Portugal of the Portuguese
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ITALY OF THE ITALIANS
BY HELEN ZIMMERN
FRANCE OF THE FRENCH
BY E. HARRISON BARKER
SPAIN OF THE SPANISH
BY MRS. VILLIERS-WARDELL
SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS
BY FRANK WEBB
GERMANY OF THE GERMANS
BY ROBERT M. BERRY
TURKEY OF THE OTTOMANS
BY LUCY M. J. GARNETT
BELGIUM OF THE BELGIANS
BY DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER
SERVIA OF THE SERVIANS
BY CHEDO MIJATOVICH
JAPAN OF THE JAPANESE
BY PROF. J. H. LONGFORD
AUSTRIA OF THE AUSTRIANS, AND HUNGARY OF THE HUNGARIANS
BY L. KELLNER, PAULA ARNOLD, AND ARTHUR L. DELISLE
RUSSIA OF THE RUSSIANS
BY H. W. WILLIAMS, PH.D.
AMERICA OF THE AMERICANS
BY HENRY C. SHELLEY
GREECE OF THE HELLENES
BY LUCY M. J. GARNETT
HOLLAND OF THE DUTCH
BY DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER
SCANDINAVIA OF THE SCANDINAVIANS
BY H. GODDARD LEACH
EGYPT OF THE EGYPTIANS
BY W. LAWRENCE BALLS
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW, LISBON]
Portugal of the Portuguese
By
Aubrey F. G. Bell
AUTHOR OF “THE MAGIC OF SPAIN,” “IN PORTUGAL,” ETC
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
597-599 Fifth Avenue
1917
PRINTED BY
SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, LTD., LONDON, ENGLAND
PREFACE
Since the murder of King Carlos and of the Crown Prince Luis Felipe on
the 1st of February, 1908, Portugal has been in the limelight. A swarm of
writers have descended like locusts on the land, and the printing-presses
of Europe have groaned beneath the mass of matter concerning this
unfortunate country. Yet most often the matter has been necessarily
superficial, and a few outstanding features, a murder, a revolution,
the methods of a secret society, have laid hold on public attention.
The Portuguese is, therefore, apt to be regarded less as a poetical
dreamer, heir of the glories of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
than as a political schemer, with a pistol in one pocket and a bomb in
another. And since in the matter of political disturbances the end is not
yet, and a strident minority is likely for some years to come to impose
itself in Portugal and attempt to impose itself on public opinion abroad,
crying out that all criticism of it springs from hatred of Portugal,
it is of importance to distinguish between this minority of misguided,
unscrupulous and half-educated persons, and the true people of Portugal.
We do not usually mistake a little yellow froth on the surface for the
sea, and only the ignorant will saddle the Portuguese people with the
words and deeds of a political party with which it has no connection
whatever, not even that of the vote. Great Britain has everything to
gain from a better understanding of a people with which she has so many
dealings, and which is in itself so extraordinarily interesting and
attractive. Prejudices rather easily formed against it vanish in the
light of better knowledge. In intellectual matters at present Portugal
turns almost exclusively to France, but there is no reason why the
business connection between Great Britain and Portugal should not lead
to closer ties. A needful preliminary is that Englishmen should be at
pains to learn something more of her ancient ally than is manifested in
its politics, often as representative of Heligoland or Honolulu as of
Portugal.
AUBREY F. G. BELL.
S. JOÃO DO ESTORIL, _June, 1915_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE v
I. CHARACTERISTICS 1
II. POPULATION AND EMPLOYMENT 25
III. LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 41
IV. RELIGION AND EDUCATION 61
V. A LAND OF FLOWERS 76
VI. CONVENTS AND PALACES 88
VII. HISTORICAL SURVEY 107
VIII. LITERATURE 133
IX. PLAYS—GIL VICENTE 152
X. POLITICS AND THE PRESS 164
XI. FROM MONARCHY TO REPUBLIC 183
XII. RECENT EVENTS 199
XIII. GREAT BRITAIN AND PORTUGAL 216
XIV. PORTUGAL OF THE FUTURE 229
GLOSSARY 259
INDEX 263
MAP _end of book_
ILLUSTRATIONS
GENERAL VIEW, LISBON _Frontispiece_
ROMAN TEMPLE, EVORA _facing page_ 2
WOMEN AT WORK ” 8
A FARMHOUSE, MINHO ” 30
A FARMER ” 32
THE VINTAGE, DOURO ” 38
TERREIRO DO PAÇO, LISBON ” 42
BOM JESUS DO MONTE, BRAGA ” 50
A SHEPHERD ” 60
CONVENTO DE JERONYMOS, BELEM ” 88
CASTELLO DA PENA, CINTRA ” 90
CLOISTER OF D. DINIZ, ALCOBAÇA ” 92
TOMB OF D. INÉS DE CASTRO, ALCOBAÇA ” 94
GENERAL VIEW, OPORTO ” 102
THE CONVENT, MAFRA ” 128
THE CHURCH, BATALHA ” 130
THE CATHEDRAL, BRAGA ” 140
GENERAL VIEW, COIMBRA ” 146
THE WASHING-PLACE, COIMBRA ” 164
CASTLE OF ALMOUROL ” 170
GENERAL VIEW, VILLA REAL ” 174
TOWER OF CASTLE, BEJA ” 178
RUINED CASTLE, LEIRIA ” 182
DOORWAY OF THE UNFINISHED CHAPELS, BATALHA ” 208
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH, BATALHA ” 214
CONVENTO DE CHRISTO, THOMAR ” 216
GENERAL VIEW, FARO ” 232
A SQUARE, LISBON ” 236
CEDAR AVENUE, BUSSACO ” 240
A STUDY IN COSTUMES ” 248
Portugal of the Portuguese
CHAPTER I
CHARACTERISTICS
[Sidenote: The People.]
