Lisbon is certainly a handsome town. It has been so frequently wrecked by earthquakes that there is very little mediæval architecture remaining, in spite of its great age. Two notable exceptions are the Tower of Belem and the exquisitely beautiful cloisters of the Hieronymite Convent, also at Belem. The tower stands on a promontory jutting into the Tagus, and the convent was built in the late fifteen-hundreds to commemorate the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama. These two buildings are both in the "Manoeline" style, a variety of highly ornate late Gothic peculiar to Portugal. It is the fashion to sneer at Manoeline architecture, with its profuse decoration, as being a decadent style. To my mind the cloisters of Belem (the Portuguese variant of Bethlehem) rank as one of the architectural masterpieces of Europe. Its arches are draped, as it were, with a lace-work of intricate and minute stone carving, as delicate almost as jewellers' work. The warm brown colour of the stone adds to the effect, and anyone but an architectural pedant must admit the amazing beauty of the place. The finest example of Manoeline in Portugal is the great Abbey of Batalha, in my day far away from any railway, and very difficult of access.
At the time of the great earthquake of 1755 which laid Lisbon in ruins, Portugal was fortunate enough to have a man of real genius at the head of affairs, the Marquis de Pombal. Pombal not only re-established the national finances on a sound basis, but rebuilt the capital from his own designs. The stately "Black Horse Square" fronting the Tagus and the streets surrounding it were all designed by Pombal. I suppose that there is no hillier capital in the world than Lisbon. Many of the streets are too steep for the tramcars to climb. The Portuguese fashion of coating the exteriors of the houses with bright-coloured tiles of blue and white, or orange and white, gives a cheerful air to the town,—the French word "riant" would be more appropriate—and the numerous public gardens, where the palm-trees apparently grow as contentedly as in their native tropics, add to this effect of sunlit brightness. As in Brazil and other Portuguese-speaking countries, the houses are all very tall, and sash-windows are universal, as in England, contrary to the custom of other Continental countries.
House rent could not be called excessive in Portugal. In my day quite a large house, totally lacking in every description of modern convenience, but with a fine staircase and plenty of lofty rooms, could be hired for £30 a year, a price which may make the Londoner think seriously of transferring himself to the banks of the Tagus.
In the "'eighties" Lisbon was the winter headquarters of our Channel Squadron. I once saw the late Admiral Dowdeswell bring his entire fleet up the Tagus under sail; a most wonderful sight! The two five-masted flagships, the Minotaur and the Agincourt, had very graceful lines, and with every stitch of their canvas set, they were things of exquisite beauty. The Northumberland had also been designed as a sister ship, but for some reason had had two of her masts removed. The old Minotaur, now alas! a shapeless hulk known as Ganges II, is still, I believe, doing useful work at Harwich.
As may be imagined, the arrival of the British Fleet infused a certain element of liveliness into the sleepy city. Gambling-rooms were opened all over Lisbon, and as the bluejackets had a habit of wrecking any place where they suspected the proprietor of cheating them, the Legation had its work cut out for it in endeavouring to placate the local authorities and smooth down their wounded susceptibilities. One gambling-house, known as "Portuguese Joe's," was frequented mainly by midshipmen. They were strictly forbidden to go there, but the place was crammed every night with them, in spite of official prohibition. The British midshipman being a creature of impulse, the moment these youths (every one of whom thought it incumbent on his dignity to have a huge cigar in his mouth, even though he might still be of very tender years) suspected any foul play, they would proceed very systematically and methodically to smash the whole place up to matchwood. There was consequently a good deal of trouble, and the Legation quietly put strong pressure on the Portuguese Government to close these gambling-houses down permanently. This was accordingly done, much to the wrath of the midshipmen, who were, I believe, supplied with free drinks and cigars by the proprietors of these places. It is just possible that the Admiral's wishes may have been consulted before this drastic action was taken. Midshipmen in those days went to sea at fourteen and fifteen years of age, and consequently needed some shepherding.
As our Minister had constantly to pay official visits to the Fleet, the British Government kept a whale-boat at Lisbon for the use of the Legation. The coxswain, an ex-naval petty officer who spoke Portuguese, acted as Chancery servant when not afloat. When the boat was wanted, the coxswain went down to the quay with two bagfuls of bluejackets' uniforms, and engaged a dozen chance Tagus boatmen. The Lisbon boatman, though skilful, is extraordinarily unclean in his person and his attire. I wish the people who lavished praises on the smart appearance of the Legation whaleboat and of its scratch crew could have seen, as I often did, the revoltingly filthy garments of these longshoremen before they drew the snowy naval white duck trousers and jumpers over them. Their persons were even dirtier, and—for reasons into which I need not enter—it was advisable to smoke a strong cigar whilst they were pulling. The tides in the Tagus run very strong; at spring-tides they will run seven or eight knots, so considerable skill is required in handling a boat. To do our odoriferous whited sepulchres of boatmen justice, they could pull, and the real workmanlike man-of-war fashion in which our coxswain always brought the boat alongside a ship, in spite of wind and tremendous tide, did credit to himself, and shed a mild reflected glory on the Legation.
The country round Lisbon is very arid. It produces, however, most excellent wines, both red and white, and in my time really good wine could be bought for fourpence a bottle. At the time of the vintage, all the country taverns and wine shops displayed a bush tied to a pole at their doors, as a sign that they had new wine, "green wine," as the Portuguese call it, for sale. Let the stranger beware of that new wine! Though pleasant to the palate and apparently innocuous, it is in reality hideously intoxicating, as a reference to the 13th verse of the second chapter of the Acts will show. I think that the custom of tying a bush to the door of a tavern where new wine is on sale must be the origin of the expression "good wine needs no bush."
The capabilities of this apparently intractable and arid soil when scientifically irrigated were convincingly shown on a farm some sixteen miles from Lisbon, belonging to a Colonel Campbell, an Englishman. Colonel Campbell, who had permanently settled in Portugal, had bought from the Government a derelict monastery and the lands attached to it at Torres Vedras, where Wellington entrenched himself in his famous lines in 1809-10. A good stream of water ran through the property, and Colonel Campbell diverted it, and literally caused the desert to blossom like the rose. Here were acres and acres of orange groves, and it was one of the few places in Europe where bananas would ripen. Colonel Campbell supplied the whole of Lisbon with butter, and the only mutton worth eating came also from his farm. It was a place flowing, if not with milk and honey, at all events with oil and wine. Here were huge tanks brimful of amber-coloured olive oil; whilst in vast dim cellars hundreds of barrels of red and white wine were slowly maturing in the mysterious shadows. Outside the sunlight fell on crates of ripe oranges and bananas, ready packed for the Lisbon market, and in the gardens tropical and sub-tropical flowering trees had not only thoroughly acclimatised themselves, but had expanded to prima-donna-like dimensions. The great rambling tiled monastery made a delightful dwelling-house, and to me it will be always a place of pleasant memories—a place of sunshine and golden orange groves; of rustling palms and cool blue and white tiles; of splashing fountains and old stonework smothered in a tangle of wine-coloured Bougainvillea.
The environs of all Portuguese towns are made dreary by the miles and miles of high walls which line the roads. These people must surely have some dark secrets in their lives to require these huge barriers between themselves and the rest of the world. Behind the wall were pleasant old quintas, or villas, faced with my favourite "azulejos" of blue and white, and surrounded with attractive, ill-kept gardens, where roses and oleanders ran riot amidst groves of orange and lemon trees.