LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
[Sidenote: The “Chiado.”]
For many, too many, Portuguese, Lisbon is Portugal. They will put up
with much misery in the provinces so long as Lisbon has fine shops and
streets and squares. The ambition of the peasant is to see Lisbon, and
many prefer to live, however wretchedly, as citizens of that great city
than quietly at their ease in the country. The rich inhabitants inhabit
Paris, or else, as in the days of Garrett, “spend their lives between the
_Chiado_ and the _Rua do Oiro_,” although the motor-car now lures many
from the clubs of the _Rua Garrett_ and the _cafés_ of the Rocio at least
as far afield as Cintra or the Estoris. _Rua Garrett_ is now the official
name (after the poet Almeida-Garrett, 1799-1854), but it remains the
_Chiado_ in common speech. Its name derived probably from the name, or
rather from the nickname, of another poet, Antonio Ribeiro, _o Chiado_.
He was a popular sixteenth-century Lisbon poet, and lived in a house
just off this street: it is thought that the frequent phrase “_Vámos ao
Chiado_” (“Let us go and see Chiado”) led to the name being given to the
street, hitherto called _Rua direita das Portas de Santa Catharina_. The
quaint lift which suspends people like the mediaeval Virgil in a basket
over the city, and, like some of the other eight _ascensores_, gives
a splendid view, still has the words written up at its _Largo de São
Julião_ entrance: “AO CHIADO.”
[Sidenote: The “Baixa.”]
Lisbon, on its seven hills, has so few level spaces that people naturally
congregate, as water runs down from a mountain-side, in the district
between the Rocio and the river, appropriately called the _Baixa_, the
Low Quarter, and meeting between acquaintances is more frequent than in
any other capital city. The splendid _Avenida da Liberdade_ has never
become popular, and is apt to be deserted except on special occasions,
a great review or some Republican anniversary. It seems to be too far
from the centres of gossip: before you had walked from the _Praça dos
Restauradores_ (_i.e._, the liberators of Portugal from Spain in 1640) to
the _Praça do Marquez de Pombal_ and back a ministry might have fallen.
Best keep on the safe side and miss nothing of the human comedy which in
Lisbon has centred in the _Rocio_ throughout the centuries. Here there
is continual movement by day and night. Lisbon sits up late and is an
extremely late riser. Three o’clock on a June morning sees the last
revellers in the streets, and, later, at an hour when other cities have
put on their best clothes, dust-bins still line the pavements, and the
rag-pickers are at their work.
[Sidenote: Singed Pigs.]
Lisbon’s streets, spick and span, at least all those that the passing
tourist will see, give no idea of the accounts of all writers a century
ago, who in prose and verse agreed about the dirt and nastiness of the
town. Indeed, so late as 1835 the suggestions of a Portuguese writer
for the improvement of the city give some idea of its condition. It
will be forbidden, said he, to break in horses in the streets. It will
be forbidden to kill or singe pigs in the streets, or keep them alive
in the streets, or tied to the doors, “for all these things annoy the
inhabitants.” Dead animals were not to be left lying in the streets.
He noted, too, the number of stray dogs, the beggars at every step,
the filthiness of the outer staircases of the houses.[25] Some of the
staircases had deep wells beneath them—there was one at No. 17 rua da
Prata, 19 _palmos_ deep.[26] The great houses had several, as also the
convents; indeed, there is a doleful history of how the Prioress fell
into one of these on a moonless night; however, she was fished out
next morning, and it was regarded as a miracle that her clothes were
perfectly dry, not even the _sabots_ which she was wearing showing any
sign of water.
[Illustration: TERREIRO DO PAÇO, LISBON]
[Sidenote: The “Aguadeiros.”]
But the wisest inhabitants of Lisbon sent and send their servants and
negro slaves to the public fountains or buy the water brought thence by
the _aguadeiros_ who may be seen barrel on shoulder in all the narrow
streets of the high-lying districts. The water of many of these fountains
is reputed to have special virtues, as formerly the “fountain of the
horses of New Street,” taken before sunrise, miraculously healed diseases
of the eyes, and the same water “has the secret property of speedily
fattening the horses that drink of it, and it would do the same to men
if they went to drink of it at the fountain.” Carrying heavy _bilhas_ of
water up Lisbon’s steep and narrow streets is so arduous a business that
the poorest inhabitants prefer to pay a tiny sum to the _aguadeiro_, and
in a country where wine is often almost as common as water the qualities
of the various waters are discussed with perhaps greater keenness than
those of wines. In the sixteenth century the number of water-sellers is
given as twenty-six.