Too many judge the character of the Portuguese from a hasty study of what
Beckford nearly a century ago impolitely called the Lisbon _canaille_.
The life of the Portuguese in a political and literary (written
literature) sense is concentrated in Lisbon, but outside this narrow
circle exists the Portuguese people proper, to the foreigner almost an
unknown quantity, taking no concern for the latest political party formed
or the latest volume of second-rate verse published, yet constituting in
its strength or weakness the political future of Portugal and containing
within itself a whole literature of prose and poetry, legend and song.
In some measure those who know the Irish peasant know the Portuguese,
and those who know the Irish will realise from this comparison what a
delightful mine of interest is here to hand. Indeed, if you take the
Irish peasantry, add hot sun, a spice of the East, and perhaps something
of the negro’s vanity and slight hold on life, you have the Portuguese.
The quick intelligence, the dreaming melancholy, the slyness and love of
intrigue, the wit and imagination are here, and the power of expression
in words. Generosity, too, and habits as unpractical as could be desired.
[Sidenote: Patriotism.]
The politician in Portugal who looks at the statistics, and, seeing that
75 per cent. of this people are illiterate, shrugs his shoulders—_non
ragionar di lor_—makes a great mistake, for it is here that those who
have considered the political intrigues of the capital and despaired of
Portugal’s present find a new hope: a population hard-working, vigorous,
and intelligent, increasing fairly rapidly, content with little,
not willingly learning to read or write, but in its own way eagerly
patriotic, each loving Portugal as represented by his own town or village
or farm, though he may not have grasped the latest shades of humanity,
fraternity, or irreligion.
A minha casa, a minha casinha,
Não ha casa come a minha.
From the earliest times the inhabitants of this western strip of the
Iberian peninsula had shown themselves capable of heroic deeds and at the
same time impressionable, open to new ideas and foreign influences, more
ready to co-operate with the French and English than with their inland
neighbours the Castilians. Had the characters of these two neighbours
been less incompatible, Portugal might have come to recognise the
hegemony of Castille, as sooner or later did all the other regions of
the Peninsula, some of which were separated from the central plains by
natural barriers more difficult than was Portugal. But to the Portuguese
the Castilian too often was and is a stranger and an enemy.
[Sidenote: King Manoel the Fortunate.]
As the power of Castille grew, Portugal called in a new world to redress
the balance of the old. Unfortunately in reaching out for this support
Portugal fatally overstrained her strength, and the brilliant reign
(1495-1521) of King Manoel I (“that great, fortunate, and only Emanuel
of Portugall,” Sir Peter Wyche called him) resembled the Cid’s famous
coffers, all crimson and golden without, but containing more sand than
gold. Those who look at the bedraggled coffer hanging in Burgos Cathedral
wonder how it can have deceived the two Jews, and those who see the
present somewhat penniless and forlorn condition of Portugal are apt to
forget that it was once a great world-empire. Before Portugal became that
we have glimpses of the Portuguese as a contented people, fond of song
and dance, a pipe and drum at every door, living rustic, idyllic lives as
cultivators of the soil in a “land abounding in meat and drink, _terra
de vyandas e beveres muyto avondosa_” (fifteenth century).
[Illustration: ROMAN TEMPLE, EVORA
[_See p. 105_]
[Sidenote: Discovery of the Indies.]
But the discoveries and conquests followed, the magic of the sea, the
mystery of the East wove a spell over the imagination of the Portuguese,
the country was drained of men, devastated by plague and famine. Lisbon
and the East absorbed energies hitherto given to the soil. Portugal,
moreover, was doomed to share Spain’s losses during the period 1580-1640,
and later was ravaged by frequent civil wars. In fine one might expect to
find a dwindling miserable population, dying out from sheer exhaustion.
But this would be very far from being a true statement of the case.
Portugal is only lying fallow. There are reserves of health and energy,
especially in the north, in the sturdy peasants of Beira and Minho.
Politically it is only a potential strength, and the real people of
Portugal has never yet come into its own, although it was on the point of
doing so at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It was not allowed
to develop naturally after the first third of that great century. Even
to-day there are said to be certain politicians who would dress it up
in a suit of ready-made clothes which has caught their fancy in some
shop window when they were on a visit to Paris. The Portuguese people
deserves better than that, and if it can be given a national government,
and a national policy and ideals, it may yet surprise Europe. It is a
question of encouraging the indigenous side of Portuguese civilisation—in
language, literature, dress, legislation, drama, cookery, in
everything—which since the sixteenth century has been set aside for the
imported foreign-erudite; to develop as it were the Saxon element at the
expense of the Norman. The people have succeeded in keeping many of their
old and excellent customs—but by the skin of their teeth now—as they have
their own names for many of the Lisbon streets and their own words side
by side with those of learned origin.
[Sidenote: Foreign Ingredients.]
But in order to become acquainted with the Portuguese people it is
necessary to go far afield, to the remote villages of Alemtejo or Minho
or of the Serra da Estrella, and, the means of doing this being often
primitive or non-existent, the traveller contents himself with swift
generalities derived from observation of the inhabitants of the towns,
precisely, that is, where the Portuguese most displays his weaknesses
and where the population is most mixed. Reclus considered the Portuguese
“_très fortement croisés de nègres_,” and other foreign observers have
denied the existence of a Portuguese nationality, dismissing it as a
mere _pot pourri_ of many races. If this is an exaggeration, it cannot
be denied that the many peaceful or warrior invaders—Phoenician, Celt,
Carthaginian, Greek or Goth—attracted by this lovely land from age to
age, and the numerous slaves imported from Portugal’s overseas dominions
have contributed to form a mixed population, especially in and around
Lisbon. At Lisbon many persons evidently have negro blood in their veins,
and others are of Jewish descent. Sobieski, the Polish traveller, wrote
in 1611: “There are in Portugal very many Jews, so many that various
houses have a Jewish origin. Although they have burnt and expelled them,
many live hidden among the Portuguese.” This was 114 years after the
expulsion of the Jews from Portugal.
