Italy; with sketches of Spain and Portugal

LETTER X

Festival of the Corpo de Deos. – Striking decoration of the streets. – The Patriarchal Cathedral. – Coming forth of the Sacrament in awful state. – Gorgeous Procession. – Bewildering confusion of sounds.

7th June.

A MOST sonorous peal of bells, an alarming rattle of drums, and a piercing flourish of trumpets, roused me at daybreak. You are too piously disposed to be ignorant that this day is the festival of the Corpo de Deos. I had half a mind to have stayed at home, turning over a curious collection of Portuguese chronicles the Prior of Avis has just sent to me; but I was told such wonders of the expected procession that I could not refuse giving myself a little trouble in order to witness them.

Everybody was gone before I set out, and the streets of the suburb I inhabit, as well as those in the city through which I passed in my way to the patriarchal cathedral, were entirely deserted. A pestilence seemed to have swept the Great Square and the busy environs of the Exchange and India House; for even vagrants, scavengers, and beggars, in the last state of decrepitude, had all hobbled away to the scene of action. A few miserable curs sniffing at offals alone remained in the deserted streets, and I saw no human being at any of the windows, except half-a-dozen scabby children blubbering at being kept at home.

The murmur of the crowds, assembled round the patriarchale, reached us a long while before we got into the midst of them, for we advanced with difficulty between rows of soldiers drawn up in battle array. Upon turning a dark angle, overshadowed by the high buildings of the seminary adjoining the patriarchale, we discovered houses, shops, and palaces, all metamorphosed into tents, and hung from top to bottom with red damask, tapestry, satin coverlids, and fringed counterpanes glittering with gold. I thought myself in the midst of the Mogul’s encampment, so pompously described by Bernier.

The front of the Great Church in particular was most magnificently curtained; it rises from a vast flight of steps, which were covered to-day with the yeomen of the Queen’s guard in their rich party-coloured velvet dresses, and a multitude of priests bearing a gorgeous variety of painted and silken banners; flocks of sallow monks, white, brown, and black, kept pouring in continually, like turkeys driving to market.

This part of the holy display lasting a tiresome while, I grew weary, and left the balcony, where we were placed most advantageously, and got into the church. High mass was performing with awful pomp, incense ascending in clouds, and the light of innumerable tapers blazing on the diamonds of the ostensory, just elevated by the patriarch with trembling devout hands to receive the mysterious wafer.

Before the close of the ceremony, I regained my window, to have a full view of the coming forth of the Sacrament. All was expectation and silence in the people. The guards had ranged them on each side of the steps before the entrance of the church. At length a shower of aromatic herbs and flowers announced the approach of the patriarch, bearing the host under a regal canopy, surrounded by grandees, and preceded by a long train of mitred figures, their hands joined in prayer, their scarlet and purple vestments sweeping the ground, their attendants bearing croziers, crosses, and other insignia of pontifical grandeur.

The procession slowly descending the flights of stairs to the sound of choirs and the distant thunder of artillery, lost itself in a winding street decorated with embroidered hangings, and left me with my senses in a whirl, and my eyes dazzled, as if awakened from a vision of celestial splendour… My head swims at this moment, and my ears tingle with a confusion of sounds, bells, voices, and the echoes of cannon, prolonged by mountains and wafted over waters.

LETTER XI

Dinner at the country-house of Mr. S – . – His Brazilian wife. – Magnificent repast. – A tragic damsel.

11th June, 1787.

TO-DAY we were engaged to dine in the country at a villa belonging to a gentleman, whose volley of names, when pronounced with the true Portuguese twang, sounds like an expectoration – Josè Street-Arriaga-Brum da Silveira. Our hospitable host is of Irish extraction, boasts a stature of six feet, proportionable breadth, a ruddy countenance, herculean legs, and all the exterior attributes, at least, of that enterprising race, who often have the luck of marrying great fortunes. About a year or two ago he bore off a wealthy Brazilian heiress, and is now master of a large estate and a fubsical, squat wife, with a head not unlike that of Holofernes in old tapestry, and shoulders that act the part of a platter with rather too much exactitude. Poor soul! to be sure, she is neither a Venus nor a Hebe, has a rough lip, and a manly voice, and I fear is somewhat inclined to be dropsical; but her smiles are frequent and fondling, and she cleaves to her husband with great perseverance.