[Sidenote: Lisbon Streets and Houses.]
Many houses, chiefly in the newer parts of the city, are entirely covered
outside with _azulejos_, mostly green or blue, which give them a cool
and cleanly appearance. The rooms inside, too, often have a pattern of
_azulejos_ several feet high round the walls, and their use should be
more common in all hot countries. The low-lying part of Lisbon between
the _Rocio_ (sometimes called Rolling Motion Square or Turkey Square) and
the _Terreiro do Paço_ or _Praça do Commercio_ (Black Horse Square) was
rebuilt in parallel straight streets after the earthquake of 1755. These
streets seem narrow enough now, and the united breadth of them would
fit into the _Avenida da Liberdade_, but for the days of the Marquez de
Pombal their plan had a certain grandeur. They still keep in some measure
their distinctive characters, the _Rua da Prata_ abounding in the shops
of silversmiths, the _Rua Augusta_ in tailors and linendrapers. From the
_Rocio_, besides these links with Black Horse Square, goes the steep _Rua
do Carmo_, with more fashionable shops, leading to the _Chiado_, and on
the opposite side is the great market-place of the _Praça da Figueira_.
[Sidenote: The Market.]
Thither through the night carts drawn by single oxen rumble slowly in,
laden with vegetables from the country, the white hanging street-lamps
lighting up the lordly pyramids of cabbages or turnips or tomatoes while
_regateiras_ (market women, also called _collarejas_, from Collares)
carry in great baskets on their heads, and may be seen resting at dawn
on the pavement outside the market. Indeed, it is one of the charms of
Lisbon that beneath all its cosmopolitanism it has succeeded in retaining
a certain rustic air. The servant-girl in one of M. Anatole France’s
books, who came back well pleased with her first day in Paris: _elle
avait vu de beaux navets_, would be enchanted with Lisbon. There the flat
open baskets of vegetables balanced by men on their shoulders at either
end of a thick pole—a truly tremendous burden, but perhaps they are
_gallegos_, the porters of Lisbon, who stand cord over shoulder at the
street corners—and the brimming panniers of donkeys give a freshness to
the streets.
[Sidenote: Pregões.]
Morning and evening the milkman drives his cows through the streets with
the most melodious and delightful of chants. Or the seller of maize bread
cries his _broinhas de milho quentinhas_. In May come the strawberries:
_morangos de Cintra_, followed through the summer months by a legion
of melon-sellers, criers of grapes and all manner of fruit as the heat
increases. Some kind of fruit is ever to be had in plenty: in winter
handcarts of oranges and pineapples; or a man carries a rosary of great
pineapples hanging from a pole. And year in, year out, go the _varinas_,
the women of Ovar, bare-footed, with their gold ornaments and stiffly
falling skirts, crying their fish; the sellers of newspapers; and the
lotteryman (_cauteleiro_) with his perpetual litany of figures and his
warning that “to-morrow the wheel goes round: _Amanhã anda a roda_.”
The cries are nearly always soft and musical, very different from the
piercing street-cries of Madrid or Barcelona.
[Sidenote: Lisbon in the Dead Season.]
There comes a time, about the end of July, when Lisbon is like Oxford in
vacation. The glory is departed, and here there is no secondary reflected
splendour of besundayed scouts to take its place. The smart carriages and
motor-cars are few and far between, the steady flow of the well-dressed
and fashionable passing up and down the _Rua do Carmo_, the _Chiado_, the
_Rua Nova de Almada_, the _Rua de S. Nicolau_, and the _Rua do Oiro_,
dries up like the summer streams. Then lemons and dark red _bilhas_ of
water are carried about the streets, here a woman bears on her head over
a kerchief of deepest blue flowing to her waist a flat basket of long
light green water-melons, or a great mound of white and purple grapes.
Or perhaps in the sultry evening from some doorway sounds the sluggish
and persistent _Quem da mais, mais, mais_, of the auctioneer at a long
drawn-out _leilão_, as if the whole world were ending in a slow desolate
agony. It is a cry so different from, yet as melancholy as, the _Ho
vitrier_ of the itinerant glazier in some village of the French Alps in
autumn before the first heavy snows cut off its communications with the
plain.
[Sidenote: Chestnuts.]