[Sidenote: The Provinces.]
But Lisbon is a country in itself, divorced in many ways from the rest of
Portugal. The Portuguese provinces present many differences of character
among their inhabitants, from the lively chattering _algarvio_ in the
south to the duller, quietly poetical and dreamy _minhoto_ on the border
of Galicia, unfairly described by Oliveira Martins as “without elevation
of spirit, dense, the Dutch of Portugal,” the fervent, hardy _beirão_
mountaineer or the stolid farmers of Alemtejo.
Taking the character of the Portuguese as a whole, its main feature seems
to be vagueness. Their minds are not inductive.
[Sidenote: General Character.]
They think in generalities and abstractions, and their deductions often
have a closer relation to these than to the facts of life. No doubt the
dreamy climate (King Duarte in the fifteenth century noted the effect of
climate on character), the misty blue skies and wide sea horizons have
exercised as much influence on the character of the inhabitants as the
many foreign ingredients, the uncertain land boundaries, the fear of
attacks from the sea, the indefinite dangers of earthquake and plague.
Everywhere in Portugal is this lack of precision evident, in the fondness
for abstractions and unsubstantial grandeur, the counting in _réis_ (most
transactions continue to be made in _réis_, which though apparently
clumsy is really simpler than the new system of _centavos_—10 _réis_—and
_escudos_—1,000 _réis_), the love of the lottery, the perpetual tendency
to exaggerate, the inexhaustible and vague good-nature which some more
direct minds find so trying, the facile criticism which encourages the
existence of too many poets, politicians and other nonentities, the
absence of discipline, the belief in the efficacy of words and rhetoric,
the idle expectation of better things, the _sebastianismo_ which looks
for the return of the ill-fated king—a later Arthur—“on a morning of
thick mist”—the universal cult of undefined melancholy and _saudade_. The
French saying, “_Les portugais sont toujours gais_,” should be rendered—
Nos labios chistes,
No coração tristes.
(On their lips a smile,
Sad at heart the while.)
[Sidenote: “Saudade.”]
None but a nation with a beautiful land and delightful climate could
be so sad. Less favoured peoples are fain to be content with what they
can get, and, in their necessary efforts to obtain something, often
obtain much. The Portuguese, living in a land where it is possible to
support life on almost nothing, has little incentive to effort. Moreover,
the Portuguese turns his imagination to the ideal, and comparing it
with the real, is saddened. His pessimism is essentially that of the
idealist: disillusion. He wishes for all or nothing, aims at a million
and misses an unit, whereas men more practical with less intelligence
it may be, and certainly less imagination, set themselves to the work
before them, and prosper. But it must not be thought that, because the
Portuguese cultivates a gentle melancholy, he has a poor heart that
never rejoices. His sadness is often as superficial as the Englishman’s
impassivity. He is, generally, far too intelligent to find life ever
dull, or if he yields to _ennui_ it is of the gorgeous philosophical kind
which takes a subtle pleasure in saying that “Vanity, vanity, all is
vanity.” As a rule, his sense of ridicule on the one hand and his nervous
self-consciousness on the other make of life for him a perpetual feast
of little comedies and tragedies. But in practical matters, failing to
realise his ideal, he does not attempt to idealise the real, but views it
with laughter or disdain. The ideal is usually vague and set apart from
practical life.
[Sidenote: Humanity.]
Thus the humanity of the Portuguese is real, they have no love of
violence or bloodshed, but it is a state of mind rather than a course
of action, and can be curiously combined with cruel persecutions in
practice. The expulsion of the Jews came to Portugal from Spain, and
it is difficult to believe that the Portuguese people ever viewed the
Inquisition fires in the _Rocio_ with anything but horror. But Vasco da
Gama, Affonso d’Albuquerque, Dom João de Castro and other Portuguese
in the East perpetrated cruelties as terrible as any practised by the
Inquisition. It was the habit of the early discoverers to seize a few
natives and, if they desired information, put them to the torture.
For sheer callousness the following deed recorded of Vasco da Gama is
remarkable (the date might almost be 1915): “Namen wi een scip van Mecha
daer waren in drie hondert mannē en̄ tachtich en̄ veel vrouwen en̄
kinderen. En̄ wi namen daar wt wel xii. dusent ducaten en̄ noch wel
x. dusent an comanscap. En̄ wi verbranden dat scip en̄ al dat volc te
pulwer den tersten dach in October.” (That is: Having captured a peaceful
trading ship from Mecca, and taken thereout the ducats and merchandise,
the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama blew up the ship with 380 men and many
women and children in her.) The Flemish sailor chronicles the fact with
more directness than would have marked a Portuguese account. What is so
striking is that the dreamy humanity of the Portuguese does not desert
him in such an event. To take a recent instance—the murder of Lieutenant
Soares in Lisbon—no foreigner could ever forget the gentle good-nature of
the assassins, apparently _bonhommes_ and affable, nor the indifference
and equanimity of the small crowd that collected. Few Portuguese would
consider Stevenson anything but a pagan when he exclaims, at the idea of
loving all men: “God save me from such irreligion!” Such directness is
foreign to their temperament. They would understand better the cry of
the Canadian poet, Émile Nelligan, “_J’ai voulu tout aimer et je suis
malheureux_,” or Corneille’s strange recommendation, “_Aimez-les toutes_
(all women) _en Dieu_.”
[Sidenote: Women.]
The position of women in Portugal is another instance of vague ideals.
