Part 11

The first sign of systematic begging that I had experienced in Portugal was at Batalha; groups of children, encouraged apparently by the constant visitors to a show place, making a regular business of cadging: for we were getting now into the centre of Portugal where the people are less sturdy and the position of the peasant less prosperous than in the north. Along the road from Batalha to Alcobaça, a new and really charming form of begging was resorted to by the children on the wayside—chubby, well-fed mites they looked most of them, evidently not in abject want. They kneel on the roadside in an attitude of prayer, their hands joined in supplication, their eyes closed reverently and their expression rapt, like little dirty angels. They have before them a few cut flowers, and the moment the carriage passes them they start like a flash of lightning from their devotions, and throw the flowers into the stranger’s lap, whilst they begin to trot by the side of the vehicle in a dogged, persistent way, not articulately asking for alms, but simply trying to win a penny by reproachful glances and disregard of all entreaties to them to stop their dog-trot and go away. Needless to say, such tactics are usually successful, for only a very hard heart could withhold the small coin they covet, when an angelic-looking child of seven has panted half a mile barefooted by the side of a carriage going at a brisk pace.

Half-way to Alcobaça the ridge upon which the road runs narrows to a mere knife edge, and on the left hand a wide valley sweeps down suddenly, a bold long hill rising beyond. This is the battlefield of Aljubarrota, upon which John, the Master of Avis, won his crown, and for the second time asserted the independence of Portugal from Castile on the 14th August 1385. From Thomar he had brought all the power that patriotic Portugal could raise, and upon this ridge awaited the attack of the Castilians, who, if once they could pass it, would have all the seacoast of Portugal at their mercy down almost to the mouth of the Tagus. The position is not very dissimilar from that of Bussaco, but upon a smaller scale. The Portuguese right and left flanks were both defended by projecting spurs; upon one of which the English bowmen were posted, and by standing upon the centre of the position it is easy to see, even to-day, how skilfully John the Great had chosen his ground for the decisive struggle, and how difficult it was for the Castilians to succeed. They dared not proceed along the valley leaving this strong force of enemies upon the heights behind them, able to cut them off from their base, and harass them flank and rear; whilst to swarm up these precipitous slopes in the face of a semicircle of determined opponents, and enfiladed by archers on both flanks, seemed inviting defeat. All was against the Spaniards. A mysterious epidemic was prostrating them, the King of Castile was ill, and had to be carried to the battle in a litter, and, above all, the Portuguese were struggling for the independence of their country, whilst the Spaniards were fighting at the behest of a corrupt and unpopular king. So on that fateful morning in August, five hundred and twenty-three years ago, as the chivalry of Castile struggled up these broken slopes, the men upon the ridge from which I look down now over the smiling plain, stood like a steel wall, and with mace and battle-axe, and double-handed swords, clove and smote them, whilst the cloth-yard arrows pierced and bowled them over by hundreds ere they reached the summit. The hearts of the Spaniards failed them, and down the slope they fled, delivered now to carnage and to capture. Ten thousand of them, the best fighting men in Castile, fell, the king barely escaped by flight, whilst half his court were taken. Aljubarrota was won, the house of Avis fixed upon the throne for two hundred years, and the alliance between England and Portugal cemented so strongly as to have lasted unbroken to this day.

Through the poverty-stricken looking village of Aljubarrota, where some questionable relics of the battle are exhibited for a consideration (though no one offers me wine, as they did to Beckford’s princely cavalcade), a few miles more brings me to a point, whence looking down on the right side of the ridge the town of Alcobaça is seen below, surrounded by miles of vineyards, touched now with bronze and crimson, for the vintage is nearly over, and a big hummock of a building over all, that I know is the famous Cistercian monastery, the sepulchre of so many princes of the ancient royal house of Portugal that I have travelled thus far to see.

The church and monastery stand fronting a very extensive triangular praça, crossed by long avenues of acacias, and the first sight of the edifice is distinctly disappointing. An ordinary façade in the seventeenth-century, Spanish “Jesuit” style of the time of Philip IV., with white walls and yellow stone outlines, and flanked on both sides by monastery buildings of great extent in the same taste, or want of it, did not quite fulfil the hopes which Beckford’s description of the splendours of Alcobaça had aroused. It is true that the west door of the church somewhat redeemed it, for it was evidently the remains of the original front in pure unadorned Gothic. The whole edifice is raised above the surface of the praça upon a platform some ten feet high, and upon this parade the monks in old time were mustered to receive distinguished visitors. Beckford thus describes the reception of his own party—

[Illustration: ON THE PRAÇA AT ALCOBAÇA.]

