All that money and skill could do was lavished upon the gardens in the ravines and slopes of Monserrate; and long before Beckford died the place became famous throughout Europe. Sir Francis Cook, Viscount de Monserrate, to whom Monserrate belonged for many years, greatly extended and improved the property, and his son, Sir Frederick Cook, the present owner, has followed the same course of munificent maintenance of this earthly paradise; with the result that now the beauties of the glens at Monserrate are probably unequalled in their own way. It was the middle of October when I visited the gardens on this occasion, although I had seen it in all the glory of its spring and summer splendour on other visits, and the luxuriance of the vegetation showed as yet no signs of waning. Great magnolias, daturas, and bougainvilliers were in full flower, with roses, clematis, brilliant coleas, and immense quantities of heliotrope. Tree ferns, aloes, agaves, and palms grew with a freedom in the open air that not even the hot-houses of Kew could surpass, whilst the crimson ampelopsis and golden-leaved maples presented gorgeous masses of colour. Some of the sylvan views are perfectly charming; but after all, one feels that one is simply an interloper seeing the showplace on sufferance by payment of a shilling—which the owner gives to a charity—and a sylvan scene, perhaps less lovely, but in which I could roam at will, as at Bussaco, would have had greater attraction for me.
Upon a peak opposite Monserrate, and belonging to the same owner, stands a humble little monastery that once belonged to the Franciscan-Capuchins. It is a quaint and curious place, the cloister, a tiny one, being joined to a rock, out of which the cells are excavated. These and the doors and ceilings of the cloister are lined with cork bark for warmth and cosiness in this exposed position, and for centuries the hermit-monks lived and prayed on this peak overlooking almost as great a panorama as the Jeronomites on the high crest of the Penha. Franciscans and Jeronomites are alike gone now; but in this case at least the place has been saved from desecration, and the little chapel is maintained with reverent care by Sir Frederick Cook, to whom the place belongs. Byron and Southey, too, did much for the fame of Cintra. In a room at Lawrence’s Hotel, commanding a fine view of plain and sea, the former wrote a portion of “Childe Harold,” and his references in verse to the beauty of the place are numerous. Writing of the cork convent, Byron refers thus to Honorius, a rigid ascetic who in a cave there lived long years in self-imposed penance:—
“Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell,
In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell.”
Volumes of poetry, indeed, have been in the aggregate written about Cintra. Byron made it practically his first stage of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” and went in raptures over it:—
“Lo, Cintra’s glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah, me! what hand can pencil guide or pen
To follow half on which the eye dilates,
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken