the outskirts,
dominates the town. Granite built upon a granite base, the walls sharp
and clear to-day, look as if cut but nine years ago instead of nine
centuries. Here is the dignity of age without its feebleness. A vast
battlemented outer wall, with corner bastions and pointed crenellations,
surrounds the majestic keep, the monolithic battlements of which, huge
single stones, stand uninjured still by time or the more destructive
hand of man. The cyclopean masses are reddened now by lichen and stained
by weather, but nine centuries have failed to crumble them, and they
stand a splendid monument of the first of the two outstanding epochs in
Portuguese history, when the nation was stirred with vast ambitions and
endowed with heroic energy to fulfil them. Affonso Henriques of
Guimarães was the protagonist of the first epoch, that of national
independence; Prince Henry the Navigator, the protagonist of the second,
that of national expansion.
Guimarães is delightful, and an artist might spend a month in its quaint
streets and alleys without exhausting the “bits” that call for
delineation. One charming old-world corner is the square in which stands
the church that alone remains of the vast monastery founded by the
Leonese Princess Munia—the Collegiada the townspeople call it, although
I believe it bears officially another name. The early florid Gothic
tower is a beautiful one, and more beautiful still the detached rood
canopy at its west end, with its quaint mixture of early Gothic with
Greek and Byzantine ornament. Opposite this is the low-arched
sixteenth-century arcade beneath the town-hall, and the houses that
surround the irregular little praça are in picturesque keeping with the
rest. There is in a street called Largo dos Trigães, one of the finest
stretches of crenellated wall that ever I saw. It must be three hundred
yards long, and at least five-and-twenty feet high, independent of its
pointed battlements, and is in the most perfect preservation though many
centuries old. It is said to enclose the grounds of a disestablished
monastery, for Guimarães was in old times monastic or nothing.
But curious and interesting as Guimarães is, I was not drawn thither
mainly to see the town, but to examine in the Sarmento museum the
objects discovered in the excavation of Citania. The collection is at
present in a state of chaos, which may possibly be remedied when the
reconstruction of the house is completed by the authorities. The number
of objects is immense, though by far the greater part of them came from
other places in the neighbourhood than Citania, and are mainly
attributable to the Roman period, though many of them are very early and
ante-Christian. The few purely Roman objects, however, found at Citania
are neither peculiar to the place nor of special interest. What is far
more attractive to the student are the relics that exist of the real and
original Celtiberian makers of the hill town.
First of all is the famous _Pedra Formosa_, to which reference has been
made. It stands at present in the open at the back of the Sarmento
house, but protected from the weather by a low roof which unfortunately
prevents a photograph being secured of it. It is a thick slab of
granite, seven feet long by nine feet wide, and notwithstanding the
contention of Dr. Hübner, who has not seen it, I am convinced that,
whatever may have been its purpose, its position was intended to be
horizontal, and that it is not a sepulchral stone to be set on edge. At
present it is mounted on four low posts or pillars, like a table, and
the elaborate carving upon it can be consequently seen plainly. At the
top of its shorter diameter in the centre is a hollow, ending in a
point, the outer circumference of the hollow being about the size of a
human head. From this, extending downwards about six feet to a
semicircular gap cut into the stone, at the foot is a raised cord-like
pattern cut out of the thickness of the stone, beneath which is bored a
tunnel, or channel, leading from the point of the hollow cone at the top
down to a hole through the stone at the bottom, a few inches from the
semicircular gap. From the base of the hollow at the top, leading
obliquely to the sides, are two other raised cord-like ridges similar to
that from top to bottom; the main design being roughly that of a human
being with the hollow for the head, the straight cord from top to bottom
for the body and legs, and the oblique cords for the arms. The whole of
the spaces between the cords are filled with a most intricate series of
designs, beautifully incised in the stone, concentric whorls, curves,
and scrolls being in each case the main motive.
Whatever may have been the purpose of the stone—religious, sacrificial,
or tribal—the work must have occupied many men for a long period, and
the skill, both of design and execution, prove that the artificers must
have reached a relatively high stage of artistic development. The art is
obviously ante-Christian, and the form of the stone suggests that it may
have been sacrificial, with the hollow cone to receive the blood from a
severed jugular and the tunnel beneath the central cord to convey it to
where the priest stood in the gap to catch it as it ran through the hole
at the bottom of the stone. The incised design shows no indication of
Greek or Roman influence, but the concentric curves are identical with
some of the earliest ornamental decoration of the stonework in the
museum brought from other Celto-Roman places in the neighbourhood, and
also with the decoration upon Celtic pottery found elsewhere in Portugal
and at Carmona in Spain.
[Illustration]
A stone of great interest found also at Citania may perhaps add more to
our knowledge than the mysterious _Pedra Formosa_. It bears an
inscription in the Celtiberian character, of which comparatively few
specimens have hitherto been discovered, and no key has been found to
decipher them. One of those known and reproduced by Dr. Hübner was found
at Peñalba de Castro in Spain, and appears to be nearly identical in
character with that from Citania; whilst another, also in Hübner,
brought from Barcelona, presents several important differences. The
Citania inscription is here reproduced, and I am indebted to Professor
Rhys, the famous Celtic authority, for an interesting suggestion,
namely, that the whole inscription, although written in the unknown
Celtiberian character, may be intended to be read in Latin; in which
case the first line and a half might represent Syatenunius. This point,
however, I must leave as being too abstruse for a book of this kind. We
are on firmer ground in the case of the very numerous specimens of red
pottery found at Citania and stamped with a mark entirely unknown
elsewhere. The marks of Roman potters on jars and pitchers were always
printed in small letters _outside_ the mouth, whereas the marked pieces
in question from Citania bear in letters an inch long _inside_ the mouth
“Camal” or “Arg,” and sometimes both words, and scores of red tiles have
also been found similarly marked ARG CAMAL. Upon a lintel-stone from
Citania in the museum I read the words CORONERI CALI DOMUS, and another,
apparently from the same house, is mentioned by Dr. Sarmento, but which
I did not see, bearing the inscription CRON CAMALI DOMUS, most of the
pottery bearing Camal’s name having been found near this house. Whether
Camal was a Celto-Roman potter, or, as seems much more likely, a great
personage or chief of Citania, is a point yet to be decided; but from
the fact that the name on the clay vessels is not situated where the
potter’s mark is usually inscribed, would tend to the belief that he was
the owner rather than the manufacturer. Arg, or Airg, as it may be read,
may have represented a Celtiberian title or dignity, and Camal, or
Camalus, is undoubtedly a Celtic name. It is unlikely, moreover, that if
Camal had simply been a potter his son Coronerus would have considered
it necessary to record upon his stone door-lintel the fact of his
descent, which he probably would have done if his father Camalus was a
person of consequence. Another peculiar fact in connection with the
incised ornamentation upon stones at Citania is the repetition of the
Swastick or wheeled cross and the wheeled whorl, which are of
pre-Christian and oriental origin, this design being also quite frequent
in the objects found in other places in the neighbourhood, and amongst
Celtic remains in other parts of the Peninsula.
The death of Dr. Sarmento has, of course, put an end to his
self-sacrificing life-task, leaving by far the greater part of the
exploration of the outer zones of Citania unattempted. It is almost too
much to hope that any other similarly public-spirited Portuguese will
provide the funds needed for the purpose, for there is little enthusiasm
for such subjects in the country; but if funds could be obtained to
excavate extensively the lower slopes of the hill on the south side
where numerous hillocks suggest that sepulchral remains may lie beneath,
it is probable that discoveries of great importance in Celtiberian
civilisation would be made, and perhaps the riddle of the Celtiberian
alphabet solved.
IV
BUSSACO
After losing sight of the marvellous view across the river of the city
upon its amphitheatre of hills, the road from Oporto towards the south
runs through a country of drifting sands parallel with the seashore.
Pines bending away from the prevailing westerly wind stand singly and in
clumps at first, and then in vast tracts, as in the Landes about
Arcachon, binding the unstable soil together; and within a few miles of
Oporto here and there a sea-bathing village of châlets and houses of
entertainment breaks the monotony of the scene. It was but seven in the
evening, but the autumn day had already sunk into dusk with an angry
streaked black and crimson after-glow when I came to the little thermal
bathing village of Luzo, on the lower slopes of the mountains that cover
the whole of the north of Portugal except the strip of country bordering
the sea. For some miles, ever since we had left the main railway line
from Oporto to Lisbon at Pampilhosa junction, we had been rising, whilst
the pines bordering the line had been growing thicker and more sturdy,
and from Luzo onward the way grew still steeper. The stars shone
brightly, but a dew almost as heavy as rain was falling as the carriage
that had met me at the station drawn by two gigantic mules, rattled
along the excellent road through Luzo.
There is always a feeling of uncanniness in speeding through an unknown
town at night for the first time. Here at Luzo little white cottages
flashed past us, a dim light flickered before a shrine at a street
corner, a man dimly visible tinkled a _bandurra_ a by the side of a
grated window, little groups whispered mysteriously in the
semi-darkness: they were all shadows to me, whilst I, poor waif, to them
was nothing, for the clatter of the mules and the rattle of the carriage
over the cobble stones were the only signs they had of the momentary
presence of a man who, like a ship passing in the night, flitted in the
darkness through the village which to them was life and death and all
things. Our road lay ever upward. By the dim light of a waning moon one
could see the trunks of great pines close together, and the soft moist
air was heavily charged with the grateful balsamic scent of the trees.
As we toiled patiently upward and still upward, in the darkness of the
night the hush of the woods fell deeply upon us, for no breath of wind
stirred the lofty tops that closed over us like an arch, and the summer
night-birds had already taken flight farther south. Presently we passed
through what in the dimness looked like an imposing architectural
gateway set in a high wall, and then the wood grew perceptibly denser.
By the wayside the bank on the left rose sheer from the road covered
with verdure, and one felt rather than saw that up and up, as it seemed
infinitely, the great trees towered higher and higher upon the steep
slope, whilst on the right hand the huge eucalyptus trunks shining white
through the blackness of the night, stood upon the brink of a
precipitous drop, from which emerged now and again tree tops and a
tumult of vegetation that showed, even though one saw but little of it,
that we were in the midst of a luxuriant forest such as those I have
seen on the Amazon and in Brazil, but never before in Europe.
Presently we drove into a circle of light, and one of the surprises of
my life burst upon me. A palace so stately and beautiful, so new and
spotless withal, as to seem like a scene from a fairy tale. But no—this
flashing white dream in stone is no scenic illusion; the carved tracery,
like petrified lace, and leaves, and branches, infinite in caprice and
variety, the lovely cloistered terrace, the monumental staircase, and
the almost insolent wealth and intricacy of sculptured ornament, are all
solid chiselled stone, and this splendid royal castle in the most
wondrous wood in Europe is an ordinary hotel, or rather an extraordinary
one run on ordinary lines.
The first instinct of a traveller when he lights upon such a find as
this is to keep it to himself rather than diminish his enjoyment in the
possession of his secret by sharing it with others; but Bussaco is big
enough, and it would be ungenerous to hide it. It was built by the
Portuguese Government, it is said, for a royal residence, and is hardly
yet quite finished, for an annexe is now being constructed for the use
of the royal family during their summer sojourn, and some of the
frescoes in the main castle are still to be added; but it is difficult
to understand—unless the intention really was, as stated, to make the
place a permanent royal residence—the reason for spending the vast sums
of money that the place must have cost upon a house of public
entertainment. However, there it stands, with its stately tower, its
majestic carved staircase, and all its heraldic blazonry, in the midst
of a crown domain seized from a Carmelite monastery, probably the most
beautiful hotel in Europe, certainly by far the best in the Peninsula;
in an exquisite climate, with perfect sanitation and water, a good white
wine grown on its own hillside, a cuisine with which no fault can
reasonably be found, cleanliness, and order; a Swiss lessee who speaks
English fluently and understands English needs, a bill of almost
disconcerting moderation ... and the woods! For, after all, the
hotel-palace, the golf-links, the tennis-lawn, the ballroom, and all the
rest of the added attractions of the place, are but subsidiary incidents
to the terrestrial paradise that surrounds it, enclosed in its high
granite wall six miles in circumference.
[Illustration: MANUELINE ARCHITECTURE AT THE HOTEL, BUSSACO]
It was night when the gleaming salt-white palace first flashed upon me
out of the darkness, but when I opened my shutters as the dawn was
breaking the next morning, and stepped out upon the wide battlements of
the castle, the scene before me was so wonderful as to force from me an
involuntary prayer of praise and thankfulness to God that so much of
beauty should be vouchsafed to my senses. Below and around me for miles
on all sides stretched the woods, woods such as I have seen nowhere else
in Europe, though the private gardens and plantations of Cintra and
Monserrat approach them in luxuriant fertility. Great palms and towering
cedars of Lebanon grow side by side with oaks of giant bulk: oranges and
fig-trees, cork and acacia, maple, birch, and willow stand beneath the
straight eucalyptus, “tall as the mast of some great admiral”:
araucarias spread their spiny branches with a luxuriance never seen at
home, and mosses, ivy, and ferns clothe thickly every inch of ground,
every bank, and even the time-worn stones, that all around testify to
the existence of dwelling here long before the white palace raised its
tall tower over the darkening wood.
Beyond the trees, on the fair morning I first beheld the scene, the
shadow of twilight still lingered in the valleys and the horizon was
veiled in mist, but already the sun was touching the mountain-tops all
around. One range after another caught the golden light, and as far as
the vision reached mountain succeeded mountain like mighty waves
suddenly stayed in their onward sweep and turned into rosy rock. Here
and there amidst the greenery, far below upon the plains, a white
cottage, or the clustered red roofs of a village lit up the picture with
a note of emphasis, and the sweet, cool air of the mountains, fresh with
the scent of pine, eucalyptus, and wild flowers innumerable, came to the
jaded town-dweller like a foretaste of some exquisite new sense to endow
mankind in a fuller life to come.
Straight before me, as I stood upon the battlements looking towards the
south, there rose as it seemed quite close a steep mountain slope
clothed with a mass of verdure so thick as to look like a solid billowy
surface of every tint of green, from tender primrose to deepest bronze.
Here and there a straight pine or cedar, more lofty than its fellows,
caught with its feathery top a glinting sun-ray and held it, whilst high
up, almost overhead, upon a rocky spur emerging from the foliage there
stood a humble hermitage, and on the very summit, looking so
inaccessible that no human foot could reach it, a little white tower of
another hermitage reared its cross over all.
[Illustration: FROM THE BATTLEMENT, BUSSACO.]
On the right hand, as one looked down over the battlements, the pretty
gardens of the palace, with flowers and palms, are spread at the foot,
whilst, resting humbly under the shadow of the palace, is the ancient
church and the tiny monastery, which for centuries housed the silent
Trappists, whose loving care made this holy wood to grow upon the spurs
and glens of a granite mountain. Beyond the garden, the wood slopes
suddenly down in billows of greenery, and then at its foot spreads the
vast plain, with towns and villages nestling in its hollows. And as the
sun grows in brightness I see beyond the limits of the plain, far away,
a long strip of white, and over it, high up, as it seems above the
horizon, a deep violet wall. It is the sea, the broad Atlantic, with its
fringe of silvery sand many miles distant, and it gives the supreme
touch to a scene of perfect beauty. On the other side of the castle the
view is just as lovely in a different way. Beyond the palms and flowers
at the foot, seen over a hundred carved crockets and capricious stone
pinnacles and gargoyles, with the great tower of the castle and its
armillary sphere over all, is a far stretch of undulating wood; and then
a vast tumble of mountains, range over range, all but the highest
clothed to the top with forests, and beyond and above them all the bare
granite peaks of the Caramulo range, iridescent now with the morning
sun. The domain occupies the whole of the north-western end of a long
continuous mountain ridge, some eight miles in total length, running
from south-east to north-west and extremely precipitous on all sides.
From the earliest times, at all events since the fourth century, the
glens and ravines that score these slopes have been jealously guarded by
ecclesiastical masters. The sheltered position and soft westerly breezes
from the Atlantic endowed the spot with a climate mild, equable, and
healthy, even for Portugal, whilst the purity and abundance of the
springs and the marvellous fertility of the soil in the deep, moist
gorges on the mountain-side made it an enviable place of secluded
residence. Whilst the minimum winter temperature is about forty degrees,
frost being unknown, the summer heat is tempered by the altitude of the
place and by the abundant shade of the woods, so that the temperature
rarely exceeds that of a warm July day in England.
With these climatic conditions it is natural that this end of the ridge,
protected on all sides, should develop a vegetation of extraordinary
luxuriance. So remarkably was this the case that the successive
ecclesiastical bodies to which it belonged for fifteen hundred years
decreed that the woods were for ever to be held sacred as a place of
sanctuary and devotion. From the eleventh century onward the domain
belonged to the Archbishops of Braga, and in 1626 one of them granted it
to the order of shoeless Carmelites, as a retreat remote from the world,
where the monks following the strict Trappist rule might meditate in
silence undisturbed by the turmoil of their fellow-men. In poverty, and
with the hard labour of their own hands, the monks built the little
monastery and humble church as they now stand, with other portions since
demolished; and, year by year, for two hundred years, planted and tended
with devout care the sacred wood which was their one earthly concern.
From all quarters of the globe where the Portuguese flag waved, from
India, South America, and the Far East, rare plants and trees were sent
by Carmelites to their beloved “Matto de Bussaco.” Medicinal herbs, rare
and lovely ferns, and exotic fruit and flowers, impossible in other
places in Europe, here grew luxuriantly, and the silent, white-robed
gardeners planted and tended their domain until it became not a wood but
a sylvan garden of surpassing beauty, as it remains to-day.
A high wall shuts it in from the rest of the world, whilst a special
Bull of Urban VIII., deeply cut to this day upon a great slab on the
principal gateway, condemned to major excommunication any person who
violated the sanctuary or injured any plant within the sacred precincts;
and another papal Bull bans any woman who dares to set her foot upon the
domain. Beautiful terraced paths were cut upon the hillsides, and
zigzagging down the ravines, fountains that gushed spontaneously from
the mossy rocks were dedicated to saints and adorned with sculptured
shrines or rustic grottoes. Everything that single-hearted toil and
devotional spirit could do, for centuries the shoeless Carmelites did
for their remote monastery and the fairy glens of Bussaco; and since the
abolition of the monastic orders in Portugal, the Government have tended
and guarded the spot as carefully as the silent monks before them. One
trembles for each innovation in such a spot as this, and the present
road-cutting operations through the wood and just around the palace,
though the new approaches will doubtless add to the accessibility of the
place, cannot fail to injure somewhat its sylvan beauty; just as the
building of the palace itself, and especially of the new annexe now in
course of construction, further dwarfs and hides the quaint little
monastery, which really seems to strike the note harmonious with the
place.
To describe in detail the beauties of Bussaco is impossible in the space
at my disposal, but one ramble amongst many may be cited as an example
of the effect produced by them upon an appreciative visitor. The sky was
the deep, lustrous, sapphire blue of which Portugal alone seems to hold
the secret, and the fierce sunlight, held in check by the lofty canopy
of leaves, just dappled with golden tesselation the steep path up which
I wandered from the palace door. On each side of the well-kept walk
stood low stone walls, a mass of brilliant emerald, clothed, as they
were, with long trailing mosses and tender fronds of ferns innumerable.
Autumn as yet had done nothing to braise and brand the greenness of
summer; for in this favoured spot the seasons make but slight difference
in the vegetation. Verdant glades and dim recesses of sea-green shadow
open up at every turn in the winding path; domed masses of foliage above
and below on the steep sides of the glen seem like the silent naves and
aisles of vast cathedrals. To say that the air was like wine is a
commonplace. This was primeval air, the breath of a myriad trees and
sweet health-giving plants, inhaled upon a mountain top overlooking the
boundless sea. Not like wine grossly made by man was this, but like some
vital elixir distilled in a magician’s laboratory, bringing new life and
vigour, with a sensuous joy added by the spirit of the place and the
soft warmth of the shaded sun.
Towering eucalyptus trees, the fawn-coloured bark hanging in long loose
strips and showing the silver skin beneath, alternated with pied planes
and feathery palms. Pines and cedars of Lebanon, and a score of trees
one knows not by name, tower over all, their great trunks (I measured
one cedar twenty feet round), clothed at foot by a dense undergrowth of
flowering plants. Large camellia trees, agaves and magnolias full of
bloom, the big white pendent flower of the datura, the pink and blue
masses of hydrangea, and the glistening foliage of orange trees, lit up
the shadowy slopes overhung by the dense foliage of the forest; and
trails of smilax, and I know not what other verdant creepers hung in
festoons from branch to branch.
[Illustration: THE HOTEL, BUSSACO, FROM THE WOODS.]
At the top of the path a moss-grown cross at the foot of a flight of
broken stone steps, hard by a crumbling archway, marks the beginning of
one of the several pilgrimages of the Cross scattered through the woods,
a lichen-covered slab upon the cross recording that: “These two
hermitages of the pilgrimage of the Cross were built by order of the
Illustrious João de Melo, Bishop and Count, in the year 1694.” The
little hermitages stand almost intact, though their thick walls are all
overgrown with bright mosses and reaching arms of verdure. Passing
beneath the archway, shadowed by a mighty cedar, I find myself at the
foot of this Via Sacra, a steep ascent with green and crumbling steps
before each open shrine of the Passion every hundred yards or so. The
shrines, little quaint square buildings, with the window-like opening
breast high, and a kneeling-stone before each, are all dismantled and
empty now; though with their cloak of foliage and ferns and their
lichen-clothed slabs telling the scene of the sacred Passion which used
to be exhibited inside, they are perhaps more beautiful so than ever
they were. Weeks after, when I saw at Caldas, in course of construction,
some very fine sacred groups in enamelled earthenware, the figures half
life-size, and was told that these scenes of the Passion were intended
by the Government for the restoration of the shrines at Bussaco, I
breathed a silent hope that, though the groups might be replaced, no
attempt would be made to restore to newness the shrines themselves.
As one trod the old path of the pilgrimage, up mossy steps and past
despoiled shrines, with glimpses of sunlit glades and shady green dells,
it was impossible to shut away from one’s thoughts those generations of
silent white-clad figures, who, shoeless, had toiled so often up the Via
Dolorosa, with tears of penitence, perhaps agonies of regret, for the
life from which they had fled. All around were relics of their
unrecorded labour. Sculptured stones, chapels, hermitages, fountains,
grottoes, and shrines were all built by their patient hands; paths
scarped on steep hillsides, seats placed in quiet nooks for the
meditative and the weary, nay, the trees and plants from all lands
growing so proudly now had all been tended anxiously by the same dumb
shadows that for centuries waited for death within the walls enclosing
the sacred wood. If ever a place was haunted by sad, harmless ghosts,
these paths of pilgrimage at Bussaco must still be thronged by the
white-robed phantoms of those who made them.
[Illustration: ON THE VIA SACRA, BUSSACO.]
Turning aside and descending the glen by a narrower path, a ramble of
half a mile brings me to another scene of marvellous beauty. In the
foreground is a pool covered with water lilies and overshadowed by
trees; and from it, leading straight up the hillside, is the “holy
stair,” or cold spring, as it is called. Eleven double flights of stone
stairs, each pair of flights leading to a landing of black and white
mosaic, whilst in the centre between the two lines of steps a rocky
cataract leads a rushing stream of icy cold clear water from the
fountain gushing at the top from the rock in its mosaic recess down to
the bottom of the hill, where it tumbles tumultuously into the pool.
Through the whole length of the long fall, flanked by stairs, perhaps
two hundred feet, rare ferns and mosses grow with wild luxuriance,
especially in and about the pools on the ten landings; and, embosomed as
the whole hillside is in dense greenery, it is impossible to exaggerate
the delicious coolness and beauty of this secluded spot.
From the top of the Fonte Fria, or Scala Santa, the path leads through a
valley, and then precipitously up the ascent that faced me when on the
morning after my arrival I stood upon the battlements for the first
time. The hermitage of St. Antão stands upon a ledge high up the slope,
a tiny dismantled cell, from which a view is gained on a clear day that
fairly takes one’s breath away. Below, set in its vast bed of verdure,
the white stone castle stands, the gold armillary sphere that crowns its
tower glittering in the sun; whilst on the left the far-flung panorama
of the plain, with the blue wall of the sea beyond, and the grey
mountains on the north, is flooded with an inundation of light, and
scattered with the abodes of men—the sombre masses of greenery and the
profound silence that surround us making the contrast the more striking.
A wider view still than this is obtained from the highest point of the
domain, on the very outskirts towards the south, where the Cruz Alta,
the “high cross,” marks the site of what in ancient times was a
watch-tower of soldier-monks, overlooking the country towards Coimbra,
whence the Moors might come to invade the sacred wood.
[Illustration: IN THE GARDENS, BUSSACO.]
A greater battle than ever Christian and Moslem fought raged in later
times upon this “Bussaco’s iron ridge,” just outside the granite walls
of the wood on the north-west slopes of the long mountain. “Victory’s
darling,” Massena, was to bring stubborn Portugal to heel at last. Soult
had been expelled in 1809, after Wellington’s surprise of Oporto; and
the Emperor was determined that nothing should stand between him and his
small victim this time. Massena was at the height of his glory and
success, and the flower of the imperial legions, eighty thousand men,
marched through Spain, and carried all before him at first in Portugal.
Almeida and Vizeu fell into his hands without a struggle; and the
invaders thought that no serious obstacle would be offered to the march
upon Lisbon by way of Coimbra. The road led them through the valley
between the long mountains of Bussaco and the Cremullo range opposite,
and Wellington, whose headquarters were at Coimbra, fifteen miles
distant, decided to stop their progress there. Before the whole of his
forces could be got into position, news came that the French had crossed
the river Mondego, and the Anglo-Portuguese force gradually fell back,
always fighting with the French advance-guard, until the whole of
Wellington’s army of nearly 50,000 were stationed upon the long ridge of
Bussaco, from the east wall of the domain to the river Mondego, where
the mountain ends.
A curious relation exists, hitherto unnoted in English narratives, in
which a monk of Bussaco gives a minute account from day to day of the
events there from the 20th September 1810 until after the battle on the
27th, and the artless details of the good man are more personally
interesting perhaps than the broad facts of the great battle itself. He
tells that, on the 20th September, an orderly of Lord Wellington came to
the monastery, and: “As soon as the door was opened to him he said, ‘I
want to see the monastery, ha! ha! ha! To-morrow at two o’clock the
commander-in-chief is coming here. He slept last night at Lorvão, and
the French have already arrived at Tondella....’ The prior was told, and
he showed the orderly the monastery and chapel, ordering the best
lodging-chamber to be cleaned and got ready for the general, and the
orderly, after drinking a little wine, galloped back to Lorvão.”
[Illustration: THE PORTA DA SULLA, BUSSACO.]
Early next morning the whole wood, the hermitages, the monastery, and
the chapel were filled with English officers, fifty officers being
quartered in the monastery itself. Wellington arrived at midday, and
when the prior showed him the best guest-chamber, swept and garnished
for his use, he refused it, “although it was the best,” because it had
only one door, and another apartment with two doors had to be found for
him. Whilst this lodging was being prepared and cleaned, the general
rode out of the domain by the gate on the north side and inspected the
whole position from the highest point of the ridge to the east, on the
bare granite crest of which he fixed his own position for the day of the
battle. Standing upon this spot there spreads below the steep slopes in
the foreground an undulating plain, some five miles across, with
Caramulo mountains on the other side. Through this broken plain Massena
was forced to march in order to turn or cross the Bussaco mountains, and
proceed on his road to Coimbra, Lisbon, and Oporto. When he learnt that
the English general had decided to risk everything by making a stand
there with forces inferior to his own he at first refused to believe it,
for constant success had made him think that his troops could do
anything; and if Wellington were beaten here, then annihilation would
await the English, and Portugal would follow Spain in bowing to the yoke
of France. But if Wellington does take the risk, said Massena, “_Je le
tiens! demain nous finirons la conquête de Portugal, et en un pen de
jours je noyerai le léopard_.” Ney, Junot, and Regnier in vain
counselled Massena not to fling his men away upon attacking such a
tremendous position as that of Bussaco, and urged him to retire and
await reinforcements from France; but Massena laughed at their wise
fears, and decided to storm the height. “_There is only the rearguard of
the English there_,” he said; “_if the whole army is there so much the
better, the good luck of the darling of victory will not abandon him_.”
Every cell and every corner of the monastery and dependencies were full
of English troops, “except Father Antonio of the Angels’ cell, which no
one would have, as it was filled with all sorts of old rags, rubbish,
and old iron he could pick up, and the monks had to sleep anywhere.” On
the 26th September the French were seen on the mountains opposite and
upon the plain below, where skirmishing was constant between
advance-guards. The north-east wall of the domain was partly demolished
and crowded with English troops, whilst batteries of artillery topped
the crest of the ridge, and Crawford’s corps held an outlying spur that
projects into the plain from opposite the north gate (Porta da Rainha)
of the wood. Lord Wellington rose very early on the morning of the 27th,
and to the dismay of the monks ordered his baggage to be sent out of the
wood towards Coimbra. It was not for flight, as the monks feared, but
prudence, and after breakfast the great general rode out and took his
stand upon the top of the ridge of Bussaco, overlooking the long valley.
