Part 17
The little choir loft over the west end of the nave, like that at Braga, is filled with finely carved oaken choir-stalls, and the episcopal throne, with Scripture scenes in high relief carved upon the panelling, probably French or Italian work of the Renaissance period. The Eborenses complain that the French plundered the cathedral of most of its valuable treasures; but the church plate and vestments are still of very great richness, and I was much struck by a great jewelled altar cross said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. The precious stones upon it amount altogether to 1425, of which 840 are diamonds; and a chalice of enamel and gold of the sixteenth century is a veritable thing of beauty. The chancel and high altar of the eighteenth century, though of precious marbles, are quite out of keeping with the church, and I was glad to turn away from them and linger in the pretty little ruined cloister of the monks, of simple devotional Gothic.
But the exterior of the old Sé after all is more picturesque than the interior. Glimpses of shady little white courtyards, with acacias, orange-trees, and abundant flowers; corners and gateways of ancient palaces, with florid and beautiful Manueline doorways; here and there a Roman tower or arch; narrow white streets, almost alleys, with supporting arches from side to side across the way; and over all a blue, blue sky. The bold, long, battlemented ridges of the aisles and nave of the cathedral, and the pointed round tower of the wonderful cimborio, with its eight turrets ranged around it, seem to force upon the mind the dignified antiquity of the place, hardly marred by the modern classicism of the trivial chancel apse tacked on to it. Outside the north-west corner of the cathedral is a Roman tower and arch in perfect preservation, and adjoining it a quaint triangular praça called S. Miguel, gives entrance to a ruined mediæval palace of the Counts of Basto. But, take a few steps to the north of this, turn the corner of the archbishop’s palace and the choir-boys’ college, and there bursts upon your view, silhouetted against the blue sky, an object that draws an exclamation of surprise and delight from the most apathetic. In an open space, almost surrounded by ancient battlemented buildings, there stands alone in the midst a majestic ruin, which makes even their hoary antiquity but a thing of yesterday. A Roman temple, almost complete, with six Corinthian columns at the end of its parallelogram and five out of the ten that formerly existed on each side. The supporting wall upon which they stand is of rough stone with well-dressed granite plinths and corners, all perfect and complete, and standing over eleven feet from the ground. Upon this rise the beautiful fluted columns of granite, with bases and carved capitals of white marble, the granite entablature over the pillars being almost perfect.
At what was the entrance of the temple the remains of a noble flight of steps, the whole width of the edifice and twelve feet high, exist, and it requires no effort of the imagination, turning one’s back to the cathedral, to repeople the space before us with figures of the long past. Up the steps to the lovely temple under the blue sky mount the white-clad citizens of imperial Rome. Slaves there are in many, and half-civilised Iberian tribesmen, still, perhaps, recalcitrant to the yoke. Trembling, perchance, for the savage vengeance of Diocletian, they sullenly look upon the sacrifice to the pagan gods, whilst they in their hearts hold with the strange new creed of the Nazarene; for this temple must have been raised in the second century after the advent of Christ, when already the trumpet sound of Christianity had pierced the hearts of the Celtiberian peoples, and had awakened vague longings for emancipation from the oppressive unconsoling gods of old.
And I turn back and contemplate the grave old mediæval cathedral close by, with its modern addition covered with flourishing cardinals hats and saintly frippery; and I see there, too, the temple of a creed that is losing its hold upon the hearts and minds of men. For the great cathedral I have just left is as empty and silent now as the temple to the unknown God before me. In successive ages surely the same old yearning is re-born for direct appeal and nearer personal access to God, free from the trammels and man-made mediations with which all creeds in time burden the simplicity of their faith. Here in this temple—called of Diana with no historical warrant—devout souls offered their sacrifice without misgiving; and in the old Sé hearts have pierced the church-raised clouds and reached the Throne any day this nine hundred years. But as the thirst for equal direct appeal for all souls overthrew the gods of the temple, so the same longing empties the great fane that has departed from the severe sincerity of the age that founded it; and thus the gods do come and go, whilst God lives on for ever.
[Illustration: THE “TEMPLE OF DIANA,” EVORA]
It is difficult to shake oneself free from retrospective visions when standing between this stately ruin and the cathedral that has supplanted it; but regarded simply as a Roman material relic, the ruin is remarkable. It is of a similar period and much resembles the Maison Carrée at Nimes, although as I recollect it appeared much larger. The temple at Evora is about eighty feet long and nearly fifty feet broad, the height of the columns being twenty-five feet. Behind the temple there is a pretty shady public garden, ending in a balustrade where the hill drops suddenly away to the plain spread out at the foot for miles to the mountains far away. It was a spot which will linger in my memory to the last; and I left it sorrowfully.