He is an odd character, will accept of no employment, civil or military, and affects a bullying frankness, that I should think must displease very much in this country, where independence either in fortune or sentiment is a crime seldom if ever tolerated.

Mr. S – likes a display, and the repast he gave us was magnificent; sixty dishes at least, eight smoking roasts, and every ragout, French, English, and Portuguese, that could be thought of. The dessert appeared like the model of a fortification. The principal cake-tower measured, I dare say, three feet perpendicular in height. The company was not equal either in number or consequence to the splendour of the entertainment.

Had not Miss Sill and Bezerra been luckily in my neighbourhood, I should have perished with ennui. One stately damsel, with portentous eyebrows, and looks that reproached the male part of the assembly with inattention, was the only lady of the palace Mr. S – had invited.

I expected to have met the whole troop of my Botanic Garden acquaintance, and to have escorted them about the vineyards and citron-orchards which surround this villa; but, alas! I was not destined to any such amusing excursion. The tragic damsel, who I am told has been unhappy in her tender attachments, took my arm, and never quitted it during a long walk through Mr. S – ’s ample possessions. We conversed in Italian, and paid the birds that were singing, and the rills that were murmuring, many fine compliments in a sort of prose run mad, borrowed from operas and serenatas, the Aminto of Tasso, and the Adone of Marini.

The sun was just diffusing his last rays over the distant rocks of Cintra, the air balsamic, and the paths amongst the vines springing with fresh herbage and a thousand flowers revived by last night’s rain. Giving up the narrow tract which leads through these rural regions to the signora, I stalked by her side in a furrow well garnished with nettles, acanthus, and dwarf aloes, stinging and scratching myself at every step. This penance, and the disappointment I was feeling most acutely, put me not a little out of humour; I regretted so delicious an evening should pass away in such forlorn company, and lacerating my legs to so little purpose. How should I have enjoyed rambling with the young Irish girl about these pleasant clover paths, between festoons of luxuriant leaves and tendrils, not fastened to stiff poles and stumpy stakes as in France and Switzerland, but climbing up light canes eight or ten feet in height!

Pinioned as I was, you may imagine I felt no inclination to prolong a walk which already had been prolonged unconscionably. I escaped tea and playing at voltarete, made a solemn bow to the solemn damsel, and got home before it was quite dark.

LETTER XII

Pass the day at Belem. – Visit the neighbouring Monastery. – Habitation of King Emanuel. – A gold Custodium of exquisite workmanship. – The Church. – Bonfires on the edge of the Tagus. – Fire-works. – Images of the Holy One of Lisbon.

June 12th, 1787.

WE passed the day quite en famille at Belem with a whole legion of Marialvas. Some reverend fathers, of I know not what community, had sent them immense messes of soup, very thick, slab, and oily; a portion which, it seems, the faithful are accustomed to swallow on the eve of St. Anthony’s festival.

As soon as I decently could, after a collation which was served under an awning stretched over one of the terraces, I stole out of the circle of lords, ladies, dwarfs, monks, buffoons, bullies, and almoners, to visit the neighbouring monastery. I ascended the great stairs, constructed at the expense of the Infanta Catherine, King Charles the Second’s dowager, and after walking in the cloisters of Emanuel, looked into the library, which is far from being in the cleanest or best ordered condition. The spacious and lofty cloisters present a striking spread of arches, which, though not in the purest style, attract the eye by their delicately-carved arabesque ornament, and the warm reddish hue of the marble. The corridor, into which open an almost endless range of cells, is full five hundred feet in length. Each window has a commodious resting-place, where the monks loll at their ease and enjoy the view of the river.

In a little dark treasury communicating by winding-stairs with that part of the edifice tradition points out as the habitation of King Emanuel, when at certain holy seasons he retired within these precincts, I was shown by candlelight some extremely curious plate, particularly a custodium, made in the year 1506, of the pure gold of Quiloa. Nothing can be more beautiful as a specimen of elaborate gothic sculpture, than this complicated enamelled mass of flying buttresses and fretted pinnacles, with the twelve Apostles in their niches, under canopies formed of ten thousand wreaths and ramifications.

