Aubrey F. G. Bell

“ He would be a very unreasonable critic, or a very ignorant party politician, who should expect the Republic to transform the financial situation inherited from the Monarchy from a desert into a garden of roses at the mere wave of a magic wand. What is expected of any Government worthy of the name is that it should be a firm and stable Government, that it should maintain order, promote private initiative and wealth, and inspire confidence by giving the country not doses of mystification and paper money, but a straightforward account of the state of its finances. ”

“ The character of a Portuguese is much more rarely than that of a Spaniard all of one piece. The Spaniard’s, clear-cut and angular, admits less readily of contrasts and contradictions, whereas the very vagueness of the Portuguese enables it to combine opposing elements. Certainly, at least, there would seem to be many puzzling inconsistencies in the character of the Portuguese people. For they are like a quiet stream with sudden falls. They are fatalists, but with moments of heroic rebellion and effort, apathetic, with bursts of energy in private and revolution in public life ”

“ It is in the strip of country between Tagus and Mondego that Portugal has massed her most famous and beautiful buildings, and the hurried traveller can thus within a space of about a hundred miles see Belem and Cintra and Mafra, Alcobaça, Batalha, and Thomar, Santarem, Leiria and Coimbra. But Portugal possesses a hundred other towns and towers so splendidly situated as to need little art for their beauty’s heightening. ”

“ Summer is the great weeder in Portugal: it robs both roofs and cobbled squares of their pleasant green. Alfama from a distance has the look of a tumble-down fishing-village above the Tagus. At close quarters it is found to be an intricate maze of streets so narrow that they never let in the sun, and a man’s stretched-out arms touch either wall, and so steep that they are built often in the form of stairs. ”

“ But the discoveries and conquests followed, the magic of the sea, the mystery of the East wove a spell over the imagination of the Portuguese, the country was drained of men, devastated by plague and famine. Lisbon and the East absorbed energies hitherto given to the soil. Portugal, moreover, was doomed to share Spain’s losses during the period 1580-1640, and later was ravaged by frequent civil wars. In fine one might expect to find a dwindling miserable population, dying out from sheer exhaustion. ”

“ But indeed the idea of Spain permanently conquering Portugal is as far removed from practical politics as the idea cherished by not a few Portuguese—of Portugal conquering Spain. Iberian unity may be a pleasant dream, but when a country has won for itself so definite and distinguished a position as Portugal in history, literature and language, it is too late for it to coalesce with another nation, unless as one of a federation of free States, the Basque Provinces and Asturias, Portugal and Galicia, Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, Andalucía, Castille. ”

“ There comes a time, about the end of July, when Lisbon is like Oxford in vacation. The glory is departed, and here there is no secondary reflected splendour of besundayed scouts to take its place. The smart carriages and motor-cars are few and far between, the steady flow of the well-dressed and fashionable passing up and down the Rua do Carmo, the Chiado, the Rua Nova de Almada, the Rua de S. Nicolau, and the Rua do Oiro, dries up like the summer streams. ”

“ If stress is here laid on these rustic traits as one of Lisbon’s great attractions to the foreigner, it must not of course be thought that it is not endowed with all the luxuries and refinements of a great modern city. There they all are, the good hôtels, streets neatly paved and scrupulously clean, the comfortable motor-cars and carriages, the tempting shop-windows, and a good service of electric tramcars, in an endless rosary of white and yellow. The service of motor-cars can scarcely be called good. ”

“ It would almost seem as if there were two writers to every reader in Portugal. “Every passing season inundates the bookshops with a flood of brochures in verse and prose, the proof of an exaggerated output of books. It seems as if even the illiterates must be authors” (Diario de Noticias, 6th April, 1914) . What most amazes the foreigner is to see the Lisbon bookshops parade a crowd of foreign books, while those in Portuguese are often tucked away in some obscure corner. Modern Portuguese literature is, unhappily, like finance and politics, largely of artificial growth, imported from abroad. ”

“ It has always been one of the anomalies of Portuguese finance that it is possible to have a full exchequer in a ruined country. To take but one instance, if the crops in Portugal fail a huge additional amount of wheat must be imported, and while the peasant is starving the Exchequer rakes in a surplus in Customs duties. Dr. Costa’s narrow methods—his great bid for popularity and a surplus—really increased the artificial character of Portuguese finance, and its tendency to live from hand to mouth and let the future take care of itself. ”

“ Many priests were liberal in politics, and only a few of them—in some remote parts of the country—were fanatics. The mass of the people is equally unfanatic. But only a section of the population of a single city—Lisbon—is non-Catholic. Indeed, according to one computation, there are only six thousand [64] non-Catholics in Portugal, or one in every thousand inhabitants. To the mass of the people religion is a pleasant show, and a refuge from the grinding reality of their lives, the Church ceremonies, the processions and pilgrimages are the notes of holiday and gaiety in the villages. ”

