Italy; with sketches of Spain and Portugal

Shall I confess that this nonsense amused me pretty nearly as much as it did my companions, whose raptures were only exceeded by those of madame de Pombeiro’s implings. They, sweet, sooty innocents, kept gibbering and pointing at the man with the black compasses in a manner so completely African and ludicrous, that I thought their contortions the best part of the entertainment.

The play ended, we hastened back to the palace, and traversing a number of dark vestibules and guard-chambers, (all of a snore with jaded equerries,) were almost blinded with a blaze of light from the room in which supper was served up. There we found in addition to all the Marialvas, the old marquis only excepted, the Camareira-mor, and five or six other hags of supreme quality, feeding like cormorants upon a variety of high-coloured and high-seasoned dishes. I suppose the keen air from the Tagus, which blows right into the palace-windows, operates as a powerful whet, for I never beheld eaters or eateresses, no not even our old acquaintance madame la Présidente at Paris, lay about them with greater intrepidity. To be sure, it was a splendid repast, quite a banquet. We had manjar branco and manjar real, and among other good things a certain preparation of rice and chicken, which suited me exactly, and no wonder, for this excellent mess had been just tossed up by Donna Isabel de Castro with her own illustrious hands, in a nice little kitchen adjoining the queen’s apartment, in which all the utensils are of solid silver.

The number of lights upon the table, and of attendants and pages in rich uniforms around it, was prodigious; but what interested me far more than all this parade, was the sportive good-humour and frankness of the company. How it happened that the presence of a stranger failed to inspire any reserve, is one of those odd circumstances I can hardly account for; especially as the higher orders of the Portuguese are the farthest removed of all persons from admitting any but their nearest relations to these family parties; but so it was, and I felt both flattered and gratified at being permitted to witness the ease and hilarity which prevailed.

The dutiful, affectionate attention of the younger part of the company to their parents was truly amiable; nor do I believe that, at this day in any other realm in Europe, the sacred precept of honouring your father and your mother is so cordially observed as in Portugal. Happy if, in our intercourse with that nation, we had profited in that respect by their example; the peace of so many of our noblest families would not have been disturbed by the lowest connexions, nor their best blood contaminated by matches of the most immoral, degrading tendency. We should not have seen one year a performer acting the part of lady this or lady t’other upon the stage, and the next in the drawing-room; nor, upon entering some of our principal houses, have been tempted to cry out – “Bless me! that lovely countenance is the same I recollect adoring by moonlight on the fine broad flagstones of Bond Street or Portland Place!”24

It was now after two in the morning, and I must own, notwithstanding the good cheer of which I had participated, and the kind entertainment I had received, I began to feel a little tired. The children were in such spirits, so full of frolic, and her sublimity, the Camareira-mor, so unusually tolerant and condescending, that there was no knowing when the party would break up. Taking, therefore, my leave in due form, I made my retreat escorted by half-a-dozen torch-bearers.

Just as I had gotten about half-way on my journey through what appeared to me interminable passages, I was arrested in my progress by a pair of dominicans, father Rocha, and his scarecrow satellite frè Josè do Rosario. A person less accustomed than I had lately been to such apparitions would have been startled; especially, too, if he had found himself like me between the most formidable living pillars of the holy inquisition.

“What are you doing here so very late,” I could not help exclaiming, “my reverend fathers? What’s the matter?”

“The matter is,” answered Rocha, with a voice of terrific hoarseness, “that we have caught cold waiting for you in these confounded corridors. The archbishop, above half-an-hour ago, commanded us to bring you to him dead or alive; but a rascally jackanapes in waiting upon her excellency the Camareira-mor would not let us in to deliver our message, so we have been airing ourselves hitherto to no purpose.”

“Do you know,” said Rocha, taking me into a little room where a lamp was still burning, “that affairs do not go on so smoothly as they ought? The archbishop seems to have lost both time and temper since he has been pressed into the cabinet; and, as for the Prince of Brazil and his consort, God forgive me for wishing their advisers and all their intrigues in the lowest abyss of perdition. How can you be scheming a journey to Madrid at this season? The floods are out, and the robbers also, and I tell you what, as the archbishop says twenty times a day, if you do go you deserve to be drowned and murdered.”