His own troops were to a large extent hidden behind the crest of the
hill, and occupied the whole length of the mountain from beyond the
Mondego on the north-east to the monastery on the west, Crawford’s
position on the projecting spur on the English left flank making the
position at that end practically semicircular; this left flank
consequently enfiladed with its artillery the face of the declivity upon
whose crest Wellington’s centre was stationed. On the extreme right of
the English, on the other side of the Mondego, General Hill was in
command, with the Portuguese under General Fane; but the whole of the
rest of the Anglo-Portuguese army was posted upon or behind the long
crest of Bussaco, the extreme left under General Crawford being thrust
forward upon the projecting spur. At six o’clock on the morning of the
27th September, under cover of a heavy mist, two desperate attacks were
delivered upon the centre of the English position. That on the right of
the centre was led by Regnier with incredible dash and bravery, but with
terrible loss to the French. A whole division of Frenchmen at one point
here finally struggled to the summit of the ridge, and the eagles
planted on the granite crest proclaimed to Massena that the victory was
won. But the 88th and 45th regiments were in reserve behind the crest,
and at the captured position gallant Picton was in command. Like an
avalanche the two regiments, with a Portuguese battalion, advanced along
the ridge with fixed bayonets at the charge. With irresistible impetus
they swept all before them. The French division was hurled
helter-skelter down the precipitous declivity with hideous ruin and
devastation. All the face of Bussaco at that point was sown with the
dead and dying, the French loss exceeding four thousand, and the legions
of the Darling of Victory experienced the bitterness of their first
defeat. This awful carnage took place at some little distance to the
right of where Wellington stood on the summit of the ridge though well
within sight, and a similar attempt, but with even less success was made
still nearer to him on his left; whilst a stubborn and sanguinary
struggle took place upon the spur on the extreme English left occupied
by Crawford and Packe, upon one point of which now stands the obelisk
commemorating the battle.
[Illustration: BUSSACO’S IRON RIDGE.]
The English and Portuguese under English officers vied with each other
in stubborn bravery, and the moral result of Bussaco was tremendous,
though the material advantage was small. From that hour of defeat the
legions of the Emperor knew that they were not invincible, and the sun
that was to set at Waterloo first turned its meridian when Massena’s
gallant infantry were hurled headlong down the hill. By a masterly piece
of strategy Wellington, the day after the victory, sent off a division
to occupy Coimbra, and when defeated Massena by a circuitous route
arrived in the neighbourhood of the city he found himself forestalled,
though the English shortly after evacuated it and fell back. The lines
of Torres Vedras finally frustrated the French, but Bussaco was the
turning-point of victory.
The monkish diarist has many poignant little stories to tell of the
horrors into which the monastery was plunged during and after the
battle. The wounded were everywhere, but were packed especially close in
the little unfinished chapel outside the walls of the wood opposite
Crawford’s position, now a commemorative chapel where many relics of the
fight are shown.
At midnight on the 28th an English officer hurried to the monastery and
reported that Massena was retreating and endeavouring to reach Coimbra
by another road. The night was dark and the rain fell heavily, but
Wellington rose from his bed, and at once gave orders for the English
army to march upon Coimbra. Like magic the monastery and wood—even the
great mountain itself—was freed from armed men, and before midday
nothing was left but the débris of battle and the dead and wounded. The
monk who tells his simple tale says that they managed to give beds in
the monastery to most of the English officers during their stay, “and a
general who was in the bishop’s chapel had a tablecloth, two brass
candlesticks, and a great copper jar for water, and also some napkins.
All of this,” he adds, “was lost.” “To Lord Wellington,” he continues,
“we gave the best napkins we had, four dozens of candles, and everything
that the other officers were continually asking for. Even to the common
soldiers and the people who came for refuge, we gave salt and all we
could. We gave out a lot of wine, bread, cheese, oil, and other things
for the troops, and when Lord Wellington was leaving he sent word to the
prior that he would pay for what had been supplied, if he would tell him
the amount. The prior replied that he asked for nothing but peace. This
monastery of ours lost very heavily by the troops. Nearly everything we
provided for the beds and tables of the officers disappeared, and not a
thing of any value was left.... Besides this they stole all the oranges
in our two orchards, they forced the door of the storehouse and took all
the bread and wine they chose, with a basket of eggs, and a comb of
honey, and many other things. Indeed they acted just as badly or worse
than the French.”
And so, after the short agony, the wave of war and horror swept away
from Bussaco, leaving only the memory behind; and the sacred wood was
abandoned to the white-robed monks:—
“The Carmelite, who in his cell recluse
Was wont to sit, and from a skull receive
Death’s silent lesson, wheresoe’er he walked,
Henceforth may find his teacher. He shall see
The Frenchman’s bones in glen and grove, on rock
And height where’er the wolves and carrion birds
Have strewn them, washed in torrents bare and bleached
By sun and rain, and by the winds of Heaven.”
[Illustration: THE BATTLE MONUMENT, BUSSACO.]
It is all forgotten now, and nothing matters much, I mused, as I
wandered up the dark avenue of cypress, yew, and pine that leads to the
low three-arched façade of the old monastery. Before the quaint little
one-storey porch, faced with designs of coats-of-arms, flowers, and
scrolls in black and white mosaic, stands an ancient cross, and within
the entrance is the tiny cloister and church that alone remains of the
monastery. I wandered into the dim cloister full of thoughts of
Bussaco’s baptism of blood, though it was all quiet and peaceful now in
this humble retreat. At each corner of the cloister stands a dismantled
altar, faced with coloured tiles of Talavera majolica, and the walls
between the windows are hung with mouldering and tattered canvases of
dead and gone Carmelites—saintly men whose bones lie beneath our feet
and in the little green enclosure formed by the cloister. Around the
walls on three sides are the doors of the cells, each door covered, as
are the timbers of the cloister, with rough cork bark, which adds to the
appearance of antiquity. One picture attracted my attention, a poor
defaced painting, faded by time and weather, representing at full length
a white-clad monk holding a skull in his left hand, and in his right a
scroll. Something noble and dignified in the appearance of the face
attracted me, and I tried to decipher the almost effaced inscription on
the scroll. It was difficult, but at last I read that the monk was the
“Reverend Father, Fray Luis de Jesus,” who in the world had been called
the Marquis of Mancera, when the seventeenth century was young. And
beneath the name this distich ran:—
“A morte me fas deixar
O que me podia danar.”
As I pondered on this curious couplet, “Death makes me leave What might
me grieve,” in the shadowy cloister, there came towards me a phantom of
the past. It was an old, old man dressed in brown undyed homespun, short
jacket, and breeches of a bygone fashion, and the universal black
knitted stocking nightcap of the Portuguese peasant. He hobbled out of
the cell where the great duke had slept the nights before the battle;
and as he came slowly towards me, supported by a long staff, he
courteously doffed his cap, and wished me good day. He was, he told me,
ninety-three years old, but his eyes were still bright and his skin
clear, and I fell into discourse with the ancient, as we rested together
upon a bench in the darkling cloister, through the end door of which a
bright splash of orange sunlight sent shimmering waves into the dimness.
Yes! _graças à Deus_, he was well, notwithstanding his great age, and he
dwelt, past work now, with his son, a sort of foreman on the domain, in
the double cell which had been that of the prior of the monastery. He
was born in a neighbouring village, and had never been far away. He had
witnessed the expulsion of the monks and the building of the beautiful
palace that had pushed aside the pathetic abode of penitence, humility,
and patience. In his prime he had known and talked to many of those who
had witnessed the great battle on Bussaco’s slopes, and he told me
artlessly, and in his quavering treble, how all down the slope, upon
which I saw him the next day, the dead and wounded Frenchmen had lain
thickly, with their arms, drums, and big shakoes scattered around them;
how the poor wretches, crying in their agony for a draught of water,
were refused by the country people, who hated so bitterly the invaders
of their fatherland; how the good monks strove their hardest, succouring
the wounded, French, English, and Portuguese alike, and reverently
burying the dead in consecrated ground.
As the old man spoke, quietly and gently, telling at first-hand the
story of nearly a century ago, my mind went back to another old man whom
I had known when I was little more than a child, who himself had fought
in this battle; but to my eager inquiries for details had little of
satisfaction to impart. But, somehow, the mere fact of having known an
actor in the scene, however inarticulate, and now to be speaking upon
the spot with one who had all his life heard direct from those who
witnessed it the story that made his countryside for ever famous,
brought nearer to me the vivid vision of long ago. Bussaco fight to me
for a brief space was real, as Salamanca and Vitoria never can be, and I
feel that for one half hour I have lived in the time when the giants of
the world contended for mastery.
Outside the cloister the dream vanished. The lofty white tower with its
golden globe, emblem of Portugal’s princely pioneer of extended empire,
spoke of another age and aroused other memories: peace, luxury, and
security reigned now supreme in this ancient abode of austerity, and no
invader of the land was possible. The far-spread forest wafted its
balsamic breath to me, and the myriad leaves softly whispered in the
sensuous breeze, as if that awful day of the 27th September 1810 had
never dawned upon the sacred wood. Bussaco is beautiful enough to live
in the present without its one cruel memory, gently pensive occasionally
at the thought of the stern, sad, anchorites who laboured to make it
perfect for the glory of God. But to Englishmen—aye, and to Frenchmen
and Portuguese too—there must come at least once during their stay a
rousing bugle blast that calls their souls to arms and bids them honour
their glorious dead who stood and fell so gallantly upon Bussaco’s
granite ridge in the long long ago.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CLOISTER, BUSSACO.]
V
COIMBRA, THOMAR, AND LEIRIA
The morning was sparkling, the sky without a fleck, and the air like
draughts of nectar, as I slowly descended from the monastery and hotel
of Bussaco, through the lovely umbrageous “valley of ferns” to the “Gate
of Grottoes,” in the south wall of the wood, where I had directed a
carriage to await me and carry me to Coimbra, fifteen miles distant. I
was loath to leave this exquisite spot, which art and nature have
conspired to make perfect; the fairy glens, the unrivalled prospects
from the heights, the spacious magnificence and homely comfort of the
guest-house—but I had already exceeded my allotted time, and other
places called me.
[Illustration: ON THE SUMMIT OF BUSSACO, THE CRUZ ALTA.]
Our road lay downward for a mile or two, through a beautiful country of
pines and gorgeous stretches of purple heather in full bloom; and here
and there long trellised vineyards, with the red bronze of the
vine-leaves adding a splash of colour to the scene. As we wound down and
along the plain, there always towered above us, as it seemed right
overhead, the “Cruz Alta” of Bussaco amidst the trees at the highest
point of the wood, near where the wall limited the greenery; and soon
the whole of the long, sharp hog’s-back of granite ridge, standing clear
and distinct from surrounding mountains, tremendous in bulk, is seen
from the plain. It was hard to realise that only yesterday I had stood,
without fatigue or trouble, upon that giddy height of the Cruz Alta,
which looked from here as if an eagle alone might reach it.
Patient ox-teams toil along, led by small boys in black nightcaps,
gravely courteous to the stranger, and black-eyed solemn children play
soberly by the wayside and take no heed. Soon we pass through the big,
poor-looking village of Pampilhosa, and leave the pines and heather
behind us; for here down in the valley olives, cork trees, ilex, and
vines abound, with figs, pears, and apples, in orchards nestled round
the white cottages. Aloe hedges, with the big, fleshy lancet leaves of
silver-grey, show that we are in a sub-tropical land, and patches of
succulent sugar-cane for cattle fodder grow brilliantly green against
the maize and millet fields; whilst all along the wayside the
light-leafed poplars rear their straight shafts, heavily burdened by
masses of purple grapes and flaming vine leaves, the only sign of
autumn, though October is now upon us.
As we near Coimbra, though it is not much past noon, we meet many groups
of handsome country women, with, as usual, heavy burdens upon their
heads, returning home from the weekly market in the city. Barefooted
they go invariably, with their fine broad shoulders, full bosoms,
classical faces, and broad, low brows, their gay kerchiefs on head and
bosom, and their fine eyes gazing straight forth with modest dignity;
and mentally I deny assent to the boast of Guimarães that its maids and
matrons reign supreme in buxom grace, for those of Coimbra need bow the
head to none on earth. All around the city are gently rounded undulating
hills covered by olive orchards, and as the road tops one of them we see
the picturesque old capital beneath us upon its steep slope, the broad
Mondego at its foot, and beyond the river a high green ridge crowned by
an immense white convent.
In the ancient times, as the Christian monarchs wrested from the Moors
one territory after another, and drove the Crescent ever farther south,
the capital of Portugal followed the victorious standard, and Guimarães
soon had to cede its place to Coimbra, which remained the capital from
the time of the first Affonso (Henriques) in the twelfth century until
the extinction of his dynasty in the fourteenth, and occasionally later.
Coimbra is crowded with memories of the heroic times, of combats with
the Moors, and of deeds of violence and blood perpetrated within its
walls; and in its quaint crowded streets are corners that can hardly
have changed since the Affonsos and Sanchos here held their court—the
Arco d’Almedina leading out of the principal street, Rua do Visconde da
Luz, for instance, and the quaint renascence palace, incorrectly called
the palace of the martyred Maria de Telles, in the Rua de Sub-Ripas.
But to the famed Church of Santa Cruz, all that remains intact of a vast
Augustian monastery, the pilgrim’s steps first turn. It stands in an
open place at the end of the Rua do Visconde da Luz, sunk several feet
below the present level of the street, and the magnificent Manueline, or
Portuguese renascence front is spoilt by a mean and hideous detached
portico, in front of the real doorway, with its fine carved figures and
capricious canopies. The lower part of the octagonal tower is much
damaged, and the delicately carved decorations destroyed; but enough
remains of the upper part to prove the magnificence with which King
Manuel in the beginning of the sixteenth century rebuilt the sepulchre
of the earliest kings. In this church, of which the interior, lined with
pictorial blue tiles, is now reduced to eighteenth-century aridity, with
the exception of the roof and chancel where the magnificent tombs with
recumbent figures of Affonso Henriques and his son, King Sancho, shame
the tastelessness of the later work, a dramatic scene was once enacted.
Both these first kings of Portugal had worn the habit of St. Augustine,
and were lay members of this monastery where their bones were laid. In
order to establish his right to the patronage of the foundation, King
Manuel, in 1510, rebuilt the church and monastery in the exuberant and
gorgeous style associated with his reign; and when the time came to
restore the bodies of the kings to the new sepulchres prepared for them,
Manuel caused the mummified corpse of Affonso Henriques to be clad in
royal robes and kingly crown, enthroned before the high altar of Santa
Cruz, and there receive the homage of his subjects as if still alive.
The pulpit of the church, the work of Jean de Rouen, though stripped now
of its side pilasters and famous canopy, is one of the most splendid
examples of early French renascence; but the richest treasure of the
church is a splendid early triptych, in the mysterious style of the
so-called Gran Vasco (who is a mythical painter), in which the early
Flemings are imitated exactly by apparently Portuguese hands. This
triptych, which should be compared with the “Fountain of Life” described
in the chapter on Oporto, and also with the famous “St. Peter” at Vizeu,
is signed “Vellascus,” and represents in its three panels the “Ecce
Homo,” the “Calvary” and the “Pentecost,” with the exquisite finish and
glowing colour of Van Eyck and Memling. The cloisters of the church are
a beautiful specimen, as is much of the exterior of the church itself,
of the peculiar Manueline renascence Gothic, of which I have so
frequently spoken, the motives being the capricious intertwining of
cordage and branches, spiral bossed mouldings, exuberant pinnacles, and
pendent floreated ornaments on the interior lines of arches and
vaultings. Of this style the Bussaco palace-hotel is a notable modern
specimen, and in a later chapter I propose to treat in some detail the
other examples inspected during my trip. By the side of Santa Cruz,
separated from it by a road formerly spanned by a high bridge, lies a
splendid massive tower, and a huge block of the old monastic buildings
now turned into a squalid barrack, so often the fate of the profanated
religious houses in Portugal, whilst behind the church and cloister lies
another large portion also turned to secular uses.
[Illustration: A STREET IN COIMBRA.]
Coimbra is famous as the seat of learning for all Portugal—for many
centuries, and still, the only university town in the realm. The huge
square bulk of the university buildings on the crest of the hill
overlooking the town typify the absolute domination of the place by the
academical tradition. The hotel on the Alameda, like other hostelries of
its sort, has no lack of commercial customers, but even they, assertive
as they are, are swamped by the university professors, staff and
graduates, who flock to its tables for their meals; whilst in the
streets bookshops jostle each other all filled with text-books, and the
unmistakable students are everywhere. And yet, with all this academical
presence, there is none of that staid atmosphere of aloof erudition
which is especially noticeable at Cambridge, and, to a lesser degree, at
Oxford. It is true that the youngsters at Coimbra affect a garb at which
the present-day undergraduate at Cambridge would scoff, if he did not
proceed to more violent means to reduce its primness. A very
clerical-looking black frock-coat, buttoned to the chin, is _de
rigueur_, covered by a long black cloak reaching to the wearer’s heels,
although, to tell the truth, this cloak, like a Cambridge third-year
man’s gown, is oftener festooned over one shoulder or trailed along upon
the arm than worn decorously as intended.
These Coimbra youths wear no head covering, and affect a gravity of
demeanour whilst in the streets that gives them all the appearance of
budding priests. But the absence of a collegiate system brings both
staff and students into more direct contact with the town than is the
case with our older universities, and the peculiar learned atmosphere of
the High at Oxford or King’s Parade at Cambridge does not exist. It is a
stiff climb up the hill to the university, and the cathedrals. The
former is built round three sides of a large court, with a tower in one
corner and an observatory in the open face, the enormous palace of the
rector occupying one entire side of the square. Seven good light
classrooms and a fine hall, senate-house, and examination rooms, give
ample accommodation; and the view of the city from the end of the
corridor containing the lecture-rooms is exceedingly fine. The library
is a gorgeous gilt and over-decorated room in the florid taste of the
eighteenth century, the worst possible style for a place of quiet study;
and almost the only attractive feature in the exterior of the university
is the fine Manueline doorway to the chapel in the great quadrangle.
Here twisted cables, rich mouldings, floreated crockets and pinnacles,
armillary spheres and crosses, the usual notes of the style, mark the
work as being of the period when Portugal was ebullient with feverish
energy and ambition.
Hard by is the bishop’s palace, now almost a ruin, but with some lovely
bits of Manueline, and a delightful sixteenth-century courtyard like a
scene upon the stage. The old cathedral (Sé Velha) upon the same hill,
is perhaps the most perfect and unspoilt specimen of pure Romanesque of
the twelfth century in the Peninsula. The deeply recessed west door,
with round arch, quadruple ball mouldings, finely decorated Byzantine
Romanesque pillars, and a large, recessed window in the same style
above, occupy a square projecting battlemented tower flanked on each
side by other square towers at the corners. On the south side the early
renascence door reaching to the battlemented roof of the aisle is
practically in ruins; but the pure, solid Romanesque of the rest of the
building stands sturdy as ever after eight centuries. Small and grave,
the nave and aisles, with the beautiful round-headed, recessed
clerestory windows and capricious Romanesque Byzantine capitals, remain
unmarred, though gilt and alabaster altars and chapels clamour for
notice, and splendid sarcophagi of bishops and nobles on all sides
contrast with the stern lines of the original building. Two features of
the more recent periods deserve attention, the truly superb high-altar
of Flemish workmanship of the first years of the sixteenth century, and
the circular chapel of the Soares family, dated 1566. I could not tear
myself away from the contemplation of the exterior of this old Sé on the
hill over Coimbra, and at night when the darkness of the ancient city
was hardly disturbed by flickering lamps, I lingered in the square
around the battlemented walls and sturdy towers, reconstructing the
scenes that had been enacted here, and calling up in imagination from
their eternal sleep those great ones who rested so quietly within.
The new cathedral (Sé Nova) is a plain and ugly pseudo-classical
building, in the so-called Jesuit style, standing on the summit of the
hill, and only merits notice on account of its treasures. These form a
veritable museum of early ecclesiastical art, from the twelfth century
onward. I have rarely seen a finer specimen of goldsmith’s work than the
custode of George d’Almeida, of pure Portuguese Gothic, in a similar
style, but more imposing than the chalice already described at the
Misericordia at Oporto.
Looking across the beautiful river Mondego from the acacia-shaded
alameda where stands the hotel, the high wooded ridge straight opposite
is crowned by the vast white convent of Santa Clara, once the glory of
Coimbra and the cloister of queens, now partly destroyed and partly
desecrated and turned into a factory. The heat was oppressive on the
morning after my arrival at Coimbra, but a pilgrimage to the shrine of
Saint Isabel the Queen, and to the shrine of love near to it, could not
be foregone. Crossing the bridge I first wended my way to a beautiful
villa almost on the banks of the river, in whose grounds there stands
the Gothic ruin of a palace, and adjoining it gushing from a rock shaded
by dark cedars a copious spring leaps joyously along a stone channel of
some twenty feet long into a stone tank covered with water lilies. It is
a lovely tranquil spot, where no sound reaches but the rustling of
leaves and the gurgling of crystal water, and yet here, tradition says,
was enacted in the long ago one of those tragedies that inspire poets,
painters, and dramatists for all time. It was in 1355, and Ines de
Castro, the lovely mistress of the Prince Dom Pedro, had so infatuated
him that he refused to marry another at his father’s bidding. The King,
Alfonso IV., incensed at the recalcitrancy of his heir, caused Ines to
be done to death here beside the “Fountain of Love” by three courtiers.
The son, Dom Pedro, rose in rebellion, and saw his father no more; but
when two years afterwards the king died and Pedro succeeded him, he
worked his ghastly revenge upon those who had persecuted his beloved.
Ines had been buried at Santa Clara, the convent near, to which this
estate belonged, and now her body was disinterred, dressed in royal
robes, crowned with a diadem and adorned with jewels, and placed, a
crumbling corpse, thus arrayed upon a throne in the monastery-Church of
Alcobaça, whilst all the courtiers upon their knees kissed the dead hand
of her whom they had insulted and contemned in life. Upon a stone by the
side of the fountain this verse of Camões is inscribed:—
“As filhas do Mondego morte escura,
Longo tempo chorando morarão:
E por memoria eterna em fonte pura
As lagrimas choradas transformarão,
O nome e reputação que inda dura
Dos amores de Ignes que ali pasarão
Vede que fresca fonte rega as flores
Que lagrimas são agua, e o nome amores.”
“The fountain of love in the garden of tears” is the spot called to this
day, and a crumbling little Gothic convent founded by the lover king
between this and the river bears the name of “the convent of tears.”
Above us gleams the long white building of Santa Clara, and zigzagging
up the steep hill lies the path, shrines at each turn of the way
inviting to devotion and to rest. The sun beats fiercely on the steep
white road, but the view from the summit upon the esplanade that faces
the convent church repays the trouble of the climb. Opposite, across the
river, the city is piled up upon its grand amphitheatre of hills, the
huge, square bulk of the university and the Sé Nova topping it all;
whilst beyond the rolling hills covered with olives provide a dark-green
background, which throws into higher relief the blue, white, and pink
houses grouped in the limpid air, under a cloudless sky, flooded with
sunlight.
Of all the rich foundation of the royal convent of Santa Clara all that
now remains devoted to religious uses is the white church, and the
adjoining sanctuary of the saintly queen, tended by ladies dedicated to
charitable work, but not cloistered. The church is mainly of the
seventeenth century, in the usual “Jesuit” style, and is crowded with
gilt and carved woodwork; a large stately, unencumbered interior,
containing several sarcophagi of members of the royal house, and the
rich treasure in the sacristy must on no account be missed. A turret
stair at the west end leads into a small loft overlooking the church,
and richly, but sombrely decorated. Here stands a little altar, and on
lifting a trap in the centre of it, and peering down through a grating a
most impressive scene is presented to the view. A large, solemn
choir-chamber, with carved stalls in rows, extending lengthwise along
it, and the ample central space occupied by a magnificent canopy, under
which, lit by a tiny red lamp burning eternally before it, lies a great
coffin of rich repoussé silver, in which there rests the body of the
sainted queen, the patron of Coimbra, the heroic Aragonese princess, who
in 1323, rode between the armies of her husband, King Diniz, and their
rebellious son, and stayed their unnatural strife at her own great
peril.
[Illustration: SANTA CLARA, COIMBRA.]
One other royal shade at least haunts the royal convent of Santa Clara.
Here, retired from the turmoil of ambitions and wrongs, of which through
her youth she had been the victim, passed the long years of her devout
renunciation that injured Princess Joan, “the Beltraneja,” daughter of
Henry IV. of Castile, whom the great Isabel the Catholic ousted from her
inheritance. Here in Coimbra, too, the tragedy of Maria de Telles,
subject of poems and plays innumerable, was enacted in real life. King
Ferdinand the Handsome, about 1371, though betrothed to a Castilian
princess, fell in love with a lady called Leonor de Telles, and so
endangered the recently concluded alliance. His people rose in revolt,
and the lady’s family, especially her sister Maria, resented the
adulterous connection. Leonor, secure in her mastery over the king,
wreaked a terrible revenge upon those who opposed her; poison, the
dagger, and the dungeon doing her fell work, until all Portugal was in
fear at her feet, and the king became her wedded husband. The virtuous
sister, Maria de Telles, happily married to the king’s half-brother,
João, and safe in her palace at Coimbra, was difficult to attack. But
the wicked Leonor was equal to the occasion, and, like a female Iago,
instilled into the ears of the prince suspicions of his wife’s fidelity,
and with forged evidence prompted him to revenge. The enraged husband
murdered his protesting and innocent wife in cold blood at Coimbra (but
not at the house now shown as the scene of the tragedy), and as soon as
the foul deed was done Queen Leonor, who had been waiting in an
adjoining room, entered, and, in the presence of the murdered Maria,
mocked at the husband’s pain, and showed him that her sister was
innocent. The prince in his rage attempted to murder the treacherous
queen, but was seized, and subsequently escaped into exile, whilst
Leonor lived to perpetrate other misdeeds.
I paced the acacia-shaded alameda as the sun sank below the hills,
thinking of these sad memories of the times long past; of the noble
self-sacrifice of the sainted queen, of the long agony of the
Beltraneja, and of the blood-stained soul of Leonor. The air was cool
and fresh, and the glowing sunset faded from crimson to dead rose in the
west; but across the shimmering river the after-glow, like a luminous
opal dawn, threw up the black silhouette of the wooded ridge, and the
vast bulk of Santa Clara on the crest stood sharp and clear as if cut
out of black velvet and laid upon pearly satin. And just over the great
convent church a star of dazzling brilliancy—the brightest star, it
seemed to me, I have ever beheld—blazed out alone in the pellucid sky,
and tipped with diamond the cross above the silent silver shrine with
its dim red lamp burning through the centuries. Thus sweet
self-sacrifice conquers over time and death. The mouldering bones are
naught, darkness enshrouds even the huge building in which they lie; yet
far aloft the cross still stands distinct above all, gemmed with its
glittering star, as the eternal memory of good deeds done still
illumines the blackness of the world.
The next morning I took the train for Chão de Maçãs, a little roadside
station, where a carriage had been ordered to meet me, and carry me two
leagues over the mountains to Thomar. There was some stay at Pombal,
where it was a feast day, and the peasant costumes were seen at their
best—good upstanding people these, gaily clad, sober, and orderly,
coming to the railway stations in good time and unhurried, but not hours
before the train starts, as the peasants do in Spain. In the market,
under the shadow of the great mediæval castle ruins on the hill, they do
their buying and selling, live-stock for the most part to-day, without
vociferation, but with an earnest quietness which is as far as possible
from depression. Here at Pombal, and at Albergaria near, the men wear
brown undyed homespun jackets, and trousers girt with red sashes. The
bag cap is almost universal, and mutton-chop whiskers are the rule, but
what will attract a foreign visitor most in their dress are the curious
triple-caped ulsters, made of layers of grass, seen in many places in
Portugal in wet weather, but especially in this neighbourhood. These
garments, bulky as they look, are not heavy, and are an excellent
protection against heavy rain.
The women here have very full, short, gathered skirts, and though none
of them wear shoes or stockings hardly any are without heavy ancient
jewelry of gold filigree apparently of considerable value. The bodices
of the dresses are mostly red or yellow, and a broad horizontal stripe
of bright colour often enlivens the skirt also, their brilliant
head-kerchiefs being usually topped by a broad-brimmed velveteen hat,
for the pork-pie hat of the north has been left behind now.
We had mounted into the country of pines and heather when we stopped at
the little station of Chão de Maçãs, dumped down, as it seemed, in the
wilderness with just a row of one-storey whitewashed cottages opposite.
But where was the carriage? None had been heard of there, and I found
myself several miles from anywhere, and with no means of conveyance.
