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LEA VES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR |
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LEAVES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN
By CHARLES THOMAS-STANFORD, f.s.a. WITH SIXTEEN FULI-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMX
Secotid Edition
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
/V\ I (oT 6lo
1^ -) 1 0
TO THE
MEMBERS OF THE LI BR ART ASSOCUriON
19E7722
PREFACE
PERHAPS no apology is needed for this trivial story of an uneventful winter in an inconsiderable island. Madeira has indeed been long a household word in Great Britain. Its generous wine has played an important part in producing the hereditary goutiness of the nation ; and its genial climate is remembered in many families as having mitigated the sufferings of an invalid relation. It is perhaps less generally known that its mountain scenery is not sur- passed in beauty, that much of the finest vegetation of the world flourishes and flowers there during the winter months, and that the gardens in and around Funchal are, for brilliance and charm, scarcely to be matched elsewhere. It is possible that in these days of widespread delight in gardening it may interest some to read of the life, largely horticultural, of a
vii ^3
Preface
voluntary exile in this most favoured climate ; and to draw some picture from it of a wealth of vegetation, unknown in Europe, to be met with at a distance of three and a half days' steaming from Southampton. I have made no attempt to produce a handbook to, or systematic account of, Madeira. This has already been done by the late Mr. Yate Johnson far better than I could aspire to do it. I have confined myself to somewhat inconsequent, and I fear sometimes irrelevant, jottings on many subjects, and if I have stated my own opinion rather freely on some controversial topics, I hope I have not trodden upon any one's corns. This hope applies especially to the remarks I have made with reference to what I consider the failings and mistakes of the Portuguese Government, especially in its fiscal system. For our kind hosts the Portuguese people here, for my Portuguese friends, acquaintances, and servants, I feel little but liking and respect ; and what I have said is less than is commonly said among themselves by those whose education and knowledge of the world make them competent to judge.
Many books have been written in English
viii
Preface
about Madeira. This is not surprising, as for more than two centuries the island has been the resort of our countrymen for business, health, or pleasure, and was for a short period under "^he British flag. Most of these books are serious works, written by scientific men, and dealing with the climate, the meteorology, the flora, and other natural features. Of the rest, many have been produced by casual visitors, who, on the strength of a stay of a few weeks and a perusal of previous authorities, have felt qualified to enlighten the public. Such persons sometimes have an irritating trick of writing about well-known places with an air of having discovered them. The following pages do not fall into either class. I do not assume to impart any information of value ; and as it has been my good fortune to pass many winters in the island, I cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for my shortcomings and mistakes.
C. T.-S.
IX
PAGE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I THE RETURN
The return — Situation of Madeira — Some essential facts — Tourists — Communications ancient and modern — Bay of Funchal — View of the town — Conditions of life — Excessive State regulation — Exchange — "The Inno- cents Abroad " — The British flag — The man who talked nothing but Madeira ..... i
CHAPTER n
FUNCHAL AND ITS GARDENS
The gardens of Madeira — Mr. W. Robinson's views — Terraced formation — Wealth of vegetation — Soil — Temperature — Plants in flower — Aims in gardening — The town of Funchal — Lack of modern improve- ments— Old-world charm — Religion and proselytism — Cleanly aspect — The strangers' quarter — Onx S^iiinta — A picnic — List of Christmas flowers . . .19
CHAPTER HI TOWN AND COUNTRY DELIGHTS
Fireworks and the New Year — The Casino — Roulette — Systems — Morality and gambling — The mountains — Levadas — An Excursion — Monte — Running cars — Ribeiro Frio — Metade valley — Ancient disregard of mountain scener}' — Modern cult of mountains — Ma- deira's volcanic origin ...... 42
xi
Contents
CHAPTER IV
THE GARDEN IN MID-WINTER page
The creation of a garden — Rapid growth — Absence of lawns — Climbing plants — Orchids — Over-watering — Ignorance of gardeners — A Russian episode — Per- quisites — Our gardeners — Good manners of lower classes — The servants' view — Botanical names of plants — Florists' names — The weather .... 62
CHAPTER V
PLAGUE AND RIOT
Sanitary shortcomings — Plague scare — A dubious epidemic — Lazaretto sacked — Serious outlook — Rioting — Ar- rival of cruiser — A real epidemic — Extraordinary proceedings — A medical hero — A noble lady — The epidemic stayed — A comfortable theory . . .82
CHAPTER VI
POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGES
Murder of Dom Carlos — The policy of hushing-up — Portu- guese politics — Franco, Reformer and Dictator — His failure — Madeira and the murders — The outlook — Portuguese society — Social changes — Abolition ot entail — Landlord and tenant — Genealogy — Historic families — A seventeenth-century visitor — His experi- ences and views — Napoleon Bonaparte ... 9^
CHAPTER VII LAND AND SEA
A mountain S^uinta — Varieties of climate — Rarity of serious crime — Ignorance and terror — Superstitions — Pigs and the evil eye — Valuable recipes — Witches — Pagan survivals — Vows — Wrecks — Freebooters — Naval inci- dents— The Canary Isles — A romance of the sea — A clerical stowaway — A very steep road — Camacha . 121
xii
Contents
CHAPTER VIII TAXES MONOPOLIES POVERTY page
State interference with trade — Exports discouraged — Taxing to death — Regulation of milling — Sugar cultivation and manufacture — An extreme instance of Protection — Its drawbacks and dangers — Restrictive import duties — Their evil effects — Profits from visitors and shipping — Population and poverty — A German bubble 146
CHAPTER IX
THE GARDEN IN SPRING
The flowers of March — Brilliant climbers — A rock garden ; a record of failure — Fruits — The banana — A plague of ants — Butterflies — Birds — Cutting sugar-cane — Vines — The wine-trade — Its brilliant past — Ferns — Their habitat . . . . . . .165
CHAPTER X
ANTIQUITIES
Absence of any indications of early habitation — The chroniclers — How history is made — The Canary Isles — Their aboriginal inhabitants — The Salvages — Ser- torius — Cathedral of Funchal — Town architecture — Sugar cultivation and the slave-trade — Opportunities of the collector — Furniture, plate, china — A legend of Chippendale — Books and duties — Curiosities of cata- loguing— A poetaster . . . . . .186
CHAPTER XI THE NORTH SIDE
Difficulties of travel — A journey to Sta. Anna — The central passes — A precipitous coast — Crops and industry — Island of Porto Santo — Columbus — The journey west- ward— 'A charming village — The angelus — A valley and a mountain-pass — A curious chapel — A coast path — The mountain plateau ..... 206
xiii
Contents
CHAPTER XII
HOLY-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS page
The observance of Holy Week — Processions — Orderly crowds — Our parish procession — Sympathy of Church and people — The Church and population — Sentimental attraction of the Church — English pessimism — Portu- guese ministerial crisis — Courtship and marriage — Street music — Account of the processions of Funchal . 228
CHAPTER XIII
MOUNTAINS AND ISLANDS
The central mountains — The Grand Curral — A mountain road — Significance of The Road — Its antiquity and permanence — Pioneering in Africa — Pico Arriero — The cloud-belt — Absence of sport — The wild goats of the Desertas — Weird scenery — Seals — A captive — A dash for freedom . . . . . -251
CHAPTER XIV THE GARDEN IN ITS GLORY
Brilliant flower-display — Absence of well-defined seasons — Its consequences — Roses — Bignonia — Wistaria — Datura — Moonlight nights — The starry heavens — Some gardens of Funchal — Fonnalists and naturalists — The pergola — Its uses — Garden paths — Cobble- stones— Garden masonry — Passion for symmetry , z6i
CHAPTER XV
DEPARTURE
An uneventful winter — The German Company — German visitors — Increase of English visitors — Tariff Reform possibilities — Mr. Chamberlain's visit to Madeira — The time of departure — Lost opportunities — The pleasures of memory — Tunny-fishing — The love of places — Farewell . . . . • • .281
xiv .-^
ILLUSTRATIONS |
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PAGE |
|
I. Datura Frontispiece |
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2. Papyrus |
22 |
3. Cypress and Daisies |
. 36 |
4. The Central Range |
. 56 |
5. Snow on the Hills |
80 |
6, A Peep of the Port |
112 |
7. Wreck of the Packet Brig "Dart" . |
• 134 |
Frojn an Old Print |
|
8. The Camacha Road . . . |
• 144 |
9. Cutting the Sugar-Cane .... |
• 152 |
10. The Pride of Madeira .... |
. 166 |
II. Bananas ........ |
. 178 |
12. A Fountain |
196 |
13. The North Coast |
. 210 |
14. Road near Boa Ventura .... |
. 224 |
From a Sketch by Chevalier |
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15. The Desertas |
. 258 |
16. Wistaria |
. 266 |
XV
I
LEA VES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN
mti^^im^^
LEAVES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN
Chapter I— DECEMBER
The Return
"Short retirement urges sweet return.'" — Milton
THE Return has ever been a moving incident. From Homer to Hardy it has continually afforded scope for '* invention." If to youth the joy of the first visit with its smack of discovery and exploration is more intense, to the mature perhaps the sober pleasure of coming back to the well-known and the well-tried makes a stronger appeal. And if the return is an annual affair, if it is a matter of " flying, flying south " like the swallows, to elude the rigors of winter in the soft luxury of an Atlantic island, what it loses in excitement it yet may gain in a renewal of interest. As our steamer drifts
I B
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
slowly to her anchorage in the bay of Funchal amid the pearly radiance of the Madeira morn- ing, we enjoy an easy confidence that our short absence will have brought no startling change in a land of slow and little change. But in small matters there is much to stimulate our curiosity. He who cultivates the soil, whether for pleasure or profit, need never be dull ; and if he is the possessor of a garden in this favoured isle of the sea, he will surely find that much has happened therein during his absence to revive a never-failing wonder at the vigor and variety of vegetable life.
It is not my purpose to lay stress on details which may be found in guide-books, but it may be convenient to mention that Madeira is an island of volcanic origin, situate, not in the Mediterranean as some of my English friends suppose, but in the Atlantic, 600 miles S.W. of Gibraltar, and 360 miles from the African coast ; that, putting aside the more or less vague tradi- tions of previous visits, it was discovered and colonized by the Portuguese (the *' Portugals " our Elizabethan ancestors called them) about 1420 ; that politically it is now a province, and not a colony, of Portugal ; that it is about 2)S
Tlie Return
miles long by 1 5 miles in width, of extremely mountainous and picturesque surface ; that its inhabitants are of Portuguese race, with some admixture of Moorish and negro blood ; and that from it came the rich wine so beloved by our ancestors, and still drunk in Russia, Sweden, France and other countries less dominated by gout than ours. " II y a — beaucoup de — vin de Madere — ici, — n'est ce pas ? " said, with great deliberation, an English admiral, in a laudable effort to make conversation during a recent official call from the Governor. And so there is, although much of the wine so labelled in Europe knows not its supposed birthplace ; but with the loss of the English market the wine trade is shorn of its former glory. Yet it still provides a living for numerous English families which form a permanent element in the cosmo- politan society of the place. Years ago Madeira's soft and genial air was regarded as a suitable "cure" for consumptive patients, but the island has more recently been abandoned by them for the High Alps and the deserts of South Africa and Colorado. It is now the winter resort of many foreigners who are unable to find so equable and gracious a climate in
3
Leaves from a Bladeira Garden
Europe, and it is visited by an ever-increasing number of tourists, American, English, and German.
From the United States especially come these invading hordes, conveyed in giant steamers of the White Star, the Hamburg- American and other lines. These vessels arrive with bands playing and flags flying in their temporary character of pleasure ships ; and if ships have feelings, one may suppose them to be a little ashamed of their job. Their passen- gers, hundreds and hundreds at a time, descend on the town, buy thousands of post-cards made in Germany, chafi^er and haggle with the vendors of embroidery and wicker-work, which are local productions, and of various curiosities specially imported for their benefit ; and lo ! to-morrow they are gone — to invade Gibraltar and Naples, Cairo and Jerusalem, in similar fashion ; and peace will reign until the next swarm appears. Of the real charm of the island these visitors see and learn nothing ; of its flowery and scent- laden gardens, the wild grandeur of its mountain gorges, its hillsides aglow with broom and gorse, few can carry away any impression whatever. Perhaps the young lady who could only recall
4
The Beturn
Rome as the place where she bought those black silk stockings is a not uncommon type.
But if this ignorance is their loss, it is our gain. These casual visitors touch but the fringe and leave the garment undefiled. Outside the limited range of their experience — the ascent by railway to the Mount Church ; the "running- cars " in which they tobogganed down ; the hotels where they raided the food of more regular guests ; the Casino where they lost their money — outside these they know not Madeira, and Madeira knows them not. Not yet is it time for Pierre Loti to add to " La Mort du Caire" and "La Mort de Philae" a threnody on " La Mort de Madere." Let us give thanks that there is " nothino: to see."
Truly in ways and means of communication the world has changed even more rapidly than in other things. If we go back to the hand- books of sixty or seventy years ago, we find it stated that the most convenient method of reaching Madeira was by the comfortable mail service of packet brigs, of about 250 tons burden, which might take anything from six days to six weeks on the passage. Nowadays we are accustomed to leave Southampton in a
S
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
boat of ten or twelve thousand tons on a Saturday evening, and to arrive here with more than the punctuality of most express trains at dawn on the following Wednesday ; and we are disposed to grumble because even to achieve this our steamer does not put forth her full strength.
The precision of the mail service by sea is a thing to wonder at, and, like most other wonderful things, is commonly taken as a matter of course. But it occasionally receives an un- conscious tribute. Some vears ago I was leaving Capetown, and the boat was several hours late in starting in consequence of some delay on the Johannesburg railway. An irate Scotsman was pacing the deck and exclaiming, " Confound it ! I shall miss my train for Edinburgh." One's thoughts reverted to the convenient packet brig.
The foil of even a three or four days' voyage serves to enhance the beauty of the approach to Funchal. To that majority of mankind which regards the very name of the Bay of Biscay with apprehension, finds little to admire in the mirk and monotony of the North Atlantic, and has too often suffered worse things than
The Beturn
monotony in its passage, the hill-encircled bay with the town spreading outwards and upwards its varied lines of picturesque houses, and its wealth of sub-tropical greenery, seems verily an enchanted haven of rest and refreshment.
*' Who would not turn him from the barren sea, And rest his weary eyes on the green land, and thee ? "
We who know it well are aware that the coup cfa-il from the sea, delightful as it is, reveals little of the more intimate beauties which await us. The houses risins: one above another are foreshortened as we see them, and give no hint of the garden luxuriance in which many of them are embowered. We can trace the roads which fan-like ascend the hills from the town, but wc cannot see the brilliant creepers and shrubs which here and there over- hang the walls that line them — the Poinsettia, the Bignonia, the Plumbago, the Datura, which at this season must be in full flower. Yet even from the sea we can discern that the great mass of Bougainvillea which clothes with a raiment of purple the cliff below an ancient fort that dominates (or once dominated) the town is vigorous as ever, though not yet come to its
7
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
full glory of colour. The hills above look almost flat in the brilliant morning light. But we know that their surface is broken into countless ridges and vales, which invite an exploration that is never finished ; and that certain shoulders of rock are concealing from us grim ravines girdled with giant precipices. And we know, too, that the peaks which en- close them are but the prelude to loftier peaks behind, and that beyond them again lies a very fairyland of beauty, the wild, forest-clad glens, the verdant and fertile lowlands, the awful sea- cliffs of the northern shore.
And so amid the turmoil of arrival at a Southern port — the clamour of the diving boys, and the importunity of touts and traders — we return once more to our winter home. It is but eight months since we left it, and our intervening experiences — the green lawns and immemorial elms of our Sussex homestead ; those glorious nights by the Norwegian salmon- river ; the routine of English life ; the haste of travel on English roads ; the bustle of Picca- dilly and the pageant of the Boulevards — all these seem to fade into a dreamland of the past, and to yield place naturally to the one
8
The Beturn
thing which is real, this Lotos-land of the South, " plac'd far amid the melancholy main." The great mountain wall which for the last hour or two before our arrival we have been circumnavigating, the main range which runs from east to west of the island, is an effectual barrier against the northerly winds which pre- vail in winter. On the north side of the island the winter climate is wet and windy, but Fun- chal faces the south and the sun. With the thermometer never falling within fifteen degrees of freezing-point, we seem, and are, very remote from the misery of London in the grip of a freezing fog. And when we consider the des- perate struggle for life under such circumstances we may be pardoned for feeling something of the suave man magno of Lucretius, so aptly paraphrased by Mr. Mallock ;
" When storms blow loud, 'tis sweet to watch at ease From shore, the sailor labouring with the seas : Because the sense, not that such pains are his, But that they are not ours, must always please."
And although it is true that we are withdraw- ing ourselves for a season from the life of our own time and our own people, it is yet possible that while we " pace serene the porches of the
9
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
light," we may reap some advantage in a more detached view of facts, policies, and tendencies, than if we were in the thick of the fray.
It is not only from the blasts of the northern winter that the expanse of ocean and the mountain barrier seclude us. We have passed completely from the conditions of modern social life as we know it. With a labour- ing class utterly illiterate, and Incapable of organization or of expressing its wants and grievances otherwise than by open revolt against authority ; with a government conducted by, and perhaps I may say not indifferent to the interests of, that small portion of the population which can read and write ; the political and social problems which arise here are quite other than those with which we are concerned. Over-population there may be, but it is con- siderably mitigated by emigration ; " unemploy- ment," in the sense that those who want work and wages cannot find them, is among a people almost entirely agricultural not a burning question ; poverty is doubtless widespread, but with cold unknown and hunger easily appeased its consequences are far less severe than in less fortunate climes. Such difficulties and dangers
lO
The Beturn
as occur, and, as I believe, much of the poverty which exists, arise from the excessive claim of the State to be the arbiter of commercial affairs ; to stimulate one industry to a feverish life, and to throttle another to death ; to decide what commodities shall be bought and sold, and by whom, and to regulate the price. These pretensions produce not only a highly artificial condition of trade, but a strangely resigned habit of mind among natives and foreign residents alike ; you cannot kick against the pricks. There is, indeed, one blessed mitigation of excessive State regulation ; the State seems to expend its energy in making laws, and to shrink from the trouble of enforcing them.
To the mere sojourner in the island for pleasure and not for profit, these matters will be rather of passing interest than of import- ance. He will find the stringency of rules readily softened in his favour by the politeness of those officials with whom he comes in contact ; and if, accustomed to the rapidity of English methods, he chafes at having to stand in a queue at the post office, he will later come to wonder at the precision with which
II
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
a large business is conducted by an inadequate staff.
It is easy for a foreigner to be censorious, to be too ready to blame a country he visits for ignoring what his own sets store by. There is another side ; and an Englishman may assuredly learn something here. He will find that all classes, high and low alike, will treat him with a courtesy which he may look for in vain at home ; that life may be agreeable with much less fuss over its machinery than he is accustomed to make ; that if unpleasant things must be done, the art of doing them pleasantly is worth cultivating ; perhaps even — but this is heresy — that the habit of never doing to-day what you can put off till to-morrow has sometimes not only aesthetic but practical advantages.
A speculative interest is added to the financial side of life here by the fluctuations in the exchange. The unit of Portuguese currency is the m, an imaginary coin of very small value — as I write about 5400 rets are the equivalent of the Eno:lish sovereign. There is a certain convenience in expressing all financial amounts in the terms of such a diminutive unit, for
12
The Eeturn
example a gift of a florin towards a charitable object sounds very much better when it is described as " five hundred," and the man who has won a couple of sovereigns at the Casino may gain a fictitious eclat as the winner of " ten thousand." But it may cause misappre- hension among strangers. Readers of Mark Twain will recall that certain of the " Innocents Abroad" dined at an hotel at Fayal at the Azores, and that when the landlord brought his bill the giver of the feast exclaimed, " Twenty- one thousand seven hundred reis ! The suffer- ing Moses ! — there ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill 1 Go — leave me to my misery, boys ; I am a ruined community." Then the shadow of a desperate resolve settled upon his countenance and he rose up and said, " Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never, never stand it. Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, sir, and it's all you'll get — I'll swim in blood, before I'll pay a cent more." On the discovery that the bill was for a fraction over twenty-one dollars, happiness reigned again — and more refreshments were ordered. At par the pound sterling is considered to be worth 4500 reis. Up to about twenty years
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
ago this rate was more or less maintained. Then the rei began to decline in value, until in 1898 as many as 8700 reis were obtainable for an English sovereign. Some mysterious operations for the improvement of Portuguese finances were then undertaken, and the exchange declined in the course of the next ten years to nearly par. It has since risen again. As we pay the wages of our servants, gardeners and labourers, and for everything produced locally, in Portuguese currency, the number of reis we get for each of our sovereigns becomes a matter of interest. To the exporter, of wine for instance, it must be a consideration of the greatest moment. He buys his raw material, his grape juice and his spirit, and pays for his labour in the local currency ; his finished product he sells in the markets of Europe for sovereigns or francs or marks, without reference to the state of the Portuguese exchange. It is a wonder if he sleeps o' nights.
Madeira has had more than one narrow escape of becoming part of the British Empire. When negotiations were proceeding for the marriage of Catharine of Braganza with Charles II., it is said that the Queen-Mother,
14
The Beturn
who was desperately anxious for the conclusion of the match, was prepared to cede Madeira, as well as Bombay, Tangier, and a large sum of money, as her daughter's dowry. The story runs that the clerk was actually instructed to include the island in the contract, but that he omitted it, either from carelessness or from patriotic intent. If the latter, he deserves to be honoured as a national hero, splendide mendax. In 1807, during the Napoleonic wars, a British force of 4000 men under General Beresford occupied the island. The principal inhabitants signed a declaration, and took an oath " to bear true allegiance and fealty to His Majesty King George III. and his heirs and successors as long as the island should be held by his said Majesty or his heirs, in conformity to the terms of the capitulation made and signed on the 26th of December, 1807, whereby the island and dependencies were delivered over to his said Majesty." The island was restored to Portugal the following year, but was gar- risoned by British troops until the general peace of 18 14. Our Portuguese friends do not always bear in mind that it is the friendship of Great Britain which has secured, and still
15
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
secures, them in the possession of their oversea dependencies.
We may amuse ourselves by speculating as to the present condition of Madeira if it had remained British. It would doubtless be an important naval coaling station, and regarded as one of the outposts of the empire which are necessary to its existence. Its outward aspect would certainly be different ; roads would have been made, sanitation would have received due attention, and an excellent water supply would have been installed. It would be very much like everywhere else, and some of the special charm of its particularity would be lost. If the outward appearance were changed, much more changed would be the inward working of things. Extravagant customs duties would have dis- appeared ; a more intelligent fiscal system would assuredly have produced great commer- cial and agricultural prosperity, and a consider- able export trade would have been developed. The presence of British officials and British troops would help to bring a larger number of visitors. On the other hand, a certain dulness generally follows the British flag, and British con- ventional morality would be unable to tolerate
i6
The Beturn
the amusements of the Casino, which now depends on British support, and is undoubtedly a great attraction. Perhaps our conclusion may- be that while for the native population, and especially for the working classes, British con- trol would be an inestimable advantage, from a visitor's point of view it would be regrettable. But such speculations are as idle as those which concern Cleopatra's nose.
It may be that in these pages I am incurring the reproach of the Senor Acciauoli, a native of this island, who married his kinswoman, daughter and heiress of the Marquis Acciauoli of Florence, and was known in Italy as the man who talked nothing but Madeira. Horace Mann wrote concerning him to Horace Walpole, and Walpole replied : " You have no notion how I laughed at the man that * talks nothing but Madeira.' I told it to my Lady Pomfret, concluding it would divert her too, and forget- ting that she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should be diverted. She asked gravely what language that was ! ' That Madeira being subject to an European prince, to be sure they talked some European dialect 1 * The grave personage ! It was of a piece with
17 c
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
her saying ' that Swift would have written better if he had never written ludicrously.' "
But to talk nothing but Madeira is my purpose on setting out ; I talk a European dialect, yet I fear that in my occasional lapses from the serious I may merit the censure of my Lady Pomfret's successors in criticism.
18
Chapter U— DECEMBER
FUNCHAL AND ITS GaRDENS
"Infinite riches in a little room." — Marlowe.
