A New Medley of Memories Part 10

The abbot and I finished our afternoon's drive with a little expedition to Cantareira, a hollow among wooded hills, some twelve or fourteen miles distant (the access is by a steam tramway), where, set in charming gardens, are some of the s.p.a.cious reservoirs feeding the city.

We drank our coffee in a rustic arbour, with bright-hued hummingbirds glancing and circling round our heads; and returning in the luminous violet twilight (which struck me always as particularly beautiful in this clear, high smokeless atmosphere), called to pay our respects to the Archbishop of the province and diocese of S. Paulo. A zealous parish priest in the city, where he had built a fine church (St.

Cecilia's), he had been made Bishop of Coritiba at only thirty, and translated to the metropolitan see two years later. He was not yet thirty-eight.

I a.s.sisted, before our school broke up for the three months' summer holidays, at some of the examinations, which were conducted in presence of a _fiscal_ (Government official), our college being at that time considered "equiparado," i.e., equivalent to the State secondary schools, a condition of the privilege being some kind of more or less nominal Government inspection. The school work, it struck me, had all been very thoroughly done, though perhaps of a somewhat elementary kind. A distraction to us all during the last hour was the news of a great fire raging in the princ.i.p.al business street of the {167} city.

A big German warehouse, the Casa Allema, was in fact burned to the ground; and we surveyed the conflagration (said, but never proved, to be the work of incendiaries) from the belfry of our church tower.

The North American element in S. Paulo, though much smaller than it became later, was already fairly numerous. A great Canadian company was responsible for the supply of light and power to S. Paulo as well as Rio; some of the leading officials in both cities were Catholics, and became my kind friends. Another hospitable friend was a Scots banker married to an American wife, whom he habitually addressed as "Honey!"[9] There was, generally, a very friendly and hospitable spirit among the English-speaking residents; but (as usual in foreign cities) it was curiously confined to the circle of their own countrymen. Some of my Brazilian acquaintances used to express regret that the English colony, for which they had much respect, never evinced the least desire for any sort of intimacy with them; and it used to surprise me to find English families which had been settled in the country for a whole generation or more, of which not a single member knew sufficient Portuguese to carry on a quarter of an hour's conversation with an educated Brazilian of their own cla.s.s.

Personally, I found such Brazilians as I had the pleasure of meeting {168} almost uniformly extremely agreeable people--kind, courteous, cultivated, and refined; and I thought, and still think, the insular aloofness of my countrymen from the people among whom it was their lot to live, a distinct disadvantage to themselves, and a mistake from every point of view.

It was a curious fact, and one worthy of attention from several points of view, that at the time of which I am writing the public and official interest of the Paulistas in educational matters, while undoubtedly exceeding that of any other community in the Republic, was in practice almost confined to primary schools. Nearly 400,000, a fifth of the whole annual budget of the State, was devoted to their support and extension; many of the school buildings were of almost palatial appearance; the code was carefully thought out, and the teaching as a whole efficient; and elementary education was, at least in principle, obligatory, though the provisions of the law of 1893, which had established a commission for bringing negligent parents to book and fining them for non-compliance with the law, were to a great extent a dead letter. For secondary education, on the other hand, the public provision was of the slenderest: there were in 1909 but three State secondary schools in the State of S. Paulo--at Campinas and Ribeiro Preto, and in the capital; and the Lyceu in the last-named city (with a population of over 400,000) numbered less than 150 pupils. The all-important work of the education of the middle and upper cla.s.ses of children, both boys and girls, thus fell inevitably into the hands of private teachers, the best colleges for both s.e.xes (mostly _internatos_ {169} or boarding-schools) being conducted by foreign religious orders.

These inst.i.tutions, receiving no State subvention of any kind, were regarded by the State with a tolerance due less to its appreciation of the principles on which their education was based, than to an obvious sense of the economic advantage of leaving private a.s.sociations to undertake a work which it neglected itself. The net gain of this policy of _laisser aller_ was that a large number of children, belonging to the cla.s.ses on which depended the future prosperity of the country, were being carefully educated on solid Christian foundations, without, as far as I could observe at S. Bento and elsewhere, any sacrifice of the patriotic principles which Brazil quite rightly desired should be instilled into the rising generation of her sons and daughters.

