Italy; with sketches of Spain and Portugal Part 27

We wandered about this forlorn, abandoned garden, whose stillness equalled that of a Carthusian convent, till dusk, when a refreshing wind having risen, waved the cypresses and scattered the white jasmine flowers over the parterres of myrtle in clouds like snow. Don Pedro filled the carriage with flowery sprays pulled from mutilated statues, and we were all half intoxicated before we reached my habitation with the delicious but overcoming perfume.

LETTER XVIII.

Excursion to Cintra.--Villa of Ramalhao.--The Garden.--Collares.--Pavilion designed by Pillement.--A convulsive gallop.--Cold weather in July.

July 9th, 1787.

I was at the Marialva Palace by nine, and set off from thence with the Marquis for Cintra. Having the command of the Queen's stables, in which are four thousand mules and two thousand horses, he orders as many relays as he pleases, and we changed mules four times in the s.p.a.ce of an hour.

A few minutes after ten we were landed at Ramalhao, a villa, under the pyramidical rocks of Cintra, Signor S. Arriaga was so kind as to lend me a month or two ago, and which I have not had time to visit till to-day.

The suite of apartments are s.p.a.cious and airy, and the views they command of sea and arid country boundless; but unless the heat becomes more violent, I shall be cooler than I wish in them, as they contain not a chimney except in the kitchen.

I found the garden in excellent order, and flourishing crops of vegetables springing up between rows of orange and citron. Such is the power of the climate, that the gardenias and Cape plants I brought with me from England, mere stumps, are covered with beautiful blossoms. The curled mallows, and some varieties of Indian-corn, sown by my English gardener, have shot up to a strange elevation, and begin already to form shady avenues and fairy forests, where children might play in perfection at landscape-gardening.

After I had pa.s.sed half-an-hour in looking about me, the Marquis and I got into our chair and drove to his own villa; a new creation, which has cost him a great many thousand pounds sterling. Five years ago it was a wild hill bestrewn with flints and rocky fragments. At present you find a gay pavilion designed by Pillement, and elegantly decorated; a parterre with statues and fountains, thick alleys of laurel, bay, and laurustine, cascades, arbours, clipped box-trees, and every ornament the Portuguese taste in gardening renders desirable.

We dined at a clean snug inn, situated towards the middle of the village of Cintra. The Queen has lately bestowed this house and a large tract of ground adjoining it, upon the Marquis. From its windows and loggias you look down deep ravines and bold slopes of woods and copses, variegated with mossy stones and ancient decayed chesnuts.

As soon as the sun grew low we went to Collares, and walked on a terrace belonging to M. la Roche, a French merchant, who has shown some glimmering of taste in the laying out of his villa. The groves of pine and chesnut starting from the crevices of rock, and rising one above another to a considerable elevation, give Collares the air of an Alpine village. Innumerable rills, overhung by cork-trees and branching lemons, burst out of ruined walls by the wayside, and dash into marble basins. A favourite attendant of the late king's, who has a very large property in these environs, invited us with much civility and obsequiousness into his garden. I thought myself entering the orchards of Alcinous. The boughs literally bent under loads of fruit; the slightest shake strewed the ground with plums, oranges, and apricots.

This villa boasts a grand artificial cascade, with tritons and dolphins vomiting torrents of water; but I paid it not half the attention its proprietor expected, and retiring under the shade of the fruit-trees, feasted on the golden apples and purple plums that were rolling about me in such profusion. The Marquis, who shares with most of the Portuguese a remarkable predilection for flowers, filled his carriage with carnations and jasmine. I never saw plants more conspicuous for size and vigour than those which have the luck of being sown in this fortunate soil. The exposition likewise is singularly happy; skreened by sloping hills, and defended from the sea-airs by several miles of thickets and orchards. I felt unwilling to quit a spot so favoured by nature, and M---- flatters himself I shall be tempted to purchase it.