Woman is set on a pedestal, but women are not always treated with
consideration, and in some parts of the country are little better than
slaves. Over and over again you will meet a man and a woman, husband
and wife, perhaps, the man in lordly fashion carrying a small parcel or
nothing at all, the woman bowing under a huge load. No one thinks of
protesting against this, it passes without notice, nor has the Republican
Parliament, which has shown itself copious in legislation, bestirred
itself to introduce a bill dealing with the position of women, although
it has denied them the right to vote. The peasant women continue to do
twice the work of the men, and to receive half the wages. Frei João dos
Santos at the beginning of the seventeenth century noted (_Ethiopia
Oriental_, 1609) that it was “as natural for Kaffir women to work in the
fields as to the women of Minho to spin,” but at the present day it is
the women in Portugal who do a heavy part of out-of-door work. To their
semi-slavery and Moorish toil may perhaps be ascribed partly the fact
that the women in Portugal are less graceful and good-looking than the
men. On the other hand, Portuguese women of all classes often display a
common sense and strength and firmness of character to a greater degree
than do the men.
[Sidenote: Liberty.]
Another good instance of the gulf between the ideal and the real is to
be found in the conception and the practice of liberty. Abstract Liberty
with a great L goes to the head of the Portuguese like wine, and in its
name they have effected many a revolution and committed many a crime. In
practice it can still be used, as two thousand years ago, “for a cloak of
maliciousness.” “Luminous in its virginal essence rises the beneficent
aspiration of a _régime_ of liberty.” No doubt these celebrated words of
Dr. Theophilo Braga on the occasion of the proclamation of the Republic
were sincere, in so far as words so abstract can have any concrete
quality, but their vagueness was characteristic and ominous. Equally
indefinite had been the poet Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s description of the
future Republic in 1897. The Republic was to be “a high road towards a
new formula of civilisation.” Such phrases, hollow and resounding like an
empty barrel, have an immense success in Portuguese politics.
[Illustration: WOMEN AT WORK]
[Sidenote: Business Capacity.]
But the same vagueness pervades business. In business the Portuguese
appears incurably careless and combines with this fault the most
meticulous scruples. The result is too often delay and confusion. There
as in other matters the Portuguese shows a genius for setting himself
in the wrong, his real ability is eclipsed by superficial errors, the
mistakes in estimates or accounts are not always in his favour, and the
unscrupulous can easily take advantage of his hesitations and candour.
The personal element is always present, and vanity, together with much
real delicacy of feeling, enters into business matters. A fact this
which Englishmen dealing with Portuguese have been slower to recognise
in the past than other nations. Moreover the Portuguese is harassed
out of his wits by the details of business, he likes a good lump sum
down rather than much larger but gradual profits, he goes for the
pounds and leaves the pennies to look after themselves. If he sees the
advantage of an enterprise, he rarely combines with this intelligence
the necessary perseverance and force of character to carry it through.
Yet here as always the Portuguese shows a marvellous inclination to
fritter away his energies in matters of the minutest interest and minor
importance, an inability to omit, to leave off. They either have no
method or a method so minutely conceived that it is almost certain to
break down in practice. Portuguese scholarship sometimes vies with
German in unprofitable minuteness. For instance, Alexandre Herculano,
the historian, wrote a few fine poems: one of his Portuguese critics has
taken the trouble to ascertain the number of verses (6,800) contained in
all his original poems and translations.
[Sidenote: Religion.]
In religion, again, the same vagueness. Many Portuguese prefer an
undefined pantheism and a mystic love of Nature or Humanity to dogmatic
beliefs. The ostentatious art of Roman Catholic ceremonies and the exact
precision of Protestant services are both in a sense congenial to them,
the former appealing to their fondness for pomp and show, the latter to
their quiet thoughtfulness. But neither the one nor the other affects
them with sufficient force to fasten upon their minds a fanaticism which
is foreign to dreamy and comfortable natures. The Roman Catholic religion
exercises a greater influence on the dramatic character of the Spanish
than on the essentially lyrical and idyllic nature of the Portuguese. Nor
do the latter show any marked enthusiasm for Protestantism, although the
number of Protestants is certainly larger than it is in Spain. Perhaps
it is too clear and reasonable for them. They require vagueness and
mystery.
[Sidenote: Contrasts.]
The character of a Portuguese is much more rarely than that of a Spaniard
all of one piece. The Spaniard’s, clear-cut and angular, admits less
readily of contrasts and contradictions, whereas the very vagueness
of the Portuguese enables it to combine opposing elements. Certainly,
at least, there would seem to be many puzzling inconsistencies in the
character of the Portuguese people. For they are like a quiet stream with
sudden falls. They are fatalists, but with moments of heroic rebellion
and effort, apathetic, with bursts of energy in private and revolution
in public life; kindly and docile, yet with outbreaks of harshness and
arrogance, indifferent yet with fugitive enthusiasms and a real love
of progress and change. They are mystic and poetical with intervals
of intense utilitarianism, erratically practical, falling from idle
dreams to a keen relish for immediate profit. They combine vanity with
diffidence and pessimism; _naïveté_, which makes them the butt of Spanish
stories, with slyness, whereby they have their revenge; indolence with
love of sport and adventure; respect for the feelings of others with
fondness for satire, sarcasm, and ridicule. They go easily from heights
of rapture to depths of melancholy and suicidal despair, from frank
trustfulness to extremes of suspicion and intrigue, and their dreamy
thoughtfulness passes at rare intervals to explosions of passion and
abuse.
[Sidenote: The Real and the Ideal.]
