IN PORTUGAL Br the SAME AUTHOR

II! KiiHI I iiiii liililt'jliiiilr IN PORTUGAL Br THE SAME AUTHOR THE MAGIC OF SPAIN Crown 8vo. 5j. net IN PORTUGAL BY AUBREY F. G. BELL Oh quern fora a Portugal, Terra que Deus bemdizia ! Romance (0 to go to Portugal, land heaven-blest) THE BODLEY HEAD, LONDON : JOHN LANE, COMPANY. MCMXIL NEW YORK : JOHN LANE WILUAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LOKDON AND BECCLES —; PREFACE guide-books give full details of THEthe marvellous convents, gorgeous palaces and solemn temples of Portugal, and no attempt is here made to write complete descriptions of them, the very names of some of them being omitted. But the guide-books too often treat Portugal as a continuation, almost as a province of Spain. It is hoped that this little book may give some idea of the individual character of the countiy, of the quaintnesses of its cities, and of peasant life in its remoter districts. While the utterly opposed characters of the two peoples must probably render the divorce between Spain and Portugal eternal and reduce hopes of union to the idle dreams of politicians, Portugal in itself contains an infinite variety the charjiecas and cornlands of Alemtejo ; the hills and moors, pinewoods, corkwoods and olives of Extremadura; the red soil and faint blue mountains of Algarve, with its figs and carobs and palms, and little sandy fishing-bays 414:810 ; vi PREFACE the clear streams and high massive ranges and chimneyless granite villages of Beira Baixa and Beira Alta ; the vines and sand-dunes and rice- growing alagadicos of Douro ; the wooded hills, mountain valleys, flowery meadows and trans- parent streams and rivers of rainy Minho, with its white and grey scattered houses, its crosses and shrines and chapels, its maize-fields and orchards and tree- or granite-propped vines and, finally, remote inaccessible Traz-os-IMontes, bounded on two sides by Spain, on the South by the Douro, to which its rivers of Spanish origin, Tamega, Tua, Sabor, flow through its range on range of bare mountains, with pre- cipitous ravines and yellow-brown clustered villages among olives, chestnuts and rye. Each of the eight provinces (more especially those of the alemtejanos^ viinhotoH and beiroes) preserves many peculiarities of language, customs and dress ; and each, in return for hardships endured, will give to the traveller many a day of delight and interest. MiRANDELLA (TeAZ-OS-MoNTES), July, 1911. — CONTENTS PAGE Preface .... V I. Characteristics akd Customs 3 II. Travelling in Portugal 18 III. The Charm of Alemtejo 27 IV. Charnecas of Alemtejo 33 V. An Early Morning Drive 39 VI. The City of Evora 44 VII. The City of Beja 50 VIII. In Algarve . 54- IX. EXTREMADURA 63 X. Lisbon I. 71 XI. Lisbon II. Alfama 81 XII. The Convent and Tower of Belem . 85 XIII. CiNTRA 89 XIV. Mafra, Alcobaca, Aljubarrota, Batalha 99 XV. King Diniz and Leiria on the Liz . 114 XVI, From Leiria to Thomar and Beira Baixa 118 XVII. PiNEWOODS OF ExTREMADURA 124 XVIIL The Serra da Estrella 128 XIX. Villages of the Serra 136 XX. The Cercal of Bussaco 142 vm CONTENTS CHAPTBB PAoe XXI. The University of Coimbra 148 XXII. Oporto 157 XXIII. The Province of Minho . 163 XXIV. A Wayside Inn .... 180 XXV. Through Traz-os-Montes . 185 XXVI. Where Lusitania and her Sister bieet 196 XXVII. On the Open Road . 202 XXVIII. The Portuguese Language 207 XXIX. A Modern Portuguese Poet . 212 Index 223 IN PORTUGAL B — — IN PORTUGAL CHAPTER 1 CHARACTERISTICS AND CUSTOMS A antiga fortaleza, A lealdade d'animo e nobreza. Camoes, (The ancient vigour and loyalty of mind and nobleness.) CAMOES speaks of the "ancient" vigour of the Portuguese, but those who imagine the Portuguese of the twentieth century to be a soft and enervated nation will be surprised to find how much quiet determination, persistent work and brave endurance of hardships exists in Portugal. Camoes elsewhere {Lusiads,' v, canto 72) lays fresh stress on loyalty as a fundamental characteristic of the Portuguese : Aquella portugueza alta excellencia De lealdade finne e obediencia. (That uoble Portuguese virtue of stout loyalty and obedience.) The Portuguese can in fact combine loyalty with independence, docility with determination ; they accept a situation which they may not Hke, 3 4 IN PORTUGAL but with a pertinacious looking for better things, persistent rather than restless. Thus during all the time of the Spaniard's domination in Portugal (from 1580 to 1640) many ceased not to look for the return of that King Sebastian who had perished in Africa, but of whose death no certain news had ever been received. But they are often indolent and careless, with fugitive enthusiasms, vague imaginings and a love of words and rhetoric which they share with the Spanish. The