The wind became troublesome as we ascended the hill, crowned by the Marialva villa. The sky was clear and the sun set fiery. The distant convent of Mafra, glowing with ruddy light, looked like the enchanted palace of a giant, and the surrounding country bleak and barren as if the monster had eaten it desolate. To repose ourselves a little after our rapid excursion we entered the pavilion I told you just now Pillement had designed. It represents a bower of fantastic Indian trees mingling their branches, and discovering between them peeps of a summer sky. From the mouth of a flying dragon depends a magnificent l.u.s.tre for fifty lights, hung with festoons of brilliant gla.s.s, that twinkle like strings of diamonds.

We loitered in this saloon till it was pitch-dark. The pages riding full speed before us with flaming torches, and the wind driving back sparks and smoke full in our faces, I was stunned and bewildered, and experienced, perhaps, the sensations of a novice in sorcery, mounted for the first time behind a witch on a broomstick. In less than an hour we had rattled over twelve miles of rough, disjoined pavement, going up and down the steepest hills in a convulsive gallop, so that I expected every instant to be thrown flat on my nose; but, happily, the mules were picked from perhaps a hundred, and never stumbled. I found the air on the heights above the Ajueda very keen and piercing.

It sounds strange to be complaining of cold at Lisbon on the ninth of July.

LETTER XIX.

Sympathy between Toads and Old Women.--Palace of Cintra.--Reservoir of Gold and Silver Fish.--Parterre on the summit of a lofty terrace.--Place of confinement of Alphonso the Sixth.--The Chapel.--Barbaric profusion of Gold.--Altar at which Don Sebastian knelt when he received a supernatural warning.--Rooms in preparation for the Queen and the Infantas.--Return to Ramalhao.

July 24th, 1787.

There exists, I am convinced, a decided sympathy between toads and witch-like old women. Mother Morgan[16] descended this morning, not into the infernal regions, but into the cellar, and immediately five or six spanking reptiles of this mysterious species waddled around her. She rewarded the confidence the poor things placed in her rather scurvily, and laid three of the fattest sprawling. I saw them lying breathless in the court as I got on horseback; the largest measured seven inches in diameter. Portuguese toads may be more distinguished for size, but are not half so amiably speckled as those we have the happiness to harbour in England.

I was some time hesitating which way I should turn my horse's steps, whether to the Pedra d'os Ovos, or on the other side of the rock to the Peninha, a cell belonging to the Hieronimites, and dependent upon their princ.i.p.al eyry, Nossa Senhora da Penha. Marialva, whom I met with all his train of equerries and picadors coming forth from his villa, decided me not to take a clambering ride, but to accompany him to the palace, the interior of which I had not yet visited.

The Alhambra itself is scarcely more morisco in point of architecture than this confused pile, which seems to grow out of the summit of a rocky eminence, and is broken into a variety of picturesque recesses and projections. It is a thousand pities that they have whitened its venerable walls, stopped up a range of bold arcades, and sliced out one end of the great hall into two or three mean apartments like the dressing-rooms of a theatre. From the windows, which are all in a fantastic oriental style, crinkled and crankled, and supported by twisted pillars of smooth marble, striking, romantic views of the cliffs and village of Cintra are commanded. Several irregular courts and loggias, formed by the angles of square towers, are enlivened by fountains of marble and gilt bronze, continually pouring forth abundant streams of the purest water.

A sort of reservoir, almost long enough to be styled a ca.n.a.l, is continued the whole length of the great hall, and serves as a paradise for shoals of the largest and most brilliant gold and silver fish I ever set eyes upon. The murmur of the jets-d'eau which rise from this ca.n.a.l, the ripple of the water undulating against steps and slabs of polished marble, the glancing and gleaming of the fish, and the striking contrast of light and shade produced by the intricate labyrinth of arches and columns, combine altogether to form a scene of enchantment such as we sometimes dream of, but hardly suppose is ever realized. There is a sobriety in the hues of the marble, a mysteriousness in the dark recesses seen in perspective, and a solemnity in the deep colour, approaching to blackness, of the water in that part of the reservoir which is overshadowed by lofty buildings, I cannot help thinking superior to all the flutter and glitter of the most famous Moorish edifices at Granada or Seville.