Sympathetic interest was not wanting. A muleteer loudly deplored that he
was engaged to carry a load of goods to Ourem, and could not take me to
Thomar. Clearly something must be done, however; so the little meeting
of grave consultants adjourned from the station platform to the door of
the humble general shop and tavern opposite to continue the important
discussion. It happened that the whole village was just then deeply
absorbed in witnessing an itinerant barber cutting a man’s hair in an
open stable whilst the onlookers criticised and suggested improvements
and variations in the process; but when the news spread that a strange
gentleman was stranded at Chão de Maçãs with no conveyance to take him
to Thomar, the critics of the barber’s art adjourned _en masse_ to the
tavern, and respectfully joined in the discussion as to my fate. They
were quite unanimous in agreeing that the Senhor Mathias Araujo, the
hotelkeeper at Thomar, could not have received the letter or he would
certainly have sent the carriage, of that there could be no doubt
whatever. But oh! that _correio_, the post, was always at fault; and
then many anecdotes were given at great length of hairbreadth escapes
and heavy losses incurred by the sins and omissions of the Portuguese
post-office. All this was no doubt interesting, but not helpful to me in
my quandary, and I gently led the talk again to the chance of my getting
a conveyance. The outlook was not hopeful, but the sympathetic muleteer
somewhat doubtfully suggested to the innkeeper that some one near had a
pair of mules. A significant look passed round, but the hint was not
lost upon me, and by dint of much diplomacy a _rapaz_ was sent off for
the mules. He returned by-and-by with an excellent-looking pair of
animals, and an ancient shandrydan was pulled out of a stable. I
wondered what had caused the hesitation, but my wonder did not last
long. No sooner were the mules hitched to the bar than they began to
kick furiously. Kicking chains were of little use; the lout who drove
the team used his whip with heart and arm, the pieced and spliced rope
and chain harness was strained almost to breaking, and the ancient
“machine” threatened every moment to disintegrate into splinters.
[Illustration: A COUNTRY RAILWAY STATION.]
And so the team kicked their hardest all the seven miles to Thomar, and
performed the distance, as it seemed to me, in one continued gymnastic
exercise, more on their fore-legs than on their full complement of
limbs. But kicking mules were powerless to mar the delight of the drive.
The road was a perfect one, over hills covered with pines and dales
ablaze with purple heather. The cool mountain breeze, laden with the
scent of wild thyme, brought with it a new sense of delight which made
breathing a conscious enjoyment, and the jaded elderly person in the
shivering shandrydan felt impelled to shout aloud in mere exhilaration
of living in such an atmosphere. Only a three weeks before I had seen
Deeside at its best, but Deeside heather was dull, and the Deeside
pine-clad hills in their wreaths of clouds were depressing, in
comparison with this sparkling sweep of sandy moor and mountain.
Turning the shoulder of the highest ridge we came in sight of the vast
and beautiful valley below us with Thomar in its midst upon its river
bank nestling in greenery, with its steep, abrupt hill and castle
standing sentinel over it. It was Sunday, and, although broad daylight
when I drove into Thomar, a flight of rockets rushed into the air from
the town-hall, and the braying of a brass band told me that the town was
_en fête_. It was, I learnt, the ceremony of prize-giving and treating
the school children by the town council, and all the little ones, clean,
chubby, and well-clad they looked, were trooping, shouting, and
cheering, as children do the world over. I found a warm welcome at the
Hotel União, and was soon convinced that the Chão de Maçãs meeting was
right in their assurance that the failure to send the carriage was from
no fault of the host, a gentleman of cultured manners and tastes, quite
unlike the ordinary type of Portuguese innkeeper. He was distressed to
have received no letter to advise him of my coming, as he ought to have
done two days before, but an hour or two afterwards he rushed into my
room, excited and triumphant. He had forced them to open the
post-office, Sunday though it was, and had rescued my letter from a heap
which some careless postman had neglected to deliver! Thenceforward
Senhor Jose Mathias Araujo, a pattern of Portuguese hotelkeepers, was
indefatigable in making me, a mere passing stranger though I was, of
whose name he had only heard vaguely, feel at home and comfortable at
Thomar.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF THE TOWN HALL AND THE CONVENT, THOMAR.]
The place is one which to my latest days I shall never forget. A clean
little rectangular town with straight streets of singularly modern
aspect, on the banks of an exquisitely beautiful stream fringed by trees
and gardens. The shops for the most part are but doorways open upon the
street, for they have not adopted the modern fashion of windows for the
display of goods. And life in general seems to pass drowsily, for with
the exception of a small factory in some ancient conventual buildings on
the farther bank of the stream, there is not much doing in the place.
But the object of my coming to this sweet, dull, little town pervades it
everywhere. At the end of the three straight streets running from the
river to the square market-place, with its ancient church and town-hall,
there looms upon a steep hill, right up over the roofs as it seems, the
most splendid and interesting mediæval castle-monastery in this land of
hill-top strongholds—the ancient fortress headquarters of the crusading
knights of the Order of Christ, successors in Portugal of the Templars.
Thomar was the metropolis and fief of the Order, and on all sides the
emblem of their peculiar cross is evident. Impressed upon my mind for
ever is the view as I first gazed upon it from the main street (of
course, incongruously called now after Serpa Pinto) on the sparkling
autumn day. Clear and sharp high up on the hill against the indigo sky
stood a ruined bell tower through whose gaping window the light shone,
with tall, pointed cypresses by its side, and flanked by a mighty
stretch of warm, grey battlements, above which rose the bulk of a great
square keep.
A zigzag path leads from behind the sixteenth-century town-hall in the
praça up the rocky sides of the precipitous hill. Gnarled olive trees,
dwarf oaks, and aloes grew in the crevices and amidst the ruins of outer
walls upon the face of the declivity; and the outer donjon, still
standing unwrecked across the path, shows the tremendous strength even
of these exterior defences. Above these loomed the Titanic walls, their
battlemented sides and turrets, all stained a golden yellow with the
lichen that covered them. The inner donjon, which adjoins the
picturesque ruined bell tower, gives entrance to a charming grassy
garden with tall cypresses, orange trees, and gay flowers, growing in
what was once the wide courtyard of the castle; and the huge square main
keep standing in the midst, all dismantled as it is, rears its
flame-tinged battlements as proudly as when the soldiers of the Cross
held this isolated stronghold against the hordes of Islam. The walls are
everywhere pierced with loopholes in the shape of a cross surmounting a
globe, and the cruciform device of the Order is graven upon stones on
all sides.
[Illustration: SOME BEAUTIES OF THOMAR.]
Connected with the walls of the ancient castle, and upon a somewhat
higher level than the keep, there stands the high round church of the
Templars, with buttresses of immense strength reaching to the parapet,
and a crumbling square bell tower upon one of its faces. Upon an ancient
slab let into the sides of the church an inscription tells how Dom
Affonso, first King of Portugal, and Gualdrim Paes, master of the
Portuguese Templars, constructed this edifice in 1108. Joined to this
ancient structure is one of the most astounding specimens of Manueline
architecture in Portugal, built in the early sixteenth century, when all
the country was pulsating with new life and eager longings. It is the
choir and chapter-house, and behind them is the ruin of the great
monastery of the Order of Christ. Words are weak to convey an idea of
the capricious splendour of the choir and chapter-house so far as they
remain undefaced, for later ages have done their best to spoil the
edifice. Eight cloisters have been built around it, and tacked on to it,
by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its lovely Manueline doorway
has been marred, and the east end of the building blocked as high as its
upper windows by the “Cloister of the Philips.”
[Illustration: THE CHOIR AND CHAPTER-HOUSE, THOMAR.]
But notwithstanding all the vandalism, enough of the Manueline building
remains intact to strike the beholder with reverent wonder at the
intricate beauty of the work, and the inexhaustible invention of the
design. The doorway stands in a recess reaching to the parapet, and
enclosed within an arch of surprising beauty, of which the under curve
is lined with an elaborate pendent ornament. Within the recess filling
the whole space and over the door itself, figures in niches stand under
canopies and upon pillars in which caprice and intricacy surpass
themselves. Coiled cables, bossed spirals, floreated pinnacles,
armillary spheres, crosses, and intertwined branches, stand out in high
relief and under cut, as if the sculptors had purposely sought
difficulties in order to overcome them. The arch of the door itself is
beyond description, so luxuriant is the design of the chiselled stone
which forms the three grooves and two spiral pilasters around it. The
parapet of the whole edifice is similarly rich, alternating the cross of
the Order with the armillary sphere; and although most of the lower part
of the walls is hidden, the view of the east end with its two corner
towers, as seen from the roof of the adjoining cloister, is magnificent.
The lower window, which lights the interior of the choir, is a massive
tangle of outstanding cables; each point being crowned by the cross and
the armillary sphere which formed the device of the grand master, the
famous Prince Henry the Navigator. Around one of the corner towers a
great chain cable, each link carved entire in stone, is braced, and
around the other an equally tremendous buckled belt, representing the
Order of the Garter, which the Prince, a Plantagenet on his mother’s
side, possessed. The upper window which lights the chapter-house is more
suggestive still. It is a highly decorated circular light bevilled into
the deep thickness of the wall, and represents upon the sloping inner
face of the circle a series of bulging staysails, each held down by a
rope.
But all this description in detail is incapable of conveying an idea of
the richness of effect produced by the whole work. The exuberance of the
style and its tricky capriciousness may be, and are, condemned by
purists as in questionable taste; but as an outcome of national feeling,
and as an example of original inventive ingenuity and patience, this and
other notable specimens of the style, to which reference will be made
later, are of the highest interest to the student, and a delight to the
ordinary observer who can free himself from the straightlaced traditions
of the schools.
Inside the grave old round church of the Templars, to which this
gorgeous edifice was to serve as a choir for the warrior monks of
Christ, a fine Byzantine altar stands in the centre. The interior of the
edifice itself is a quaint and curious mixture of Byzantine, Moorish,
Romanesque, and Gothic, the pillars being painted and gilt in oriental
taste, whilst the splendid canopy over the central altar is pure Gothic,
and dated 1500. In four of the eleven arched spaces upon the wall of the
circular church there are some ancient pictures of the highest interest,
the remaining seven having been stolen by the French invaders in the
Napoleonic wars. The paintings are fine enough to be by the hand of Jan
Van Eyck himself, and are, as usual, ascribed by Portuguese to the
mythical Gran Vasco. It is far more likely, however, that they may be
the work of a painter called Jean Dralia of Bruges, who was living in
this monastery at the end of the fifteenth century, and is buried here.
It is lamentable to see the condition to which these masterpieces have
been allowed to fall from sheer want of care; and unless they are
promptly rescued, a few years more will complete their ruin.
The great choir, added on to the round church, presents in its interior
the same wealth of fancy as that already described on the outside; but
the wonderful choir stalls of the Manueline period were stolen or
destroyed during the French invasion. As I stood under the exquisitely
carved ceiling of this choir, looking towards the Byzantine altar in the
round church before me, my mind flew back to a scene enacted here in
April 1581, which I had more than once endeavoured to describe in
writing without having seen the place. Philip II. had followed in the
devastating steps of Alba to wrest from the native Portuguese pretender
the crown he coveted. Portugal had sullenly bent its neck to the yoke,
and the nobles had either been exiled or bought to the side of the
Spaniard. But one thing more was needed to make grim Philip legally King
of Portugal as well as King of Spain. The Portuguese Cortes, elected of
the people, though in this case elected with Alba’s grip upon its
throat, had to swear allegiance to the new monarch, and Philip had to
pledge his oath to respect the rights and liberties of his new subjects.
The stronghold of the Knights of Christ at Thomar was chosen by the
Spaniard for the crowning act of Portuguese national subjection; and
here Philip arrived on the 15th March 1581. On the 3rd April, in one of
those charming little letters to his orphan daughters, he wrote from
Thomar saying that the Cortes would sit soon, for many people were
already arriving, and the oaths would be taken as soon as they were met.
“You have heard,” he says, “that they insist upon my dressing in
brocade, much against my will, but they say it is the custom here.”
On the 16th of April the church of the monastery was aglow with shimmer
of gold and gems and rich stuffs. Under a dais at the end of this choir
Philip sat in a robe of cloth of gold over a dress of crimson brocade;
though his heart was sad for the death of his last wife, and he hated
splendour in his broken old age. After mass had been said, the Cortes
did homage and swore to keep their faith to him as king; and then
stepping down from the throne, he advanced to the high altar and
solemnly pledged his word to respect the laws and liberties of Portugal.
How little he relished the splendour is seen in a letter he sent to his
girls from Thomar a fortnight later, as soon as he could find time to
write to those whom he loved more dearly than any other creatures on
earth. “How much I wish,” he wrote, “you could have seen the ceremony of
taking the oath from a window as my nephew [the Archduke Albert] did,
who saw everything excellently. But I send you a full account of it
all.... I have given the Golden Fleece to the Duke of Braganza, and he
went with me to mass, both of us wearing the collar of the Order; which
upon my mourning looked very bad, and I can tell you he looked much
smarter than I did, although they say that the day of the oath was the
first time he had worn low shoes, though everybody is wearing them here
now except myself.” Thomar, for the last time in its existence, was a
blaze of splendour for those six feverish weeks; for Spanish and
Portuguese nobles, jealous of each other, vied in lavish expenditure;
and then the fortress of the Knights was left to its solitude: gradually
royal encroachments stripped the Order of its wealth and power, and
Thomar lived in memory alone.
The upper chamber of the Manueline building over the choir is the
chapter-house of the Order of Christ. A grand, low, pillared hall, with
the twisted cables and the repeated cross and sphere, testifying once
more to the reigning idea of the period of the Navigator Grand-Master.
Here it was that the Portuguese Cortes sat to confirm the religious act
of allegiance to Philip, and set the seal of subservience upon the
nation for nearly a century. Every carved stone and crocket has a story
to tell if we could but hear it. Here in the older monastic building the
Navigator himself held his chapters, dwelling in the adjoining palace,
in the intervals of his life-task upon his eyrie at Sagres; here in the
“cloisters of the Philips,” dull Philip III. held his monastic court
upon his one visit to Portugal; and the magnificent cloister of John
III. testifies to the classical reaction after the exuberance of the
times of his father Dom Manuel.
In the quaint little Gothic cloister around the burial-place of the
monks, called the “Cloister of Dom Henrique,” a strange sight is to be
seen in the upper ambulatory. Baltasar de Faria was the instrument of
Philip II. in forcing the Spanish form of Inquisition ruthlessly upon
Portugal, and in cruelty surpassed his master. So bitterly hated was he
that the saying ran that earth itself would reject and refuse to
assimilate the body of such a monster. In the lid of a stone coffin in
the cloister a pane of glass is set, and he who will may gaze and see
how Baltasar de Faria looks now. He was a splendid courtier in his time,
and doubtless a gallant-looking one too, for it was a sumptuous age; but
the poor gentleman’s looks have now little to recommend them, as he lies
contorted and mummified but perfect in his narrow home, to be gazed and
wondered at by those who list—a scoff for the ribald, a text for the
moralist.
More there was, much more, to describe in this wonderful monastery,
but I have said more than enough to prove that the visitor to
Portugal who misses Thomar has failed to see a relic, which, in its
way, has hardly an equal in Europe. The drives around Thomar are
exquisitely beautiful, the view from the hill across the river
embracing the monastery and the great white sanctuary of the
Misericordia, with its long _scala sacra_, upon the twin hill, being
one never to be forgotten. Just outside the town, hard by an ancient
pillar marking the junction place of the armies which won for a
second time the independence of Portugal from Spain (at Aljubarrota,
1385), there stands the beautiful old church of Santa Maria, a
perfect Gothic fane; and close to its west end a strong tower built
as a place of refuge for its constructors against the constant
attacks of the Moors. Much I should like to linger upon Thomar: upon
the quaint garb of the peasants, the picturesque bits of the old
Manueline church of St. João in the praça, upon the lovely private
gardens by the side of the stream, upon the noble aqueduct, and upon
the sweet tranquillity of the acacia-shaded walks; but I dare not
delay further, for the carriage is at the door of the humble though
hospitable, Hotel União, to carry me on this brilliant morning the
twenty-five miles to Leiria, where I must pass the night. As we
drove clear of the town the loveliness of its situation came home to
one with more intensity than ever. The peaceful stream winding
through the plain, its course marked by a continuous line of
poplars, the pine-clad hills all around—miles away but in this clear
air seeming within touching distance of the hand—the cluster of
white and pink houses with red roofs, and, almost sheer above them,
the two hills, one crowned by its never-to-be-forgotten
monastery-castle with its long battlemented walls, its high keep,
and, most striking of all, its gaunt bell tower, with its guard of
tall cypresses; whilst climbing up the gentler green slope of the
other hill is the snow-white _scala sacra_ of twenty-five flights of
steps leading to the gleaming sanctuary of the Misericordia. Above
all a sky of deep luminous blue, and pervading all the soft warm
air, sweet with the scent of thyme, basil, cistus, and pines.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. JOÃO IN THE PRAÇA, THOMAR.]
Thus, for two hours or more, I drove over a good road, winding round the
foot of rising hills, and following the sinuosity of fertile valleys,
above me grey boulders, around me pines, olives, and sweeps of flowering
heather on the red earth. At length, afar off, there loomed a bolder
hill than the rest, rising abruptly and crowned by another great
fortress, as it seemed at an unscalable height, with a cluster of
ancient houses nestled just beneath it. Patience and a scarped road on
the hillside, however, enabled us to reach without apparent difficulty
half up the hill to the modern village of Ourem, where a rest for the
horses and a meal for myself had been agreed upon. The place was dead,
basking in the hot sunshine, all the village, as it seemed, baked to the
uniform yellowish-white colour of the soil of the hill upon which it
stood. The gaunt yellow castle above[1] softened only by the verdure of
a crown of pines, and just below its walls the ancient town and a great
monastery of long ago.
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE AT THOMAR.]
The hostelry was humble enough, but a chatty, shrewd-looking, old lady
provided an excellent luncheon for me in an upper room, and became
charmingly friendly when I praised her wine, of which she was very
proud, and with reason, grown, as she told me, in the vineyard at the
back of the house, and as good a wine of its sort as I care to drink.
She was equally pleased with the approval of her quince marmalade, and
pressed no end of home-made confections upon her passing guest, whilst
she kept repeating that “_os senhores ingleses que veem sempre alabão
muito o nosso vinho_;” for the approval of Englishmen in this country is
always taken as fixing the final seal of excellence upon anything.
Outside in the main street of the town complete quiet reigned in the
fierce sunshine of midday. Against the indigo sky the immense castle on
its peak showed clear, as nothing is ever seen in our mist-laden
atmosphere. A man passes, bearing a great boat-shaped basket piled with
big black grapes, the bloom upon them still undisturbed; four cronies in
black nightcaps and with long staves in their hands gossip in the
parallelogram of black shadow thrown athwart the road by the church
tower; and, by-and-by, three lithe damsels with bright yellow
head-kerchiefs flowing as they walk, swing by joyously; then comes,
painfully hobbling beneath a heavy burden of yellow gourds, a barefooted
old woman, and anon a man riding _à la gineta_, a pacing nag with
brass-embossed harness, and great box stirrups. Then silence again for
another half-hour, and this is life at Ourem.
Still through a land of pine and heather with beautiful little valleys
full of vines, figs, and olives, we drove for two hours more, and, just
as the black shadows began to lengthen, we drove into the town of
Leiria, the Calippo of the Romans, and for long the stronghold whence
the Moors harried the advancing Christians to the north. It is a lovely
place on the banks of the Liz, set in the midst of pine-clad hills, and
the centre of a great agricultural district. Here, again, the two abrupt
eminences that loom over the town are crowned respectively by the
enormous mediæval stronghold and the religious house that for ever seems
to keep it company—the sword and the cross, twin instruments of soldier
and priest, to keep the people in subjection, both alike happily now
superseded, in Portugal at least, by more enlightened means.
[Illustration: IN THE MAIN STREET OF OUREM.]
I started soon after my arrival at the inn, where there was no
particular temptation to remain, to scale the hill from which the castle
frowned down upon the town. The townspeople seemed to care nothing for
the vast ruin that to me was the one attraction of the place. No one
cared to guide me up the steep. It was easy, they said, to find the way
by following the path, and the castle ruins were open to all. So I
started alone, and wound round the lower ascent, finding myself at last
on the side of the hill farthest from the town, and at a point from
which the castle was apparently quite inaccessible, as the ascent was
almost a sheer precipice. A couple of women and some children were in a
field by the wayside, and from them I learnt that I should have taken
another path, and have ascended on the opposite face of the hill. It was
annoying, for the day was already declining, and I had other things to
do on the morrow. Just then an officious urchin of twelve volunteered to
show me a way he knew of by the side I was on, and rather than lose my
opportunity I followed him across a ploughed field to the foot of the
steep.
A rocky path aslant the hill amidst the undergrowth seemed to offer no
great difficulty at first, and I began the climb. The path, if it can so
be called, was continued by other slanting ascents more difficult than
the first, but still intent only upon each next step, I scrambled on by
the aid of tufts of esparto grass, until I became aware that the track
had ended altogether, and that the farther ascent was apparently
impossible. Not until then had I looked down, but when I did so I
understood in a moment the peril in which I was. I stood at a height of
some five hundred feet above the level, and descent by the way I had
come was absolutely impossible. For the last hundred feet I had only
scrambled up by the aid of occasional stones that afforded a momentary
lodgment for the toe and by clutching tufts of grass, but these would
not help me to descend. The pine-needles that lay thick underfoot made
the slope as slippery as ice, and I knew that if I attempted to retrace
my steps I should certainly be dashed to pieces. The poor women below
knew it too; for one was wringing her hands in horror, and had thrown
her apron over her face to hide from her the coming catastrophe, whilst
the other was loudly bewailing, whilst she belaboured the head of the
urchin who had been the cause of the trouble. For one moment panic
seized me, but it was succeeded immediately by a cool wave of critical,
speculative interest, as if another person’s life and not mine were at
stake, as to the sporting chance of my ever being able to negotiate the
hundred feet of sheer precipice that lay between me and the top. Each
step achieved was a triumph, and my whole soul was concentrated upon the
chances of the next being successful. Of course, the ascent had to be
made by long zigzags on the face of the precipice, and again and again,
as a stone slipped from beneath my foot or a frond of bracken yielded to
my grasp, I gave myself up for lost. But I never glanced below, and the
jagged and frowning battlements above me gradually drew nearer and
nearer, until at last, I know not how, I stood beneath them, panting but
safe, and then, looking from the giddy height to the field below, I saw
quite a large group of peasants now, waving their black nightcaps, and
shouting in token of rejoicing at my safety.
The great castle around me, built by King Diniz the Farmer, in the
thirteenth century, upon the site of the Moorish stronghold, was of
immense extent, and included ruins of residential edifices of later
mediæval times. As I saw it now it was a dream of beauty. The setting
sun falling athwart its lichen-covered stones dyed them as red as blood.
Within the vast crenellated walls two distinct castles stood, one the
cyclopean early structure, and the other a lovely Gothic palace, whose
ogival windows, pointed arches, and slender pillars were still graceful
in decay. The dismantled chapel is exquisite, and if light had served or
any intelligent guidance had been obtainable, the inscriptions in it
would have been interesting. But the twilight was falling, and the
magnificent view from the battlements over the town, the plain, and the
mountains called to me.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE, LEIRIA.]
It was a feast of loveliness to the eye. The golden light of the setting
sun glorified the vast plain below me, with its silver river fringed by
poplars winding through it for many a mile, and the hills in the
distance clothed to the crests with lofty pines, black and solemn now in
the fading light. On a hill adjoining that upon which I stood the great
white Convent and Sanctuary of the Incarnation looks across at the
crumbling castle that it has outlived; and, just below me, between the
inner and outer defences of the stronghold, on a green grassy slope,
some children are playing joyously. As I wander down the way, safe and
easy on this side, through mighty donjons, and thick, tunnelled walls
which have seen so many bloody sights and echoed so many dismal sounds,
the very spirit of peace seems to pervade the place. Half-way down,
leaning over one of the grim walls, was a beautiful peasant girl talking
to her young lover, who stood at the foot, and cascading masses of
purple flowers fell across the jagged stones here and there, giving the
just touch of colour needed to perfect the scene. Past a quaint old
desecrated church and the enormous monastery of St. Peter, now, like
most of such places, a barrack, I tread the picturesque praça of the
town again, and stroll along the fine avenue of planes and eucalyptus by
the side of the river as the after-glow lights up the cliff and the
castle with a pearly reflected glamour. The hill from below is like that
of Edinburgh, but apparently double as high, and the vast extent of the
battlements is more evident than when seen on the summit. Huge
buttresses of rock seem to sustain the curtain that connects the keep of
the fortress with the Gothic palace, and everywhere the grey of the
granite is covered with a patina of yellow lichen, and the crevices
filled with yew, aloes, and olives.
[Illustration: ON THE ALAMEDA, LEIRIA.]
The next day was market-day at Leiria, and long before dawn the town was
busy. This was by far the largest country market I saw in Portugal, and
the gathering of peasantry the quaintest and most picturesque. The
shops, particularly those in the mosaic-paved praça, are mainly
wholesale warehouses for the supply of village traders, and a very
extensive distributing trade must be done. The town itself, on this
occasion, was one vast emporium, and multitudes of people bargained from
early morning till past midday in the acacia avenues under the brilliant
dark-blue sky. A gay-looking crowd they were: for the costume here is
quite distinct. The women invariably wear a velvet pork-pie hat over a
yellow or red head-kerchief, of which the ends hang down the back, and
the older women have full black cloaks with hoods, whilst most of them
have a broad band, some nine inches wide, of yellow cloth round the
bottom of the skirt. The wares exposed for sale were infinite. In the
praça great heaps of maize, grapes, potatoes, chestnuts, and beans
covered the mosaic pavement, whilst stalls displayed calicoes and cloths
of vivid colours. Giant yellow gourds in high piles lined the footpath,
and elsewhere under the shade of the trees stacks of grass-fodder and
maize-leaves for cattle stood. In another space heaps of salt, and long
lines of stalls for the sale of salted sardines and salted pork, were
followed by a score of temporary butchers’ shops. Then came stands for
the sale of fresh fish, skate, sardines, and cod, with the inevitable
bacalhau; and farther on, spread upon the ground, were hundreds of
homely crocks, red amphoræ, slender and beautiful in shape, coarse
household dishes gaudily decorated, and unglazed jars to keep water
cool. Beneath a beautiful picturesque arcade of ancient arches in the
praça women were seated before panniers piled with pears, figs, apples,
melons, and grapes, such as Covent Garden might glory in; and hard by
strings of garlic, onions, and eschalot claimed their purchasers. In a
field by the side of the river long lines of oxen, horses, and asses
were for sale, and men in red and green nightcaps, and trousers made of
two or three different coloured cloths, soberly bargained for the
beasts. Over all was the dark-blue arch of the sky, and the brilliant
sun, tempered beneath the trees by the light-green of the acacia leaves:
but what strikes most an observer who is familiar with the south, is the
absence of vociferation and apparent excitement. There was no shouting,
no pushing or quarrelling, and every transaction in the chaffering town
seemed to be got through with serious deliberation. Even the cluster of
gaily-dressed women around the stately sixteenth-century fountain
adjoining the hotel, gossiped staidly, and the children playing beneath
the trees were as grave as little judges. This is Leiria as I saw it on
market-day; but long before sunset the country people trudged homeward
again; the ox-wains carried away the produce and merchandise; the stalls
and booths folded their canvas sides and disappeared, and the next
morning Leiria resumed its habitual sleep, from which it awakens but
once a week.
[Illustration: THE ENCARNAÇÃO, LEIRIA.]
-----
Footnote 1:
I noted with interest that this castle of Ourem, and others of these
vast hill-top strongholds, had the outer defences arranged similarly
to those I have described in the chapter on the buried city of
Citania; namely, that on the side of the hill, where attack was
difficult or impracticable, the outer walls dipped far down the slope,
whilst at the point where danger might be apprehended the three lines
of circumvallation were comparatively close together. This arrangement
of hill-top defences was evidently long pre-Roman in the Peninsula,
and seems to have been adopted by the Romans and their Gothic
successors.
VI
BATALHA AND ALCOBAÇA
I drove out of Leiria in the morning just as the business of the market
was in full swing; and for the first half-hour of the upward way amidst
a country of vines and olives, we met crowds of country people riding
into the town on heavily laden asses. Then, mounting high above the
plain, we passed into the region of pines and heather, where the warm
but invigorating air came charged with the scent of thyme, lavender, and
rosemary. At a point of the road, about eight miles from Leiria, a deep
hollow opens to the left, and at the bottom of it, and reached by a
downhill road running almost parallel with the way we came, lies the
world-famed abbey of Batalha, the wonder and envy of ecclesiastical
architects for six centuries, and even now, dismantled and bedevilled as
it is, one of the most beautiful Gothic structures in existence.
Before its west front I stand lost in admiration. The whole edifice is
built of a marble-like limestone, which time has turned to a beautiful
soft yellowish cream colour, similar to that of an old Japanese ivory
carving. Like most Portuguese cathedrals the body of the church is
somewhat narrow; but in this case a large chapel on the north side
extends the apparent width of the exterior west front. How can one hope
to convey in written words an adequate impression of this exquisite
façade? To the severe perpendicular parallel lines over the door and
window, reminiscent of the west front of Lincoln, is added a lace-like
elaboration of parapets, pinnacles, and glorious flying buttresses,
which almost bewilders by its aerial gaiety and transparent richness. A
beautiful Gothic breastrail stands before a double flight of steps
leading down to the west door, for the abbey is lower even than the road
before it; “the portal,” wrote William Beckford, a hundred and twenty
years ago, “full fifty feet in height, surmounted by a window of
perforated marble of nearly the same lofty dimensions, deep as a cavern,
and enriched with canopies and imagery in a style that would have done
honour to William of Wykeham, some of whose disciples or co-disciples in
the train of the founder’s consort, Philippa of Lancaster, had probably
designed it.”
