# Lisbon and Cintra/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
THE Rua de Santo Bento passes to the north of the Cortes and climbs gradually to the Rato, a large open space, circus-shaped, the streets diverging in many directions. On the right in the street of the Escola Polytechnica is the palace of the Duke of Palmella with a handsome entrance, two Caryatids in stone at the side, and the sculptured escutcheon above the door. The palms and greenery of the gardens show above a high, pink wall which turns towards the Rato with a large fountain at the base where people are constantly filling their pitchers. Following the electric car lines right to the other side up the street of the Amoreiras you skirt an enormous stone wall, and above this stands out like a small Bastille, a squared, plain, massive building with a flat roof. It is the famous depositary of water called the Mãe d'Agua, or Mother of Water, which at one time supplied all the fountains of Lisbon. Striding away from the edifice behind are the high, grey piles and arches of a noble aqueduct which show through the openings peeps of a little praça filled with trees and flowers, and the datura trees conspicuous with their white, sweet-smelling pendant blossoms. At the end of the garden the aqueduct turns sharply across the street, forming a triumphal arch of the Doric style erected in honour of its founder. Masses of ivy cover the piers as they pass from sight behind the houses.
It was a work that D. Manuel, and also Philippe II had once in project, but it was left for D. João V to bestow this great benefit upon Lisbon. Though in the vicinity of the city there are vestiges of many abandoned aqueducts, some of Roman antiquity, none of them have excelled in fame and splendid construction this Aqueducto das Aguas Livres. It is a superb aqueduct, uniting solidity ​and boldness with great utility, for at one time it supplied with its crystalline flow all the fountains of the city, whence every one was allowed to fetch freely the water they needed, a privilege giving rise to the name of Aguas Livres—free waters. The aqueduct passes out of the city over dale and hill for the distance of ten miles as far as Chellas receiving the water from various springs. The arches number 127, but the most remarkable are those which stride across the valley of Alcantara, close to Campolide, in full view from the train as it emerges from the city tunnel. Their height and majesty exceed those of Segovia, and compete nobly with the monumental constructive feats of ancient Rome. The fact that the aqueduct suffered no injury in the earthquake redounds to the skill of the master-builder, Manuel da Maia.
The little praça of the mulberry trees—dos Amoreiras—might have been a garden for old pensioners, so peaceful the seclusion beyond the great arches, and as the thought occurred I suddenly glanced at a white low building with an ancient roof, and read there inscribed, that it was, indeed, an asylo for aged people. Through open windows lower down came the drone of the loom, an apposite sound in the shade of the mulberry trees. And now the rushing of many waters fell upon my ear coming from the steadfast repositary of the spring waters which heralded their advent from distant hills. I left the praça and made my way to the gateway of the Mãe d'Agua. A spacious hall is that containing the vast cistern with a vaulted roof uplifted by four massive pillars rising from the depths of the basin. It reminded me of the spacious underground cisterns of the east, temple-like in their shadowed and calm seclusion from the outside world. The water descended from the conduit in silvery rivulets over a sloping mass of rocks into the bosom of the limpid, aquamarine ​Mother of Water. To one side climbs a flight of steps conducting to a narrow passage which looks down on the rockery, then leads to more steps that emerge on the roof. Here Lisbon is spread out to view from a new aspect, more beautiful in many ways than any other.
To the right within near distance of the Rato is seen the Church of St Isabel which overlooks the beautiful treed area of the Estrella Gardens. The dark spires of many cypress trees cluster in the north-west division of the gardens showing the locality of the English church and cemetery which was once the only open-air burial ground in Lisbon. It was formerly the usage to inter in vaults within the churches, lime being placed in the coffins to promote speedy dissolution. The Government assigned this place of burial to the English under an article of the Treaty of Alliance in the time of Oliver Cromwell, according to Murphy. The year 1717 is named by other authorities as the date of its foundation. The Dutch obtained a plot of land for the same purpose in 1724; a few years later both were united and subsequently enlarged. "Impensis Britanorum et Batavorum" is inscribed above the little chapel to the right of the gateway. A beautiful garden with straight walks intersecting one another, lined with tall cypress trees, Judas, lilac, rose and acacia trees is this God's Acre of the English colony in Lisbon, and many are the tombs which fill it. Names famihar in military records catch the eye; dates varying from the eighteenth century up to the present time witness to the long establishment of English blood in the land.