[1] St. Trid's Well (as it was called before the Reformation) had the repute of miraculously curing diseases of the eye. A satirical sixteenth-century poet scoffs at the folk who flock to "Saint Trid's to mend their ene."

[2] The King (so his secretary wrote to me) was "much surprised and gratified" at hearing how the toast of his health had been received by the foreign pa.s.sengers on an English ship. I sent on the letter from S. Paulo to the captain, who said it should be framed and hung up on board, but I never heard if this was done. Edward VII. died less than six months later, and on December 30, 1917, the _Aragon_, whilst on transport service in the Mediterranean, was torpedoed (together with her escort H.M.S. _Attack_), a few miles from Alexandria. The ship went down within half an hour of being struck, with a loss of more than six hundred lives.

[3] Their names are worthy of perpetuation--Lauro Muller, Paulo Frontin, Pareiro Pa.s.so (the Haussmann of Brazil), and Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, a pupil of Pasteur, and popularly known as the _mata-mosquitos_ (mosquito-killer).

[4] This lapse from diplomatic courtesy on the part of Sir William Haggard was, I take pleasure in recalling, amply atoned for later by the kindness I received from two of his successors as British representative in Rio.

[5] The Tropic of Capricorn pa.s.ses through S. Paulo--I had even heard said, through the monastery garden of S. Bento. "Let us dig and look for it," said one of my little pupils to whom I imparted this supposed geographical fact.

[6] When I saw S. Bento (after a long interval) eleven years later, the new buildings (except for the internal decoration of the church) were practically complete. Many of the details were no doubt open to criticism, and were in fact rather severely criticised; but it was a tribute to the architect that the general effect of his work was recognized as being both dignified and impressive.

[7] When I returned to S. Paulo eleven years later, I heard with pleasure from the parents of some of our former pupils of the satisfactory way in which their sons had turned out--a happy result which they attributed to the excellence of their upbringing at S. Bento.

[8] Let me note once for all that whatever I say about S. Paulo, here and elsewhere, is founded (facts and figures alike) on what I knew and learned of the city in 1909-10. A dozen years may, and do, bring many changes!

[9] "Honey!" said an American bride (returning from an early morning walk) at a door--which she imagined to be that of the nuptial chamber--in the corridor of a big hotel; "honey! it's me: let me in."

No response. "Honey! it's me, it's Mamie: open the door." Still no answer. "Honey! honey! don't you hear? it's me, honey." Gruff (unknown) male voice: "Madam, this is not a beehive, it's a bathroom!"

{170}

CHAPTER X

1910

The early days of December brought me news from England of the death of Provost Hornby, my old head master at Eton, aged well over eighty. He had birched me three times;[1] still, I bore him no malice, though I did not feel so overcome by the news as Tom Brown did when he heard of the death of _his_ old head master.[2] An eminent scholar, a "double blue" at Oxford, of aspect dignified yet kindly, he had seemed to unite all the qualities necessary or desirable for an arch-pedagogue; yet {171} no head master had ever entered an office under a cloud of greater unpopularity. We were all Tories at Eton in the 'sixties; and the rumoured a.s.sociation of the new head with the hated word _Reform_ (which his predecessor Dr. Balston was said to have stoutly resisted) aroused in our youthful b.r.e.a.s.t.s a suspicion and dislike which culminated in the words "No Reform!" being actually chalked on the back of his gown (I personally witnessed the outrage) as he was ascending the stairs into Upper School. _Tempora mutantur_: I dare say there are plenty of young Etonian Radicals nowadays; though I do seem to have heard of Mr. Winston Churchill having been vigorously hooted in School Yard, on his first appearance at his old school after "finding salvation" in the Radical camp.

Two or three weeks before Christmas our abbot found himself rather suddenly obliged to sail for Europe on important business--leaving me a little forlorn, for he was my only real friend in our rather cosmopolitan community, though all were kindly and pleasant. The midsummer heat, too, was more trying than I had antic.i.p.ated on this elevated plateau; and though the nights were sensibly cooler, they were disturbed by mosquitoes, tram-bells in the square outside, _grillos_ and _cigarras_ in our cloister garden beneath, our discordant church bells[3] striking every quarter above one's head, and our big watch-dog, Bismarck, baying in the yard. I accompanied the abbot to the station, where the _dispedida_ (leave-taking) in this country was always an affair of much demonstration and copious embracing. When {172} he had gone we all settled down for a week's retreat, given by a venerable-looking and (I am sure) pious, but extraordinarily grimy, Redemptorist father, who must have found it an uncommonly hard week's work in the then temperature, for he "doubled" each of his Portuguese sermons by a duplicate German discourse addressed to the lay brethren.