To me this door presented itself rather more in detail. I saw a portal
the whole width of the nave-space, the deep, bevilled sides being
occupied by the Twelve Apostles standing under rich Gothic canopies, and
from the capitals above them a slightly pointed arch sprang ending in a
floreated cross finial, the arch itself being composed of six orders,
each occupied by a row of Kings of the House of David under exquisite
Gothic canopies. The great window above is full of tracery so intricate
and plastic in appearance as almost to banish the impression of a work
in stone. The octagonal lantern of the side chapel is supported by
flying buttresses of indescribable grace and lightness, and is fronted
by a screen pierced with three Gothic windows almost level with the main
west front; and upon every point of the building and along each side of
the roof of the nave crocketed pinnacles rise, supported by fairy flying
buttresses—the effect of the whole exterior from the west front being an
exquisite blending of seriousness and exuberant rejoicing.
And these were precisely the feelings that prompted the establishment
here of the Dominican abbey at the instance of its English foundress,
Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, married in 1386 John,
the Master of Avis, the high-minded and patriotic bastard of the royal
house, who had successfully resisted Spanish aggression the year before,
and, with the assistance of the English archers at Aljubarrota, had
gained for himself the crown of Portugal. Here in the neighbourhood of
the battle, at the instance of Philippa, was built this abbey of
Dominican monks in devotional thankfulness for the signal victory, and
for the rescue of the King from threatened death. All through the older
portion of the building the English Plantagenet influence is
predominant, and marks the abbey as being entirely different from all
other ecclesiastical buildings in Portugal.
The monastery was always a poorly endowed one, in glaring contrast to
the neighbouring Cistercian house of Alcobaça, one of the richest
monastic houses in the world. Beckford, in his humorous description of
his visit to both houses in 1782, draws a lively comparison between the
two. Accompanied by two great Portuguese prelates, of whom he makes
merciless fun, he had gone to see Alcobaça at the wish of the Prince
Regent. His great train of servants and attendants had been received
with lavish splendour and Gargantuan gluttony at Alcobaça, and on the
way with the prelate of the latter house to visit Batalha, the whole
party had got drunk at Aljubarrota, whose wine is famous. They arrived
at Batalha at night.
“Whilst our sumpter mules were unloading, and ham and pies and
sausages were rolling out of plethoric hampers, I thought these poor
monks looked on rather enviously. My more fortunate companions—no
wretched cadets of the mortification family these, but the true
elder sons of fat mother church—could hardly conceal their sneers of
conscious superiority. A contrast so strongly marked amused me not a
little.... The Batalha prior and his assistants looked quite
astounded when they saw the gauze-curtained bed and the Grand
Prior’s fringed pillow, and the Prior of St. Vincent’s superb
coverlid, and basins and ewers and other utensils of glittering
silver being carried in. Poor souls! they hardly knew what to do or
say or be at—one running to the right, another to the left—one
tucking up his flowing garments to run faster, and another rebuking
him for such a deviation from monastic decorum.”
I have in my library a manuscript account by Lord Strathmore of the
visit he paid to the two monasteries twenty years before Beckford, and
his account of the poverty of Batalha in comparison with Alcobaça is
more emphatic still. He says:—
“Though far from rich, they received us with great hospitality. The
prior, an exceedingly good, kind, old man, exerted his utmost
efforts to do us honour, and had a cook sent to him from the Bishop
of Leria upon ye occasion. We here with many thanks dismist our
militia, who had been mounting guard hitherto at ye door of our
apartment. This convent is of ye most elaborate and exquisite Gothic
architecture I ever saw, one part being left imperfect, being so
beautiful that nobody dar’d to finish it. When we took leave of our
old prior next morning ye only request he made us was that we would
relate to ye minister how much their fabric had suffered by the
earthquake [_i.e._ of 1755], and how much they needed ye King’s
assistance to repair it: whereas I could not help observing that
every one of our friends who had been particularly assiduous about
us at Alcobaça desired us to remember their names particularly at
Lisbon.”
Alas! priors and monks, rich and poor, have all gone now, and the place
is a “national monument,” with hardly a pretence of being a place of
worship.
The interior of the church is almost severe in its plainness, the lofty
narrow nave being divided by clustered pillars arranged in a somewhat
peculiar manner; the three pillars facing the nave supporting the groins
of the main roof, whilst from the remaining three spring the groining of
the aisle. Before the high altar, and close to the steps, are two
magnificent tombs side by side, the recumbent figures upon them hand in
hand; the male in full armour, the woman clasping a book. “_Hic Jacet
Eduardus I., Port. et Alg., Rex et Regina, Elenora Uxor Ejus_,” runs the
inscription around the fillet; and this is the tomb of the unhappy
Duarte, son of John the Great and Philippa of Lancaster, who died of a
broken heart, whilst still young, at the disaster to his arms and house
in the defeat of his crusading attack upon Tangier.
As Beckford saw the church during service it must have throbbed with the
life and colour that it now lacks.
“There is greater plainness [_i.e._ than Winchester], less
panelling, and fewer intersections in the vaulted roof: but the
utmost richness of hue, at this time of day at least, was not
wanting. No tapestry however rich, no painting however vivid, could
equal the gorgeousness of the tint, the splendour of the golden and
ruby light which streamed forth from the long series of stained
glass windows: it played, flickering about in all directions on
pavement and on roof, casting over every object myriads of glowing
mellow shadows, ever in undulating motion, like the reflection of
branches swayed to and fro in the breeze. We all partook of these
gorgeous tints, the white monastic garments of my conductors seemed
as it were embroidered with the brightest flowers of paradise, and
our whole procession kept advancing invested with celestial
colours.”
Iconoclasm and war have wrought their fell work upon Batalha since then;
but still the lovely fane stands materially uninjured. The
transept-chapels and sacristy are fine, especially the latter, though
the seventeenth-century carved woodwork matches ill with the exquisite
pure Gothic groining of the roof, and the great yellow sarcophagus of
Diego Lopez de Souza, master of the Order of Christ, in the adjoining
chapel of St. Barbara, is a remarkable piece of sixteenth-century work.
One of the great glories of Batalha is the side chapel already
mentioned, the octagonal “chapel of the Founder.” The arrangement of it
and its general effect are strikingly like those of Queen Victoria’s
mausoleum at Frogmore. In the centre, standing high and imposing in all
the pomp of Gothic tracery, are the twin tombs of John the Great and his
English wife, their sculptured effigies hand in hand as the noble pair
went through life; and around the chapel are ranged the sarcophagi of
their sons Pedro, João, Fernando (who chivalrously passed all the best
years of his life a hostage to the Moor), and, the greatest of them all,
the Prince Dom Henrique the Navigator, who made Portugal a world power.
Upon each stone coffin are carved the insignia of the Garter and the
arms of England quartered with those of Portugal, and along the fillets
run the quaint mottoes that each royal personage adopted for his device.
Some of them are enigmatical; such as that which consists of the
repetition of the word “_Désir_” alternating with the scale of justice,
and the other that offers the riddle of “VII.,” a cogwheel, and
“_Jamais_” repeated again and again. “Pro rege pro grege,” on the other
hand, if hackneyed, is still quite intelligible.
“All these princes,” says Beckford, “in whom the high bearing of
their intrepid father and the exemplary virtues and strong sense of
their mother were united, repose after their toil and suffering in
this secluded chapel, which, indeed, looks a place of rest and holy
quietude; the light equally diffused, forms, as it were, a tranquil
atmosphere, such as might be imagined worthy to surround the
predestined to happiness in a future world. I withdrew from the
contemplation of these tombs with reluctance, every object in the
chapel that contains them being so pure in taste, so harmonious in
colour, every armorial device, every mottoed label, so tersely and
correctly sculptured.... The Plantagenet cast of the whole chamber
conveyed to me a feeling so interesting, so congenial, that I could
hardly persuade myself to move away.”
Every word written by Beckford a hundred and twenty years ago of this
chapel is true to-day, and I could have lingered for hours before the
coffins of these heroic princes and their parents in a day-dream of
recollection prompted by their noble lives and deeds.
Just outside the door of the chapel, in the pavement of the nave, is a
stone bearing the almost effaced inscription that below it lies the body
of “Martin Gonsalves de Maçada, who saved the life of the King Dom John
in the battle of Aljubarrota”; and one speculates that had it not been
for the fortunate deed of this obscure gentleman, this great abbey would
never have been built, and the kings and princes that lie in it would
never have existed, with the exception of the Master of Avis himself,
who would have passed down to history not as the founder of a dynasty
but as an unsuccessful rebel.
A door in the south aisle leads into the renowned cloister, and here,
the work being of a later date than the church, controversy has spent
itself as to whether the luxuriant exuberance of the sculpture is, or is
not, in perfect taste. Personally I find the cloister exquisite beyond
description, and I care not whether the purists condemn it or not. The
sensation produced, it is true, is—like all Manueline sculpture—neither
purely devotional nor highly exalted, but rather one of joyous delight
in the actual handiwork, in the gracious curves, in the kaleidoscopic
variety, in the dexterous adaptation of means to ends, and these
sensations, though I am told that they are vulgar when produced by
ecclesiastical sculpture, I experience in the fullest measure as I gaze
at this marvel of human skill, the cloistered court of Batalha. Standing
in the centre of the courtyard and looking up at the abbey, one sees
three beautiful lace-like parapets rise one above the other along the
whole length, on cloister, clerestory, and nave, clear-cut edges of
perfect curves against the blue sky. Each of the cloister arches is
filled with stone tracery of amazing richness and variety, the cross of
the Order of Christ and the armillary sphere being deftly introduced in
the fretwork with great effect. This cloister, like that of Belem, of
which I shall speak later, seems to mark the purer and less extravagant
development of the Manueline style, in which the Gothic traditions have
not been entirely cast aside, and only the most callous soul could
remain unmoved by its exquisite beauty. From the cloister there opens a
chapter-house of the same style and period, a perfect gem, although the
entrance arch leading to it shows signs, in the lace-like pendent
ornament that lines it, of the over-elaboration which finally led to
decadence. The chapter-house is thus described by Beckford with special
reference to what struck me most—namely, the exquisite groining,
springing like palm branches from clustered pillars in the wall, and all
centring in the apex of the roof:—“It is,” he said, “a square of seventy
feet, and the most strikingly beautiful apartment I ever beheld. The
graceful arching of the roof, unsupported by console or column, is
unequalled; it seems suspended by magic, indeed human means failed twice
in constructing this bold unembarrassed space. Perseverance and the
animating encouragement of the sovereign founder at length conquered
every difficulty, and the work remains to this hour secure and perfect.”
Close by is the great refectory of the monks, now used as a sort of
lumber-room museum of débris; and leading from it the vast, vaulted
kitchen, its stone roof blackened still by the smoke of centuries of
cooking fires. The humble little ancient cloister of the original
monastery still remains, with its rows of cells in the upper ambulatory.
Here there is no Manueline exuberance or wealth, only reverent pointed
Gothic, grave groined roofs and arches unadorned, enclosing, as of old,
the sweet, quiet little garden that more than a century ago aroused the
admiration of Beckford.
[Illustration: THE CLOISTERS, BATALHA.]
From there the distance is but a few steps to the “unfinished chapels”;
but the contrast of feeling between the two places is wide indeed. The
chapels consist of a sort of Lady chapel or apse built out at the back
of the high altar, like Henry VII.’s chapel at Westminster. A large
central chapel with ten smaller chapels round it rise to perhaps half
their intended height, and roofless, for when King Manuel died in 1521
the work was stopped and has never been resumed. The first view of this
fragment, and particularly of the great arch by which it was intended to
connect it with the church, strikes an observer with astonishment that
human brains and hands could ever compass such intricacy of design and
execution. Convolutions more tortuous than those of Arab art, floridness
more overloaded than Churriguerra ever dreamt of, boldness for which the
only just word is insolence, here run riot unrestrained, fatiguing the
eye, tiring the mind, and ending by palling upon the senses from mere
over-exuberance. The lower portion and pillars, and the exterior of the
chapels, are restrained and sober, and this makes the more overwhelming
the arches and the upper pillars designed to support the roof. One feels
that the design is that of a genius, but of a genius whom another step
would have led to madness, and who threw aside all the accepted canons
of his art. But, withal, though Beckford avoids detailed notice of these
chapels, it is impossible even for the purist in architecture to pass
such work by without some admiration being mixed with his surprise. The
great arch leading into the church is the culminating point of the work;
its western side being a mass of intertwined foliage, knots, cables,
flowers, and concentric lines, cut in high relief in seven distinct
mouldings or orders, and the inner line of the arch is decorated with a
deep pendent open-work border; whilst forming part of the intricate
design of the whole arch, the enigmatical words “_Tanias el Rey_” are
repeated hundreds of times on small labels. What the words mean nobody
knows, though the most probable guess is that they may be an anagram for
“_Arte e Linyas_” (“art and lines,” in old Portuguese).
[Illustration: “THE UNFINISHED CHAPELS,” BATALHA]
As I walked up the road leading from the hollow in which the abbey
stands, I looked back again and again at the perfect loveliness of the
building I was leaving behind. The flying buttresses, the lines upon
lines of fretwork edging, the multitude of floreated pinnacles, and the
glorious Gothic of the west front, all of the softened hue of old gold,
presented in my eyes the perfection of a Gothic building. I have seen
the stately grandeur of Amiens, the soaring pride of Cologne, the vast
magnificence of Burgos, and the fairy prettiness of Milan, and I have
worshipped at the shrines of Ely, Norwich, and Lincoln. Each one in its
way is supreme and incomparable; but Batalha, reservedly nestling in its
green hollow far from the busy haunts of men, has a charm of its own
that I have found in no other Gothic church; and as I finally turned my
back upon it, I carried with me a memory which in my life will never
fade.
We are soon amongst the pines and heather again, driving along an
elevated ridge with a valley and bold mountain ranges beyond upon either
side, the effect of the distant hills seen through the perpendicular
lines formed by the straight pine trunks that cluster on each side being
very beautiful. A sort of light-blue veil seems to cover the far
landscape, such an atmosphere as Corot loved to paint; not a mist
arising from dampness, but the azure tint of the air itself seen by its
clarity to a vast distance through the dark pine copses.
The first sign of systematic begging that I had experienced in Portugal
was at Batalha; groups of children, encouraged apparently by the
constant visitors to a show place, making a regular business of cadging:
for we were getting now into the centre of Portugal where the people are
less sturdy and the position of the peasant less prosperous than in the
north. Along the road from Batalha to Alcobaça, a new and really
charming form of begging was resorted to by the children on the
wayside—chubby, well-fed mites they looked most of them, evidently not
in abject want. They kneel on the roadside in an attitude of prayer,
their hands joined in supplication, their eyes closed reverently and
their expression rapt, like little dirty angels. They have before them a
few cut flowers, and the moment the carriage passes them they start like
a flash of lightning from their devotions, and throw the flowers into
the stranger’s lap, whilst they begin to trot by the side of the vehicle
in a dogged, persistent way, not articulately asking for alms, but
simply trying to win a penny by reproachful glances and disregard of all
entreaties to them to stop their dog-trot and go away. Needless to say,
such tactics are usually successful, for only a very hard heart could
withhold the small coin they covet, when an angelic-looking child of
seven has panted half a mile barefooted by the side of a carriage going
at a brisk pace.
Half-way to Alcobaça the ridge upon which the road runs narrows to a
mere knife edge, and on the left hand a wide valley sweeps down
suddenly, a bold long hill rising beyond. This is the battlefield of
Aljubarrota, upon which John, the Master of Avis, won his crown, and for
the second time asserted the independence of Portugal from Castile on
the 14th August 1385. From Thomar he had brought all the power that
patriotic Portugal could raise, and upon this ridge awaited the attack
of the Castilians, who, if once they could pass it, would have all the
seacoast of Portugal at their mercy down almost to the mouth of the
Tagus. The position is not very dissimilar from that of Bussaco, but
upon a smaller scale. The Portuguese right and left flanks were both
defended by projecting spurs; upon one of which the English bowmen were
posted, and by standing upon the centre of the position it is easy to
see, even to-day, how skilfully John the Great had chosen his ground for
the decisive struggle, and how difficult it was for the Castilians to
succeed. They dared not proceed along the valley leaving this strong
force of enemies upon the heights behind them, able to cut them off from
their base, and harass them flank and rear; whilst to swarm up these
precipitous slopes in the face of a semicircle of determined opponents,
and enfiladed by archers on both flanks, seemed inviting defeat. All was
against the Spaniards. A mysterious epidemic was prostrating them, the
King of Castile was ill, and had to be carried to the battle in a
litter, and, above all, the Portuguese were struggling for the
independence of their country, whilst the Spaniards were fighting at the
behest of a corrupt and unpopular king. So on that fateful morning in
August, five hundred and twenty-three years ago, as the chivalry of
Castile struggled up these broken slopes, the men upon the ridge from
which I look down now over the smiling plain, stood like a steel wall,
and with mace and battle-axe, and double-handed swords, clove and smote
them, whilst the cloth-yard arrows pierced and bowled them over by
hundreds ere they reached the summit. The hearts of the Spaniards failed
them, and down the slope they fled, delivered now to carnage and to
capture. Ten thousand of them, the best fighting men in Castile, fell,
the king barely escaped by flight, whilst half his court were taken.
Aljubarrota was won, the house of Avis fixed upon the throne for two
hundred years, and the alliance between England and Portugal cemented so
strongly as to have lasted unbroken to this day.
Through the poverty-stricken looking village of Aljubarrota, where some
questionable relics of the battle are exhibited for a consideration
(though no one offers me wine, as they did to Beckford’s princely
cavalcade), a few miles more brings me to a point, whence looking down
on the right side of the ridge the town of Alcobaça is seen below,
surrounded by miles of vineyards, touched now with bronze and crimson,
for the vintage is nearly over, and a big hummock of a building over
all, that I know is the famous Cistercian monastery, the sepulchre of so
many princes of the ancient royal house of Portugal that I have
travelled thus far to see.
The church and monastery stand fronting a very extensive triangular
praça, crossed by long avenues of acacias, and the first sight of the
edifice is distinctly disappointing. An ordinary façade in the
seventeenth-century, Spanish “Jesuit” style of the time of Philip IV.,
with white walls and yellow stone outlines, and flanked on both sides by
monastery buildings of great extent in the same taste, or want of it,
did not quite fulfil the hopes which Beckford’s description of the
splendours of Alcobaça had aroused. It is true that the west door of the
church somewhat redeemed it, for it was evidently the remains of the
original front in pure unadorned Gothic. The whole edifice is raised
above the surface of the praça upon a platform some ten feet high, and
upon this parade the monks in old time were mustered to receive
distinguished visitors. Beckford thus describes the reception of his own
party—
[Illustration: ON THE PRAÇA AT ALCOBAÇA.]
“The first sight of this regal monastery is very imposing, and the
picturesque well-wooded and well-watered village out of the quiet
bosom of which it seems to rise relieves the mind from the sense of
oppression the huge domineering bulk of the conventual buildings
inspire. We had no sooner hove in sight, and we loomed large, than a
most tremendous ring of bells of extraordinary power announced our
speedy arrival. A broad hint from the Secretary of State
recommending these magnificent monks to receive the Grand Prior and
his companions with peculiar graciousness, the whole community,
including fathers, friars and subordinates, at least four hundred
strong, were drawn up in grand spiritual array on the vast platform
before the monastery to bid us welcome. At their head the Abbot
himself, in his costume of High Almoner of Portugal, advanced to
give us a cordial embrace.”
All is quiet enough now, for the monks are gone these seventy years, and
the huge dilapidated edifice behind, forming a vast square, is partly
occupied as a barrack, and the rest falling into ramshackle ruin. Nor is
anything stirring in the prim little town, which has grown up around the
wealthy foundation, and now lives placidly upon the produce of its
vineyards.
The interior of the church presents a marked contrast to the façade. The
impression produced is one of ponderous solidity and permanence, and the
stern devotional character of all the ecclesiastical buildings founded
by the great Affonso Henriques, first king of Portugal, in the twelfth
century is again conspicuous, though even here a cornice of gilt curly
wood lines the fine chancel arch. The nave though somewhat narrow is
impressive and handsome, separated from the aisles by square pillars of
immense size, broader than the spaces between them. From brackets or
ledges at various heights from the ground upon the front and sides of
these pillars spring the simple arches and groining of the roof, each
pillar carrying its arch right over the nave, so that each set of simple
groins is separated from the rest by the arch moulding. The aisles, very
narrow, seem overwhelmed by the immense square pillars, and it is easy
to understand in the face of this stern interior that the notoriously
luxurious and self-indulgent monks of Alcobaça did their best to soften
the austerity of their surroundings. That they did so to some purpose is
seen both by Beckford’s account of his visit and by my Strathmore
manuscript of 1760. The account given by Lord Strathmore is worth
transcribing:—
“The minister having ... ordered them to do us ye utmost honour they
were capable of, we found a large place before the convent so
crowded with people that it was necessary for a guard of militia
which they had summoned to make a lane for us up ye steps. At ye
door we were reciev’d in form by ye guardian and first people of ye
fraternity with ye utmost ceremony, and conducted by ye light of
torches thro’ cloisters of Gothic arcades with ye whole college in
procession to our apartments.... Our rooms were extremely spacious,
and were hung with crimson damask and gold, ye floor cover’d with
Persian carpets, and our beds in alcoves deck’d with embroidered
coverlids. We had a basin and ewer brought to wash before supper,
and on another salver a napkin of fine linen, curiously pinck’t and
strew’d with rose-leaves and orange-flowers. We then pas’t into the
next room, where we found a large table groaning under a service of
monstrous dishes.”
The writer comments unfavourably upon all the eatables placed before
him, reeking, as they did, he says, of garlic, bad oil, and other
horrors, and he comments upon the tasteless lavishness of the fare. He
then continues:—
“At last, after having drank reciprocally all ye healths that we
thought would be required on either side, we retir’d to repose. The
next morning we were no sooner dres’t than we found ye whole college
assembled in ye next room at our levee. We breakfasted in state, at
ye end of a long table with ye rest seated round ye room, and
admiring ye peculiar grace with which we put every morsel into our
mouths. After breakfast we were attended thro’ ye convent, and had
everything explain’d to us, which I must own gave me great pleasure.
They are of ye Cistercian order, and ye richest in Portugal,
possessing a vast tract of land which is said to bring them in
£50,000 per annum. Their magnificence is in every way
proportionable. Their church is Gothic, but extremely noble, ye
plate, jewels and ornaments, copes, etc. are as rich as possible....
They have no taste or design in their expenditure, and seem to study
richness rather than elegance in all they do. As they reign, so they
entertain, like princes over the district. In the evening we saw
their great altar lighted up at vespers, which at the end of a long
Gothic aisle had a most striking effect with ye organ and voices
altogether impressing upon the mind most solemn awe.”
Remains of the tasteless splendour referred to are still to be seen on
all sides. The gilt-trimmed chancel arch, the high altar, with its blue
starred globe and wooden gilt rays in the centre, and popes carved and
gilt in niches each side, amidst gold whirligigs galore, are as
incongruous as can be with the stern, simple nave: and the altars of the
north transept and retro choir all present the same features, some of
them, moreover, being in a lamentable state of dilapidation, inciting to
derision rather than devotion. In the north transept, hard by the
thirteenth-century sepulchral stones of Affonso II. and Affonso III., is
a dark but beautiful Gothic hall, the holy of holies of the monastery,
“the chapel of the tombs,” the resting-place of several of the earlier
princes of the royal house.
[Illustration: UNDER THE ACACIAS, ALCOBAÇA.]
The most striking objects in it are two magnificent sarcophagi in florid
decorated Gothic. The recumbent figures of king and queen upon them, as
fair and perfect as the day they were sculptured, rest, not hand in hand
as upon most similar tombs, but foot to foot. For these are the
sepulchres of Pedro the Just and his murdered mistress, Ines de Castro,
done to death by servile nobles beside the “fountain of love” in the
“garden of tears” at Coimbra, and the faithful king ordered the body of
himself and his beloved to be laid thus, so that when the universal
trump should call him to arise, the first object upon which his reopened
eyes should rest would be her, who, though unwed, was yet his wife
through all eternity.
Kings, queens, and princes, whose names now mean little even in the
country where they held sway and nothing elsewhere, lie around in tombs
of varying magnificence, together with débris and relics of times
earlier than any of them. The usual dense ignorance is displayed by the
guardian of the objects he is supposed to describe; for he points out
two very small ancient sarcophagi, one of them obviously Byzantine
Romanesque, and the other probably pre-Christian, and tells you gravely
that they once contained the bodies of Ines de Castro’s children. Both
of them are centuries earlier than her time, and her only children grew
up and survived her. But this is not more absurd than the
representation, in the current English “History of Portugal,” of a lady
in the height of the Portuguese fashion of the end of the seventeenth
century as Ines de Castro, who lived in the fourteenth.
The cloister of the monastery presents the characteristics of two
styles. The lower part is pure early Gothic, like the church and
chapter-house, with simple rose lights in each arch; but the upper
storey has evidently been added or rebuilt in the early sixteenth
century in good Manueline taste; and in one corner there is a very
beautiful fountain in the same style bearing the monogram of the
“Fortunate” monarch Manuel himself. The vast refectory, of which
Beckford spoke so sneeringly, as dirty and slovenly, is entered by a
handsome Manueline doorway, and is now being restored. The entrance to
the sacristy is also a fine specimen of Manueline, but inside the bad
taste of the late seventeenth-century monks is rampant. All around the
great square apartment are carved and gilt niches, in which are dozens
of life-sized busts also carved and gilt, of saints and bishop, each of
which has a hollow for a relic upon the breast, all now despoiled of
their contents; and the precious treasury of jewels, ornaments, and
embroidery that aroused the envious admiration of the virtuoso Beckford,
has all disappeared, many of the most beautiful and precious objects
being now in the Museum of Fine Arts at Lisbon, a storehouse of mediæval
goldsmith’s work unsurpassed in Europe, though almost completely
neglected both by residents and visitors to the capital.
One more show chamber there is in the “national monument” portion of
Alcobaça: a hall lined with eighteenth-century pictorial blue tiles,
representing in large tableaux memorable deeds of the kings of Portugal,
with statues of the kings themselves upon brackets above; the great
tableau at the end, representing the coronation of Affonso Henriques,
being an exceptionally good specimen of a poor artistic medium. As I
walk through the grave, silent church again, and so out into the bright
praça, with its avenues of shady acacias casting long shadows, the
façade of the church strikes me as more inharmonious than before, now
that the wonderful glow of the slanting sunrays touch the salient points
with fire. The front with its seventeenth-century figures, its Manueline
central round window, and its elaboration of outlines, so characteristic
of the Spanish “Jesuit” style, are utterly incongruous with the pure
early Gothic of the doorway, and it is with a sigh of regret that one
turns from the contemplation of such a result of wealth divorced from
artistry.
The vast monastic building behind the church is squalid and ugly, for
the occupation of soldiery does not tend to the æsthetic maintenance of
a building. The famous kitchen of the monastery is used now for military
purposes, but may be seen by easily obtained permission. As I looked
upon it, a bare, great, vaulted hall, with the channel for water still
running through it, and the marks of the long line of ovens extending
across the wall, I cast my thoughts back at the busy scene that the
place presented in the palmy days of the monks, when the flesh-pots of
Alcobaça were proverbial through the land. This is how the place struck
Beckford on his memorable visit.
“The three prelates lead the way to, I verily believe, the most
distinguished temple of gluttony in all Europe. What Glastonbury may
have been in its palmy state I cannot answer, but my eyes never
beheld in any modern convent of France, Italy, or Germany, such an
enormous space dedicated to culinary purposes. Through the centre of
the immense and nobly groined hall, not less than sixty feet in
diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the clearest water, flowing through
pierced wooden reservoirs, containing every sort and size of the
finest river fish. On one side loads of game and venison were heaped
up, on the other vegetables and fruit in endless variety. Beyond a
long line of stoves extended a row of ovens, and close to them
hillocks of wheaten flour whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of
the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a numerous tribe
of lay brothers and their attendants were rolling and puffing up
into a hundred different shapes, singing all the while as blithely
as larks in a cornfield.”
Abbots and monks, lay brothers, and cooks have gone the way of all
flesh; and of the plethoric plenty of old no vestige remains in the
enormous dingy hall. So, there being no fatted calf killed for me in
these degenerate days, I wend my way through the acacia avenues to the
humble hostelry where a dinner is prepared for me, eatable, it is true,
but a sad falling off from the culinary splendours of Alcobaça in the
good old times.