^HE island of Madeira," says Mr. W. Robinson in his " English Flower Garden" — that sacred volume of the amateur — " is very instructive in the variety of its gardens ; every one I remember was distinct, and this was owing to the owners being free to do as the ground invited them, instead of following any fixed idea as to style, or leaving it to men who are ready with similar plans for all sorts of positions. In France, England, or Germany, this could never happen because, owing to the conformity about style and the use of book plans, we can usually tell beforehand what sort of garden we are to see." And he further speaks of " real gardens varied and full of beautiful colour, yet without any trace of the barren monotony characteristic of gardens at
19
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
home. The generally picturesque nature of the ground, the presence of graceful fruit and other trees, and the absence of any pretentious attempt to conform the whole to a set idea, lead to the simple and picturesque garden."
When every allowance is made for his well- known preferences, Mr. W. Robinson seems to strike the right note. Of the best and most characteristic Madeira gardens it may be said that they have grown rather than been made. Those v/hich have been consciously created are perhaps the least successful. The villas which surround the town, and in many cases have now been swallowed up by it — Quintas is their local name — were originally country houses sur- rounded rather by small farms than gardens. A square plot in front of the house, with a level surface secured by retaining walls, often on the hillsides of considerable height, and cut up into beds of rather fantastic shape — such is the beginning from which most of the existing gardens have been gradually evolved. The main condition governing this evolution is that level, or even undulating, ground is rare, and that the hillsides surrounding the town are, wherever possible, terraced. These terraces,
20
Fanchal and its Gardens
upheld by rough or cemented stone walls, are devoted to the operations of the fazenda — the farm or vegetable garden — and chiefly occupied by sugar-cane, banana trees, or vines. The first step In the extension of the garden is to annex a piece of the fazenda, to uproot the canes or bananas, and to devote the ground to the cultivation of flowers. This generally necessitates the building of a flight of steps and the laying out of paths. And so a new feature is created, unlike anything which existed before, and probably unlike anything in any other garden. There are generally fresh fields waiting to be conquered, and so the process goes on, "as the ground invites us," until a considerable garden has been created, a garden rich in variety and surprise ; a garden of walls hung with heliotrope and mesembryanthemum and trailing geranium, of pergolas covered with roses and the brilliant climbing plants of the South American forests, perhaps of ponds crowded with water-lily and papyrus ; a garden of fruit trees, the peach, the mango, the loquat, and the custard-apple ; of palms and tree-ferns, and bamboos.
Such gardens, of which there are many, have
21
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
for the most part been made by Englishmen resident here. The Portuguese are great and successful growers of specimen plants in pots, but they seem to have little aptitude or inclina- tion for the cultivation of extensive gardens. A result of this is that there is no tradition of gardening among the working classes, and that the professional gardener in our English sense is almost unknown. One has to do one's best with labourers, strong, willing, and hard-working, but with only the labourer's limited knowledge.
The soil is of volcanic origin, rich, dark, often reddish in colour, containing no lime. It becomes very sticky after rain ; in dry weather it cakes and does not easily become converted into dust. This absence of dust renders the atmosphere in Madeira quite different from that of North and South Africa, and is no doubt very beneficial to persons with weak chests and throats.
The range of temperature, whether daily or annual, is remarkably small. It is quite common for the variation not to exceed ten degrees Fahrenheit in the twenty-four hours ; and my registering thermometer, placed in a well-shaded position, has during the whole of the year 1908
22
Funchal and its Gardens
touched 50° as a minimum, and 79° as a maximum. The maximum is unusually low ; the minimum is normal. In a record of several years I have only found the thermometer to fall below 49° on one night. The effect of this on plant life will be at once evident. It means that, putting aside questions of soil, and in a minor degree of wind, you can grow out of doors everything cultivated in a cool greenhouse in England, and some of the things commonly designated as stove-plants. Where we break down is with plants whose health requires a cold snap. To find the spring flowers — the anemones, the daffodils, the violets — in per- fection, we must go to an altitude of 1500 to 2000 feet above the sea, where winter nights are cold, and snow sometimes falls, though not to lie. At least one garden at such an altitude has a character perhaps unique — a glorified English garden, where English flowers hold their own amid sub-tropical trees and shrubs ; where avenues of camelias rehabilitate the fame of that too long unfashionable flower, and Australasian tree-ferns fill the dells with a luxuriance unknown elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.
23
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
I have appended to this chapter a list of treeSj shrubs, and plants which we have observed to be in flower on Christmas Day this year in our own garden, which is situate about two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and about a quarter of a mile from it. It will perhaps surprise some that such a range of blossom may be met with in mid-winter at a distance of eighty hours' steaming from our shores. Owing to the copious rains which have happily fallen during the autumn, everything this year is looking its best, and the growth of tree and shrub since last spring is surprising. At this season no floral feature of the island approaches in glory the Bignonia venusta^ " the Golden Shower." Of the most luxuriant growth, it is ramping everywhere over wall and pergola and trellice, and its leaves are almost hidden in the wealth of its orange flowers. Crimson Poinsettias^ white 'Daturas^ blue-grey Plumbago make a notable trio, magni- ricent in combination. Hedychium gardnerianum is over, but its orange seed-pods are a hand- some feature. The great single Hibiscus bears aloft its fine red blossoms, individually a flower unsurpassed for symmetry and beauty. Irises
24
Funchal and its Gardens
are coming out ; for the pretty lilac jimbriata we must wait a little, but the white stylosa, which I brought from England last year, is flowering already. Some of the roses are making a great show. Begonias of various kinds are in perfection. The fine orange Strep- tosoleUy introduced by an English lady a few years ago, and now pervading every garden, and intent on being naturalized as Madeiran, vies in colour with the Bignonia. A few stray sweet peas are in flower, but for the produce of the seeds we sent out in October we must wait a little longer. Comparable in colour efi^ect even with the brighter flowers is the foliage of the AcaUipha^ with its bizarre combination of green and red and bronze and pink. In our garden it seems to flourish unusually, growing into a big shrub eight or ten feet high. With these and many others the most exacting lover of garden colour has no cause to grumble ; and if we grow surfeited with these, the ordinary fare of gardens here, we may find in the culture of ferns, orchids, rock-plants, or other byeways of horticulture, innumerable points of interest. Or, if our turn of mind is practical, we may set ourselves to the improvement of the peas,
25
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
beans, and new potatoes which are our cus- tomary table vegetables.
There are, it may be held, two schools of gardeners. One is mainly concerned with the iiarden as a whole, with the creation and main- tenance of a pleasance in which trees and shrubs and flowering plants play their subordinate parts in a scheme of decoration. The other school busies itself with the nurture of special plants — with roses, carnations, begonias, or what not. 1 have somewhere read a comparison of flowers in this connection with pictures — ■ with pictures viewed as a decorative adjunct, or displayed as in a gallery for their own sakes. The two attributes may be united in one person ; usually, at any rate, one or the other predominates. To me the cult of the general, of the garden scheme as a whole, appeals more strongly ; yet in the joy I feel at the unhoped- for survival of a gentian, or the luxuriance of an adiantum^ I own some deference to the particular.
The town of Funchal, as I have already suggested, lies in the curve of the bay, and straggles upwards from its centre to the sur-
rounding hills.
26
Funchal and its Gardens
" Houses with long white sweep Girdle the glistening bay ; Behind through the soft air The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away."
Like the Garden of Eden (which, but for his selection of the Seychelles, General Gordon might very well have located in this island), it owns four rivers ; yet none of them at all resembles the Euphrates. In their lower course through the town they usually contain very little water, much having been carried off higher up by the kvadas^ or open canals, which supply water for domestic purposes, and to irrigate the fields ; they are much used for washing clothes, and (illegally) as receptacles for rubbish. But if heavy rains fall in the hills — and when it really rains there is no doubt about it — then their channels become roaring torrents, and the dirt they bring down will colour the sea for a long distance. It happened once that a barrel of permanganate of potash was accidentally dropped into the Sta. Luzia river at a sugar mill above the town. It converted it into a stream resembling Condy's fluid, and the washerwomen ran through the streets screaming that the water had turned to
27
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
blood. If the municipality were to take the hint and periodically repeat the experiment, it might have very beneficial results. These rivers are separated by ridges with more or less precipitous sides, the buttresses of the great mountain mass to the north and east of the town, a range which culminates in peaks six thousand feet high. Up these ridges lie very steep roads, some of which lead across the mountains to the north side of the island. Houses line these roads continuously to the height of about a thousand feet. Save in the town itself there is scarcely a bridge, and unless one is prepared to venture into the ravines by tortuous paths, and to cross the river by step- ping-stones, it is necessary in passing from one ridge to another to descend into the town and to ascend on the other side. This makes the distances by road between houses which face each other across a ravine often considerable. It is almost incredible that under these circum- stances, in the third city of Portugal, with a population, including the suburbs, of over forty thousand, there is no telephone system. If you want to send a message you send your servant to run with it, and if he happens to
28
Funchal and its Gardens
look in at his club, and to take part in a pro- longed rubber, you will not see him again for some time. To those accustomed to the enter- prise of northern countries, such a neglect of an opportunity of profitable business, and such disregard of public convenience are very sur- prising. Even in such a poor country as Norway you may find a telephone wire in the remotest mountain valleys. The Portuguese lament the poverty of their country and them- selves. In this and kindred matters is to be found its explanation. They are accustomed to throw the blame on the Government ; but do not peoples enjoy the governments, like the religions, they deserve ?
It would not be very difficult, nor over- whelmingly costly, to make a fine drive round the mountain basin above the town, at an alti- tude of from 500 to 800 feet. To judge from the fragments of roads which exist, some such scheme may have been at some time contem- plated. The French would do it in a year or two ; but to judge from the general rate of progress here, it will remain undone for centuries.
Yet in its aloofness from the modern stream
39
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
of improvement perhaps much of the attraction of Madeira lies. As far as essentials are con- cerned, we might be living in the eighteenth century ; and we now learn how few of the inventions of the nineteenth are necessary to comfort or contentment. One need never be in a hurry ; for most things to-morrow will do as well as, or better than, to-day. And being accustomed to go about the town in a car on runners, not wheels, drawn by two oxen, one is inclined to resent the recent introduction of two or three motor-cars, especially as the streets are narrow and twisted. As their operations are limited by the nature of the country to certain parts of the town, and a road along the coast about six miles in length, and as the cobble stones and ridged hills must be very trying to their tyres and machinery, there are reasonable grounds for hoping that they will not endure very long.
There is indeed a certain old-world charm about the cobbled and grass-grown streets of Funchal. The houses are irregular in con- struction ; many of them, especially in the centre of the town, are of considerable an- tiquity ; and though most are more or less
30
Funchal and its Gardens
modernized, some still retain their fine old stone doorways and wrought-iron balconies. Here and there a mass of brilliant Bougainvillea or Bignonia streams streetvvards over the wall from an inner court, while later in the winter the Wistaria will hang its graceful blossoms over the heads of the wayfarers. Girls filling their pitchers at the fountain ; carpenters, tin- smiths, and shoemakers plying their little trades in open shops beneath the dwelling-houses ; picturesque country-folk staring open-eyed and open-mouthed at what to them is the bustle and hubbub of a great city, and on festal days crowding to the cathedral ; such are among the customary sights of the streets. The ancient Church is here still vigorous and dominant ; she is a real force deeply influencing the lives of the people, and with her happy use of dramatic and pictorial art in services and pro- cessions, doing much to infuse some interest and variety into them. We who can read are prone to forget the effect on the unlettered of such a representation as the Holy Child in His cradle ; nor do we want the Holy Rood borne aloft to remind us of the manner of His death. And at the evening hour, when the town is
31
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
already in shadow, but the sunlight still lingers on the hill, and the "Angelus" rings from the tile-clad Campanile, you may indeed feel that here, if anywhere, the Church is still " whisper- ing from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Ages."
At various times certain well-meaning, but misguided, British subjects have striven to make converts among the people to some form of Protestant religion. Much ill-will was for- merly engendered by these attempts, leading to serious riots. Perhaps the small amount of success which has attended them has led to the indifference and toleration which now prevail. As far as I know, the ministers of the English Church have been blameless in this respect ; and it would indeed be idle to expect that the ecclesiastical compromise of the Tudors, which on historical and other grounds has so strong a hold on us, should have any meaning for these people. Still less do the tenets of other Protestant bodies, however well they accord with the comparative simplicity and directness of the Northern character, seem fitted to satisfy the emotions of warm-blooded Southerners, with their strong tendency to
32
FimcJial and its Gardens
mysticism, and what their would-be instructors designate as superstition. One would suppose that the heathen of the neighbouring Dark Continent offer a more suitable, if less agree- able, field for such endeavours.
The general aspect of Funchal, apart from the unfortunate condition of the river-beds, which is due to neglect of duty on the part of the local government, is pre-eminently clean. The inhabitants have a positive mania for whitewash, with its pink and yellow varieties. They carry its use to the excess of plastering and washing all their garden walls, a practice which creates a dead level of uniformity and an unnecessary glare. If, as applied to the exterior of houses, whitewash may not always be a sign of inward grace, yet it is something to look clean, and in this respect Funchal far surpasses the towns of Italy and other Mediterranean countries. And in the matter of street smells it only achieves a very modest distinction.
On the western side of the town, in the neighbourhood of the " Ribeiro Secco," a river which, except in very wet weather, does not belie its name, the ground is less precipitous than elsewhere, and as it faces the higher
33 D
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
hills the views are generally far finer than those obtained from their slopes. This may now be described as the Strangers' quarter, for here, as elsewhere, those who are free to select their own place of residence seem to be drawn by some mysterious law to move westwards. Can this be a survival of the instinct of emigration westwards which has populated Europe and America from the Central Asian steppes ? In this direction are the hotels frequented by visitors, and here, on a slope above the Dry River, is the Quinta in which we live among our flowers. It faces south-east, and looks across the bay to the rocky uninhabited islands known as the " De- sertas " (I have an old Admiralty chart in which they appear as the " Deserters " ! — perhaps a poetical suggestion that they are fugitives from the main island) ; and across such portions of the city as are not hidden by the intervening ridges to the great hills beyond. Below us lies the little harbour behind the breakwater which terminates in the Loo Rock, crowned with its ancient fort ; and farther off the road- stead in which the great liners ride at anchor. It would be difficult to find a fairer setting for
34
Funchal and its Gardens
a garden, a nobler combination of sea and mountain, with just the sufficient evidence of man's neighbourhood and handiwork to emphasize the natural grandeur of the scene. We purchased this Quinta about seven years ago from a Portuguese gentleman, who was more concerned with farming than with flowers. There was the usual square plot in front of the house ; in the centre of it a handsome marble fountain, and round about certain flower beds edged with jagged clinkers, unpleasant to look at, and very damaging to the boots of those who incautiously approached them. With the exception of this, and of a paved court enclosing a small pond in which a duck of some northern breed passed in solitude a melancholy existence, the whole ground was given up to bananas and vines. It was all very well " arranged," to use a favourite Portuguese expression ; looked at practically from the point of view of the Madeira agriculturist it was perfect ; the symmetrical, terraced plots all provided with cemented conduits for purposes of irrigation, and the roads and paths of cobble-stones laid in cement to prevent the intrusion of weeds ; most of the paths covered with pergolas of chestnut wood
35
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
on solid iron posts, for the support of vines ; and the garden plot and the entrance-drive surrounded by a bare cast-iron railing. The whole had an air of having cost a great deal of money ; and to the eye of a garden lover, and perhaps especially of an Englishman, the general effect was appalling.
Save for a few fine old trees, camphor trees, magnolias and others, surrounding the house, the domain was destitute of shade, for in the winter the vines covering the pergolas are almost leafless ; and this, combined with the arid pavements and the too obtrusive iron railings, gave a distressing air 'of bareness to the place. But we put our trust in the vigour of Madeira soil and air, and our confidence has not been misplaced. We planted eucalyptus trees where shade was most urgently needed, and we have already specimens of those beautiful trees at least thirty feet high. We dared to run counter to public opinion in planting an avenue of cypresses, here still the *' invisae cupressi" of Horace, and held to be an ornament for graveyards alone ; and already our avenue is visible far and wide and imparts something of a Mediterranean aspect to the
36
Funchal and its Gardens
vicinity. Our shade-giving trees planted, we could afford to proceed more leisurely with our climbers and flowering plants ; and of these and of the extension of the garden ground to contain them I will speak later.
At the back of our house a steep road leads to the district of S. Martinho — a village two or three miles to the west of Funchal, You mount very quickly, and at an elevation of about seven hundred feet come upon a pleasant road which is almost level for two or three miles, and bending northwards and eastwards presents a continually varied and charming series of views of the town lying in the great basin below. Hither on one of the days between Christmas and the New Year — a day of brilliant sunshine, but as the white-horses out at sea may tell us wit), a strong north-east wind blowing — we asc ;nd intent to meet some friends from an ither quarter of the town. The trysting- p ace is a pine wood, in the shade of which we jicnic. That at such a season such things are possible is evidence of the wonderful climate we enjoy here. At this slight elevation the air is lighter and fresher than by the sea-board. Some wandering gusts of the north-easter reach
37
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
us ; but with a shade temperature of over 60° it cannot be called cold. The country round seems remotely to suggest Devonshire in spring. The oak-trees, indeed, retain their summer foliage, and will not lose it till the new leaves in February push the old ones off. But at their base are the wild flowers of spring, and the scent of spring is in the air. The clumps of pampas grass and huge yuccas at the entrance of a neighbouring Qidnta recall an English garden, and the only suggestion at hand of a more southern land is the luxuriance of the glaucous aloes which grow in masses on the rocks. Here with jest and laughter we beguile the midday hours —
" Light flows our war of mocking words ; " —
and, when the sun declines, watch, as we have often watched in wonder and delight before, the ravines of the opposite hills grow dark and mysterious in their evening haze, a foil for the heightened glow on peak and ridge.
38
'
Fimchal and its Gardens
SOME SHRUBS, CLIMBERS, AND PLANTS IN FLOWER ON CHRISTMAS DAY.
Astrapaca viscosa, "Tassel Tree." Cantua dependens. Datura suaveolens. Euphorbia, in variety. Habrothamnus, red. Hibiscus, single red
,, double red.
„ yellow. Lasiandra. Myrtle. Olea fragrans. Plumbago capensis Poinsettia capensis. Strelitzia augusta.
„ reginac. Streptosolen Jameson!.
Bignonia venusta. „ Smithii. Bougainvillea, purple.
„ mauve.
„ rose.
„ red.
Cobaea scandens. Convolvulus, various species. Ipomaea, "Morning glory." Passiflora caerulea. Solanum jasminoides. ,, Seaforthianum.
39
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
Tacsonia insignis. Thunbcrgia grandiflora.
Aponogeton (iistachyon.
Arum lilies.
Asters.
Azaleas.
Begonias, in great variety.
Callistemon speciosum, " Bottle brush."
Cannas.
Carnations.
Celosia cristata.
Coleus Thyrsoideus.
Crinum.
Franciscea,
Fuchsias, in variety.
Geranium, in great variety.
Heliotrope, light and dark.
Iris, English. ,, stylosa alba.
Lantana, in variety.
Lobelia.
Linum, yellow.
Melastoma.
Mignonette.
Pelargonium.
Phlox.
Salvia.
Stocks.
Roses : — Bardou Job. Beauty of Glazenwood Caroline Testout. 40
Fiinclial and its Gardens
Roses — continued. Cloth of Gold. Duchesse d'Auerstadt. Frau Karl Druschki. Gloire de Dijon. La Marque. La France. Marechal Neil. Reine Marie Henriette. Souvenir de Malmaison. Souvenir d'un Ami. William Allen Richardson, and others.
41
Chapter lll—J^NUzART Town and Country Delights
" The little pleasure of the game." — Prior.
THE old year died in a blaze of glory. The passion of the Madeirans for fireworks, as pleasing not only to the eye, but to the ear, is extra- ordinary. During the past fortnight the Saturnalia have been celebrated with a con- tinuous fusillade by day and night. Learned men will discourse to you of survivals of sun- worship and fire-worship. But these do not seem to account for the noise-worship in which the younger part of the population especially takes so active a part. The great delight of the small boys, abetted, it must be owned, by their small sisters, is to place some fulminating powder on a stone and to strike it just as you are passing, on foot or horseback. Let us hope that this early training in the abuse of explosives will not induce bomb-throwing in maturity.
42
Toiun and Country Delights
In the last hours of the thirty-first of December the firework habit produces its fullest manifestations. The town, the suburbs, the country houses, and the surrounding hills are all ablaze with coloured lights, and, as the hour of midnight approaches, showers of rockets, of shells, of Roman candles, and what- not rise in all directions. The climax is reached at midnight, when the rain of fire redoubles, the steamers in the port blow their hooters, bells are rung, and a most unholy din prevails. Then in a few minutes all is peace, save when some roysterers wake the echoes, or a belated bomb disturbs our slumbers.
This watch-night display of fireworks Is Indeed a splendid spectacle, its success being largely due to the hilly nature of its area, and its widespread extent. Though the individual fireworks may be of comparatively inferior quality, yet the whole far surpasses in glory set displays at exhibitions and such places, and the effect is much heightened by the fact that it is the result of private and spontaneous effort.
With the advent of the New Year, Madeira's " season," from the hotel-keepers* point of view, may be said to be well started. The Casino is
43
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
in full swing. It is called euphemistically the " Strangers' Club," a name less rich in poetic fancy than the " Sea-bathino- Establishment " of Monte Carlo, but appropriately suggesting to the reflective mind that the taking-in of strangers is its business. Its very modest subscription is naturally inadequate to keep up the house and gardens, or to pay for its excel- lent music, and its frequent balls and entertain- ments. The deficiency is very comfortably provided by the game of Roulette. Such games are, I understand, as illegal in Portugal as in England ; but in this delightfully easy-going country it seems the business of no one to enforce an inconsiderate law, and if such a functionary exists he is easily convinced that it is best to leave things alone. It is not for us English to throw stones. We have a beautiful system of laws intended to repress betting, and we know the result. And does not " the City" exist that, under the skilfully designed semblance of a real transaction, we may be enabled to satisfy our gambling propensities in buying stocks and shares and wheat and cotton without paying for them, or in selling such things without possessing them, and indeed
44
Town and Country Delights
without troubling ourselves very much whether they exist or not ? Nor are we backward in availing ourselves of opportunities wherever they occur. An old traveller once said to me, " I have been all over the world, and wherever I found gambling going on, there were English- men in the thick of it." And perhaps it may be remarked that the chief patrons of this excellent club are English. It is a great boon to many visitors. In the modern sense there is here " nothing to do " — no golf, no motoring (to speak of), no sports of the field ; and the Casino, before and after dinner, is a resource for the resourceless. If people lose their money it is their own affair. Losing has been stated on expert authority to be the next greatest pleasure to winning. Possibly it keeps them out of worse mischief. And the unco' guid who find in the vices, venial or otherwise, of their neighbours an occasion for self-com- placency, are enabled to gird at the iniquities of this sinful establishment ; and so everybody is pleased.
The game of Roulette is a very fair one to the player. Considering that "the bank" provides the place and means of playing ; that
45
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
It pays for the croupiers and the lights, and for sweet music to soothe your sorrows ; that if you commit suicide on the premises it will charge itself with your burial ; surely for all these services it is a small thing that when you back a winning number, one of the 37 on the board, it pays you 35, instead of 2)^^ times your stake. This is a very modest deduction from such noble winnings ; and if (as is more probable) you lose, you have nothing further to pay whatever. And think of the possi- bilities ; in a few minutes a sovereign may gather to itself hundreds. But you cannot expect that to happen every day ; and if you are here for some time, and wish to make the most of your opportunities, you will play a " system." This is a very certain method of losing in the end ; but it is quite possible that you may take a long time dying. And you will be able to find occupation for your morn- ings in looking over your system in the light of yesterday's results, in darning holes in it, as it were, in readiness for the evening's en- counter ; or if it be worn too threadbare, in inventing a new one.
I hope that other readers of Wordsworth
46
Toivn and Countrij DeUglds
will forgive me for irreverently quoting from " The Excursion ; Despondency Corrected " —
"If tired of systems, each in its degree Substantial, and all cruml)ling in their turn, Let him build systems of his own, and smile At the fond work, demolished with a touch/'
If you are a heaven-born gambler (I confess to some incongruity in the phrase) — one of those blighted Bonapartes whose star occa- sionally illumines the monotony of the Casino sky — you will know how to take fortune at the flood, or, what is even more important, to remember an engagement elsewhere when luck is against you. But such a genius is rare ; nascitur 7ion fit.