One name stands out from the rest with startling distinction, that of Henry Fielding, England's greatest novelist, who came out to Lisbon in the late summer of 1754 in search of health. He had delayed too long and died within two months of being carried on shore. The grave ​is stated to have been left unmarked for many years, a reproach to British appreciation of so gifted a writer, yet some stone or memorial must have been assigned to the spot, for we read in George Borrow's Bible in Spain that travellers, "if they be of England, may well be excused if they kiss the cold tomb, as I did, of the author of Amelia, the most singular genius which their island ever produced." The present massive stone erection was placed there by the efforts of the Rev. Christopher Neville, chaplain in 1830. Three years earlier than Fielding, Philip Doddridge, divine and hymn-writer, had been laid to rest in that same end of the burial ground. Over their graves, and through the whole of that sweet garden, wild canaries, brown and yellow breasted, flit through the foliage, their song, clear and thrilling, striking responsive chords in human hearts of a Hope "that what was shall live as before."
Dos Prazères, or the Pleasures, is the singular name of the Portuguese cemetery for this western side of Lisbon, and for a time I was at a loss to understand its derivation. Then I discovered that a small hermitage once stood on this same site dedicated to Nossa Senhora dos Prazères, the ground around being called Campo dos Prazères. Many are the broad, silent avenues, all numbered as streets, in this Père la Chaise of Lisbon, lined with lofty cypress trees that watch over the countless rows of small chapels, repositaries of the coffins, for the Portuguese are reluctant to bury them out of sight. Flowers and small altars gleam in the shadowy interiors through the iron grilles of the gates. It is an elevated site from which another splendid panorama spreads out to view with the city below, the river in the middle distance, and for background a limitless sea.
​commanding cupola of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (SS. Coraçao de Jesus), commonly known as the Estrella. D. Maria I, the unfortunate Queen whose vain efforts to unite her intense religious views with the politics of her reign ended in partial dementia, erected this church in fulfilment of a vow made before the birth of her eldest son, the long-desired heir to the throne. The royal consort, D. Pedro III, laid the first stone in 1779; the building was not completed until 1796. Money was expended on it that is said to have been destined by the ex-minister, Marquis de Pombal for making a monumental bridge spanning the Tagus between Lisbon and Almada, a project that several clever engineers have again put seriously forward during the last twenty years. The interior is rich in marbles, and the sculptured figures on the façade display, as usual, the skill of the Portuguese stone chiseller, in this instance the well-known Machado de Castro. Connoisseurs in architecture, however, from Murphy downwards, question the constructive methods of the architects.
The Largo da Estrella is always teeming with light, colour and life. Many electricos have their terminus before the church, a military hospital stands at one side, the gates of the Estrella Gardens are exactly opposite. These are, perhaps, the best laid out and most beautiful gardens in the whole city. A French gardener—certainly an artist too—planned and carried out the scheme of broad avenues, and winding walks, flower parterres, artificial lakes. In spring no lovelier spot is to be seen in Lisbon, and here the Judas trees flourish to perfection in groups, singly or in whole avenues, their beauty of colour in strong relief against the early foliage and evergreen exotics. This tree met with so often in Lisbon bears the name of olaia in Portuguese, and a prettier name in English than Judas is ​the Love tree. "It is the tree on which Judas did hang himself," says an ancient herbalist; but why a tree that is a native of Southern Europe should have received this reputation it is difficult to say. The Love tree as it grows in Lisbon streets and gardens is literally covered, every branch and smallest twigs, with clustering masses of gay purple-pink blossoms, similar in form to the pea. The foliage which develops later resembles the poplar.