But with the autumn in Lisbon cheerfulness returns. From Bussaco and
Cascaes and Cintra, the Estoris and Buarcos and Caldas da Rainha, from
Paris and foreign and Portuguese watering-places, come the sun-browned
_veraneantes_. There is a fresh vigour in the streets, the first autumn
violets are sold, the chestnut-seller with his smoking baskets chants
his _Castanhas quentes e boas_. Donkeys are driven through the streets
with panniers of olives fresh from the country, and a little later
droves of turkeys stalk through the Rocio undeterred from their leisured
dignity by all the embarrassing trams and taxis. The inner meaning of
_castanha_ in Portuguese is “restoration”; violets were the emblems of
Napoleon’s return from Elba: so that everything points to the coming of
King Sebastian on one of those quiet autumn mornings when the hot sun
does not pierce till midday through the thick mists enveloping the Tagus,
and the fishing boats pass down-stream silent and invisible. The author
of _Costume of Portugal_[27] refers to Lisbon’s chestnut-roasters: “women
who are seen at the corner of almost every street in Lisbon. While the
chestnuts are roasting a few grains of salt are thrown over them, which
gives them a down similar to the bloom on a plumb fresh gathered.” We may
take the bloom of the plumb with a grain of their salt, but still in the
winter months women are to be seen sitting in nearly every doorway of the
humbler streets fanning their glowing earthenware pots of shape exactly
the same as that used in illustration of the letter F (_Fogareiro_) in
João de Barros’ alphabet (1539).
[Sidenote: Modern Lisbon.]
If stress is here laid on these rustic traits as one of Lisbon’s great
attractions to the foreigner, it must not of course be thought that
it is not endowed with all the luxuries and refinements of a great
modern city. There they all are, the good hôtels, streets neatly paved
and scrupulously clean, the comfortable motor-cars and carriages, the
tempting shop-windows, and a good service of electric tramcars, in
an endless rosary of white and yellow. The service of motor-cars can
scarcely be called good. Most of the cars are comfortable, and some of
the drivers efficient, but the drivers of others sprawl lazily in the
_Rocio_, only waking up to charge an excessive fare, which frightens
away most people. Even if they have a taximeter, it starts at a shilling
(250 _réis_) and reaches 1,000 _réis_ with a strange rapidity. And if
they have inveigled some unwary person into becoming their fare and
prey—they, of course, consider all foreigners fair prey—he will find
himself being conveyed at breakneck pace in a totally wrong direction.
Indeed, the foreigner driven furiously in a Lisbon taxi may think that
the _lisboeta_ sets more value on time than on life, but in fact their
attitude to time is rather that of the _madrileño_ driver who, if asked
to drive faster, will gradually slow down, stop, get down, open the
door, take off his hat, and ask if you wished for anything. He will keep
his politeness, even if you miss your train. All the sadder is it that
in Lisbon the inroad of foreign customs tends to interfere with the
pleasant dilatory habits of the native. Few shops, for instance—one or
two chemists or booksellers at the most—have a little circle of chairs
for their clients (_freguezes_) to pass the time in leisurely _cavaco_.
But centuries of progress have failed to make Lisbon uninteresting, so
various are the ingredients of its motley population, men of all nations,
classes and religions. _Saloios_, _i.e._, peasants from the neighbourhood
of Lisbon, are noticeable in the streets for their short “Eton jackets”
and close-fitting trousers spreading out over the foot, and peasants from
further afield, beyond the Tagus for their immensely wide (_desabado_)
hats and their sackcloth coloured cloaks reaching in a succession of
capes to the feet. And emigrants with their many-coloured patchwork
_alforges_ and their coffin-shaped trunks haunt the quays.
[Sidenote: Glimpses of Lisbon.]
Along the Tagus are more markets of fruits and vegetables and fish,
and vessels of every description, from the fishing-boat to the great
Atlantic liner, are continually loading and unloading. Above and between
the masts of the boats show the many-coloured dresses of fishwives and
peasants, while a multitude of snow-white seagulls rise and fall, rise
and fall against the turquoise blue of the river. Beyond lies Barreiro,
with its cork factories, the banks of the Tagus rise abruptly, and on a
clear day lordly Palmella (from which the _palmellão_ wind blows across
the Tagus), perched on its lofty crag, gleams from the dark _serra_.