The fact is that both in life and literature they are incorrigibly
romantic, and when they turn from their romantic dreams to reality they
are peculiarly exposed to the danger of not considering it worth an
effort. They let things be, they easily persuade themselves that things
must be as they are, or that they are as they in words imagine them; and
so in their _saudade_ for some impossible ideal they sink into _desleixo_
and drift (_deixarse-ir_, _deixarse-estar_). Or the Portuguese will
continue to live in his romanticism and ignore reality altogether; his
vanity helps him to ignore it; he will wear cheap and garish chains and
rings and trinkets and imagine himself rich, he will eke out the picture
by the help of his quick imagination and ever-ready flow of words,
heaping rhetoric and exaggeration, and in his vagueness drifting ere he
is aware into falsehood. Then, if his efforts to impose the picture of
his imagining on others at his own valuation fail, he will feel hurt by
their brutal directness, their incapacity to see that a mere string of
words may move mountains.
[Sidenote: “Desleixo.”]
They are taxed with laziness, but it should at least be observed that the
laziness is not due to lack of energy, but rather to the conviction that
“it is not worth while”—_desleixo_. When a thing does appear to be worth
while the _desleixo_ disappears like a cast-off mask. The amount of work
achieved, for instance, by some Portuguese politicians or men-of-letters
is extraordinarily large.
More serious is the accusation that they do not know what the word
justice means, hate or love, acquit or condemn, fawn or bully, persecute
or place on a pinnacle as occasion offers, and lose all sense of fair
play in their vindictiveness. But after all it is the attraction of
the Latin temperament that it is quick and impulsive, even if it
therefore rarely attains that impartial justice which is all-important
for the ruling of an Empire, but the absence of which certainly adds a
picturesque and unforeseen element to life.
[Sidenote: Attitude to Foreigners.]
Unhappily the Portuguese delicacy often meets with rougher manners in
foreigners and shrinks as from a rebuff. The Portuguese himself is
excessively sensitive and he will go out of his way and sacrifice his
own comfort and indolence in order not to hurt the feelings of others,
perhaps in some trifling matter of which the person thus contemplated,
especially if he is a foreigner, remains serenely unaware. The Portuguese
do not know how to treat foreigners. This may seem a strange statement
to those who have visited Portugal and experienced the kindness and
courtesy of high and low on all sides. But they make too great a
difference between themselves and foreigners, and have an almost morbid
desire to stand well in the eyes of the stranger, to appear civilised
and _bien élevés_. On one occasion when a spirited affray was proceeding
in the _Rocio_ of Lisbon, and several persons were killed and wounded,
a Portuguese spectator did not seem in the least concerned by the fact
that men were being shot down, but much concerned that it should be
witnessed by foreigners. “A nice thing for foreigners to see,” was all
he said. Outwardly he pays too much deference to the foreigner, and one
cannot help suspecting that all the time he is aware of his own greater
delicacy and of the poor foreigner’s ill manners. Being self-conscious
and susceptible and, moreover, himself intimately persuaded that Portugal
is a backward country unworthy of Paris or London’s civilisation, he does
not conceive that the foreigner may be making comparisons favourable to
the country he is visiting, but easily imagines that he is slighting or
smiling at him and his customs. His own love of satire and ridicule which
is apt to paralyse his private initiative and political action, makes him
prone to suspect ridicule in others. He will then brood silently over
his offended feelings, and nurse his susceptibilities till they have
vent in one of those sudden outbreaks not unknown to quiet natures. But
the Portuguese, despite his exaggerated politeness towards the stranger
in his land, and a very real and hospitable wish to be of help to him,
does not love foreigners. A Spanish writer in the seventeenth century,
Vicente Espinel, described the Portuguese as “_gente idólatra de si
propria, que no estima en nada el resto del mundo_.” If he despised
foreigners then, it is scarcely to be wondered at if he should dislike or
distrust them now. Vast colonies and the lordship of the sea, which were
once Portugal’s, are now in the hands of other nations, and she never
forgets this. She considers herself to be, like the fallen Napoleon, at
once “conqueror and captive of the earth.” Were Germany mistress of the
seas, and London fallen from its high estate to a provincial destiny, the
English would probably feel some bitterness towards not only their German
conquerors but all foreigners.
[Sidenote: Dream of Vanished Splendour.]
And if the Portuguese does not easily forget that Portugal was once the
greatest empire in Europe, he considers that other nations forget it too
often. It may be that other nations sometimes do not allow sufficiently
for the fact that without pioneer Portugal their own empires had been
less easy of acquisition, but it would certainly be to Portugal’s
advantage were she herself to forget it occasionally. Under modern
conditions it is of little use for a penniless person to dwell on the
fact that his ancestors possessed vast estates: he must make the best of
his present poverty, and, if he has some estates left which cost him more
than they bring in, he will think no shame to sell part in order to be
able to administer the rest—always provided he can find a purchaser. But
the majority of Portuguese reject indignantly the idea of parting with
an inch of their Indian or African possessions. Rather their thoughts
run to extending their territory, to the construction of a fleet, or the
conquest of Spain. Even the idea of a general subscription among the
whole population is not unknown, with a view to securing one or more
of these objects. Dr. Affonso Costa knew his countrymen well when he
promised them a large surplus, to be employed in building a fleet. Such
is the great but misguided patriotism of the Portuguese people, while
the interests and well-being of Portugal itself, which only needs proper
development to become a flourishing country, are overlooked. They dream
of high-flown projects and the work immediately to hand is—postponed. The
Portuguese people is not really indifferent, or at least its indifference
is confined to the play of party politics in Lisbon. In the fall and rise
of a ministry, in the debates of Parliament or in the elections, the
interest of the country at large is of the slightest. The expectations
of the people have been too frequently disappointed for it to set great
store now by political promises, but the Portuguese have a real love of
their country for which they are willing to sacrifice much—everything, it
sometimes seems, except personal vanity and party intrigues.
[Sidenote: Forms of Address.]