From this gloomy recess, I was conducted to the church, one of the largest in Portugal, vast, solemn, and fantastic, like the interior of the Temple of Jerusalem, as I have seen it figured in some old German Bibles. There was little, however, in the altars or monuments worth any very minute investigation.

It fell dark before I went out at the great porch, and found the wide space before it beginning to catch a vivid gleam from a line of bonfires on the edge of the Tagus. I could hardly reach my carriage without being singed by squibs and crackers, and wished myself out the moment I got into it, a rocket having shot up just under the noses of my mules and scared them terribly.

Unless St. Anthony lulls me asleep by a miracle, I must expect no rest to-night, there is such a whizzing of fireworks, blazing of bonfires and flourishing of French horns in honour of to-morrow, the five hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary of that memorable day, when the Holy One of Lisbon passed by a soft transition to the joys of Paradise. I saw his image at the door of almost every house and even hovel of this populous capital, placed on an altar, and decked with a profusion of wax-lights and flowers.

LETTER XIII

The New Church of St. Anthony. – Sprightly Music. – Enthusiastic Sermon. – The good Prior of Avis. – Visit to the Carthusian Convent of Cachiez. – Spectres of the Order. – Striking effigy of the Saviour. – A young and melancholy Carthusian. – The Cemetery.

June 13th, 1787.

I SLEPT better than I expected: the Saint was propitious, and during the night cooled the ardour of his votaries and the flames of their bonfires by a vernal shower, which pattered agreeably this morning amongst the vineleaves of my garden. The clouds dispersed about eight o’clock, and at nine, just as I ascended the steps of the new church built over the identical house where St. Anthony was born, the sun shone out in all its splendour.

I cannot say this edifice recalled to my mind the magnificent sanctuary of Padua, which five years ago on this very day impressed my imagination so forcibly. Here are no constellations of golden lamps depending by glittering chains from a mysterious vaulted ceiling, no arcades of alabaster, no sculptured marbles. The church is supported by two rows of pillars neatly carved in stone, but wretchedly proportioned. Over the high altar, where stands the revered image in the midst of a bright illumination, was stretched a canopy of flowered velvet. This drapery, richly fringed and tasseled, marks out the spot formerly occupied by the chamber of the saint, and receives an amber-light from a row of tall casement windows, the woodwork gleaming with burnished gold.

A great many broad English faces burst forth from amongst the crowd of profane vulgar at the portal of the church, and all their eyes were directed to their enthusiastic countryman, but he was not to be stared out of a decent countenance.

The ceremony was extremely pompous. A prelate of the first rank, with a considerable detachment of priests from the royal chapel, officiated to the sounds of lively jigs and ranting minuets, better calculated to set a parcel of water-drinkers a dancing in a pump-room, than to direct the movements of a pontiff and his assistants.

After much indifferent music, vocal and instrumental, performed full gallop in the most rapid allegro, Frè Joaô Jacinto, a famous preacher, mounted the pulpit, lifted up hands and eyes, and poured forth a torrent of sounding phrases in honour of St. Anthony. What would I not give for such a voice? – it would almost have reached from Dan unto Beersheba!

The Father has undoubtedly great powers of elocution, and none of that canting, nasal whine so common in the delivery of monkish sermons. He treated kings, tetrarchs, and conquerors, the heroes and sages of antiquity, with ineffable contempt; reduced their palaces and fortifications to dust, their armies to pismires, their imperial vestments to cobwebs, and impressed all his audience, except the heretical squinters at the door, with the most thorough conviction of St. Anthony’s superiority over these objects of an erring and impious admiration.

“Happy,” exclaimed the preacher, “were those gothic ages, falsely called ages of barbarism and ignorance, when the hearts of men, uncorrupted by the delusive beverage of philosophy, were open to the words of truth falling like honey from the mouths of saints and confessors, such words as distilled from the lips of Anthony, yet a suckling hanging at the breast in this very spot. It was here the spirit of the Most High descended upon him, here that he conceived the sublime intention of penetrating into the most turbulent parts of Europe, setting the inclemency of seasons and the malice of men at defiance, and sprinkling amongst lawless nations the seeds of grace and repentance. There, my brethren, is the door out of which he issued. Do you not see him in the habit of a Menino de Coro, smiling with all the graces of innocence, and dispensing with his infant hands to a group of squalid children the portion of nourishment he has just received from his mother?

