Italy; with sketches of Spain and Portugal

We were heartily sick of the performance before it was half finished, and the night being serene and pleasant, were tempted to take a ramble in the Great Square, which received a faint gleam from the lights in the apartments of the palace, every window being thrown open to catch the breeze. The Archbishop Confessor displayed his goodly person at one of the balconies; from a clown, this now most important personage became a common soldier, from a common soldier a corporal, from a corporal a monk, in which station he gave so many proofs of toleration and good-humour, that Pombal, who happened to stumble upon him by one of those chances which set all calculation at defiance, judged him sufficiently shrewd, jovial, and ignorant, to make a very harmless and comfortable confessor to her Majesty, then Princess of Brazil: since her accession to the throne, he is become Archbishop, in partibus, Grand Inquisitor, and the first spring in the present Government of Portugal. I never saw a sturdier fellow. He seems to anoint himself with the oil of gladness, to laugh and grow fat in spite of the critical situation of affairs in this kingdom, and the just fears all its true patriots entertain of seeing it once more relapse into a Spanish province.

At a window immediately over his right reverence’s shining forehead, we spied out the Lacerdas, two handsome sisters, maids of honour to the Queen, waving their hands to us very invitingly. This was encouragement enough for us to run up a vast many flights of stairs to their apartment, which was crowded with nephews and nieces and cousins clustering round two very elegant young women, who, accompanied by their singing-master, a little square friar, with greenish eyes, were warbling Brazilian modinhas.

Those who have never heard this original sort of music, must and will remain ignorant of the most bewitching melodies that ever existed since the days of the Sybarites. They consist of languid interrupted measures, as if the breath was gone with excess of rapture, and the soul panting to meet the kindred soul of some beloved object. With a childish carelessness they steal into the heart, before it has time to arm itself against their enervating influence; you fancy you are swallowing milk, and are admitting the poison of voluptuousness into the closest recesses of your existence. At least, such beings as feel the power of harmonious sounds are doing so; I won’t answer for hard-eared, phlegmatic northern animals.

An hour or two passed away almost imperceptibly in the pleasing delirium these syren notes inspired, and it was not without regret I saw the company disperse and the spell dissolve. The ladies of the apartment having received a summons to attend her Majesty’s supper, curtsied us off very gracefully, and vanished.

In our way home we met the Sacrament, enveloped in a glare of light, marching in state to pay some sick person a farewell visit; and that hopeful young nobleman, the Conde de Villa Nova,13 preceding the canopy in a scarlet mantle, and tinkling a silver bell. He is always in close attendance upon the Host, and passes the flower of his days in this singular species of danglement. No lover was ever more jealous of his mistress than this ingenuous youth of his bell. He cannot endure any other person should give it vibration. The parish officers of the extensive and populous district in which his palace is situated, from respect to his birth and opulence, indulge him in this caprice, and indeed a more perseverant bell-bearer they could not have chosen. At all hours and in all weathers he is ready to perform this holy office. In the dead of the night, or in the most intense heat of the day, out he issues and down he dives, or up he climbs, to any dungeon or garret where spiritual assistance of this nature is demanded.

It has been again and again observed, that there is no accounting for fancies. Every person has his own, which he follows to the best of his means and abilities. The old Marialva’s delights are centered between his two silver recipiendaries; the Marquis his son in dancing attendance with the Queen; and Villa Nova, in announcing with his bell to all true believers the approach of celestial majesty. The present rage of the scribbler of all these extravagances is modinhas, and under its prevalence he feels half-tempted to set sail for the Brazils, the native land of these enchanting compositions, to live in tents, such as the Chevalier de Parny describes in his agreeable little voyage, and swing in hammocks, or glide over smooth mats surrounded by bands of youthful minstrels, diffusing at every step the perfume of jasmine and roses.

LETTER XV

Excessive sultriness of Lisbon. – Night sounds of the city. – Public gala in the garden of the Conde de Villa Nova. – Visit to the Anjeja Palace. – The heir of the family. – Marvellous narrations of a young priest. – Convent of Savoyard nuns. – Father Theodore’s chickens. – Sequestered group of beauties. – Singing of the Scarlati.