This pious exercise over, we prepared for the Christmas festival, which I enjoyed. It was my privilege to officiate at matins and lauds and the solemn Ma.s.s, lasting from half-past ten till nearly two. Our church (the demolition of which had not yet begun) was elaborately adorned and filled with a crowd of devout communicants, young and old; and when the long services were over, our good brothers gathered round the Christmas crib, and sang immensely long and pious German songs far into the small hours of morning. Later in the day I went up to Paradise ("Paraiso," the name of one of our picturesque suburbs), and lunched with the kind Canadian family whose pleasant hospitality const.i.tutes one of the most agreeable souvenirs of my sojourn at S.

Paulo, both at this time and ten years later.

After New Year we had a sudden cool spell, with a southerly wind bringing refreshing airs from the Pole; and I profited by it to extend my daily walk, visiting churches and other places of interest in and about the city. Such old Portuguese churches as the _Se_ (cathedral) had a certain interest, though no beauty in themselves. The side altars, surmounted by fat and florid saints boxed up in arbours of artificial flowers, were painfully grotesque; and the big church was decked (for Christmastide) with {173} faded red damask which, like Mrs.

Skewton's rose-coloured curtains, only made uglier what was already ugly. A scheme, however, was afoot for pulling the whole place down; and a model and plans for a great Gothic cathedral of white granite were already on exhibition in a neighbouring window, and were exciting much attention. A few of the other old churches in the city had already been demolished to make way for new ones, mostly of an uninteresting German Romanesque type, planned by German architects.

Native talent, however, was responsible for the splendid theatre, its facade adorned with red granite monoliths; but the finest building in S. Paulo (perhaps in Brazil) was the creation of an Italian architect (Bezzi). This was the n.o.ble palace at Ypiranga--a site dear to Brazilians as the scene of the Proclamation of Independence in 1822--now used as a museum of ethnography and natural history, and containing collections of great and constantly increasing value and importance. S. Paulo in 1909 was--perhaps is even now, a dozen years later--a city still in the making;[4] but the intelligence of its planning, the zeal of its enterprising citizens for its extension and embellishment, and the noticeable skill and speed of the workmen (nearly all Italians) under whose hands palatial buildings were rising on every side, were full of promise for the future.

In 1909 the Inst.i.tuto Serumtherapico, now very adequately housed at Butantan (popularly known {174} as the "chacara dos serpentes," or snake-farm), a mile or two from the city, was only beginning, after years of patient and fruitful research, its remarkable work--a work of which (like the sanitation and reconstruction of Rio and the successful campaign against yellow fever) the credit is due to Brazilians and not to the strangers within their gates. The serums discovered by the founder of the Inst.i.tute, Dr. Vidal Brazil, for the cure of snake-bite are as important and beneficent, within the vast area where the mortality from this cause has. .h.i.therto been far greater than is generally known or supposed, as Pasteur's world-famous treatment for hydrophobia. One serum is efficacious against the rattlesnake's bite, another against the venom of the urutu, the jararaca, and other deadly species, while a third is an antidote to the poison of any snake whatever. Twenty-five per cent. of snake-bite cases have hitherto, it is estimated, proved fatal; when the serum is administered in time cure is practically certain. To Dr. Brazil is also due the credit of the discovery of the mussurana, the great snake, harmless to man, which not only kills but devours venomous reptiles of all kinds, even those as big as, or bigger than, itself. It was expected, I was told, that the encouragement of the propagation of this remarkable ophidian might lead in time to the extermination of poisonous serpents not only in the State of S. Paulo, but in every part of tropical Brazil.