Another apparent inconsistency is the democratic feeling which, in
private life, prevails in Portugal to a greater degree than perhaps in
any other country, social distinctions being often ignored there, not
only by those who are not distinguished but by those who are, to an
extent that would be utterly impossible in England. For this democratic
usage has to be reconciled with the widespread vanity of the Portuguese.
In place of the plain “you” employed in England in addressing king or
cobbler, there are in Portugal all kinds of gradations, from _Vossa
Excellencia_ to _O senhor_ (in the third person), _Vossemecé_, or the
more familiar _Vossé_, which even so is a contraction of “Your Worship.”
Ladies are always addressed as _Vossa Excellencia_, and are given the
title of _Dona_ (= the Spanish _Doña_). The title _Dom_ is only given
to men belonging to old aristocratic families, whereas in Spain the
use of _Don_ is, of course, far more general, and in South America it
descends still further, corresponding there, indeed, to the English
use of “Mr.” instead of “Esq.” Letters are often addressed to the Most
Illustrious, Most Excellent, _Senhor_, and, generally, the Portuguese
are more ceremonious even than the Spanish. The humanist, Luis Vives,
in the sixteenth century, complained of the pomposity of address then
beginning in Spain (_i.e._, Spain and Portugal) and Italy: and soon,
he said, we shall be saying “Your Deity”—_mox, ut opinor, Deitas_. But
the fiery Spanish dignity is absent, although the Portuguese have a
quiet resolution and dignity of their own, and their gentle sadness
rarely sinks to a spiritless despondency, and still more rarely to the
grovelling abjection—lowest of the low—described by Byron.
[Sidenote: The Peasants.]
The Portuguese peasantry, especially, is gifted with a delicacy and
intelligence which make life pleasant and poverty no hardship in that
climate. The illiterate are often the flower and cream of the nation.
They are able to express themselves with fluency and correctness, in fact
you will often find a peasant’s speech purer and more refined in accent
than that of an educated Portuguese, and will be amazed at the clearness
and delicacy of tone and expression coming from a person barefoot and
in tatters. Thrice fortunate they who can associate and converse with
the peasants during the summer _romaria_ or village _festa_, or as
they sit round the winter fire (_a lareira_), or gather for some great
common task, a shearing (_tosquia_) or _esfolhada_ (separating the maize
cob from its sheath), for they are certain to glean a rich store of
proverbs, folk-lore, and philology, and will learn much about spirits
and witches. These peasants have poetical imagination, witty speech, no
dearth of ideas, a ready sympathy, and, moreover, a sobriety, patience
and self-control which are the more remarkable in that by nature,
although not quick, they are impulsive and extraordinarily sensitive. It
may be said without exaggeration that the Portuguese people, for all its
colossal ignorance and lack of letters, is one of the most civilised and
intelligent in Europe.
[Sidenote: Folk-Lore.]
It is full of superstitions, and in few countries—Ireland again naturally
occurs to the mind—can there be more legends and charms and incantations,
ignorance thus fostering an immense popular literature in prose and
verse. The varieties of sorcerers and diviners are many: there are
_benzedores_ and _imaginarios_, _magicos_ and _agoureiros_, _bruxas_ and
_feiticeiras_, etc., etc. Only during the last thirty years has this
begun to be a written literature, thanks to the brilliant initiative
and untiring researches of Z. Consiglieri Pedroso, A. T. Pires, Snr. F.
Adolpho Coelho, Snr. Leite de Vasconcellos, Snr. Theophilo Braga and
others. Round every hill and stream of the country has the people woven
some quaint fancy or preserved some ancient myth or fact. To take a
solitary instance: the great rock (_Pedra Amarella_), above the convent
of Pena Longa, at the foot of the Serra de Cintra, is covered with yellow
moss. What is the explanation of this? That the moss grew there, you say.
But the Portuguese people is not likely to dismiss anything in heaven
or earth with four words. The fact is that an old woman, believing this
rock to contain a hidden treasure, was anxious to break it open and to
that purpose kept throwing eggs at it. She did not succeed in her object,
but the rock remains covered with the yolks of the eggs. The Portuguese
people is especially devoted to music, flowers, dance and song. The
humblest, most ramshackle cottage will have an old tin of carnations on
its window ledge or hanging anyhow from the wall. Many of the flowers
have popular names of no little charm. _Goivo_, the old Portuguese word
for joy, is given both to the stock and the wallflower, the fuchsia is
_lagrimas_ (tears), anemones _beijinhos_ (little kisses), the roadside
iris is _lirio_ (lily), any downhanging creeper is _chorão_ (weeper). A
common creeper of that name grows extraordinarily fast, and once boasted
that it would scale heaven, whereupon it was sentenced to advance always
in a downward direction.
[Sidenote: Popular “Cantigas.”]
Of the fascinating popular quatrains (_quadras_) an immense collection
might be formed, indeed some of those already in existence are not
trifling, as, for instance, the _10,000 Cantos populares portuguezes_,
collected in four volumes by A. Thomaz Pires (Elvas, 1902-10). Those
who are alarmed by so great a number may read the _Cancioneiro popular_
(Porto, 1914), selected by Snr. Jaime Cortesão, which contains 563. Or,
still better, make a selection of their own, writing them down at the
dictation of many a peasant who can himself neither write nor read.
These _cantigas_ or _quadras_ spring up continually like mushrooms, and
perish unrecorded, or go from mouth to mouth of the illiterate in endless
variation. They are delightful examples of unpremeditated art, many of
them showing real delicacy and poetical imagination, more so than the
melancholy _fado_ or ballad of fate of the professional _fadistas_. A
vague melancholy underlies most of these _cantigas_. Sadly in the soft
summer evenings many a _canção perdida_ is sung to the slow and plaintive
accompaniment of the guitar—
Triste canta uma voz na syncope do dia.