name Algarvio has come to be the common Portuguese word for a chatterer, but, although the Portuguese of the North are more reserved and morose than the inhabitants of Algarve, they can scarcely be said to be more taciturn. The Paniberian ideal has been revived from time to time (as by the Spanish statesman Canovas del Castillo) ; but the Castilian tends to despise the Portuguese, and the Portuguese returns this dislike in flowing measure. To the uneducated Spaniard, especially, the Portuguese is an inferior being, muy I'uin, muij iniserahle^ and he is the butt of their stories, invariably playing the part of the fool and dupe. This mutual dislike of Spaniard and Portuguese is not based upon a similarity in weaknesses, in which case it would be the more easily intelligible, but rather upon an opposition of excellences, a complete divergence of character. The CHARACTERISTICS AND CUSTOMS 5 thoughtful humaneness of the Portuguese is poles apart from the noble rashness and imprudence of the Spaniard ; the Spaniard's restless discontent is replaced in Portugal by what might almost be called a contented melancholy, a " humorous " sadness like that of Jaques in " As yoii like it.'' They have a resigned, a genial pessimism,^ a patient, perhaps indolent tolerance, finding relief in sarcasm and irony. A sentence in one of E^a de Queiroz' " *' Contos — *' Esse era um civilizado e accusou logo governo ; he, as a civilized man, at once laid the blame (for some lost luggage) upon the Government "—might seem to imply that the discontent of the people in Portugal was as unreasoned as that of the people in Spain, their politics as unruly. But they are in fact much more apt to be indolently indifferent, ever ready to say of a government, whether Monarchist or " Republican : Jie7n c bom nem e ruim—it is neither good nor bad." The Portuguese peasant preserves a noble independence, and if at an election he votes as he is directed without a thought or murmur, it is that he is practical, and considers the result of an election to be quite immaterial to his affairs ; and he, at least, has none of the sabujice ^ that bows down before * Cf. their frequent exclamation Ora essa, almost equivalent to Jl ne manquait que cela. * Span, ramploneria—a kind of moral cowardice. ; 6 IN PORTUGAL foreign customs, foreign virtues, foreign phrases and fashions. In courtesy the Portuguese scarcely yield to the Castilians, and if in Portugal characters are not so strongly marked or asserted as in Spain, the Portuguese can nevertheless join to pleasant- ness of manner a very real firmness of purpose, just as in many parts of the country the blue eyes of the peasants have an expression at once kindly and frank. The Portuguese have a quiet dignity, but personalities are less aggressively emphasized than in Spain; they are vain, but they have not the irascible, susceptible pride of the Spaniard, theirs is a more placid vanity. In their address they are even more high- flown than the Spanish, Vossa Excellencia alter- nating with Vossemce {Vossa Merce, your worship) and o Senhor (in the third person, or, especially in Minho and Traz-os-Montes, men senhor). It is interesting to compare Spanish and Portuguese crowds. A Spanish crowd is so evidently composed of units only momentarily and loosely knit together, a Portuguese crowd is a mass more compact and closely welded the rumour of a Lisbon holiday- crowd is sufficiently imposing,^but it is a continuous roar or murmur, whereas the sound of a Spanish crowd is continually broken into individual shouts and laughter; the latter has the appearance of a —; CHARACTERISTICS AND CUSTOMS 7 fortuitous concourse of atoms, the former of a united multitude. Naturally so fair a country excites deep love, amor da patria nao movida De premio vil^ mas alto e quasi eterno, ( Love 'of country unmoved by low reward, but noble and as it were immortal.) nor would the Portuguese ever submit for long to a union with Spain, even as an autonomous region. The two characteristics most fundamentally Portuguese are perhaps a quiet human thought- fulness and a certain *; wistful melancholy or saudade. The very children are quiet, they seem to have no noisy games ; the voices are soft, the faces meditative. The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. It is not the attribute of poetic idlers only, but belongs also to the toilers in the fields. A popular cantiga says A ausencia tern uma lilha Que se chama Saudade, Eu sustento mae e filha Bern contra miuha vontade. (Absence has a daughter, whose name is Saudade ; alas, both mother and daughter are mine against my will.) — — 8 IN PORTUGAL but as a rule saudade is caused by nothing so definite as absence from a person or thing beloved.

Load more