Part 35

It is perhaps a relief to turn to the prose plays, _O Azebre_ (1909, written in 1904), the interest of which centres in the artist Fidelio, _Nó Cego_ (1904), dealing with divorce, and especially to _O Salto Mortal_, which treats of more homely peasant affairs, and to the admirably natural fishermen’s scenes and dialogues enacted at Ericeira in the second half of the nineteenth century, in _Amor Louco_ (1899). The author succeeds in giving a more definite picture of a whole community here than of any of his individual heroes in high places. _A Herança_ (1913) also has the lives of fishermen for its subject. An equally slight but charming one-act piece in verse is _Saudade_ (1916), while the dramatist’s power of evoking past scenes is shown in the glowing historical tales of _Sangue Português_ (1920), _Gente Namorada_ (1921), and _Lanças n’Africa_ (1921).

The most conspicuous among slightly younger dramatists is Snr. JULIO DANTAS (born in 1876), who published a first volume of poems, _Nada_, in 1896. He is gifted with wit, lightness of touch, an excellent style, and a sense of atmosphere, which enables him to bring a pleasant archaic flavour to reconstructions of the past and observe the true spirit of history in periods the most diverse. His malleable talent is equally at its ease in _O que morreu de amor_ (1899) and _Viriato Tragico_ (1900); in Spain of the seventeenth century: _Don Ramón de Capichuela_ (1911); contemporary Lisbon: _Crucificados_ (1902), _Mater Dolorosa_ (1908), _O Reposteiro Verde_ (1912); the Inquisition-clouded Portugal of the seventeenth century: _Santa Inquisição_ (1910), or its lighter side, with the _bonbon_ marquis: _D. Beltrão de Figueiroa_ (1902); the gentle, romantic Portugal of the middle of the nineteenth century: _Um Serão nas Laranjeiras_ (1904), or the bull-fighting Portugal of the same period: _A Severa_ (1901) with the gallant Marques de Marialva and the beautiful and magnanimous gipsy of the Mouraria. The filigree of his elaborate stage directions is skilfully used to enhance the effect,[685] and some of his scenes are exquisite, especially the simple, very charming, and tragic one-act comedy _Rosas de todo o anno_ (1907). If the characters are usually sacrificed to their setting, here and there a slight sketch stands out, as that of the cynical old cardinal who delights in the mental torture of others, in _Santa Inquisição_, the attractive bishop of _Soror Mariana_ (1915), or the characters in _A Ceia dos Cardeais_ (1902). ERNESTO BIESTER (1829-80) in the middle of last century wrote lively comedies of contemporary Lisbon life. The comedies of GERVASIO LOBATO (1850-95), as _Os Grotescos_, _A Condessa Heloïsa_ (1878), _O Festim de Balthazar_ (1892), _O Commissario de Policia_, _Sua Excellencia_, and many others, are natural, farcical scenes of high spirits and real good humour and good feeling. More literary and charming is the work of Snr. EDUARDO SCHWALBACH, whose _O Dia de Juizo_ (1915) and _Poema de Amor_ (1916) came to crown a long series of plays and _revistas_. There are touches of real comedy in the lightly sketched scenes and characters of Snr. AUGUSTO DE CASTRO’S _Caminho perdido_ (1906), _Amor á Antiga_ (1907), _As nossas amantes_ (1912), _A Culpa_ (1918), as in his slight, attractive essays _Fumo do Meu Cigarro_ (1916), _Fantoches e Manequins_ (1917), and _Conversar_ (1920); thought and character in Snr. AUGUSTO LACERDA’S _O Vicio_ (1888), _Casados Solteiros_ (1893), _Terra Mater_ (1904), _A Duvida_ (1906), _Os Novos Apostolos_ (1918). In Snr. BENTO MANTUA’S _O Alcool_ (1909) and _Novo Altar_ (1911) the problem may be a little too much in evidence, but in his prose plays _Má Sina_ (1906) and _Gente Moça_ (1910) the human interest is insistent. _Má Sina_, apart from the author’s weakness for strained coincidences, is a story of peasant life very naturally told. A young playwright of promise is Snr. VASCO DE MENDONÇA ALVES, author of _Promessa_ (1910) and _Filhos_ (1910). The subject of _Filhos_ is unpleasant if not original (it is that of Eça de Queiroz’ _Os Maias_ and Ennes’ _Os Engeitados_), but is treated with dignity and in a good prose style. Snr. JAIME CORTESÃO, hitherto known rather as a poet, has turned to the drama in _Egas Moniz_ (1918).

