The Department of Public Works has an army of architects and other officials, but when some public work crops up a foreign engineer is usually called in. The Department resembles a river which dries up before reaching the region that required irrigation or that army sent by Philip XII of France against Spain, which had dwindled away before crossing the Bidasoa. In the same way it was complained in Portugal a few years ago that there were “too many canons” (O Diario de Noticias, January, 1902). In the same way it is complained to-day that there are too many officers. The sum of 1,535 contos, over a sixth of the whole military estimates, was devoted to the retired list in the Budget of 1913-4. The average of officers is, roughly, one to nine men. “Our officers would suffice for an army as large as that of Germany” (O Diario de Noticias, 11th February, 1902). (In the Engineers there are 145 officers to 1,075 men, in the Artillery 368 to 2,610 men, in the Cavalry 263 to 1,837, in the Infantry 1,291 to 12,289 men.) (A Republica, 26th March, 1913). It has been suggested that a thousand officers would be sufficient, and that the other thousand should be employed as mayors, a course also proposed in 1893. And in the same way there are too many journalists, too many politicians. Some attempts have been made to get back to reality, and several technical schools, for instance, are in existence.
“Francezismo.”
The same lack of funds which fetters the schools prevents the libraries of Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra, Evora, and Braga from being kept up to date. But for these difficulties, the material to the teacher’s hand is promising enough, for the people, if it can be persuaded that it is to its advantage, is quick and eager to learn. The attempts, however, to dissociate the teaching from all the traditions of Portugal is bound to be a failure. The trouble already is that the Portuguese are too much inclined to be cosmopolitan, and what is required is a development of that part of the Portuguese people still untainted with francezismo along strictly national lines. The lament of the novelist Eça de Queiroz is well known. Accused of Gallicism in his work, he retorted: “Scarcely was I born when I began to breathe a French atmosphere. France was all around me.” The atmosphere of his home was continued in French text-books, at Coimbra. At Lisbon, “in theatres and shops and cookery there was nothing left of Portugal: there was nothing but cheap imitations of France.” And especially was this true in politics: a small group of Frenchified persons ruled Portugal.[34] In the last half-century this Frenchification has only increased in Portugal. “Portugal is a country translated from the French into slang,” said Eça de Queiroz on the same occasion, in an essay published after his death. Fortunately this is an exaggeration, and a symptom of the disease that a Portuguese should thus mistake Coimbra and Lisbon for Portugal. “Outside Lisbon,” he declared, “there is neither intellectual nor social life,” and this may be deplorable but it is of good augury for the future. Not Portugal but Lisbon is “translated from the French.” The francezismo has not yet extended to the mass of the people, and it is therefore of the utmost importance that it should not be denationalized by French text-books, French laws, French customs. At the root of this francezismo lies the love of progress which has always characterised the Portuguese, but the truest progress at present will surely consist in going back to Portugal’s past, to the study of the land of Portugal, of her history, as rich as that of any other country in striking episodes and personalities, and of her literature, in which the glories of that history are reflected.
CHAPTER V
A LAND OF FLOWERS
Estoril and Cintra.
It is a land of roses flowering in December, a land where, in the words of Garrett, “oranges glow in the orchards and myrtle blooms on the moors: Onde a laranjeira cresce na horta e o matto é de murta” (Viajens na minha terra, 1846). The foreigner who spends a few days in Portugal and sees perhaps Cintra and Estoril may think that he has been offered a few show pieces, yet everywhere in this wonderful climate, a warmer South-west of Ireland, given water and shelter either from the sea or from the subtle Spanish wind, plants thrive and grow as swiftly almost as the fabled bean-stalk, and flowers cover the ground like mushrooms in the twinkling of a fairy’s eye. A desolate strip of coast near Lisbon, apparently grey and barren, mere sunburnt and spray-beaten rock, was found on closer acquaintance to have at various seasons of the year, among other flowers, whin and cistus, yellow jonquil, white clustered jonquil, celandine, crocus, light blue dwarf iris, large dark-blue iris, mint and sea-lavender. And Cintra possesses many lovely places unknown to tourists, the whole region deserving not the stay of a few hours but a quiet sojourn in one of its houses or hôtels. The slopes of the Serra looking towards Cascaes, though rarely visited, are scarcely less beautiful than those above the village of Cintra, and are crowded with all kinds of trees and flowers. You may walk across from Estoril. The path goes haphazard through the uncultivated matto and then a road, also through matto moorland, passing an occasional village with low one-storeyed houses and lanes between walls of loose stones covered with brambles, sarsaparilla, and eglantine. Here a woman in white blouse, yellow skirt, and plum-coloured kerchief is at work in a small plot of vines; there a boy keeping donkeys and black-and-white cows is dressed all in light faded greys and blues like one of the wayside thistles. The country has a look of Dartmoor—only that there is no water, no patches of vivid treacherous green—and in front rise the twenty odd tors of the Serra.
Ribeira de Pena Longa.
At the foot of the Serra is Ribeira de Pena Longa, a little tumble-down village in olives and fruit-trees, with a few clumps of mighty planes. The village street is mainly of rock with loose stones, evidently a torrent in winter, and the forlorn and poverty-stricken look of the whole village will amaze the Englishman accustomed to see the flourishing condition of villages near or on some great estate in England. There are a few iron balconies with tins of carnations, and grey ruined walls of houses with olives and vines growing between them seem to tell of a more prosperous past, perhaps when the neighbouring Convent of Pena Longa was wont to receive the visits of King João III. From the village a wide gate leads into a kind of mysterious fairyland: out of the glowing sunshine the road passes to a cool shaded avenue of arched trees, where the songs of birds are heard in number and variety rare in Latin countries. A rapid stream runs by the road, and on this side and on that are a multitude of fruit trees and great myrtle hedges, twenty-feet high cactus with their large deep-orange-coloured flowers, giant-leaved bananas, vine-trellises, groves of lemons, plots gay with garden flowers. It is an enchanted country, and presently you will come to many peacocks and the low rambling house of the Viscondes de Pena Longa. At the other end the estate is bounded by the serra of pines and eucalyptus. A little further on a small lake is fringed with great pines, and here is a marvellous solemn silence scarcely broken by the distant cooing of doves or the sound of running water. Among the pines grows bracken and heather, myrtles in massed snow-white flower, and thick tufts of the dark purple lavender. Thence with some difficulty you may climb through a dense wood of every variety of tree and labyrinthine paths up to the palace of Pena. Fuchsias and bays and many a scented shrub and flowering tree will recompense you for the pains of the ascent, and goodly views of the Tagus, and of the Serra d’Ossa in Alemtejo. There are masses of periwinkles, and many an old wall a-crumble fretted with maidenhair and that variety of daisy which loves old mellow stonework, be it that of an Oxford college or of the Basque church of Urrugne.
The Coast.