(Guerra Junqueiro, _Os Simples_, 1892):
Com os passaros do campo
Eu me quero comparar:
Andam vestidos de pennas,
O seu allivio é cantar.
(With the birds of the air
I compare
My plight:
’Tis their solace to sing,
Dark of wing
Is their flight.)
The pun on the words _pennas_ (feathers) and _penas_ (woes) is
untranslatable.
Ó mar alto, ó mar alto,
Ó mar alto sem ter fundo:
Mais vale andar no mar
Do que na boca do mundo.
(O sea so deep, O sea so deep,
O sea so deep beyond our ken:
Better to go upon the sea
Than upon the lips of men.)
Os teus olhos, ó menina,
São gentias da Guiné:
Da Guiné por serem pretos
Gentios por não terem fé.
(Heathen are thine eyes, O maiden,
And from Guinea must they be:
From Guinea eyes that are so black,
Heathen that look so faithlessly.)
With this _cantiga_ readers of Julio Diniz may be already familiar. It
occurs in his _Ineditos_ (1900).
Ó rosa d’este canteiro,
Deixa-te estar até ver,
Que eu vou ao Brazil e volto,
Rosinha, p’ra te colher.
(O rose that flowerest here,
Here till we meet remain,
For, little rose, to Brazil I go,
Then to cull thee come again.)
Chamaste me trigueirinha,
En não me escandalizei:
Trigueirinha é a pimenta
E vae á mesa do rei.
(Brown of hue you called me,
Nor to sting were able:
Brown of hue is pepper,
Yet it goes to the King’s table.)
Ó vida de minha vida,
Quanto tenho tudo é teu,
Só a minha alminha não:
Hei de da-la a quem m’a deu.
(Life thou in whom I live,
All that I have is for thee:
Only my soul (_animula_) must I give
Unto Him who gave it me.)
Quando era solteirinha,
Trazia fitas e laços!
Agora que sou casada
Trago os meus filhos nos braços.
(When I was unwed,
O the ribbons and the laces!
Now each arm instead
A fair babe embraces.)
Nos mais rijos temporaes;
O vento solta gemidos:
Gemidos soltam eguaes
Amantes quando trahidos.
(In the stress of the tempest
The wind makes moan:
So moaneth the lover
Betrayed and alone.)
O annel que tu me deste
Era de vidro e quebrou-se:
O amor que tu me tinhas
Era pouco e acabou-se.
(The ring that thou gav’st me
Was of glass and is broken,
And ended the love
By thy lips lightly spoken.)
Eu direi que em peito amante
Inda amor excede o mar:
Pois que o mar tem a vazante,
E amor tem só preamar.
(Love is more ev’n than the sea
In a lover’s breast, I know:
For love is ever at the full
While the sea’s tides ebb and flow.)
Aqui estou á tua porta
Como o feixinho de lenha,
A espera da resposta
Que de teus olhos me venha.
(Here like a bundle of sticks
Stand I still at thy door,
An answer from thy eyes
Awaiting evermore.)
Cada vez que vejo vir
Gaivotas a beira-mar,
Creio que são os meus amores
Que me desejão fallar.
(When the seagulls come flying
In from the sea,
I think ’tis my love
That would speak with me.)
Cantas tu, cantarei eu
Que o cantar é alegria,
Tambem os anjos cantaram
Canções á Virgem Maria.
(I will sing as thou art singing,
Joy is in the heart of song;
Songs, too, to the Virgin ringing
Came once from the angel throng.)
[Sidenote: Illiterate Poets.]
Anyone with a spirit of enterprise and a thorough knowledge of Portuguese
might collect a goodly crop of such _cantigas_, together with thousands
of delightful expressions and sayings peculiar to each region of
Portugal. Minho especially, that charming province of crystal streams
and cool maize-fields, offers a wide scope. But it is a narrowing
opportunity, since education, however slow its progress in Portugal,
is gradually advancing. Many of the _cantigas_, composed by illiterate
persons, are not intended to survive the occasion that gave them birth.
Hence their naturalness and charm. The lovely Greek epigrams show a more
conscious art. They are the perfect daffodils and hyacinths, whereas
the Portuguese _cantigas_ are the forgotten celandines and primroses of
the lanes and woods. In 1911 died an old workman of Setubal, Antonio
Maria Euzebio (born in 1820), who could neither read nor write, but had
composed verses with great ease from an early age. A volume of his verses
was published in 1901, with introduction by Snr. Theophilo Braga and Snr.
Guerra Junqueiro. Of a poetic art as such he had no glimmering, but, in
Portugal at least, such ignorance would help rather than injure him as a
poet.
[Sidenote: Nature and Art.]
The Portuguese are richly gifted by nature, but, in matters of art or in
artificial surroundings, their natural taste sometimes seems to desert
them. _Corruptio optimi_. Under circumstances which do not allow them
to be themselves some of the aspersions of an eighteenth century writer
may be true of them: “Ils sont jaloux au suprême degré,” wrote the
author of the _Description de la ville de Lisbonne_ (Amsterdam, 1738),
“dissimulés, vindicatifs, railleurs, vains et présomptueux sans sujet.”
(The same writer admits that they have great virtues: “Ils ont avec
beaucoup de vivacité et de pénétration un attachement extraordinaire pour
leur Prince; ils sont fort secrets, fidèles amis, généreux, charitables
envers leurs parens, sobres dans leur manger, ne mangeant presque que
du poisson, ris, vermicelli, légumes, confitures, et ne buvant pour
l’ordinaire que de l’eau.”) The family life of a Portuguese, especially
in some country _quinta_, is extremely attractive, and he only becomes
uninteresting when he follows the customs of foreign nations. So long as
he is natural, few nations excel him; when he ceases to be natural he
lags woefully behind in the ruts of foreign imitation. There was a grain
of truth in the remark of a critic that Camões, with a great lyrical
gift, was unsuccessful in the sonnet owing to his attempt to introduce
naturalness into an essentially artificial form. The Portuguese, where
their love of nature does not help them, are left at the mercy of
extravagance and tawdriness.