A small cable-car line—precursor of the electrico and very ably engineered—lies outside the gates of the Estrella Gardens; it descends the steep Calçada da Estrella, passes the Cortes, climbs from the Rua de S. Bento in the hollow up a lengthy hill of appalling declivity, and finishes its course on the Praça de Camões. This is a sunlit, paved little praça surrounded by high houses at the head of the Rua Garrett, popularly called the Chiado. Here is erected in bronze the figure of Portugal's immortal poet whose name no true Portuguese hears spoken without heart vibrations of pride, Luiz de Camões, the Homer of modern times. The figure holds in one hand his poem, in the other a sword, in accordance with a verse in the Lusiadas, and also with his twofold career of soldier and poet. Grouped round the pedestal hewn in marble are eight statues of his most noted contemporaries in letters.
The life of Camões was no less interesting than his work, though there are conflicting stories of his birth, poverty and many viscissitudes. All his life he seems to have struggled with privation and difficulties, in spite of his having studied at Coimbra and then becoming a member of the court. Here it was he fell in love with Catherine d'Ataïde, the inspirer of one of his well-known odes, but whether she accepted or repelled his vows is not recorded. We are told only that Camões went to fight in ​Africa as a volunteer where before Ceuta he lost his eye. How familiar that maimed, rugged, yet strong, noble physiognomy becomes to the sojourner in Portugal, for in every town, house, almost every cottage one comes across it in some shape or form, as a bust, or in a print, or cast. Wounded, he returned to Lisbon, but slighted, overlooked, he did what all enterprising Portuguese yearned to do in those days, set sail for India, and again became a fighter in an expedition against the King of Cochin China. When he returned to Goa, the metropolis of Portuguese India, he had the indiscretion to publish a satire on the abuses which everywhere met his notice. He had to leave the town and seek refuge in the island of Macao, where having found a humble employment he began Os Lusiadas. Five years passed quickly, then he was recalled to Goa, but the ship on which he embarked stranded on the coast, and he lost everything he possessed except his poem, which he bore on his person when he was cast into the sea. Misfortune dogged him at Goa, for the viceroy who had recalled him set out for Europe, and his earlier enemies caused him to be put in irons under false accusations. When the new viceroy arrived, Camões's petition for liberty was not unheeded, and from this time forward the soldier merged into the poet, the great epic drew to a close.
In 1569, sixteen years since he had left Lisbon, he returned to his country. The young Sebastião was King. Although making a cult of religion rather than the muses, he accepted the dedication of the Lusiadas, and awarded to the author the puny pension of fifteen milreis—about the same sum that Paradise Lost gave to Milton.
From that time forward Camões had no resource but his pen, and in consequence tradition has stored many tales concerning the straits to which poverty reduced ​him. One of them speaks of a black slave whom he had brought from the East, and who went regularly into the streets to beg for his master. Then came that fatal expedition to Africa when national liberty for years to come was buried with D. Sebastião on the battlefield of Alcacer-el-Kebir.
"I die with the glory of my country," said Camões, when the news came to Lisbon. In truth, the poet expired a few days later in a hospital, goes the story, and was buried in the Convento de Santa Anna. The Lusiadas is the epic of the golden age of Portugal, the song of Vasco da Gama's adventurous expedition. The poet weaves in all the great figures and events of his country's history, and also episodes of romance, the tragedy of D. Pedro and Ignez de Castro being the subject of one of the finest passages. Over all watch the mythological figures of Homer and Virgil, singularly intermixed with the names of Christ, the Virgin and the saints of the Catholic Church. It was the first epic written since the invasion of the Goths; it was the forerunner and model of Tasso.
