XI
After the revolution in Portugal, which led to the exile of King Manuel and the overthrow of the Royalist régime in favor of a republic under the presidency of Affonso Costa, I was asked by Lord Lytton to go out and report upon the condition of the prisons in that country.
They were packed with Royalists and with all people, of whatever political opinion, who disapproved of the principles and methods of the new government, including large numbers of the poorest classes. Sinister stories had leaked through about the frightful conditions of these political prisoners, and public opinion in England was stirred when the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, who had visited Portugal, published some sensational statements. I suspected that the dear old Duchess of Bedford was influenced a good deal by sentiment for the Royalist cause, although when I saw her she was emphatic in saying that she had never met King Manuel and was moved to take action for purely humanitarian reasons. Lord Lytton, a man of liberal and idealistic mind, was certainly not actuated by the desire for Royalist or anti-republican propaganda, and in asking me to make an investigation on behalf of a committee, he made it clear that he wished to have the true facts, uncolored by prejudice. On that condition I agreed to go.
I found, before going, that the moving spirit behind the accusations of cruelty appearing in the British press against the new rulers of Portugal, and behind the Duchess of Bedford, was a little lady named Miss Tenison.
“She has all the facts in her hands,” said Lord Lytton, “and you ought to have a talk with her. You will have to make a long journey.”
I made the journey to a remote part of England, where I found a very ancient little house, unchanged by any passing of time through many centuries. I was shown into a low, long room, haunted, I am certain, by the ghosts of Tudor and Stuart England. Two elderly ladies, who introduced themselves as Miss Tenison’s aunts, sat on each side of a mediæval fireplace. Presently Miss Tenison appeared and for more than a moment—for all the time of my visit—I imagined myself in the presence of one of those ghosts which should properly inhabit a house like this—a young lady in an old-fashioned dress, so delicate, so transparent, so spiritual, that I had the greatest difficulty in accepting her as an inhabitant of this coarse and material world.
She was entirely absorbed in the Portuguese affairs, and her aunts told me that she dreamed at night about the agony of the Royalist prisoners in their dungeons. She was in correspondence with many Royalist refugees, and with those still hiding in Portugal, from whom she obtained the latest news. She had a romantic admiration—though not knowing him personally—for a certain count, who had led a counter-revolution and had been captured sword in hand, before being flung into prison and treated as a common convict. She hated Affonso Costa, the President, as Russian émigrés afterward hated Lenin.
It was from this little lady, ethereal in appearance but as passionate in purpose as Lytton Strachey’s Florence Nightingale, that I gained my first insight into the Portuguese situation and my letters of introduction to some great people still hiding in Lisbon. I left her house with the sense of having begun a romantic adventure, with this remarkable little lady in the first chapter.
The second chapter of my adventure was fantastic, for I found myself in the wilds of Spain, suddenly responsible for a German wife and six bandboxes filled with the lingerie of six Brazilian beauties.... It sounds incredible, but it is true.
It happened that a tunnel fell down on the engine of a train immediately ahead of the one in which I was traveling through northern Spain on the way to Lisbon. This brought our train to a standstill in a rather desolate spot. There was vast excitement, and a babble of tongues. Most of the travelers were on their way to Lisbon, to catch a boat to Brazil which was leaving the following day. Among them was a stout little German, with a large, plump, and sad-looking wife. Neither of them could speak anything but German, but the husband, who was almost apoplectic with rage and anxiety, seemed to divine by intuition that a local train which halted at the wayside station might go somewhere in the direction of Lisbon. Entirely forgetting his wife, or thinking, perhaps that she would follow him whithersoever he went, he sprang on to the footboard of the local train, and scrambled in just as it steamed away. So there I was with the German wife, to whom I had previously addressed a few words, and who now appealed to me for advice, protection, and something to eat. The poor lady was hungry, and her husband had the money. Highly embarrassed, because I knew not how long I should be in the company of this German Hausfrau, I provided her with some food at the buffet, and endeavored to get some news of the best manner to reach Lisbon.