29th June, 1787.

THE bright sunshine which has lately been our portion, glorious as it is, begins to tire me. Twenty times a day I cannot help wishing myself extended at full-length upon the fresh herbage of some shady English valley, where fairies gambol in the twilights of Midsummer, whispering in the ears of their sleeping favourites the good or evil fortunes which await them. It is too hot for these oracular little elvish beings in Portugal, one must not here expect their inspirations; but would to Heaven some revelation of this or any other nature had warned me off in time, from the blinding dust and excessive sultriness of Lisbon and its neighbourhood. How silly, when one is well and cool, to gad abroad, in the vain hope of making what is really best, better. Depend upon it, there is more vernal delight and joy in our green hills and copses, than in all these stunted olive fields and sun-burnt promontories.

We have a homely saying, that what is poison to one man is meat to another, and true enough; for these days and nights of glowing temperature, which oppress me beyond endurance, are the delight and boast of the inhabitants of this capital. The heat seems not only to have new venomed the stings of the fleas and the musquitoes, but to have drawn out, the whole night long, all the human ephemera of Lisbon. They frisk, and dance, and tinkle their guitars from sunset to sunrise. The dogs, too, keep yelping and howling without intermission; and what with the bellowing of litanies by parochial processions, the whizzing of fireworks, which devotees are perpetually letting off in honour of some member or other of the celestial hierarchy, and the squabbles of bullying rake-hells, who scour the streets in search of adventures, there is no getting a wink of sleep, even if the heat would allow it.

As to those quiet nocturnal parties, where ingenuous youths rest their heads, not on the lap of earth, but on that of their mistresses, who are soothingly employed in delivering the jetty locks of their lovers from too abundant a population, I have nothing to say against them, nor am I much disturbed by the dashing sound of a few downfalls14 from the windows; but these dog-howlings exceed every annoyance of the kind I ever endured, and give no slight foretaste of the infernal regions.

Nothing but amusement and racket being thought of here at this season (when to celebrate St. Peter’s festival with all the noise and extravagance in your power, is not more a profane inclination than a pious duty,) that simpleton, the Conde de Villa Nova, opened his garden last night to the nob and mob-ility of Lisbon. There was a dull illumination of paper lanterns, and a sort of pavilion awkwardly constructed for dancing, beneath which the prettiest French and English mantua-makers, milliners, and abigails of the metropolis, figured away in cotillons with the Duke of Cadaval and some other young men of the first distinction, who, like many as hopeful in our own capital, are never at their ease but in low company. Two or three of my servants accompanied my tailor to the fête, and returned enraptured with the affable pleasing manners of the foreign milliners and native nobility.

I should have been most happy to remain at home, in the shade of my green blinds, giving ear, through mere laziness, to any nonsense that anybody chose to say to me; but we had been long engaged to dine with Don Diego de Noronha, at the Anjeja Palace.

When we arrived at our destination, we found the heir of the family surrounded by priests and tutors, learning to look out at the window, the chief employment of Portuguese fidalgo life. Oh what a precious collection of stories did I hear at this attic banquet! There happened to be amongst the company a young oaf of a priest, from I forget what university (I hope not Coimbra), who kept on during the whole dinner favouring us with marvellous narrations, such as the late Queen’s pounding a pearl of inestimable value, to swallow in medical potions; and that one of the nuns of the Convent of the Sacrament, having intrigued with old Beelzebub in propria persona, had been sent to the Inquisition, and the window through which his infernal majesty had entered upon this gallant exploit, walled up and painted over with red crosses. The same precautionary decoration, continued he, has been bestowed upon every opening in the façade, so that no demon, however sharp-set, can get in again. He would fain also have made us believe, that a woman very fair and plump to the eye, with an overflowing breast of milk, who took in sucklings to nurse cheaper than anybody else, regularly made away with them, and was now in the dungeons of the holy office, accused of having minced up above a score of innocents!

Heaven forbid I should detail any further particulars of our table-talk; if I did, you would be finely surfeited.