Opposite the temple is the Archæological Museum of Evora, containing a large collection of Roman and mediæval relics, found in the city and rescued from ruined buildings; and in the streets still the remains of ancient architecture greet the visitor at every turn. Evora, indeed, is a museum of itself; and it is impossible even to mention a quarter of the objects in it that would appeal to an antiquarian or archæologist. Two buildings there are, however, that cannot be entirely passed over. The so-called palace of Dom Manuel is now used as an agricultural museum, and some of the upper portion has been rebuilt in semi-Moorish style; but the lower portion is intact, and is a splendid specimen of early sixteenth-century stonework. The hall is low but tremendously massive, the walls being three yards thick, and the octagonal pillars supporting the simple groined roof in the centre being massive in proportion.
From the beautiful semi-tropical public garden in which this palace stands, just beyond the mediæval walls of the city, it is but a step across the road to the extraordinary hermitage church of St. Braz. A great plague had assailed Evora in 1479, and here a temporary pesthouse was established outside the walls. The bishop vowed that if St. Braz would free the place from the epidemic he would build here a permanent temple to his honour. When the plague disappeared in the following year, 1480, the bishop kept his word, and the present church has stood here ever since. The style, in my experience, is unique—Norman-Gothic local archæologists call it—the building being a long, low, fortress-like structure, with six pointed turrets along each side, and with battlemented parapets; the two first turrets supporting a massive battlemented ante-porch, with plain pointed arches and Byzantine capitals, the porch being perhaps a third the length of the church, and of the same height. For a building so late as the end of the fifteenth century, just on the verge of the period that went crazy over the exuberant Manueline, this survival of the Norman-Byzantine tradition is extraordinary.
Evora was all aglow with the glories of the setting sun when I left it. Long lines of lofty eucalyptus trees stretched as far as the eye reached along the railway, the long hanging strips of bark and the bright clean trunks shining a brilliant orange, whilst the drooping foliage was a bright bronze tipped with gold. Wistaria and clematis hung in wondrous bunches and masses over walls and in wayside gardens, and no sign of coming winter marred the beauty of the day. Long rows of trucks and waggons filled with cork lined the way, and open doors of depôts and warehouses disclosed overflowing stores of cork in bales ready for transport; for Evora is the centre of this profitable industry, and derives from it much of its prosperity. Over all the gold and emerald after-glow cast its strange glamour; high overhead the deep blue of the sky was just flecked by purple cloud, and the soft scented air was like a breath from the Arabian Nights.
Once only in the four hours’ journey through the night to Barreiro and Lisbon was I aroused from the series of reveries into which the impressions of these scenes had cast me. It was at a station by the way, dimly lit with smoky oil lamps. Some bundles of rags topped by nightcaps lounged about in the gloom of the platform, and across the way a few white cottages stood out from a background of trees and the hills beyond, whilst overhead, through the high branches of the eucalyptus, the stars shone brilliantly. There was nothing special in all this, for the same picture is presented by most Portuguese and Spanish railway stations by night during the interminable waits inherent to travelling by a train whose first interest is the conveyance of merchandise; but what did strike me as I looked was the name of the place: MONTEMOR.
From here, then, from this humble remote place, came the man, the poet, Jorge de Montemor—or Montemayor as he came to be called—who set all cultured Europe running again after the preposterous pastoral romances of lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses, which had been forgotten since the eclogues and bucolics of classical Italy had been voted old-fashioned. From here came the inspiration that made Cervantes write the “Galatea,” Sidney write the “Arcadia,” and Spenser write the “Fairy Queen”: these sweet fertile hillsides and vales of southern Portugal were the scenes which the native poet peopled with the erotic swains of his Spanish pastoral, “Diana Enamorada.” It was a style utterly foreign to arid Spain, for there the flocks had to travel in vast multitudes from desert to desert in search of the scanty pasture; but it caught the fancy of a people sated with knights-errant, and the pastoral became the rage. That Spain itself should have given it new birth was incredible, though Jorge de Montemor wrote in Spanish. The neighbourhood of his birthplace gives us the key; for here in rich pastures and lush, half-tropical valleys flocks would need but little tending or travelling, and here beneath the sunny skies shepherds and their lasses might as easily as in Italy be imagined piping, singing, and telling their long-winded love stories to their hearts’ content.
Lisbon was all smiles when I arrived; clear and crisp as if no rain-clouds and wreaths of wet mist had ever crept up the Tagus and put her out of temper. But the big steamer was lying in the harbour ready to sail for England, and though Lisbon tempted me, I could not choose but go. Forth from the splendid panorama we went, past the great white fortress high on the hill, the city piled up on its amphitheatre and set in verdant frames, the majestic square palace of Ajuda looking down upon Belem and its glorious church, and the sturdy old tower rising from the water dumbly protesting against its desecration by the gasworks that surround it.