George Selwyn, in repentant old age, de- scribed play as one of the greatest consumers of time, fortune, constitution, and thinkino-. If history tells the truth, he had enjoyed every opportunity of knowing. Yet putting aside fortune and constitution, there are some who reckon the killing of time as one of its merits and many who do not want to think. No one seems to have discovered a sound basis for condemning gambling on moral grounds. Its excess is no doubt pernicious ; but that may be
47
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
said of many pleasures and pursuits quite innocent in themselves. It does not seem to be in itself demoralizing, for it has been the recreation of many of the greatest and most honoured among men. If it is accused of withdrawing men from more useful pursuits, the same may be said of golf and beggar-my- neighbour. It does not appear to do any injury to the Commonwealth, for it is merely the means of transferring money from one man's pocket to another (as does the Old Age Pensions' Scheme) ; and is, so far, less blame- worthy than some forms of extravagance. And it causes no suffering to any living thing, which cannot be said of field-sports. So perhaps we may conclude that the ladies and gentlemen, and others, who are sitting round that revolving wheel, are enjoying themselves in a very harm- less, if rather stupid, way ; and that if we only want to listen to the band, or to sit in a pleasant garden overlooking the bay, we ought to be obliged to them for paying for our amusement.
Yet it is a refreshment to turn from the somewhat banal atmosphere of such estabhsh- ments to the free air of the mountains. At
48
Toivn and Country Delights
this season of the year the weather in the hills is often less to be distrusted than it is a month later. At an altitude of five thousand feet, where snow may be lying to-morrow, you may find to-day a blazing sun, and be glad to ride in your shirt-sleeves.
The mountain scenery of Madeira, consider- ing its small area, is of surprising magnificence. The island is a little smaller than the Isle of Man, and about one-fourth larger than the Isle of Wight. The distance from Funchal on the south to Santa Anna on the north coast is only fourteen miles as the crow flies ; yet so devious is the road, so steep and numerous the ridges to be crossed, that the journey involves a ride of six or seven hours. Perhaps the most characteristic scenery is to be found in the valleys of the north side ; deep troughs which run right into the heart of the central chain, and at their head are surrounded by precipices several thousand feet high. Shaded by their aspect from the fiercer rays of the sun, and enjoying a moist atmosphere, for the valleys are often filled with cloud, these precipitous cliff's are clothed, wherever it can find a foot- ing, with a superb vegetation. The trees are
49 E
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
mostly of the laurel tribe, and under favour- able conditions are of great size and doubtless of great age. Beneath their shade, and on their trunks, ferns and mosses flourish in unbridled luxuriance. The traveller receives a just and agreeable impression of being surrounded by those primeval conditions, un- affected by man's handiwork, which are ever becoming rarer in the more easily accessible portions of the world's surface. The majority of these valleys are rarely trodden by civilized man. A visit to them necessitates sleeping at one of the villages on the north coast, where accommodation is still very limited and primi- tive ; and owing to the absence of demand it seems rather to have deteriorated than advanced during recent years.
Much of the finest scenery of Madeira is rendered accessible to the adventurous through the levadas^ or channels, by which water is collected in the higher hills and brought down to irrigate the lower regions. They are com- monly cut out of the rock, or built of masonry, on the steep hillsides, and the watercourse is usually protected by a parapet about eighteen inches wide. Their construction must often
50
Toiun and Country Delights
have presented great difficulties, it having been necessary in many cases to let down the work- men by ropes from above. As their existence is essential to the cultivation of the lower lands they are generally kept in good repair, and those who have steady heads, and dare to walk by so narrow a path along the face of giant precipices, may reach magnificent scenery other- wise unapproachable. As the levadas must of course follow every deviation of the hillside their length is often very great, and it may sometimes involve a walk of fifteen or twenty miles to reach a point not more than two or three miles distant in a straight line. Here and there it may be necessary to creep through tunnels, and perhaps to walk in the water- channel itself ; sometimes an overhanging rock will make the passage of the narrow parapet, with a thousand feet of precipice below, a rather blood-curdling business ; but the reward is great. We are conducted into the very heart and penetralia of the mountain solitude, and may feast our eyes on ever-changing vistas of forest-clad cliffs and soaring crags.
It happens that a point of view in one of the grandest and most typical valleys of the north
51
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
may be visited with great ease from Funchal in a day's excursion. Two thousand feet above the town lies on the steep hillside the hamlet and church of Monte. The main road to the north runs through, and ascends rapidly above, to a pass which crosses the principal chain of mountains at a height of 4500 feet. A cog- wheel railway takes one very easily up from Funchal to "the Mount." The village is a favourite resort of the townsfolk on holidays, and is visited annually by thousands of pas- sengers from steamers calling at the port for a few hours. They ascend by the railway and return in " running cars " down the Mount Road. These cars are, I believe, peculiar to Madeira. They are made of wickerwork and mounted on sledges, and descend the steep roads around Funchal very rapidly, chiefly by the force of their own momentum. They are guided by two men by means of ropes fixed to the front of the car, and where propulsion is necessary, the men stand with one foot on the back of the car and push with the other behind. From the Mount you may proceed to the hills above on foot or on horseback ; or in the ancient Madeira mode you may be carried by
52
Toivn and Country Delights
men in a hammock slung on a pole. The hammock, and the palanquin were formerly the chief means of locomotion for ladies in town or country ; the hammock is still used for mountain excursions, and by aged priests when visiting their parishioners. A combi- nation of riding and walking is the pleasantest method for those who are equal to it. So on one of the earliest days of the year we start from the Mount for the Ribeiro Frio, "the Cold River," a stream running northward from the main chain, near to which is a celebrated point of view, the spot chosen for our picnic. A dog and several horses, with their attendants, form our cavalcade ; the first has made many a mountain excursion before, but he is still under the impression that he is brought out to hunt the half-wild goats that browse upon the hillsides. We ascend rapidly through pine-woods, pausing where there is an opening to look back at the city lying below us, and away to the westward to the great mass of Capo Girao, a headland with a sheer front to the sea. It has been said to be the highest sea-clifFin the world, but is surpassed by many on the Norwegian coast, and doubtless elsewhere.
53
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
To the east, a mist almost lilac in hue, envel- opes without concealing the Desertas. When we emerge from the pine-woods, at an altitude of nearly four thousand feet, we enter a bleak moorland region with great heaths and bilberry- bushes. There is an agreeable haze in the sky to prevent the sun from being too hot ; at this altitude the air is very fresh but not cold. Our enjoyment and exhilaration there is naught to mar. I expect, from past experience, that we may find the northern valleys filled with cloud ; but we are in luck, and they prove to be as clear as the southern slope. Liability to disappointment from this cause is a risk of Madeira travel. Our uphill journey ends at a shelter-hut on the top of the pass, where the northern ocean comes into view. Thirty miles off, on the horizon, lies the mountainous island of Porto Santo, and to our left the highest peaks of Madeira, Ruivo and Arriero. Hence we begin the descent across another moorland tract, the mountain views becoming at every step grander and better defined. From the moor we reach the valley by a road of steep zigzags, in woods of laurel, with an undergrowth of fern. Through this
54
Toioii and Country Delights
forest glade, which has been compared rather fancifully to the scenery of Killarney, meanders the Cold River. But this is not what we have come out to see. We leave our horses on its banks, ascend a slope of some two hundred feet to a levada, pass along it by a cutting through one of the narrow ridges characteristic of Madeira scenery, and in a few minutes are in the presence of one of the world's great views. Climbing on to an isolated rock we look down into the vast valley of the Metade, with its precipitous sides rising apparently sheer from its floor upwards some five thousand feet to the pinnacles of the highest mountains. That they are not so precipitous as they look we may judge from the fact that the lower cliifs are clothed everywhere with a wealth of vegetation. The valley is widest, and circular in form, at its head. Mysterious and only half-seen minor valleys branch from the main body, separated from each other by the buttresses of the mountain range. Far below us foams the torrent, a small stream itself, but dowered by the reverberations of a thousand echoes with the roar of a great river. High over all tower the masses of Ruivo and Arriero, and the
55
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
inaccessible crags of the Torres which lie between them. They are clear to-day, and are perhaps less overwhelmingly grand than when a belt of mist lies below their summits. But too often they are completely hidden in cloud, and to-day we may rejoice that we have not made our journey in vain.
As filled with a delight not unmixed with awe, we linger in the presence of this majestic scene, scarcely touched and in no way spoilt by the hand of man, we may reflect with wonder on the sentiments with regard to mountains which prevailed not only in the ancient world, but in the modern down to a very recent period. To-day, certainly to Northerners, perhaps especially to those who have in them something of Celtic breeding, the attraction of the mountain, of the stern and terrible in Nature, is immense. It exercises over many minds that " cleansing of the pas- sions " which Aristotle ascribes to tragedy. It may be that it marks a reaction from our flagrant sacrifice of the softer beauties of Nature to our coarser needs, from the grimy hideous- ness and meanness of our towns, and the pro- gressive despoilment of our rural amenities. In
56
Toimi and Countrij Delights
this form of barbarism, perhaps, no nation rivals the British ; and it may be that the British, as a nation, are the chief mountain-lovers.
To the Greeks and Romans, says Humboldt, only the homely was pleasant in a landscape, not what we call the wild and romantic. To the Middle Ages, and for long after the Renaissance, the idea of the romantic was foreign ; and the love of Nature in her savage, and what we call her grander, moods found until the latter half of the eighteenth century only rare and isolated expression. The last two centuries have witnessed many revolutions in human thought and sentiment. Perhaps none is more striking than this new-born worship of the mountain.
In the great days of Rome, innumerable travellers were constantly traversing the passes of Switzerland. They saw in them only Livy's fceditas Alpiunty the hideousness of the Alps. They had no eye but for " the difficulties of the narrow mule-paths, the wilderness of ice and snow, the horror of the avalanches." This is the reason why "of the eternal snow of the Alps, ruddy in sunset or sunrise, of the mar- vellous blue of the glaciers, of the magnificence
57
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
of the Swiss landscape, no ancient said one word ; it is why Silius Italicus describes the Alps as a horrifying barren desert, whilst lovingly dwelling on Italy's ravines and wooded shores." It has been pointed out in mitigation of their blindness that modern travellers to the Arctic desolations of ice have been equally impervious to the terrible majesty of those regions, destined perhaps some day to be the playground of a jaded townsfolk. "We have to wait many centuries for the awakening. I find that even Horace Walpole, writing from Turin in 1739, after crossing the Alps for the first time, has nothing to say of them but " such uncouth rocks, and such uncomely inhabitants." But he is full of sentiment concerning the loss of his pet King Charles " Tory," which was carried off by a wolf.
To the crowds which now find an almost exaggerated delight in the moors and lochs of Scotland, the words of Dr. Johnson on his tour in 1773 would seem to refer to another planet. He describes the dreary monotony of the treeless moors and naked hills : "An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by the wide
5S
Tolou and Country Delights
extent of hopeless sterility." This is the classical note ; Nature untamed or untamable by man is repellant. The idea took form in the gardens of the ancients, reproduced in those of the Renaissance. The modern English garden, with its groups of shrubs and its flowers in masses, recalling Nature's own arrangements, its " wild garden " and its " naturalizations " — the "English plan of freakish Nature," as Goethe called it — is based on quite a different set of feelings from those which found expres- sion (to quote a historic sentence) in the " voluptuous parterre, the trim garden, and the expensive pleasure-grounds, where effeminacy was wont to saunter, or indolence to loll." Is not the charm we find in the gardens of the Renaissance, such as those of Tivoli or Frascati, chiefly due to the fact that Nature has reasserted her sway ? Should we find it all if the balustrades were cleansed of their lichens, the broken steps and pillars put into a thorough state of repair, and the gnarled trunks of ancient trees, the dense thickets of ancient shrubs, replaced by the neat greenery of the earlier days ?
The jaded Roman Emperor offered a great
59
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
reward to the man who would discover for him a new pleasure ; surely we moderns have found one in our new-born love for Nature's greater works — the blue glaciers and soaring peaks of the Alps ; the vast snow-caps and sombre fjords of Norway ; the jagged pinnacles and forest-clad cliffs of this volcanic island.
Yet as we gaze to-day, the 4th of January, 1909 — our minds full of the Sicilian catas- trophe— across the vast cauldron of the Metade valley to the fire-scarred crags of Arriero and the Torres, perhaps there mingles with our admiration some remnant of the ancient feeling of horror at such evidence of the terrific and ruthless forces of Nature. This island stands six thousand feet high, amid sea-depths more than twice as great. It has been piled up on the ocean's bed by a series of eruptions repeated again and again, sometimes in rapid succession, sometimes at long intervals, over a period of time to be reckoned by tens of thousands of years. Earthquakes have riven the layers of solid rock and filled the fissures with lava, now to be seen in the form of dykes inter- secting the highest hills. To earthquakes are due the vast rendings of the rock which
60
Town and Country Delights
through the subsequent action of the elements have become those " trenches of the long- drawn vales " that delight us to-day. Every- where, in highland and lowland alike, we behold traces of a prolonged and appalling volcanic activity. For many centuries it has been stilled, and we who dwell upon its slumbering ashes may dare to hope that the forces which gave it birth will rest for ever contented with their labour.
6i
Chapter IV—JiANUz/fRr
The Garden in Mid-Winter
" Profusion bright ! and every flower assuming A more than natural vividness of" hue, From unaffected contrast with the gloom Of sober cypress."
Wordsworth.
T
HE effect of the copious rainfall of last autumn is still felt in our garden. Never before in mid- January have we been so rich in flowers ; never have the roses especially bloomed with such a reckless abandon.
I have already related that six years ago our house stood in the middle of several acres of banana trees, with a small garden plot in front. The whole property is on a moderate slope, facing to the south-east, and is divided into about half a dozen main terraces. We resisted the blandishments of those who would have us lay out a garden on a preconceived scheme. In succeeding years we have taken different pieces
62
The Garden in Mid-Winter
of ground from the fazenda^ and turned them into flower garden ; — here a little lawn with a belt of white datura on either side ; there a walk bordered by cypresses, which serve as frames for exquisite views of sea and mountain ; here a long pergola covered with roses, William Allen Richardson and Marechal Niel ; there a little winding path, bordered with rosemary, among tall shrubs, the many- hued Jcalapha, and the giant Strelitzia with its strangely beaked blossom. This method of proceeding has had the advantage of giving us continued employment, and if we do not use up all our ground too quickly, may be con- tinued almost indefinitely. An old quarry, the floor of which we found a potato field, has become a rich jungle of tree-ferns, various flowering shrubs, arum lilies, cannas, scarlet salvias, and many another ; its walls hung with Bignonia, Bougainville a ^ and white roses. On either side of the entrance drive, which ascends in a curve from the gate to the level of the house, we cleared a broad belt in which palms rise from a carpet of geranium and pelargonium^ and are already asserting their supremacy over lesser trees and shrubs. The iron railing which
63
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
bounds this drive is no longer visible, being covered from end to end with the Chinese white single rose, not as yet in flower, but in March to be resplendent in snow-white purity. The little pond was deprived of its melancholy duck, and is now a watery wilderness of papyrus and lilies. The general effect is not unpleasing. It may be that it lacks dignity and repose, but it is typically Madeiran, a glorified and extended cottage-garden. And it is rich not only in colour but in variety and surprise.
One thing these Southern gardens lack, the
" Wet, bird-haunted English lawn."
Grass can be grown, with care and trouble, but it is not quite the same thing. And it is a question whether it is worth while to strive at all for that in which we cannot hope to attain a reasonable degree of success. In gardening, as in other things, which is our best course : to cultivate what suits our earth and climate to perfection — to develop our potentialities on their natural lines, or to set ourselves to fight with obstacles ; to grow rhododendrons in chalky Sussex, or to foster the reluctant primrose here ? Different natures will give different
64
The Garden in Mid-Winter
answers ; mine would be whole-heartedly for making the best of circumstances. There may- be great men, and great gardeners, who claim to mould the world, and its soils, to their will ; history is witness that they generally come to grief in the end. So let us waste little time upon our turf here, and if we wish to see it in perfection, after its " rolling and cutting once a week for a thousand years," let us revisit the Oxford of our youth in May.
There is no great change this month in the ordinary run of our garden flowers. The sweet peas are growing apace, but it will be February before they bloom. A magnificent IVigandia is rearing its great purple heads above a wealth of giant green leaves. For stately dignity it is unsurpassed, and its rapid growth is prodigious. Three years ago a small plant in a pot was given to us by a friend, and to-day masses of it, twelve feet high and flowering profusely, are perhaps the most striking feature of our garden.
Like the roses, the flowering climbers are this winter beautiful without precedent. The orange Bignonia indeed is beginning to show signs of decadence, but the Bougainvilleas are
65 F
Leaves from a Jladeira Garden
now superb. Their splendour is due not to the flower proper, which is insignificant, but to the coloured bracts which surround it. Four or five species flourish here — purple, rose, red, and mauve. The purple is the strongest grower, and produces the most startling mass of colour — perhaps unrivalled in Nature ; it may be that the rose, which is more uncommon and less sturdy, is the loveliest. But each has its votaries, and the wise will be content to admire all without setting one above the others. The beautiful blue-grey Thuyihergia is in flower, but not in its full pride ; and among less prominent climbers the scarlet passion-flower and a delicate mauve Solanum attract atten- tion. The '' Morning Glory," unique among flowering plants for the sheen of its steely blue, is passing. Coba'a scandens clothes our verandah with a never-failing wealth of graceful bloom, and with it mixes a dainty climbing asparagus covered now with small white flowers.
Among orchids, the great pots of various Cypripedia^ which for the last month have decorated our drawing-room, are beginning to show signs of wear. Of these perhaps the
66
Tiie Garden in Mid-Winter
most striking in colour is C. Lathamianum. Their place will be taken by some fine Czlogyne, now beginning to hang their snow-white blooms in profusion. Various species of Dendrobiuin will take their turn later. All these are here of very easy culture, the chief difficulty being to induce our gardeners not to drown them in our absence.
And in this ineradicable passion for over- watering lies one of our chief troubles. Water is here a valuable and expensive commodity. Each property possesses so many hours' run of water from the le^jada per fortnight ; and it is possible to purchase these rights, or to buy water by the hour from a neighbour who is short of cash. Stealing it by turning the stream intended for his tank into your own is a cheaper and more popular method of obtaining it. So important is the estimate of rights to water, that if you are contemplating the purchase of a piece of ground, the vendor will probably dilate to you, not of its acreage, its soil, its aspect, or its prospective building value, but of the hours of water it possesses. Doubtless in the uneducated mind the ownership of many hours confers a kind of distinction (such as the
67
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
possession of many wives brings to a Kaffir chief), and your garden boy feels that he is doing honour to himself in serving a " patron " who can afford to let him stand and pour forth the precious liquid from a hose, especially where it isn't wanted. It is almost as good fun as letting off fireworks, and, besides, it is easier work than digging or weeding or sweep- ing. And so we find that those portions of the garden where the water-tap is handy and the hose can be easily adjusted are con- tinually in a swampy condition, and if the roses are mildewed and other things "damp off" it is not surprising. We are waging war this year against this continual inunda- tion, but it is hard to fight with prejudiced ignorance.
The absence of any garden knowledge among the working people here is indeed a great trial, especially when one is only present one's self for a third of the year, and the most important operations, the pruning of roses and so on, have to be conducted in our absence. It is an immense tribute to the vitality of the vegetation that our gardens do as well as they do. It would of course be easy to bring over
68
The Garden in Mid-Winter
an English gardener, but there is the difficulty of the language to be considered ; and English- men of that class too frequently develop an abnormal thirst in this climate when left to themselves.
But though they have little knowledge of their craft, being ignorant even of the names of all but the commonest flowers, they are as a rule pleasant fellows to work with, willing and eager to oblige. Our first head gardener, Manoel, might with education have gone far ; in middle life he had taught himself to read and write not only Portuguese but English. Miss Dowie has told us that all the gardeners she has met are "blighted carpenters." Manoel was a blighted politician, foreign politics being his speciality. He was intensely interested in the Russo-Japanese war, and could give you a full estimate of the land and sea forces of either nation. Like almost all the Portuguese, gentle and simple, he took the Russian side, being influenced by a consideration which rather strangely carried no weight in England — that the Russians were Christians, and the Japanese not. To them this war was but another phase of the eternal struggle between Christendom
69
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
and Paganism. But though something of an idealist, Manoel was not wanting in a certain practical wisdom. I inquired why he was having his little bright-eyed son taught French rather than English, He replied, " Not many people here know French ; my cousin Jos^, he can speak French very well. One winter, many years ago, a rich Russian gentleman come to Madeira, and take the Quinta Vigia. None of his servants speak any Portuguese or any English, only French. The rich Russian gentleman take my cousin Jose into his house to arrange everything for him, and to buy everything he want. When the Russian gentle- man go away, my cousin Jos6, he very rich man, he go to Calheta and buy a property, and never do any more work. Perhaps some day another Russian gentleman come here ; so I will have my little boy learn French." This custom of regarding the foreign visitor as a milch cow is deeply ingrained in the servant class here. It is a consideration ever present to us in our dealings with our otherwise excellent cook, whose pleasant and profitable business it is to market for us. We hear dark rumours that he is buying house property in the town, and
70
The Garden in Mid-Winter
we have an uneasy feeling that if every one had his due, those houses would be ours. Manoel, with all his merits, had one serious weakness ; he did not carry his " aguardente " well, and became very quarrelsome in his cups. One Christmas afternoon we were seated quietly in our verandah, when a dishevelled, tear-stained and voluble Manoel appeared to inform us that either he or Silva must die. Now, Silva is our " odd man," and does nine-tenths of the house- work, and we could ill afford to lose him. Our fears were groundless, as next morning I dis- covered the two playing cards amicably together among the bananas. We were willing to over- look a little excess at Christmas time, but Manoel's lapses became too frequent, and he fell. He bears no ill will, and when I meet him in the street, he hopes the master is well, and inquires with respect of the mistress.
Our next head gardener was of a different type. He really knew a little — a very little — about his work ; unfortunately he thought he knew everything, and generally regarded my proceedings with a sickly toleration. One compliment he did indeed pay me, and I have
71
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
treasured the memory of it as a testimony that some of my labours were appreciated. We were leaving for England, and he came to me and said, " Now the patron is going away, I shall want another garden-boy." He was always worried about the "muito tra- balho " of his place, and the inadequacy of his ample salary ; and so we decided that he had better find another situation.
We have now promoted an excellent youth who has been with us as an under-gardener for several years. Carlos is a typical Madeira country boy, with thick-set, sturdy frame, crisp black hair and laughing eyes. He is overjoyed at his rise in the world, and for some days murmured " muito contente " whenever I went within a few yards of him. He is to get married on the strength of it, and his fiancee can fortunately read and write, and will be able to keep his accounts. He is to bring his bride to our garden cottage, and perhaps before long we may have the luck to see some nice little black-eyed Carloses and Carlottas playing among our chickens and turkeys, and pulling the much-bitten ears of our cross old mongrel " Yap."
7«
The Garden in Mid-Winter
Carlos has enjoyed the benefit of some military training, but having passed the age of twenty-five he is relieved from the fear of service in the army. These sturdy Portu- guese countrymen make very well set-up soldiers. They are of great strength and endurance, 'and, if somewhat excitable, gifted with a certain doggedness. Wellington wrote of his Portuguese troops in the Peninsula, when well paid and well fed, as the " fighting- cocks " of his army.
The good manners which are so marked a characteristic of the Portuguese upper classes are shared by the lower. To their social superiors they are respectful without servility, and they are uniformly courteous to each other. Servants have a pleasant way of ex- hibiting; an interest in their masters' health and well-being ; if I meet our cook in the morning he never fails to express a hope that the patron has passed a good night. A master is expected to address his servants as " Vosse Merce " — " Your worship " — a form of speech we too often omit.
The Portuguese master does not need Lord Chesterfield's advice to his godson : " There
73
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
is a degree of good breeding towards those who are greatly your inferiors which is in truth common humanity and good nature ; and yet I have known some persons, who in other respects were well bred, brutal to their servants and dependants. This is mean, and implies a hardness of heart, of which I am sure you never will be guilty."
Most Portuguese titles and modes of address are somewhat exaggerated. In writing to an equal, you put on the envelope, " Illustrissimo Excellentissimo Senhor," which may be taken as the equivalent of our " Esq." Servants, even labourers, invariably use " Senhor " and " Senhora " in speaking to each other. A small and perky boy, whom we have made porter at our gate, always hazards a remark to me on the weather as I pass in or out ; and if I do not immediately understand it, shouts at me as if I were deaf. He is growing very fat on his congenial occupation, but it is to be feared that he will find the summer, when our kitchen is closed, a saison maigre.