Then in the gloaming I drove four miles through woods of pine and
eucalyptus, balsamic now in the soft evening air, to Vallado station on
the railway to Lisbon. Out of the darkness at about seven there sprang a
long spinning factory blazing with electric light, and humming with the
whirr of wheels. The “hands” were just flocking out from their daily
toil, and filled the black, unlit road with a gay babbling crowd. There
was no town near, and the mill was deeply embosomed in the pine woods:
this seemed to me an ideal form of factory life, in which the house of
toil, instead of debouching its crowd of pallid workers into fetid
town-slums to fester unwholesomely until the morrow, needed but a step
from its threshold to plunge them into the sweet air of the pines and
heather; and where the “hands,” though they worked in crowds underneath
a roof, never ceased to be country folk. It was but a passing flash and
hubbub to me in the darkness of my lonely drive, and the toilers to me,
and I to them, but fleeting shadows. But seen thus, there seemed to me
something of suggestive possibilities in this hive of what is usually an
urban industry, set in the midst of lofty pines, sweet mountain herbs,
and far-flung folds of purple heather. A railway journey of
three-quarters of an hour brought me to the famous medicinal thermal
watering-place of Caldas da Rainha, where in the excellent Hotel
Lisbonense, which the proprietor, one of those frugal, honest, Gallegos
who are the industrial salt of the Peninsula, told me was the largest in
Portugal, as it is certainly one of the best, I ended a long day of
overcrowded impressions by a night of delightful dreamless sleep.
VII
CINTRA
I had often before seen Caldas in the height of the bathing season, when
the midsummer heat made Lisbon intolerable and inspired people with more
or less imaginary maladies to get cured. The place then, with its crowds
of visitors and pleasant parties, was bright and lively enough; but now
that the last pleasure-seeker had fled, and the only people taking the
wonderful health-giving waters were the few really sick, and the inmates
of the great “Queen’s hospital” adjoining the hot springs, Caldas looked
mean and ugly. The drives through the pine forests in the neighbourhood,
it is true, are pleasant; but for a fortnight I had been passing through
a glorious pine country much more diversified and elevated than these,
and Caldas had no fresh attractions to offer me. A visit to the famous
factory of enamelled _faience_, charmingly situated in the midst of
gardens, yielded an hour’s interest in the inspection of the late
Bordallo Pinheiro’s fine sacred figure groups now in course of
production for the shrines at Bussaco, and the hundred curious
Palissy-like pieces in high relief, plates of fruit, fish, &c., which
are the specialty of the factory. But that being finished the charms of
Caldas were exhausted, so far as I was concerned, and the train for
Cintra claimed me irresistibly.
The first station from Caldas (Obidos), with its little town, nestles at
the foot of an eminence upon which another of the stupendous mediæval
castles peculiar to Portugal rears its massive battlements, castles in
comparison with which most of the English feudal strongholds are mere
sentry-boxes. For these Portuguese fortresses were national outposts
thrust forward successively into conquered or debatable land; bases for
further extension southward and bulwarks against the return of the tide
of Islam. Another two hours of travelling brought us into a country of
red rolling hills, with a bold granite ridge on the east and a still
loftier ridge beyond merging into the blue mist on the horizon. For
miles on either side grand sweeps of flowering heather flushed against
breaks and slides of ochre-earth, touched here and there with the light
feathery green of the pines; whilst in the dips of hills sheltered
valleys of bronzing vines and little white granges, slept tranquilly
after the bustle of the just finished vintage. Soon we get nearer the
granite hills before us, and looming over the station, upon a great
projecting spur of one of these there frowns another of these tremendous
strongholds, from which, running towards the east and south between us
and Lisbon, there bars the way a series of gigantic ridges and peaks.
Most of the heights are capped by towers, and scored along the faces of
the mountains may still be discerned lines and marks of earthworks and
redoubts. These are the never-to-be-forgotten lines of Torres Vedras, by
which the genius of Wellington finally held the legions of Napoleon at
bay, and saved Portugal—and incidentally Europe—from the domination of
the French.
All the earth seems soaked and saturated in sunlight and brilliant
colour; little ancient towns, like Runa, perched on the tops of cliffs,
at the foot of which more modern hamlets cluster, testify to the changed
conditions between the days when the first need was safety from
aggression, and the later times when, the danger of wanton attacking
being past, men sought accessibility and ease. Acacias, aloes, canes,
olives, and vines spreading down the plain, tell of a benign and equable
climate enjoyed in security and peace; a beautiful and favoured land,
where nature has done its best to make man happy without making him
idle. As the twilight begins to fall we change trains at Cacem, the
junction of the small local line from Lisbon to Cintra, and
thenceforward we travel due west towards the sea. Before us looms a
great isolated mountain, the “Rock of Lisbon,” which seafarers know so
well, with its bold outline and its gleaming towers on the topmost crag.
“And Cintra’s mountain greets them on the way.”
—_Childe Harold_, canto i.
The “mountain of the moon,” and of its goddess Cynthia, devoted from the
dawn of time to the worship of deities that, one by one, have been
deposed, this long-backed hummock, stretching nearly fifteen miles from
end to end and rising well-nigh two thousand feet above the plain, is
one of Europe’s acknowledged beauty spots, and, like a human
professional beauty, on this occasion coyly hid its charms from too
ready a discovery by cloaking its summit with a cloud as black as ink,
forerunner of the coming night. The gradient of the line continues
upward as we wind round the base of the hill, and it is quite dark when
the terminal station of Cintra is reached, and after a long drive upward
the quaint little English hostelry, known to four generations of
Britons, welcomes me to dinner and to rest.
Like the similar mountain of Bussaco, the “Rock of Lisbon” is scored by
ravines and dells innumerable, sheltered valleys open to the soft
sea-breezes charged with grateful moisture; and from time immemorial the
luxuriance and variety of its vegetation have been proverbial. At a time
when Lisbon, only some fifteen miles away, is sweltering and breathless
within its south facing semicircle of hills, the slopes of the mountain
of Cintra are fresh and invigorating, and some of its gardens are a
veritable paradise all the year round. But beautiful as it undoubtedly
is, Cintra owes much of its fame to its nearness and accessibility to
the capital, and so far as English celebrity is concerned, to the
accident of several influential Englishmen persistently singing its
praises at a time when Lisbon was a fashionable winter and health
resort.
The village of Cintra lies in one of the folds of the great hill, at
perhaps a third of its height up the side: a little Swiss-looking
pleasure-town round an open praça, like a set scene upon a stage. A few
hotels and shops, a church, the inevitable big stone building at the
most conspicuous corner, with the heavily barred windows on the level of
the footpath, and the squalid prisoners begging and bandying repartee
with the passers-by: at one end of the praça, a lovely ancient Manueline
cross upon a palm-shaded mound, at the base of which a picturesque group
is usually lounging, and close by, the courtyard of an old, old palace
whose most conspicuous features are two curious protruberances from the
roof, looking like a cross between Kentish oast-houses, and giant
champagne bottles. This is Cintra as seen from its central point, but
over it all there towers that which gives unique distinction to its
otherwise somewhat trite, self-conscious picturesqueness. Sheer aloft
upon a precipice a thousand feet and more above its roofs there stretch
the mighty battlements and massive keeps of a huge castle of
fawn-coloured stone, a castle so immense as to dwarf Thomar, Leiria, and
even Obidos almost to insignificance. Long lines of crenellated walls
following the dips and sinuosities of the crest of the peak appear to
grow out of the mighty rounded boulders; some of these great masses of
rock seeming to hang over perilously—as they must have done for
thousands of years—top-heavy and threatening.
[Illustration: THE OLD PALACE, CINTRA.]
To climb such an eminence looks impracticable when seen from the praça
of the little town, and yet it is but a pleasant and easy walk up the
zigzag road round the projecting shoulder of the hill. As I start in the
early morning to ascend the two twin peaks, only one of which is visible
from the praça, the air is indescribably sweet with the mingled
freshness of the sea and the perfume of herbs and flowers. The way winds
upwards between the trim walls of villas embosomed in gardens.
Ampelopsis, blood-red now, long trails of wistaria and starry clematis,
and large fuchsia trees loaded with flower, hang over the pathway
everywhere, whilst masses of heliotrope clothe the jutting gables and
corners, and pervading all are the scent and sight of oceans of flowers.
Palms, planes, poplars, and firs shoot upward, and around their straight
bare trunks there clusters a tangle of figs, laurels, mimosa, camellias,
aloes, and cactus. On the outer side of the road, as the villas are left
behind, you may look over the dwarf-wall down the tree-clad slopes into
glens of deep shade, with here and there a glimpse through the branches
of a vast sunlight plain far below, whilst on the inner side of the
zigzag way, the mosses and ferns, and the pendent greenery of the
precipitous hillside, with an occasional break into a deep ravine,
exhibit at each turn and step some new beauty of tint or atmosphere.
Presently at a turn of the road, after half-an-hour’s climb, you see
right over head the bare granite cliff covered with huge overhanging
boulders, and on the summit a long stretch of yellow battlements and a
huddle of enormous towers. The trees around us are mostly oaks now, and
the grey boulders are covered on their inner faces with ivy and lichens,
whilst clumps of purple crocuses star the grass by the wayside. The sun
is as hot as July in England, but the breeze is delightfully fresh and
pure, the sky of spotless azure, and the air so clear that the ancient
fortress, still far above us, is seen in all its detail as if we had it
near to us under a giant microscope.
Suddenly as I turned a corner there burst upon my view another and a
loftier peak than the one upon which stands the Moorish stronghold that
had hitherto been my objective. A crag so inaccessible it looked, as to
suggest that the imposing building upon it with its lofty towers was the
work of a magician. The royal palace of the Penha is this, piled up
rather than built upon a sheer precipice.[2] Here upon the highest point
of the rock of Lisbon was King Manuel the Fortunate wont to linger for
hours and days for many months together, climbing up from his palace in
the town below, that he might gaze far out upon the Atlantic, watching
and praying for the return of Vasco da Gama from his voyage to India
round the African continent, the route that in two generations the
impetus of Prince Henry the Navigator had opened up. There was but a
tiny Jeronomite hermitage or penitentiary here in this savage eyrie to
shelter the anxious king,[3] and during his vigils he vowed that if the
great explorer came home successful he would build upon the spot a
worthy monastery of the Order in memory of the event. The work must have
been a prodigious one, for even now the place is hardly accessible by
carriages, and the quantity and the weight of material necessarily
brought from below was enormous. This monastery like the rest, was
disestablished and secularised by the State in 1834, and King Ferdinand,
the consort of the Queen of Portugal, and a first cousin of Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert, bought the building for conversion into a
royal palace, as it remains to-day, and here he lived the latter years
of his life with his second wife, the ex-opera-dancer, the Countess of
Edla. Ferdinand altered his palace, in many cases with very doubtful
taste, Moorish and German baronial features being liberally grafted on
to the Manueline edifice, with the result that the whole building when
seen closely is a pretentious muddle, saved from contempt by some of its
ancient portions, and by its sublime situation.
The palace on the peak was soon lost to sight again on my climb upward,
and the path led direct to the outer donjon of the Moorish stronghold
opening upon a narrow path cut along the face of the rock, and bordered
on the outer side by a low stone wall. The view down over the steep,
rocky slope, with the town of Cintra far below, and the plain limitless
beyond, is very fine, and the walls that border the path are clothed
with mosses and ferns almost as lovely as those of Bussaco. The fortress
must have been impregnable by force; and indeed was only gained at last
from the Moors by treason, this very gate having been bought by the
Christians from an unfaithful guardian. This narrow path cut on the face
of the precipice is the only practicable approach to the fortress, and
leads soon to yet another gate flanked by a strong tower built upon one
vast, solid boulder. The dells below are filled with billows of verdure;
the face of the rock on the inner side of the path is covered with
creepers, ferns, and flowers, whilst above them, high up in the dips
near the summit, great trees lean over, shading the way by which we
come. Yet another strong gate tower we pass through; and with a sudden
turn we are inside the fortress, on the right of us a ruined chapel,
once a mosque, and on the left a watch-tower, with, at its foot, a
monument upon which the cross is graven surmounting the crescent,
emblematical of the fate of the adjoining chapel.
To describe in detail this prodigious ruin would be impossible in any
reasonable space. The summit of the crag consists of two separate peaks
at some distance from each other, the higher one occupied by the main
keep, “the royal tower,” and long battlemented walls reach from one
point to the other, with bastions at intervals and massive square keeps
at the salient angles. On all sides within the great enclosure formed by
the battlements, covering the whole summit, remains of towers and
buildings of various sorts are scattered, amidst the dense growth of
trees and brushwood that have intruded upon the space. The battlements,
many of them built upon the rounded boulders that border the precipice
and following the contour of the hill top, are strong and perfect still;
and it needs but little imagination to people them again with the
turbaned and mailed warriors, sheltered snugly behind them, watching for
the advancing hosts of the Christian king, certain that, so long as
Islam was true to itself, no force could take this stronghold of their
race. The view over the battlements on all sides is tremendous. Just
below the walls a Titanic scatter of boulders, varying in size from a
few feet in diameter to the bulk of a cathedral, and then the descending
folds of greenery, with the sunlit plains and clustering towns below;
and there on the west, seemingly almost at the foot, a long stretch of
breaker-strewn beach, and the blue line of the sea. The view on the
Cintra side is almost appalling, the drop from the battlements and
boulders to the town being almost sheer, and on the south-east a great
bay opens, and the mouth of the Tagus bounds the prospect.
As I gazed, entranced at this wonderful scene, surrounded by yet sturdy
relics of the war of civilisations eight centuries old; musing upon the
immutability of nature’s face in comparison with even the most enduring
works of man, I noticed a wire fixed on the face of the Moorish
battlement, and thence to a boulder, and so from point to point, I know
not whither—to the palace or the adjoining peak, perhaps. A telegraph
wire! A familiar object enough, but, as it seemed to me, strangely out
of harmony with the stern battlements from which for centuries the sons
of the prophet held back the advance of Western civilisation.
The point upon which the Moorish stronghold stands is connected with the
higher site of the palace by a saddle-back dipping considerably and then
rising very precipitously. The vegetation on all sides is marvellously
luxuriant, and inside the well-kept gardens of the royal domain flowers
and plants, temperate and sub-tropical, make the place a horticultural
paradise. Through graceful Moorish archways, bright with Alambresque
decorations and _azulejos_, under rocky tunnels and over mediæval
drawbridges, all redolent of the gimcrack taste of the forties, the
upward way leads at length to the little inner _patio_ of the castle,
and here, at last, some of the Manueline monastery still remains. It is
little enough, a window here and a door there, and is almost swamped by
modern Alambresque and German baronial additions, but the ancient chapel
in the _patio_ is a gem. The beautiful groined ceiling especially
attracts attention, but the pride of the place is the exquisite altar of
translucent alabaster or jasper and black marble in the purest style of
the classical Renaissance, dated 1532, a thank-offering of King John
III. for the birth of an heir. The many groups of figures in alabaster
are extremely beautiful, and as the whole structure turns upon a pivot
the perfection of the work can be seen in various lights. A concession
to the Portuguese Manueline taste of the time is made by the pendent
festoons on each side of the altar, which are formed of two lengths of
knotted and twisted cable in alabaster, a _tour de force_ of execution,
though rigid purists may perhaps question their artistic
appropriateness.
The chapel is marred by the hard, bright German stained glass inserted
in the principal window by King Ferdinand; but the modern Portuguese is
very far from being critical in matters of art, and though hundreds of
people yearly toil up the mountain to venerate the holy image of the
Virgin of the Penha in this chapel, and the lovely ivory figure of St.
John in the sacristy, no one apparently thinks of removing the flashing
offence of the stained glass window in favour of some subdued medium
more appropriate to this beautiful little church. A climb to the highest
tower of the palace is said to be rewarded by a magnificent view. I was
content to take it on trust, for I had already climbed high enough, and
could hardly hope to behold a more striking prospect than those I had
enjoyed from the castle battlements, and from the inner _patio_ of the
palace itself, which is perhaps the most striking of them all.
As I retrace my steps down the long zigzags to Cintra again, and ever
and anon look up at the heights from which I have come, they seem quite
inaccessible. Equally, or more so, does the somewhat lower, but even
more precipitous eminence called the Cruz Alta, from which the prospect
is of surpassing extent over land and sea.
“Eis campinas que ao ceo seu canto elevam,
Aqui o espaço, alem a immensidade,”
“Behold the plains their psalms raise to the sea,
Here spread below in space, beyond immensity,”
as the Portuguese poem on the base of the cross proclaims.
Everywhere the flowers trail over the walls of villas, and the high
palms within rock softly in the heliotrope scented breeze. Very
beautiful it is; but the gardens belong to other people, and are
jealously closed by stone walls and iron gates. From above them, at
hundreds of points all over Cintra, you may command views of gardens of
tropical luxuriance; but without permission of the wealthy owners you
may not enter them. Cintra’s beauty is not free like the sacred wood of
Bussaco, where you may wander at your will through purely sylvan scenery
that not even Cintra can surpass. The grandeur of the towering Moorish
stronghold on its crest of grey boulders is more imposing than anything
Bussaco can show, and the interior of some of the highly cultivated
private gardens of Cintra are as fine as any in Europe; but, so far as
the enjoyment of the mere traveller is concerned, I am inclined to agree
with the opinion of those who hold that Cintra’s fame is quite equal to
its merits. Beckford had very much to do with it. His friends the
Marialvas were amongst the first of the Portuguese aristocracy, and owed
the large palace of Seteaes, where Byron and some guide-books
erroneously say that the humiliating convention of Cintra was signed by
the victorious English generals. Beckford’s visits to them and to the
court at Cintra inspired him with an enthusiastic admiration for the
place, and his letters are full of references to its beauty. To the
immensely wealthy and eccentric young Englishman desires and their
accomplishment ever went hand in hand, and Beckford purchased a
picturesque valley and slopes of the mountain some two miles from the
town round the shoulder of the hill towards the west. Here he built an
eccentric house, partly in the Moorish style, and here he displayed the
virtuoso tastes and exotic luxury which afterwards made Fonthill
famous.[4]
All that money and skill could do was lavished upon the gardens in the
ravines and slopes of Monserrate; and long before Beckford died the
place became famous throughout Europe. Sir Francis Cook, Viscount de
Monserrate, to whom Monserrate belonged for many years, greatly extended
and improved the property, and his son, Sir Frederick Cook, the present
owner, has followed the same course of munificent maintenance of this
earthly paradise; with the result that now the beauties of the glens at
Monserrate are probably unequalled in their own way. It was the middle
of October when I visited the gardens on this occasion, although I had
seen it in all the glory of its spring and summer splendour on other
visits, and the luxuriance of the vegetation showed as yet no signs of
waning. Great magnolias, daturas, and bougainvilliers were in full
flower, with roses, clematis, brilliant coleas, and immense quantities
of heliotrope. Tree ferns, aloes, agaves, and palms grew with a freedom
in the open air that not even the hot-houses of Kew could surpass,
whilst the crimson ampelopsis and golden-leaved maples presented
gorgeous masses of colour. Some of the sylvan views are perfectly
charming; but after all, one feels that one is simply an interloper
seeing the showplace on sufferance by payment of a shilling—which the
owner gives to a charity—and a sylvan scene, perhaps less lovely, but in
which I could roam at will, as at Bussaco, would have had greater
attraction for me.
Upon a peak opposite Monserrate, and belonging to the same owner,
stands a humble little monastery that once belonged to the
Franciscan-Capuchins. It is a quaint and curious place, the cloister,
a tiny one, being joined to a rock, out of which the cells are
excavated. These and the doors and ceilings of the cloister are lined
with cork bark for warmth and cosiness in this exposed position, and
for centuries the hermit-monks lived and prayed on this peak
overlooking almost as great a panorama as the Jeronomites on the high
crest of the Penha. Franciscans and Jeronomites are alike gone now;
but in this case at least the place has been saved from desecration,
and the little chapel is maintained with reverent care by Sir
Frederick Cook, to whom the place belongs. Byron and Southey, too, did
much for the fame of Cintra. In a room at Lawrence’s Hotel, commanding
a fine view of plain and sea, the former wrote a portion of “Childe
Harold,” and his references in verse to the beauty of the place are
numerous. Writing of the cork convent, Byron refers thus to Honorius,
a rigid ascetic who in a cave there lived long years in self-imposed
penance:—
“Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell,
In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell.”
Volumes of poetry, indeed, have been in the aggregate written about
Cintra. Byron made it practically his first stage of “Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage,” and went in raptures over it:—
“Lo, Cintra’s glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah, me! what hand can pencil guide or pen
To follow half on which the eye dilates,
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken
Than those whereof such things the bard relates
Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium’s gates—
The horrid crags by toppling convent crown’d,
The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain moss by scorching skies embrown’d,
The sunken glen whose sunless shrubs must weep,
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
The vine on high, the willow branch below,
Mixed in one mighty scene with varied beauty glow.”
The poet, in one of his letters to his mother complaining of the dirt
and discomfort of Lisbon, says: “To make amends for the filthiness of
Lisbon and its still filthier inhabitants, the village of Cintra, about
fifteen miles from the capital, is perhaps in every respect the most
delightful in Europe. It contains beauties of every description, natural
and artificial; palaces and gardens rising in the midst of rocks,
cataracts, and precipices; convents on stupendous heights; a distant
view of the sea and the Tagus.... It unites in itself all the wildness
of the Western Highlands with the verdure of the south of France.”
Robert Southey, too, calls Cintra “the most blessed spot in the
habitable globe,” and Beckford’s letters are crowded with eloquent
passages to the same effect. “The scenery,” he says, “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 the 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.”
The Portuguese poets have of course dwelt much upon the beauties of
Cintra, especially Almeida Garrett, the principal Portuguese poet of
modern times. One stanza by him is cut upon a slab erected on one of his
favourite walks in the village as a memorial, and the following lines
from it may be quoted:—
“Cintra, amena estancia,
Throno da vegetante primavera:
Quem te não ama, quem em teu regaço
Uma hora da vida lhe ha corrido,
Essa hora esquecerá?”
“Ah! Cintra, blest abode,
The throne of budding spring,
Who loves thee not: and who
Can e’er forget in life
An hour passed in thy lap?”
When the stronghold on the crest of the mountain was securely held by
the Moslem soldiery, before the great Affonso Henriques swept southward
with the Cross victorious, the Moorish kings of Lisbon lived in silken
ease below in their summer alcazar in the praça of Cintra—a building
this full of interest still, though injudicious or inexperienced
travellers have caused no little disappointment by comparing it
unjustifiably with the splendid Arab remains at Seville, Granada, and
Toledo. Truth to say, the palace at Cintra is no Alhambra, and should
not be approached with expectations of anything of the sort. And yet the
place is very quaint and charming as you enter the courtyard from the
praça, hard by the Manueline cross with its spiral shaft. The front of
the palace appears to be purely Manueline, the elaborate window and door
decoration, consisting of twisted cables and intertwined branches, and
even the pillars, spouts, and gargoyles are all redolent of Portugal’s
age of heroic expansion and wealth under the “Fortunate” king.
It was a regal Christian palace long before his time; for his
great-grandfather, John the Great and his wife Philippa of Lancaster,
had adapted the Moorish alcazar for their summer residence and made it
their favourite palace, their grandson and successor Affonso being born
here. But it was in the palmy times of Dom Manuel that the palace of
Cintra became the centre of culture, wit, and poetry, where gaily-clad
courtiers listened to the wondrous tales of Portuguese explorers
returned from Africa and the Indies, and poets sang the national epics
telling of the opening of the mystic East with its wealth untold to
Portuguese commerce and dominion.
Though the outside of the palace is Portuguese Manueline, the interior
exhibits at every step portions of the original Moorish edifice
unaltered. The vast kitchen, with its enormous champagne-bottle chimneys
in the centre, has never ceased to be available for culinary uses from
the time of the Arab kings until to-day; whilst the dining-room is pure
Moorish, lined with beautiful Arab tiles. Arab tiles, indeed, remain in
many rooms, and the chancel of the chapel, once of course a mosque, is
exquisitely paved with them. There is a beautiful little Moorish _patio_
too, with its marble fountain and laurels, that might be a portion of a
palace at Fez or Mequinez now, so pure and intact is it. The older rooms
of the palace generally are dark, for the Moorish architects shut out
the sun wherever possible, and the up and down floors on all sorts of
queer levels impress upon one the immense antiquity of the place as a
dwelling-house.
The finest rooms are the hall of magpies, the hall of swans, and the
hall of stags. The first-named is a square apartment with beautiful
Moorish tiles, and a coved ceiling covered with paintings of magpies,
each one with a motto issuing from its mouth saying, _Por Bem_, “with
good intent.” The legend told is that Queen Philippa one day surprised
John the Great, who was a gallant lover, kissing a maid of honour and
offering her a rose. The Plantagenet queen had a temper of her own,
which John probably feared more than the Castilian charge up the slope
of Aljubarrota, and the king in exculpation cried to his wife, “Por
Bem”; as who should say, _Honi soit qui mal y pense_. The reputation of
John was such that his excuse passed from mouth to mouth derisively, the
queen’s sycophantic maids repeating it with such significant emphasis,
and so frequently, that the king to shame them adopted “Por Bem” as his
motto, and had his reception hall at Cintra painted with the chattering
birds repeating it.
[Illustration: MANUELINE WINDOWS IN THE OLD PALACE, CINTRA]
Another fine Moorish hall is called the hall of swans, of which the
ceiling is painted with those birds, in memory of a pair of them kept in
the _patio_ below, and given to King Manuel by his brother-in-law,
Charles V., as a very great rarity. Another large apartment, with a
conical roof, was constructed by King Manuel himself, who gave to it the
name of the hall of stags. Here the king collected the armorial
achievements of all the Portuguese nobility. Seventy-four stags are
ranged around the room, each one having dependent from its neck the
scutcheon of a noble family—except one, that of Tavora, which the great
minister Pombal, in the eighteenth century, ordered to be erased—whilst
upon a frieze running round the hall is the following verse:—
“Pois com esforços e leaes
Servicios, foram ganhados,
Com estes e outros taes
Devem ser conservados.”
“By prowess stout and loyal fame
These honours bright were gained;
By others like or eke the same
They needs must be retained.”
The small and plain hall of audience or justice has at the end a seat of
tiled brick upon which the Sovereigns sat, and here tradition says the
Council met, summoned by the rash young King Sebastian in 1578, to
sanction the crusading attack upon Morocco upon which he had set his
heart. All his fiery zeal and imperiousness were needed to persuade his
nobles to agree to an adventure from which many foresaw disaster. But
the ambitious youth had his way, and his mysterious fate, never solved
when he disappeared for ever from the eyes of men at the battle of
Alcacer Kebir, ended the male line of the house of Avis which John I.
had begun at Aljubarrota two hundred years before. In this gloomy
chamber the die was cast, and with the loss of Sebastian his uncle
Philip II. and his descendants became kings of Portugal for a century.
A more modern tragedy was enacted within these ancient walls. The
vicious young debauchee, Affonso VI., was deprived of his crown and his
wife by his brother Dom Pedro, in 1667; and here in the palace, in a
room called after him, the wretched king passed the last twelve years of
his imprisonment, shut off entirely from the sight of men. The windows
of his prison-chamber still show the sockets wherein the strong bars
were set, and a deep groove worn in the brick floor along one side marks
the spot where the footsteps of the caged king, as he paced up and down
for years before his bars, have worn his enduring epitaph. Up in a
little closely barred cell overlooking the choir of the chapel, where
Affonso used to hear mass, he died suddenly in 1683.
The old palace of Cintra, indeed, is full of memories, a place to linger
in and about, rather than to rush through at the tail of a guide;
although it must be confessed that the guardian in this case does take
an intelligent interest in the objects under his care. Cintra, in short,
is beautiful beyond compare in certain directions; but, as happens in
most frequented show-places, the chief beauties can only be enjoyed by
the permission of others, and by the use of a silver key. The beautiful
villa-gardens are jealously shut in by high walls and forbidden by gates
marked private; the palace of the Penha, a royal residence, is
approached with bated breath and whispering humbleness, and the palace
in the town, though not now inhabited by royalty, is still only shown on
special application. But there is one thing in Cintra that may be
enjoyed freely and uncontrolled by all, the finest thing that Cintra can
show, the view from the town of that stupendous Moorish fortress on its
precipitous height. In sylvan beauty, in sweetness and freshness of
atmosphere, even in its sublime prospects of mountain, vale, and sea,
Bussaco may rival and, in some respects, surpass it; but the
long-stretched yellow battlements and massive towers piled upon the
eternal granite boulders, sheer up a thousand feet and more over the
little pleasure-town and its leafy ravines, would be worth the voyage to
Portugal alone to see, even though the gardens of the rich were more
reserved and exclusive than they are.
-----
Footnote 2:
Byron thus speaks of this climb up the hill of Cintra:—
“Then slowly climb the many winding way,
And frequent turn to linger as you go,
From loftier rocks new loveliness survey,
And rest ye at Our Lady’s house of woe.”
This last epithet for the monastery, which is now the royal palace, is
an error arising from a misunderstanding, which Byron shares with many
other people to the present day. The original name of the venerated
image of the Virgin, after which the monastery was named, is “Nossa
Senhora da Penha,” “Our Lady of the Rock.” For some reason the place
is still often referred to as the “Pena,” which means “sorrow,” and
the Saint becomes “Our Lady of Woe,” as Byron called it.
Footnote 3:
Two German ecclesiastics, who in 1450 were sent to Lisbon by the
Emperor Frederick III. to ask for the hand of the Portuguese Infanta
Leonor, thus mention Cintra in the narrative of their voyage: “Oh!