“The die is cast,” I replied, “and I must take my chance; but really I wish you would have the goodness to bid the archbishop a very good night in my name, and let me put off asking his benediction till to-morrow, for I am quite jaded.”

“Jaded or not,” answered the monk, “you must come with me; the wind is up in the archbishop’s brain just at this moment, and by the least contradiction more would become a hurricane.”

Finding resistance vain, I suffered myself to be conducted through two or three open courts, very refreshing at this hour you may suppose, and up a little staircase into the archbishop’s interior cabinet. All was still as death – no lay-brother bustling about – no sound audible but a low breathing, which now and then swelled into a half suppressed groan, from the agitated prelate, whom we found knee-deep in papers, immersed in thought.

“So,” said he, “there you are at last. What have you been doing all this while? Who but a brute of an Englishman would have kept me waiting. Ay, ay, you told me how it would be, and you are right. They plague my soul out. We have twenty rascals pulling as many ways. Your people too are not what they used to be, though Mello would make us believe to the contrary. One thing I know for certain, some infernal mischief is afloat, and unless God’s grace is speedily manifested, I see no end to confusion, and wish myself anywhere but where I am. These smooth-tongued, Frenchified, Italian, Voltaireists and encyclopedians have poisoned all sound doctrine. Ay,” continued he, rising up, with an expression of indignation and anger I never saw before on his countenance, “somebody’s ears25 are poisoned whom I could name… But where is the use of talking to you? You are determined to leave us, be it so. God’s providence is above all. He knows what is best for you, and for me, and for these kingdoms. There is your passport, countersigned by your friend Mello; and here is a letter for Lorenzana, and another for his catholic majesty’s confessor, in which I tell him what an amazing fool you are, and unless you continue one without any remission, we shall soon have you back again. Tell Marialva,” he added, addressing himself to Rocha (for the other father had not been admitted), “tell Marialva and all his friends that I have dried up my tongue almost more times than one, in attempting to argue a thousand silly whimsies and crotchets out of his harum-scarum English brain; but come,” said he, extending his arms, “I bear no malice, I pity, I do not condemn. Let me give you an embrace, and pray God it may not be the last you will receive from me.”

It was, alas! the last I ever received from him, poor, honest-hearted, kind old man! A sort of melancholy foreboding which seemed to pervade all he said in this interview was too soon realized. The fatal tide of events flowing on as it were with redoubled, tremendous velocity, swept away in the course of a few short months from this period the Prince of Brazil, the lovely and amiable infanta his sister, her husband Don Gabriel of Spain, and the good old King Charles the Third. Not long after, the archbishop-confessor himself was called from the plenitude of power and the enjoyment of unrivalled influence to the presence of that Being in whose sight “no man living shall be justified;” but as in many trying and peculiar instances he had shown the tenderest mercy, it may tremblingly be hoped that mercy has been shown to him. Notwithstanding the bluntness of his manner, the kindness of his heart, so apparent in his good-humoured, benevolent eye, found its way, almost imperceptibly to himself, to the hearts of others, and tempered the despotic roughness he sometimes assumed both in voice and gesture.

I still seem to behold the last, earnest, solemn look he gave me when, the door closing, he retired to the cares of state, and I with my escort of torch-bearers and dominicans hastened forth to breathe the open air, of which I stood greatly in need. Many things I had heard, and many others I conjectured, above all, the reluctance I felt at the bottom of my heart to leave a country in which I had received such uncommon marks of friendship, bore heavily upon me. When I got home, scarcely two hours before daybreak, and tried to compose myself to sleep, I was neither refreshed nor recruited, but experienced the agitation of feverish and broken slumbers.

LETTER XXXIV

Dead mass at the church of Martyrs. – Awful music by Perez and Jomelli. – Marialva’s affecting address. – My sorrow and anxiety.

26th Nov. 1787.

I WENT to the church of the Martyrs to hear the matins of Perez and the dead mass of Jomelli performed by all the principal musicians of the royal chapel for the repose of the souls of their deceased predecessors. Such august, such affecting music I never heard, and perhaps may never hear again; for the flame of devout enthusiasm burns dim in almost every part of Europe, and threatens total extinction in a very few years. As yet it glows at Lisbon, and produced this day the most striking musical effect.