From the Praça de Camões the Rua Alecrim (Rosemary) descends to the Caes de Sodré, still precipitous, though not showing as in George Borrow's time the palaces of fidalgos, "massive and frowning but grand and picturesque with here and there a hanging garden overlooking the street at a great height," but chiefly the shops and offices of a busy thoroughfare. A little way down there opens out to the right a quiet little largo, where, against a background of thick, clustering palm fronds, stands, gleaming and white, the monument erected to Eça de Queiroz, with a characteristic quotation from the noted writer inscribed beneath: "sobre a nudez forte de Verdade a manto diaphono de phantazia" (over the strong nudity of Truth the diaphonous cloak of fantasy). Truth ​is represented by a semi-draped feminine figure, behind which rises the statue of the man, the folds of his academic robe merging into the plastic drapery which he is represented in the act of raising over the nude feminine bust. It is a piece of sculpture concerning which opinions differ very freely, but the criticism which seems best to understand the sympathetic intuition of the sculptor is made by a Portuguese:
"Teixeira Lopes showed a clear intuition of plastic interpretation when he brought to being out of the same block—as though from Mother Earth herself—the bust of Eça de Queiroz and the figure of the woman in whom is represented the naked strength of Truth; because no creator and his work interpenetrated each other more intimately, were such living counterparts; in a word no writer has more ably externalized his visions of beauty with so intense a love of form. The same vital ichor appears to circulate from the work to the life, from the life again to the work. That is to say, being a creation, it is a prolongment of the creator. In each realization he makes our feelings vibrate with his own. It is not the least title to his glorious memory of romanticist, this secret of making us feel the thrill of a life, nervously human, through his limpidly divine form." This is exactly what the sculptor appears to have tried to express. Whether he has succeeded or not is for the individual to judge.
The National Museum of the Fine Arts is at present in the street of the Green Windows (Janellas Verdes) in an old palace that once belonged to the Marquis de Pombal and was later the residence of the ex-Emperor and Empress of Brazil. Modern sculptures are displayed in the vestibule showing specimens of the work of the Duchess of Palmella, Thomaz Costa, Simões d'Almeida, and of Teixeira Lopes, the producer of the statue of Eça de ​Queiroz. Round the walls are a thousand blue and white azulejos representing pictorially a unique and interesting panorama of Lisbon before the earthquake.
Malhõa's well-known name in Portuguese art is represented in the first gallery of paintings by the great picture of the last moments of the Marquis de Pombal surrounded by his family. A painting of Santo Antonio, by Columbano deserves attention. This is an artist whose portraits are esteemed for their vigorous, and at the same time sympathetic, treatment. Of the work of Domingos Sequeira who lived from 1761 to 1837 there are several interesting, good specimens. The Flagellation of Christ, a small picture, slight in treatment but delicate and artistic, is full of movement. Two others by the same artist merit notice, a large canvas painted in Rome 1824, representing the Casa Pia allegorically; and another named The Promulgation of the Constitution, which not only displays good dramatic action in the figures, but a Turneresque feeling for effect and colour in the scheme of tender pinks and blues. There is a St Jerome (Jeromymos), attributed to Albrecht Dürer, but the dark, Moorish head with its silky, waved beard, the black cap and rich crimson coat suggest rather a Spanish painter or one of the primitive Portuguese school. In the Dutch school of painting a little portrait of Vasco da Gama, and a picture of the Calvario strike attention. Pedro Alexandrino, whose name soon becomes familiar in going through the churches is represented, and Viera Lusitano; also Morgado of Setubal noted for his pictures of still life—realistic studies of birds, fish, fruit, vegetables—particularly esteemed by the ordinary Portuguese visitor to picture galleries.
As a collection it is difficult to describe and still more to criticize these paintings of the Museu das Janellas Verdes, ​for there is only a catalogue of one division, and some of doubtful origin are attributed to the great masters: Michael Angelo, Rubens, Raffaelle, Vandyke and to stars of lesser magnitude, Teniers, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Landseer and so forth, without real authority.