Cintra, most pleasant place and royal garden, with a little river in
which there are good trout. Here, too, there are devout brethren in a
Jeronomite monastery, who live according to their rule.”—_Historia
Desponsationis Frederici III. cum Eleanora Lusitanica._
Footnote 4:
When Byron visited Cintra in 1809, Beckford, whose fame as an author
rests upon his curious Eastern tale of “Vathek,” had left his villa at
Monserrate for the more pretentious splendours of Fonthill, and the
Peninsular war was pending.
“And yonder towers the Prince’s palace fair;
There thou, too, Vathek, England’s wealthiest son,
Once formed thy paradise, as not aware,
When wanton wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,
Meek peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.
Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan,
Beneath yon mountain’s ever beauteous brow;
But now, as if a thing unblest by man,
Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou.”
VIII
LISBON
No capital city in Europe, with the exception of Constantinople, can
compare with Lisbon in beauty of situation. On approaching the city up
the Tagus from the sea the panorama presented is most striking; although
the unæsthetic Portuguese have done their best to mar it by fringing the
foreshore with possibly profitable, but certainly hideous and offensive,
industrial and commercial excrescences, from the noble and historic
tower of Belem at the mouth of the river, almost hidden in the midst of
defiling gasometers, to where the city merges into the country at Poço
do Bispo three miles away. Piled up upon a grand amphitheatre of hills,
the city rises tier over tier, the river opening out before it in the
form of an extensive bay. Away above Belem the vast square Ajuda palace
stands conspicuously upon a hill-top backed afar off by the huge mass of
Cintra; whilst at the other end of the panorama towards the east the
ancient citadel-palace of St. Jorge looks down from its height upon the
busy river-bank and the central valley running inland, in which the
rectangular main streets are cramped.[5]
The noble Praça do Comercio, Black Horse Square, as English visitors
call it, fronts the river in the foreground, the most imposing public
square in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Place de la Concorde
in Paris. Previous to the great earthquake of 1755 a royal palace stood
upon a portion of this site, and the valley behind it was a closely
crowded congeries of narrow and filthy lanes. In my manuscript already
referred to of Lord Strathmore’s travels in the country, an interesting
account is given of the condition of things in 1760, when he saw the
ruined city; and a quotation from his description of the plans then
existing for rebuilding the portion destroyed will give a good idea of
the present aspect, since the plans were executed precisely.
“The prospect,” writes Lord Strathmore, “of this great city rising
from its ruins is still distant, as besides ye arsenal there are but
three houses built upon the intended plan. The plan of the streets
and squares is extremely well imagin’d. There is a pretty broad
valley between two hills, running down to ye Tagus in ye part where
ye palace stood. Thro’ this they intend to make their principal
street, all ye houses regularly built after one model and _tirés au
cordon_, terminating in a noble square open in front to ye river,
which is of great breadth here, with old Lisbon upon high ground
opposite. The other three sides [of the square] will be surrounded
by a very handsome, narrow arcade, with public buildings above and
an equestrian statue of ye King in ye centre. The other streets will
likewise be regular, and will lead at right angles into ye great
street from ye hills on each side. Tho’ ye design is extremely noble
ye architecture is as bad [_i.e._ as before] except in ye square
already described. They seem to consider ye front of a house only as
a high wall with holes larger or smaller to admit light as occasion
requires.”
This exactly pictures Lisbon as it stands to-day. From Black Horse
Square on the Tagus bank run the Rua Augusta and two other parallel
streets, called respectively the streets of “gold” and “silver,”
straight as a line to the busy centre of Lisbon, the fine parallelogram,
called the Praça de Dom Pedro, or the Rocio, paved with its inevitable
mosaic of black and white waves, at the end of which is the theatre of
Donna Maria, the central railway station, and the entrance to the
handsome Avenida da Libertade, a garden and tree-shaded drive of good
houses occupying the whole of the narrow valley for nearly two miles
into the suburbs. On either side of the Avenida and the principal
rectangular streets in the valley the hills rise precipitously, and when
the tops of these have been surmounted a series of sudden dips and rapid
ascents succeed east and west. The city is, therefore, a most fatiguing
one to explore, as to go anywhere away from the river-bank, which with
the exception of Black Horse Square is irretrievably ugly and squalid,
and from the streets “_tirés au cordon_” in the central valley,
formidable hills have to be faced. This of late years has been much
relieved by a complete system of electric trams, which practically cover
the city, and by the instalment of funicular railways and lifts up some
of the more difficult ascents.
The city, on the whole, is decidedly disappointing at close quarters.
The straight principal streets and rectangular cross thoroughfares, with
their flat, prosaic architecture, the high white houses all alike, are
the antipodes of picturesqueness, whilst the authorities seem perversely
to have done their utmost to make the river-side as ugly as Rotherhithe
or Wapping. This is the more to be regretted, as since I first knew the
city many years ago, great tracts of land have been reclaimed from the
sludge and ooze of the foreshore which might well have been treated with
some regard for public amenity. The large strip reclaimed from the
river, however, almost as far as Belem, has for the most part been
turned into untidy deserts of dust, shabby-looking docks, and
dumping-places for débris. The utter lack of æsthetic taste is
observable on all hands. The terrace before the king’s residence, the
palace of the Necesidades, for instance, is upon the brow of a low hill,
and commands a splendid view of the river and the opposite shore for
many miles on either hand; and yet even here, between the palace and the
river factory chimneys belch black smoke day and night, hopelessly ugly
industrial buildings block the prospect, and the reclaimed foreshore and
docks are as desolate as elsewhere.
Of the pure picturesque, indeed, little remains in Lisbon; but what
still exists must be sought amongst the fisher folk on the river-side,
and especially in the markets that have been built on the reclaimed land
of the Ribeira Nova, not far from the centre of the city and close to
the Hotel Central. It was pleasant to turn into the cool, spacious,
covered fish-market out of the brilliant sunlight, which even quite
early in the day drove people to welcome shade. The air was clear,
crisp, and elastic, and every object seemed to sparkle with light and
colour. Inside the market hundreds of people were bargaining quietly,
for even here the absence of vociferation was remarkable; servants
buying their stocks of provisions for the day, housewives of the humbler
class doing their own marketing, baskets on their arms, and women fish
hawkers by the score laying in their stocks. They were all shoeless, as
usual, wearing under their vast head burden black pork-pie hats over red
or yellow kerchiefs, and they have girdles below the hips into which the
upper portion of their pleated skirts is drawn to relieve the waist of
their weight. Upon the ground, spread around the women sellers, were
great heaps of glistening fish; cod, dory, skate, whiting, and large
quantities of squids or cuttlefish, which are much liked by the
Portuguese poor.
[Illustration: ON THE QUAY, LISBON.]
The male fish-sellers of Lisbon are for a wonder even more picturesque
than the women; for here on the Tagus the seafarers of the south are
first noticeable, quite distinct in racial characteristics as they are
from those of the north. These Lisbon fishermen go barefooted, which the
poorest men of the north never do, they wear breeches only to the knee,
girt by a crimson sash, and the hanging tasselled bag-cap falls and
waves over their shoulder as they loup along with a peculiar springing
gait under a long flexible pole balanced transversely across the
shoulders, at each end of which a flat, shallow basket of fish is
suspended. The vegetable market adjoining that devoted to fish is a
brilliant sight in this favoured land. Heaps of scarlet pimentos and
tomatoes are flanked by enormous yellow gourds, and mountains of purple
grapes incredibly cheap, pomegranates, and big luscious pears jostle
piles of humbler vegetables of the kitchen, and some of the groups of
bright-coloured produce seem to reproduce the old pictures of the
mythical cornucopia overflowing with all the best fruits of the earth.
It is a long and tiring walk from here to Belem, but two lines of
electric trams go thither, one along the river-bank and the other by the
parallel route past Alcantara, and either will serve our turn. Belem is
now but a suburb of Lisbon, continuous lines of houses covering the two
miles of the route. There still remains, however, something of
distinction in this royal village, full of memories as it is of
Portugal’s great day of power and wealth. For here it was that at length
the dream came true, and those long vigils of the Fortunate King on the
savage peak of Cintra were rewarded by the coming of Vasco da Gama to
the squat, sturdy old tower of Belem, that had been in his yearning
thoughts through so many trials and dangers. King Manuel greeted his
great subject, who had brought to his native land the potentiality of
wealth illimitable, here in the village of Belem, at the mouth of the
Tagus; and as the explorer stepped ashore, the king, overjoyed at his
coming, swore to build upon that very spot a Jeronomite monastery
splendid enough to be worthy even of that great occasion. And he kept
his word; for two years afterwards, in 1500, the first course was laid
of a building which surpasses all others in its particular style, and in
some respects is one of the most remarkable ecclesiastical structures in
the world.
A long line of church and monastery adjoining runs parallel with the
sea, the conventual portion partly in ruins but now in course of
reconstruction, and the eye is at first perfectly bewildered by the
richness of the details of the doors and windows of the edifice. Here
Manueline architecture is at its earliest and best, before extravagance
like that of the unfinished chapels at Batalha overwhelmed it. Here the
orthodox florid Gothic and Renaissance styles are leavened, but not
obliterated, by the new spirit of expansion and aspiration that found
its national expression in what is called Manueline. The west door of
the church, where the monastic buildings join it, is extremely
beautiful. On each side are rich canopies under which kneel the king and
queen with their patron saints, and smaller figures exquisitely carved
surround the rest of the door, which is surmounted by flamboyant
pinnacles in the Manueline taste. The general idea of the windows, which
are very large and high, is of a round-topped arch three or four courses
or orders deep, each course being set with bosses of a different, but
always elaborate, pattern, an outer moulding representing a twisted
cable or twined branches in infinite variety, ending in a series of
pinnacles, surrounding the window on the surface of the wall.
The great south doorway facing the road and the Tagus, the principal
door of entrance, almost defies description by its richness and
complexity of ornament, this and the cloisters of the church being
perhaps the best specimen of Gothic Manueline in Portugal. Between the
two doorways into which the entrance is divided there is a pillar or
column, upon which, under a rich Gothic canopy, stands a large figure of
a man wearing a tabard. The scheme of decoration is carried up by a
series of flamboyant pinnacles and canopied figures beautifully
interlaced to the top of the aisle wall. The two great windows flanking
this gorgeous doorway match it in magnificence, and one feels on turning
away from this monument of human skill and ingenuity that here the
short-lived art of the Portuguese Renaissance has reached its highest
flight.
[Illustration: THE SOUTH DOOR AT BELEM]
The impression, however, hardly survives the moment when you cross the
threshold and enter the church itself; for here you see an interior
unlike any other great temple. The first impression is one of immense
unencumbered spaciousness. The ordinary arrangement of nave and aisles
does not exist, but from the floor there spring straight up to a height
that seems prodigious six slender isolated marble pillars, three on each
side. They form no continued arcade, although, of course, they are
aligned, and each pillar is decorated lavishly in high relief with
Renaissance ornamentation in panels, with canopied niches half-way up
their height. From the top of each column spring a series of branches
like the fronds of a palm-leaf, which, meeting in beautiful graceful
curves, form the intricate series of bossed groins which compose the
vaulted marble roof. At the west end of the church three low-pointed
Manueline arches support the choir-loft, and along the north wall twelve
Manueline doorways are ranged, with rich canopied niches above them,
whilst the magnificent transept, with its gorgeous ceiling and royal
chapels and tombs, and its vast Manueline chancel arch of twisted cables
and cordage supporting rich canopied pulpits, altogether produce an
effect of overpowering majesty.
Here in the chancel repose, in splendid tombs, the ashes of the king,
Manuel the Fortunate, and his son, John III., the two great builders of
the fane; and here too lie, in a transept chapel, Vasco da Gama himself,
and Camões, who enshrined in deathless epic the spirit of exalted
enterprise of which the great explorer was the personification, and the
Infante, Prince Henry, the prophetic inspirer. Kings, queens, princes,
and princesses lie around in fretted sepulchres—that ill-used Catharine
of Braganza, Queen-Consort of England, amongst them, here where she
passed the long years of her widowhood—but their very names are for the
most part forgotten now; and this memorable church of Belem, whilst its
daring beauty stands, will remain the shrine of the two greatest figures
of Portugal’s golden age, and of the “Fortunate Monarch,” Manuel, in
whose reign the vision of the Infante was realised.
The cloisters of the monastery vie with those of Batalha in beauty,
which is saying much. Each of the twenty arches, four on each face and
one at each corner, is filled with Manueline tracery, exhibiting
inexhaustible caprice and invention, no two being alike in pattern;
whilst highly decorated Manueline doorways line the inner walls. The
upper ambulatory is wider and, if possible, more elaborate than the
lower, an unusual arrangement, each upper arch buttress being capped by
a beautifully decorated finial. The chapter-house, as usual, leads out
of the cloister, an exquisitely rich specimen of Manueline, and is now
devoted to the stately tomb of Alexandre Herculano, the
nineteenth-century Portuguese historian. Pompous as are the sepulchres
of kings and heroes in the adjoining church, this monument to the
historian—a respectable figure in literature, it is true, but by no
means a genius of universal fame—surpasses them all. Here, alone in the
midst of this grandiose chapter-house of the monks, the dead
man-of-letters rests more splendidly than monarch or millionaire. Modern
Portugal, at least, can honour the gifted pen; for the names of Camões,
of Almeida-Garrett, the nineteenth-century poet, and Herculano, the
historian, are all through the country commemorated by street names. How
long shall we have to wait before Englishmen, so ready to bow the knee
before successful finance, will thus do homage to an historian? Verily,
little as we may relish the truth, we have much to learn from Portugal,
and not in this alone.
The monastery buildings of Belem shelter twelve hundred orphan boys, who
are there clothed, fed, and educated by the State, and it was a fine
sight to witness them all at table in the great Manueline refectory of
the vanished monks, and pleasant to hear the ringing of their youthful
laughter as they played joyously in the stately cloisters. In the museum
adjoining there is a collection of ancient royal coaches, some of them
very imposing and curious, but generally speaking not so interesting a
collection as that in the royal _caballerizas_ at Madrid.
Sated almost with sculptural richness, I left the monastery, and rested
beneath the grateful shade of palms in the public garden opposite, with
the broad Tagus before me and the glowing blue sky overhead until the
perfect day began to wane. Then through the fine Praça de Dom Fernando,
with its handsome Manueline pillar and statue of Albuquerque, the great
viceroy of the Indies, I slowly wended my way back by the chaotic
river-bank to Lisbon. Belem is beautiful and suggestive enough to
provide reflection for one day without allowing other impressions to
disturb it, and the sordid sights and sounds of the water-side were
nothing to me, for the airy fancies of the artist in stone and the
romantic memories of the heroic days surrounded me as with a mantle.
Lisbon is a city of prospects, and, uninteresting as are its main
streets, it is only necessary to stand upon one of its many eminences to
see spread before you a wide and varied panorama. The end windows of the
upper corridors in the Hotel de Bragança afford a splendid view of the
port and the mouth of the Tagus, whilst from the ancient citadel of St.
Jorge, and from the dome of the big classical church of Estrella, the
city and the rolling hills for miles around are spread out at the foot
like a map in relief. Speaking for myself, I have always considered one
of the most attractive coigns of vantage in Lisbon to be the Largo da
Gloria just over the entrance of the Avenida. This can be reached either
up the Rua de São Roque or by the funicular lift from the Avenida
itself. The view from this pretty public garden on the top of a
precipitous bluff is charming. The whole of the central valley lies
under you with its straight lines of streets, starting from the great
parallelogram of the Rocio just below and reaching the Tagus. Just in
front of you across the valley rise the hills covered with houses of all
colours amidst greenery, with the great old citadel of the Moors and
their conquerors crowning the highest point towards the river; the
square battlemented towers of the old cathedral being seated upon a
lower hill at its foot. To the left an ocean of mountainous hills
covered with verdure and buildings stretch as far as the eye reaches;
whilst on the right beyond the extensive Black Horse Square shines the
wide estuary of the river, and miles away across the water the mountains
that bound the prospect towards the south.
As you stand and look down from the garden of Gloria to the big busy
square, with its wavy black and white pavement, and tall column just
underneath you, you may notice that at the north-east corner of the
square the valley broadens somewhat, and a maze of narrow streets starts
from that corner. If when you descend from your eminence you penetrate
and explore this corner you will find in it all that is left of the
quaint Lisbon of before the great earthquake. For here, in a district
still called the Mouraria, and in what once was the Villa Nova de
Gibraltar adjoining it, dwelt outside the ancient walls the Moors and
Jews, who for centuries almost monopolised the wealth of Portugal, until
at the bidding of his Spanish father-in-law and mother-in-law, Ferdinand
and Isabel, the “Fortunate” King Manuel made short work of the children
of Israel. Here in the ghetto, of which the ancient gateway still
stands, the streets are narrow and tortuous. Crumbling gables and quaint
corner turrets overhang the pathway, and dark mysterious entries, lined
with oriental _azulejos_, tell of the time when men lived in daily fear
of rapine and violence.
Almost sheer over the district of the Mouraria towers the hill upon
which the fortress of St. Jorge stands, and if you care to climb it you
may see Lisbon, and beyond from the point opposite to that from which
you have just descended. The cathedral stands upon a hill nearer the
river, and may best be reached by following the tram-lines up the Rua da
Conceição. The sturdy old church fronts a triangular space, from which
picturesque glimpses of the roofs of the old town and river-bank may be
caught. Two square Romanesque towers, which, like the rest of the
cathedral, are now in course of restoration from the vandalism of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stand on each side of and connect
with a large square porch before the west door. Cupolas and a railed
parapet formerly surmounted these towers, but battlements in accordance
with the original design are in future to replace them, and the lavish
additions of carved wood capitals to the pillars and coats of stucco
over ancient decorations are being cleared away, thanks largely to the
encouragement of the present Queen of Portugal, who is interested in the
work.
Here on this hill stood the mosque of the Moslem kings, and here, when
in 1147 Affonso Henriques, the first King of Portugal, captured the
city, the first Christian church was built by the conqueror, who
nominated an English warrior-monk, Gilbert, to be the first bishop of
the new See. Upon a stone within the porch of the west door, the carved
legend tells how the Moors were vanquished by the Christian king, and
the cross set up in this place, and the twelfth-century round-arched
doorway with the grotesque capitals of its pillars demonstrate that this
part of the edifice at least dates from the earliest years of the
Portuguese monarchy.
The interior presents six round arches on clustered marble columns, now
stripped of the stucco that disfigured them for centuries, though the
Corinthian capitals which were added in the eighteenth century still
remain. When Lord Strathmore saw the church in 1760, five years after
the earthquake, he referred to these Corinthian capitals in a sketch he
drew of the church: “I have left out,” he says, “the large Corinthian
capitals and marble pedestals which have been added to the pillars
within memory. The fire has burnt most of the capitals off, both of the
ambulatory and the nave arches, and the other capitals have been so much
impaired that you can only see remains of basket-work, foliage, and
flowers.” The intention referred to by Lord Strathmore to restore the
church to its original simplicity was so far from being carried out that
new gilt wood acanthus leaf capitals were added to these fine old
Romanesque pillars. At last, however, the church is really being
judiciously treated, and is rapidly assuming the grave, devotional
appearance of the early Christian temples raised after the victories of
Affonso Henriques.
The roof is particularly striking in its solid majesty, the middle flute
of each cluster of columns springing to the ceiling and supporting a
round arch carried over the nave to the opposite column, something like
the roof plan at Alcobaça. The transepts have majestic rose windows at
each end, and the central lantern tower or cimborio stands on pillars of
lofty clustered columns, forming round arches rising as high as the roof
of the nave; all this being as early as the first foundation of the
church. The chancel is very beautiful early Gothic, with pointed arches,
and a gorgeous ceiling, and the little Gothic chapels round the
ambulatory are many of them interesting. Tombs and sarcophagi of
archbishops, most of ages long past, crumble in dark corners and dim,
grated chapels, and two splendid royal tombs of Affonso IV. and his wife
are on the left of the high altar. Here, to be seen only on great
occasions, rest the bones of the patron saint, Vincent, opportunely
discovered by the king, Affonso Henriques, in their hiding-place far
away, where, guarded by ravens, they had been saved from the desecration
of the unbelieving Moors. The ship that brought the holy relics from the
southernmost point of Portugal, for reverent preservation, to Lisbon was
always escorted by the faithful ravens, thenceforward sacred birds for
the cathedral church of Lisbon, where some of them are kept to this day
in memory of their piety.
Along the walls of the aisles run large pictorial tableaux of scenes in
the life of St. Vincent and incidents in the miracles of the ravens, the
ancient blue and white tiles of which the pictures are composed showing
clear indications of the still lingering Moorish traditions in early
Christian ceramics. It was Saturday afternoon as I mused in the old
church, which was blocked and encumbered in many places by the materials
of the restoring workmen; and, wandering past an open doorway in the end
of the south aisle, I heard the hum of voices. It came from the ruined
cloister, where a sad-looking young priest and a sister of charity were
teaching classes of little children. It was a charming picture. The
bright sun filtered through the half-ruined twin lancet lights of the
ogival arches and fell in dappled patches of gold upon the ancient
sarcophagi and dismantled altars that lined the humble arcade: a wild,
neglected little garden, all abloom with untended masses of autumn
flowers and trails of crimson creepers, and the droning hum of the
children reciting in turn the sacred lesson they were conning. Peace and
remoteness from the world seemed to reign in this quiet nook of the busy
capital. Here was none of the sculptured glories such as dazzled the
beholder at Belem or Batalha; only two plain pointed narrow arches in
each bay of the arcade, with a round light above, bordered by a simple
nailhead or rouleau moulding. Everything is ruinous and in course of
restoration, but devout humility is the note struck throughout the
cathedral, from the solemn, restrained Romanesque of the nave to the
plain sepulchral little Gothic cloister, where, in the dim sea-green
light filtering through leaves and crumbling arches young children learn
the letter of their faith.
There is in these Portuguese churches no affectation of the gloomy
splendour and mystery which is the characteristic of the Spanish
cathedrals. At mass on Sundays the faithful gather, and on other days a
certain number attend; but the constant coming and going of worshippers
at all hours of the day, and the celebration of mass at one altar or
another continuously from dawn to midday that in Spain is universal,
find no counterpart in the Portuguese portion of the Peninsula. Here,
and above all in the north, the priest is not constantly in evidence, as
he is in Spain, and his garb is, as a rule, as unobtrusive as that of an
English clergyman; for the shovel-hat and flowing cassock and cloak have
in Portugal almost disappeared. However religious the Portuguese may be
the apparatus and panoply of religion are not conspicuous, and when once
mass is over in the Portuguese church, the place is usually deserted.
Although with justice, Lisbon is usually considered an extremely
unæsthetic capital, and has not much to show worth seeing in pictorial
art, there is one feature, in which, little known or noticed as it is by
visitors, Lisbon can boast of unrivalled artistic possessions. I mean in
that of ecclesiastical _orfèvrerie_. When the religious houses were
suppressed, and the State appropriated church property, the priceless
productions of the old goldsmiths, gifts of devout sovereigns and
grandees for centuries to sacred shrines, were not plundered or
frittered away in private hands, as happened in England and France, but
carefully preserved by the State for public enjoyment. Truth to say, no
one seems to enjoy these exquisite objects very much now, for of the
many times I have spent hours in admiring the collections in the
National Museum, and in that of São Roque, I have rarely seen any but an
occasional stranger in either place.
The Museum of Fine Arts at Lisbon possesses, it is true, few objects of
importance, apart from the goldsmith’s work and ecclesiastical
embroidery, and the lack of a catalogue of the paintings—except for the
collection given to the nation by Count de Carvalhido—stands in the way
of their enjoyment. Most that is worth seeing here in pictorial art
comes from the suppressed religious houses and churches, especially the
early Flemish and German paintings, of which several are really fine.
But the collection of ancient pictures is so lamentable in condition as
a whole, and so badly lit, as to make the study of them difficult. Count
de Carvalhido’s large collection, which is separately housed in two
rooms in the Museum, contains a few good pictures and many by obscure
artists quite the reverse, the specimens of the Flemish and Germanic
schools predominating. The attribution of the works to named painters is
often quite wide of the mark, many pictures bearing no resemblance
whatever to the style of their alleged authors. There is, for instance,
a little panel attributed to Sir Thomas Lawrence. It is called
“Seduction,” and represents, in the usual eighteenth-century French
genre style, an interior with a young man seated at an open escritoire
offering jewels and money to a girl, whilst an old woman watches through
a half-closed door. Anything more unlike Lawrence, either in technique
or subject, it would be difficult to conceive. Another picture, a large
canvas attributed to Zaniberti, an Italian painter, who died in 1636,
represents a Carnival in Rome with a large number of maskers and
spectators, all of whom are dressed in the fashion of the late
eighteenth century, a hundred and fifty years after Zaniberti’s death.
But the wealth of church and altar plate more than makes up for the
shortcomings of the picture galleries. Monstrances in gold of great
antiquity and beauty, covered with precious stones, are to be seen
literally by the dozen. Silver gilt processional crosses of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some almost Byzantine, some nearly
Mudejar in design, abound; chalices of unimaginable richness in pure
Gothic and Manueline styles, reliquaries in gold and gems beyond price,
and gold and enamelled crowns and girdles, altar crosses, and
candlesticks without number, are displayed in cases in a suite of rooms
commanding a fine view over the Tagus. Alcobaça has contributed the
lion’s share of these treasures, but Batalha and many other religious
houses have been placed under involuntary contribution; and the result
is a collection of early ecclesiastical art in gold and silver that I
have never seen approached elsewhere. The church vestments, too, are
rich and numerous beyond description; and a large series of beautifully
embroidered court dresses of the eighteenth century displays the
influence exerted by the Portuguese connection with the far East upon
artistic embroidery of the period.
The collection of church property contained in the small museum attached
to the Jesuit church of São Roque is circumscribed in period to the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; but as the whole collection
is derived from the possessions of a single chapel—that of St. John—in
the adjoining church, a vivid idea is gained of the lavishness with
which the church in Portugal was endowed in the days of the national
prosperity.
The church and district of São Roque have always possessed special
interest for me. The monastery, standing upon a bluff overlooking the
valley, was the point of attack when the English under Norris and the
Earl of Essex tried to capture Lisbon for the Pretender, Dom Antonio, in
1589;[6] and, though the monks were in favour of the English _protégé_,
the Spanish musketeers filled the long line of windows commanding the
approach from the English camp, on the opposite hill outside the gate of
São Antão, and frustrated all attempts to force the position.
Inside the great square church there is an object of interest that first
attracted my attention many years ago, and always demands from me a
pilgrimage to São Roque, up the hill of the Carmo, as soon as I arrive
in Lisbon. Sir Francis Tregian was one of those stout Cornish Catholic
recusant gentlemen whose career in the days of Elizabeth I had had
occasion to follow in detail; and his persecution and escape were
familiar to me, as they are to many students of the religious troubles
of the last years of the Tudor queen; but I had never known where he had
found a last resting-place. Here in São Roque a large upright slab
stands beneath the pulpit on the north side of the church which quaintly
tells the story: “_Aqui esta, em pé, o corpo de Dom Francisco Tregian,
fidalgo inglés mui illustre, o qual depois de confiscados os seus
estados, e grandes trabalhos padecidos em 28 annos de prisam, polla
defensa da fe catholica em Inglaterra, na persecuçam da Rainha Isabel,
no anno 1608 ao 25 Dezembro morreó nesta cidade de Lisboa, com fama de
santidade. Avendo 17 annos que estava sepultado nesta igrega de S. Roque
da Companhia de Jesus, no anno de 1625 ao 25 Abril, se achouo seu corpo
inteiro e incorrupto, e foe collocado neste lugar pelos ingleses
catholicos residentes en esta cidade, ao 25 Abril 1626._” “Here upright
stands the body of Sir Francis Tregian, a very illustrious English
gentleman, who, after his estates were confiscated and he had suffered
great tribulation during twenty-eight years of imprisonment for the
defence of the Catholic faith in England, in the persecution of Queen
Elizabeth, died on the 25th December 1608 in this city of Lisbon, famed
for his saintliness. After he had been entombed for seventeen years in
this church of São Roque of the Company of Jesus, in the year 1625, on
the 25th April, his body was found intact and uncorrupted, and was
placed in this position by the English Catholics resident in this city
on the 25th April 1626.”
The chapel on the north side of São Roque nearest the altar is the
beautifully decorated chapel of St. John. It had been for centuries the
poorest chapel in the sanctuary; but with the advent of King John V., at
the dawn of the eighteenth century, the new monarch declared his
intention of making the shrine of his patron saint the richest altar in
Portugal. And he did so, with gifts both lavish and beautiful, an
example naturally followed by his courtiers; so that when the Jesuits
were expelled, the treasures of St. John, the property thenceforward of
the State, formed a museum of their own. The objects exhibited,
monstrances, reliquaries, crosses, altar furniture, banners, frontals,
and vestments, are of surpassing magnificence; although they often
attract more by their intrinsic worth than by the purity of their taste,
as, for instance, the silver-gilt altar candlesticks ten feet high, and
the great silver _repousé_ altar front: but as specimens of the
decorative art—Italian, French, and Portuguese—of their period, they are
well worth study.
Lower down the hill stands the beautiful ruined Gothic-Manueline church
of the Carmo, now an archæological museum, filled with many fragments of
the older buildings of Lisbon saved from the ruin of the earthquake that
wrecked the Carmo itself.