If our servants are to us a strange and in- teresting study, what must we be to them ? We come heaven knows whence, not at the
74
The Garden in Mid-Winter
joyous season of the vintage, but when days are shortest and rains are cold ; we profess an impious religion which will conduct us surely to damnation ; our manners are odious — we don't even know how to take ofF our hats ; we make a ridiculous fuss about boiled water and such trifles ; our pockets are apparently overflowing with boundless wealth, and yet we make ourselves hot digging in the garden ; we scour inhospitable mountains with no com- prehensible object ; we are always hunting for old and rickety chairs and tables, and paying for them at least the price of new ones ; we exhibit and expect a most uncomfortable amount of energy, when there is really no necessity to hurry or to fuss ; and just when the warmth of spring is flooding our gardens, which we profess to love, with the richest treasures, we are off again. Truly must we be sunk in
" The depth of that consuming restlessness Which makes man's greatest woe."
The servants' view does not often leak out ; when it does it is not always flattering to the masters. " There has happened," wrote Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, " a comical
75
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
circumstance at Leicester House ; one of the Prince's coachmen, who used to drive the Maids of Honour, was so sick of them, that he has left his son three hundred pounds, upon condition that he never marries a Maid of Honour."
One of the pleasures of a garden is to show it to the appreciative visitor ; and this is a pleasure which we very frequently enjoy here. New-comers usually express genuine astonish- ment at the floral luxuriance, and friends who land from passing steamers are of course pre- pared to enjoy anything. One nice young soldier-cousin who passed by last week won our hearts by saying, "Well, I've never seen a garden before ; they buck about their gardens in India, but they don't know what a garden is." Some visitors are a little trying with their excessive botanical knowledge. The study of nurserymen's catalogues has had a distressing effect. Following the lead of these publications there are people who, regardless alike of poetry and of grammar, will habitually speak of columbines as aquikgias^ of snap- dragons as antirrhinums^ of forget-me-not as myosotis, even of lilies as liliums. They are the
76
The Garden in 3Iid^Winter
sort of people, as Lady Grove might say, who would call a napkin a " serviette." A serious stand ought to be made against this sort of thing. Those who know their Parkinson may sigh for more of the good old words ; but " gilliflower, the pride of our English gardens," and too many of its contemporaries, are dead beyond hope of resurrection. The greater our duty to our country and to posterity to hold fast by such of the ancient names as still have life in them. To preserve the pansy or heart's-ease, fairest of flower-names, from yielding place to violay is surely worth an effort. Some old-fashioned garden flowers seem to have been spared as yet. The hollyhock is still with us ; I do not hear mignonette spoken of as reseda^ though even that may come ; and the worst offenders have not dis- covered the botanical names of sweet-peas and stocks.
In our Madeira gardens, rich with
" Flowers of all heavens and lovelier than their names,"
we have so many plants not yet endowed with English titles, that we are driven perforce to the Botanical Dictionary. Perhaps if Mr.
77
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
Kipling, or some one else with the gift of speech, were to pay us a visit, he might in a week or two supply us with some reason- able answers to the constant query, " Oh ! Can you tell me what that is ? " We ought to be able to reply, " It is the Silver Restbringer, a kind of water-cress from Central China, where a decoction of its leaves is prepared for the use of such members of the imperial family as contemplate the happy dispatch." But accord- ing to the present rules of the game, this would not be playing it, and we are compelled to answer, " It is Schwarzenbachia Griesenfeldit minima^ var. zigzagia Veitchiiy^ and our guest murmurs, " Oh, really ! " and the incident is closed. I nurse — I positively dandle — an ever- lively grievance that the splendid flowering shrubs of the banana tribe are called by the awful name Strelitzia. What in the world is the Duchy doing in this galley ? Latin generic names are not of necessity hideous or unfitting. Those which are based on some peculiarity of the plant or its habitat are the pleasantest ; such zs geranium^ "crane's bill ;" arenaria,^' sand- wort ; " saxifragay " stone-breaker." Names derived from celebrated botanists, if often ugly,
78
I The Garden in 3Iid-Winter
are perhaps not Inappropriate ; such are Wigandia from Wigand, and Solandra from Solander. Those who have had the good fortune to see Linnaa horealis trailing In its native marsh will honour the great master for linking his name with this loveliest and lowliest of plants. But to burden a fine shrub for all time with the title of a mere Grand Duke is an outrage.
And If there Is some excuse for the botanists who must furnish urbi et orbi a name of bastard Greek and Latin for universal acceptance and use, there is less for the florists. It is sad that one of our finest roses here — luxuriant In growth and rich In tint beyond experience — should bear the prosaic name of William Allen Richardson, a gentleman otherwise unknown to fame. Herr Druschki's wife may, as far as I know, personify all the virtues, but is it not cruel to condemn a supremely pure and delicate rose to bear the harsh-sounding title Frau Karl Druschki ? Nor has Oberhofgartner Terks a pleasant sound to English ears. A Society for the Protection of Flowers from being called Bad Names Is one of the crying needs of the day. When the Board of Agriculture can
79
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
spare time from the pursuit of gooseberry mildew it ought to take the matter up ; but I fear that until a florist or two has been lynched nothing will be done.
Fine as has been the weather for the past four or five weeks, January is not to pass without a touch of winter. Winter for us means a strong north wind, from which Funchal is well sheltered, bringing more or less snow to the mountains, where it generally lies for a few days, and copious showers to the lowlands. The rain is not continuous but broken by short spells of sunshine, with some- thing of the " uncertain glory of an April day." The thermometer falls at night to 50 degrees, or half a degree lower, and the mid-day shade temperature is 56 degrees to 58 degrees. We amuse ourselves by grumbling at the bitter cold, and are pleased to light a fire of fir-cones in the evening. Our roses are battered to pieces, but all things will flourish with renewed vigour when the steady sunshine comes again. And to the agriculturist these plentiful showers are very grateful. They do not wash the soil away like the torrential rains which sometimes come from the west ; but sink gradually into
80
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The Garden in Mid-Winter
it. And the snow on the hills will fill the springs. So the heart of the farmer is glad within him. But he always asks for m.ore.
8i
Chapter V—J^NUi^RT Plague and Riot
" Diseases, desperate grown, By desperate appliance are relieved Or not at all." — Hamlet.
THREE years ago a remarkable episode, savouring rather of the Middle Ages than of our time, occurred here. It illustrates the distrust of the learned, especially of doctors, which still lingers among the uneducated, and it is full of lessons as to how things should not be done. It threw a new light on the nature of the people, previously supposed to be more than docile, and unwilling under any circum- stances to lift a hand against constituted authority. And it had an undoubted effect on their general character and demeanour.
The Government, being well aware that the ordinary sanitary requirements of a civilized country are not fulfilled here, is extremely
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Plague and Riot
nervous about the importation of serious in- fectious diseases, especially bubonic plague and cholera. There are good grounds for this state of apprehension. A large number of steamers call here from Southern ports, especially those of South America, and strangers are constantly coming and going. Waterborne diseases are invited by the primitive character of the water-supply. Water, pure in its source, is brought from the hills in open conduits, and in its passage is liable to pollution of every kind. The absence of an effective drainage system is perhaps less serious, as owing to the numerous fissures in the volcanic rock, impurities find their own way of escape. Arrangements for the isolation and proper treatment of disease are, or were, inadequate ; and above all the funds at the disposal of the local authorities are quite insufficient to deal with an outbreak.
And if an epidemic occurs the indirect results are likely to be far more serious to the island than the mere sickness itself. There is a dense population living under conditions of extrava- gant protection, amounting almost to State Socialism, and engaged in an industry created and fostered by the State, for whose welfare the
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State is peculiarly responsible. And if steamers ceased to call, and foreigners absented them- selves, the large number of people which lives on traffic with them, directly or indirectly, would be face to face with starvation. Yet years roll on and nothing very dreadful happens, and little in the way of sanitary improvement is carried out, in spite of much talk about it. But the underlying nervousness is always there.
On our arrival here in December, 1905, we were told that a few cases of plague were said to have occurred ; *' but," added our informant, "it isn't plague, it's all politics." The word " politics " here is of wider application than with us ; it may truly be said to cover a multitude of sins. After some perplexity we discovered the suggestion to be that the authorities thought an epidemic would be a help to a water scheme they were urging on the Lisbon Government, on the principle of getting up a war-scare to carry naval votes. But this seems to have been a libel. In fact, the existence of plague was never officially admitted ; the disease if it existed, and what- ever it was, was described as "infectious fever."
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It appeared that two or three weeks earlier a woman of the middle class had been taken to the Lazaretto suffering from a disease pro- nounced by the doctor in charge to be bubonic plague. It was stated that he exhibited to some of his colleagues the characteristic plague bacilli. Other cases of suspicious disease followed and were removed to the Lazaretto. Thither also were taken for isolation and dis- infection the families of the patients. It was reported that the disease was taking a pneu- monic form of a particularly insidious and dangerous character.
Up to this point the authorities seem to have acted in the only way possible. Granted the existence of a serious infectious disease, as they were informed by their medical adviser was the case, it was their duty to endeavour by isolating the patients and those who had been in contact with them to stamp it out. Where they broke down, and occasioned the subse- quent trouble with its far-reaching conse- quences, was in the neglect of proper methods, especially as regards publicity. People in con- siderable numbers were taken to the Lazaretto ; no official news as to what was passing within
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its walls was published. Patients died and no notice of their death reached their friends. So, at any rate, it was commonly said. The wildest rumours began to gain currency. The ignorant believed that the doctors inoculated people and murdered them ; some of the better educated asserted that the whole thing was being run as a financial speculation by the Lazaretto doctor, who was paid so much a head for those under his charge. Sinister stories of the treatment of women and girls were widely spread abroad. Meantime people of influence, whose interest was against any interference with the shipping trade of the island, were strenuously denying the jexistence of any sickness at all, and the Government was watering it down to " infectious fever."
A veritable reign of terror resulted. To be taken to the Lazaretto was feared as a sentence of death. People who had been in contact with patients ran away and hid themselves to escape the dreaded isolation. I happened one day to look over my garden wall and to see the chief of police and several constables with an ambu- lance-car standing outside a neighbouring cot- tage. I inquired their object, and was told
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that for some days they had been looking for a woman whose brother had been taken as a patient to the Lazaretto, and that they had found her hiding with relations there. They took her away, and we heard subsequently that she died that night from heart-failure due to shock.
Three days later, on Sunday, January 7, the crisis came. A few soldiers who were isolated at the Lazaretto succeeded in getting a message carried to their comrades at the barracks, asking them to deliver them. On the Sunday morning a band of a hundred soldiers, accompanied by several hundreds of the townsfolk, and countrymen from the surrounding hills, attacked and broke into the Lazaretto, liberated their comrades and others who were in quarantine, and carried from the hospital the sick patients to their own homes. This carrying was a veritable procession of triumph, and was succeeded by great rejoicings. It was with mixed feelings that we heard next day that our cook had visited a friend of his who had been brought to his home on his bed, and that a housemaid had attended an impromptu dance at another
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patient's house. After this, we felt we could only await developments.
The Lazaretto doctor succeeded in escaping the fury of the mob, which would have made short work of him. His house in the town was attacked, and there was some shooting by the police who defended it, happily without fatal result. An attack on the prison in which a few of the rioters who were arrested were lodged was not pressed home, and failed. But the authorities were now practically powerless ; the town was quite out of hand, and a portion of the garrison being implicated, it could not be depended on. As soon as the news reached Lisbon the Government acted with commend- able promptitude. The smart cruiser Dom Carlos was at once dispatched ; and when thirty hours later, having made the fastest passage on record, she steamed into the port, the cause of law and order was saved. The Lazaretto doctor found his way on board, it was said, disguised as an old woman. His name is still execrated here, and probably even now his life would not be safe.
But the sanitary situation now looked very serious. Sick persons had been withdrawn
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from the Lazaretto and spread over the town, and hundreds or thousands of people had been in contact with them. If one was to believe in the existence of plague, one could only expect a great outbreak within a week or two. But nothing happened. The sick recovered, and no further case of suspicious sickness occurred. This of course confirmed the unbelievers in their disbelief, and the ignorant in their distrust of doctors. To a dispassionate observer it appears incredible that a doctor should invent and exploit an epidemic for his personal gain ; yet that such was the case we were solemnly assured by serious people. The truth may never be fully known ; what happened is probably that a few cases of plague did occur, but that the disease was stamped out in the early days, and that the sick persons removed later were suffering from non-infectious pneu- monia or less serious complaints.
Eighteen months afterwards, in the summer of 1907, there was a serious outbreak of a mysterious disease, said to be septic pneu- monia of a plague type, at S. Antonio, a suburb of Funchal. Fourteen persons, includ- ing a doctor, were attacked, and the fourteen
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died. A fifteenth, a doubtful case, recovered. The energetic governor of the day — it was during Franco's rule in Portugal, of which more hereafter — personally superintended the isolation of the sick, and the threatened epidemic was stayed.
During the riots the Lazaretto had been somewhat damaged, and subsequently the hated building was completely looted and gutted, and rendered quite unfit for use. The Government took no steps to put it in order, probably being unwilling to incur the unpopu- larity and the expense of doing so. The punishment that followed was swift and bitter.
Early in the following winter a mariner was landed from a steamer suffering from what proved to be small-pox. Whether as a result of his case or not, within a few weeks the disease became prevalent in the poor quarters of the town, chiefly among the families of the boatmen. For twenty years or more there had been no serious outbreak here, and the greater part of the population, especially the youthful part, was unvaccinated. The Lazaretto having been wrecked, and being moreover in very bad
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odour with the people from the events of the previous year, there was no hospital to which patients could be taken, and no provision for their isolation. The authorities adopted the remarkable expedient of placing a policeman outside an infected house to prevent ingress or egress. How the poor people were to live was a question apparently ignored. And the absurdity of the arrangement was grimly ex- hibited when a policeman caught the disease and died. A private subscription was got up to supply food and medicines as far as possible, but it is not surprising that the disease spread with great rapidity, that it began to appear all over the town and in the suburbs, and that it assumed a virulent type. The statistics showed that amonff six hundred cases there were two hundred deaths. Probably this proportion is misleading, as there may have been numerous mild cases of which little or no notice was taken.
At first there was considerable disinclination among the populace to be vaccinated. A dis- trust of doctors, an evil heritage of the plague trouble, was prevalent. For our part we in- sisted on the vaccination of our employes^ and
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when we announced that it should be done by an English doctor with English lymph, the reluctance disappeared. We invited them to bring their relations, which many of them did.
The redeeming feature of such a crisis is that it always produces acts of heroism and un- selfishness. Such were not wanting here. The doyen of the medical profession, Dr. Mourao Pitta — for many years Vice-Consul of France, a fine example of the old-fashioned doctor, a man of culture and of the world, of wide sympathies and many social gifts, a welcome guest at every man's table and a genial host at his own — wore himself out in visiting the poorest of the sick in their squalid homes. He was not strong or young enough to bear the continuous strain, and died a victim of blood- poisoning contracted in the course of his labours. His self-sacrifice added one more name to the roll of martyrs which honours his profession ; and his death left a void in many lives.
When things were at their worst, when it appeared likely that the disease would extend all over the island, and that with the dis- organization of trade widespread distress would
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result, a very noble English lady went to the Government and offered, if the Lazaretto were at once put in order, to take charge of it, and to nurse as many patients as it would contain. Miss Wilson has spent much of her life in nursing the sick poor of this island ; she is of their own religion, and is the head of a devoted band of sisters. The Government was prepared to find the funds for the repairs and furnishing, but no more. Miss Wilson took the chance of what might happen afterwards, and the work was hurriad on. In a fortnight the hospital was ready for occupation. The confidence of the people having been won by Miss Wilson's previous labours among them, no objections were raised by them to the removal thither of the sick. But there were no funds available for their feeding and attend- ance when there. Miss Wilson was not daunted. She had perfect trust, as I have had the privilege of hearing from her own lips, that Heaven would provide. And her prayer was not un- answered. On the day before one hundred and eighty people were to be moved to the hospital, a yacht unexpectedly entered the port. The owner, hearing what was going on, sent her a
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cheque for ^^50. This was the beginning of a continuous stream of charity, which left her for not one moment in trouble about funds. She was enabled to purchase every requisite and comfort for the patients, even toys for the children. And from that moment the plague was stayed. It began to decline in the town, and it did not spread to the remoter parts of the island. Its final disappearance was coincident with an exceptionally strong and intensely hot "Leste," the dry east wind which sometimes blows from the Sahara, and brings its dust across the intervening three hundred miles of sea.
It is satisfactory to know that Miss Wilson's great services were fully appreciated and publicly recognized. The Queen of Portugal took the lead in doing honour to her, and press and pulpit and private citizens joined in a chorus of gratitude. And surely we English have great reason to be proud of our countrywoman.
It must not be inferred from the somewhat lugubrious contents of this chapter that we live here in a constant state of epidemic sickness. The reverse is the fact. In spite of all the invitations to zymotic diseases held out by the
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habits of the people and the sanitary short- comings of the Government, they seldom get a hold here. Possibly the outdoor life of the people and the qualities of the air have some- thing to do with this. Scarlet fever, so severe a scourge of youth in England, appears to be almost unknown, and one hears little of diph- theria, which might be expected to prevail. I have had propounded to me an agreeable theory that such diseases cannot propagate themselves for more than three generations here ; that is, if A is landed from a steamer suffering from an infectious disorder, he may communicate it to B, and B may pass it on to C, but that C has no such power. The remarkably abrupt termi- nation of the small-pox epidemic and the complete disappearance of the disease seem to lend some colour to this comfortable belief.
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Chapter Yl—FEBRUiART Politics and Social Changes
" Confound their knavish tricks, Frustrate their politics." ^
A YEAR has passed since the murders of King Carlos and his son. " Dastardly," the customary news- paper epithet, is perhaps not very appropriate, and doubtless " coward " is not the right term for a man who goes forth into a street to shoot a king ; but that they were the hideous product of a disordered common- wealth no one will deny. And inured as we are to the accounts of assassination of kings and queens, of presidents and premiers, we may well find something more than usually pathetic in this story — the pleasant and pleasure-loving king slain just when he was rousing himself to a sense of his responsibilities ; the fair young prince surviving his father but a moment ; the wife and mother and queen striving to beat off
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the assassins with her bouquet of flowers ; the younger son lifted to a throne in such a baptism of fire. Never have the " fiercer Goth and more hideous Hun " perpetrated a fouler deed.
" Duncan is in his grave ; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; Treason has done its worst : nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further ! "
A year has passed, and the origin of the whole affair is still shrouded in mystery. No serious inquiry into it has been held, a fact in itself somewhat damaging to the reputation of a civilized country. One naturally presumes that those in authority fear to stir the mud. And we have the usual result of hushing: things up — an innumerable crop of wild rumours and secret insinuations against various prominent persons, most of whom are, of course, innocent of all complicity in the crime.
I have found that the political conditions ruling in Portugal at the time are little under- stood in England, in spite of the able articles on them in the Times. That Joao Franco's rule was generally described as a dictatorship,
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which in effect it was, obscured the fact that it was a phase in an attempted revolution with objects somewhat similar to those of the Young Turks. But while the Turkish revolution has been acclaimed in free countries, the Portuguese party of reform and pure administration has met with little sympathy, partly because its methods sounded tyrannical, and partly because for the time being it has failed. One important difference there was. In Portugal the Sovereign was heart and soul with the reformers, and theirs was the cause for which he met his death.
For many years Portugal has been governed by an oligarchy divided into two parties, Reeeneradores and Progressistas. There is no great difference in principle between them, but the former may be described as Conservatives, the latter as Liberals. In one important point they are in complete accord. "The Regener- adores and the Progressistas," says the Times in a recent leader, " neither regenerate nor make progress. They make arrangements between themselves in virtue of which they share the spoils of office in rotation, a practice so notorious that they are known collectively
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as Rotativistas." The spoils of office do not merely include official appointments and salaries; they comprise numerous sinecures and less reputable emoluments. Among the Rotati- vistas there are doubtless men of high character and complete incorruptibility ; there are also men of another type. If the results were not so serious there would be something irresistibly comic about a Portuguese general election, in which the party in power, having control of the ballot boxes, is never beaten. In any case the system is condemned by its effects. The country is naturally rich, and its inhabitants, if uneducated, are intelligent and hard-working ; but owing to the rottenness of the Government, assisted by a childishly absurd fiscal policy, in itself a powerful instrument of corruption, it is kept in a state of poverty, bordering on bankruptcy, through which, indeed, it has already passed. This was the system which Franco with the King's support was striving to overthrow ; his aim was to substitute for it an honest administration with the honest col- lection and the honest spending of public money. Naturally he raised up bitter enemies among those who saw their occupation gone,
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and he was driven by the necessities of the situation to take arbitrary measures against some supporters of the old regime. The incidents of the time will supply material for many historical romances — the secret meetings, the sensational arrests, the hurried flights in motor-cars to the Spanish frontier. If it was Charles and Strafford over again, the Portuguese Carlos displayed the moral courage and the loyalty to his servant in which the English king was wanting. To the bitter disappoint- ment of those who had based their hopes of a regenerated Portugal on this combination, his very courage and loyalty were the cause of the king's assassination ; and in that first critical hour the minister, his nerve broken, faltered and fell. It is interesting to conjecture what course events might have taken if there had been In him something of the stuff of Crom- well. One can imagine a strong man forcing the boy-king to his will, and using the murders as a means to crush his opponents completely. And we may wonder what was in King Carlos* mind to do In the event of Franco's assassina- tion, the possibility of which must have been ever present to him. But Franco failed at the
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supreme moment, and things have slipped back into the old groove, and it is idle to dwell upon the might-have-beens. Franco and his enthusiastic young lieutenants were doubtless too far in advance of the circumstances of their time and country. No permanent reform will be effected until there is an overwhelming public opinion, and public opinion can hardly exist until the people are educated. It is said that, both on the mainland and here, eighty to ninety per cent, of the adult population cannot read or write. An illiterate man, necessarily quite uninformed, cannot exercise any influence for good in politics, though he may be an instrument on the other side. We have to p;o back some distance in English history to find such a state of affairs prevailing, and then we see not wholly dissimilar conditions as regards corruption. We have heard of Paymasters- General making vast fortunes in a few years, and we know that the connections of the governing families swarmed in sinecure offices. Some atrophied survivals of such a system may still exist, but toleration of them is not one of the faults of an educated electorate, whatever they may be.
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The murders of the King and his son seemed to be taken very calmly here. The King himself was apparently unpopular ; for what reason I was unable to discover ; probably the people did not know themselves, beyond a vague notion that the taxes wrung from them went into his pocket. I noticed that our servants, while ready to admit that the boy's death was sad, would express no regret at that of the father. The upper classes generally exhibited sorrow and horror at the deed, and the masses held in the cathedral were attended by large congregations decorously clad in mourning. But I observed that persons who appeared to be of quite respectable position took occasion to wear flaunting red ties, which, whatever their political opinions, seemed to betray a lack of decent feeling, and some apathy on the part of their fellow-citizens, in that they permitted it. How far the Republican idea has spread it is impossible to judge, but the Republican party is active and militant. The success of the French Republic during nearly forty years, and the credit which now it especially enjoys, must give a great impetus to Republican propaganda in the Peninsula.
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In this strange country the comic and the tragic ever tread on each other's heels. To this tragedy the comic element was supplied by the cruiser Dojn Carlos, which immediately after the murders came at full speed from Lisbon to Madeira — for the second time within two years. But on this occasion there was no question of quelling disorder here ; and the wags suggested, perhaps not wholly without foundation, that the new Government, hastily formed to meet the emergency, felt happier with Funchal and not Lisbon lying at the mercy of her guns. The mere suspicion of a disaffected navy must be a perfect nightmare to shaky governments in seaside capitals.
As regards the future much will depend on the personal character and conduct of the young King ; whether as he feels his feet he will have the judgment to take the right course, and the courage to face all risks in pursuing it. The body of opinion which Franco represented is not dead, and will, as time goes on, probably gather fresh strength. Some of the most considerable forces in the country hold themselves aloof from present politics, and when the "Young Portugal"
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movement begins, in concert it is to be hoped with the young King, it may sweep all before it.
But for Portugal, as for every country, there is no permanent hope unless she can breed great men — men not only fitted to deal with a crisis which demands unusual qualities, but strong and steadfast in the ordinary conduct of affairs. She has bred them in the past, and her sturdy, virile people may produce them again. We who pinned our faith to Joao Franco have had to stomach our disillusion. Yet even the work that he did, the aspirations which perhaps by wrong methods he tried to realize, have left their effect. But Portugal needs a Lincoln to set her political house in order, a Gladstone to cleanse the stables of her finance, a Bright to raise the moral level of her public life.