[Sidenote: Artistic Sense.]
Not that the ordinary artisan does not turn out much good honest work.
Indeed, while the Spanish make things for show rather than for use, and
the French for a little of both, the Portuguese agrees with the English
in making them with a regard for comfort and a sublime unconcern for the
look of them. And in this no doubt they show their good sense. But they
are not artistic. This is shown in a thousand ways, in the curve of a
chair, the finish of a book-case, in their buildings, in the colour of
their dress and of the wash for their houses, in which squashed hues,
and especially pink, predominate; in the shape of the water-jars, in
which the soul of a Latin people is often expressed. (The Portuguese jars
are often rather useful than ornamental, squat in shape, fashioned to
contain the greatest possible quantity of water, and with but one handle,
for use, instead of two, for art’s sake.) In the construction of modern
houses, as in many matters of daily life, the Portuguese makes comfort or
a saving of trouble the principal consideration. Their ancient buildings
in which, indeed, foreign architects had no little part—Batalha, for
instance, or Alcobaça—can vie in beauty with those of any country. But,
although Manoeline architecture in some cases may have justified its
existence, in principle it was an outrage against pure Gothic, and a
similar tastelessness may be noted in daily life at the present time. The
undertakers add a horror to death in other cities besides Lisbon, but
in no other can the grandest funerals be marked by a more grotesque and
fantastic ugliness. Nor is it easy to forget a coffin at a funeral in the
provinces—not that of a child. It was bright pink with silver scales. It
is most curious, this tendency to tinsel on the part of a people which
appears to have natural good taste. Perhaps it is an importation from the
East.
[Sidenote: Soft Wax.]
Certainly foreign influences and a half-education are extremely dangerous
in Portugal. In many parts of the country the people is still unspoilt,
and the demagogue and politician appear like a bull in a china shop, with
vast possibilities of damage and destruction. Portugal is but a little
wax, wrote the novelist Eça de Queiroz (1843-1900). The Portuguese people
is “soft wax” repeated Snr. Guerra Junqueiro in 1896: “What we need is
a great sculptor.” The history of Portugal has been the history of a
few great men who have passed on the torch of her glories from century
to century, a Nun’ Alvares, the soldier-saint, or the splendid Affonso
d’Albuquerque, who often found it as difficult to cope with his own
followers as with the enemy in the East. But for all that Portugal is
a land of strongly-rooted and noble traditions, and these the required
sculptor must take into account if he is to be successful in his task. It
would be wrong to infer that the anonymous mass that forms the background
to those great figures of the past is characterless. For, beneath the
apathy, the docility, the contradictions of the Portuguese people remains
something perhaps not very easy to define, but which has an intimate
peculiar flavour, something pliant, adaptable, insinuating but with
a real will and persistency of its own. Potential, it may be, rather
than actual, but certainly a sound and promising basis for growth and
development, if properly directed.
“What is urgent,” to quote again Snr. Guerra Junqueiro, “is not a social
or a political but a moral revolution.” “Quant à la moralité,” wrote M.
Léon Poinsard later, in 1910, “elle semble plutôt en voie de diminuer”
(_Le Portugal Inconnu_). A few years earlier a Lisbon newspaper, _O
Diario de Noticias_, in a leading article (16th September, 1902) deplored
the _podridão moral_ of Portuguese society, the “_perversão de caracteres
e desbragamento dos costumes politicos_.” Such remarks apply usually to
Lisbon rather than to Portugal as a whole. In village life, considering
the circumstances, the absolute lack of direction, the landed gentry
absentee, the authority of the priest undermined, morality may be said
to stand remarkably high. And the great mass of the Portuguese people
is, emphatically, _désorienté_ rather than degenerate. They would answer
readily—yes, even Beckford’s Lisbon _canaille_—to a leader capable of
leading something more than a pack of yelping political parasites.
[Sidenote: The Portuguese at Home.]
It must always be remembered that the foreigner often views the
Portuguese at his worst, in an artificial atmosphere, rarely in his
natural life and surroundings. He seldom has occasion to see him in his
home life, in which the real affectionateness of his nature is evident,
nor to realise the nobility and delicacy of his dreams and ideals which
are so often shattered by harsh reality, and the genuine kindliness which
proves that his politeness and courtesy are not merely superficial.
If they have not the immediate attraction of some other nations, they
prove, on longer acquaintance, to be a people not only pleasant but of
a real good-nature, of a child-like simplicity beneath their vanity,
and with a certain strength and determination for all their apparent
pliancy. Intensely susceptible and easily driven by rudeness and violence
into furtive, hypocritical and vindictive tactics, they answer with
extreme goodwill to any show of friendliness and respect. If they are
capable rather of occasional heroic actions than of securing a gradual
prosperity, they are nevertheless a people peculiarly gifted, under
proper guidance, to achieve what, presumably, is the end to which modern
civilisation aspires—a state of peace and culture with ever-widening and
deepening international relations. Only, of course, such relations can
never be set on a satisfactory basis by sacrificing anything that is
genuinely Portuguese. For a nation can hardly look for respect which has
nothing of its own to offer, and prides itself exclusively on its foreign
imitations. And the Portuguese of all peoples will find their best models
in their own past history and literature. Voltaire, not a bad judge in
the matter of wit, called the Portuguese “_une nation spirituelle_,” and,
in spite of all their national misfortunes, a witty nation they remain.
It will be well if their wit be directed not to pull down national
customs and institutions, but—as by many writers of the sixteenth
century—against those who ape foreign manners.