The traditional Benedictine hospitality was never wanting at our abbey: the guest-rooms were always occupied, and the guest-table in the refectory was a kaleidoscope of changing colour--now the violet sash and cap of a bishop from some remote State, {175} now the brown of a Franciscan or bearded Capuchin, the white wool of a Dominican missionary or a Trappist monk from the far interior, or the sombre habit of one of our own brethren from some distant abbey on the long Brazilian coast. Nor were the poorer claimants for rest and refreshment forgotten. I remember the British Consul, after seeing the whole establishment, saying that what pleased him most was the noonday entertainment of the lame, blind, and halt in the entrance-hall, and the spectacle of our good Italian porter, Brother Pio Brunelli, dispensing the viands (which the Consul thought looked and smelled uncommonly good) to our humble guests. Our Trappist visitor mentioned above was "procurador" of a large agricultural settlement in charge of his Order; and I remember understanding so much of his technical talk, after dinner, about their methods of hauling out trees by their roots, and their machinery for drying rice in rainy weather, as to convince me that my Portuguese was making good progress!

All our cablegrams from England in these days were occupied with the General Election, the result of which (275 Liberals to 273 Unionists) was vastly interesting, leaving, as it appeared to do, the "balance of power" absolutely in the hands of the seventy Irish Nationalists.

Several Catholic candidates (British) had been defeated, but nine were returned to the new Parliament--five Unionists and four Rad.-Nat.-Libs.

Of greater personal interest to me was the welcome and not unexpected news that by a Roman Decree issued on the last day of 1909 our monastery of Fort Augustus had been reunited with the English {176} Benedictine Congregation, our position of "splendid isolation" as a Pontifical Abbey being thus at an end. My letters informed me that the abbot's resignation had already been accepted, and Dom Hilary Willson installed in office by the delegate of the English Abbot-president, with the good will of all concerned, and the special blessing of Pope Pius X., conveyed in a telegram from Cardinal Merry del Val, the Papal Secretary of State. The new superior's appointment was _ad nutum Sanctae Sedis_, i.e. for an undetermined period; and the late abbot (whose health was greatly impaired) was authorised to retire, as he desired, to a "cell"--a commodious house and chapel--belonging to our abbey, high among pine-woods near Buckie, in Banffshire.[5]

My mail brought me, too, tidings of the marriage of the sons and daughters of quite a number of old friends--Balfour of Burleigh, North Dalrymple (Stair's brother), the Skenes of Pitlour and All Souls, Oxford; also of the engagement of Lovat's sister Margaret to Stirling of Keir, and of the death (under sad circ.u.mstances already referred to)[6] of Ninian Crichton Stuart's poor little son. I heard with pleasure from Abbot Miguel that he hoped shortly to return to us: he had already cabled the single word "Demoli"; our poor old choir was under the hands of the house-breakers; and we were saying office temporarily in the chapter-room, lighted by such inefficient lamps {177} that I could read hardly a line of my breviary by their glimmer.[7]

"Just a song at twilight, When the lights are low,"

is all very well in its way; but the conditions are not suitable for matins and lauds lasting an hour and a half! After an interval of this discomfort, we get into our _corozinho provisorio_ (temporary little choir), a hantle cut out of the nave, which was still standing; and there we recited our office during the remainder of my stay.

St. Benedict's feast this year fell after Easter; and we kept it with solemn services in our diminished church (which was packed to the doors), an eloquent panegyric preached by the vicar-general, and a good many guests in the refectory. The fare was lavish--too lavish for the temperature: there were soup, fish, oysters and prawns, three courses of meat, "tarts and tidiness," and great platters of fruit, khakis (persimmons), mamoes, abacaxis (small pineapples), etc. "Oh!

Todgers's could do it when it liked!"[8] I sat for a while afterwards with our U.S.A. padre, just returned from a week's trip on an American steamer. He had grown restive under the sumptuary laws (ca.s.sock-wearing, etc.) of our archdiocese, and as soon as the school holidays began, had donned his straw hat and monkey-jacket, and gone off to enjoy himself on the _Vasari_. He was very good company, and full of quaint Yankee tales and reminiscences. I recall one of his stories about a man who thought he could draw, and used {178} to send his sketches to the editor of a picture-paper whom he knew. Meeting his friend one day, he asked him why his contributions were never used.

"Well, the fact is," said the editor, "I have an aunt living in Noo Jersey, who can _knit_ better pictures than yours!"