“But Anthony, from the first dawn of his existence, lived for others, and not for himself: he forewent even the luxury of meditation, and instead of retiring into a peaceful cell, rushed into the world, helpless and unprotected, lifting high the banner of the Cross amidst perils and uproar, appeasing wars, settling differences both public and domestic, exhorting at the risk of his life ruffians and plunderers to make restitution, and armed misers, guarding their coffers with bloody swords, to open their hearts and their hands to the distresses of the widow and the fatherless.

“Anthony ever sighed after the crown of martyrdom, and had long entertained an ardent desire of passing over into Morocco, and exposing himself to the fury of its bigoted and cruel sovereign; but the commands of his superior retain him on the point of embarkation; he makes a sacrifice of even this most laudable and glorious ambition; he traverses Spain, repairs to Assisi, embraces the rigid order of the great St. Francis, and continues to his last hour administering consolation to the dejected, fortifying their hopes of heaven, and confirming the faith of such as were wavering or deluded by a succession of prodigies. The dead are raised, the sick are healed, the sea is calmed by a glance of St Anthony; even the lowest ranks of the creation are attracted by eloquence more than human, and give marks of sensibility. Fish swim in shoals to hear the word of the Lord; and to convince the obdurate and those accursed whose hearts the false reasoning of the world had hardened, mules and animals the most perversely obstinate humble themselves to the earth when Anthony holds forth the Sacrament, and acknowledge the presence of the Divinity.”

The sermon ended, fiddling began anew with redoubled vigour, and I, disgusted with such unseasonable levity, retired home in dudgeon. This little cloud of peevishness was soon dissipated by the cheering presence of the good Prior of Avis, than whom there exists not, perhaps, in this world a more benign, evangelical character; one who gives glory to God with less ostentation, or bears a more unaffected goodwill towards men. This excellent prelate had been passing his morning, not in attending pompous ceremonies, but in consoling the sick and relieving the indigent; climbing up to their miserable chambers to afford assistance in the name of the saint whose festival was celebrating, and whose fame, for every charitable beneficent act, had been handed down by the inhabitants of Lisbon from father to child, through a long series of generations.

Our discourse was not of a nature to incline me to relish pomps and vanities. I waved seeing the procession which was expected to pass through the principal streets of the city, and, accompanied by my reverend friend, enjoyed the serenity of the evening on the shore of Belem. We stopped as we passed by the Marialva palace, and took up Don Pedro and his nursing father, the old Abade, who proposed a visit to the Carthusian convent of Cachiez.

In about half an hour we were set down before the church, which fronts the royal gardens, and were ushered into a solemn, silent quadrangle. Several spectres of the order were gliding about the cloisters, which branch off from this court. In the middle is a marble fountain, shaded by pyramids of clipped box; around are seven or eight small chapels; one of which contains a coloured image of the Saviour in the last dreadful agonies of his passion, covered with livid bruises and corrupted gore.

Whilst we were examining this too faithful effigy, some of the monks, by leave of their superior, gathered around us; one of them, a tall interesting figure, attracted my attention by the deep melancholy which sat upon his features. Upon inquiry, I learned he was only two-and-twenty years of age, of illustrious parentage, and lively talents; but the immediate cause of his having sought these mansions of stillness and mortification, the Grand Prior seemed loth to communicate.

I could not help observing, as this young victim stood before me, and I contemplated the evening light thrown on the arcades of the quadrangle, how many setting suns he was likely to behold wasting their gleams upon these walls, and what a wearisome succession of years he had in all probability devoted himself to consume within their precincts. The eyes of the good prior filled with tears, Verdeil shuddered, and the Abade, forgetting the superstitious part he generally acts in religious places, exclaimed loudly against the toleration of human sacrifices, and the folly of permitting those to renounce the world, whose youth incapacitates them from making a due estimate of its sorrows or advantages. As for Don Pedro, his serious disposition received additional gloom from the objects with which we were environed.

The chill gust that blew from an arched hall where the fathers are interred, and whose pavement returned a hollow sound as we walked over it, struck him with horror. It was the first time of his entering a Carthusian convent, and, to my surprise, he appeared ignorant of the severities of the order.

The sun set before we regained our carriage, and our conversation the whole way home partook of the impression which the scenery we had been contemplating inspired.