After dinner the company dispersed, some to their couches, some to hear a sonata on the dulcimer, accompanied on the jew’s harp by a couple of dwarfs; the heir-apparent to his beloved window; and Verdeil and I to a convent of Savoyard nuns, at Belem, the coolest, cleanest retirement in the whole neighbourhood, and blessed into the bargain by the especial patronage and inspection of Father Theodore d’Almeida. His reverence, it seems, had been the principal instrument, under Providence, of transplanting these blessed sprouts of holiness from the Convent of the Visitation at Annecy to the glowing climate of Portugal.

As I had just received a sugary epistle from this paragon of piety, recommending his favourite establishment in several pages of ardent panegyric, he could do no less than come forth from his interior nest, and bid us welcome with a countenance arrayed in the sweetest smiles, though I dare say he wished us at old scratch for our intrusion.

“Poor things,” said he, speaking of the chickens under education in this coop, “we do all we can to improve their tender minds and their guileless tongues in foreign languages. Sister Theresa has an admirable knack for teaching arithmetic; our venerable mother is remarkably well-bottomed in grammar, and Sister Francisca Salesia, whom I had the happiness to bring over from Lyons, is not only a most pure and persuasive moralist, but is acknowledged to be one of the first needles in Christendom, so we do tolerably well in embroidery. In music we are no great proficients. We allow of no modinhas, no opera airs; a plain hymn is all you must expect here; in short, we are ill-fitted to receive such distinguished visiters, and have nothing the world would call interesting to recommend us; but then, I, their unworthy confessor, must allow that such sweet, clean consciences as I meet with in this asylum are treasures beyond all that the Indies can furnish.”

Both Verdeil and myself, conscious of our own extreme unworthiness, were quite abashed by this sublime declamation, poured forth with hands crossed on the bosom, and eyes turned up to the ceiling, like some images one has seen of St. Ignatius or St. Francis Xavier.

It was a minute at least before his reverence relaxed from this attitude, and, drawing a curtain, condescended to admit us into a spacious parlour, delightfully cool, perfumed with jasmine, and filled with little Brazilian doves, parroquets, and canary birds. Such a cooing and chirping was never heard in greater perfection, except in Mahomet’s Paradise; nor were the houries wanting, for in a deep recess, behind a tolerably wide lattice, sat a row of the loveliest young creatures I ever beheld. A daughter of my friend Don Josè de Brito was amongst the number, and her eyes, of the most bewitching softness, seemed to acquire new fascination in this mysterious sort of twilight, beaming from behind a double grating of iron.

Every now and then the birds, not in the least intimidated by the predatory glances of Father Theodore, violated the sanctuary, and pitched upon ivory necks, and were received with ten thousand endearments by the angels of this little sequestered heaven, which looked so refreshing, and formed by its sacred calm so inviting a contrast to the turbulent world without, and its glaring atmosphere, that I could not resist exclaiming, “O that I had wings like a dove, that I might fly through those bars and be at rest!”

I need not tell you we passed half-an-hour most delightfully in talking of music, gardens, roses, and devotion, with the meninas, and had almost forgotten we were engaged to hear the Scarlati sing. Her father, an old captain of horse, of Italian extraction, lives not far from the Convent of the Visitation, so we had not much time during our transit to experience the woful difference between the cool parlour of the nuns and the suffocating exterior air.

A numerous group of the young ladies’ kindred stood ready at the street-door, with all that hospitable courtesy for which the Portuguese are so remarkably distinguished, to usher the strangers up-stairs into a gallery hung with arras and sconces, not unlike the great room of an Italian inn, once the palace of a nobleman. To keep up these post-house ideas, we scented a strong effluvia of the stable, and heard certain stampings and neighings, as if a party of hounnyms had arrived to partake of the concert.

Many strange, aboriginal figures of both sexes were assembled, an uncouth collection enough, I am apt to conjecture; however, I soon ceased giving them any notice. The young lady of the house charmed me at first sight by her graceful, modest manner; but when she sang some airs, composed by the famous Perez, I was not less delighted than surprised. Her voice modulates with unaffected carelessness into the most pathetic tones.15 Though she has adopted the masterly and scientific style of Ferracuti, one of the first singers in the Queen’s service, she gives a simplicity of expression to the most difficult passages, that makes them appear the effusions of a young romantic girl warbling to herself in the secret recesses of a forest.