[Illustration: LISBON FROM THE NORTH.]
The next day at noon I stood and gazed over an indigo sea, from whose waves the light breeze lifted the white foam and cast it wantonly to leeward in a shower of diamonds. All along the coast gleaming towns nestled in the laps of the hills. The mountains of fair Lusitania, pine-clad to the tops, were slowly receding from my view, covered with a glory of opal grey and gold, touched here and there where the shadows fell with tints of darkling green and lavender, whilst the sky over all melted from a horizon of palest primrose, through turquoise, to an illimitable vault of sapphire. As the lovely scene faded in the distance, and the bold jagged rocks of Spain loomed ahead, I turned away full of thankfulness for the ineffable beauty of the world: but I could find no word to say more than the quaint outburst of the simple-minded priest whom the Emperor sent to bring home his Portuguese bride five centuries ago: “_O Portugallia, O Portugallia, bona regio!_” Fifty-two hours afterwards I was shrinking from the chill embrace of a November fog in London.
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Footnote 8:
Oswald Crawford, “Portugal: Old and New.”
Footnote 9:
The manuscript quoted is in the Vatican Library, and is reproduced at length by Herculano in an article called Archeologia Portugeza in “Opusculos.”
Footnote 10:
There are fourteen of the same sort in the Cathedral of Viseu, one the famous St. Peter.
Footnote 11:
The whole interior width of the church is only 46 feet, much less than the nave alone of Toledo, Seville, or York.
X HINTS TO TRAVELLERS IN PORTUGAL
_How to get there._—By railway the direct route is by the Sud Express, which leaves Paris twice or thrice a week, according to the season, for Oporto and Lisbon, _via_ Bordeaux, Medina, and Salamanca, covering the distance from Paris to Lisbon in thirty-five hours—the cost from Paris, single fare, first-class, being 222 francs. The journey is naturally tedious, as well as costly, and for tourists and pleasure-travellers who are not absolutely averse from sea-voyages the journey by steamer is much preferable. The Royal Mail steamships from Southampton and the Pacific Line from Liverpool both have splendid steamers, which run fortnightly to Lisbon or Oporto (Leixões), the voyage to Lisbon usually occupying rather under three days, the fare being £8 single and £12 return on both lines. But for those who wish to visit Portugal either for health or pleasure, and desire to see something of the country under favourable conditions the steamers of the Booth Steamship Line offer much greater facilities than either of the previously mentioned companies, combined with considerable economy. I have travelled to Portugal by all three lines, and can find little to choose between them; the newer vessels especially of the Booth Line being in all respects as comfortable and well served as the others, whilst the fare is lower. It is, however, chiefly in the organisation of tours through Portugal that the Booth Line offers the greatest advantages to travellers, the arrangements being such that most of the difficulties of travelling in a foreign country are obviated by holders of through tourist tickets. The system provides for the meeting of travellers on board the steamers and at railway stations by representatives of the hotels, and advice is sent forward of the travellers to be expected. The tickets issued include coupons for hotel expenses, carriages, and all the necessary outlay of the journey from place to place, and, speaking from my own experience, I may say that the portions of my journey that were covered by Booth Line tickets were much easier and less troublesome than those which were undertaken without them. I found, moreover, that the people at the hotels were, if anything, more anxious to show attention to travellers accredited by the Booth Line tickets and forward advice than to visitors arriving unannounced. Some of the Portuguese tours of the Booth Line seem extremely moderate in price, including, as they do, hotel expenses as well as travelling by sea and land, and, so far as my experience went, everything possible was done for the convenience and pleasure of ticket-holders.