On May 1 my friend Father Caton and I, desirous of seeing something of one important element of the heterogeneous population of S. Paulo, witnessed a procession of Garibaldians on their way to inaugurate a statue of their hero in one of the public gardens. A sinister crowd they were, members of some fifty Italian clubs and a.s.sociations here, Socialist, masonic, revolutionary and anti-Christian, whose G.o.ds are Mazzini, Carducci, and their like. Round the statue was gathered a ma.s.s of their countrymen--some ten or twelve thousand at least, mostly Calabrians of a low type,[9] who greeted with frantic applause a hysterical oration, with the usual denunciations of Popes and priests and kings, from a fanatical firebrand called Olavo Bilac. A humiliating spectacle on a May-day Sunday in the Catholic capital of a Catholic State; but a large proportion of these Italian immigrants were in truth the sc.u.m of their own country and of Christendom. Our abbot, whose zeal and charity extended to all nationalities in this cosmopolitan city, had established, with the help of some Brazilian ladies, a free night-school for the crowds of little s...o...b..acks and newspaper-sellers, practically all Italians. He preached at their periodical First Communion festivals, entertained them afterwards to a joyful breakfast (at which I {179} sometimes a.s.sisted with much pleasure), and did his best to keep in touch with them as they grew up.

I remember a great Italian audience (of the better sort) in our college hall one evening, witnessing with delighted enthusiasm three little plays, one in Portuguese and two in Italian, acted extremely well by a troupe of the abbot's young Italian _proteges_. With all his charitable efforts, he could never, of course, touch more than the fringe of the question; but he never wearied of urging on the ecclesiastical authorities--nay, he had the opportunity at least once of forcibly representing to the Pope himself--the paramount necessity of some organised effort to evangelise these uninstructed ma.s.ses of Italians who were annually pouring into the country. No one realised better than he did that united and fervent prayer was at least as powerful a factor as pastoral labour in the work of Christianisation which he had so greatly at heart; and it was therefore with special joy that he saw at this time the fruition of a scheme for which he had long been hoping, the establishment in S. Paulo of a community of enclosed nuns of our own Order. I spent some interesting hours with him visiting, with the chosen architect, various possible sites for the new foundation in and about the city. That matter settled, the rest soon followed; and he had the happiness of seeing the foundation-stone of the new monastery laid in May, 1911, and six months later, the inauguration of community life and the Divine Office, under Prioress Cecilia Prado.

The first week in May brought us news of the alarming illness of Edward VII., and twenty-four hours later of his death. The universal and {180} spontaneous tributes to his memory in this foreign city were very remarkable: everywhere flags flying half-mast, and many shops and business houses closed. The newspaper articles were all most sympathetic in tone, with (of course) any number of quaint mis-spellings. The "Archbishop of Canter Cury" figured in several paragraphs; but I could never make out what was meant by one statement, viz., that the King was "successivamente alumno de Trinity, Oxford, e de Preoun Hall, Cambridge," and that he possessed intimate technical knowledge of the construction of fortresses. The abbot and I called at the British Consulate to express our condolence; and a large congregation (including many Protestants) attended ma.s.s and my sermon at S. Bento a Sunday or two later, it having been understood that there would be a "pulpit reference" to the national loss. The Prefect of the city was present, and called personally on me later to express his own sympathy and that of the munic.i.p.ality of S. Paulo.

Funeral services in this Latin-American capital were not, as a rule, very edifying functions. I attended, with the Rector of our college, the obsequies of an aged, wealthy and pious lady, Dona Veridiana Prado.

A carriage and pair of fat white horses were sent to take us to her house, where there was a great concourse of friends and relatives; but neither there nor in the cemetery afterwards was there much sign of mourning, or even of respect, and not a tenth part of those present paid the slightest attention to the actual burying of the poor lady.

We walked afterwards through the great Consolaco cemetery, which struck me as having little that was {181} consoling about it. It was well kept, and the monuments were--expensive, the majority of white marble, but with far too many semi-nude weeping female figures, apparently nymphs or muses: inscriptions from Vergil, Camoens, etc., and such sentiments as "Death is an eternal sleep," and "An everlasting farewell from devoted friends." The most remarkable tomb I noticed was a tribute to an eminent hat-maker--a large relief in bronze representing a hat-factory in full blast!