LETTER XIV

Curious succession of visiters. – A Seraphic Doctor. – Monsenhor Aguilar. – Mob of old hags, children, and ragamuffins. – Visit to the Theatre in the Rua d’os Condes. – The Archbishop Confessor. – Brazilian Modinhas. – Bewitching nature of that music. – Nocturnal processions. – Enthusiasm of the young Conde de Villanova. – No accounting for fancies.

14th June, 1787.

IT was my lot this afternoon to receive a curious succession of visitors. First came Pombal, who looked worn down with gay living and late hours; but there is an ease and fashion in his address not common in this country. Though he possesses one of the largest landed estates in the kingdom, (about one hundred and twenty thousand crowns a-year,) he wished me to understand that his dread father, the scourge and terror of the noblest houses in Portugal, the sole dispenser during so many years of the royal treasure, died, notwithstanding, in distressed circumstances, loaded with debts contracted in supporting the dignity of his post.

The next who did me the honour of a visit was the Judge Conservator of the English factory, Joaô Telles, a relation, legitimate or illegitimate (I know not exactly which), of the Penalvas. This man, who has risen to one of the highest posts of the law by the sole strength of his abilities, has a nervous, original style of expression, which put me in mind of Lord Thurlow; but to all this vigour of character and diction, he joins the pliability and subtleness of a serpent; and those he cannot take by storm, he is sure of overcoming by every soothing art of flattery and insinuation.

As soon as he was departed, entered a pair of monks with a basket of sweetmeats in cut paper, from a good lady abbess, beseeching me to portion out two sweet virgins as God’s spouses in some neighbouring monastery.

They were scarcely dismissed, before Father Theodore d’Almeida and another of his brethren were ushered in. The whites of their eyes alone were visible, nor could Whitfield himself, the original Doctor Squintum of Foote, have squinted more scientifically.

I was all attention to Father Theodore’s seraphic discourse; so excellent an opportunity of hearing a first-rate specimen of hypocritical cant was not to be neglected. No sooner had the fathers been conducted to the stairshead with due ceremony, than Monsenhor Aguilar, one of the prelates of the Patriarchal Cathedral, was announced. He confirmed me in the opinion I entertained of Father Theodore. No person can accuse Aguilar of being a hypocrite. He lays himself but too much open, and treats the church from which he derives a handsome maintenance, not as a patroness, but as an humble companion; the constant butt and object of his sarcasms. In Portugal, even in the year 1787, such conduct is madness, and I fear will expose him one day or other to severe persecution.

We were roused from a peaceful dish of tea by a loud hubbub in the street, and running to the balcony, found a beastly mob of old hags, children, and ragamuffins assembled, headed by half-a-dozen drummers, and as many negroes in scarlet jackets, blowing French-horns with unusual vehemence, and pointing them directly at the house. I was wondering at this Jericho fashion of besieging one’s door, and drawing back to avoid being singed by a rocket which whizzed along within an inch of my nose, when one of the servants entered with a crucifix on a silver salver, and a mighty kind message from the nuns of the Convent of the Sacrament, who had sent their musicians with trimbrels and fireworks, to invite us to some grand doings at their convent, in honour of the Festival of the Heart of Jesus. Really, these church parties begin to lose in my eyes great part of the charm which novelty gave them. I have had pretty nearly my fill of motets, and Kyrie eleisons, and incense, and sweetmeats, and sermons.

That heretic Verdeil, who would almost as soon be in hell at once as in such a cloying heaven, would not let me rest till I went with him to the theatre in the Rua d’os Condes, in order to dissipate by a little profane air the fumes of so much holiness. The play afforded me more disgust than amusement; the theatre is low and narrow, and the actors, for there are no actresses, below criticism. Her Majesty’s absolute commands having swept females off the stage, their parts are acted by calvish young fellows. Judge what a pleasing effect this metamorphosis must produce, especially in the dancers, where one sees a stout shepherdess in virgin white, with a soft blue beard, and a prominent collar-bone, clenching a nosegay in a fist that would almost have knocked down Goliah, and a train of milk-maids attending her enormous foot-steps, tossing their petticoats over their heads at every step. Such sprawling, jerking, and ogling I never saw before, and hope never to see again.