The novelists of the second half of the century were numerous and, as a rule, too dependent upon foreign models, chiefly French. JOAQUIM GUILHERME GOMES COELHO (1839-71) neither by date nor inclination belonged to one or other of the two schools between which lies his brief ten years’ activity. His talent developed early. As a medical student at his native Oporto he published poems and several stories, originally printed in the _Jornal do Porto_ and later collected with the title _Serões de Provincia_ (1870), and at the age of twenty-one, under the pseudonym JULIO DINIZ, he wrote the novel which brought him immediate fame and is still sometimes preferred to his later works: _Uma Familia Ingleza_ (1868). In these scenes of the life of Oporto he drew with the most elaborate analysis the relations between English and Portuguese which he had had frequent opportunities of observing in that city. Portuguese critics hint that what to superficial readers has seemed the tediousness of his novels is due to the influence of Dickens and other English novelists who revel in detail, and it is interesting that Gomes Coelho’s maternal grandmother was an Englishwoman, Maria, daughter of Thomas Potter. But it is a mistake to call his work tedious; the deliberate dullness of his novels has an excitement of its own, ‘’tis a good dullness’. The reader, tired with sensational plots and strained incidents, follows not only with relief but with growing absorption the homely daisy-chain of his stories, in which not the tiniest link in the development of the action or thought, especially the latter, is omitted. The interest never flags and never disappoints, leading gently on with carefully measured steps; the approval of virtue and disapproval of wickedness only occasionally becomes obtrusive and insipid. Julio Diniz confessed to a preference for _bourgeois_ types, but his real interest was in the country, and _As Pupillas do Senhor Reitor_[686] (1866), a village chronicle suggested by Herculano’s _O Parocho de Aldea_, is by many held to be his best work. The characters are delineated with the same delicate charm as that of Jenny in his earlier novel, and there is a background of curious observation--_esfolhadas_ (husking the maize), _espadeladas_ (braking flax), _ripadas_ (dressing the flax), _fiadas_ (gatherings of women to spin at the winter _lareira_ in the faint light of a lamp hanging on the smoke-blackened wall), the men at cards in the tavern, the old country doctor going his rounds on horseback, the solemn greetings _Guarde-o Deus, Louvado seja nosso Senhor Jesu Christo_. If he sometimes sees the peasants as he would have them be rather than as they are, if his realism is subdued and gentle, his descriptions are at least truer than those of the naturalistic school. In _A Morgadinha dos Canaviaes_ (1868), another village chronicle of Minho, the winter life of the peasantry is described, the _consoada_ preceding ‘cock-crow mass’ on Christmas Eve, the _auto_ represented on a rough stage in the village on the Day of Kings, together with the inevitable missionaries, _beata_, enriched ‘Brazilian’, and electioneering intrigues. Some critics have seen a falling off in his last novel, _Os Fidalgos da Casa Mourisca_ (1871), written in the winter of 1869-70 at Madeira, whither he went in vain quest of health, but it is perfectly on a level with his previous work. There may be a slight tendency to exaggerate some of the characters, as there was in _A Morgadinha_, the contrast between Jorge and Mauricio may be too crude, the last scenes may be touched with melodrama, the style may have traces of the _francesismo_ which Castilho noticed in his first novel, the execution may be excessively minute--these were not new defects in his works. On the other hand, the ruined _fidalgo_ D. Luiz, his chaplain and agent Frei Januario, who scents a Liberal doctrine leagues away, the large-hearted peasants Anna do Vedor and Thomé da Povoa, are as interesting as Tio Vicente the herbalist or any of his previous characters, and the charming and accurate descriptions of the country that he loved so well show him at his best. This demure chronicler of quiet scenes, this specialist in the obvious, in his _romances lentos_, as he calls them--a Portuguese blend of Jane Austen, Enrique Gil, and Fernán Caballero: his delicacy is essentially feminine--achieved an originality which so often eludes those who most furiously pursue it. His _Poesias_ (1873), partly consisting of poems interspersed in his novels, have a quiet, intimate charm. A curious originality had been attained earlier by a young naval lieutenant, FRANCISCO MARIA BORDALLO (1821-61). When he published _Eugenio_ (1846) at Rio de Janeiro, and a second edition at Lisbon in 1854, it was claimed that this sea novel (_romance maritimo_) was the first of its kind to be written in Portuguese; but his use of naval technical terms and descriptions of the sea is perhaps too deliberate. His _Quadros maritimos_ appeared in _O Panorama_ in 1854.