The passing traveller has, even without landing, a magnificent view
of city and harbour. But Lisbon has many more intimate beauties which
demand a longer study, and would provide an artist with work for months
and years. Especially in winter the colouring is often very exquisite,
with tints subdued and delicate, as, for instance, on a stormy day the
grey irregular roofs with their crops of fresh green grass seen in some
steep _travessa_ against the dark indigo of the river or hills beyond;
or some glimpse of ruined Carmo or crumbling Alfama set in relief by a
sky of limitless clear blue. The old tiled roofs, warped and curving,
are a perpetual delight. Sometimes they have grass in straight furrows
between the rows of tiles like springing corn, or they are covered by
a more continuous carpet of mosses, or even are gay with the flower
of hawksweed. It depends largely on the rain. Two or three months of
continuous rain in winter brings them to a high perfection. Summer is
the great weeder in Portugal: it robs both roofs and cobbled squares
of their pleasant green. Alfama from a distance has the look of a
tumble-down fishing-village above the Tagus. At close quarters it is
found to be an intricate maze of streets so narrow that they never let in
the sun, and a man’s stretched-out arms touch either wall, and so steep
that they are built often in the form of stairs. Equally picturesque
is the district of Santa Catharina, on the other side of the city. The
marvellously steep streets and stairways going down from the _Calçada
do Combro_ to the river are full of quaint surprises worthy of the
wynds of Edinburgh. Narrow stone staircases lead round and down and
down, apparently nowhither, small yards and terraces struggle manfully
to keep their balance as level spaces, here and there a palm or a vine
or an orange-tree gives a touch of green. The principal descending
streets are several yards in width. Rows of bright-coloured clothes
perpetually a-drying are projected on poles from either side, and beneath
these motley banners is a succession of tiny stifling black shops. The
steps are strewn with rubbish and with cats and children innumerable.
Sometimes from a doorway comes a smell of burnt rosemary or other scented
brushwood used to light the kitchen fire, and bringing with it _saudade_
of the life in Portuguese villages. The names of the streets are often
as quaint as the streets themselves, or were, for they disappear and
change with a dreadful frequency. One may tremble for the _Travessa da
Larangeira_ (of the Orange Tree) or for the _Travessa dos Fieis de Deus_
(of the Faithful of God). How soon will these be called the Passage of
Progress and the Street of Civilisation? But perhaps those in authority
are beginning to realise that these changes often rob the city of what is
more precious than much fine gold and can never be replaced.
[Sidenote: Village Life.]
One need not go many leagues from Lisbon to find a look of immemorial
age about the life of the peasantry. One might be in pre-Roman times.
The peasant in black peaked woollen cap, black shirt or blouse and
knee-breeches and woollen leggings, walks slowly, goad in hand, in front
of his ox-cart with its spokeless wheels of solid wood, or is jolted
along as he stands against the tall crooked stakes that form the sides of
the cart. The life is often very primitive. The village will have some
kind of a dark _taverna_, where men may drink and play cards, and the
shop of the grocer who is the little god and gombeen man of the village.
His shop sells everything from hats and shoes and brooms to cheeses and
candles and wine and bread and melons and grapes. He gives himself no
airs and is always ready to serve his customers behind the counter, but
he is a power in the land, often makes a considerable sum of money, and
becomes an usurer, or even helps to turn the scale at an election.
[Sidenote: Prisons.]
The village will also, though it may not have a church, almost certainly
have a prison, through the bars of which the prisoners converse with
their friends or with any passer-by, as is, indeed, the case in the
famous _Limoeiro_ prison in Lisbon. The Portuguese are unfortunately
notorious for their neglect of the prisons and for the astonishing way in
which children and hardened criminals, political and common offenders,
are herded together. And the eagerness to arrest is only equalled by
the reluctance to provide food for the arrested. In fact, to give a meal
to prisoners is a recognised form of private charity, and stands between
them and actual starvation.
[Sidenote: “Festas.”]