Lisbon abounds in public gardens of almost tropical luxuriance. The fine
plantations before the big classical church of the Estrella, the park of
the Necessidades palace, the square of the Principe Real, the Avenida
itself, and the pretty garden of the Gloria already referred to, might
for the vegetation in them almost be in the West Indies; whilst the
Botanic Gardens, especially, can show palm groves to be matched nowhere
in Europe, except at Elche in the east of Spain. And not palms alone
grow here in a way wonderful in the midst of a populous city, but cacti,
aloes, daturas, and magnolias bloom with great luxuriance, and huge
tropical forest trees from South America thrive in the open as if on
their native soil.
The climate of Lisbon, indeed, is extraordinarily soft and mild
relatively to its latitude, owing to its sheltered position and to the
prevalence of westerly sea breezes. As a winter resort it has
unaccountably fallen somewhat out of fashion of late years in favour of
the Mediterranean Riviera, where the climate is much less equable and
more trying to those in delicate health. The latitude of Lisbon is about
the same as that of Palermo, three hundred miles south of that of the
Mediterranean Riviera, and the mean winter temperature (December,
January, and February) in Lisbon is 10.63° Centigrade (51° Fahrenheit),
against 7.79° at Biarritz, and 7.91° at Nice. Not only is Lisbon thus
much warmer on an average than the winter resorts now most affected by
English visitors, but the climate is more uniform, the diurnal
fluctuation in winter being considerably less at Lisbon than at
Biarritz, Nice, or even at Palermo in the same latitude. The winter
atmospheric humidity of Lisbon slightly exceeds that of Biarritz and
Nice, though in summer Lisbon is atmospherically much drier than either:
but in the matter of the entire winter rainfall the average of Lisbon is
considerably higher, and this it is that to some extent has set English
physicians against the place as a winter health resort, although the
average rainfall for the whole year is much less at Lisbon[7] than
either at Biarritz or Nice. The rains in Lisbon, however, which fall
heavily in the months of November, December, and January (a mean of 277
milimetres, as against 254 milimetres at Biarritz and 167 milimetres at
Nice), are usually rapid and torrential, and pass away at once.
Snow is practically unknown at Lisbon, and frost is extremely rare. But,
withal, equable and mild as the average hibernal climate of Lisbon is, I
do not personally recommend it as a residence for those who are forced
in the winter to seek a warm, dry, and bracing atmosphere. The smoke of
the numerous factories, and the mist that clings about the river and in
the narrow gullies that contain much of the town, make the place
somewhat depressing. But within fifteen miles of the city, and free from
the objections natural to the valley of the Tagus, there are two resorts
which are, in my opinion, and I speak from experience of both of them,
ideal places in which the unpleasantness and danger of winter in a
northern climate may be escaped. It is, indeed, difficult to overrate
the attractions in this respect of Cascaes and Mont’ Estoril, especially
the latter. Cascaes stands in a lovely bay surrounded by bold, rocky
scenery, and backed by hills which protect it from the north. A fine
sheltered promenade facing the sea possesses a grove of palms more
luxuriant than any that Nice or Cannes can show, and the walks along the
coast are beautiful. Mont’ Estoril, which is within a mile or so of
Cascaes, on the point of the Bay, is of more modern reputation, but is
in some respects to be preferred to Cascaes as a winter resort. The
train from Lisbon, running along the coast for fourteen miles, lands the
visitor to Mont’ Estoril in the midst of a beautifully picturesque
village of hotels and villas, grouped upon the slope of a hill
descending in a semicircle to the sea, with pines and eucalyptus woods
above, and palms everywhere below. The high range of Cintra, and the
lower hills on the north and east, completely protect the place from
inclement winds, whilst the open sea-front on west and south prevents
the sweltering stuffiness and relaxing effect of so many shut-in places.
There are several excellent hotels specially intended for winter
visitors; and for any one to whom a three-days’ voyage at sea in a
commodious, well-found steamer has no terrors, this Portuguese Riviera
just outside the Tagus forms a winter refuge which it will be difficult
to beat in Europe. The climate of Mont’ Estoril is noticeably warmer
than Lisbon in the winter, and the diurnal variations of temperature are
smaller; whilst the humidity and rainfall, which in Lisbon during the
three winter months form its only natural drawback, are very much
smaller at Mont’ Estoril. It is, indeed, very rare that mist is seen at
the latter place, even when the Tagus valley is full of haze. From
personal knowledge of both places I should say that the mean winter
rainfall of Mont’ Estoril is much less than that of Biarritz, whilst
certainly its temperature is higher and its uniformity greater.
I have dwelt only upon the winter climatic conditions, because it is in
this respect that misapprehension usually exists. The spring and autumn
climate generally is simply perfect, and from the middle of March onward
fine warm weather, with only an occasional heavy shower in April, May,
and October, may be counted upon almost with certainty. During the
particular tour of which this book is a record, I passed thirty days in
Portugal in the month of October. Out of this period I saw rain on four
days only—namely, three hours of deluge at Oporto, a portion of the day
at Bussaco, and two days at Lisbon; whilst in previous journeys in
Portugal I have on more than one occasion seen an even smaller quantity
of rain in October, April, and May. November is usually wet, though not
so wet as at Biarritz or Nice for the same month (Lisbon, 106
milimetres; Biarritz, 122 milimetres; Nice, 114 milimetres), whilst in
December and January Lisbon and Biarritz have about an equal rainfall,
Nice being in those months drier than either. From March onward Lisbon
has a decided advantage over both places.
-----
Footnote 5:
Byron, who, much as he loved Cintra, hated Lisbon and the Portuguese
generally, which perhaps is not very surprising when it is considered
that he visited it in 1809, after the first French invasion and before
the Peninsular War, thus wrote of Lisbon:—
“What beauties does Lisboa first unfold;
Her image floating on that noble tide,
Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,
And now whereon a thousand keels do ride.
But whoso entereth within this town,
That sheening far celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down,
Mid many things unsightly to strange ee.”
Footnote 6:
The story of the expedition is told in full in “The Year after the
Armada,” by the present writer.
Footnote 7:
Lisbon, 738 milimetres; Biarritz, 1067 milimetres; Nice, 766
milimetres.
IX
SETUBAL, TROYA, AND EVORA
Tyneside itself cannot be more disagreeable than Lisbon on the rare
occasions when really bad weather comes up the Tagus from the west.
Smoke of unusual blackness and abundance is poured without let or
hindrance from innumerable industrial chimneys by the water-side, and
the heavy sea-mist, clinging and wet, holds the carbon in its embrace
until the atmosphere would hardly disgrace a London particular at
Blackwall. I had stood it for a day, but as I knew I could get away from
it by a short railway journey out of the valley of the Tagus I
determined to endure it no longer, but to fly to the other side of the
hills. The weather was as bad as ever when I started the next morning by
the ferry-boat to cross the four miles or so of river to Barreiro, which
is the terminus of the southern system of railways for Lisbon. Through
an arid-looking country of vines producing the famous Lavradio wine, but
ugly and poor, on the slopes of the Tagus watershed, we gradually rose
to the region of pines and eucalyptus. Leaving all the mist and rain
behind us we topped the sandy hills and descended towards the south in
an atmosphere brilliantly clear and as exhilarating as nitrous oxide
gas.
Portuguese railways are slow, and it took an hour and a half to cover
the eighteen miles between Barreiro and Setubal—the Saint Ubes of the
English geographies. A clean spacious little town, beautifully situated,
is this metropolis of sardines and salt. The days of its saline
preeminence, it is true, have passed away—the times of humming
prosperity at the salt-pans, when the harbours was wont to be crowded by
ships loading salt for England and elsewhere; but still the local trade
is considerable, and the great extension of the tinned sardine trade in
Portugal has made up for everything, there being as many as thirty-four
sardine-packing factories at present in full work at Setubal. Five
minutes after we had got clear out of the Tagus valley and over the last
ridge, the aspect of the land had changed as if by magic. Oranges,
lemons, and almond-trees stretch in groves and orchards on all sides;
broad tracts of cereal land and dark olive plantations mix with the
vineyards, telling of a country of overflowing fertility; whilst long
lines of tall eucalyptus trees, with hanging strips of bark, add a
strange and exotic note to the scene. This fertile plain descending to
the sea on the south is enclosed by high mountain ranges, especially
towards the west, upon an outlying spur of which, a great isolated hill,
stands aloft Palmella, another of those stupendous fortresses for which
Portugal bears the palm. At the foot of the plain, on the edge of the
sea, sits the sparkling little town of Setubal, with Palmella, six miles
away, looming behind it, but in the marvellous clear air looking as if
within reach of one’s hand.
Before the town of Setubal, and three miles away across the estuary,
there extends a long sandy spit or island completely enclosing the
harbour and river mouth on the south, the only entrance being from the
west where a rocky point, an extreme spur of the great Arrabida range,
runs out into the Atlantic facing the sandy point. This land-locked
haven of clear blue water is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen,
especially when entering it from the sea. The climate of Setubal is
perhaps the warmest of any in Portugal, and the fertility of the country
at the back is remarkable, the hills behind it completely shutting off
the winds from the north.
And yet the people in this part of the country present an undefinable
trace of poverty and hardship, such as is never seen in North Portugal.
They are hard-working and frugal, but they are somehow less upstanding
and independent in their bearing, and their conditions of life are
evidently inferior. The difference is no doubt to some extent racial;
for here the sturdy Teutonic and Celtic stocks left fewer traces than in
the north: but the land in the south is mostly owned in large estates,
and not by the small cultivators themselves, as it is in North Portugal,
and this has probably more to do with it. A population of wage-earners
is never so well conditioned as one of independent workers, and in some
such direction as this, surely, must be sought the explanation for the
marked difference between the people of the north and south of a country
so small and so homogeneous as Portugal.
The long sandy island across the bay was my objective, and I lost no
time in bargaining with the owner of a sardine-boat to carry me across.
The boat was a heavy, clumsy craft, as it needs to be for the sardine
fisheries, the shape of a crescent-moon with pointed prow and stern, a
high-peaked lateen sail of red canvas stretched on canes, and long
sweeps which worked over a pin in the thwarts, fitting into a hole in a
mighty block of wood in the centre of the oars instead of between
rollocks. If the craft was picturesque the crew was still more so: the
owner, a sturdy old seaman, and his son, a bright lad of twenty, wore
the universal bag-cap, when they wore any head-covering at all, which
was seldom. The old man had boots as well, evidently more for appearance
than use, for he took them off for good as soon as the bargain with me
was concluded. A flannel shirt and trousers tucked up to the knees, and
girded at the waist by a red sash, completed the costume. The other
member of the crew, presumably a hired hand, was a striking Levantine or
Greek-looking fellow of about seven-and-twenty, far more intelligent
than the _patrão_ or his son, brimming over with eager interest in the
expedition, an incessant talker, with all sorts of queer lore and
information about the strange place we were going to see. He, for all
his intelligence and readiness, had but two ragged and scanty cotton
garments to cover him, and made no pretence of head or foot covering.
Whilst the boat was being brought round to the stair, I explored the
town and found a fine old Manueline door in the church São Julião at the
corner of the spacious praça called after the eighteenth-century poet
Bocage, who having been born at Setubal is the principal literary glory
of the town.
Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the lumbering sardine-boat, with
its big sweeps weighing nearly half a hundredweight each, was a heavy
pull for two men. But the _patrão_ and his son put their backs into the
work cheerfully and with good will, the vivacious, black-eyed
tatterdemalion of a crew chattering incessantly whilst he held the
tiller; his being by far the easiest job, apparently as a concession to
the superiority of mind over matter. No ripple stirred the blue, clear
water as we slowly pushed out into the bay and got clear of the town.
The air was of exquisite clarity and fineness, with some sort of subtle
pungency in it that seemed to blend the freshness of the salt sea with
the languor of the lotus land; and as we receded from the shore there
gradually opened out behind us, in clear, sharp outline sparkling with
colour and brilliancy, one of the most striking coast panoramas I have
ever beheld. The bay was almost land-locked, and at the brink of the
blue water shone the town as white as snow in the sunlight. Behind, in a
great amphitheatre, rose the hills from the deep green masses of the
orange groves upon the broad plain at their feet. Bright red earth
glowed in big gashes upon the slopes, amidst the varying verdure of
olives, cork, and pines; and then above the trees and hills towards the
west soared the peaks and crags of the great Arrabida range, tinted in
this golden morning from orange to ochre and from ochre to violet, with
shadows here and there of deepest indigo. Right behind the town the
great stronghold of Palmella, upon its sudden hill six miles away,
seemed to stand sentinel over the verdant plain and white houses: and
there, in the near distance, on the west, upon a promontory of rock
forming the point of the inner bay, was another ancient fortress, that
of St. Philip, looking sheer down into the sea. Beyond that as we
advanced we saw still another castle on a point; and, farther off, the
end of the Arrabida range, whose towering peaks dwarfed all the lower
hills, pushes far into the sea its precipitous bluff, bounding the
landscape on that side.
An hour’s hard pull brought us close to the long island. A wild,
uninhabited place it looked as we approached it, all blown sand in dunes
and hillocks overgrown with coarse rank tussock and esparto. Even before
we reached the sandy shore, fragments of walls and broken tiles in
abundance could be seen through the pellucid water, half-buried in the
soft, sandy bottom; and when I landed upon the beach of pure sand some
twenty feet or more wide, a glance sufficed to show that this was the
site of a place where many people had dwelt in the long ago. A long sand
dune, some fifteen feet high, runs parallel with the sea, and in the
face of this dune strong walls, doorways, and ruins of all sorts are
embedded. The sand in many places has been removed sufficiently to
uncover entire rooms and passages, and the whole beach below is
literally covered with broken tiles, apparently Roman, which presumably
formed the roofs of the ruined dwellings. The walls are usually formed
of undressed stones, with some rubble cement almost as hard, the
courses, and sometimes corners, being composed of coarse red bricks or
tiles eighteen inches long by twelve broad and two thick.
Mounting the top of the dune I saw beneath me the houses that at various
times had been excavated, and partially cleared of sand by the
successive adventurers, who, for the sake of profit or curiosity, have
undertaken the work. It has been done unsystematically and
unscientifically; but in the three-quarters of a century or so that have
elapsed since renewed interest has been displayed in the place, an
immense number of Roman coins, some of the latest period of the
domination, have been found; and numerous relics of Roman, and, as I
believe, of a much earlier civilisation have also been discovered, many
of the objects being now in the Belem museum. Mr. Oswald Crawford wrote
an amusing account of a visit he paid to the place about thirty years
ago, and advanced some attractive theories with regard to it; but
apparently the excavations that have taken place since his time must
have been considerable, as some of the most significant features noticed
by me were presumably not uncovered when he was there, as he does not
mention them.
The place has been called Troia by the Portuguese from time immemorial;
but it agrees in position with, and probably is, the important Roman
town of Cetobriga. The name of Cetobriga can hardly be of pure Latin
origin, nor is the situation of the place, at the end of a barren,
low-lying sandbank, such as Romans usually chose for a settlement. It is
known, however, that a people called Bastuli, some of whom Strabo says
lived upon a narrow strip of land by the sea in this part of Portugal
were of Phœnician origin, and inhabited this coast[8]; and this at once
provides a clue to the original founders of the city. The Phœnicians and
their successors in the Peninsula, the Carthaginians, were a Semitic
people whose trading depôts were carried to the extreme of the then
known world. At first, and for many centuries, purely traders and men of
peace, they made no attempt to dominate, but established their
factories, with defensive stockades and walls around them in places,
which, though unadapted for aggression, were capable of easy defence. It
is difficult to imagine an easily accessible place, well situated for
maritime traffic, better calculated than Troia upon its sandy island
opposite a fertile plain for the purposes of such a people as this; and
the opinion of antiquarians since the re-discovery of Troia has been in
favour of its Phœnician origin.
The later Roman period, it is true, has provided most of the remains
unearthed. I saw and measured myself, amongst many other houses, two of
undoubted Roman construction, one apparently a temple, to judge by the
now empty niches which are constructed round three sides of the inner
wall, and the doorway of well-dressed stone in the fourth side. Another
house near it, of which the chief apartment was twenty-two feet in
diameter, possessed a dressed stone piscina or font in the wall, and
what appeared to be a bath of five feet in diameter and nearly six feet
deep of rubble and tiles. These houses and practically all the others
stood some fifteen feet below the present top of the dune, but in no
case has the excavation been completed, sand silting up almost to the
door lintels in most cases. On the beach itself near the point, I
noticed what appeared to be the base of a hollow tower ten feet in
diameter, which may well have been a pharos; and in many places not much
above sea-level are square cemented tanks, which some authorities assert
were used for fish salting, although its suggestion is not a very
convincing one considering the position of the tanks.
The largest house that has been excavated is of undressed rubble for the
walls, the angles and doors and window frames being squared with tiles,
and the principal doorway topped by a flat arch of brick, the pitch of
the roof being evidently angular. On the other side of a sandy peninsula
facing the south, and farthest from Setubal, a very large villa has been
partially uncovered, presenting the same construction as the rest, but
with the base of a round tower at one corner; whilst on the point of the
beach there is a house containing four uncovered very large square
concreted tanks, sunk in the ground some twenty-five feet deep,
apparently reservoirs—perhaps vivaria for edible fish. There is no
indication—at least to a layman in the matter like myself—that these
buildings are earlier than the Roman occupation, though, of course, some
of them may have been, whilst a large building standing high at the very
end of the point, which the energetic boatman who constituted himself my
companion insisted was “the chapel,” is evidently much later than Roman
times, and may probably have been a Christian church.
Mr. Crawford advances a theory to account for the foundation of a
populous settlement upon a mere sandbank. He is of opinion that when the
town was originated the sand did not exist there, but has been blown or
cast up since. Although the dune facing the beach has doubtless
accumulated greatly since the city was finally abandoned, I cannot
believe, after looking well at the buildings, that the level has changed
more than perhaps a dozen or fifteen feet since the town was inhabited;
and there must, I think, have been hills of sand here from Roman times
at least. Still it is possible that a thorough excavation would
establish that the remains of the Phœnician town on solid earth underlie
the Roman buildings now existing amidst the sand. The most interesting
object that I saw at Troia is not mentioned by Mr. Crawford, though as
it stands at the highest point of the sand dune (though perhaps with a
base of solid earth beneath the sand) it is curious if it was not
uncovered when he visited the place. In any case, there it is now, the
most convincing proof possible that the city was Phœnician,
notwithstanding the extensive Roman remains of a later time. Upon a
square base or plinth there rises a smooth conical column, some ten feet
high, four feet in diameter at base and tapering conically to a diameter
of less than two at its apex. There is no mistaking the shape of this
column or its significance by any one who has studied the beliefs of the
ancient peoples and the symbols of their worship. The column is
apparently composed of red tiles smoothly covered with fine white
cement; and standing, as it does, in the most conspicuous position over
the settlement, it seems to prove that the Nature-worshippers,
Phœnicians, Carthaginians, or those who inherited their traditions, must
have been the constructors of this column supporting nothing. It may be
advanced that this sign of ancient paganism would not have been allowed
to remain by the Romans for four hundred years after the Christian era;
but it is possible that even then the ritual symbolism of the column had
been lost sight of or forgotten, and that it remained as a landmark.
I was glad to embark in my sardine boat again, for the glare and heat of
the sun beating down upon the shadeless sand was almost intolerable, and
the treacherous black sandflies, so harmless looking and so venomous, in
the three hours I had been at Troia had rendered my face unrecognisable
by my nearest friends, and turned my hands to agonised dumplings. So,
with a slight puff of breeze now and again to help us, we slowly crossed
the blue bay to Setubal where much needed refreshment awaited me.
I was bound for the ancient city of Evora, and I could have gone by
train to Pinhal Novo junction, where the train to the south was to
receive me. But the plain over which Palmella lords it had captivated
me, and I decided to traverse by road the ten miles to the junction. As
I drove out of Setubal, with its clean white houses, and gaily decked
women in a long kneeling row washing their linen in the river, the
glamour of the south was over all. Cactus hedges lined the way, the
glistening green of the orange trees with the abundant fruit already
showing, the bronzed vines and the grey olive orchards chequered the
light red earth; the rolling slopes were thickly wooded to the summits,
and nestling amidst the verdure on many hill-tops were glistening white
houses, abandoned cloisters, or shrines of pilgrimage. The aspect was
Andalusian, as were the traits of the people, and North Portugal seemed
very far away. Before us always towered the huge castle of Palmella,
with its tremendous stretches of battlements and square towers, seen
first from one side and then from another, as we gradually wound round
and round the base of the eminence upon which it stands. The way is
always upward, and on all sides spread below us, growing more extensive
as we round each successive rising turn of the hill, is the fertile
plain and the sea beyond. Wheat, maize, olives, and oranges grow here
luxuriantly, the lower folds of the sandy hillsides are covered with
vines, and the rich brown velvet trunks of the stripped cork-trees are
all along the way.
My coachman is one of the talkative type of south Portuguese, almost
oriental in the voluble vehemence of his manner, and his eagerness to
impart information. Ah! yes Troia, Setubal, and Palmella were all very
well in their way: but Evora! That indeed is a place. What a pity his
Excellency was not going to see Evora. His Excellency replied that Evora
was his present destination, and the patriotic Eborense, for, of course,
the voluble coachman came from Evora, broke out into unrestrained
panegyric of his native city. Lisbon was nothing, Oporto was nothing, to
Evora; why, Evora was a great city and a capital when they were
villages: Evora made Portugal what it is—and much more to the same
effect the wild-eyed coachman rattled off with much gesticulation,
whilst the patient horses, left to themselves, slowly toiled up the
winding road to the town of Palmella, now to the right now to the left,
and anon straight overhead, apparently inaccessible.
At length we entered the town, a poor squalid looking place upon the
steep slope; and whilst the tired horses rested I climbed the top of the
hill to the castle. The tremendous outer defences covered with yellow
lichen, and the round bastions of the inner circumvallation, are
evidently of Moorish origin, whilst the great square battlemented towers
inside appear to be mediæval. The whole of the top of the hill is
occupied by the fortress; the outer walls following the contour, with
corner bastions on the spurs of the summit. The views obtained from the
battlements of the salient bastions are tremendous. The central keep,
standing high above the rest, is veiled with mist, though where I stand
upon the battlements is clear and bright. Over the vast plain spread
below me bathed in sunlight dark patches of cloud wander, and, on the
south side beyond it, is Setubal and the sea; whilst on the other,
towards the north, far away stretches the broad estuary of the Tagus,
and the distant mountains loom upon the west. Ancient as the castle is,
it shows signs of more recent habitation than is usual, indeed a row of
humble dependencies within the walls are still occupied by poor people.
The roofs of the principal buildings are everywhere destroyed; and upon
the very ancient walls of one portion there rises the ruin of a
sixteenth-century palace; whilst by the side of the great mediæval keep
is the shell of a beautiful chapel of Romanesque Gothic. The inner
gateway of the fortress bears upon it a tablet with the arms of Portugal
and the date of 1689; and I was informed by one of the residents in the
row of dwellings that the place had only been entirely dismantled in
living memory. All is silent and abandoned now; and the great Moorish
stronghold which Affonso Henriques captured from the Moors in 1147, the
royal fortress of the Commandery of the Order of Santiago, and the seat
of the powerful Dukes of Palmella, as the place successively has been,
has now become what for all future time it will remain, a worthy compeer
with the rest of the proud old Portuguese hill-top fortresses, whose
sturdy walls dismantled though they be, refuse to crumble into dust.
Long may they rear their noble towers intact from man’s destroying hand,
and tell their silent lesson of heroic times to a generation that sorely
needs it.
As we wind down the hill again from the poverty-stricken town beneath
the castle walls, carts of little black grapes meet us winding up the
hill for the belated vintage, and through the open doors of granges we
see the wide shallow tubs being filled with grapes trodden under the
feet of swarthy lads. The air is soft and close as the sun sets red and
orange behind the tree-clad hills, and I pass the hour waiting for the
train at Pinhal Novo under a grove of lofty eucalyptus trees, whilst the
shrill twittering of millions of cicadas, and the languorous perfume in
the air tell me that I have left the strenuous land behind, and am in a
clime where to strive is folly.
The next morning Evora revealed its quaint charms to me, for in the
night when I arrived all seemed gloomy and threatening in its narrow
tortuous ways. Under a glowing blue sky and the fierce sun the place was
charming, and few cities in Portugal, if any, present so many
attractions to the archæologist, the antiquarian, or the simple seeker
after the picturesque. The long irregular space of the principal praça
is lined by ancient arcades like the plazas in Spanish towns, and the
people who flock hither and thither under the covered ways are purely
Andalusian in appearance, the men wearing sheepskin _zamarras_ over
gaudy waistcoats, and upon their heads wide-brimmed velvet _calañeses_
surmount bright-coloured kerchiefs. We have almost lost sight now of the
ox as a draught animal, and big mules, drawing a somewhat light waggon,
are universal.
At unexpected corners and unlikely angles relics of unfathomed antiquity
meet you: a Roman tower built into a sixteenth-century wall, a Moorish
arch, a low-browed doorway that may go back to the time of the Goths,
though the house to which it gives entrance may be comparatively modern,
fragments of palaces and beautiful bits of Manueline are everywhere. For
this city of Evora is an epitome of the historical vicissitudes of
Portugal, and under each successive régime has played a principal part.
Ebora of the Phœnicians and Iberians, Liberalitas Julia of the Romans,
seat of government of the patriot rebel Sertorius, who here defied the
legions of the Cæsars (80 B.C.), Gothic capital of Lusitania, Yebora of
the Moslems for four hundred years, and now chief city of Alemtejo and
the south—the walls and towers of its Latin and Gothic masters are still
clearly traceable, and the mediæval defences still surround the ancient
city.
Its modern Portuguese history dates from its capture from the Moors in
1165 by the freebooter Gerald and his band of desperadoes, who
surrendered the place to King Affonso Henriques in exchange for pardon
and reward; and from that time its archbishops have vied with those of
Braga in the north in wealth and dignity. Infantes of Portugal have
often worn its mitre, and one of them, Cardinal Henry, the last of his
race, became king. It is difficult to realise, looking at this crumbling
old city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, the magnificence of which it
was the scene in times when the population must have been much smaller
than at present. I have before me as I write an account written at the
time by an Italian ecclesiastic in the train of the papal Legate, who
came to Portugal in 1571, of the reception of the embassy by the
Archbishop of Evora (João de Mello), on which occasion lavishness seems
to have outdone itself. The king’s lieutenant, with five hundred
followers and ten thousand armed militia of the province, had met the
Legate some miles outside the city, and at the gates the governor and
magistracy awaited the visitors in full panoply, with several bands of
trumpeters dressed in cloth of gold and scarlet caps, many companies of
halberdiers smartly garbed in various uniforms, black drummers and
cymbal players on velvet-draped mules, the mayor and aldermen and civic
officers with their respective armed escorts, followed by—
“Ten boys dressed in green, dancing a Morris-dance to the sound of
tambourines, and then ten more dressed in yellow with fife and drum,
also dancing, each one carrying an arch which they intertwined and
disentangled with great rapidity and dexterity. Then came ten boys
dressed as pilgrims dancing round a drum, and singing the praises of
the Legate. Then came ten women gipsies dancing their usual dance to
the sound of the drum, and performing dexterous tricks with wands
and scarfs. Following them came ten gipsy men with a drum, and
placing themselves alternately with the women, they made a very
pretty chain. Finally at the gate of the city there were ten boys
dressed in white with branches in their hands, dancing round a
carrying chair of red velvet striped with gold, which was carried by
eight little boys with white kilts, and golden haloes round their
heads. They bowed low to the Legate as the rest did separately when
they danced their measure, and then all together, the dances
continuing all the while before the Legate. The archbishop of Evora
entertained the Legate and prelates sumptuously at his palace, and
the _fidalgos_ splendidly received the rest in their houses. The
apartments were lined with the finest Flanders hangings, and the
floors were covered with green sprigs and rushes, which is the
custom here at weddings and feasts. They usually remain at table two
or three hours. Each person has a separate cup, and when dinner is
half through the tablecloth is changed. The roast meats are placed
upon the table already cut up and covered, and they are wont to put
into these dishes and others, eggs, many spices, and sugar. The
viands are not sumptuous, but are abundant, and they say most of the
dishes are Moorish. They only serve one dish at a time, and this it
is that makes their dinners last so long, whilst they pass the time
chatting, drinking healths, and helping each other to what is
brought to table, they being very gay the while.”[9]
Of this splendour in the Evora of the past little is now apparent to the
visitor, though the modern Barahona palace, of which, and its wealthy
owner, the Eborenses seem very proud, could probably furnish forth a
good twentieth-century equivalent for it; and behind the closed doors
and frowning walls of many ancient noble palaces, now mostly in the
hands of rich landowners and cultivators of the district, are doubtless
luxurious interiors.