_Hotels._—We English are not particularly popular on the Continent as travellers, though we are better liked in Spain and Portugal than elsewhere. Nor is the reason of our lack of popularity far to seek. We are apt to assume a demeanour and tone towards foreigners in their own country which imply a belief in our superiority, and a claim to assert priority for our own needs and pleasures over those of others. This attitude is worse than useless in Spain and Portugal, for not only is it ineffectual, but it turns otherwise polite and civil people against us. In Portugal an honest desire to please and serve will be encountered by travellers everywhere, almost without exception. But tourists must repay this, if they wish to travel smoothly, by cheerfully accepting the best that the people know how to give them, and must not claim to establish a new standard for themselves. The hotels in the smaller towns of Portugal do not exist for tourists. They live almost entirely upon commercial travellers, and residents, business, professional men, and officials, who board at the hotel table by contract. A tourist arriving at such an hotel will be civilly received, but no fatted calf will be killed for him, nor charged for, and the fare and accommodation considered satisfactory by the regular customers of the hotel must be good enough for him or he must go without. Generally speaking these are fair, even in the small towns, the beds being usually clean, if hard and skimpy of pillow; and of the dishes offered, some, at all events, will be found palatable, even to an untravelled Englishman. In any case, it will be useless to ask for others. These remarks are not applicable either to the hotels in Oporto and Lisbon, nor to those which specially depend upon visitors in search of health and pleasure, like those of Bom Jesus, Caldas, and Bussaco. In Oporto the Grand Hotel is said to be the best, but it still leaves much to be desired in many respects. The cuisine, however, is good, though there is a tendency to charge unduly high prices for extras, such as wine, table water, &c. The same may be said of the Hotel Central at Lisbon, where the cuisine is excellent and the rooms generally good, but the extras are charged too high. This hotel has been greatly improved of late years, and especially since the reclamation of the foreshore has done away with what formerly was its principal objection. It is very central for all the tramway routes, and for a stay of a day or two may be convenient. The noisy, self-assertive German commercial element is, however, too conspicuous and demonstrative to be agreeable to most English people travelling for pleasure, and personally I much prefer the Hotel Braganza, which stands on high ground overlooking the river, and is quieter than the Central. The Grand Hotel at Bom Jesus, in its way, is excellent, though purely Portuguese, and the proprietor, the son of the late Senhor Gomes, whose enterprise made Bom Jesus what it is, is always anxious to do his best, both here and with his partner at their hotel at Braga, to be useful and agreeable to visitors. The Grand Hotel at Bussaco stands in a class by itself, and I have spoken of it elsewhere.
_Luggage._—As little luggage should be taken as possible, as above 60 lbs. is charged extra on the railways, and a careful traveller will contrive to get what he really needs in packages that may, at a pinch, be carried, or at all events lifted, by himself. For clothing, some warm garments should be worn until Portugal is reached, and again on embarking, but for use in the country summer clothing, with one light over-garment, is all that will be needed. The tyranny of the top hat is almost at an end in Portugal, and this impedimentum may be dispensed with, though it may be advisable for some men-travellers to take with them a dinner jacket-suit, as these are frequently worn on board the larger steamers, and in some of the hotels, such as that at Bussaco.
_Language._—Some acquaintance with the Portuguese language is, of course, a great advantage, but the knowledge of such words as are necessary for the purposes of travel may be acquired easily by a few hours of study. Spanish will be generally understood in the hotels, as practically all the hotel servants in Portugal are Spanish Gallegos, though the ability of the latter to reply in Castilian is variable and limited. Generally a foreigner speaking Spanish will be _understood_ in Portugal; but a knowledge of Spanish, though enabling him to _read_ Portuguese without difficulty, will not aid him much in understanding it when spoken, as the pronunciation of the two languages is radically different. A little French is also not uncommonly spoken and understood even in the smaller hotels, though very rarely is any English at command. In Lisbon and Oporto, of course, especially the former, English is quite common, and is spoken at all the principal hotels.
_Wine._—In all the smaller hotels the wine is served on the table without charge, as in Spain; and as it is, in most cases, the produce of the neighbourhood, it is quite pure and genuine, and in some places excellent. Where it is not liked other wines can always be ordered. Collares, white and red, grown at the foot of the Cintra mountain, is always a safe wine to order, and is very moderate in price, usually about 250 reis per bottle (1_s._ 1_d._). At Lisbon Termo is also a good wine at very reasonable price; whilst in the north of Portugal Bucellas may be recommended, and Mirandella is a good cheap little wine. The new or green wine, Vinho Verde, is much liked by the Portuguese in the hot autumn weather, as it is light and slightly acidulous; but it is not much adapted to English tastes. The country wine at Bussaco is excellent—as it is at Cintra, Ourem, and other places. As I have mentioned elsewhere the prices charged in the hotels named in Lisbon and Oporto for ordinary Portuguese wines appear to be excessive in comparison with the price of these wines in other places. The prices of foreign wines are everywhere well-nigh prohibitive.
_Water._—The traveller will be wise to regard with suspicion the water in most places, and to insist upon having some of the excellent bottled table waters from the springs which abound in Portugal. One of the best and safest of these waters is Sameiro, drawn from the mountain adjoining Bom Jesus. It is in character almost identical with Apollinaris. Lombadas is another pure neutral water from Madeira, somewhat resembling St. Galmier; whilst Monte Banzão, Pedras Salgadas, and Vidago are digestive waters similar to those of Vichy. The medicinal waters of Luzo, just below Bussaco, are like those of Carlsbad, Kissingen, and Vittel, powerfully digestive and rather laxative. It will be unnecessary to order any such waters—unless for purely medicinal purposes—at Bom Jesus, Bussaco, or Cintra, the ordinary drinking water of these places being excellent.