The villages themselves, their streets and houses, are often miserable
enough, but they are enlivened by a large number of _festas_ through
the year. The pilgrimage or _romaria_ is usually to some shrine in the
hills or by the sea, and combines the character of a profane picnic with
a religious motive. The most famous shrine is that of the _Bom Jesus_,
near Braga, but every village has its small church or hermitage to which
a yearly procession is organised. In some parts of the country the year
begins with the _janeiras_, when groups of men go from house to house
with songs special to the occasion, after the fashion of the waits in
England. This may be on New Year’s Day or five days later on the Day of
Kings. It ends, of course, with the festivities of Christmas, which in
Portugal, where the ties of family life are strong, is observed with a
peculiar devotion, and all the rites of the yule log and other ancient
customs, as the _consoada_ or odd meal to pass the time while waiting
for the midnight mass, called _a missa do gallo_. In the towns at
Christmas and at Easter the postman, the porter, the newspaper-seller,
the tradesman will send you their visiting-cards (!) with their name and,
printed beneath it the words, “_Deseja boas festas a V. Exa. e sua Exma.
familia_” (“Wishes a happy _fête_ to Your Excellency and to your most
excellent family”). In return for this you are expected at Christmas to
_dar as broas_ (lit., give maize-breads—the _broas_ eaten at Christmas
in the towns are yellow cakes, in which honey, egg, almond, and orange
peel predominate, and are very different from the excellent maize bread
of Minho), and at Easter _dar as amendoas_ (almonds). Between the Day
of Kings and Christmas comes a long series of feast-days and pleasant
customs, such as in autumn (on All Saints’ Day) the _magusto_, that is, a
kind of picnic in which the principal feature is the roasting and eating
of chestnuts not unaccompanied by wine.
[Illustration: BOM JESUS DO MONTE, BRAGA]
[Sidenote: St. John’s Day.]
But, above all, June is the month of rustic merriment, with the _fêtes_
of St. Antony, St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter. Happily no attempts
to dislodge these saints from their pre-eminence in the mind of the
people have hitherto succeeded. The eve of St. John continues to be
celebrated with festivities far more joyous and interesting than the
_bourgeois fête_ of Carnival, in which the real people takes little part.
(At Lisbon the Carnival lasts not one day but many, and is marked by a
good deal of vulgarity and absence of originality. Indeed, it would be
utterly tedious but for the striking miniature peasant costumes in which
it is the custom to dress up small children.) St. John the Baptist is
the true popular patron saint of Portugal, and around St. John’s Eve the
popular fancy has woven a rich fairy web of legend and superstition. In
all the world, says a _cantiga_, this day is celebrated—
São João não ha no mundo
Quem não queira festejar:
Este dia é mui sob’rano,
Esta noite é singular.
The very Moors observe it in Moordom—
Até os Mouros da Mourama
Festejão o São João.
He is set above all the other saints: there is none like him, none—
São João é festejado
Por todo o mundo em geral,
Entre todos os mais santos
Não ha quem lhe seja igual.
São Pedro é homem honrado,
Companheiro do Senhor,
Mas para’s noites divertidas
São João tem mais valor.
(St. Peter is an honest man,
Companion of Our Lord,
But for a night of sheer delight
St. John must be preferred.)
On the hills and at cross-roads and in the villages the fires of St. John
glow late into the night. The saint himself comes to light them. He comes
from the flowered _mattos_ and _charnecas_, bringing with him a scent of
rosemary—
Donde vindes, ó Baptista,
Que cheirais a alecrim?
(Rosemary is spoken of as the king of herbs—
O alecrim, rei das hervas
or,
Das floras que ha no monte
O rosmaninho é rei;)
or he descends straight from heaven, where he has been engaged in leaping
over the fires lit in his honour in the sky.
Donde vindes, ó Baptista,
Pela calma sem chapeo?
—Vim de pular as fogueiras
Que me fazem lá no ceo.
(Whence come you, St. John the Baptist,
Hatless in the heat of the day?
—From leaping over my fires in the sky
Am I come away.)
Or he even comes all drenched from watering beds of onions—
Donde vindes, São João,
Que vindes tão molhadinho?
—Venho d’entre aquellas hortas
De regar o cebolinho.
[Sidenote: St. John as “Picaro.”]
He is a rogue, a _picaro_, up to all kinds of fun in the popular fancy,
which treats him with the utmost familiarity. He stands as godfather, he
eats the grapes in the vineyards, he courts the girls as they go to fill
their pitchers at the fountain, and they in turn crown him with flowers—
O meu rico São João
Quem vos metteu entre as flores?
—Foram as donzellinhas
Que não têm outros amores.
He is expected to win the hearts of the village maidens for his votaries,
and smooth the course of true love, and if he fails in these duties he is
treated with scant respect and even well beaten—
Em as moças não me querendo
Dou pancadas no santinho.
He is expected himself to help in building up the fire—
Para fazer as fogueiras
Na noite de sua festa,
São João traz lá do monte
Um braçado de giesta.
