Adventures in Journalism

by Philip Gibbs

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.