After the revolution in Portugal, which led to the exile of King Manuel
and the overthrow of the Royalist _régime_ in favor of a republic under
the presidency of Affonso Costa, I was asked by Lord Lytton to go out
and report upon the condition of the prisons in that country.
They were packed with Royalists and with all people, of whatever
political opinion, who disapproved of the principles and methods of
the new government, including large numbers of the poorest classes.
Sinister stories had leaked through about the frightful conditions
of these political prisoners, and public opinion in England was
stirred when the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, who had visited Portugal,
published some sensational statements. I suspected that the dear old
Duchess of Bedford was influenced a good deal by sentiment for the
Royalist cause, although when I saw her she was emphatic in saying that
she had never met King Manuel and was moved to take action for purely
humanitarian reasons. Lord Lytton, a man of liberal and idealistic
mind, was certainly not actuated by the desire for Royalist or
anti-republican propaganda, and in asking me to make an investigation
on behalf of a committee, he made it clear that he wished to have the
true facts, uncolored by prejudice. On that condition I agreed to go.
I found, before going, that the moving spirit behind the accusations
of cruelty appearing in the British press against the new rulers of
Portugal, and behind the Duchess of Bedford, was a little lady named
Miss Tenison.
“She has all the facts in her hands,” said Lord Lytton, “and you ought
to have a talk with her. You will have to make a long journey.”
I made the journey to a remote part of England, where I found a very
ancient little house, unchanged by any passing of time through many
centuries. I was shown into a low, long room, haunted, I am certain,
by the ghosts of Tudor and Stuart England. Two elderly ladies, who
introduced themselves as Miss Tenison’s aunts, sat on each side of
a mediæval fireplace. Presently Miss Tenison appeared and for more
than a moment--for all the time of my visit--I imagined myself in
the presence of one of those ghosts which should properly inhabit a
house like this--a young lady in an old-fashioned dress, so delicate,
so transparent, so spiritual, that I had the greatest difficulty in
accepting her as an inhabitant of this coarse and material world.
She was entirely absorbed in the Portuguese affairs, and her aunts
told me that she dreamed at night about the agony of the Royalist
prisoners in their dungeons. She was in correspondence with many
Royalist refugees, and with those still hiding in Portugal, from whom
she obtained the latest news. She had a romantic admiration--though
not knowing him personally--for a certain count, who had led a
counter-revolution and had been captured sword in hand, before being
flung into prison and treated as a common convict. She hated Affonso
Costa, the President, as Russian _émigrés_ afterward hated Lenin.
It was from this little lady, ethereal in appearance but as passionate
in purpose as Lytton Strachey’s Florence Nightingale, that I gained
my first insight into the Portuguese situation and my letters of
introduction to some great people still hiding in Lisbon. I left her
house with the sense of having begun a romantic adventure, with this
remarkable little lady in the first chapter.
The second chapter of my adventure was fantastic, for I found myself
in the wilds of Spain, suddenly responsible for a German wife and six
bandboxes filled with the lingerie of six Brazilian beauties.... It
sounds incredible, but it is true.
It happened that a tunnel fell down on the engine of a train
immediately ahead of the one in which I was traveling through northern
Spain on the way to Lisbon. This brought our train to a standstill in
a rather desolate spot. There was vast excitement, and a babble of
tongues. Most of the travelers were on their way to Lisbon, to catch
a boat to Brazil which was leaving the following day. Among them was
a stout little German, with a large, plump, and sad-looking wife.
Neither of them could speak anything but German, but the husband,
who was almost apoplectic with rage and anxiety, seemed to divine by
intuition that a local train which halted at the wayside station might
go somewhere in the direction of Lisbon. Entirely forgetting his wife,
or thinking, perhaps that she would follow him whithersoever he went,
he sprang on to the footboard of the local train, and scrambled in
just as it steamed away. So there I was with the German wife, to whom
I had previously addressed a few words, and who now appealed to me for
advice, protection, and something to eat. The poor lady was hungry, and
her husband had the money. Highly embarrassed, because I knew not how
long I should be in the company of this German _Hausfrau_, I provided
her with some food at the buffet, and endeavored to get some news of
the best manner to reach Lisbon.
Then the second blow befell me. Six extraordinarily beautiful Brazilian
girls, with large black eyes and flashing teeth, did exactly the same
thing as the German gentleman. That is to say, they hurled themselves
into a local train just as it was starting away. Six heads screamed
out of the carriage window. They were screaming at me. It was a wild
appeal that I should rescue the six enormous bandboxes which they had
left on the platform, and bring them to a certain hotel in Lisbon. So
there I was, with the bandboxes and the German wife.
I duly arrived in Lisbon, after a nightmare journey, with all my
responsibilities, and handed over the bandboxes to the Brazilian
beauties, and the German wife to the German husband. I obtained no
gratitude whatever in either case.
In Lisbon I plunged straightway into a life of romance and tragedy,
which was strangely reminiscent of all I had read about the French
Revolution.
With my letters of introduction I called at several great houses of
the old nobility, which seemed to be utterly abandoned. At least, no
lights showed through the shutters, and they were all bolted and barred
within their courtyards. At one house, in answer to my knocking, and
the ringing of a bell which jangled loudly, there came at last an
answer. A little door in the wall was cautiously opened on a chain by
an old man servant with a lantern. Upon mentioning my name, and the
word “Inglese,” which I hoped was good Portuguese for “English,” the
door was opened wider, and the man made a sign for me to follow him. I
was led into a great mansion, perfectly dark, except for the lantern
ahead, and I went up a marble staircase, and then into a large salon,
furnished in the style of the French Empire, with portraits on the
walls of eighteenth century ladies and gentlemen in silks and brocades.
In such a room as this Marie Antoinette might have sat with her ladies
before the women of the markets marched to Versailles.
The old man servant touched a button, and flooded the room with the
light of the electric candelabra, making sure first that no gleam of it
would get through the heavy curtains over the shutters. Then he left
the room, and soon afterward appeared an old lady in a black dress
with a white shawl over her shoulders.
She was the aunt of one of the great families of Portugal, some of
whom had escaped to England, and others of whom were in the prisons of
Lisbon. She spoke harshly, in French, of the base and corrupt character
of the new Portuguese Republic, and of the cruelties and indignities
suffered by the political prisoners. She lived quite alone in the old
mansion, not caring to go out because of the insults she would receive
in the streets, but otherwise safe. So far, at least, Affonso Costa and
his police had not threatened her liberty or her possessions.
In another house in the outskirts of Lisbon, with a beautiful garden,
where the warm air was filled with the scent of flowers in masses of
rich color, I met another lady of the old _régime_, a beautiful girl,
living solitary, also, and agonized because of the imprisonment and ill
treatment of her relatives. She implored me to use what influence I
had, as an English journalist, to rescue those unhappy men.
It was my mission to get into the prisons, and see what were the real
conditions of captivity there. After frequent visits to the Foreign
Office, I received permits to visit the Penetenciaria and the Limoero,
in which most of the political prisoners were confined. The guide who
went with me told me that the Republic had nothing to hide, and that
I could see everything and talk as much as I liked with the captives.
He was certain that I should find the Penetenciaria, at least, a model
prison. The other was “rather old-fashioned.”
On the whole, I preferred the old-fashioned prison. The “model prison”
seemed to me specially and beautifully designed to drive men mad
and kill their humanity. It was spotlessly clean and provided with
excellent sanitary arrangements, washhouses, bakehouses, kitchens, and
workshops, but the whole system of the prison was ingeniously and, to
my mind, devilishly constructed to keep each prisoner, except a favored
few, in perpetual solitude. Once put into one of those little white
cells, down one of the long white corridors, and a man would never see
or talk with a fellow mortal again until his term of penal servitude
expired, never again, if he had a life sentence. There were men in
that place who had already served ten, or fifteen, or twenty years.
Through a hole in the door they received their food or their day’s
ration of work. To exercise them, a trap was opened at the end of their
cell, so that they could walk out, like a captive beast, into a little
strip of courtyard, divided by high walls from the strip on either
side. Up above was the open sky, and the sunlight fell aslant upon the
white-coated walls, but it was a cramped and barren space for a man’s
body and soul. Perhaps it was no worse than other European prisons,
possibly much better. But it struck me with a cold horror, because of
all those living beings isolated, in lifelong silence, entombed.
