SANTOS, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL—RICHARD'S SECOND CONSULATE.
"My native land's the land of Palms,
The Sabiá sings there.
In this drear land no song-birds' notes
With our sweet birds compare.
"More radiant stars bestrew our skies,
More flowers bedeck our fields,
A fuller life teems in our woods,
More love our Home-life yields.
"My wakeful thoughts—alone—at night
Full of sweet memories are,
Of mine own land,—the land of Palms,
Where sings the Sabiá.
"My land has sweetest fruits and flowers,
Such sweets I find not here.
Alone—at night—in wakeful hours
More pleasures find I there,
Mine own dear land,—the land of Palms,
Where sings the Sabiá.
"God, in His mercy, grant I may
To that dear land return,
Ere the sweet flowers and fruits decay,
Which here, alas! I mourn;
That once again, before I die,
I may the Palm-Trees see,
And hear again the Sabiá
Sing its sweet melody."
——Daniel Fox (translated from the Brazilian
of the poet Antonio Gonçalves Dias).
During this stay at home we had represented to Lord Russell how miserable our lives were, being always separated by the climate of Fernando Po, and he very kindly transferred us to Santos, in the Brazils, where I could go. So Richard agreed that I should go out with him to Portugal for a trip; that he should go on to Rio de Janeiro; that I should return to London to wind up our affairs, and then join him at Santos; and we set sail in May. I now began to learn Portuguese. We had very bad weather, and on the fourth day we arrived at Lisbon, and went to the Braganza Hotel.
Here was a totally new experience for me. Our bedroom was a large white-washed place; there were three holes in the wall, one at the bedside bristling with horns, and these were cockroaches some three inches long. The drawing-room was gorgeous with yellow satin, and the magnificent yellow curtains were sprinkled with these crawling things; the consequence was that I used to stand on a chair and scream. This annoyed Richard very much. "A nice sort of traveller and companion you are going to make," he said. "I suppose you think you look very pretty and interesting, standing on that chair and howling at those innocent creatures." This hurt me so much that, without descending from the chair, I stopped screaming and, made a meditation, like St. Simon Stylites on his pillar, and it was, "that if I was going to live in a country always in contact with these and worse things, though I had a perfect horror of anything black and crawling, it would never do to go on like that." So I got down, fetched a basin of water and a slipper, and in two hours, by the watch, I had knocked ninety-seven of them into it. It cured me. From that day I had no more fear of vermin and reptiles, which is just as well in a country where nature is over-luxuriant. A little while after we changed our rooms, we were succeeded by the late Lord and Lady Lytton, and, to my infinite delight, I heard the same screams coming from the same rooms a little while after. "There!" I said in triumph, "you see, I am not the only woman who does not like cockroaches."
Here he insisted on taking me to a bull-fight, because he said I ought to see everything once. But there is a great difference between a Spanish and a Portuguese bull-fight. In Portugal the bull's horns are knobbed; he does not gore horses nor dogs—he tosses men softly, and if I do not mind that, it is because the men go in for it willingly, are paid for it, and are bred to it as a profession from father to son for endless generations. The only torment the bull has to endure is the darts thrown into the fat part of his neck. If he fights well, they are taken out afterwards and his wounds dressed with oil, and he is turned out loose to fight another day. If he won't fight, he is killed for beef; so you get all the science and the play without the disgusting cruelty. At first I crouched down with my hands over my face, but I gradually peeped through first one finger and then another, until I saw the whole of it; but it awed me so much that I was almost afraid to come out of our box, for fear we should meet a bull on the stairs.
We then went to Cintra, and to Mafra. Richard found an old mosque in Cintra, and we saw Mr. Cooke's beautiful house.[1] For people who have not been to Lisbon, I may say that Belem Church is, I think, quite the most beautiful thing in the world. It is one of the noted dreams in marble. From Lisbon we went on to Corregado, to Serçal and Caldas, to see Alcobaço, where there is a most beautiful monastery. In the days of rebellion and persecution, the days of Don Miguel, somewhere in the early thirties, the monks had to clear out, and my father took one of them, whose name was Antonio Barboza de Lima, to be our tutor and chaplain, when we were children (and he is now buried at Mortlake); so Richard and I took an extra interest in the details. We then went to Batalha, where there is another beautiful monastery, to Pombal, to Leiria, and to Coimbra. This seat of learning is one of the prettiest, dirtiest, and slowest places imaginable, and we soon made our way to Oporto, and went to Braga to see the Whit-Sunday fête, from thence to Malozinhos. This northern part of Portugal is ever so much more beautiful than Lisbon. The more you get into Douro, and the nearer you are to Spain, the larger and handsomer become the people.
However, our time was short, and, after a delightful two months' Portuguese exploration, we had to get back to Lisbon, where we saw another bull-fight, and Richard embarked for Brazil. I promised him to go back by the very next steamer that sailed. As I used to keep my word very literally, a few hours after his departure, a very tiny steamer came in, much worse than the West African boats; but I thought myself obliged to go, and we started at 9.20 in the evening, in spite of north-easterly gales, and had a bad time of it in the Bay of Biscay, she being only 428 tons. The route was from London to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Mazagan, Mogador, Canary Islands, coast of Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. On board, besides myself, having made the same mistake, was Dona Maria Rita Tenorio y Moscoso, who afterwards married the Portuguese Minister in London, Count Lavradio. We were in a tremendous fog off Beachy Head, went aground somewhere near Erith in the fog, and were very glad to land on the eighth day, having roughed it prodigiously. I note nothing important except some very interesting experiments at Mr. William Crookes's, both chemically and spiritualistically.