Every individual present seemed penetrated with the spirit of those awful words which Perez and Jomelli have set with tremendous sublimity. Not only the music, but the serious demeanour of the performers, of the officiating priests, and indeed of the whole congregation, was calculated to impress a solemn, pious terror of the world beyond the grave. The splendid decoration of the church was changed into mourning, the tribunes hung with black, and a veil of gold and purple thrown over the high altar. In the midst of the choir stood a catafalque surrounded with tapers in lofty candelabra, a row of priests motionless on each side. There was an awful silence for several minutes, and then began the solemn service of the dead. The singers turned pale as they sang, “Timor mortis me conturbat.”

After the requiem, the high mass of Jomelli, in commemoration of the deceased, was performed; that famous composition which begins with a movement imitative of the tolling of bells,

“Swinging slow with sullen roar.”

These deep, majestic sounds, mingled with others like the cries for mercy of unhappy beings, around whom the shadows of death and the pains of hell were gathering, shook every nerve in my frame, and called up in my recollection so many affecting images, that I could not refrain from tears.

I scarcely knew how I was conveyed to the palace, where Marialva expected my coming with the utmost impatience. Our conversation took a most serious turn. He entreated me not to forget Portugal, to meditate upon the awful service I had been hearing, and to remember he should not die in peace unless I was present to close his eyes.

In the actual tone of my mind I was doubly touched by this melancholy, affectionate address. It seemed to cut through my soul, and I execrated Verdeil and all those who had been instrumental in persuading me to abandon such a friend. The grand prior wept bitterly at seeing my agitation. Marialva went to the queen, and the grand prior home with me. We dined alone; my heart was full of heaviness, and I could not eat. At night we returned to the palace, and there all my sorrow and anxiety was renewed.

SPAIN

LETTER I

Embark on the Tagus. – Aldea Gallega. – A poetical postmaster. – The church. – Leave Aldea Gallega. – Scenery on the road. – Palace built by John the Fifth. – Ruins at Montemor. – Reach Arroyolos.

Wednesday, Nov. 28th, 1787.

THE winds are reposing themselves, and the surface of the Tagus has all the smoothness of a mirror. The clouds are dispersing, for it rained heavily in the night, and the sun tinging the distant mountains of Palmella. Charming weather for crossing to Aldea Gallega, that self-same village in whose praises Baretti launches out with so much luxuriance. Horne and his nephew accompanied me to the stairs of Pampulha, where the old marquis’s scalera was waiting for me, with eight-and-twenty rowers in their bright scarlet accoutrements.

Beggars innumerable, blind, dumb, and scabby, followed me almost into the water. No beggars equal those of Portugal for strength of lungs, luxuriance of sores, profusion of vermin, variety and arrangement of tatters, and dauntless perseverance. Several clocks were striking one when we pushed off from the shore, and in a few minutes less than two hours we found ourselves at Aldea Gallega, four leagues from Lisbon. Vast numbers of boats and skiffs passed us in the course of our navigation, which I should have thought highly agreeable in other circumstances; but I felt oppressed and melancholy; the thoughts of my separation from the Marialvas bearing heavily on my mind. Nor could the grand prospects of the river, and its shores, crowded with convents, towers, and palaces, remove this dead cold weight a single instant.

The sun having sunk into watery clouds, the expanse of the Tagus wore a dismal, leaden-coloured aspect. Lisbon was cast into shade, and the huge mass of the convent of San Vicente, crowning an eminence, looked dark and solemn. The low shores of Aldea Gallega are pleasant and woody; many varieties of the tulip, the iris, and other bulbous roots, already springing up under the protection of spreading pines.

Instead of going to a swinish, stinking estellagem, my courier, Martinho de mello’s prime favourite, and the one he employs upon the most confidential negociations, conducted me to the postmaster’s; a neat, snug habitation, where I found very tolerable accommodations, and dined in the midst of a vapour of burnt lavender, that was near depriving us of all appetite.