One corridor was set apart for the political prisoners, and when I
saw them they were allowed to have their cell doors open, and to
converse with each other, for a short time. Otherwise they, too,
were locked in their separate cells. I spoke with a number of them,
all men of high-sounding names and titles, but a melancholy, pale,
miserable-looking crowd, whose spirits seemed quite broken by their
long captivity. They were mostly young men, and among them was the
Portuguese count who had led the counter-revolutionary rising and
had been captured by the Republican troops. They had one grievance,
of which they all spoke passionately. The Republic might have shot
them as Royalists. At least that would have enabled them to die like
gentlemen. But it had treated them like common criminals and convicts,
and had even forced them to wear convict garb, to have their heads
shaved, and to wear the hood with only eyeholes which was part of
the dress--horrible in its cruelty--of all long-sentence men. My
conversation with most of them was in French, but two young brothers
of very noble family spoke excellent English. They seemed to regard my
visit as a kind of miracle, and it revived hopes in them which made me
pitiful, because I had no great expectation of gaining their release.
When I went away from them, they returned to their cells, and the steel
doors clanked upon them.
In the prison called the Limoero there were different conditions of
life, enormously preferable, I thought, to the Penetenciaria, in spite
of its filth and dirt and disease. There was no solitary confinement
here, but crowds of men and women living in a hugger-mugger way, with
free intercourse between their rooms. They were allowed to receive
visitors at stated times, and when I was there the wives of many of the
prisoners had come, with their babies and parcels of food. The babies
were crawling on the floor, the food was being cooked on oil stoves,
and there was a fearful stench of unwashed bodies, fried onions,
tobacco smoke, and other strong odors.
The Fleet Prison, as described by Charles Dickens, must have closely
resembled this place, in its general system of accommodation and social
life, and I saw in many faces there the misery, the haggard lines,
the despair, which he depicts among those who had been long suffering
inmates of that debtors’ jail.
Many of the men here were of the aristocratic and intellectual classes,
among them editors and correspondents of Royalist papers, poets,
novelists, and university professors. They had not been charged with
any crime, they had not been brought up for trial, they had no idea
how long their captivity would last--a few months, a few years, or
until death released them. But at least in equal proportion to the
Royalists--I think in a majority--were men of poorer class--mechanics,
printers, tailors, shoemakers, artisans of all kinds. They, too, were
political prisoners, having been Socialists, Syndicalists, and other
types of advanced democrats.
Some of the men told me that they had no idea whatever why they were
lodged in Limoero. They had been arrested without charge, flung into
prison without trial, and kept there without hope of release. Quite a
number of them had been imprisoned by the Royalist _régime_ in the time
of the monarchy, and the Republic had not troubled about them. They
were just left to rot, year after year.
The political prisoners were allowed to receive food from their
relatives, but many had no relatives able to provide them, and they had
nothing but prison fare, which was hardly enough for life. They begged
through the bars of the windows to passers-by, as I saw them, with
their hands thrust through the iron gratings. Owing to the overcrowding
and insanitary conditions, disease was rife, and prison fever ravaged
them.
I had been told of one prison called Forte Mon Santo, on a hill some
distance away from Lisbon, and as I could get no official pass to visit
it, I decided to try and gain admission by other means. In the Black
Horse Square at Lisbon, I hired a motor car from one of the street
drivers, and understood from him that he was the champion automobilist
of Lisbon. Certainly he drove like a madman and a brute. He killed
three dogs on the way, not by accident, but by deliberately steering
into them, and laughed uproariously at each kill. He drove through
crowded streets with a screeching horn, and in the open countryside
went like a fiend, up hill and down dale. I was surprised to find
myself alive on the top of the hill which, as I knew by private
directions, was the prison of Mon Santo.
But I could see no prison. No building of any kind stood on the lonely
hilltop or on its slopes, which were bare of all but grass. All I could
see was a circle of queer-looking objects like large metal mushrooms.
Upon close inspection I saw that these things were ventilators for a
subterranean building, and walking further, I came to a steep, circular
ditch, into which some steps were cut. At the top of the steps stood a
sentry with a rifle slung over his arm.
I approached this man, who regarded me suspiciously and unslung his
rifle, but the glint of a gold sovereign--we used to have such things
before the era of paper money--persuaded him that I was an agreeable
fellow. My brutal motor driver, who spoke a bit of French, so that he
understood my purpose, explained to the sentry that I was an English
tourist who would like to see his excellent prison. After some debate,
and a roving eye over the surrounding landscape, the sentry nodded,
and made a sign for me to go down the steps, with the motor driver. I
noticed that during all the time of my visit he walked behind us, with
his rifle handy, lest there should be any trick on our part.
It was the most awful dungeon I have ever seen, apart from ancient dens
disused since mediæval times. Completely underground, its dungeons
struck me with a chill even in the short time I was there. Its walls
oozed with water. No light came direct through the narrow bars of the
cells in which poor wretches lay like beasts, but only indirectly
from the surrounding ditch, so that they were almost in darkness. In
the center of this underground fort was a cavern in complete darkness
except, perhaps, for some faint gleam through a grating about two feet
square, high up in the outer wall. It was just a hole in the rock,
and inside were five men with heavy chains about them. Once a day the
jailers pushed some loaves of bread through the grating. What went on
in that dark dungeon, and in the darkness of those men’s souls, it is
better, perhaps, not to imagine. The cruelty of men is not yet killed,
and there are still, in the hearts of men and of nations, lurking
devils worse than the wildness and ferocity of beasts....
I went to other prisons in Lisbon and Oporto. They were not like that,
but, generally, like the Limoero, unclean, squalid, horrible, but with
human companionship, which alleviates all suffering, if there is any
kind of comradeship. In these cases one could not charge the Portuguese
Republic with inflicting bodily suffering upon their prisoners in any
deliberate way. The indictment against them was that, under the fair
name of liberty, they had overthrown the monarchical _régime_ and
substituted a new tyranny. For, among all the people I met, there were
few who had been charged with any offense against the law, or given the
right of defense in any trial.
A queer fellow came into my life during this time in Portugal, whose
behavior still baffles me by its mystery. The episode is like the
beginning of a sensational detective story, without any clue to its
solution.
The first night of my arrival in Lisbon I dined alone in the hotel,
and soon remarked a handsome, well-dressed, English-looking man who
kept glancing in my direction. After dinner he came up to me and said:
“Excuse me, but isn’t your name Jones? I think I had the pleasure of
meeting you in London, some months ago?”
“A mistake,” I said, civilly; “my name is not Jones.”
He looked disappointed when I showed no signs of desiring further
conversation, and went away. But presently, after studying the hotel
list (as I have no doubt), he returned, and with a very genial smile,
said: “Oh, forgive me! I made a mistake in the name. You are Philip
Gibbs, I believe. I met you at the Savage Club.”
I knew he was lying, for I seldom forget a face, and not such a face
as his, very powerful and arresting, but as I was bored with my own
company, I gave him a little rope. We took coffee together, and talked
about the affairs of the world and the countries in which we had
wandered. He had been to South America and other countries, and told
me some very amusing yarns. I was much taken with this man, who was
certainly well-educated and a brilliant talker.
The mystery appeared when he tapped at my door next morning, and said
he desired to ask a favor.
I expected him to borrow money, but what he wanted was less expensive,
and more extraordinary. He wanted me to go to the seashore near Cascaes
and bring back to him a handful of pebbles. As he could not pay for
such a service from a man in my position, he would gladly make me a
friendly gift of anything that might strike my fancy in the shops of
Lisbon.
No questioning of mine as to the meaning of this extraordinary
request brought any explanation. He regretted that he could not
enlighten me as to his reason, but for him the matter was of vital
importance. I utterly refused to fetch the pebbles or to go anywhere
near the seashore. It flashed across my mind that this very handsome,
English-looking gentleman might be a police spy set to dog my
footsteps. He certainly dogged me all right. I could hardly get away
from him, wherever I went, and he pressed me to take wine with him
at the open-air cafés. One night when we sat together in Black Horse
Square, he became uneasy, and kept glancing over his shoulder at the
crowded tables. Presently he rose, and said, “Let us take a stroll.” I
agreed, and was quickly aware that we were being followed by three men.