Much more consoling than the funeral of poor Dona Veridiana was the general manifestation of faith and devotion on the festival of Corpus Christi. All business was suspended for the day (although it was not a state holiday); and when our procession emerged from the church and pa.s.sed slowly along one side of our busy square, I was pleased and edified to see how every head in the great expectant crowd was bared, and all, from cab-drivers, motor-men and police down to street arabs, preserved, during the pa.s.sing of the _Santissimo_, the same air of hushed and reverent attention. It was a joy to feel, as I felt then, that these poor people, whatever their defects or shortcomings, possessed at least the crowning gift of faith. A curious reason was given me by one of the clergy of the city for the unusual spirit of devotion at that time manifest among the people. Halley's Comet was just then a conspicuous object, blazing in the north-west sky. The phenomenon, so said my informant, was very generally believed to portend the speedy end of the world--a belief which stimulated popular devotion, and sent many spiritual laggards to their religious duties.

However that may have been, a great deal of genuine popular {182} piety there undoubtedly was in the big busy city. It was not only at solemn functions on high festivals that our church was thronged by a silent and attentive crowd; but Sunday after Sunday, at every ma.s.s from dawn to noonday, the far too scanty s.p.a.ce was filled by an overflowing congregation, while the ever-increasing number of communions gave evidence of the solid piety underlying their real love for the services and ceremonies of the Church.

Our abbot, who returned to us from Europe on the morrow of King Edward's death, had almost immediately to leave again for Rio, where our brethren of S. Bento there were being fiercely attacked in the public press. The French subprior in charge had not only refused leave to the Government to connect the Isle of Cobras (an important military station) with the mainland, i.e. with St. Benedict's Mount, on which our abbey stood, but had revived an old claim of ownership to the Isle itself. "Very imprudent," thought Abbot Miguel, who knew well the risk of the old parrot-cry of "frades estrangeiros" (foreign monks) being revived against us, and also shrewdly surmised that the young superior was more or less in the hands of astute _advogados_, who (after the manner of their tribe) were "spoiling for a fight," and scenting big fees and profits for themselves if it came to litigation. Dom Miguel left us quite resolved, with the robust common-sense characteristic of him, to meet the attacks of the newspapers, interview the Papal Nuncio, and (if necessary) the President of the Republic himself, talk over the subprior, and give the lawyers a bit of his mind; and he did it all very effectually! When he returned a few {183} days later, the advocates had been sent to the right-about, all claims had been waived (or withdrawn) to the Isle and the Marine a.r.s.enal between our abbey and the sea, which was also in dispute: the President and his advisers had expressed their satisfaction with the patriotism and public spirit of the monks: the Nuncio had sealed the whole transaction with the Pontifical approval: the hostile press was silenced; and, in a word, the "incident was closed"--and a very good thing too!

Among the fresh activities consequent on the new regime at Fort Augustus was the contemplated reopening of our abbey school, which had been closed for some years; and there was, I understood, some desire that I should return home with a view of undertaking the work of revival. I ventured to express the hope that the task might be entrusted to a younger man; and Abbot Miguel had, whilst in Europe, begged that I might be permitted to remain on in S. Paulo for at least another year. These representations had their due effect; and I was looking forward contentedly to a further sojourn under the Southern Cross, when the matter was taken out of our hands by a serious affection of the eyesight which threatened me with partial or total blindness. There were plenty of oculists in S. Paulo; and after they had peered and pried and peeped and tapped and talked to their hearts'

content, generally ending up with "Paciencia! come again to-morrow!"

the youngest and most capable of them diagnosed (quite correctly, as it turned out), a rather obscure, unusual and interesting ailment--interesting, _bien entendu_, to the oculists, not to the patient--which necessitated more or less drastic {184} treatment. By the advice of my friend the Consul (himself a medical man of repute[10]), and with the concurrence of the abbot, I determined that the necessary treatment should be undergone not in Brazil but at home.

Hasty preparations for departure, and the inevitable leave-takings, fully occupied the next fortnight. I found time, however, to attend an exciting football match, the winning of which by our college team gave them the coveted championship of the S. Paulo schools. The game had taken a wonderful hold of the Brazilian youth within the past few years, very much to their physical and moral benefit; and many of these youngsters, light of foot and quick of eye, shaped into uncommonly good players. They had plenty of pluck too: in the last few minutes of the match of which I have been speaking one of our best players, a lively pleasant youth with a face like a Neapolitan fisher-boy's, had the misfortune to fall with his right arm under him, and broke it badly.