From the Hotel Eborense, with its sixteenth-century outside staircase
and trellised balcony-landing, looking upon a quaint, tree-shaded,
little praça, I descend through narrow streets, that remind me of
Toledo—streets that for the most part still bear historic names, though
of course the inevitable “Serpa Pinto” has modernised one of them. Peace
and stillness reign over all, for the sun stings shrewdly; and those who
are obliged to be out linger drowsily under white walls and the frequent
shade of acacias, cork-trees, and vine-trellises. A ruined church and a
vast monastery attached, and now used as a barrack, first attract my
attention, for the edifice shows signs of past magnificence, and the
white, roofless walls and façade against the indigo sky form a beautiful
picture even in their decay. An Augustinian monastery-church, that of
Our Lady of Grace, I am told it is; and over the broken portico I read
that it was built “_sub imp. Divi Joannis III., Patris Patriæ._” This
John III. was the son of the “Fortunate” Manuel, and was one of the
principal builders of Belem; so that we are justified in expecting
something good from him in architecture. The expectation is not
disappointed, for the work is a gem in its uncommon way. It is, indeed,
but little touched with the Manueline taste of the time it was built
(1524); and has more affinity with the fine cloister of John III. at
Thomar, built by the same monarch. It is, in fact, almost the only
specimen I have seen in Portugal of the pure Italian Renaissance in the
style of Michael Angelo. Columns, trophies, shields, and decorative
statuary, all tell the same story of direct Florentine influence, as
apart from the less virile Raphaelesque tendency of the French
Renaissance, which is much more common in Portugal, and, indeed,
elsewhere. Even in the later decorations of this very church of Graça
the graved medallions, festoons, and delicate panel carving in low
relief, show that, even a few years after the church was built, the
French style was preferred.
It is but a step from the Graça to a splendid church which is deservedly
one of the boasts of Evora, and, for skilful solidity of construction,
one of the most extraordinary churches in Portugal, if not in Europe.
Situated in a wide praça, and flanked on one side by shady groves of
cork-trees, stands the great square church of S. Francisco, all that
remains intact of an important Franciscan monastery of immense
antiquity. Adjoining it, until recent times, stood a royal palace, of
which this church and monastery were privileged to form a part; and the
Franciscans of Evora were altogether very lordly monks indeed. Without a
tower, as is usual with monastery churches, the big square building,
with its rows of battlemented roof ridges, looks more like a fortress
than a church; and from the peculiarity of its construction, it is safe
to say that, unless the hand of man or some great natural convulsion
destroys it, the next four centuries will have as little effect upon it
as the last four have had since its construction at the end of the
fifteenth century.
The great west porch extends the whole width of the building in fine
Romanesque-Gothic. The arches of this porch are almost Moorish in form,
with elaborated twisted-cord capitals; and the peculiar arrangement of
supports noticed in the nave at Alcobaça is also seen here, where the
great inner supports of the arches do not reach the ground, but start
suddenly three-quarters up the pillar, producing the effect of the lower
portion having been cut away. The double doorway itself is fine early
Manueline marble, surmounted by the pelican and young, the device of
John II., and the armillary sphere, which was that of his son, King
Manuel the Fortunate. The inside of the church is very striking. The
immense width of nave (42 feet) is unbroken by pillars or aisles, the
side chapels being apparently embedded in the walls and separated from
each other by fine pure Gothic pillars on the wall surface, each pillar
being carried right up to the spring of the roof and its uninterrupted
arch carried over to the corresponding pillar on the other side, the
effect being one of great width and spaciousness, as the length of the
nave to the chancel arch is no less than eighty-eight feet.
The chapels, some of which are very beautiful with carved figures of the
good sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish period, are separated
from the nave by a handsome black and white marble balustrade of the
same period. The transepts are exceptionally majestic, and, like the
nave, of good unadorned Romanesque-Gothic, but the tiled walls and
overloaded altars—the latter still greatly venerated by the
faithful—sadly mar the simple grandeur of their main plan. The chancel
is magnificent, with its elaborately bossed and groined roof, and fine
carved choir-stalls, the work of the Fleming, Oliver of Ghent, who
carved the now plundered stalls for the Templars’ church at Thomar; and
over the noble chancel arch again the devices of John II. and Manuel,
with the arms of Portugal, are carved.
In the chapels, and especially in one of the transepts, are some
paintings of the highest interest; but the light is so bad that it is
impossible to inspect them carefully. They can, however, be seen
sufficiently well—notwithstanding their deplorable condition—to prove
that some of the great mysterious Flemish-Portuguese masters of the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries must have painted them. One
representing St. Anthony preaching to the fishes is perfectly exquisite
in its minute conscientiousness. I was informed that in the bishop’s
palace twelve fine paintings of the same school, attributed to the
brothers Van Eyck, are kept in similar semi-darkness and neglect; but
these I could not see. It is a thousand pities that these art treasures
and others of the same sort which I have mentioned,[10] should not be
rescued and reverently kept.
A peculiarity of this church of St. Francisco, as of the cathedral of
Evora, which I shall mention presently, is that the brown granite blocks
of which it is constructed are clearly marked out with staring white
divisions of cement, either real or simulated. The effect is one of very
questionable taste, but the peculiarity is not a modern innovation, and
the series of white transverse lines traced upon the brown background
has some attraction from its very strangeness. The story goes that this
monastery-church, founded originally in 1224, twice fell down, and when,
after the second disaster late in the fifteenth century, the famous
architect, Martin Lourenço, was commissioned to construct a new church,
he swore that his building, at least, should never share the fate of its
predecessors. Instead of a single main outer wall he built two on each
side of the church, all of similar height, the space between the inner
and outer walls being about five feet or less, and in the lower portion
of this space the side chapels are accommodated. The two walls were tied
together by transverse walls of similar strength and height between the
chapels, and upon each of these transverse walls, which are carried over
the roof to the opposite pair of walls, similarly constructed, the roof
arches rest. The roof is, therefore, divided into six independent
sections, each one supported by its own separate walls and arch. As if
this were not enough, a similar arrangement was made below the ground,
where corresponding sets of transverse walls were carried across to the
other side, and thus the whole nave consisted of six complete and
self-supporting bodies joined together. Even this did not satisfy Martin
Lourenço. He built yet another wall longitudinally along the central
ridge of the roof, and a similar one underground along the same axis
binding together both above and below the transverse sections from end
to end, and increasing the stability of the building by the added
weight. All this it is, of course, impossible to see from the inside,
but from the praça the top battlements of the four long lines of wall
and the roof-ridge are discernible, and the skeleton of the church, so
to speak, can be understood.
A door in the transept leads to an extraordinary chapel of considerable
size (58 feet long by 34 broad), divided into a nave and two aisles, the
whole of the walls, pillars, and ceiling of which are lined or
constructed of skulls and other human bones, arranged in symmetrical
patterns. The remains of many thousands of human beings are contained in
this ghastly chamber, probably constructed by the monks in the
seventeenth century from the contents of ancient crypts and
charnel-houses. The specially venerated figure of our Lord, of which
this was formerly the chapel, has now been transferred to an adjoining
apartment better adapted for modern worship.
Evora stands upon a gentle eminence in the midst of a vast fertile
plain, surrounded by distant mountains, and upon the very summit of the
hill, hidden away between narrow, winding streets leading up from the
main arcaded praça, stands the venerable Sé—the cathedral of the
archbishopric. In a quiet little open space it rears its two solid,
square, granite Romanesque towers of the twelfth century, flanked by the
whitewashed, monastic-looking palace of the archbishop, the two towers
being united by a pure Gothic doorway porch which fills the space
between them. The inner doorway pillars are adorned by early Gothic
statues of the disciples, all so direct and vivid as to put to shame the
affected elaborations of a later time. Slabs in the porch over ancient
sarcophagi in Gothic niches tell that all this has been restored in
recent years; but it is easy to see that here, at least, the restorer
has been reverent and has spoilt nothing.
Like most of the Portuguese cathedrals of the period the first effect
produced by the interior is that of grave massiveness. The narrow nave
and aisles separated by clustered Romanesque pillars, supporting early
Gothic arches, very slightly pointed, and a graceful triforium, have all
the beauty of serene severity.[11] Here again, the clustered pillars
shoot sheer up to the spring of the roof, and carry an arch over to the
other side, and the cimborio or lantern at the intersection of the
transepts and the nave is especially striking. The pillars that support
it on four sides, chancel, nave, and two transepts, are as bold and
aspiring as those of Ely, and seem to cry out aloud in exalted
triumphant devotion. To gaze up at this cimborio with its lovely
groining and its graceful spandrils carried to a prodigious height at
one sweep is a sensation worth coming from England to experience.
High up on the wall of the nave there is roughly sculptured the
life-sized figure of a man, bearing upon his breast a cartouche with the
Gothic letters C. C. E. cut upon it, representing, as local antiquarians
insist, the figure of the twelfth-century architect of the building,
Martin Dominguez, and the coats-of-arms and sepulchral figures in
chapels and on walls are many. One florid Gothic sarcophagus in the
south transept is that of André de Resende, a relative of Garcia de
Resende, the earliest Portuguese historian, whose house, with its
beautiful Manueline windows, still stands in Evora. The chapels on each
side of the cathedral are much disfigured by tawdry decorations and
curly gilt wood carvings, but several have finely painted altar-pieces,
badly lit and uncared for; and one altar, Our Lady of the Angel, against
a pillar in the nave, evidently much venerated, for it is hung all over
with votive offerings, is grotesquely hideous, with its ill-carved, big,
staring doll upon a gilt monstrosity of a stand.
The little choir loft over the west end of the nave, like that at Braga,
is filled with finely carved oaken choir-stalls, and the episcopal
throne, with Scripture scenes in high relief carved upon the panelling,
probably French or Italian work of the Renaissance period. The Eborenses
complain that the French plundered the cathedral of most of its valuable
treasures; but the church plate and vestments are still of very great
richness, and I was much struck by a great jewelled altar cross said to
contain a fragment of the True Cross. The precious stones upon it amount
altogether to 1425, of which 840 are diamonds; and a chalice of enamel
and gold of the sixteenth century is a veritable thing of beauty. The
chancel and high altar of the eighteenth century, though of precious
marbles, are quite out of keeping with the church, and I was glad to
turn away from them and linger in the pretty little ruined cloister of
the monks, of simple devotional Gothic.
But the exterior of the old Sé after all is more picturesque than the
interior. Glimpses of shady little white courtyards, with acacias,
orange-trees, and abundant flowers; corners and gateways of ancient
palaces, with florid and beautiful Manueline doorways; here and there a
Roman tower or arch; narrow white streets, almost alleys, with
supporting arches from side to side across the way; and over all a blue,
blue sky. The bold, long, battlemented ridges of the aisles and nave of
the cathedral, and the pointed round tower of the wonderful cimborio,
with its eight turrets ranged around it, seem to force upon the mind the
dignified antiquity of the place, hardly marred by the modern classicism
of the trivial chancel apse tacked on to it. Outside the north-west
corner of the cathedral is a Roman tower and arch in perfect
preservation, and adjoining it a quaint triangular praça called S.
Miguel, gives entrance to a ruined mediæval palace of the Counts of
Basto. But, take a few steps to the north of this, turn the corner of
the archbishop’s palace and the choir-boys’ college, and there bursts
upon your view, silhouetted against the blue sky, an object that draws
an exclamation of surprise and delight from the most apathetic. In an
open space, almost surrounded by ancient battlemented buildings, there
stands alone in the midst a majestic ruin, which makes even their hoary
antiquity but a thing of yesterday. A Roman temple, almost complete,
with six Corinthian columns at the end of its parallelogram and five out
of the ten that formerly existed on each side. The supporting wall upon
which they stand is of rough stone with well-dressed granite plinths and
corners, all perfect and complete, and standing over eleven feet from
the ground. Upon this rise the beautiful fluted columns of granite, with
bases and carved capitals of white marble, the granite entablature over
the pillars being almost perfect.
At what was the entrance of the temple the remains of a noble flight of
steps, the whole width of the edifice and twelve feet high, exist, and
it requires no effort of the imagination, turning one’s back to the
cathedral, to repeople the space before us with figures of the long
past. Up the steps to the lovely temple under the blue sky mount the
white-clad citizens of imperial Rome. Slaves there are in many, and
half-civilised Iberian tribesmen, still, perhaps, recalcitrant to the
yoke. Trembling, perchance, for the savage vengeance of Diocletian, they
sullenly look upon the sacrifice to the pagan gods, whilst they in their
hearts hold with the strange new creed of the Nazarene; for this temple
must have been raised in the second century after the advent of Christ,
when already the trumpet sound of Christianity had pierced the hearts of
the Celtiberian peoples, and had awakened vague longings for
emancipation from the oppressive unconsoling gods of old.
And I turn back and contemplate the grave old mediæval cathedral close
by, with its modern addition covered with flourishing cardinals hats and
saintly frippery; and I see there, too, the temple of a creed that is
losing its hold upon the hearts and minds of men. For the great
cathedral I have just left is as empty and silent now as the temple to
the unknown God before me. In successive ages surely the same old
yearning is re-born for direct appeal and nearer personal access to God,
free from the trammels and man-made mediations with which all creeds in
time burden the simplicity of their faith. Here in this temple—called of
Diana with no historical warrant—devout souls offered their sacrifice
without misgiving; and in the old Sé hearts have pierced the
church-raised clouds and reached the Throne any day this nine hundred
years. But as the thirst for equal direct appeal for all souls overthrew
the gods of the temple, so the same longing empties the great fane that
has departed from the severe sincerity of the age that founded it; and
thus the gods do come and go, whilst God lives on for ever.
[Illustration: THE “TEMPLE OF DIANA,” EVORA]
It is difficult to shake oneself free from retrospective visions when
standing between this stately ruin and the cathedral that has supplanted
it; but regarded simply as a Roman material relic, the ruin is
remarkable. It is of a similar period and much resembles the Maison
Carrée at Nimes, although as I recollect it appeared much larger. The
temple at Evora is about eighty feet long and nearly fifty feet broad,
the height of the columns being twenty-five feet. Behind the temple
there is a pretty shady public garden, ending in a balustrade where the
hill drops suddenly away to the plain spread out at the foot for miles
to the mountains far away. It was a spot which will linger in my memory
to the last; and I left it sorrowfully.
Opposite the temple is the Archæological Museum of Evora, containing a
large collection of Roman and mediæval relics, found in the city and
rescued from ruined buildings; and in the streets still the remains of
ancient architecture greet the visitor at every turn. Evora, indeed, is
a museum of itself; and it is impossible even to mention a quarter of
the objects in it that would appeal to an antiquarian or archæologist.
Two buildings there are, however, that cannot be entirely passed over.
The so-called palace of Dom Manuel is now used as an agricultural
museum, and some of the upper portion has been rebuilt in semi-Moorish
style; but the lower portion is intact, and is a splendid specimen of
early sixteenth-century stonework. The hall is low but tremendously
massive, the walls being three yards thick, and the octagonal pillars
supporting the simple groined roof in the centre being massive in
proportion.
From the beautiful semi-tropical public garden in which this palace
stands, just beyond the mediæval walls of the city, it is but a step
across the road to the extraordinary hermitage church of St. Braz. A
great plague had assailed Evora in 1479, and here a temporary pesthouse
was established outside the walls. The bishop vowed that if St. Braz
would free the place from the epidemic he would build here a permanent
temple to his honour. When the plague disappeared in the following year,
1480, the bishop kept his word, and the present church has stood here
ever since. The style, in my experience, is unique—Norman-Gothic local
archæologists call it—the building being a long, low, fortress-like
structure, with six pointed turrets along each side, and with
battlemented parapets; the two first turrets supporting a massive
battlemented ante-porch, with plain pointed arches and Byzantine
capitals, the porch being perhaps a third the length of the church, and
of the same height. For a building so late as the end of the fifteenth
century, just on the verge of the period that went crazy over the
exuberant Manueline, this survival of the Norman-Byzantine tradition is
extraordinary.
Evora was all aglow with the glories of the setting sun when I left it.
Long lines of lofty eucalyptus trees stretched as far as the eye reached
along the railway, the long hanging strips of bark and the bright clean
trunks shining a brilliant orange, whilst the drooping foliage was a
bright bronze tipped with gold. Wistaria and clematis hung in wondrous
bunches and masses over walls and in wayside gardens, and no sign of
coming winter marred the beauty of the day. Long rows of trucks and
waggons filled with cork lined the way, and open doors of depôts and
warehouses disclosed overflowing stores of cork in bales ready for
transport; for Evora is the centre of this profitable industry, and
derives from it much of its prosperity. Over all the gold and emerald
after-glow cast its strange glamour; high overhead the deep blue of the
sky was just flecked by purple cloud, and the soft scented air was like
a breath from the Arabian Nights.
Once only in the four hours’ journey through the night to Barreiro and
Lisbon was I aroused from the series of reveries into which the
impressions of these scenes had cast me. It was at a station by the way,
dimly lit with smoky oil lamps. Some bundles of rags topped by nightcaps
lounged about in the gloom of the platform, and across the way a few
white cottages stood out from a background of trees and the hills
beyond, whilst overhead, through the high branches of the eucalyptus,
the stars shone brilliantly. There was nothing special in all this, for
the same picture is presented by most Portuguese and Spanish railway
stations by night during the interminable waits inherent to travelling
by a train whose first interest is the conveyance of merchandise; but
what did strike me as I looked was the name of the place: MONTEMOR.
From here, then, from this humble remote place, came the man, the poet,
Jorge de Montemor—or Montemayor as he came to be called—who set all
cultured Europe running again after the preposterous pastoral romances
of lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses, which had been forgotten since
the eclogues and bucolics of classical Italy had been voted
old-fashioned. From here came the inspiration that made Cervantes write
the “Galatea,” Sidney write the “Arcadia,” and Spenser write the “Fairy
Queen”: these sweet fertile hillsides and vales of southern Portugal
were the scenes which the native poet peopled with the erotic swains of
his Spanish pastoral, “Diana Enamorada.” It was a style utterly foreign
to arid Spain, for there the flocks had to travel in vast multitudes
from desert to desert in search of the scanty pasture; but it caught the
fancy of a people sated with knights-errant, and the pastoral became the
rage. That Spain itself should have given it new birth was incredible,
though Jorge de Montemor wrote in Spanish. The neighbourhood of his
birthplace gives us the key; for here in rich pastures and lush,
half-tropical valleys flocks would need but little tending or
travelling, and here beneath the sunny skies shepherds and their lasses
might as easily as in Italy be imagined piping, singing, and telling
their long-winded love stories to their hearts’ content.
Lisbon was all smiles when I arrived; clear and crisp as if no
rain-clouds and wreaths of wet mist had ever crept up the Tagus and put
her out of temper. But the big steamer was lying in the harbour ready to
sail for England, and though Lisbon tempted me, I could not choose but
go. Forth from the splendid panorama we went, past the great white
fortress high on the hill, the city piled up on its amphitheatre and set
in verdant frames, the majestic square palace of Ajuda looking down upon
Belem and its glorious church, and the sturdy old tower rising from the
water dumbly protesting against its desecration by the gasworks that
surround it.
[Illustration: LISBON FROM THE NORTH.]
The next day at noon I stood and gazed over an indigo sea, from whose
waves the light breeze lifted the white foam and cast it wantonly to
leeward in a shower of diamonds. All along the coast gleaming towns
nestled in the laps of the hills. The mountains of fair Lusitania,
pine-clad to the tops, were slowly receding from my view, covered with a
glory of opal grey and gold, touched here and there where the shadows
fell with tints of darkling green and lavender, whilst the sky over all
melted from a horizon of palest primrose, through turquoise, to an
illimitable vault of sapphire. As the lovely scene faded in the
distance, and the bold jagged rocks of Spain loomed ahead, I turned away
full of thankfulness for the ineffable beauty of the world: but I could
find no word to say more than the quaint outburst of the simple-minded
priest whom the Emperor sent to bring home his Portuguese bride five
centuries ago: “_O Portugallia, O Portugallia, bona regio!_” Fifty-two
hours afterwards I was shrinking from the chill embrace of a November
fog in London.
-----
Footnote 8:
Oswald Crawford, “Portugal: Old and New.”
Footnote 9:
The manuscript quoted is in the Vatican Library, and is reproduced at
length by Herculano in an article called Archeologia Portugeza in
“Opusculos.”
Footnote 10:
There are fourteen of the same sort in the Cathedral of Viseu, one the
famous St. Peter.
Footnote 11:
The whole interior width of the church is only 46 feet, much less than
the nave alone of Toledo, Seville, or York.
X
HINTS TO TRAVELLERS IN PORTUGAL
_How to get there._—By railway the direct route is by the Sud Express,
which leaves Paris twice or thrice a week, according to the season, for
Oporto and Lisbon, _via_ Bordeaux, Medina, and Salamanca, covering the
distance from Paris to Lisbon in thirty-five hours—the cost from Paris,
single fare, first-class, being 222 francs. The journey is naturally
tedious, as well as costly, and for tourists and pleasure-travellers who
are not absolutely averse from sea-voyages the journey by steamer is
much preferable. The Royal Mail steamships from Southampton and the
Pacific Line from Liverpool both have splendid steamers, which run
fortnightly to Lisbon or Oporto (Leixões), the voyage to Lisbon usually
occupying rather under three days, the fare being £8 single and £12
return on both lines. But for those who wish to visit Portugal either
for health or pleasure, and desire to see something of the country under
favourable conditions the steamers of the Booth Steamship Line offer
much greater facilities than either of the previously mentioned
companies, combined with considerable economy. I have travelled to
Portugal by all three lines, and can find little to choose between them;
the newer vessels especially of the Booth Line being in all respects as
comfortable and well served as the others, whilst the fare is lower. It
is, however, chiefly in the organisation of tours through Portugal that
the Booth Line offers the greatest advantages to travellers, the
arrangements being such that most of the difficulties of travelling in a
foreign country are obviated by holders of through tourist tickets. The
system provides for the meeting of travellers on board the steamers and
at railway stations by representatives of the hotels, and advice is sent
forward of the travellers to be expected. The tickets issued include
coupons for hotel expenses, carriages, and all the necessary outlay of
the journey from place to place, and, speaking from my own experience, I
may say that the portions of my journey that were covered by Booth Line
tickets were much easier and less troublesome than those which were
undertaken without them. I found, moreover, that the people at the
hotels were, if anything, more anxious to show attention to travellers
accredited by the Booth Line tickets and forward advice than to visitors
arriving unannounced. Some of the Portuguese tours of the Booth Line
seem extremely moderate in price, including, as they do, hotel expenses
as well as travelling by sea and land, and, so far as my experience
went, everything possible was done for the convenience and pleasure of
ticket-holders.
_Hotels._—We English are not particularly popular on the Continent as
travellers, though we are better liked in Spain and Portugal than
elsewhere. Nor is the reason of our lack of popularity far to seek. We
are apt to assume a demeanour and tone towards foreigners in their own
country which imply a belief in our superiority, and a claim to assert
priority for our own needs and pleasures over those of others. This
attitude is worse than useless in Spain and Portugal, for not only is it
ineffectual, but it turns otherwise polite and civil people against us.
In Portugal an honest desire to please and serve will be encountered by
travellers everywhere, almost without exception. But tourists must repay
this, if they wish to travel smoothly, by cheerfully accepting the best
that the people know how to give them, and must not claim to establish a
new standard for themselves. The hotels in the smaller towns of Portugal
do not exist for tourists. They live almost entirely upon commercial
travellers, and residents, business, professional men, and officials,
who board at the hotel table by contract. A tourist arriving at such an
hotel will be civilly received, but no fatted calf will be killed for
him, nor charged for, and the fare and accommodation considered
satisfactory by the regular customers of the hotel must be good enough
for him or he must go without. Generally speaking these are fair, even
in the small towns, the beds being usually clean, if hard and skimpy of
pillow; and of the dishes offered, some, at all events, will be found
palatable, even to an untravelled Englishman. In any case, it will be
useless to ask for others. These remarks are not applicable either to
the hotels in Oporto and Lisbon, nor to those which specially depend
upon visitors in search of health and pleasure, like those of Bom Jesus,
Caldas, and Bussaco. In Oporto the Grand Hotel is said to be the best,
but it still leaves much to be desired in many respects. The cuisine,
however, is good, though there is a tendency to charge unduly high
prices for extras, such as wine, table water, &c. The same may be said
of the Hotel Central at Lisbon, where the cuisine is excellent and the
rooms generally good, but the extras are charged too high. This hotel
has been greatly improved of late years, and especially since the
reclamation of the foreshore has done away with what formerly was its
principal objection. It is very central for all the tramway routes, and
for a stay of a day or two may be convenient. The noisy, self-assertive
German commercial element is, however, too conspicuous and demonstrative
to be agreeable to most English people travelling for pleasure, and
personally I much prefer the Hotel Braganza, which stands on high ground
overlooking the river, and is quieter than the Central. The Grand Hotel
at Bom Jesus, in its way, is excellent, though purely Portuguese, and
the proprietor, the son of the late Senhor Gomes, whose enterprise made
Bom Jesus what it is, is always anxious to do his best, both here and
with his partner at their hotel at Braga, to be useful and agreeable to
visitors. The Grand Hotel at Bussaco stands in a class by itself, and I
have spoken of it elsewhere.
_Luggage._—As little luggage should be taken as possible, as above 60
lbs. is charged extra on the railways, and a careful traveller will
contrive to get what he really needs in packages that may, at a pinch,
be carried, or at all events lifted, by himself. For clothing, some warm
garments should be worn until Portugal is reached, and again on
embarking, but for use in the country summer clothing, with one light
over-garment, is all that will be needed. The tyranny of the top hat is
almost at an end in Portugal, and this impedimentum may be dispensed
with, though it may be advisable for some men-travellers to take with
them a dinner jacket-suit, as these are frequently worn on board the
larger steamers, and in some of the hotels, such as that at Bussaco.
_Language._—Some acquaintance with the Portuguese language is, of
course, a great advantage, but the knowledge of such words as are
necessary for the purposes of travel may be acquired easily by a few
hours of study. Spanish will be generally understood in the hotels, as
practically all the hotel servants in Portugal are Spanish Gallegos,
though the ability of the latter to reply in Castilian is variable and
limited. Generally a foreigner speaking Spanish will be _understood_ in
Portugal; but a knowledge of Spanish, though enabling him to _read_
Portuguese without difficulty, will not aid him much in understanding it
when spoken, as the pronunciation of the two languages is radically
different. A little French is also not uncommonly spoken and understood
even in the smaller hotels, though very rarely is any English at
command. In Lisbon and Oporto, of course, especially the former, English
is quite common, and is spoken at all the principal hotels.
_Wine._—In all the smaller hotels the wine is served on the table
without charge, as in Spain; and as it is, in most cases, the produce of
the neighbourhood, it is quite pure and genuine, and in some places
excellent. Where it is not liked other wines can always be ordered.
Collares, white and red, grown at the foot of the Cintra mountain, is
always a safe wine to order, and is very moderate in price, usually
about 250 reis per bottle (1_s._ 1_d._). At Lisbon Termo is also a good
wine at very reasonable price; whilst in the north of Portugal Bucellas
may be recommended, and Mirandella is a good cheap little wine. The new
or green wine, Vinho Verde, is much liked by the Portuguese in the hot
autumn weather, as it is light and slightly acidulous; but it is not
much adapted to English tastes. The country wine at Bussaco is
excellent—as it is at Cintra, Ourem, and other places. As I have
mentioned elsewhere the prices charged in the hotels named in Lisbon and
Oporto for ordinary Portuguese wines appear to be excessive in
comparison with the price of these wines in other places. The prices of
foreign wines are everywhere well-nigh prohibitive.
_Water._—The traveller will be wise to regard with suspicion the water
in most places, and to insist upon having some of the excellent bottled
table waters from the springs which abound in Portugal. One of the best
and safest of these waters is Sameiro, drawn from the mountain adjoining
Bom Jesus. It is in character almost identical with Apollinaris.
Lombadas is another pure neutral water from Madeira, somewhat resembling
St. Galmier; whilst Monte Banzão, Pedras Salgadas, and Vidago are
digestive waters similar to those of Vichy. The medicinal waters of
Luzo, just below Bussaco, are like those of Carlsbad, Kissingen, and
Vittel, powerfully digestive and rather laxative. It will be unnecessary
to order any such waters—unless for purely medicinal purposes—at Bom
Jesus, Bussaco, or Cintra, the ordinary drinking water of these places
being excellent.
_Travelling in Portugal._—The roads are usually very good, and open
carriages with one or two horses can be hired in any town at an
extremely reasonable price, four or five milreis a day being ample for a
carriage and two horses, which for the price will cover some
five-and-twenty miles or more according to circumstances. In railway
travelling it must be borne in mind that the trains on Portuguese
railways for the most part run primarily to convey goods and
merchandise, and that passengers must be content to wait whilst the
goods are being loaded or discharged. The trains, except an express on
the main line, are very slow. The carriages are, however, usually
comfortable. The absence of vociferation in Portugal, which in a general
way is a boon, is somewhat a drawback in railway travelling, as the
names of the stations are not called out, and as they are often painted
inconspicuously, and are not visible from the carriage windows, it is
necessary for strangers to be on the alert in order not to pass their
station. The best way is to provide oneself with a railway guide and
count the stations as they are passed. There is, however, usually a wait
at the stations long enough for inquiries to be made, as things are
rarely done in a hurry in Portugal.
THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
ERRATUM
Page 44. From line 2 read as follows: ‘whilst fighting valiantly by
the side of the Master of Avis at the ever-memorable battle of
Aljubarrota, that gave the regal crown of Portugal to the
illegitimate scion of the House of Burgundy.’
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Made the correction mentioned in the ERRATUM.
2. Silently corrected typographical errors.
3. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
5. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Through Portugal" ***
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