“The first sight of this regal monastery is very imposing, and the picturesque well-wooded and well-watered village out of the quiet bosom of which it seems to rise relieves the mind from the sense of oppression the huge domineering bulk of the conventual buildings inspire. We had no sooner hove in sight, and we loomed large, than a most tremendous ring of bells of extraordinary power announced our speedy arrival. A broad hint from the Secretary of State recommending these magnificent monks to receive the Grand Prior and his companions with peculiar graciousness, the whole community, including fathers, friars and subordinates, at least four hundred strong, were drawn up in grand spiritual array on the vast platform before the monastery to bid us welcome. At their head the Abbot himself, in his costume of High Almoner of Portugal, advanced to give us a cordial embrace.”

All is quiet enough now, for the monks are gone these seventy years, and the huge dilapidated edifice behind, forming a vast square, is partly occupied as a barrack, and the rest falling into ramshackle ruin. Nor is anything stirring in the prim little town, which has grown up around the wealthy foundation, and now lives placidly upon the produce of its vineyards.

The interior of the church presents a marked contrast to the façade. The impression produced is one of ponderous solidity and permanence, and the stern devotional character of all the ecclesiastical buildings founded by the great Affonso Henriques, first king of Portugal, in the twelfth century is again conspicuous, though even here a cornice of gilt curly wood lines the fine chancel arch. The nave though somewhat narrow is impressive and handsome, separated from the aisles by square pillars of immense size, broader than the spaces between them. From brackets or ledges at various heights from the ground upon the front and sides of these pillars spring the simple arches and groining of the roof, each pillar carrying its arch right over the nave, so that each set of simple groins is separated from the rest by the arch moulding. The aisles, very narrow, seem overwhelmed by the immense square pillars, and it is easy to understand in the face of this stern interior that the notoriously luxurious and self-indulgent monks of Alcobaça did their best to soften the austerity of their surroundings. That they did so to some purpose is seen both by Beckford’s account of his visit and by my Strathmore manuscript of 1760. The account given by Lord Strathmore is worth transcribing:—

“The minister having ... ordered them to do us ye utmost honour they were capable of, we found a large place before the convent so crowded with people that it was necessary for a guard of militia which they had summoned to make a lane for us up ye steps. At ye door we were reciev’d in form by ye guardian and first people of ye fraternity with ye utmost ceremony, and conducted by ye light of torches thro’ cloisters of Gothic arcades with ye whole college in procession to our apartments.... Our rooms were extremely spacious, and were hung with crimson damask and gold, ye floor cover’d with Persian carpets, and our beds in alcoves deck’d with embroidered coverlids. We had a basin and ewer brought to wash before supper, and on another salver a napkin of fine linen, curiously pinck’t and strew’d with rose-leaves and orange-flowers. We then pas’t into the next room, where we found a large table groaning under a service of monstrous dishes.”

The writer comments unfavourably upon all the eatables placed before him, reeking, as they did, he says, of garlic, bad oil, and other horrors, and he comments upon the tasteless lavishness of the fare. He then continues:—

“At last, after having drank reciprocally all ye healths that we thought would be required on either side, we retir’d to repose. The next morning we were no sooner dres’t than we found ye whole college assembled in ye next room at our levee. We breakfasted in state, at ye end of a long table with ye rest seated round ye room, and admiring ye peculiar grace with which we put every morsel into our mouths. After breakfast we were attended thro’ ye convent, and had everything explain’d to us, which I must own gave me great pleasure. They are of ye Cistercian order, and ye richest in Portugal, possessing a vast tract of land which is said to bring them in £50,000 per annum. Their magnificence is in every way proportionable. Their church is Gothic, but extremely noble, ye plate, jewels and ornaments, copes, etc. are as rich as possible.... They have no taste or design in their expenditure, and seem to study richness rather than elegance in all they do. As they reign, so they entertain, like princes over the district. In the evening we saw their great altar lighted up at vespers, which at the end of a long Gothic aisle had a most striking effect with ye organ and voices altogether impressing upon the mind most solemn awe.”

Remains of the tasteless splendour referred to are still to be seen on all sides. The gilt-trimmed chancel arch, the high altar, with its blue starred globe and wooden gilt rays in the centre, and popes carved and gilt in niches each side, amidst gold whirligigs galore, are as incongruous as can be with the stern, simple nave: and the altars of the north transept and retro choir all present the same features, some of them, moreover, being in a lamentable state of dilapidation, inciting to derision rather than devotion. In the north transept, hard by the thirteenth-century sepulchral stones of Affonso II. and Affonso III., is a dark but beautiful Gothic hall, the holy of holies of the monastery, “the chapel of the tombs,” the resting-place of several of the earlier princes of the royal house.

[Illustration: UNDER THE ACACIAS, ALCOBAÇA.]