The flat summit of one of the loftiest terraces, not less than one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, is laid out as a neat parterre, which is spread like an embroidered carpet before the entrance of a huge square tower, almost entirely occupied by a hall encrusted with glistening tiles, and crowned by a most singularly-shaped dome. Amidst the scrolls of arabesque foliage which adorn it, appear the arms of the princ.i.p.al Portuguese n.o.bility. The achievement of the unfortunate house of Tavora is blotted out, and the panel it occupied left bare.

We had climbed up to this terrace and tower by one of those steep, cork-screw staircases, of which there are numbers in the palace, and which connect with vaulted pa.s.sages in a secret and suspicious manner.

The Marquis pointed out to me the mosaic pavement of a small chamber, fretted and worn away in several places by the steps of Alphonso the Sixth, who was confined to this narrow s.p.a.ce a long series of years.

Descending from it, we looked into the chapel, not less singular in form and construction than the rest of the edifice. The low flat cupola, as well as the intersections of the arches, are much in the style of a mosque; but the barbaric profusion of gold, and still more barbaric paintings with which every soffite and panel are covered, might almost be supposed the work of Cingalese or Hindostanee artists, and reminded me of those subterraneous paG.o.das where his Satanic Majesty receives homage under the form of Gumputy or of Boodh.

The original glare of all this strange scenery is greatly subdued by the smoke of lamps, which have been burning for ages before the altar: a mysterious pile of carved work and imagery, in perfect consonance, as to gloom and uncouthness, with every other object in the place. It was whilst kneeling before this very altar that the young, the ardent, the chivalrous Don Sebastian is said to have received a supernatural warning to renounce that fatal African expedition which cost him his crown and his life, and what an heroic mind holds in far higher estimation, that immortal fame which follows successful achievements.

A something I can hardly describe, an oppressive gloom, seemed to hang over this chapel, which remains very nearly, I should imagine, in the same style it was left by the ill-fated Sebastian. The want of a free circulation of air, and a heavy cloud of incense, affected the nerves of my head so disagreeably that I was glad to move on, and follow the Marquis into the rooms preparing for the Queen and the Infantas. These are airy and well ventilated; but instead of hanging them with rich arras, representing the adventures of knights and worthies, her Majesty's upholsterers are hard at work covering the stout walls with bright silks and satins of the palest and most delicate colours. I saw no furniture worth notice, not a picture or a cabinet: our stay, therefore, as we had nothing to see, was not protracted.

As soon as the Marquis had given some orders, with which his royal mistress had charged him, we returned to Ramalhao, where Horne and Guildermeester, the Dutch Consul, were waiting our arrival, and squabbling about insurances, percentages, commissions, and other commercial speculations.

I have been persuading the Marquis to accompany me to-morrow to Guildermeester's: it is the old man's birthday, and he opens his new house with dancing and suppering. We shall have a pretty sample of the factory misses, clerks, and apprentices, some underlings of the _corps diplomatique_, and G.o.d knows how many thousand pound weight of Dutch and Hambro merchants.

LETTER XX.

Grand gala at Court.--Festival in honour of the birthday of Guildermeester.--Mad freaks of a Frenchman.--Unwelcome lights of Truth.--Invective against the English.

July 25th, 1787.

Grand gala at Court, and the Marquis gone to attend it; for this blessed day not only gave birth to Guildermeester, but to the Princess of Brazil. We went to dine with the Marchioness. A band of regimental music, on their march to Guildermeester, began playing in the court, and drew forth one of those curious swarms of all s.e.xes, ages, and colours, which this beneficent family are so fond of harbouring. Donna Henriquetta was seated on the steps, which lead up to the great pavilion, whispering to some of her favourite attendants, who, like the chorus in an ancient Greek tragedy, were continually giving their opinion of whatever was going forward.

Just as Don Pedro and I were preparing to set off together for the ball at the old consul's, we were agreeably surprised by the arrival of the Marquis, who had escaped from the palace much earlier than he expected.