Then the second blow befell me. Six extraordinarily beautiful Brazilian girls, with large black eyes and flashing teeth, did exactly the same thing as the German gentleman. That is to say, they hurled themselves into a local train just as it was starting away. Six heads screamed out of the carriage window. They were screaming at me. It was a wild appeal that I should rescue the six enormous bandboxes which they had left on the platform, and bring them to a certain hotel in Lisbon. So there I was, with the bandboxes and the German wife.
I duly arrived in Lisbon, after a nightmare journey, with all my responsibilities, and handed over the bandboxes to the Brazilian beauties, and the German wife to the German husband. I obtained no gratitude whatever in either case.
In Lisbon I plunged straightway into a life of romance and tragedy, which was strangely reminiscent of all I had read about the French Revolution.
With my letters of introduction I called at several great houses of the old nobility, which seemed to be utterly abandoned. At least, no lights showed through the shutters, and they were all bolted and barred within their courtyards. At one house, in answer to my knocking, and the ringing of a bell which jangled loudly, there came at last an answer. A little door in the wall was cautiously opened on a chain by an old man servant with a lantern. Upon mentioning my name, and the word “Inglese,” which I hoped was good Portuguese for “English,” the door was opened wider, and the man made a sign for me to follow him. I was led into a great mansion, perfectly dark, except for the lantern ahead, and I went up a marble staircase, and then into a large salon, furnished in the style of the French Empire, with portraits on the walls of eighteenth century ladies and gentlemen in silks and brocades. In such a room as this Marie Antoinette might have sat with her ladies before the women of the markets marched to Versailles.
The old man servant touched a button, and flooded the room with the light of the electric candelabra, making sure first that no gleam of it would get through the heavy curtains over the shutters. Then he left the room, and soon afterward appeared an old lady in a black dress with a white shawl over her shoulders.
She was the aunt of one of the great families of Portugal, some of whom had escaped to England, and others of whom were in the prisons of Lisbon. She spoke harshly, in French, of the base and corrupt character of the new Portuguese Republic, and of the cruelties and indignities suffered by the political prisoners. She lived quite alone in the old mansion, not caring to go out because of the insults she would receive in the streets, but otherwise safe. So far, at least, Affonso Costa and his police had not threatened her liberty or her possessions.
In another house in the outskirts of Lisbon, with a beautiful garden, where the warm air was filled with the scent of flowers in masses of rich color, I met another lady of the old régime, a beautiful girl, living solitary, also, and agonized because of the imprisonment and ill treatment of her relatives. She implored me to use what influence I had, as an English journalist, to rescue those unhappy men.
It was my mission to get into the prisons, and see what were the real conditions of captivity there. After frequent visits to the Foreign Office, I received permits to visit the Penetenciaria and the Limoero, in which most of the political prisoners were confined. The guide who went with me told me that the Republic had nothing to hide, and that I could see everything and talk as much as I liked with the captives. He was certain that I should find the Penetenciaria, at least, a model prison. The other was “rather old-fashioned.”
On the whole, I preferred the old-fashioned prison. The “model prison” seemed to me specially and beautifully designed to drive men mad and kill their humanity. It was spotlessly clean and provided with excellent sanitary arrangements, washhouses, bakehouses, kitchens, and workshops, but the whole system of the prison was ingeniously and, to my mind, devilishly constructed to keep each prisoner, except a favored few, in perpetual solitude. Once put into one of those little white cells, down one of the long white corridors, and a man would never see or talk with a fellow mortal again until his term of penal servitude expired, never again, if he had a life sentence. There were men in that place who had already served ten, or fifteen, or twenty years. Through a hole in the door they received their food or their day’s ration of work. To exercise them, a trap was opened at the end of their cell, so that they could walk out, like a captive beast, into a little strip of courtyard, divided by high walls from the strip on either side. Up above was the open sky, and the sunlight fell aslant upon the white-coated walls, but it was a cramped and barren space for a man’s body and soul. Perhaps it was no worse than other European prisons, possibly much better. But it struck me with a cold horror, because of all those living beings isolated, in lifelong silence, entombed.
One corridor was set apart for the political prisoners, and when I saw them they were allowed to have their cell doors open, and to converse with each other, for a short time. Otherwise they, too, were locked in their separate cells. I spoke with a number of them, all men of high-sounding names and titles, but a melancholy, pale, miserable-looking crowd, whose spirits seemed quite broken by their long captivity. They were mostly young men, and among them was the Portuguese count who had led the counter-revolutionary rising and had been captured by the Republican troops. They had one grievance, of which they all spoke passionately. The Republic might have shot them as Royalists. At least that would have enabled them to die like gentlemen. But it had treated them like common criminals and convicts, and had even forced them to wear convict garb, to have their heads shaved, and to wear the hood with only eyeholes which was part of the dress—horrible in its cruelty—of all long-sentence men. My conversation with most of them was in French, but two young brothers of very noble family spoke excellent English. They seemed to regard my visit as a kind of miracle, and it revived hopes in them which made me pitiful, because I had no great expectation of gaining their release. When I went away from them, they returned to their cells, and the steel doors clanked upon them.
In the prison called the Limoero there were different conditions of life, enormously preferable, I thought, to the Penetenciaria, in spite of its filth and dirt and disease. There was no solitary confinement here, but crowds of men and women living in a hugger-mugger way, with free intercourse between their rooms. They were allowed to receive visitors at stated times, and when I was there the wives of many of the prisoners had come, with their babies and parcels of food. The babies were crawling on the floor, the food was being cooked on oil stoves, and there was a fearful stench of unwashed bodies, fried onions, tobacco smoke, and other strong odors.
The Fleet Prison, as described by Charles Dickens, must have closely resembled this place, in its general system of accommodation and social life, and I saw in many faces there the misery, the haggard lines, the despair, which he depicts among those who had been long suffering inmates of that debtors’ jail.
Many of the men here were of the aristocratic and intellectual classes, among them editors and correspondents of Royalist papers, poets, novelists, and university professors. They had not been charged with any crime, they had not been brought up for trial, they had no idea how long their captivity would last—a few months, a few years, or until death released them. But at least in equal proportion to the Royalists—I think in a majority—were men of poorer class—mechanics, printers, tailors, shoemakers, artisans of all kinds. They, too, were political prisoners, having been Socialists, Syndicalists, and other types of advanced democrats.
Some of the men told me that they had no idea whatever why they were lodged in Limoero. They had been arrested without charge, flung into prison without trial, and kept there without hope of release. Quite a number of them had been imprisoned by the Royalist régime in the time of the monarchy, and the Republic had not troubled about them. They were just left to rot, year after year.
The political prisoners were allowed to receive food from their relatives, but many had no relatives able to provide them, and they had nothing but prison fare, which was hardly enough for life. They begged through the bars of the windows to passers-by, as I saw them, with their hands thrust through the iron gratings. Owing to the overcrowding and insanitary conditions, disease was rife, and prison fever ravaged them.
I had been told of one prison called Forte Mon Santo, on a hill some distance away from Lisbon, and as I could get no official pass to visit it, I decided to try and gain admission by other means. In the Black Horse Square at Lisbon, I hired a motor car from one of the street drivers, and understood from him that he was the champion automobilist of Lisbon. Certainly he drove like a madman and a brute. He killed three dogs on the way, not by accident, but by deliberately steering into them, and laughed uproariously at each kill. He drove through crowded streets with a screeching horn, and in the open countryside went like a fiend, up hill and down dale. I was surprised to find myself alive on the top of the hill which, as I knew by private directions, was the prison of Mon Santo.
But I could see no prison. No building of any kind stood on the lonely hilltop or on its slopes, which were bare of all but grass. All I could see was a circle of queer-looking objects like large metal mushrooms. Upon close inspection I saw that these things were ventilators for a subterranean building, and walking further, I came to a steep, circular ditch, into which some steps were cut. At the top of the steps stood a sentry with a rifle slung over his arm.
I approached this man, who regarded me suspiciously and unslung his rifle, but the glint of a gold sovereign—we used to have such things before the era of paper money—persuaded him that I was an agreeable fellow. My brutal motor driver, who spoke a bit of French, so that he understood my purpose, explained to the sentry that I was an English tourist who would like to see his excellent prison. After some debate, and a roving eye over the surrounding landscape, the sentry nodded, and made a sign for me to go down the steps, with the motor driver. I noticed that during all the time of my visit he walked behind us, with his rifle handy, lest there should be any trick on our part.
It was the most awful dungeon I have ever seen, apart from ancient dens disused since mediæval times. Completely underground, its dungeons struck me with a chill even in the short time I was there. Its walls oozed with water. No light came direct through the narrow bars of the cells in which poor wretches lay like beasts, but only indirectly from the surrounding ditch, so that they were almost in darkness. In the center of this underground fort was a cavern in complete darkness except, perhaps, for some faint gleam through a grating about two feet square, high up in the outer wall. It was just a hole in the rock, and inside were five men with heavy chains about them. Once a day the jailers pushed some loaves of bread through the grating. What went on in that dark dungeon, and in the darkness of those men’s souls, it is better, perhaps, not to imagine. The cruelty of men is not yet killed, and there are still, in the hearts of men and of nations, lurking devils worse than the wildness and ferocity of beasts....
I went to other prisons in Lisbon and Oporto. They were not like that, but, generally, like the Limoero, unclean, squalid, horrible, but with human companionship, which alleviates all suffering, if there is any kind of comradeship. In these cases one could not charge the Portuguese Republic with inflicting bodily suffering upon their prisoners in any deliberate way. The indictment against them was that, under the fair name of liberty, they had overthrown the monarchical régime and substituted a new tyranny. For, among all the people I met, there were few who had been charged with any offense against the law, or given the right of defense in any trial.
A queer fellow came into my life during this time in Portugal, whose behavior still baffles me by its mystery. The episode is like the beginning of a sensational detective story, without any clue to its solution.
The first night of my arrival in Lisbon I dined alone in the hotel, and soon remarked a handsome, well-dressed, English-looking man who kept glancing in my direction. After dinner he came up to me and said: “Excuse me, but isn’t your name Jones? I think I had the pleasure of meeting you in London, some months ago?”
“A mistake,” I said, civilly; “my name is not Jones.”
He looked disappointed when I showed no signs of desiring further conversation, and went away. But presently, after studying the hotel list (as I have no doubt), he returned, and with a very genial smile, said: “Oh, forgive me! I made a mistake in the name. You are Philip Gibbs, I believe. I met you at the Savage Club.”
I knew he was lying, for I seldom forget a face, and not such a face as his, very powerful and arresting, but as I was bored with my own company, I gave him a little rope. We took coffee together, and talked about the affairs of the world and the countries in which we had wandered. He had been to South America and other countries, and told me some very amusing yarns. I was much taken with this man, who was certainly well-educated and a brilliant talker.
The mystery appeared when he tapped at my door next morning, and said he desired to ask a favor.
I expected him to borrow money, but what he wanted was less expensive, and more extraordinary. He wanted me to go to the seashore near Cascaes and bring back to him a handful of pebbles. As he could not pay for such a service from a man in my position, he would gladly make me a friendly gift of anything that might strike my fancy in the shops of Lisbon.
No questioning of mine as to the meaning of this extraordinary request brought any explanation. He regretted that he could not enlighten me as to his reason, but for him the matter was of vital importance. I utterly refused to fetch the pebbles or to go anywhere near the seashore. It flashed across my mind that this very handsome, English-looking gentleman might be a police spy set to dog my footsteps. He certainly dogged me all right. I could hardly get away from him, wherever I went, and he pressed me to take wine with him at the open-air cafés. One night when we sat together in Black Horse Square, he became uneasy, and kept glancing over his shoulder at the crowded tables. Presently he rose, and said, “Let us take a stroll.” I agreed, and was quickly aware that we were being followed by three men.