The most striking objects in it are two magnificent sarcophagi in florid decorated Gothic. The recumbent figures of king and queen upon them, as fair and perfect as the day they were sculptured, rest, not hand in hand as upon most similar tombs, but foot to foot. For these are the sepulchres of Pedro the Just and his murdered mistress, Ines de Castro, done to death by servile nobles beside the “fountain of love” in the “garden of tears” at Coimbra, and the faithful king ordered the body of himself and his beloved to be laid thus, so that when the universal trump should call him to arise, the first object upon which his reopened eyes should rest would be her, who, though unwed, was yet his wife through all eternity.

Kings, queens, and princes, whose names now mean little even in the country where they held sway and nothing elsewhere, lie around in tombs of varying magnificence, together with débris and relics of times earlier than any of them. The usual dense ignorance is displayed by the guardian of the objects he is supposed to describe; for he points out two very small ancient sarcophagi, one of them obviously Byzantine Romanesque, and the other probably pre-Christian, and tells you gravely that they once contained the bodies of Ines de Castro’s children. Both of them are centuries earlier than her time, and her only children grew up and survived her. But this is not more absurd than the representation, in the current English “History of Portugal,” of a lady in the height of the Portuguese fashion of the end of the seventeenth century as Ines de Castro, who lived in the fourteenth.

The cloister of the monastery presents the characteristics of two styles. The lower part is pure early Gothic, like the church and chapter-house, with simple rose lights in each arch; but the upper storey has evidently been added or rebuilt in the early sixteenth century in good Manueline taste; and in one corner there is a very beautiful fountain in the same style bearing the monogram of the “Fortunate” monarch Manuel himself. The vast refectory, of which Beckford spoke so sneeringly, as dirty and slovenly, is entered by a handsome Manueline doorway, and is now being restored. The entrance to the sacristy is also a fine specimen of Manueline, but inside the bad taste of the late seventeenth-century monks is rampant. All around the great square apartment are carved and gilt niches, in which are dozens of life-sized busts also carved and gilt, of saints and bishop, each of which has a hollow for a relic upon the breast, all now despoiled of their contents; and the precious treasury of jewels, ornaments, and embroidery that aroused the envious admiration of the virtuoso Beckford, has all disappeared, many of the most beautiful and precious objects being now in the Museum of Fine Arts at Lisbon, a storehouse of mediæval goldsmith’s work unsurpassed in Europe, though almost completely neglected both by residents and visitors to the capital.

One more show chamber there is in the “national monument” portion of Alcobaça: a hall lined with eighteenth-century pictorial blue tiles, representing in large tableaux memorable deeds of the kings of Portugal, with statues of the kings themselves upon brackets above; the great tableau at the end, representing the coronation of Affonso Henriques, being an exceptionally good specimen of a poor artistic medium. As I walk through the grave, silent church again, and so out into the bright praça, with its avenues of shady acacias casting long shadows, the façade of the church strikes me as more inharmonious than before, now that the wonderful glow of the slanting sunrays touch the salient points with fire. The front with its seventeenth-century figures, its Manueline central round window, and its elaboration of outlines, so characteristic of the Spanish “Jesuit” style, are utterly incongruous with the pure early Gothic of the doorway, and it is with a sigh of regret that one turns from the contemplation of such a result of wealth divorced from artistry.

The vast monastic building behind the church is squalid and ugly, for the occupation of soldiery does not tend to the æsthetic maintenance of a building. The famous kitchen of the monastery is used now for military purposes, but may be seen by easily obtained permission. As I looked upon it, a bare, great, vaulted hall, with the channel for water still running through it, and the marks of the long line of ovens extending across the wall, I cast my thoughts back at the busy scene that the place presented in the palmy days of the monks, when the flesh-pots of Alcobaça were proverbial through the land. This is how the place struck Beckford on his memorable visit.

“The three prelates lead the way to, I verily believe, the most distinguished temple of gluttony in all Europe. What Glastonbury may have been in its palmy state I cannot answer, but my eyes never beheld in any modern convent of France, Italy, or Germany, such an enormous space dedicated to culinary purposes. Through the centre of the immense and nobly groined hall, not less than sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the clearest water, flowing through pierced wooden reservoirs, containing every sort and size of the finest river fish. On one side loads of game and venison were heaped up, on the other vegetables and fruit in endless variety. Beyond a long line of stoves extended a row of ovens, and close to them hillocks of wheaten flour whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a numerous tribe of lay brothers and their attendants were rolling and puffing up into a hundred different shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks in a cornfield.”

Abbots and monks, lay brothers, and cooks have gone the way of all flesh; and of the plethoric plenty of old no vestige remains in the enormous dingy hall. So, there being no fatted calf killed for me in these degenerate days, I wend my way through the acacia avenues to the humble hostelry where a dinner is prepared for me, eatable, it is true, but a sad falling off from the culinary splendours of Alcobaça in the good old times.