The primitive Portuguese school, the mysterious Flemish pictures, and what is called in Portugal the Gothic (meaning Germanic) school are nearly all nameless works. The best are always attributed to Grão Vasco, that great national artist of the Middle Ages, about whose life and experience hangs a cloud of mystery as impenetrable as that which envelops those of Shakespeare in England. Count Raczynsky, who published in Paris, 1846, a very careful detailed work, prepared con amore, on the Arts in Portugal and is still reckoned by many as an authority, gathered together all the matter he could find relating to this artist; others declare he never existed at all but has in course of time been made by tradition the figurehead of the school his work represents. Almeida Garrett, a later exponent of artistic and literary life in Portugal, declares that it is known from documents of the time that Grão Vasco lived about the end of the fifteenth century, that he was painter-royal in the reign of D. Alfonso V and D. Manuel, that his style resembling the old Florentine school makes critics pronounce him to have been a pupil of Pedro Perugino. "Strong, accurate, yet rugged draughtmanship, high conceptions of architecture, beauty of landscape work are the characteristic marks of this celebrated genius whose fertile brush and assiduous application enriched the kingdom with his achievements."
Exhibitions of modern art are held in the Academy of the Bellas Artas in the same old monastery as the National Library, but not every year so it seems, as this season the Barcelona International Exhibition appears to have ​absorbed too many of the pictures of Portuguese artists to allow of their usual national one. A new edifice, to be specially devoted to art exhibitions, is on the point of erection through the exertions of the National Society of the Fine Arts, in the north-east of the city, a scheme which will realize one of the strongest desires of local artists.
The names of El-Rei D. Carlos and Carlos Reis head the list of Portuguese artists to-day. Carlos Reis was the pupil of Silva Porto, a well-known landscape and animal painter of the Lisbon Academy. He studied later in the Paris studios, and ten years ago was appointed to the landscape chair of painting in the School of Art in this city. By him was initiated the Sociedade Silva Porto, a society whose members are students who go into the country every summer to study art from nature, and hold annual exhibitions of their work in the well-lighted Salon of the Illustraçao Portuguez at the top of the big building of the chief daily paper of Lisbon, O Seculo. The taste for art is diligently propagated by the critics of this and other journals. "The want of æsthetic education in a people and its neglect of artistic talent demonstrate disgraceful mental inferiority, and the incrustation of faculties which should be maintained clear and integral during a well-balanced development," is the little sermon of one art critic writing on the last exhibition of this Society.
​varicoloured gems, examples of rare craftsmanship all vying one with the other in beauty of design and dainty, ingenious execution. In front of all these glass-faced cabinets one lingers long making involuntary comparisons, for the spoils of the different religious houses are marked by name. Among the most valuable and beautiful are ranked the Custodia and other jewelled plate of the Igreja Madre de Deus. Sunday afternoon is a favourite time for the Lisbonense to visit their National Museum, in fact I have been there at times when it was difficult to pass from one gallery to the other for the number blocking the way. Among the many appreciators of the Church's invaluable relics one notes groups of the humbler classes of city and suburb, the women with the gay, spotless handkerchiefs tied round their heads, the men in their broad-brimmed sombreros of felt, their awed, absorbed faces all showing the keenest interest in objects that still retain for them the original halo of sanctity.
There is also a fine display of ecclesiastical vestments, altar frontals and banners, embroidered with a fantasy of design, a wealth of gold and silver thread, a rare contrivance of daring or delicate colouring, that tell of the Oriental influence of the Moors strongly ingrained upon national taste. This is evident, too, in the interesting collection of richly worked costumes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Up to the time of D. Fernando nearly all the ecclesiastical vestments and altar furniture embroidered on silk and velvet were worked abroad, chiefly in Flanders, but in that reign the Portuguese began to cultivate the industrial art of embroidery and passementerie. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the development of the industry was as remarkable for its excellent productions as for the number of workers employed.
​Another art was promulgated in Portugal by the custom of decorating chapels and altars of the churches with gilded, carved wood (obra de talha dourada), which began to be introduced into the country the end of the fourteenth century. The extraordinary vogue it attained in the seventeenth century created a school of sculpture in wood which produced important artists as well as skilled gilders; to this the interiors of many churches throughout the kingdom bear witness.