“ In the palace private photographs and weapons belonging to the Portuguese Royal Family still hang from the walls, and the tables are covered with magazines and newspapers, dated October, 1910, precisely as on that autumn day on which Queen Amélie heard here the faint booming of the guns from Lisbon in revolution. Those who are not content with the exquisite partial view from the terrace of the dining-room climb by a little outer staircase to the wind-swept cupola. ”

“ A Republic of principles so excellent would not, however, suit the character of the Portuguese very well—a people that still looks askance at manual labour as illiberal, even to the carrying of a parcel in the street, and loves the liberal professions and idleness-with-a-sense-of-importance. Yet if Portugal wishes to be really revolutionary she would adopt this programme of manual labour (with alternative of military service) for all under sixty years of age from Minister to miner, from President to ploughman, the only sure remedy for a great many modern social problems. ”

“ Humanity.
Thus the humanity of the Portuguese is real, they have no love of violence or bloodshed, but it is a state of mind rather than a course of action, and can be curiously combined with cruel persecutions in practice. The expulsion of the Jews came to Portugal from Spain, and it is difficult to believe that the Portuguese people ever viewed the Inquisition fires in the Rocio with anything but horror. But Vasco da Gama, Affonso d’Albuquerque, Dom João de Castro and other Portuguese in the East perpetrated cruelties as terrible as any practised by the Inquisition. ”

“ But in its position on the sea, its lines of low houses washed in many light hues, its inner harbour, like some still sky-reflecting lagoon, its markets and the shifting scenes that enliven its streets and praças, it is one of the most charming of Portugal’s towns, and gives the traveller one of those lively impressions of contrast in which the whole land of Portugal abounds. Surely no other combines in so small a space so many varieties of natural scenery and of architecture. ”

“ Most foreigners after a sojourn in Portugal take away the most pleasant impressions of the land and people, and they deplore the fact that it should be possible to say of Portugal, as was once said of Spain, that it has been given every blessing except that of a good Government. Rich in its sea and soil, and subsoil and climate, rich in buildings, traditions and literature from a glorious past, fortunate in the intelligent and progressive character of the inhabitants, Portugal possesses splendid advantages. ”

“ It is a question of encouraging the indigenous side of Portuguese civilisation—in language, literature, dress, legislation, drama, cookery, in everything—which since the sixteenth century has been set aside for the imported foreign-erudite; to develop as it were the Saxon element at the expense of the Norman. The people have succeeded in keeping many of their old and excellent customs—but by the skin of their teeth now—as they have their own names for many of the Lisbon streets and their own words side by side with those of learned origin. ”

“ It would, of course, be quite as easy for Great Britain to pocket the entire colonial empire of Portugal as it was for Germany to invade Belgium. But even the most suspicious and cantankerous Portuguese trusts Great Britain’s honour and moderation; and if the Republicans have sometimes affected to regard Great Britain as a gorged beast of prey, they trust and love Germany much as one may love and trust a tiger ready to spring. ”

“ All that should be desired of the Government is that it should afford a fair and open field for individual effort. And every Portuguese who lives not in Paris but in Portugal, who devotes himself to hard work instead of some so-called liberal profession, and who in his own immediate sphere of action encourages among the peasants cleanliness and regard for health, and among the educated toleration and discipline, will do more for Portugal than all the wordy warfare of the party politicians. ”

“ By such obvious sincerity the people would be brought to listen to this party, and to learn to live their own lives—each family its life in health and independence. How far removed this creed from Liberty, Humanity, and other such stereotyped catchwords, yet how infinitely more conducive to a prosperous future for Portugal! ”

“ A foreigner will give far less offence if he adopts a detached, amused, supercilious attitude than if he studies Portuguese politics sincerely from a Portuguese point of view, and considers what is the best remedy for the country. But all who prefer to breathe the sweet air of Heaven rather than that of the prisons of Portugal, would do well to club together, and keep the “Democrats” out of office until they have moderated their inquisitorial ardour. ”

“ Or, when the road cuts through matto, thick masses of cistus often invade it on either side, and the air is heavy with its scent. (Both in leaf and scent it strongly resembles escalonia.) A walking tour is more often a hardship than a pleasure, or rather its pleasure is of recollections, especially where, as in Spain, inns are rare and food in an inn rarer. But Portugal, that is in the northern provinces—for the sun tyrannises south of the Tagus and shade is rarer—is an ideal country for such a tour. ”

“ Rather un peuple qui revient. For, in the sixteenth century, Portugal may be said to have conquered a whole world and lost her own soul. The reverse process is now before her: to begin with Portugal’s own development and prosperity and so work outwards, and no one will contend that to convert Portugal from its miserable state into a flourishing and contented country will not merit all the praises won by Portugal’s discoveries and conquests of yore. ”