(With a handful of broom
For his festal night,
St. John now is come
His fires to light.)
He even jumps over it—on a donkey—
S. João comprou um burro
Para pular as fogueiras
E depois de as pular todas
Deu-o de presente ás freiras.
(St. John bought a donkey to leap over the fires, and when he had leapt
over them all he gave it as a present to the nuns.) Possibly the donkey
enables him to go from one fire to the other, from hill to hill, and
village to village.
[Sidenote: St. John Superstitions.]
In Beira[28] a pine tree is pulled up, a procession going out to the
woods with drums and pipes. Then the smaller branches are lopped off, and
as a _galheiro_ it is decked with ferns and rosemary and other scented
shrubs and so burnt. When the fire has burnt down to a heap of glowing
logs and faggots children and grown persons jump over it, chanting
various rhymes to bring them health and good luck through the year till
next fire-tide. It does not seem to be the custom to roll a stone on to
the ashes, as in the South of France, where the beard of St. John is
found next morning under the stones. But, although St. John’s Eve is in
Portugal recognised as essentially the night of song and love—
Cantão moças, cantão velhas
Na noite de São João.
(Young maidens and old women sing
Alike on St. John’s Eve).
Esta noite é de segredos
Noite de amores e ciumes:
Quantos nacem, quantos morrem
Hoje a volta destes lumes!
Na noite de São João
É que é tomar amores,
Que estão os trigos nos campos
Todos com as suas flores.
(St. John’s night yields
Love’s fairest hour,
For the corn in the fields
Is all aflower.)
many superstitious beliefs are also connected with this night. Its hours
between midnight and dawn are among the most precious of all the year,
and no witch who has the least inkling of her business will waste a
single instant of them. The dews (_orvalhadas_) then gathered have a
special virtue, as also rosemary and other herbs and water brought from
the mountains and streams. By the fountains appear enchanted Moorish
maidens combing their hair with combs of gold, and many other spirits are
abroad. It is the night, too, of the great blue thistles or Jerusalem
artichokes (_alcachofras_) and other auguries of love. Next morning, on
St. John’s Day, the sun dances at its rising. So a Galician _romance_
begins with these lines—
Madrugada de San Joan,
Madrugada a mais garrida,
Que baila o sol cando nace
E ri cando morre o dia.
(The morning of St. John,
Fairest of all the year,
For the sun at its rising dances
And laughs when the day dies.)
Even at Lisbon St. John’s night is celebrated with genuine enthusiasm,
and the dark blue flower of the artichoke abounds in the markets.
[Sidenote: The Bull-fight.]
Such a _fête_ is far more popular than the bull-fight, about which in
Portugal there seems to be something a little artificial, with none of
the fierce passion that it evokes in Spain. As a spectacular display
the Portuguese _touradas_ can be very fine, and there is no horror of
killed horses, though the _toreador_ himself has been killed before
now, despite the bull’s blunted horns. The death of the well-known
Portuguese bull-fighter Fernando d’Oliveira, in Lisbon’s bull-ring at the
_Campo Pequeno_ on the 12th of May, 1904, caused an immense impression.
A special feature in Portugal are the _touradas nocturnas_ (first
introduced in 1880), carried on by artificial light. The more spirited
among the young men looking on are keen to show their own skill and
valour in the arena, and on special occasions the _toreadores_ are of
noble birth.
[Sidenote: Sports.]
Perhaps the greatest surprise of the Englishman visiting Portugal,
especially if he comes from Spain, where he may have imbibed the false
notion that the Portuguese are an enervated and decadent people, is to
find that a considerable and ever-growing number of Portuguese take part
and interest in sports and games—horse-racing, regattas, lawn-tennis,
football, motoring, riding, fencing, swimming. Football and lawn-tennis
are fairly common, cricket is played at Oporto, and in spite of a vague
belief that golf is played by the mad Englishman on horseback, his object
being to hit the ball and arrive on the green before it, a golf-links is
to be laid down in the grounds of the new thermal establishment, hôtel
and casino at Estoril.
[Sidenote: “Brazileiros.”]
In Portugal there is a small and narrowing circle of old nobility,
haughty and aloof, naturally growing more aloof as they have seen in
recent years titles showered or money made the sole measure of respect.
Lisbon, certainly, materialistic as a South American city, is at the feet
of the first _brazileiro_ who returns rich to his native land.