Few authors are more interesting to the critic (owing to the courageous and persistent development of his art) than JOSÉ MARIA DE EÇA DE QUEIROZ (1843-1900), a far more robust writer than Julio Diniz and the greatest Portuguese novelist of the realistic school. Born at Villa do Conde, the son of a magistrate, he was duly sent to study law at Coimbra, and after taking his degree contributed in 1866 and 1867 a series of _feuilletons_ to the _Gazeta de Portugal_. These _folhetins_, reprinted in _Prosas Barbaras_ (1903), are remarkable because they show beside a love of the gruesome and fantastic (_O Milhafre_, _O Senhor Diabo_, _Memorias de uma Forca_) at least one story (_Entre a neve_) of a perfect simplicity, such as the author is sometimes supposed to have attained only towards the end of his life. His partiality for the exotic was fostered by travels in Egypt and Palestine in 1869 and manifested itself in _A Morte de Jesus_, _Adão e Eva no Paraiso_, and _A Perfeição_, as well as in _A Reliquia_ and in part of _A Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_. In 1873 he went to Havana as Portuguese Consul, and twenty-six years as Consul at Newcastle-on-Tyne (1874-6), Bristol (1876-88), and Paris (1888-1900), where he died, enabled him to see his own country in a new light. His prose lost its exuberance, his taste became more severe, his extravagant fancy, so strangely combined with realism in many of his works, was merged in natural descriptions of his native land. He regained his own soul without losing that peculiar mockery with which he veiled a kindly, sensitive temperament, and which agreeably stamps the greater part of his writings. But indeed the introducer of the naturalistic novel into Portugal only played with materialism, which in his hands was always unreal: legendary and romantic, as in _Frei Genebro_, _S. Christovam_, _O Tesoiro_; deliberately false and artificial, as _A Civilisação_; a macabre fantasy, as _O Defunto_; or half-intentional caricature, as _O Primo Basilio_ and _Os Maias_. What more chimerical than _A Reliquia_ or more elusive than _O Suave Milagre_, or more fanciful than _O Mandarim_ (1879), in which without himself knowing China the author makes his readers know it! All through his life he was as it were groping through Manueline for a purer Gothic; the pity was that his education from the first should have thrown him into contact with French models--so that his very language too often reads like translated French--instead of directing him to a truer realism (such as that of his nearer neighbour Pereda), to which he turned in his last works, and in which he might have written regional masterpieces had he not died at a moment when his art apparently had lost nothing of its vigour. More probably, however, his still unsatisfied craving for perfection would have sought relief in mysticism. His first novel was a sensational story written in collaboration with Ramalho Ortigão: _O Mysterio da Estrada de Cintra_ (1870), originally published in the _Diario de Noticias_ (July 24-September 27, 1870). It was, however, _O Crime do Padre Amaro_ (1876), in which he grafted the naturalistic novel on the quiet little town of Leiria, and the two notable if unpleasant Lisbon stories _O Primo Basilio_ (1878) and _Os Maias_ (1880), that marked him out as the most powerful writer of the time in Portugal. But he was still feeling his way. _A Reliquia_ (1887) is as different from _Os Maias_ as it is from the remarkable and charming letters of _A Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_ (1891) and his last two novels, _A Illustre Casa de Ramires_ (1900), most Portuguese of his works, and _A Cidade e as Serras_ (1901). The three fragments in _Ultimas Paginas_ (1912) were probably written earlier. There are samples of all his phases in his _Contos_ (1902), and the short story gave scope for his powers of observation and insight without calling for an elaborate plot, in which he often failed. _A Cidade e as Serras_, after developing the earlier story _A Civilisação_, is but a fascinating succession of country scenes. All Eça de Queiroz’ characters are caricatures, some more so, others less, but they are nevertheless true to a certain degree, that is to say, they are good caricatures, and living, and this is so especially in these later novels, which show how great a regionalist writer was lost in him through the influence of French schools. Yet no one can deny that his works have an originality of their own as well as power and personal charm, and all contain some striking character-sketches or delightful descriptions that are not easily forgotten.