It is probable that the intense interest taken in "politics" — a word of wider meaning, as I have already suggested, than with us — is due to the general dulness of life. Compared with life, as we understand it in England, the existence of these people is very empty. They have little literature of their own, no art, no
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drama, no racing, no field-sports, no outdoor games — scarcely one of the multifarious pur- suits which go to make up life in England for the busy and the leisured alike. Small wonder that the game of politics, the game of pulling wires of every kind, in every direction, the game of poking political fingers into every financial and every commercial pie, should have an attraction for speculative and alert natures denied almost every other exercise but that which is afforded by religion. And if we add the fact that the governing classes are for the most part poor, that the hunger for office under the State as the only possible career exists to an extent which we can with difficulty understand, we may be able to picture faintly to ourselves the passion for "political" intrigue which has helped to bring the country to such a pass.
With all their alertness, their tact, their power of rapid decision (well illustrated by their skill at card games), the Portuguese do not seem to be good men of business. Until quite recently almost all the important business of this town — wine, sugar, shipping, coal — was in the hands of foreigners, chiefly English.
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Lately there seems to have been some awaken- ing from Portuguese lethargy in this respect, a fact which is of good augury for the future of the country. For in this lack of business capacity, or business training, is probably to be discovered one reason for Portugal's
o
political failure. I shall have occasion to speak later of the singular ineptitude of the system of taxation, and it is impossible to doubt that under a more intelligent Government the country would attain a level of prosperity quite undreamt of now.
Socially, those who have the privilege of knowing them, will find the Portuguese a very charming people. It may be that they do not feel in general much sympathy with the English, whose somewhat brusque manners and comparative want of tact must often jar on their finer susceptibilities, but it is possible for individuals of the two nations to be close friends. And an Englishman who has adopted their nationality may become Lusitanis Lusi- tanior. Many Englishmen who have visited this island will recall with affection and regret the gracious dignity and unfailing bonhomie of
the late Count T . Of British parentage
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and British up-bringing, he married a great Portuguese lady, and was created a Portuguese noble. He played his part well ; he would speak to us as " you English," and he was not averse from commenting to us on the faults of our national diplomacy and conduct. I remember the delight with which I heard his reply to an American lady who said to him : " It seems to me, Count, that for a Portuguese you speak remarkably good English." His answer was, " So they tell me." A lesser man would have adduced his honourable Scottish house, and his Eton education.
Here, as elsewhere, the nineteenth century witnessed great social changes. The decline of the old landed aristocracy was hastened by the abolition of the law of succession to estates. Much of the land in Madeira was formerly held under strict entail, and could not be sold. These entails arose originally in connection with the building of chapels and the celebration of masses. The owners were styled " Mor- gados " — a species of territorial title corre- sponding perhaps to that of " Lord of the Manor." The law of entail has been abolished, and the estates can be sold in the ordinary
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way. And nothing breaks up the old regime more effectually than the division by law of the parents' property equally among the children, now (with limitations) the rule here. It is rather strange that there has never been any serious movement in England for the adoption of this system, which prevails in most Euro- pean countries. No doubt the parents' right of freedom of bequest is comparatively seldom abused ; and among the upper classes the custom of the eldest son succeeding to the bulk of the family property, and the younger children being left to shift, more or less, for themselves is so engrained that no sense of hardship is present. And it has doubtless been a factor in creating British pre-eminence in trade, and in the extension of the British Empire. Before the establishment of a stand- ing army provided them with a regular military career ; before India and the colonies offered a field for military, civil, and commercial enter- prise, the country gentleman's younger sons naturally went into trade at home —
" Boastful ami rough, your first son is a squire, Your next a tradesman meek, and much a liar."
This custom after some eclipse during the
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eighteenth century revived in earnest during the nineteenth, and extended to more exalted circles. Yet the eighteenth century idea that trade, other than selling stacks of hay or fat beasts, was in some sense derogatory still sur- vives, if only as a pose and a pretence ; did not a distinguished essayist remark not long since that '* English etiquette allows no trading for gentlefolk below the rank of a marquis." Here the child becomes from the day of his birth a partner, as it were, in the family pro- perty or business ; and as he is sure of his share he has perhaps less incentive to strike out a line for himself. The old feudal life is dead. The estates of the Morgados have for the most part passed into the hands of new men, who have made fortunes in South America, or of foreigners. But here too, as elsewhere, the pride of descent is, I believe, stronger in decadence and poverty than in the prosperous days of unquestioned lordship. The change has its drawbacks ; the ancient patriarchial relations have disappeared ; the country houses stand empty, or are visited for a month or two in the year by their new owners ; and the tenants are left to their own
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devices. They have things very much their own way. The landlord is as a rule the owner of the bare soil and of the water-rights apper- taining to it. He cannot turn his tenant out without compensating him in full for his build- ings, walls, pavements, trees, and crops. And the tenant can sell his property in these. Theoretically, the landlord is entitled, as rent, to half the produce of the farm ; but in the case of small holdings, which are the rule, it is practically impossible to check this, and no doubt he habitually gets much less.
To the genealogist this island must be a happy hunting-ground ; but the difficulties of such investigations in the way of a foreigner are almost insuperable. When it was first settled, in 1420, by Joao Goncalvez, surnamed Zargo, representatives of some of the chief families of Portugal accompanied him, and obtained grants of land ; and four noblemen were sent by John I. to marry his daughters. Their names are common here to-day, and possibly their descendants are numerous. It is quite usual for illegitimate children to be called by their father's surname, and this practice helps to disseminate widely the greater
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family names. In our own country we have a pretty accurate notion, when a man is called Stanley, or Percy, or Herbert, whether he is of the race or a pretender. Here it is very diffi- cult for a foreigner to distinguish. Many of the great names survive to-day — Aguiar, Almeida, Camara, Correia, Freitas, Goncalvez, Leal, Or- nellas, Perestrello, Vasconcellos, and others. Some of these are to be found borne by members not only of the upper but of the lower classes.
Among the historic Madeira families are some derived from foreign adventurers who arrived after the occupation. There are Drum- monds (pronounced Drumont) to-day who are descended from John Drummond, son of Sir John Drummond, Lord of Stobhall, brother of Annabella, queen of Robert IH. of Scotland. He came to Madeira in 1425, probably as a refugee, and only revealed his real name on his death-bed. The Esmeraldos, perhaps the greatest of Madeira families, descended from Jean d'Esmenaut, a Fleming, who arrived in 1480. A Knight of the Order of Christ, named Robert Willoughby, came from Portugal in 1590. His name was corrupted to Vizovi.
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A pleasant account of a visit to Madeira more than two centuries ago is contained in the letters of Christopher JeafFreson, of DuUingham House, Cambridgeshire, published in 1878 by Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson, under the title "A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century." This youno- gentleman inherited, besides important properties in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, large plantations in St. Christopher's Island, in the West Indies. On his way out to take posses- sion of these he called at Madeira in the year 1676. He sailed from Gravesend in the Jacob and Mary, " a vessell of about a hundred and fifty tunns, 14 or 16 gunns, a square stearne, with good accomodations."
If this vessel left something to be desired in the way of size and speed, her pleasant name atoned for much. The day of such fearsome titles as Cappadocian or Aconcagua was not yet. It would indeed be agreeable if one of the great steamship lines were to have the courage to revert to the old style. And surely such names as Darby and Joan, The Happy Lovers, or The Jolly Tripper, would amount to a gra- tuitious advertisement in themselves. But the modern shipowner names his ship out of the
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Gazetteer, and reserves his play of fancy for the decoration of the saloon, with strange and distressing results.
Contrary winds detained the Jacob and Mary; she lay ten days at Plymouth, and took six weeks to reach Madeira. But voyages, if longer, were perhaps less monotonous than nowadays. "The 28th we came in sight of the islands called ' the deserts,' and the same evening we espied a sayle, which we doubted was a Turke ; which made us putt ourselves in a posture of defence, and the next morning, finding that he had chased us all night, we were confirmed in our opinions, and seeing that he made still all the sayle he could after us, we prepared all things for a fight, and continued in that posture all the day and night ; and the next day, drawing neare the Island of the Madera, our pursuer quitted his chase, and we got into Funchiall road in the afternoone ; where wee were verry neare loosing our shippe, the master being unacquainted, and comeing too boldely in near the shoar, in a dangerous place. But the men towed her off againe." After such near chances of wreck or capture, "of being taken by the insolent foe and sold to slavery,"
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it is not surprising that our traveller hastened to land, which he did with difficulty and not without being well wetted. He went to " Mr. Pickford and Mr. Allen* s, the Consull's house, to whom the shippe was consigned ; where we met with civil entertainment from those persons, whose repute as well as gravety gave weight to their wordes." In these days gravity, even among consuls, is not a very common character- istic. It may be that the disappearance of the Barbary pirate has made us all more light- hearted. From the Consul, Mr. JeafFreson learnt that the island produced " some years twenty-five thousand pipes of wine, besides sugar and corne, with which it doth not suffi- ciently fournish its people, who are supplied from England and elsewhere, as allso for herrings, pilchards, beefe, mutton, baizes, perpetuanas, hatts and the like, which are there bartered for wine and sweetmeats." It was, as appears elsewhere in the letters, a profitable business for ships outward bound to the West Indies to call at Madeira and exchange such goods for wine to be subsequently bartered in the Leeward Isles for sugar, tobacco or indigo. Writing later from St. Kitt's to his
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cousin, Mr. Poyntz, upholsterer, at the sign of the " Goat " in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange, London, Mr. JeafFreson points out the advantages of this trade, and adds, " There is noe living here without those wines. If you consign the goods to Mr. Pickfourd and Mr. Allen, I doubt not that they will be just in shipping the valew for my use. It is worth sometimes five or seven pounds a pipe. If you can doe this with conveniency, it would save me the charge of buying it here, and if there bee more than enough for my own drinking I feare not to dispose of it well." The West Indians had not as yet discovered the virtues of the cock-tail.
During his stay at Funchal, Mr. Jeaffreson kept his eyes open, and some of his observa- tions would not be out of place to-day. " The walkes from the cittie are so rugged and uneven, that one may be said to climbe rather than walke abroad. But these difficulties are recom- pensed with the fruitefull, well cultivated, and pleasant viniards, the frequent delightfuU land- skipps, with the frequent and odoriferous scents of the weedes or common herbes and field- flowers, which Nature produces of herself in
"5
Leaves from a 3fadeira Garden
the barren and unmanured parts of this most pleasant and fruitfull spot ; where neither the extreme colde of winter, nor the violent heat of summer pinches or scorches the inhabitants." He visited among others the convent of Santa Clara, and was surprised at the "freedome these women use," a fact noted by other travellers. He " understood but little of their language, but made a shift to barter some ribbands for sweetmeats." This convent, with all other convents and monasteries, was sup- pressed in 1834. The property of these conventual establishments passed to the Government ; much of it was sold. But the convent of Santa Clara still stands in all its charm and beauty, and a number of sisters, who have taken voluntary vows not recognized by the State, are permitted to inhabit it.
I refer elsewhere so the superstitious pro- ceedings designed to bring rain in time of drought. Such are noticed by Mr. Jeaffreson. " Rains are sometimes much wanted by the islanders, for which theire idols or images of their saints suffer most severely, by several! sorts of chastisements, and are brought into the cittie, and carried otherwhiles in prosession.
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Trying fowle means as well as faire, if they wont heare theire prayers, the islanders try if beateing will learne them better manners ; like Baals priests, who leaped and stamped on the altar, when theire deaf God would not heare."
From his hosts, the traveller heard much of an Enchanted Island, which had several times been seen by very credible persons to the northward or north-west of Madeira. The Governor had employed a French ship to seek it, but in vain. This story was long as persistent as that of the sea-serpent. A floating island figures in the legendary history of St. Brendan, that Odysseus of the sixth century; and in succeeding centuries stories of islands which appeared from time to time are quite common. In a treaty between Portugal and Spain in 1519, the former actually ceded to the latter the " Island not found." It is probable that this bafiling phantom was due to the effects of mirage, not uncommon in these latitudes. Mr. Samler Brown states that he has often seen portions of the coast reproduced on the horizon with a startling fidelity.
A more remarkable traveller arrived off the
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
port of Funchal after dark on August 23rd, 18 1 5. H.M.S. Northiiynberland^ conveying Napoleon Bonaparte to his last home at St. Helena, called here for provisions. It is related in the Diary of Mr. John R. Glover, secretary to Rear-Admiral Cockburn, that on the follow- ing day Mr. Veitch, His Majesty's Consul, visited the ship, *' of whom Bonaparte asked numerous questions with respect to the island : its produce, the height above the level of the sea, its population, etc." On the 25th Mr. Glover notes : " We had a continuation of the violent and most disagreeable siroc wind, which commenced on our first making the island ; and such was the superstition of the inhabitants that they attributed this destructive siroc to Bonaparte being off the island, and were extremely apprehensive that their crops, which were nearly ripe, would be more than half destroyed." On the same day, after dark, the Northumbei'land set sail. Next day Bonaparte ate little and was out of spirits. Mr. Glover attributes this to the heat and the considerable motion of the vessel. We may suspect a deeper cause for his malaise. In Madeira he had passed the last outlying speck of the world
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which he had striven to master, and as the vessel headed for the desolate Southern ocean, it may be that a sense of his final and utter failure at length came fully to his mind. And who may measure the bitterness of this sense to him ? " He knew no motive but interest — he acknowleged no criterion but success — he worshipped no God but ambition ; and with an Eastern devotion he knelt at the altar of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess — there was no opinion that he did not promulgate. In the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the Crescent ; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross ; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic ; and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the crown and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he im- prisoned the Pope ; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country ; and under the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Caesars ! **
So did a contemporary sum up his worship of success, and his subordination of means to
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his end. And however much we may detest his objects and his methods, however great our satisfaction at his overthrow and the part our country played in it, we may spare some pity for the greatness of his fall.
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Chapter Yll—FEBRU^ART Land and Sea
"The earth hath bubbles, as the water has." — Macbeth.
BY way of introducing a little variety into our horticultural pursuits, we have this year rented a cottage and garden near " the Mount," which I have already described as lying some two thou- sand feet above Funchal. It is rendered very easy of access by the mountain railway, and a visit to it has the advantage of affording a complete change of air. In mid-winter this region is often bathed in mist, with " the rainbow smiling on the faded storm," when the town and the lower lying country are in full sun ; but as the spring advances, these uplands enjoy one of the most delightful climates in the world. The spring flowers — violets, anemones, daffodils, and the rest — which die or languish in the unvarying geniality of the litoral, flourish at this elevation in unexampled glory. It is possible in Madeira
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to experience within the space of an hour or two quite a variety of climates, each furnished with its characteristic vegetation. From the sea-level, with its sub-tropical wealth of gorgeous climbers, its sugar-cane, mangoes and bananas, you ascend a thousand feet to find groves of oranges and lemons. A little higher you enter a region of pine-trees, with gardens where the hardy fuchsias and the hydrangeas grow to an immense size, where the ground is carpeted with agapanthus lilies, and the hedges are bright with mimosa blossom in spring. Higher still, passing from the pine-woods, you come to a moorland region faintly recalling some of the wilder parts of North Wales or Cumberland, while above are the bare and fantastic crags which have been compared to those of the Dolomites. So you may pass in a short space from the sub-tropical region to the Riviera, from the Riviera to Bournemouth, from Bournemouth to Carnarvonshire, and from Carnarvonshire to the Alps.
Our mountain garden lies in the middle of these regions. As the domain is full of deci- duous trees, it presents at this season quite a wintry aspect. But the camelias are in flower,
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irises are throwing up buds, freesias and daffodils will not be long behind them. The garden has been much neglected, and the box hedges have grown into straggling bushes five feet high. Innumerable seedlings of the incense tree are blocking all the banks, and have rendered some of the garden paths quite im- passible. Our first care is to hack a way through these, and to open up vistas of the hills and sea. It is too late to do much in the way of planting for this season, but we can make preparations for next year. There is no such thing as a nursery-garden in Madeira — an opening awaits an enterprising man. If it is known that you are in want of plants, casual persons will probably arrive with some for sale ; but, unless you wish to be a receiver of stolen goods, you will be chary of buying them, as it is quite likely that they have been removed from your neighbour's garden. There is very little serious crime in the island ; aggravated offences against the person appear to be almost unknown, and robbery on a large scale, " flat burglary," is rare. You never hear of any one being molested in the town or suburbs, and you may tramp the wildest mountains and most
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unfrequented valleys and meet with nothing but civility from the sparse inhabitants. Times and manners have changed for the better since the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Dr. Hans Sloan tells us that every tradesman wore his short doublet, and for the most part a black cloak with a long big-hilted dagger under it, a sharp knife being in his pocket. No man dared go into the street after dark, lest any one who had a grudge against him should shoot him, or lest he should be taken in the dark for another man. Dr. Sloan was told that a small piece of money to a negro would purchase any man's life. He mentions having been called in to treat a priest who had been shot at in the night by some one who took him for another.
But there Is a very lax state of public opinion as regards petty theft. Unless you keep watch- dogs, you will have your poultry and your fruit stolen by night. The authorities seem to be reluctant to enforce the penalties against such offences. Not long since, a neighbour's gar- dener caught a man handing some bundles of bananas over my garden wall late at night and apprehended him as he descended himself. He called to my gardener, and together they haled
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the man to the police-station. The case was quite clear : sections of the stalks left on the trees were produced in Court and shown to fit the bunches which the man was removing ; but the judge dismissed it. 1 was told afterwards, I know not with what truth, that the prisoner was a very poor man, that he could not pay a fine, or for his keep in prison ; and that if I had offered to pay for his board the Court would have been willing to lodge him there for a week or two. This seems to add fresh burdens to the lot of the prosecutor, which even with us is often a troublesome one ; and probably accounts for the small number of prosecutions.
If there is one advantage of education more obvious than another (some of us are too apt nowadays in England to note only its dis- advantages), it is that it delivers from terror.
** Your nature's needs are twain, And only twain : and these are to be free — Your minds from terror, and your bones from pain." *
We hardly realize perhaps how deeply we are indebted on both counts to the achievements
* W. H. Mallock, " Lucretius on Life and Death."
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of science, even in the very diluted form in which they reach most of us. The state of fear in which the lower classes here, though they are by nature of a cheerful temperament, pass their lives is inconceivable to the educated Northerner, unless, indeed, he is unfortunate enough to be afflicted with that gruesome form of religion which Mr. Gosse has so graphically described in " Father and Son." The common people here are doubtless not so worried about the horrors of eternal punishment as are the more unhappy kinds of Protestants. Their Church, with its practice of Confession and Absolution, does much to deliver them from that gloomy obsession. But it fails to dissemi- nate the imaginary dangers which beset their daily lives. For them
<' Hell and its torments are not there but here."
The unseen and the seen are equally fraught with terror ; they dread alike the ruthless forces of Nature and the malignity of man ; they live in fear of the powers of darkness, of the authorities, and of each other.
Their attitude towards witchcraft and its kindred superstitions is still quite mediaeval.
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Witches of course abound, and it will be very bad luck for you if you come across them on the hills, whither they repair to meet their master, the devil. They will naturally turn themselves into beasts of the field, or fowls of the air, and you won't know anything about them ; but they will be very angry with you for disturbing them, and you will suffer for it. It is a good plan if you have reason to believe that you are in the presence of a witch to open a pair of scissors wide to the form of a cross. As long as you keep them like that you will be all right, but it must be confessed that it is sometimes inconvenient. And you must be on your guard against vampires in human form. They are always on the look-out to suck your blood from your little finger. And of course the evil eye has to be continually thought of. Charms are very useful against it, and a sprig of rosemary— the herb of Our Lady — has great virtues. If you keep a pig — and if you are a Madeira peasant of course you do — very elabo- rate precautions have to be taken to preserve him from malign influences. It is always advisable to have a bunch of rosemary laid on the stye, and a bottle containing water — holy
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water is of course the best, but expensive — should be hung above it. This will attract any threatened danger of an occult kind, and the animal will escape. Once upon a time a mischievous young Englishman thought to make sport of this time-honoured belief by breaking many such bottles with an air-gun. But the fact that the bottles were broken while the pigs remained unharmed was, in their owner's eyes, a powerful vindication of the practice. And perhaps there was something in it — in the absence of the bottle the naughty boy might have been tempted to aim at the
pig- Pigs are, of course, peculiarly subject to/
malign influences.* For do not the evil spirits
of bad men reside within them ? and that is why
you will never give them any bread ; indeed,
you must carefully remove all crusts from the
pig tub. I have always felt that the lot of the
Gadarene swine was a hard one ; it seems
harder still that the curse should be extended
to their distant cousins many times removed.
But facts are stubborn things.
* " Where hast thou been, sister ? " says the first witch in "Macbeth." "Killing swine," replies the second.
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If you become suddenly rich, or in any other way attain unexpectedly your heart's desire, your neighbours will say that you have found a hair ball. They refer to those curious round and smooth agglomerations of undigested hair which are sometimes found in the stomachs of oxen and other animals, and which are not uncommonly fatal to the domestic Persian. cat. But it is not enough to find such a ball. You must make a loaf of bread yourself, and secretly ; you must place the hair ball within it ; and then you must hide the loaf under an altar or in some sacred place where nobody will see it. Then whatever you wish will arrive to you. It is all rather troublesome, but the reward is great if the conditions are properly fulfilled.
If your own hair is coming out, the remedy is quite simple. You must cut off a lock on St. John's night (no other night will do) and bury it under a quick-growing plant, such as a pumpkin. Then if you are careful never to pass the place again, your hair will be sure to grow. I hope the publication of this simple and certain remedy will not bring down on me the wrath of Mr. Truefitt.
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Many other ailments may be cured without the intervention of a doctor, whom indeed you are naturally very much inclined to distrust. If you have erysipelas, you should bleed a black puppy dog, or draw blood from the comb of a black hen ; then steep part of a pumpkin in the blood and apply it to the affected part ; and hang up the rest of the pumpkin in the chimney, and be sure to take no further notice of it. If you suffer from varicose veins, you should apply a piece of pumpkin and then throw it to a pig, the flesh of which must on no account be eaten.
If you lose any of your property it will be very unwise to go to the police. They will cause no end of trouble and will want all sorts of stupid forms filled up, about the age and occupation of your parents, and such irrelevant things ; and they may ask many inconvenient questions, so that you come to feel more like the guilty than the injured party. You had far better resort to a wise woman, or a wizard, whichever sex you prefer ; and it is conceivable that the seer, possessing a wide and varied acquaintance of things and people, may be in a position to negotiate for the return of the
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goods — for a suitable consideration. And of course you will not marry, or set out on a journey, or take any important step in life without due consultation in the same quarter. One hundred reis, or fivepence, will procure you much disinterested advice. Truly must the wizard, like the professional letter-writer, become the repository of strange secrets. With the productions of the latter we are familiar. There is one of the fraternity who writes English, and revels in a picturesque style. It was something of a surprise to my wife after a good many years of married life to find me described in one of his effusions as her " affec- tionate bridegroom." Such a notable gift of expression, and so fine a contempt for mere facts are wasted here ; they would command a large salary in Fleet Street.
There is, I think, as elsewhere in Latin countries, a strong pagan survival in the creed of the common people. The ancient gods are not wholly dead, but they are called by other names. Even the Blessed Virgin herself is per- haps not clearly understood to be one Person. If you suffer from rheumatism, you pray to Our Lady of the Mount ; if you are anxious
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for a son and heir, you propitiate Our Lady of somewhere else ; it is no great step from this for the uneducated mind to think of two goddesses, possessing different attributes and powers.
The patron saint of our own parish here, St. Martin, seems to have obtained his repu- tation as the friend of revellers, publicans, and tavern-keepers from the accident that his festival coincides with an old pagan feast. St. Martin does not himself appear to have been an especially jovial person. The oft-painted incident of his dividing his cloak with a beggar made him originally the guardian of mendicants ; but that function has been transferred to St. Giles. In early life he worked many miracles, including the restoring of the dead to life, and while Bishop of Tours he did much to spread the monastic system. There is nothing in this to connect him with the toper, or even the moderate drinker. Yet throughout Christen- dom Martinmas is a day proper for revelry, the day on which cattle are killed to be salted for winter use, and the new wine is drawn from the lees and tasted. It is a curious chance which has linked the Christian ascetic with the
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attributes of Dionysus. Very appropriately the large parish dedicated to him here is one of the chief vine-growing districts of the island, and the curious may note " Fine old S. Mar- tinho" in wine-merchants' lists. Neighbouring parishes are dedicated to St. Anthony, who may perhaps assist you to regain lost or stolen property ; and St. Rock, the friend of the sick, and especially the plague-stricken. No doubt his shrine was much sought during the un- happy events of 1906. The expression, "as sound as a roach," is perhaps due to a cor- ruption of the French form of his name.