He bore the severe pain like a Trojan; and when I visited him next day, though he confessed to a sleepless night, laughingly made light of his injury. His chief regret was being unable to join in the exodus of our hundred and fifty boarders, who departed with much bustle and many cheers for their month's holiday. Their long three months' vacation was in the hot season, from November to February. {185} A few, who stayed with us for the winter holiday, hailed from remote corners of the State, and some from even farther afield, from Goyaz, Pernambuco, or Matto Grosso. Two I remember whose homes were in far Amazonas; and it took them a much longer time to journey thither (in Brazilian territory all the time) than it would have done to reach London or Paris. One never ceased to wonder at the amazing vastness of Brazil, and to speculate on what the future has in store for the country when it begins to "find itself," and seriously to develop its incomparable resources.

Almost my last visit in S. Paulo was to the newly-appointed English clergyman, whom I had met at a friend's house. He entertained me hospitably at luncheon; but whilst helping me to prawn mayonnaise begged me to say if "I shared the official belief of my Church that he and all Protestants were irrevocably d----d." I need not say that I evaded the question, not deeming the moment propitious for a course of the Catechism of the Council of Trent; and we parted good friends.

On June 28 I left S. Paulo with many regrets, wondering whether I should ever revisit the fair city and my kind friends, of whom many mustered at the station, according to the pleasant custom of the country, to speed the parting traveller. The rapid drop down the serra--it was my first trip on the wonderfully-engineered "English Railway," which enjoys the profitable monopoly of carrying pa.s.sengers and coffee (especially coffee) to the busy port of Santos--was enjoyable and picturesque, with glimpses, between the frequent tunnels, into deep wooded valleys, the dark uniform green of the _matto_ {186} interspersed with the lovely azure and white blossoms of the graceful Quaresma, or Lent tree (_Tibouchina gracilis_), one of the glories of the Brazilian forest. The kind prior of S. Bento at Santos met me there, and I rested for a while at his quaint and charming little priory, perched high above the city on its flight of many steps, and almost unchanged in appearance since its foundation two centuries and a half before, though the buildings had, I believe, been restored early in the eighteenth century. Higher still, and accessible only on foot, stood the famous shrine or hermitage of Our Lady of Montserrat, served by our Benedictine fathers ever since its foundation in 1655, and a much-frequented place of pilgrimage. I had a drive, before going aboard my ship, round the picturesque and prosperous little city, the transformation of which, since I pa.s.sed by it in 1896, had been almost more rapid and astonishing than that of Rio. From a haunt of pestilence and death, yearly subject to a devastating epidemic of yellow fever, it had become a noted health-resort, its unrivalled _praia_, stretching for miles along the blue waves of the Atlantic, lined with modern hotels and charming villas standing in their own luxuriant gardens, whither the _fina flora_ of Paulista society came down in summer with their families to enjoy the sea-bathing and the ocean breezes.

I was cordially welcomed on the _Araguaya_, a fine ship of over 10,000 tons, by my old friend Captain Pope, with whom I had made my first voyage to Brazil nearly a quarter of a century before. There was a full complement of pa.s.sengers, including (at the captain's table with me) Sir John Benn, _ex_-chairman of the London County Council and {187} M.P. for Devonport, also Canon Valois de Castro, representative of S.

Paulo in the Federal Parliament. I landed at none of the Brazilian ports, the ascent and descent of steep companions, sometimes in a heavy swell, being hardly compatible with my semi-blind condition. Leaving Pernambuco, I looked rather wistfully at the unforgotten heights of Olinda, and wondered if I should ever see Brazil's low green sh.o.r.es again. Sir John was my chief companion on deck: he was a clever artist, and kept me amused with his delightful sketches of famous Parliamentarians--Disraeli, Gladstone, R. Churchill, Redmond, Parnell, Hartington, and many others--as well as of some of the more eccentric of our fellow-pa.s.sengers. At our table was an agreeable captain of the Brazilian Navy, going to Barrow-in-Furness to bring out their new Dreadnought, the _So Paulo_. His 400 bluejackets were on board, smartly dressed in British fashion; but he confided to us that most of them were raw recruits, and that some had never seen the sea till they boarded the _Araguaya_! As our voyage progressed he grew more and more _distrait_, lost, no doubt, in speculation as to how he and his heterogeneous crew were ever going to get their big new battleship from Barrow to Rio. I never heard how they got on.[11]