The dullness of the naturalistic novels of JULIO LOURENÇO PINTO (1842-1907) is not relieved by Eça de Queiroz’ pleasant irony and definite characterization. These ‘scenes of contemporary life’, while they display a praiseworthy restraint, give the idea rather of exercises in imitation of a French exemplar or of one of Eça de Queiroz’ early novels than of living stories. Their style is slovenly, the development of the plot prolix and monotonous. A certain interest attaches to _Margarida_ (1879)--although even here the author is too methodical in detailing the past lives of the four protagonists, the nonentity Luiz, the aspiring Adelina (a Portuguese Madame Bovary), Fernando, and Margarida, after they have been duly presented in the opening pages--and to the descriptions of a fair, a bull-fight, a flood, or provincial politics in _Vida Atribulada_ (1880), _O Senhor Deputado_ (1882), _Esboços do Natural_ (1882), and _O Homem Indispensavel_ (1884). Snr. JAIME DE MAGALHÃES LIMA (born in 1857) in _O Transviado_ (1899), _Na Paz do Senhor_ (1903), and _O Reino da Saudade_ (1904), has written novels _à thèse_ which are quite as interesting as naturalistic novels and more natural, but his art, especially in the presentation of contemporary politics, is a little too photographic. Snr. LUIZ DE MAGALHÃES (born in 1859), author of several volumes of verse, wrote a single novel, _O Brasileiro Soares_ (1886). It would offer little new in theme or treatment to distinguish it from other naturalistic novels were it not for the author’s success in drawing in Joaquim Soares a natural and attractive portrait of the Portuguese returned rich from Brazil (the _Brasileiro_). None of these novelists can rival the reputation of FRANCISCO TEIXEIRA DE QUEIROZ (1848-1919). He became prominent as a novelist of the realistic school over forty years ago when under the pseudonym of BENTO MORENO he inaugurated the series of his _Comedia do Campo_ (8 vols.), of which the last volume is _Ao Sol e á Chuva_ (1916), followed by a second series: _Comedia Burgueza_ (7 vols.), which began with _Os Noivos_ (1879). The obvious defects of his work--its laborious realism, its insistence on medical or physical details, its vain load of pedantry[687]--need not obscure its real merits. The careful style has occasional lapses, the psychology is thin, the conversations commonplace. His art, like a winter sunshine, fails to penetrate. Yet even in the _Comedia Burgueza_, where the interest must depend on the psychology, he succeeds in _D. Agostinho_ and _A Morte de D. Agostinho_ (1895) in giving individuality to that strange rickety figure of the old _fidalgo_ in his ruined Lisbon _palacio_. And in the Minho scenes of the _Comedia do Campo_ his scrupulous descriptions obtain their full effects. In the _romaria_ (pilgrimage), the _cantadeira_ (improvisator), the _diligencia_ with its load of priests (in _Amor Divino_), the girl shepherdess, the _abbade_ fond of hunting wolves and boars, the old women spinning, the lawsuit of centuries over the fruit of an orange-tree, the sexton Coruja and his dog Coisa (in _Vingança do morto_ and _O Enterro de um Cão_), and especially some old familiar country-house, with Dona Maria and her preserves and _receios infernaes_, in _Amor Divino_ and _Amores, Amores_ (1897), Minho and the Minhotos are presented with naturalness and skill. Many of these scenes are from the short stories of _Contos_, _Novos Contos_ (1887), _A Nossa Gente_ (1900),[688] and _A Cantadeira_ (1913),[689] some of which have been collected in an attractive volume, _Arvoredos_ (1895).

Snr. MANUEL DA SILVA GAYO (born in 1860), poet and novelist, wrote in _Peccado Antigo_ (1893) a short _novela_ as it calls itself, or rather a _conto_, remarkable for its combination of colour and restraint. It describes country scenes and customs in a style that may not be spontaneous but is well subservient to the matter in hand, and has a vigour, purity, and concision too often lacking in modern Portuguese prose. Some of his early stories were collected in _A Dama de Ribadalva_ (1904). In his later novels this style is not maintained. We will not quarrel with its abruptness in _Ultimos Crentes_ (1904), a remarkable story of nineteenth-century _Sebastianistas_ in a fishing village to the extreme north of Estremadura, but it is more slovenly in _Os Torturados_ (1911), in which a certain originality of thought seems to have damaged the form in which it was expressed. There is a welcome Spanish directness in the work of the able journalist Snr. CARLOS MALHEIRO DIAS (deputy for Vianna do Castello in 1903-5) in his novels _O Filho das Hervas_ (1900), _Os Telles de Albergaria_ (1901), and _A Paixão de Maria do Ceo_ (1902). Frankly sensational in _O Grande Cagliostro_ (1905), he displays his gift for the short story in _A Vencida_ (1907), a volume of dramatic tales, of which _A Consoada_ is especially effective. Snr. JOÃO GRAVE (born in 1872) carefully elaborates his prose in _A Eterna Mentira_ (1904) and _Jornada Romantica_ (1913). It turns to marble in the musings of the marble faun in _O Ultimo Fauno_ (1906), but loses this unreality in studies of the poor in country, _Gente Pobre_ (1912), and town, _Os Famintos_ (1903), a tragic story of a workman’s family at Oporto. More recently he has treated historical themes with success in _Parsifal_ (1919) and _A Vida e Paixão da Infanta_ (1921). In the historical novel Snr. FRANCISCO DE ROCHA MARTINS has won a special place by picturesque works such as _Os Tavoras_ (1917). He has an eye for dramatic episodes and has composed many a living picture of the past.