Before I sat down to table, I wrote to M – , and sent my letter by the return of the scalera. It was not without difficulty I wrote then, or write at present, for my kind host, the postmaster, has not only the same age, but equal glibness of tongue as the abade. They were cotemporary at Coimbra, and their tongues have kept pace with each other these eighty years. The postmaster is blessed with a most tenacious memory, and having been a mighty reader of operas, serenatas, sonnets, and romances, seemed to sweat verses at every pore. For three hours he gave neither himself nor us any respite, but spouted whole volleys of Metastasio, till he was black in the face. Having washed down the heroic sentiments of Megacle, Artaserse, and Demetrio with a dish of tea, he fell to quoting Spanish and Latin authors, Ovid, Seneca, Lopez de Vega, Calderon, with the same volubility.

As millers sleep sound to the click of their mill, so I, at the end of the two hours’ gabbling, was perfectly well-seasoned, and let him run on with the most resigned composure, writing and reading as unconcernedly as if in a convent of Carthusians.

Thursday, November 29th.

THERE was a continual racket in the house and about the street-door all night. At four o’clock the baggage-carts set forth, with a tremendous jingling of bells. The morning was so soft and vernal, that we drank our chocolate on the veranda, which commands a wild rural view of shrubby fields and scattered pines, terminated by a long range of blue hills, most picturesquely varied in form, if not in colour.

After breakfast I went to the church, which Colmenar pretends is magnificently gilt and ornamented; but which, in fact, can boast no other decoration than a few shabby altars, displaying the images of Nossa Senhora, and the patron saint, in tinselled garments of faded taffeta. I knelt on a mouldy pavement, and felt a chill wind issuing from between the crevices of loose grave-stones, that returned a hollow sound when I rose up and walked over them. A priest, who was saying mass, officiated with uncommon slowness and solemnity. It was hardly light in the recesses of the chapels.

Soon after eight o’clock we left Aldea Gallega, and ploughed through deep furrows of sand at the sober rate of two miles and a half in an hour. On both sides of the heavy road the eye ranges uninterrupted, except by the stems of starveling pines, through a boundless extent of barren country, overgrown with stunted ilex and gum-cistus. The same scenery lasted without any variation full five leagues, to the venta de Pegoens, where I am now writing, in a long dismal room, with plastered walls, a damp brick-floor, and cracked window-shutters. A pack of half-famished dogs are leaping around me, their eyes ready to start out of their sockets and their ribs out of their skin.

After dining upon the provisions we brought with us, of which the yelping generation enjoyed no inconsiderable share, we proceeded through sandy wilds diversified alone by pines. Not a single habitation occurred, till by a glimmering dubious starlight, for it was now half-past seven, we discovered the extensive front of a palace, built in the year 1729, by John the fifth, for the accommodation of the infanta of Spain, who married his son, the late king D. Josè. Here we were to lodge, and I was rather surprised, upon entering a long suite of well-proportioned apartments, to find doors and windows still capable of being shut and opened, large chimneys guiltless of smoking out of their right channel, and painted ceilings without cracks or crevices.

A young priest, neither deficient in manners nor erudition, the keeper of this solitary palace, did his utmost to make our stay in it agreeable. By his attention, we had some chairs and tables placed by a blazing fire, which I worshipped with all the fervour of an ancient Persian. I had need of this consolation, being much disordered by the tiresome dragging of our heavy coach through heaps of sand, and depressed with feverish shiverings.

Friday, November 30th.

IT was a long while last night before I composed myself to sleep, and being called at the first dawn, I rose, if possible, more indisposed than when I lay down; I could scarcely swallow any refreshment, and kept walking disconsolately through the vast range of naked apartments, till the rays of the rising sun entered the windows. The horizon glowed with ruddy clouds. The vast desert levels, discovered from the balconies of the palace, gleamed with dewy verdure. I hastened out to breathe the fresh morning air, impregnated with the perfume of a thousand aromatic shrubs and opening flowers. I could not believe it was the last day of November, but fancied I had slept away the winter, and was just awakened in the month of May.

To enjoy these fragrant breezes in full liberty, I left our carriage to drag along as slowly as the mules pleased, and the muleteers to smoke their cigarros as deliberately as they thought proper; and mounting my horse, rode the best part of the way to Montemor; which is built on the acclivity of a mountain, and surrounded on every side by groves of olives. The whole face of the country is covered by the same vegetation, and, of course, presents no very cheerful appearance.