I carried him in my chaise to Horne's, where we drank tea on his terrace, which commands the most romantic view in Cintra; vast sweeps of varied foliage, banks with twisted roots, and trunks of enormous chesnuts, mingled with weeping-willows of the freshest verdure, and citrons cl.u.s.tered with fruit. Above this sylvan scene tower three shattered pinnacles of rock, the middle one diversified by the turrets and walls of Nossa Senhora da Penha, a convent of Jeronimites, frequently concealed in clouds. I leaned against a cork-tree, which spreads its branches almost entirely over the veranda, enjoying the view, and staring idly at the grotesque figures, Dutch, English, and Portuguese, pa.s.sing along to Guildermeester's; a series sufficiently diversified to have amused me for some time, had not M---- grown impatient and uneasy. His brother-in-law, S---- V----, to whom he has a mortal aversion, having made his appearance, the powers of light and darkness, if personified, could not exhibit a stronger contrast than these two personages; M---- looking all benignity, and S---- V---- all malevolence. Indeed, if one half of the atrocities[17] public report attributes to this notorious n.o.bleman be true, I should not wonder at the blackness of revenge and tyranny being so deeply marked in every line of his countenance.

Moving off the first opportunity, we pa.s.sed through dark and gloomy lanes, admirably calculated for such exploits as I have just alluded to, and were near being jerked into a ditch as we drove to the old consul's door. The s.p.a.ce before this new building is in sad disorder. The house has little more than bare walls, and was not very splendidly lighted up.

As for the company, they turned out just what I expected. Madame G----, who is a woman of spirit and discernment, did the honours with the greatest ease, and paid her princ.i.p.al guests the most marked attentions.

There is a something pointedly original in all her observations, which pleased me very much. She is not, however, of the merciful tribe, and joined forces with Verdeil (no foe to a little slashing conversation) in cutting up the factory. M---- handed her in to supper. This part of the entertainment was magnificent. There was a bright illumination, an immense profusion of plate, a striking breadth of table, every delicacy that could be procured, and a dessert-frame, fifty or sixty feet in length, gleaming with burnished figures and vases of silver flowers. I felt no inclination to dance after supper; the music was not inspiring, and the company thrown into the utmost confusion by the mad freaks of a Frenchman, upon whom one of the princ.i.p.al ladies present is supposed for two or three years past to have placed her affections. A _coup de soleil_ and a quarrel with his amba.s.sador, Monsieur de Bombelles, it seems had turned the poor fellow's brain: there was no preventing his rushing from room to room with the sputter and eccentricity of a fire-work, now abusing one person, now another, confessing publicly the universal kindness he had received from the lady above hinted at, and the many marks of tender affection a certain Miss W---- had bestowed on him. "Why," said he to the two heroines, who I am told are not upon the best terms imaginable, "should you squabble and scratch? You are both equally indulgent, and have both rendered me in your turns the happiest mortal in the universe."

Whilst the light of truth was shining upon the bystanders in this very singular manner, I leave you to imagine the awkward surprise of the worthy old husband, and the angry blushes of his spouse and her fair a.s.sociate. I never beheld a more capital scene. In some of our pantomimes, if I recollect rightly, harlequin applies a touchstone to his adversaries, and by its magic influence draws truth from their mouths in spite of propriety or interest. The lawyer confesses having fingered a bribe, the soldier his flight in the day of battle, and the whining methodistical dowager her frequent recourse to the bottle of inspiration. This wondrous effect seems to have been here realized, and some malicious demon to have possessed the talkative Frenchman, and to have compelled him to disclose the mysteries to which he owes his subsistence. Amongst the harsh truths poured out by this flow of sincerity was a vehement apostrophe to the English canaille, as he styled them, upon their rank intolerance of all customs except their own, and their ten thousand starch uncharitable prejudices. Mrs.----, become dauntless through despair, took up the cudgels in this cause most vigorously, compared the chief part of the company to a swarm of venomous insects, unworthy to crawl upon the hem of her really pure, though calumniated garments, and fit to be shaken off with a vengeance the first opportunity.

The Marquis, Don Pedro, and I enjoyed the scene so much, that we stayed later than we intended.

LETTER XXI.

The Queen of Portugal's Chapel.--The Orchestra.--Rehearsal of a Council.--Proposal to visit Mafra.

Ramalhao, near Cintra, 26th August, 1787.