I sat in a dark corner, unconscious of every thing that passed in the apartment, of the singular figures that entered, or those that went away; the starings, whisperings, and fan-flirtings of the assembly were lost upon me: I could not utter a syllable, and was vexed when an arbitrary old aunt insisted upon no more singing, and proposed a faro-table and a dance.

Most eagerly did I wish all the kindred and their friends petrified for the time being by some obliging necromancer, and would have done any thing, short of engaging my own dear self to the devil, to have obtained an uninterrupted audience of the syren till morning.

LETTER XVI

Ups-and-downs of Lisbon. – Negro Beldames. – Quinta of Marvilla. – Moonlight view of Lisbon. – Illuminated windows of the Palace. – The old Marquis of Penalva. – Padre Duarte, a famous Jesuit. – Conversation between him and a conceited Physician. – Their ludicrous blunders. – Toad-eaters. – Sonatas. – Portuguese minuets.

30th June, 1787.

…WE sallied out after dinner to pay visits. Never did I behold such cursed ups-and-downs, such shelving descents and sudden rises, as occur at every step one takes in going about Lisbon. I thought myself fifty times on the point of being overturned into the Tagus, or tumbled into sandy ditches, among rotten shoes, dead cats, and negro beldames, who retire into such dens and burrows for the purpose of telling fortunes and selling charms for the ague.

The Inquisition too often lays hold of these wretched sibyls, and works them confoundedly. I saw one dragging into light as I passed by the ruins of a palace thrown down by the earthquake. Whether a familiar of the Inquisition was griping her in his clutches, or whether she was being taken to account by some disappointed votary, I will not pretend to answer. Be that as it may, I was happy to be driven out of sight of this hideous object, whose contortions and howlings were truly horrible.

The more one is acquainted with Lisbon, the less it answers the expectations raised by its magnificent appearance from the river. Could a traveller be suddenly transported without preparation or prejudice to many parts of this city, he would reasonably conclude himself traversing a succession of villages awkwardly tacked together, and overpowered by massive convents. The churches in general are in a woful taste of architecture, the taste of Borromini, with crinkled pediments, furbelowed cornices and turrets, somewhat in the style of old-fashioned French clock-cases, such as Boucher designed with many a scrawl and flourish to adorn the apartments of Madame de Pompadour.

We traversed the city this evening in all its extent in our way to the Duke d’Alafoens’s villa, and gave vast numbers of her most faithful Majesty’s subjects an opportunity of staring at the height of the coach-box, the short jacket of the postilion, and other Anglicisms of the equipage. The Duke had been summoned to a council of state; but we found the Marquis of Marialva, who went with us round the apartments of the villa, which have nothing remarkable except one or two large saloons of excellent and striking proportions.

He afterwards proposed accompanying us about half-a-mile farther to the quinta of Marvilla, which belongs to his father. This spot has great picturesque beauties. The trees are old and fantastic, bending over ruined fountains and mutilated statues of heroes in armour, variegated by the lapse of years with innumerable tints of purple, green, and yellow. In the centre of almost impenetrable thickets of bay and myrtle, rise strange pyramids of rock-work surrounded by marble lions, that have a magic, symbolical appearance. M – has feeling enough to respect these uncouth monuments of an age when his ancestors performed so many heroic achievements, and readily promised me never to sacrifice them and the venerable shades in which they are embowered, to the pert, gaudy taste of modern Portuguese gardening.

We walked part of the way home by the serene light of the full moon rising from behind the mountains on the opposite shore of the Tagus, at this extremity of the metropolis above nine miles broad. Lisbon, which appeared to me so uninteresting a few hours ago, assumed a very different aspect by these soft gleams. The flights of steps, terraces, chapels, and porticos of several convents and palaces on the brink of the river, shone forth like edifices of white marble, whilst the rough cliffs and miserable sheds rising above them were lost in dark shadows. The great square through which we passed was filled with idlers of all sorts and sexes, staring up at the illuminated windows of the palace in hopes of catching a glimpse of her Majesty, the Prince, the Infantas, the Confessor, or Maids of Honour, whisking about from one apartment to the other, and giving ample scope to amusing conjectures. I am told the Confessor, though somewhat advanced in his career, is far from being insensible to the allurements of beauty, and pursues the young nymphs of the palace from window to window with juvenile alacrity.