Vows to execute unpleasant tasks are not uncommon. In their performance men will carry heavy chains or bars of iron ; women will shuffle on bare knees over sharp stones, and up the steep steps leading to the Mount Church. Votive offerings, such as wax models of injured and ailing limbs, are constantly made. I asked one custodian of a church what became of them. With a twinkle in his eye he explained that the patient either died or recovered ; whichever happened there was no further use for the offering, and the wax made very good candles. If a long drought occurs,
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various expedients are resorted to with the object of propitiating the powers that make rain. A procession in which men bared their backs and lashed themselves and each other with great vigour was formerly in vogue, and is recorded to have been most successful. It is now, I believe, forbidden. Our housekeeper, who has the faculty of throwing a refreshingly new light on things we are inquiring about, has had something to say on this subject. She recalls a year when there was no rain, and the earth was parched and the corn did not grow, and the poor people were in great distress. So they walked in procession, and they said many prayers, and at last the good God took pity on them and sent three wrecks. The insu- larity here exhibited is characteristic ; there is no thought of the shipwrecked, and possibly drowned, mariner ; of the loss or ruin to ship- master, owner and underwriter ; it is only the abundance of loot that counts. So no doubt we are regarded by some of those we employ as specially created, like the wrecks, by a bene- ficent Providence, in answer to their prayers for a master and mistress fairly well off and not too knowing.
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w I
o o
Land and Sea
Before the days of steamers, wrecks must have been quite a considerable source of profit to the islanders. A southerly gale has been known to drive half a dozen ships lying in the port on shore. Steamers are able to go out to sea, where they are safe ; and such a gale, especially as it sometimes does much damage to shore boats and lighters, is perhaps regarded with less favour than formerly.
But the sea has sometimes brought less welcome visitors. The islands of Madeira and Porto Santo suffered much in their early days from privateers and corsairs. Next to dis- covering an "unsuspected isle in far off seas," the harrying of one which somebody else had discovered and settled must have been the greatest fun imaginable. Such raids are not entirely without their modern successors, but nowadays they are not considered good form. In 1566 the town of Funchal was sacked by a large force of French freebooters, who landed on a convenient beach about three miles to the west of the town. They occupied it for fifteen days, plundering churches, convents and houses, holding citizens to ransom, and putting many, including the Governor D'Ornellas, to the
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sword. Their leader Montluc was wounded by a shot from the garden of one Caspar Correa, who was killed in consequence. Mont- luc died of his wound just as relief was arriving from Lisbon. His followers escaped. It is interesting to note that the families of Correa and D'Ornellas are still among the most pro- minent in the island.
In later days, when England was at war with France and Spain, and naval combats frequently took place in these seas, many incidents must have occurred to enliven the monotony of life at Funchal. From the Gentleman s Magazine for 1742 I cull the following: "The Hastings Lord Bamff, took off the Madeiras, Jan. 7, after an engagement of two hours, a Spanish register-ship of 20 guns and 105 men, besides 10 men and 4 women passengers, and a child, bound from Cadiz for the Havanna. As he was carrying his prize into Madeira, he like- wise took on the i6th a privateer of 14 carriage and 6 swivel guns, and 73 men."
We can picture the excitement which such arrivals as are described in this bald narrative must have caused.
In October, 1799, a fleet of ninety-six British
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Land and Sea
merchant vessels, under the escort of three men-of-war and bound for the West Indies, anchored in Funchal Bay. It is recorded that they took away 3041 pipes of wine shipped by British merchants, either for the supply of the colonies, or for the sake of the voyage. These were the palmy days of the Madeira wine-trade.
Madeira cannot claim the stirring place in our naval annals which belongs to the not dis- tant Canary Islands. Thrice have our greatest sailors attacked the Spaniards there ; and it must be owned that Spain has won the rubber. In 1595 Drake, on his last voyage, was repulsed off Las Palmas in Grand Canary. This failure of the scourge of Spain, the destroyer of count- less treasure ships, the relentless pursuer of the beaten Armada, must have been very welcome to the victorious defenders. In 1657, during Cromwell's Protectorate, Blake attacked the harbour of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, in which was lying a great treasure-laden fleet, home- ward bound from the West. He thrust his ships into the port under the guns of the shore batteries, and succeeded in sinking sixteen Spanish galleons without the loss of one of his
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own ships. It was a daring piece of work and our first great naval victory since the defeat of the Armada. In 1797 Nelson attacked Santa Cruz with the object of taking possession of a large treasure landed there from a Spanish galleon. He was beaten off with heavy loss. It was his one defeat, and it was here that his arm was shattered by a cannon-ball. He returned to England expecting to be punished for his failure, and found himself a hero.
The romance of the sea is not yet wholly spent. Three or four years ago two boat-loads of shipwrecked mariners rowed into the port of Funchal. They landed on the pier, and commenced to relate to an excited crowd the story of their adventures, with much picturesque embellishment. They told how their vessel, a large sailing ship carrying the French flag, had sprung a leak a hundred miles to the westward of Madeira, and somewhat out of the track of steamers. They described their heroic efforts to keep her afloat, and their unceasing labour at the pumps, and how finally, with the ship sinking beneath their feet, they had taken to the boats just in time to escape being engulfed as she disappeared. So engrossed were they
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Land and Sea
and their audience with this thrilling tale that until it was concluded they did not lift up their eyes to see a large sailing ship being towed into the port by a steamer. When at length observed she must have given them a nasty turn, for was she not the very vessel from which, as they had just so circumstantially narrated, they had narrowly escaped two or three days before ? And indeed
" It was that fatal and perfidious bark ; "
and we may feel no doubt that they greeted her with " curses dark." The inconvenient steamer had found her derelict with some awk- ward augur holes in her bottom, and deemed her a prize worth towing into Funchal. There are some ships that nothing will sink. What became of the poor distressed mariners I do not know ; the sailing ship lay here for some time, while the lawyers wrangled over the salvage, and then sailed away, doubtless in charge of a fresh crew.
The sea is the home of strange coincidences. One day, a quarter of a century ago, two vessels hom.eward bound left the port together. Their names began with the same three letters.
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
One was the European^ a steamer of the Union line ; the other was the Eurydice^ a man-of-war. Neither reached its destination. The former was wrecked on Ushant ; the latter capsized in a squall off the Isle of Wight, and was lost with all hands.
During the South African War our feelings were harrowed with stories of privateers which were being fitted out in the Canary Isles with the especial object of attacking the Cape mail- boats. And there were circumstantial accounts of such and such a liner having received a warning, and travelling night after night with no lights, to the great inconvenience, not to mention the alarm, of her passengers. But such tales were no doubt apocryphal. Towards the close of the war some members of the former Transvaal Government resided here, and acted as a kind of post-office between their comrades who were still in the field and their friends in Europe. Certain very curious proceedings took place in this connection. It is still a little too near the events to record what happened ; but there is reason to believe that our own Govern- ment was fully alive to what was going on, and took its own measures to deal with the matter.
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Land and Sea
The sea, like life, has its little ironies. And it condescends sometimes to play practical jokes. Last winter a young English clergyman, stay- ing for a short holiday at one of the hotels, mentioned to the hotel-keeper one morning that he thought of going for a walk in the hills. His failure to return in the evening suggested pictures of his mangled corpse lying at the foot of a precipice. Fortunately, one of his fellow- guests was able to say that he had seen him on board a Royal Mail steamer which was outward bound for South America. This allayed anxiety, but originated various theories for his disappearance. Ten days later a telegram arrived from Brazil to say that he had been carried on involuntarily, not having noticed that the steamer had started. He was taken the round trip, and on his return to Southampton found himself famous, being met by seven reporters anxious to gather the impressions of a clerical stowaway.
The converse sometimes happens. Not long ago a young man and a maiden, who had made acquaintance on board, landed together from a mail-boat bound for South Africa, for a walk. Doubtless time took wings, for when they
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
returned to the pier the steamer was gone. The girl's parents were on board, and must have been consumed with anxiety at her dis- appearance, as they could get no news of her until they reached Capetown. This, and not the absence of tooth-brushes, is the really tragic side of such occurrences. The young couple were hospitably entreated here, and proceeded the following week. Let us hope that the tale had an appropriate conclusion.
I have wandered afar from our mountain Quinta — perhaps not inappropriately, for it is a convenient starting-point for many excursions. It lies on the very brink of a delightful ravine, the source of Funchal's easternmost river, known to the English as the Little Curral. If this valley lacks the sensational features of Madeira's wildest gorges, it is rich in all the elements of the picturesque. Up hill and down dale you walk or ride, with miniature precipices yawning below you, while rocky eminences, aping in their form the greater mountains, stand clear against the sky above. Villages with peaked thatched roofs, almost Japanese in character, hang on to the slopes in the most inconvenient situations. Arum lilies growing wild fleck
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Land and Sea
the hill-sides with their cream-white grace ; on damp rocks masses of liverwort abound to charm the fern-lover. In an hour or two you emerge from this little wilderness on to the Caminho do Meio, the very steep road which ascends to the east of Funchal. This alarming road has an inclination of 23°, or one in two and a third, and from its exceeding abruptness has been nicknamed " Rocket Road." Facilis descensus^ it is easy to toboggan down it in a running car ; but how any one ever gets up it is a mystery. Crossing it, you may pass through a delightful little forest of eucalyptus trees, their smooth straight stems springing to a surprising height, and ascend to a winding levada, affording very charming views of the town, the sea, and the rocky Desertas, which leads you in time to the pleasant mountain village of Camacha.
A very pleasant village indeed it is, lying over two thousand feet above the sea-level, on a spur of the higher hills, a few miles to the east of Funchal. It was formerly much resorted to in summer by those English whose business re- tained them in Madeira, as is attested by the presence of some agreeable villas, now little
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Leaves from a Aladeira Garden
used. The railway which ascends to " the Mount " directly above Funchal now makes that locality more convenient as a residence in hot weather. Camacha possesses among other attractions a level tract of good turf on which many a cricket match has been played. It mi^ht be mistaken for the grreen of an
O CD
English village but that it lies on the very brink of a deep and picturesque ravine.
In this hamlet and its neighbourhood is made much of the wicker-work — chairs, tables, sofas, and other articles — which fills the shops of Funchal. Enormous quantities are purchased by the passengers of passing steamers ; and it is not unknown at charity bazaars in England. It is carried down the steep moun- tain road to the town chiefly by women, who will bear, balanced on their heads, a surprisingly heavy and unwieldy mass of tables and chairs. This practice gives them a peculiar gait ; the body is held perfectly rigid, and the hips swing with a regular motion as they walk. The muscular development of these women must be prodigious.
And Camacha is justly celebrated for its flowers — its arum lilies and irises, its ixias and
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sparaxlas, its primroses and violets, with many others which prefer the stimulating freshness of its elevated site to the softness, of lower regions. The hills around are golden in spring with broom and gorse ; the hedges are full of hardy fuchsias and their like ; the stream-beds and woodland walks are rich in fern. Truly it is a pleasant district for the flower-lover and botanist.
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Chapter VUl—FEBRU^Rr
Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty
" I do not give you to posterity as a pattern to imitate, but aa example to deter." — Junius.
THE commercial conditions existing in this island afford a melancholy example of the evils of State in- terference in business matters. Of unrivalled climate, with a soil of great fertility, and lying within a few days' steam of the greatest markets in the world, it is yet pre- vented by a vicious fiscal system from enjoying the wealth which is its natural due. There is no question here of the encouragement of young and struggling industries by a moderate scheme of Protection, and it is not necessary in this connection to consider under what circum- stances, if ever, Protection is beneficial. Two facts strike the observer : firstly, the apparent desire of the Government to tax everything that can be taxed, regardless of consequences ; and
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secondly, the extraordinary state of things which may be brought about by monopolies created in the supposed interest of one set of cultivators, but probably originating in the desire of the politicians to have their fingers in every possible pie. These two facts are closely interwoven, but as instances of the first may be mentioned the injudicious taxation of the " raw material " of export trade, such as the duty on wood from Norway intended for immediate re-exportation as crates for fruit, a tax which has killed the cultivation and export of bananas ; the duty on bottles to be used for the export of bottled wines ; the duty on artificial manures necessary for the successful growing of vegetables, in which an enormous trade might be done ; and what is more serious, the effect of the sugar monopoly on the price of the alcohol which is largely used in the preparation of wine. The authorities do not appear to understand that an export trade is one of the chief sources of wealth ; that people cannot live " on taking in each other's washing " ; or that exporters have to compete in foreign markets with the pro- ducers of other countries ; that the price they obtain for their wares is chiefly regulated by
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
that competition ; and that it is to the interest of the whole community that they should not be driven out of those markets by the artificial raising of the cost of production. " Here is an industry, come let us tax it to death," seems to be their motto. One can almost hear Lord Place, the Parliamentary candidate in Fielding's " Pasquin," *' I hope we shall have no such people as tradesmen shortly ; I can't see any use they are of ; if I am chose, I'll bring in a bill to extirpate all trade out of the nation."
Of the second fact, remarkable instances may be adduced, some of them savouring rather of the " Arabian Nights " or a comic opera, than of a serious business community. But to quote Dr. Johnson, " Sir, to leave things out of a book because people tell you they will not be believed is meanness." First, as regards flour. In order to prevent, it is said, the growth of a monopoly in the people's food, licence is granted to various millers to grind corn ; each miller being allowed to grind such proportion of the whole amount required as corresponds to the proportion his machinery bears to the total milling machinery in the town. The result is that mills have been multiplied and increased
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to an extent many times in excess of economic requirements, a serious waste of capital and of administrative expenses, which ultimately falls on the consumer, or at any rate tends to the impoverishment of the community.
The growth of sugar-cane, and the manufac- ture from it of sugar and alcohol, offer a still more noteworthy example of the effects of State control of commerce. The industry is one in which many thousands of people are directly or indirectly interested, and having been for some years in a state of intermittent crisis, arising from differences between the manufacturers and the Government, offers a staple subject for conversation in the island. Stand on any eminence in the neighbourhood of Funchal at this season of the year, when the crop is ripe for cutting, and you will see miles and miles of sugar-cane extending from the seashore up the mountain slopes. This cane is mostly bought by an English firm long estab- lished here, and sugar is manufactured from it in a thoroughly efficient mill, equipped with the most modern machinery ; yet when you go to buy sugar in the shops you are charged sevenpence a pound for it. This astonishing
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result, to which natives and foreign residents are inured, but which to strangers appears incredible, is brought about in the first instance by a duty of three hundred per cent, on imported sugar, which of course raises the price here to nearly four times what it would be in a free market. But it is also influenced by other factors. The sugar manufacturers have what is practically a contract with the Government, under which they are bound to purchase the whole of the Madeira crop at a price which, I understand, is about four times that current for cane in Barbadoes, in consideration of which they obtain, if not explicitly at least practically, a monopoly of the business, and also may im- port free of duty, or nearly so, molasses from the West Indies in an unmanufactured state. This provision appears to be of some value to them in the ordinary course of their business, and would naturally be of the highest impor- tance in the event of a failure of the Madeira crop.
It might be supposed that this sacrifice of the consumer would bring great profits (taken from his pocket) to the cultivators. But such does not appear to be the case. It may be that
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neither the soil nor the climate of Madeira is really fitted for the permanent growing of sugar on a large scale. It is an exhausting crop, and can perhaps be only grown economically in countries which enjoy cheap black labour. Here it certainly pays to grow — at the expense of the consumer, and under cover of the three hundred per cent, duty, but that is all. And as it is of easy cultivation, and under the con- tract I have mentioned the grower is sure of a sale at a fixed price, it is effectually discouraging the raising of other crops. However beneficial this curious system may be to the cultivator and his landlord, from the point of view of the community certain obvious disadvantages attach to it. Of course at this price no sugar can be exported to foreign countries ; all export of preserves, jams, candied fruits, and such articles depending on the use of sugar is equally out of the question, though it is conceivable that a great industry might be established in these, and bring much profit to the island ; and one cannot but think that in the languishing state of the wine trade, the provision of untaxed alcohol, at the lowest possible price, from what- ever source obtained, would commend itself to
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
the Government as a means of saving what is still the island's staple export.
Under the system of land tenure which pre- vails here, the landowner takes by way of rent half the produce of the soil, the remaining half being the tenant's share. The cultivation of sugar-cane under the artificial conditions de- scribed is no doubt advantageous to the land- lord. Not only does the crop produce a good return to him at a fixed price, but it is easy to check the amount received for it, and petty frauds by the tenant are rendered impossible. And at first sight it is also beneficial to the tenant ; at any rate he receives in money an amount which he could not otherwise hope for. But against this must be set the fact that little else can be grown with sugar-cane : that the beans, and sweet potatoes and yams, the sup- port of the tenant's family, must be bought and paid for instead of, as was formerly the case, being grown on the farm. Some of the opponents of the sugar cultivation assert (I cannot say with how much reason) that the tenants are gradually being impoverished, and that the outcome will probably be a widespread revolt against the landlords, whose present
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CUTTINt; THE SLCAK'-CAMi
Taxes — Monopolies — Po verty
prosperity may be expected to be short-lived. Since the introduction of the fixed-price system a few years ago the cane crop has increased fourfold, and is still increasing. Species of cane have been introduced which will flourish at a greater altitude than would that formerly cultivated, and already much of the best land in the island is given up to this absorbing crop. In the view of its opponents not only is the whole system economically bad, but it is fraught with dangers to the community, both financial and political.
It is not the least of the drawbacks of such artificial arrangements that they cannot be abolished or altered without causing great loss and even ruin to numerous innocent indi- viduals. It is in effect an experiment in Socialism. The cultivators are mere creatures of the State, and are entirely at the mercy of such provisions as the State may make. With the cultivation on this artificial basis, free com- petition on the manufacturing side is practically impossible ; you must either have State mills, or mills owned by individuals working, as here, under contract or in close touch with the State.
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
I have endeavoured to describe in a few words the main features, as they strike a mere spectator, of this extraordinary system, which is full of lessons for those who may discern them. Its contentious details, which I have avoided, are discussed with much acrimony in the local press ; but so ingrained is the idea of State- protection and State-regulation that the British practice of letting business matters take their natural course seems to be the last thing to occur to any one. And perhaps as things are it would puzzle even an administrator like Lord Cromer to find a way out. A country whose chief industry is based on a protective duty of 300 per cent, naturally gets into a very queer tangle economically.
Exports being discouraged in this fashion, and also to a less serious extent by the imposi- tion of export duties, it is not to be expected that the import trade should flourish. And it is further checked by very high customs duties, averaging, I believe, not far short of 100 per cent.
Sydney Smith's " dying Englishman " would not get off so cheaply here : " The dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid
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fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death."
These duties can hardly be described as pro- tective, because with the exception of certain minor articles, such for example as furniture and boots, few things in general use are manu- factured in the island. It must be acknow- ledged that they act as protective of certain industries on the mainland of Portugal ; but to judge from the predominance of foreign (chiefly German) goods in the shops, this protection is of no great eflfect. The duties are in practice rather restrictive than protective. Every one gets in the way of doing without many things which in other countries are in quite ordinary use. And to some extent they account for the backward state of the island in such matters as sanitation. The enormous duty on iron pipes, for example, discourages very effectually private enterprise in the laying on to houses of water from springs, and so on. The result in revenue of these duties is therefore quite incommensu- rate with the damage they do to trade, and to
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the well-being of the inhabitants. If there must be a tariff, it is probable that a very much lower one would soon produce a much greater revenue. At present we go without a new carpet, because the duty on it would be £,20 or ;^30. If the duty were reduced to one quarter of this sum, we should import our new carpet, and the State would receive £,^ or so instead of nothing. And the vista of general prosperity which after the first wrench would succeed such a change, coupled with the abolition of socialistic experiments as touching cultivation and manufacture, is boundless. But there is no sign as yet of the existence of any intelligent appreciation of economic laws.
In spite of everything the State can do to cripple foreign trade, and the fact that the most important export, wine, is a declining factor, a good deal of foreign money comes into the island. The coaling, watering, and provisioning of calling ships employ much labour ; there is an ever-increasing influx of visitors during the winter and spring ; and the salubrity of the climate tempts many Portuguese who have made money in tropical countries to make it their home on retiring from business. Much
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of the land has during the last fifty years passed into the possession of this class.
The amount of money left by passing steamers must be very considerable. In the palmy days of Johannesburg, the homeward- bound Cape mail, with much money burning holes in many pockets, must have been a veritable gold mine. And nowadays huge steamers taking American tourists to the Mediterranean call here and remain thirty-six hours. It is said that these tourists are very close-fisted, but even the post-cards they pur- chase must run into a goodly sum. It is to be feared that the money does not always go in the first instance into very worthy hands. Our excellent house-keeper, whose uncon- vential views are a perpetual joy, especially as regards the dignity of certain professions which we regard as disreputable and some of which must be nameless, has thrown light on this subject. We asked what had become of a certain John, formerly one of our hammock- bearers, whom we had not seen acting in that capacity lately. " Oh no," she replied, " John does not carry hammocks any more ; he is a very respectable man now ; he is a guider."
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We inquired what a guider might be. "A guider," she answered, "is like this. John he stand on the pier when English gentleman land from Cape steamer, and he say to English gentleman" (we can see that English gentleman), " * You want a drink ? ' English gentleman say, * Yes ! ' So John take him to a wine-shop, and say to him, * Madeira wine very good here.' So English gentleman order a bottle. When he drink it, he say, ' How much ? ' John say, * Eight shillings — very fine Madeira wine.' English gentleman very cross, he say too much money ; but in the end he pay, and then he go on board again " — no doubt assisted by the obliging John.
" Next day," she continued, " John go to the wine-seller, who give him four shillings. Yes," she added reflectively, "John very respectable man now " ; and we felt that any remarks on the honesty of his former toil, as contrasted with his present rascally business, would be misunderstood.
If it were not for these adventitious benefices the island would be in a bad way. A stranger may ask in surprise why Portugal, and especi- ally Madeira, are poor. It is obvious that this
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Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty
island is one of the most favoured spots of the earth's surface. Its genial climate, its fertile soil, its ample rainfall, its situation on the lines of route from South and West Africa and South America to Europe, and from North America to the Mediterranean ; its possession of plentiful labour — all these factors combine to promise an exceptional prosperity of State and individual alike. This promise is not ful- filled. There is no money to provide even the most ordinary requirements of a civilized coun- try. Roads, bridges, water-supply, drainage, hospitals, asylums, schools — in all these depart- ments Madeira is a century behind the age. If you ask why, there is no answer but " We are too poor." Good heavens ! how do the Portu- guese imagine that peoples inhabiting countries which lack almost all the advantages of theirs furnish themselves with these necessaries of life and a hundred others ? Even the provision of "up-to-date" hotel accommodation for visitors appears to be rendered impossible. The com- panies which have been during recent years crowding the health resorts of Europe with first- class hotels and restaurants have left Madeira alone, and the wealthier class of travellers, which
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is prepared to pay for its comforts and might bring much profit to the island, is discouraged from visiting it.
If we seek for the cause of this poverty and backwardness, our investigations always lead by one route or another to the vicious fiscal system of which I have given some examples. The concessions, the monopolies, the extravagant duties, the sacrifice of the community to the supposed interest of a class — such are the means by which the State forces poverty on itself and its citizens.
It is frequently said, and by some for whose judgment I have much respect, that the poverty of the inhabitants is due to over-population. So it may be under the present fiscal system ; but granted one which did not discourage export trade, a large population would be a blessing and not a curse. In Madeira the people are very prolific ; there is no question of the declining birth-rate, which is pro- ducing pessimistic forecasts of the extinction of Western civilization ; and owing to the healthy outdoor life infant mortality is less than might be expected ; — the greater the reason why the working class should not be
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Taxes — Monopolies — Poverty
hedged off from opportunities of profitable labour.
Even as things are the labourer's lot is not an unhappy one. Farm hands get from 400 to 500 reis a day, that is, from one and eight- pence to two shillings. I find they do not,'as a rule, work every day in the week ; one or two days are generally devoted to the cultivation of their own little patches, where they grow the sweet potatoes on which they chiefly live, or the sugar-cane which is supplanting them. They do not know what cold is, and fuel is only required for cooking. An English farm- labourer might reasonably regard their con- dition with envy.