[Sidenote: Oporto.]
At Oporto, too, although the atmosphere is totally different from that of
Lisbon, the enriched _brazileiro_ plays a great part. It is, of course,
principally a business city, and has something grim and forbidding, a
reserve foreign to Lisbon. The large number of English wine merchants
and its communications by sea prevent it, however, from being a typical
Portuguese city.
[Sidenote: Braga.]
This is reserved for Braga in the north, which retains a peculiar
old-world flavour, and where probably there are not more than
half-a-dozen foreigners. As most towns in Portugal, it is a steep city
on a hill, its streets of houses of many-coloured _azulejos_, tiles,
and washes, going up precipitously to the splendid old cathedral. The
inhabitants are conservative as mountaineers, and it has the reputation
of being a stronghold of the reactionaries.
[Sidenote: North and South.]
The outlook on life in the North and in the South of Portugal seems
often, indeed, poles asunder, the North conservative, reserved, slow;
the South more expansive, liberal, and socialist, and the inhabitants
of Minho will look upon the inhabitant of Algarve as little less of a
stranger than the Frenchman or the Spaniard, indeed more of a stranger
than his northern neighbour of Galicia. The inhabitants of the North
are certainly more independent: in the South, and especially in all
the district round Lisbon, political intrigue and office-hunting, and
invasion of foreigners, have had a bad influence on character.
[Sidenote: Begging.]
Perhaps in no region on earth is begging more general. It is not only
the _lamuria_, the woeful _ladainhas_ of the beggars in the streets and
on the roads, with their strange tales or worn pieces of paper telling
of “disastrous chances” and “moving accidents,” in spelling still more
disastrous. You may say that you have no money to give or that you
will not give it, but that will not move them. The shibboleth to get
rid of them is _Tenha paciencia_ (Have patience: the very last thing
they require), which corresponds in effectiveness to the _Perdone Vd.
por Dios_, the pardon asked in the name of God of Spanish beggars for
giving them nothing. It means presumably that you have a hardened and
obdurate heart, that you have heard it all before, and are up to all
their tricks and devices: at least they immediately depart with gently
muttered imprecations. These unfortunate persons are from time to time
swept up promiscuously, the knaves and the deserving, by the police, and
shut up in the worst cells of the Lisbon prisons till they can be shipped
overseas with far less care or concern than a cargo of frozen meat.
Meanwhile their _confrères_ in higher grades of society continue in their
no less degrading mendicity: for an official post, a trade concession,
a favourable verdict in the law-courts, a this, a that, sinecures and
trifles, in an endless intrigue to _arranjar_ whatever necessity or
ambition demands at the hands of friends, Government officials, deputies,
politicians.
[Sidenote: Officials.]
And the number of Government officials is enormous and increases. It
is the object of all to attain this dignity. For the higher posts a
University degree is a help, and many go to Coimbra solely with this
object in view. (In the seventeenth century, according to the _Arte de
Furtar_ (1652), over a hundred “students” yearly succeeded in taking
their degree at Coimbra in order to obtain government employment without
ever having been in Coimbra.) But even the _cantoneiro_, who receives
something under a shilling from the State to mend or omit to mend the
roads of Portugal, thereby rises a step in the social scale and, if he
starves, starves with authority. It is the duty of a political leader
to provide places high and low for as large a number of followers as
possible: herein will be gauged the measure of his success. There is
thus continually a great moral (or immoral) force persistently at work
to overthrow the existing Government, which is like a solitary batsman
with not only the bowler—the legitimate Opposition—against him, but the
whole field and all the spectators (hostile or indifferent). For the
Portuguese are like the frogs, never content until King Log has been
replaced by King Stork, and not very content then. For them the bird
in the hand is never half so fine as the two in the bush, and they go
on intriguing, insinuating, imagining _novidades_ and betterment, both
in private and public life, forgetful of their own proverb, _Do mal o
menos_ (Let sleeping dogs lie). Politics sometimes causes disturbances at
Coimbra. The University, formerly Liberal, has now become Conservative,
“reactionary” in its dislike of the methods of the “White Ants.”
[Sidenote: Coimbra University.]