I spoke to him.
“One of us is being shadowed. Is it you or me?”
“Me,” he said. “As long as you stay with me, I am safe. Let us slip into this place....”
He pushed open the swing door of a wine shop, and we went inside. He ordered a bottle of cheap wine, and before it had been brought, three men entered and sat near the door.
My strange acquaintance sipped a little wine, spoke to me loudly in English about the weather, and whispered the words, “Follow me quickly!”
He rose from the table, and went rapidly out of the back door of the restaurant into the courtyard, and out through a side door into the street by which we had entered. It was dark, but as we walked we saw, at the end of the street, under a lantern, three men standing motionless.
“Hell!” said my acquaintance.
He plunged into a narrow alley, and then through a labyrinth of little streets until suddenly we emerged on the square opposite our hotel.
“How’s that for geographical knowledge?” he asked.
“Good!” I said. “But after this I do not desire your company. I don’t understand why these men followed you, and I don’t like the game, anyhow.”
He regretted my annoyance, and was so polite and amusing that I relented toward him, especially as he told me he was going to Vigo next day.
He wished me good-by that night when he went to bed. But next morning when I left Lisbon for Oporto, he was on the platform, and said that he had changed his plans and was going to the same place as myself.
I was now convinced that he was really shadowing me, and told him so. But he shook his head and laughed.
“Nothing of the kind. I like your company, because you’re the only Englishman in this land of dagoes. Also I want you to get me that handful of pebbles.”
He returned again to the subject of those ridiculous pebbles. I could get them easily for him on the seashore by Oporto. It would give me very little trouble. It would be an enormous favor to him.... I refused to consider the idea.
In Oporto he took me into a jeweler’s shop and bought a little cedarwood box about five inches square.
“I want enough pebbles to fill this box,” he said. “Surely you can get them for me?”
“Surely you can get them yourself,” I answered.
But he shook his head, and said that was impossible.
We were again followed down the streets of Oporto. My companion drew my attention to the fact, and then sidestepped into an umbrella shop. But he did not buy an umbrella. He bought a very neat, and rather expensive, sword stick, and offered to give me another like it.
“It may be useful,” he remarked.
I declined the sword stick, but accepted the thick cudgel which he had been carrying since I knew him.
That is practically the end of the story. He left Oporto two days later, and before going made one last request. It was that I should send a telegram which he had written out, to an address in South Kensington. It was to the following effect:
“Arriving in London Saturday. Cannot get the pebbles.”
What is the meaning of that mystery? I cannot give a guess, and have sometimes thought of offering the problem to Conan Doyle.
Sometimes, also, I have wondered whether it is in any way connected with an incident that took place in the abandoned palace of King Manuel, or rather, in his garden. From the newspaper reports it appeared that some of the royal jewels had been buried before the flight of King Manuel. Perhaps it was for the purpose of digging for them that three men, of whom one was believed to be an Englishman, had entered the palace garden on the night of my arrival in Lisbon. A sentry had discovered them and fired. The men fired back, and the sentry was wounded, before they escaped over the wall.
Was that man “believed to be an Englishman” my mysterious acquaintance? I am tempted to think so, yet I cannot provide a theory for the pebbles from the seashore, the jewel box, the shadowing in the streets of Lisbon, the purchase of the sword stick, and the eagerness for my company.
All that has nothing to do with the political prisoners and my mission of inquiry. The end of that story is that after the publication of my articles in The Daily Chronicle, and many papers on the Continent, Affonso Costa declared a general amnesty and the prison doors were unlocked for a great “jail-delivery” of Royalists.
How far my articles had any influence toward that action, I do not know. Certainly I received some share in the credit, and for months afterward there were Portuguese visitors at my little house in Holland Street, to kiss my hand—as the deliverer of their relatives and friends—much to the amusement of my wife.
But the real deliverer of the prisoners was little Miss Tenison, who had pulled all the wires from her haunted house.