In the foreign concession-hunter the Portu- guese sometimes catch a Tartar. A few years ago a German company-promoter, backed by a millionaire prince of imperial connections, obtained a concession to exploit this island as a resort for tourists and invalids. The company formed to work it undertook, as a consideration, to build a sanatorium with forty beds for sick poor — an ingenious arrangement, as it secured Royal support, her Majesty the Queen of Portugal being charitably disposed in such
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
matters. But it was a very inadequate con- sideration for the outrageous terms of the concession. These included not only the ad- mission of furniture and appliances for the German hotels free of customs duties — an injustice to the owners of existing hotels, who have paid duties on their imports — but also the right of expropriating land within a defined zone. This zone covered much property be- longing to British subjects, including important business premises of British firms. These firms naturally objected to their property being expropriated and their business being damaged, not for public purposes, but in the interests of a private company formed to run hotels and gambling casinos. A great outcry arose. Sug- gestions, perhaps not wholly without foundation, of German political aggression being at the bottom of it all were freely made in the English press. After a long fight, the English Foreign Office was moved to protest energetically against the threatened expropriation of certain English property, and the Portuguese Government had to inform the German company that it could not carry out the terms of the concession. The company, which had bought a good deal
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of land and done some building, threw up the business and claimed ^^500,000 damages. It was asserted that over ;^2 00,000 had already- been spent. The matter is still unsettled. It may be that the Portuguese Government will have to pay /!i2 00,000 or more, and take over the lands and buildings ; for which it would be unlikely to find a profitable use at one-quarter of the cost. But the lesson is worth something.
It is rather gratifying to the Englishman, before whom the bugbear of German competi- tion, of German commercial wisdom and success, has been brandished for years, to discover that even the German " sometimes nods." The possession of a few unused, and presumably useless, buildings, and a shadowy claim against a Government which is itself in financial diffi- culties, do not seem a very brilliant result for years of work, of diplomatic pressure and political intrigue, coupled with the expenditure, one way and another, of nearly a quarter of a million sterling.
I will conclude this chapter with a quotation from the " First Voyage " of Captain Cook : " Nature has been very bountiful in her gifts to Madeira. The soil is so rich, and there
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is such a variety of climate, that there is scarcely any article of the necessaries or luxuries of life which could not be cultivated here." These words have been almost repeated in my hearing by expert botanists in recent times. But Nature's bounty has been unavailing against the perversity of man.
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Chapter lX^m<iARCH The Garden in Spring
*' When spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil."'
Heber.
DURING the last month the garden I has lost some of the splendid colouring which characterized it in mid-winter. We have suffered from no southerly gale, perhaps our worst enemy in the way of weather, but we have had much northerly wind, with snow on the hills, and cold showers below. These will ulti- mately have a good effect, but they have retarded growth for the present, and the spring blossoms seem to be later than usual.
A notable feature of the past month has been the flowering of a native plant, the " Pride of Madeira," Echhim fastiiosum. It grows wild on the sea-cliffs, and in greater luxuriance in gardens. From a mass of grey foliage it throws up a number of torch-shaped heads of
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
a beautiful blue-grey colour, according well with the rocks or walls over which it loves to hang. Grown In a mass on a bank in full sun, it is a very handsome object, and it owns the sentimental attraction of an indigenous plant.
Freesias are now in full blossom, and the air is sweet with their delicious perfume. Violets do not grow well with us, but they are brought from the hill-gardens of unrivalled size and scent, the " Princess of Wales " being perhaps the most noteworthy. The yellow blossom of the mimosa trees has about it a very strong suggestion of spring.
Among climbers the Bougainvillea is now in its fullest perfection, and compensates us for the fading of the Bignonia venuUa. The mag- nificent rose-coloured Bignonia chirere is in flower in some sheltered gardens ; for ours we must wait a little longer. And shortly we shall enjoy what is perhaps the noblest of our flowers, the upstanding cream-white bells of Solandra grandifiora, I find that this is usually a novelty to English visitors, perhaps because its rampant growth renders it unsuitable for all but the largest houses. Here it will fling itself along a wall, or over a roof, in unrivalled luxuriance.
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THE I'RIDK OF MADEIRA
TliG Garden in Spring
If it has a fault it is that its splendid blooms too quickly fade.
It is more pleasant to chronicle such brilliant and easy successes than to confess to failures. It is perhaps not worth while where victory in one direction can be so readily won to strueele to avert defeat in another. But
DO
hope springs eternal, and suggests that even where others have failed we may succeed. I have made a valiant attempt to form a little rock-garden on English lines, and it must be owned with reluctance that it is a complete and utter failure. I did not venture to hope that many " Alpines " would put up with the con- ditions of this climate, but I was not prepared for the behaviour of some of the rock-plants which are almost weeds in our rockeries at home. Of the numerous kinds of sedum, encrusted saxifrage^ sempervivum, veronica^ thymey aubretia^ arabiSy cerastium, and such-like plants which I imported, not many have sur- vived the summer, and not one has really flourished. To my surprise, gentians have lived and looked fairly healthy ; but they show no signs of flowering. Some plants change their habits under the new conditions ;
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the common cat-mint, which on the Sussex chalk grows into a respectable shrub, here creeps along the ground with great humility ; and the helianthemum behaves in like fashion, and looks anything but happy. Another summer will probably sweep them all away. It is, I think, not so much a matter of climate as of soil. In dry weather the earth here cakes almost to the consistency of stone, and these rock-plants may be unable to extract from it the moisture they require. So, if one is to have a rock garden, one must probably fall back for its denizens on such succulent plants as cacti, which contain their own supply of water within themselves. With these and aloes, and such hanging things as heliotrope and ivy-leafed geranium and the "Pride of Madeira " one may clothe one's rocks, and try to forget that one is beaten. I have this year blasted out of the natural rock a deep path, with sloping walls six feet high, which will be eminently fitted for the display of such flowers ; but with all their beauty they will not equal in interest- the spring glory of the English rock- garden.
Yet perhaps with our wealth of roses,
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The Garden in Spring
varying indeed in profusion but never lacking ; our gorgeous tropical climbers ; our masses of scarlet geranhirriy and brilliant pelargonium ; our hedges of sweet peas ; our beds of delicate begonia ; of euphorbia^ azalea^ fuchsia^ lantana^ salvia^ llnum^ and many another never-failing flower ; perhaps it is more reasonable for us to be content with these than to go astray after strange gods.
Among fruits, the banana Is always with us, and is much better eating than the travelled specimen we know at home. The custard apple, delicious when at its creamy best in January, is becoming stringy and tasteless now. But the passion-flower fruit — that huge and glorified gooseberry — Is ripening ; and the loquat, the Japanese quince, is displaying its abundance of golden clusters. if not of universal acceptance raw. It makes very tasty tarts, and a jam with few rivals. With its large and shiny dark green foliage it Is a handsome tree In Itself; it will grow well against a wall In the South of England ; there Is a fine speci- men at Kew, but the fruit does not ripen there.
Some of the fruit trees and many of the shrubs and flowering plants sufl^er much from
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the attentions of a small species of ant, which has so abounded in recent years as to amount to a veritable plague. " An ant," said the wisest of mankind, " is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd thing in an orchard or garden." This particular species is said to have been imported in recent times from Mauritius or Brazil with some sugar-cane plants. It has certainly flourished after the manner of new importations — the rabbit in Australia, the measles in Fiji, the trout in New Zealand. But I have doubts as to the alleged origin of this ant ; I find complaints of the abundance of a similar pest in books published fifty or sixty years ago. Its numbers appear to have been steadily diminishing in our garden during the last year or two, and such shrubs as Oka fragranSy which it formerly permitted only just to exist, are now growing vigorously. Yet it has had its uses ; it has destroyed most of the fleas with which the streets of Funchal formerly swarmed, and by devouring their young it has much diminished the number of lizards, which do great damage to the ripe grapes in the vintage season.
Of more agreeable insects, we are favoured
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The Garden in Spring
throughout the winter with the presence of the Red Admiral butterfly, and, less commonly, of the Painted Lady. We constantly observe a curious habit of the former. The pavement in front of the house is of dark grey cobbles, with a pattern of thin lines of white stones running through them. Every sunny day a Red Admiral will float over this, settling here and there, and it is quite safe to bet ten to one that it will choose a white stone to alight on. We have endeavoured to acclimatize his first cousin the Peacock butterfly, by introducing a con- siderable number in the chrysalis stage, but so far have not seen a specimen of the perfect insect. With the spring comes thej lovely Clouded Yellow. I am under the impression that I have observed the Pale Clouded Yellow (Colias Hyale)y but I can find no record of its having been noticed by others.
Birds are not very numerous in Madeira, perhaps because of the prevalence of the kestrel, which may be seen everywhere in town or country. It will sometimes even snatch the tame canaries from their reed cages as they hang outside the houses. And it is to be feared that, as in France, every feathered thing
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is game to the peasant with a gun. But at this season the wild canaries, peculiar to Madeira and the Canary Islands, are building in all our garden trees, and enlivening us with their song. Among other garden friends are the grey wag- tail, the linnet, the ring sparrow, and the gold- finch. The red-legged partridge, the woodcock, and the quail breed in the island, but the sportsman must expect to work very hard for a small bag. The snipe is said to be a periodical visitor. Stragglers of various species some- times arrive from the African coast, especially after the prevalence of a strong east wind ; and even American species have been observed, a fact very interesting to naturalists, as it suggests a way in which the seeds of American plants may have reached the island in the past.
This is a busy season in the. fazenda^ or farm. The sugar-cane is now being cut, and the streets of Funchal are full of ox-drawn sledges con- veying bundles of it to the mill. By a curious perversity these are laid cross-wise on the sledge, instead of length-wise, with the result that the ends will sometimes strike the legs of the unwary wayfarer, or otherwise obstruct traffic, and much shouting and vituperation is
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The Garden in Spring
the outcome. A cloud of urchins hovers round the sledges, eager to pilfer a cane as occasion may serve. In this land of abundant cane and dear sugar, youth seldom tastes any other sweetmeat.
The vines have all been pruned during February, and are now putting forth their leaves. I have spoken of the wine industry as a declining one, but wine is still in point of value the only important export from the island. The culture of vines is of little interest tp us, as we do not see the vintage ; and one has not even the satisfaction of feeling that it pays, as for some years past the price paid by the merchants for the must, or grape juice, has been steadily declining. Indeed, there have been years when it was difficult to sell it at all. The attack of temperance from which the Western world appears to be suffering is producing much distress among those concerned one way or another in the supply of intoxicating drinks. It will soon be a question of almshouses for decayed brewers and wine-merchants. The happy days when brewer after brewer deigned to enter the House of Lords, and was provided by obliging genealogists with a descent from
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Crusaders, seem already very far ofF. " Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne " is no longer the monarch that he was.
But the wine trade of Madeira has passed through many vicissitudes in the past, and perhaps when the world has recovered from its headache and is athirst again the rich golden wine without rival of its kind will once more enjoy a vogue.
The first vines introduced into Madeira are said to have come from Crete. It is probable that the famous " butt of Malmsey " which figured so prominently in the history books of our childhood was of Cretan, and not Madeiran growth ; but Malmsey is still one of the finest wines made here. The English had certainly found out the merits of Madeira wine before the close of the sixteenth century. It is re- corded in the "Voyage of Lopes," in 1588, in "Purchas His Pilgrimes," that "wine groweth in great abundance in Madeira, yea, and in my opinion, the best in the world, whereof they carry abroad great store into divers countries, especially into England." A hundred years later there are said to have been ten English commercial houses in the island, the first
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English Consul, John Carter, having been appointed in 1658.
Mr. Yate Johnson quotes from the account of Paterson's disastrous expedition to Darien in 1698, that when his vessels touched at Madeira " those gentlemen who had fine clothes among their baggage were glad to exchange embroidered coats and laced waist- coats for provisions and wine." And John Atkins, a surgeon in the navy, who was here about 1720, relates that he bought a pipe of wine for two half-worn suits, and another pipe for three second-hand wigs.
The Continental wars of the close of the eighteenth century gave a great impetus to the consumption of Madeira wine in England, and for many years before and after the year 1 800 the average export was nearly 20,000 pipes. The restoration of peace on the fall of Napo- leon, and the consequent re-opening of French ports, brought about a decline, but the trade flourished until the vines were attacked in 1852 by a fungus, Oidium Tuckeri, znd nearly all destroyed. Sulphur has been found to keep this in check, the vineyards have been replanted with American stocks, and in spite
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of much trouble from the phylloxera, which appeared in 1874, the cultivation has attained something of its former importance. But the Oidium did worse than temporarily ruin the island vineyards ; it destroyed the confidence of the English wine-drinker. " There is," says Mr. Greg — in an essay rich with generous appreciation of Madeira of the right sort — " there is indeed a fashion to decry the wine, and he has suffered much from blight, and the rougishness of vintners ; for when the demand in former years ran high, these sorry rascals substituted for the real Simon Pure low-priced fluids liable to turn acid, and so did he fall into disrepute." *
So the English market was lost, and, as regards the finer wines at any rate, it is not likely to be regained, as long as the merchants maintain their policy of shipping wines blended to a particular quality, rather than vintage wines. If there is one thing that commends a wine more than another to the Englishman, it is the knowledge that it is of a good year ; and he who might be induced to lay down a pipe of an exceptional vintage will discover
* "Through a Glass lightly." By T. T. Greg. London, 1897,
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no particular inducement to purchase Messrs. Smith, Brown & Co.'s " Special Verdelho," which is always kept to the same standard.
For the spirit which must be added to the grape juice in the manufacture of wine no other than that made from sugar-cane is now available. The importation or manufacture of rectified spirit from any other source is for- bidden in the interest of the sugar cultivation. It is frequently said that grape brandy is the proper spirit for this purpose, that no other combines and matures with the juice of the grape in the same manner. The opposite is asserted here ; you are told that it is the same thing chemically. The very word is enough to make the amateur who contemplates a purchase close his cheque-book with a snap.
To return to the banana. For reasons already stated its cultivation has declined here in recent years, for under the prevailing fiscal arrangements it is quite impossible to grow it at a profit in competition with the Canary Isles and Jamaica, where more enlightened conditions prevail. But small if dwindling plantations still exist, and a few trees are to be found in every garden. It imparts to the scenery a more
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tropical aspect than perhaps any other plant in general cultivation. It was introduced at an early period. Thomas Nichols, a resident at the Canaries about 1560, wrote a short account of Madeira, in which he says, " The banana is in singular esteem and even venera- tion, being reckon'd for its deliciousness, the forbidden fruit. To confirm this surmise, they allege the size of its leaves. It is considered almost a crime to cut this fruit with a knife, because after dissection it gives a faint simili- tude of a crucifix ; and this, they say, is to wound Christ's sacred image." I believe this idea still prevails among the lower orders. For local consumption the small fruited " silver banana," which grows on a tall tree, is more highly esteemed than the banana of commerce, which is a better traveller.
Once upon a time, in the far-off Victorian days, it was the pleasant habit of young ladies to collect fronds of ferns, or other botanical specimens, but before all things ferns, and to press them between sheets of paper, sub- sequently connected, when the collection approached completion, with graceful ribbons. Croquet and its more strenuous successors were
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The Garden in Spring
not as yet invented ; archery was not becoming to every one's figure. The collection of fern- fronds had many merits ; it took the young ladies into fresh air and ennobling scenery ; it developed a power of observation and a sense of order, and it may have had even more important advantages. It is possible that the assistance of a strong arm, the help of a willing hand, was sometimes necessary upon a steep hill-side, or here in Madeira in the passage of a precipitous levada.
With the recrudescence of the early Victorian fashions, especially as regards hats, I have observed during the last year or two some revival of interest in crushed ferns. But it was only a flicker ; fashions change quickly nowadays, and with the abrupt disappearance again of the mid-nineteenth century mode, the demand for blotting-paper has slackened. From a botanical point of view this is perhaps not to be deplored. Were a serious epidemic of frond- snatching to set in, the stalwart young women of to-day, deserting the tennis-lawn for the mountains, might make short work of the Madeira fernery. The threatened danger, we may hope, is past, and in the forests of the
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
northern valleys the ferns may still shed their spores and multiply undisturbed.
The attempt to transplant specimens ot the native ferns from their home in the mountains or by the northern shores to our gardens here, is not as a rule very successful. Even if one can manage to give them adequate shade and sufficient water the air on this southern littoral is too dry. The charming ivy leaf fern {^Asplenium hemionitis), which grows in great pro- fusion below two thousand feet on the northern slopes, will live in a rockery here, even as it will flourish in a pot in a cool house in England. But it will not produce the enormous fronds of its wild state. The curious liverwort {Adiantum remforme)yVfh[ch. is peculiar to this and some other Atlantic islands, delights to grow on the face of damp rocks in the ravines of the southern side, and is a little less intolerant of removal. Its stiff heart- shaped fronds with their outer row of spores dangling on delicate stems, never fail to please. Woodwardia radicanSy which has been found in the northern valleys with fronds eight or ten feet long, will grow anywhere. The common Maidenhair {Adiantum capillus Veneris) is very
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adaptable, both wild and under cultivation. In damp woods it will throw up fronds two or three feet in length ; in sunny walls it is as small and bushy as our English Rue-fern. The Hare's Foot {Davallia Canariensis)^ which is a native of this island and the Canaries, but was introduced to Europe two centuries ago, grows freely in any situation.
The inhabitants of Funchal and its suburbs have an exasperating habit of plastering their walls and whitewashing them, so that no fern can grow in their chinks. But in the western quarter of the town there still remains a frag- ment of the great wall built after the invasion of the French freebooters in 1566. This has escaped both demolition and plaster, and it is the home of a very curious woolly fern, Notoclaena lanuginosa y which seems to revel in the hardest mortar. Like many ferns which live on walls in sunny situations, it shrivels up in dry weather, but is very fine after rain. Other ferns of similar habit may be found in un- plastered walls, especially in the hills to the west- ward of the town, and at an altitude of seven or eight hundred feet. The common Spleen- wort is one of these, and with it sometimes
iSi
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grows the Scale fern, Ceterach officinarum. The last named is very local, but I have found it in great abundance, and of surprising size in the situation described. Cheilanthes fragrans may be found in walls close to the town, but as it is usually in a dried and withered condition it may easily escape notice. This fern has a great power of retaining its vitality when dry, and a specimen is said to have revived after being mounted for eleven months in a herbarium. At this season of the year banks near the town are green with gymno- gramma leptophyllay a small and pretty annual.
Ascending to the Mount, two thousand feet above Funchal, and exploring the neighbouring ravines, we may find in abundance the Black Spleen-wort, and a few other interesting ferns, but to reap his full harvest of delight the fern- lover must cross the mountains and traverse the moist ravines which descend towards the north coast.
The great cushion fern, Dicksonia Culcita^ still grows in damp woods in the north-west of the island. Unfortunately its silky fibres are much used for stuffing pillows, and like other plants which serve human needs it is,
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unless saved by cultivation, threatened with extermination. So, too, the native junipers are almost extinct, their wood being used not only by cabinet-makers, but as torches. Many of the island trees are becoming very rare from similar causes, notably a lofty olive, with a hard white wood, much in request for the keels of boats. Very few large specimens of the native laurels now remain, as they are in demand for cabinet-making. It is related by the old chroniclers that when the island was discovered it was clothed with dense woods. To clear it for cultivation they were set fire to. The con- flagration is said to have lasted ten years, and on one occasion to have mastered the colonists and driven them to their ships. This story is probably only a poetic way of saying that it took ten years to destroy the primeval vegeta- tion on the ground required for the cultivation of sugar-cane ; and it is quite possible that man's needs in more recent times have had as much to do with extinction of the native flora as this possibly mythical fire. The inner and more inaccessible ravines seem to have escaped both these means of destruction, and in them may still be found a few very ancient specimens
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
of the indigenous hard-wood trees. Beneath their shade and on their trunks cluster the finest of the island ferns. The levadas^ or artificial watercourses, which I have already described as winding in and out of valleys otherwise inaccessible, and crossing the face of precipitous cliiFs afford a ready means of approaching these haunts. The levada on the east side of the Metade Valley (see Chapter III) may be reached in less than three hours from Funchal, and following its course either west- ward into the heart of the valley, or eastward from the Ribeiro Frio towards the Lamaceiros Pass, the pedestrian will be rewarded with a view of very luxuriant fern life. Here especially will he note the Killarney fern {Trichomanes radicans)^ and the filmy ferns {Hymenophyllum Timhridgense and H. unilaterale). These grow in masses on damp rocks and sometimes clothe the gnarled trunks of the ancient laurels. Here also may be found the curious cow's- tongue fern {Acrostkhum squamosum) growing in the same manner. 1 have observed this fern in great profusion, and of unusual size, by the path which leads up the head of the Boa Ventura Valley to the Torrinhas Pass, a route
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which, whether from the botanical or the picturesque point of view, is one of the most interesting in Madeira. The wealth of fern life in this gorge is something almost in- describable.
At a lower altitude on the north side of the island banks and walls will be found full oi Asplenium furcatum growing side by side with the ivy-leaf fern ; and on the coast itself the sea spleenwort flourishes everywhere.
In all there are about forty species of ferns found in the island ; of these three are peculiar to Madeira, and five to the North Atlantic islands. A full account of them may be found in Mr. Yate-Johnson's " Handbook to Madeira," with some indication of the localities in which they may be looked for.
Some slight knowledge of ferns undoubtedly adds great interest to a country walk. It would almost seem that they have an eye for the picturesque. I have noticed in this and in other countries that the finest ferns are often to be found amid the finest scenery.
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Chapter X—<dM^RCH Antiquities
Duke. " And what's her history ? f^io. A blank, my Lord."
Twelfth Night.
IT must be owned that while what we especially enjoy in Madeira — climate, scenery, vegetation — is of surpassing excellence, many things are lacking. Some will regret that there are no sandy dunes by the sea-shore whereon to essay the putting of a little ball into small holes " with instru- ments singularly ill-adapted to the purpose " ; others the absence, or scarcity, of partridges. Some the want of roads suitable for motors and bicycles. To others again the lack of any savour of real antiquity will be a never- assuaged sorrow. We have to go without all the romance which springs from that sugges- tion of ancient civilizations which is every- where present in Mediterranean countries. The chance of turning up even a Corinthian
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stater amid our sugar-canes would invest spade- work with a new interest. And our gardens lack that spice of immemorial antiquity which is added in Italy by the presence of a broken column, or a battered bust ; which even in many English gardens proceeds from the proximity of an ancient church, a fragment of a city wall, or a castle shattered in the civil wars.
" I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as were some buried Caesar bled ;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head."
It seems an undoubted fact that previous to the Portuguese colonization this island was un- inhabited. No vestiges of any previous race, civilized or uncivilized, have ever come to light. It may have been visited by early explorers, Phoenicians, or others ; more probably the adventurous mariners who passed the pillars of Hercules and turned their faces southwards kept too close to the African coast to gain any inkling of its existence. But even if it was visited, it was not settled, and we are therefore denied all the sentimental excitement and the practical labour of searching for antiquities.
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Those who have seen Etna from the Greek theatre of Taormina, or walked from temple to temple on the heights of GirgentI, or wondered at the mighty columns lying prone on either side of the stream at Selinunto, may realize our loss. And even if our aspirations do not soar so high as such glorious monu- ments of Hellenic art and civilization, if fancy fails us to picture an Acropolis of Funchal with its crown of Ionic columns, we yet may regret that even the ancient earthworks and the Roman villas of our own country, or such mysterious relics of the past as the temples and treasure-houses of tropical South Africa are lacking. And perhaps we may feel some surprise at the strange purposes of Nature in so long hiding from human knowledge an island so eminently fitted for human needs.
The old chroniclers, notably Fructuoso, who relates with picturesque detail the discovery of Madeira, are not invariably to be trusted. The measure of their historical value may be judged from Cordeyro's account of the early kings of Portugal. His object was to connect them with the heroes, scriptural or mythical, of antiquity. Lisbon was originally built by
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Eliza, nephew of Thubal, grandson of Noah ; hence it was called Elisabon. Eliza was in some way connected with Elysium, and his name survives to-day in " Champs Elysees." He was also called Luso ; hence Lusitania, the Roman name for Portugal ; and under his third name of Phoromeo or Prometheo, he invented fire. But in order to have two strings to his bow, the chronicler later attributes the foundation of Lisbon (Ulyssabon !) to Ulysses, who married Calypso, daughter of Gorgorio, King of Portugal, in b.c. ii8o. Another King, Atlante, had two daughters, Roma and Electra. The former founded Rome (subsequently rebuilt by Romulus and Remus) about 1628 b.c, 678 years after the Deluge. So is history made.