About a mile from Montemor we crossed a clear river, whose banks are thick-set with poplars, and a light, airy species of broom, intermixed with indian-fig, and laurustine in full blossom. The bees were swarming amongst the flowers, and filling the air with their hum.

Whilst our dinner was preparing we climbed up the green slopes of a lofty hill, to some ruins on its summit; and passing under a narrow arch discovered a broad flight of steps, which lead to a very ancient church of gothic uncouth architecture: the pavement almost entirely composed of sepulchral slabs and brasses. As we walked on a platform before the entrance, the sun shone so fiercely that we were glad to descend the eminence on its shadiest side, and take refuge in a cavern-like apartment of the estallagem, very damp and dingy; but in which, however, an excellent dinner awaited our arrival.

We set out at two in a blaze of sunshine, so cheerful and reviving, that I got once more on horseback, and never dismounted till I reached Arroyolos. Just as we came in sight of this ugly old town, which, like Montemor, crowns the summit of a rocky eminence, it fell totally dark; but the postmaster coming forth with torches, lighted us through several winding alleys to his house. I found some pleasant apartments amply furnished, and richly carpeted, and had the comfort of settling myself by a crackling fire, writing to the whole circle of the Marialvas, and drinking tea without being attacked by quotations of Virgil and Metastasio.

LETTER II

A wild tract of forest-land. – Arrival at Estremoz. – A fair. – An outrageous sermon. – Boundless wastes of gum-cistus. – Elvas. – Our reception there. – My visiters.

Saturday, December 1st, 1787.

HITHERTO I have had no reason to complain of my accommodations in travelling through Portugal. A mandate from the governor procured me milk this morning for my breakfast, much against the will of the proprietor, who had a great inclination to keep all to himself. The idea of its being squeezed out by force, persuaded me that it had a very sour taste, and I hardly touched it.

I laid in a stock of carpets for my journey, of strange grotesque patterns and glaring colours, the produce of a manufactory in this town, which employs about three hundred persons. Methinks I begin to write as dully as Major W. Dalrymple, whose dry journal of travels through a part of Spain I had the misfortune of reading in the coach this morning, as we jogged and jolted along the dreary road between Arroyolos and Venta do Duque.

We passed a wild tract of forest-land, and saw numerous herds of swine luxuriously scratching themselves against the rugged bark of cork-trees, and routing up the moss at their roots in search of acorns. Venta do Duque is a sty right worthy of being the capital of hoggish dominions. It can boast, however, of a chimney, which, giving us the opportunity of making a fire, rendered our stay in it less intolerable.

The evening turned out cloudy and cold. Before we arrived at Estremoz, another city on a hill, better and farther seen than it merits, it began to rain with a vengeance. I hear it splashing and driving this moment in the puddles which lie in the vast, forlorn market-place, at one end of which our posada is situated. For Portugal, this posada is by no means indifferent; the walls and ceilings have been neatly whitewashed, and here are chairs and tables. My carpets are of essential service in protecting my feet from the damp brick-floors. I have spread them all round my bed, and they make a flaming exotic appearance.

Sunday, December 2nd.

WHEN I opened my eyes about seven in the morning, the sky was still dismal and lowering; and a crowd of human figures, enveloped in dark capotes, were just issuing from several dens and lurking-places on each side the entrance of the posada. A fair, which was held to-day, had drawn them together, and they were lamenting in chorus the rainy weather, which prevented the display of their rural finery. Most of these good people had passed the night in the stables of the posada. As I came down stairs, I saw several of their companions of both sexes lying about like the killed and wounded on a field of battle; or, to use a less fatal comparison, like the dead-drunk during a contested election in England.

From the windows of the posada I looked down on a vast opening a thousand feet in breadth, surrounded by irregular buildings; amongst which I could not discover any of those handsome edifices adorned with marble columns, some travelling scribblers mention in terms of the highest commendation. The marble tower, too, they describe, built by Don Deniz, has totally lost its polish, if true it is it ever had any.