It was nine before we got home, and I had not been long reposing myself after my walk, and arranging some plants I had gathered in the thickets of Marvilla, before three distinct ringings of the bell at my door announced the arrival of some distinguished personage; nor was I disappointed, for in came the old Marquis of Penalva and his son, who till a year ago, when the Queen granted him the same title as his father, was called Conde de Tarouca.

You must have heard frequently of that name. A grandfather of the old Marquis rendered it very illustrious by several important and successful embassies: the splendid entertainments he gave at the Congress of Utrecht, are amply described in Madame du Noyers and several other books of memoirs.

The Penalvas brought this evening in their suite a famous Jesuit, Padre Duarte, whom Pombal thought of sufficient consequence to be imprisoned for eighteen years, and a tall, knock-kneed, rhubarb-faced physician, in a gorgeous suit of glistening satin, one of the most ungain, conceited professors of the art of murdering I ever met with. Between the Jesuit and the doctor I had enough to do to keep my temper or countenance. They prated incessantly, pretended to have the most implicit admiration for everything that came from England, either in the way of furniture or poetry, and confounding dates, names, and subjects in one strange jumble, asked whether Sir Peter Lely was not the actual President of our Royal Academy, and launched forth into a warm encomium of my countryman Hans Holbein. I begged leave to assure these complaisant sages, that the last-mentioned artist was born at Basle, and that Sir Peter Lely had been dead a century. They stared a little at this information, but continued, nevertheless, in full song, playing off a sounding peal of compliments upon our national proficiency in painting, watch-making, the stocking-manufactory, &c. when General Forbes came in and made a diversion in my favour. We had some conversation upon the present state of Portugal, and the risks it runs of being swallowed up by the negotiations, not by the arms of Spain, ere many years are elapsed…

Our discourse was interrupted by the arrival of a fiddler, a priest, and an Italian musician, humble servants and toad-eaters to my illustrious guests. They fell a thumping my poor piano-forte, and playing sonatas whether I would or not. You are aware I am no great friend to sonatas, and that certain chromatic, squeaking tones of a fiddle, when the performer turns up the whites of his eyes, waggles a greasy chin, and affects ecstasies, set my teeth on edge. The griping countenance of the doctor was enough to produce that effect already, without the assistance of his fellow parasites, the priest and musician. Padre Duarte seemed to like them no better than myself; General Forbes had wisely withdrawn; and the old Marquis, inspired by a pathetic adagio, glided suddenly across the room in a step which I took for the beginning of a ballet heroique, but which turned out a minuet in the Portuguese style, with all its kicks and flourishes, in which Miss S – , who had come in to tea, was persuaded to join much against her inclination. It was no sooner ended, than the doctor displayed his rueful length of person in such a twitching angular minuet, as I want words to describe; so, between the sister-arts of music and dancing, I passed a delectable evening. This set shan’t catch me at home again in a hurry.

LETTER XVII

Dog-howlings. – Visit to the Convent of San Josè di Ribamar. – Breakfast at the Marquis of Penalvas. – Magnificent and hospitable reception. – Whispering in the shade of mysterious chambers. – The Bishop of Algarve. – Evening scene in the garden of Marvilla.

July 2nd, 1787.

I WAS awakened in the night by a horrid cry of dogs; not that infernal pack which Dryden tells us in his divine tale of Theodore and Honoria went regularly a ghost-hunting every Friday, howled half so dreadfully: Lisbon is more infested than any other capital I ever inhabited by herds of these half-famished animals, making themselves of use and importance by ridding the streets of some part, at least, of their unsavoury incumbrances.

Verdeil, who could not sleep any more than myself, on account of a furious and long protracted battle between two parties of these hell-hounds, persuaded me to rise with the sun, and proceed on horseback along the shore of Belem, which appeared in all its morning glory; the sky diversified by streaming clouds of purple edged with gold, and the sea by innumerable vessels of different sizes shooting along in various directions, whilst the waves at the entrance of the harbour were in violent agitation, all froth and foam.