This, the only Portuguese University, answering to Oxford and Cambridge,
and old as they, is built on a hill in a delightful position above the
Mondego, perhaps the most beautiful of Portugal’s many beautiful rivers,
flowing through a country lovely in itself and endeared to all Portuguese
by its traditions of history and legend, of which a great book might
be filled. The teaching at Coimbra is apt to be too theoretical and to
embrace too many fields, to the loss of exact scholarship. Many attend
the lectures and rarely open a book. Literary discussions are frequent
unless momentarily submerged by politics, and of course much ingenuity
is always expended on skit and _troça_ and epigram. Actual book-learning
and accurate study of texts are less in favour (especially among the
_cabulas_ or _calaceiros_, _i.e._, students whose mission in life is to
take the key of the fields). Rows between town (_futricas_) and gown are
not unknown. The undergraduates are divided into _caloiros_ (_becjaune_,
fledgling, fresher), _novatos_ and _veteranos_, and live in considerable
freedom, in lodgings or hôtels, or clubbing together in _republicas_
composed of a few students often from the same province, _algarvios_,
_minhotos_, _beirões_.
[Sidenote: Regional Variety.]
Thus even here are maintained those distinctions between region and
region, which form no little part of the attraction of Portugal for
the traveller. Scarcely for the traveller in trains: if anyone wishes
to write a valuable and delightful book on Spain and Portugal, let his
travels be with a donkey, or on foot, selling, say, saffron or images of
saints, and he will be amply rewarded for whatever little discomforts he
may have to endure. The dress and gold ornaments of the peasant women of
the North have been often described, and if Minho deserved visiting for
nothing else it would be worth while to go there in order to see some
out-of-the-way village _praça_ (consisting often of the high road) on a
market day gleaming with gold, if not purple, more than all the cohorts
of Sennacherib. Some of the women are entirely covered with necklaces
from neck almost to the waist, and wear one or more pairs of earrings
often several inches in length. But even the _boeirinha_, the little
ox-girl who goes dressed in scarlet and gold with her huge goad in front
of the oxen, will have her gold ornament. It is in the North that the
oxen wear on their heads those strange erections, often beautifully
carved, called _cangas_. In Minho, too, chiefly survives the use of the
cloak of reeds—_coroça_—which, according to the author of _Costume of
Portugal_, was adopted by certain English officers who had seen it in
Portugal nearly a century ago, and admired its convenience and capacity
for keeping out the rain, which runs off it as water from a duck’s back:
a useful property in a country like Portugal, where the autumn, winter,
and spring rains are often heavy and sometimes continuous. For the
Portuguese, except for some districts of Traz os Montes and Beira, winter
consists of rain, not cold, and the rain at most develops a suspicion of
sleet (_chuva branca_). But as a rule that good sun of Portugal, which
has the property of warming without burning, is ever lurking round the
corner, ready to appear on the first pretext.
[Sidenote: Shepherds.]
A familiar sight in Alemtejo and the _Serra da Estrella_ are the
shepherds, the _rabadãos_ and _zagaes_, dressed in brown fleeces, with
their huge umbrellas of faded blue slung across their shoulders. The late
Conde de Ficalho, in the first volume of _A Tradição_ (1899), described
in an interesting paper the shepherds of Alemtejo, living a nomad life
from pasture to pasture, after the fashion of the Arabs, transferring
their clothes and food and implements on donkeys, as in Gil Vicente.
Many of the words they use are of Arabic origin, as _alfeire_ (a flock
of young lambs) or the _alfirme_ used to tie the sheep’s legs for the
shearing. They wear a _pellico_, _i.e._, a great jacket of fleeces
sewn together with _corriol_ (strips of leather) or a _çamarro_, which
consists merely of two fleeces without sleeves. The shepherd earns a
small salary (_soldada_) and his food (_comedia_), and has certain sheep
of his own (his _pegulhal_). The shepherds of the _Serra da Estrella_
are more stationary. Sun and wind have fanned and tanned them till they
sometimes resemble nothing so much as an old dead tree-trunk scarred
by lightning, and they may be seen standing motionless as a tree hour
after hour in the bare _Serra_. They are as remote from the twentieth
century as are the days of Romulus and Remus, and their customs and
those of the quaint villages set in the deep ravines of the _Serra_ are
worth a careful study, belonging as they do to an age long past, before
civilisation sweeps them away. Read or write the inhabitants cannot,
books and newspapers are unknown; but they maintain an old-world courtesy
and dignity of bearing which are attractive. They constitute one of the
most characteristic parts of the Portuguese people, one of the most
interesting elements in the infinite variety of Portuguese life.
[Illustration: A SHEPHERD]