ABEL BOTELHO (1856-1917), a colonel in the Army, and for some years Minister of the Portuguese Republic at Buenos Aires, author of a volume of verse, _Lyra Insubmissa_ (1885), showed an intermittent power of description in seven stories of his native Beira, collected under the title _Mulheres da Beira_ (1898). In his series of novels published under the heading _Pathologia Social: O Barão de Lavos_ (1891), _O Livro de Alda_ (1898), _Fatal Dilemma_ (1907), _Prospera Fortuna_ (1910), he would seem to have laboured under a misapprehension, believing apparently that the introduction of physiology into literature might prove him an original writer.[690] Sainte-Beuve may speak of the _saletés splendides_ of Rabelais, a great stylist like Signor Gabriele d’ Annunzio, except when his art fails, may redeem if he does not justify any theme. But Abel Botelho’s style in these wearisome novels can only be described as worthy of their matter. They are a welter of shapeless sentences, long abstract terms, French words, gallicisms, expressions such as _pathognomonico_, _autopsiação_, _neuro-arthritico_, _a etiologia dos hystero-traumatismos_. This may be magnificent pathology, but it is not art or literature. _As Farpas_ had come to an end some years before these novels began to appear, otherwise their defects might have been pilloried by an adept in ridicule who in contemporary literature occupies a place apart. As critic JOSÉ DUARTE RAMALHO ORTIGÃO (1836-1915) took his share in the controversy of 1865, as a traveller he wrote a vivid, witty, and charming account of Holland, with malicious side-reflections on Portugal: _A Hollanda_ (1883). Between these two dates a series of papers, _As Farpas_ (1871-87), originally suggested by Alphonse Karr’s _Les Guêpes_ and begun in collaboration with his friend Eça de Queiroz, had made him famous. His clear and pointed style was an excellent instrument for the barbed shafts of his satire and irony and, having discovered how powerful a weapon he possessed, he wielded it to right purpose. With abundant good sense he ridiculed and undermined the foibles and follies of Lisbon life, obstinately determined to bring health to the minds and the bodies of his fellow-countrymen and succeeding by his wit where a more sedate reformer might have failed. The range of subjects covered was very wide--the interest of many of them necessarily ephemeral--and his skill in brief character-sketches is remarkable. But although Ramalho Ortigão will always be remembered as the author of _As Farpas_ it is perhaps _A Hollanda_ that will be read. The former work was imitated by Fialho de Almeida in _Os Gatos_ (1889-94), which achieved popularity in Lisbon. His is a more lumbering wit: the rapier of Ramalho Ortigão is exchanged for bludgeon or umbrella. But _Os Gatos_, despite much that is vulgar and much that is dull, contains some good literary criticism and successful descriptions, of places rather than of persons. A battling critic was MANUEL JOSÉ DA SILVA PINTO (1848-1911) in _Combates e Criticas_ (1882), _Frente a frente_ (1909), and _Na procella_ (1909). Equally vigorous and pure was the style of JOAQUIM DE SENNA FREITAS (1840-1913) in _Per agoa e terra_ (1903) and _A Voz do Semeador_ (1908), as likewise that of FRANCISCO SILVEIRA DA MOTA in _Viagens na Galliza_ (1889). The literature of travel is not extensive. Oliveira Martins published in the _Jornal do Commercio_ of Rio de Janeiro in 1892 his _A Inglaterra de hoje_ (1893); Eça de Queiroz showed a deeper acquaintance with England in his _Cartas de Inglaterra_ (1905). Snr. WENCESLAU JOSÉ DE SOUSA MORAES (born in 1854), sometimes called the Portuguese Pierre Loti, has skilfully described China and Japan in _Traços do Extremo Oriente_ (1905), _Paisagens da China e do Japão_ (1906), and _Cartas do Japão_ (three series, 1904-7). In a letter in French at the end of his _Traços_ he says: _J’ai dit ce que je pensais, naïvement, au gré de mes souvenirs._