Then in the gloaming I drove four miles through woods of pine and eucalyptus, balsamic now in the soft evening air, to Vallado station on the railway to Lisbon. Out of the darkness at about seven there sprang a long spinning factory blazing with electric light, and humming with the whirr of wheels. The “hands” were just flocking out from their daily toil, and filled the black, unlit road with a gay babbling crowd. There was no town near, and the mill was deeply embosomed in the pine woods: this seemed to me an ideal form of factory life, in which the house of toil, instead of debouching its crowd of pallid workers into fetid town-slums to fester unwholesomely until the morrow, needed but a step from its threshold to plunge them into the sweet air of the pines and heather; and where the “hands,” though they worked in crowds underneath a roof, never ceased to be country folk. It was but a passing flash and hubbub to me in the darkness of my lonely drive, and the toilers to me, and I to them, but fleeting shadows. But seen thus, there seemed to me something of suggestive possibilities in this hive of what is usually an urban industry, set in the midst of lofty pines, sweet mountain herbs, and far-flung folds of purple heather. A railway journey of three-quarters of an hour brought me to the famous medicinal thermal watering-place of Caldas da Rainha, where in the excellent Hotel Lisbonense, which the proprietor, one of those frugal, honest, Gallegos who are the industrial salt of the Peninsula, told me was the largest in Portugal, as it is certainly one of the best, I ended a long day of overcrowded impressions by a night of delightful dreamless sleep.

VII CINTRA

I had often before seen Caldas in the height of the bathing season, when the midsummer heat made Lisbon intolerable and inspired people with more or less imaginary maladies to get cured. The place then, with its crowds of visitors and pleasant parties, was bright and lively enough; but now that the last pleasure-seeker had fled, and the only people taking the wonderful health-giving waters were the few really sick, and the inmates of the great “Queen’s hospital” adjoining the hot springs, Caldas looked mean and ugly. The drives through the pine forests in the neighbourhood, it is true, are pleasant; but for a fortnight I had been passing through a glorious pine country much more diversified and elevated than these, and Caldas had no fresh attractions to offer me. A visit to the famous factory of enamelled _faience_, charmingly situated in the midst of gardens, yielded an hour’s interest in the inspection of the late Bordallo Pinheiro’s fine sacred figure groups now in course of production for the shrines at Bussaco, and the hundred curious Palissy-like pieces in high relief, plates of fruit, fish, &c., which are the specialty of the factory. But that being finished the charms of Caldas were exhausted, so far as I was concerned, and the train for Cintra claimed me irresistibly.

The first station from Caldas (Obidos), with its little town, nestles at the foot of an eminence upon which another of the stupendous mediæval castles peculiar to Portugal rears its massive battlements, castles in comparison with which most of the English feudal strongholds are mere sentry-boxes. For these Portuguese fortresses were national outposts thrust forward successively into conquered or debatable land; bases for further extension southward and bulwarks against the return of the tide of Islam. Another two hours of travelling brought us into a country of red rolling hills, with a bold granite ridge on the east and a still loftier ridge beyond merging into the blue mist on the horizon. For miles on either side grand sweeps of flowering heather flushed against breaks and slides of ochre-earth, touched here and there with the light feathery green of the pines; whilst in the dips of hills sheltered valleys of bronzing vines and little white granges, slept tranquilly after the bustle of the just finished vintage. Soon we get nearer the granite hills before us, and looming over the station, upon a great projecting spur of one of these there frowns another of these tremendous strongholds, from which, running towards the east and south between us and Lisbon, there bars the way a series of gigantic ridges and peaks. Most of the heights are capped by towers, and scored along the faces of the mountains may still be discerned lines and marks of earthworks and redoubts. These are the never-to-be-forgotten lines of Torres Vedras, by which the genius of Wellington finally held the legions of Napoleon at bay, and saved Portugal—and incidentally Europe—from the domination of the French.

All the earth seems soaked and saturated in sunlight and brilliant colour; little ancient towns, like Runa, perched on the tops of cliffs, at the foot of which more modern hamlets cluster, testify to the changed conditions between the days when the first need was safety from aggression, and the later times when, the danger of wanton attacking being past, men sought accessibility and ease. Acacias, aloes, canes, olives, and vines spreading down the plain, tell of a benign and equable climate enjoyed in security and peace; a beautiful and favoured land, where nature has done its best to make man happy without making him idle. As the twilight begins to fall we change trains at Cacem, the junction of the small local line from Lisbon to Cintra, and thenceforward we travel due west towards the sea. Before us looms a great isolated mountain, the “Rock of Lisbon,” which seafarers know so well, with its bold outline and its gleaming towers on the topmost crag.

“And Cintra’s mountain greets them on the way.”

—_Childe Harold_, canto i.