We Madeirans are dimly aware that to the south of us, s6me two or three hundred miles away, lies another group of islands, called the Canaries, and belonging to Spain. We do not think much of them, and we understand that in return they are fully alive to our defects. So, perhaps, Ramsgate may not admire Mar- gate, and Worthing be blind to the merits of Littlehampton. Officially the two groups are
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ever on the watch to pounce on the means of inter-communication. You have only to sug- gest plague, to whisper small-pox, to hint at yellow fever, as existing in one of them, and until further notice an exceedingly strict quarantine will be imposed by the other.
We are accustomed — especially such of us as have not visited them — to speak of the Canary Islands as dusty, arid, waterless deserts, lacking the plenteous vegetation of our more favoured island. We sometimes hear with indignation that the Canarians contrast their dry and bracing air with what they impudently term the damp-laden and depressing climate of Madeira, and we are shocked at the abyss of prejudice therein revealed. We admit that our own mountains are only half the height of the Peak of Teneriffe, "whose majestic summit may well be said to support the sky ; which thrusts its snow-clad cone far into the glittering sunlight to serve as a beacon and a guide to the wander- ing sailor." But we are not concerned for the wandering sailor, if such a being still exists ; and who will maintain that the beauties of Nature are to be measured by a foot-rule ? Did not Ruskin hold that the noblest stretch of water,
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and the fairest mountain elevation in the world, were contained in the view across Windermere to the Langdale Pikes ?
These islands, whether they rival the amenities of Madeira or not, have quite a different history. Lying as they do much nearer to the coast of Africa, and their loftiest peak being of such a soaring height, they could not escape the notice of the early voyagers who passed from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and skirted the Libyan coast in their southward course. And they therefore seem to have been fairly well known to the ancients. When, at the close of the Crusades, the adventurers of Western Europe turned their attention to the Atlantic, these islands were inhabited by a semi-civilized people, possibly of Egyptian origin, as they practised the mummification of their dead. They were organized on a basis of caste, a convenient belief being maintained that the Creator first made the nobles, and then, finding the world would hold more, created the common people to wait upon them. Such an opinion is perhaps still held covertly to this day in some other countries. These islanders made a very gallant defence of their country against
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the invading Spaniards, and from the date of the Jean de Bethencourt's expedition to con- quer them in 1402 a century elapsed before they were completely subdued. It must be owned that in the stirring details of this con- quest, and in the relics of these mysterious and interesting people, the Canaries possess an asset which Madeira with its more peaceful history lacks.
Midway between Madeira and the Canaries lies a small group of three uninhabited islands, the Salvages, to which a different sort of interest attaches. In 1820 a dying sailor made a confession that Captain Kidd, the celebrated pirate, had buried a great quantity of treasure there. Various attempts have been made to discover it, without success ; and if the dying sailor was not playing a practical joke on the world he was leaving, it still remains to tempt the adventurous.
If the Romans had not shrunk from explora- tion on the high seas — a curious want of enter- prise considering their taste for conquest and colonization ; and in the course of their wan- derings had occupied Madeira, our gain would perhaps be not merely that of the antiquary
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and scholar, but practical. Roads, bridges, aqueducts, and other public works would surely have survived the fall of the Empire, and as elsewhere within its confines would either serve modern uses, or point the way for their successors.
And a very little thing turned the scale and left this fertile island unoccupied for another fifteen hundred years. The writers of the guide-books do not seem to have stumbled on the story, but it is recorded by Plutarch that in the century before the birth of Christ some Andalusian seamen made two islands in the Atlantic, which from the account would seem to have been Madeira and Porto Santo. They described to the Roman general Sertorius the richness of their soil, the wealth of their vegetation, their soft airs, and the equable warmth of their climate. Having heard these things, we are told, Sertorius was filled with a wonderful longing to dwell in these islands, and to live in quietness far removed from the usurpation of tyrants and the stress of war. But he was prevented by his followers, and some time after was assassinated. No later Roman made the attempt. How many little
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things have changed the history of the world ! The colonization of Madeira was the first step towards the great over-sea possessions of Por- tugal ; its occupation by Rome might equally have been the first step to a world-wide Roman Empire.
Although the general aspect of Funchal may be described as " old-world," yet it suggests rather the comfortable and leisurely world of the eighteenth century than anything earlier. An old house or two with a sixteenth-century coat-of-arms and date may be seen ; some of the churches were built not long after the original occupation, but they contain very little of interest. The cathedral, which was finished in 1 5 14, is not an interesting building as a v/hole ; but its ceiling of juniper wood, com- monly said to be Moorish in character, and distantly recalling some Venetian work of the period, is very fine. The sacristy contains a good deal of elaborate carving of the sixteenth century, and a number of pictures which to describe as of no merit is too mild. The Church of the Convent of Sta. Clara, in which Zargo, the first governor, is buried, is lined with very beautiful tiles with an interlaced arabesque
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design, I think, of early sixteenth-century work, and the effect is most pleasing ; but there is little in the whole town which one would take the trouble to look at in Italy or Spain. None of the fine arts seem to have flourished here at any time. Probably the Morgados, the territorial lords, who for several centuries had everything in their control, were very unenlightened coun- try squires, who never produced a Maecenas.
In masonry the good Latin tradition of sound and substantial work still survives, and the houses are built with great solidity. One misses the stone stairways and marble balustrades of Italy, but pleasant fountains and stone seats of passably good design are common ; and long pergolas with stone pillars and tops of chestnut wood are an agreeable feature. The houses were formerly roofed Vvith brown-grey tiles which " weather " to a very charming and reposeful tint. These were unfortunately abandoned some years ago for tiles of that staring red which one sees in the neighbourhood of Marseilles ; and more recently a hideous diaper design of many colours has come into fashion. And architectural taste generally is at present at a very low ebb.
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
Although Madeira has played no great part in human story, and has no imposing relics of the past to show, it was nevertheless the nursery of two very notable things, which profoundly influenced the history of subse- quently discovered and colonized Western countries. I have mentioned that its colonization was the first step in that world-wide Portuguese over-sea enterprise which blazed up in the succeeding century, and led the Pope to divide the new world between Portugal and Spain. Into Madeira Prince Henry introduced some shoots of sugar-cane from Sicily, and here he organized the first cultivation and manufacture of sugar on a large scale, and from Madeira the cultivation spread to the West Indies when they were discovered and settled. The de- ficiency of white labour for the working of this crop led to the importation into Madeira of large numbers of negroes from Africa, their first employment by Europeans in the develop- ment of a new country, and a step which later led to very momentous consequences in North and South America. For hence arose " that execrable sum of all villanies," the slave trade.
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The arms of the city of Funchal com- memorate the early prosperity of the cultivation of sugar-cane. They are : Sable, five sugar loaves argent, arranged cruciformly. Originally a stem of sugar-cane was disposed on each side of the shield, but later a vine branch with fruit took the place of one of the canes.
The collector — we are all collectors nowadays — who cares for English furniture and silver of the eighteenth century, has sometimes found Madeira a happy hunting ground. In house after house — English and Portuguese — you may see good old English furniture, especially fine chairs and settees, some undoubtedly the work of the great English makers ; while others are local copies and adaptations of their designs. And as the Madeira cabinet makers have always been masters of their craft, the latter are not to be despised. They may generally be detected by the great heaviness of the island mahogany from which they are made, and by their missing in some indefinable way the quality which genius impresses. But the real thing is not uncommon.
Walnut furniture of the Queen Anne period, whether of English or of Dutch origin, is also to be found ; but as the wood is peculiarly
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liable to the attacks of worms, which in this climate are rampant, it is usually in very poor condition, a fact which those who have come to feel its unique charm will regret. The business of " worm-eating," which is said to afford an honest livelihood to many respectable workmen in London, is as yet unknown here.
Strangers often express surprise at this abundance of old English furniture in a foreign country. It is explained by the fact that in the seventeenth and especially in the eighteenth centuries many Englishmen settled here to exploit the wine trade ; they made a great deal of money, and built themselves fine houses, and sent to England for their furniture and plate. And as later the East Indiamen commonly called here for wine, Madeira pro- bably had more regular communication with England than even with Portugal. There is, however, a persistent tradition that Thomas Chippendale himself at one time resided and worked either in Portugal or here. 1 can find no authority for this, but the surprising amount of work more or less showing his influence seems to lend some colour to the story, which is not in itself incredible.
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It is not to be supposed that you can walk into a shop and buy such treasures. The getting of them still has some of the excitement of the hunt. There are as yet no dealers in curios, and there are consequently no sham antiquities at genuine prices. Occasionally an old piece finds its way to one of the cabinet makers, or if it is known that you are looking out for such things you hear of them. In a country where the lower orders cannot read or write, report by word of mouth seems to play a greater part than with us. Everything is known everywhere at once, and no doubt our mysterious tastes excite much comment among a people which loves nothing so much as talk. And when you do get a chance of buying, you are generally asked quite old-fashioned prices. I bought a " Chippendale " chair for twenty-two shillings. It was covered with green paint ; this being: washed off it stood revealed as of the finest design and workmanship. And do we not possess one of the most beautiful silver cake-baskets ever seen, with London mark and date 1762, which was bought for a trifle more than its weight in dollars ?
Occasionally the contents of an old house are
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sold by auction. If the sale occurs during the winter season, when the town is full, fair prices may be obtained for the more obviously attractive lots. But s^reat bargrains are some- times to be had. Not many years ago a very beautiful and extensive set of Nant-Garw china was sold for a mere song, perhaps less than the price asked for a single plate by London dealers. It fortunately passed into the possession of those who were able to appreciate it.
The ethics of buying valuable things at a low price have often been discussed. If the purchase is made in market overt, as at public auction, under the eyes of the world, there would seem to be no moral obligation on the purchaser to pay more than his bid. The case is different where the sale is privately made by a poor and ignorant person who has little means of judging the value of what he is parting with. A sensitively honest purchaser will hesitate to take advantage of such a situa- tion, and may fittingly astonish the vendor by paying more than is asked. Where a dealer, who may be presumed to be an expert, is concerned, it is too much to expect any one
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who buys to do more than thank heaven for a bargain. A story is going the rounds of a young lady buying a pewter jug from an old woman in Suffolk for a shilling, and finding screwed up in paper within it a black pearl necklace, said to be of great historic interest, and of enormous value. This is not quite a case in point, as I suppose the necklace still belongs, not only morally, but legally, to the old woman.
Book-lovers will deplore the booklessness of the town — which does not boast a bookseller of any sort. A few English eighteenth-century calf-bound volumes occasionally appear at sales, having presumably arrived with the Chippen- dale chairs. I have long nourished a vain hope that among them I may some day discover such a treasure as the first edition of the " Vicar of Wakefield," published at Salisbury ; but so far I have found little but the customary theology, and odd volumes of " Sir Charles Grandison," and Young s '' Night Thoughts." By the way, one of my most treasured literary curiosities is a bookseller's catalogue, in which the last-named work is described as Young's "Night Thoughts on
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Life, Death, and Immorality," a lapse which is like to make our great-grandmothers, whom the reverend doctor's pious platitudes lulled to sleep, turn in their graves. A pleasing collection may be made of curious extracts from bookseller's catalogues. Some in puffing their wares adopt a very flamboyant style. I cull the following recommendation of the bound numbers of a magazine which appears to have died untimely ; but there are two ways of looking at everything : " This yellow flower lived triumphantly for three years ; and so long as real art and literature are loved in this island, the work will be treasured. Some of the greatest names of modern times are to be found on its pages ; some of the most brilliant gems glisten in the green field of its endeavour, against whose brightness time may
batter in vain. With as literary editor,
a host of great ones appeared, splendid, like an army with banners." This is going one better than our Madeira letter-writer.
True to their obscurantist principles, the authorities impose a tax on books imported in any considerable quantity, although they permit Messrs. Hatchard to post us single
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volumes free of duty. This tax is said to be regulated by the nature rather of the binding than by that of the book ; the unhappy pur- chaser of the " Encyclopasdia Britannica," bound in " three-quarter levant morocco " (specially recommended), was mulcted in a much more considerable sum than he who was content with the same notorious work in cloth covers. If either of them was induced to order the well-made revolving bookcase, he probably found that the duty on it was about four shillings per pound avoirdupois. So dearly must knowledge sometimes be bought. This absence of any distributing agency for literature affords a strange contrast to the teeming bookshops of France and England ; to the piles of cheap reprints both of time- honoured and of modern works which are now offered to us everywhere in such profusion ; to the public libraries which flourish in every self- respecting town. In this matter, as in so many others, Portugal is still living under the con- ditions of the eighteenth century. The root of it all is to be found in the absence of educa- tion ; until this is remedied there will be no awakening.
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Many books have been written about Madeira, but they have generally been on somewhat prosaic lines, statistics of temperature and rainfall being especially the concern of their authors. The poets — certainly in our language — do not seem to have found much inspiration in the island's beauties. Combe, the author of "Dr. Syntax," produced a curious work, a sort of guide-book combined with verses after his manner, the whole designed apparently to illus- trate some very exaggerated coloured caricatures of Madeira types, somewhat in the style of Rowlandson. And it has been my good fortune to light upon a remarkable book entitled "The Ocean Flower," a poem in ten cantos, pub- lished in London in 1845. The author was T. M. Hughes, whom I judge by internal evidence to have been of the male sex. The object of this astonishing work is to relate the discovery, colonization and early history of Madeira, embodying what used to be called a " chorographical " description of the island. The following verses, which describe Zargo's selection of the site for a town which he named Funchal, from the fennel which abounded there, are a fair specimen of the writer's style : —
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"For here an amphitheatre of hills
Swept sheltering upwards, a fair strand around ; And Zargo fixed amid three murmuring rills The island capital upon this ground.
" And for that on this stripe of level strantl
(There's round the Isle, I ween, no other mall) Grew store of fennel gay by zephyrs fanned, The Donatorio named the place Funchal."
Nearly two hundred pages are filled with this sort of thing, interspersed with songs, some of which in their own way are gems. The giant Til-tree, the wood of which may or may not have been used in the decoration of the Spanish Armada, is thus referred to —
" 'Twas in the Cadea Velh he stood Till Spain usurped the crown, When Philip for his Armada-wood
The noble tree cut down. Its beauteous veins dark-polished Shone in many a gay saloon ; But a storm arose. And his English foes That Armada finished soon ! "
Of the vine our author has much to say —
" His joy is to shoot forth his leaves. And from trellis to trellis to pass, And when ripened to wine, upon sociable eves, To be poured into glass upon glass,'
and so on. Tobacco appears as " the shrub
narcotic which the fair disdain." But the tair
have changed since 1 845.
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Chapter Xl—.fMz^RCH
The North Side
" And there The sunshine in the happy glens is fair. And by the sea, and in the brakes The grass is cool, the seaside air Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers More virginal and sweet than ours."
Matthew Arnold.
A JOURNEY to the north side of this island is something quite apart from the ordinary run of travel in the modern world. A very mountainous country, girt with precipitous sea- cliffs and intersected by a succession of ravines ; with no roads other than mere horse-tracks at the best and almost impassable foot-paths at the worst ; an absence of any other than the most simple lodging and most homely fare in the seldom visited villages ; such are the conditions of the journey. But its very difficulties have produced their own remedy. The necessity of carrying across mountain passes or up
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precipitous cliffs everything not locally produced has bred a race of porters unsurpassed for strength and endurance in the world, porters who take a very pride in the weight of their loads, who will delight to carry not only your luggage but yourself, who will make shift to carry your grand piano if you have a fancy to take it with you. Wherefore it is possible for the modest traveller who is content with a change of clothes, and some certainty of pro- vision in the shape of a tinned tongue and a little tea, who will ride or walk as occasion serves, and if he or she knocks up be content to be borne in a hammock by casual peasants — they are all porters, more or less — it is possible for such an one to journey with a light heart and a single attendant. The less hardy may think a second bearer for a camp bed and some blankets not out of place ; the sybarite who wants more had better stick to the hotels and casino of Funchal.
The roads or tracks which cross the central range of mountains radiate from Funchal like the sticks of a fan. They all lead the traveller through mountain and sylvan scenery of great beauty, especially on the northern watershed.
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I have already described the chief route across the island as far as the Ribeiro Frio, the excursion which gives to many visitors their one glimpse of the northern valleys. The traveller who instead of returning to Funchal pursues this route to the village of Sta. Anna will pass through a succession of enchanting scenes, " an intermingled pomp of hill and vale." He will ascend ridge after ridge and descend into valley after valley, each differing from each in character, yet now and then displaying that curious repeti- tion of feature, that suggestion of imitative power, which are sometimes very marked in the scenery of volcanic mountains. Perhaps the finest part of the route is where the traveller crosses the Metade valley, a good deal lower down than the point of view already described. Looking back, he gazes once more into the stupendous recesses of the great ravine ; the view if less intimate is more mysterious ; and if clouds have gathered on the crests and hide the topmost crags of Arriero and the Torres, their lower cliiFs will appear the more appalling for the gloom above. At this season the lower hills are made glorious by the common broom, " flooding the mountain-sides for miles with
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seas of golden blossoms." The late Rev. R. T. Lowe, author of " A Manual Flora of Madeira," states that though not indigenous to the island it has been during the last hundred years so widely diffused, both by culture and self-pro- pagation, as to appear so. It is sown exten- sively on the mountains to be cut down for firing, or to be burnt on the spot every five or six years to fertilize the ground and prepare it for a crop of corn or potatoes. The twigs and more slender branches are employed as withs for binding bundles of faggots or brush- wood ; and numbers of the country people, especially women and girls, living within reach of Funchal earn a scanty livelihood by bringing into town bundles of giesla to be used for heating ovens, and similar purposes. In some places the broom is being completely superseded by the common gorse, which was introduced about one hundred years ago, and has spread over the whole island. It is used as in England for clipped fences, and occasionally as brushwood for firing.
Passing from the slopes of the lower hills, the traveller enters a sylvan region, and emerges from it to arrive at the pleasant
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village of Sta. Anna. Here are masses of hydrangeas, which must be glorious in summer, and the hedges are full of fuchsias and other flowering plants. At this season the air is still fresh and keen, for Sta. Anna lies at an elevation of eleven or twelve hundred feet.
Using Sta. Anna as a centre, the traveller may explore much of the northern coast ; he may ascend the six thousand feet of Ruivo, the highest summit of the island, or, by means of the levadas which tap their streams, he may find his way into the great valleys and their ramifications which extend deep into the central range. The village itself lies a short distance from the edge of the sea-clifi^s, which are here about one thousand feet high and rich in all the elements of savage grandeur.
Here he may look down on little coves and isolated beaches, such as Stevenson would have loved to endow with the romance of a piratical past, and he may dream of days when perchance they were put to nefarious, if picturesque, uses. In some of its features this coast recalls the fantastic pictures of Gustave Dore ; solitary and peaked rocks stand out in the sea, and the ceaseless fret of
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the waves has in more than one instance worn a passage through the centre of such a rock, forming a natural arch.
Or he may stroll eastward through the woods for an hour or two to the Cortado pass, where, as he emerges from a rocky defile, he will come suddenly on one of the most striking views of the island. In front is the mass of the Penha d' Aguia, the Eagle's Rock, an isolated mountain rising from the sea to a height of nearly two thousand feet, and joined by a low neck or saddle to the mountain chain of the island. At its foot lie the little ports of Fayal and Porta da Cruz, Inland the eye ranges over a vast extent of the cultivated hillside up to the wooded heights of the Lamaceiros Pass. This part of the island, considering its mountainous and broken character, is very thickly populated. The soil is rich and friable ; to work it the pointed tools which are used in the neighbourhood of Funchal are not needed. There is plenty of water. The climate is much cooler than on the southern side, and there is a delightful freshness in the air. Some vines, and a little sugar, are grown ; the staple crops are the
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corn and the vegetables on which the people feed.
Of the lower slopes of the hills, every available space is terraced and cultivated. The concen- trated industry displayed is very remarkable. There are those who will prate to you of the " lazy Latin races." Let them reflect on the conditions of cultivation in this and similar countries, and recant their heresy. These peasants, scratching the slopes of an extinct volcano — though they knew it not as such — lead simple lives very remote from all modern influences. Many pass their days without even visiting the great city of Funchal. Their ignorance of the very rudiments of education insures their continued adscriptio glehce. For what Mr. Wells calls the "general adventurous- ness of life " in towns, perhaps the chief attrac- tion of town-life to those who have learnt to read and write, they are quite unfitted. Where- fore, as their fathers before them, and their sons to come, they wage their life-long combat with the forces of Nature and the exactions of their landlord. Their religion, with its ordered ceremonies and cheerful festivals, is at once their chief consolation, their sole recreation, and
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their one taste of a life higher than their con- stant toil. It is idle to ask whether their lot is more or less happy than that of more " advanced " communities. Even if we allow that happiness is the end, it is perhaps more evenly distributed by a principle of compensa- tion than is generally evident. If they are denied the joys of the "Football Special" and " All the Winners " ; if their sole glimpse of the achievements of science, such as the electric light, Is afforded by the play of some warship's searchlight, which in the early days of such in- ventions must have scared their simple wits to distraction ; if of what is passing in " the world" they are as ignorant as their own beasts ; yet who, being master of his fate, would not choose theirs in preference to that of the stunted slaves of modern industry }
Were it not for the difficulty of bringing them to market, vegetables might be grown in large quantities In these valleys for the supply of European markets during winter. But carnage over the mountain passes is out of the question ; and the tiny steamers which en- deavour to keep up communication between the little ports and Funchal are often unable in
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the stormy sea of this northern coast to ship cargo for weeks together. Cars running on overhead wire-ropes across the mountains have been suggested, and as far as I know may be feasible, but who is to find the capital outlay for such an enterprise ? So "ihe northern dis- tricts of the island remain pretty much the same as they have been for centuries ; and those who take delight in unspoiled scenery and the ways of a primitive peasantry may indulge a hope that they will long remain so.
As one looks northwards across the ocean, the island of Porto Santo is ever a prominent object, hanging like a fairy isle between the sea and sky. It is but six miles long, with an extreme width of three miles, with some two thousand inhabitants, chiefly engaged in pastoral pursuits. Here are bred the oxen so largely used for draught purposes in Funchal. Its loftiest peak is about 1660 feet high. There are no trees, and from a distance it affords a strangely barren contrast to the fertile aspect of Madeira. It is a poor little place, with a mail only every two or three weeks, when the weather permits a small steamer to make the voyage from Funchal : and life on the island
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must be of the dullest. Yet it has Interesting historical associations. It was occupied by the Portuguese a year before they colonized Madeira. The first governor was Bartolomeo Perestrello, an Italian sea-captain in the Portu- guese service. His daughter married the great Columbus, who resided here for some time. The story runs that the dying pilot of a Biscayan vessel which was driven into Porto Santo by stress of weather gave to Columbus his chart and papers, and some information which led the great navigator to believe that land lay beyond the ocean to the westward.
Washington Irving waxes wroth over this " idle tale of a tempest-tossed pilot," which he says was seized and shaped by such as sought to tarnish the glory of his hero. But we may see in it nothing more than one of those vague reports of islands or continents yet undiscovered which in the ferment of the fifteenth century were eagerly received. In that wonderful period human activity was at its highest point ; not only were the scholars and the artists, filled with the spirit of the classical revival, ever seeking fresh means of intellectual and imagi- native enjoyment ; the men of action and of
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science were no less thirsting for a wider know- ledge of the material universe. The great achievements of the Renaissance, says John Addington Symonds, following Michelet, were the discovery of the world and the discovery of man. And the former process did not stop with the voyage of Columbus to America in 1492, and the rounding of the Cape by the Portuguese in 1497 ; the solar system was explained by Copernicus in 1507. If we con- trast the history and achievements of the ten centuries preceding these dates with those of the four centuries succeeding them, we may realize what we owe to the intellectual emanci- pation of the fifteenth century.
The discovery early in the century of rich islands in the Atlantic, of Madeira and the Azores, suggested naturally the possibility, almost the certainty, of fresh discoveries. From time immemorial men had dreamed of a happy land beyond the western wave. The Elysium of Plato's " Timaeus," the Antilla of Aristotle, the Christian legend of the seven bishops who with their followers fled from Spain before the Moors, and were guided miracu- lously to an island of the ocean, whereon they
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founded seven cities — such were examples in literary form of the vague mass of tradition which existed in the popular mind. And Columbus, lingering in the solitude of Porto Santo, weighed the various stories which reached him, of islands seen afar, of mysterious reeds and trunks of pine trees of an unknown kind wafted by westerly gales, of the bodies of two dead men cast upon the island of Flores, whose features differed from those of any known race of people. Of such stories, false or true, Madeira and Porto Santo were doubtless as full as a mining-camp to-day with rumours of rich '* strikes." According to the statement of his son Fernando, he passed from one position to another, until he came to the conclusion that there was undiscovered land in the western part of the ocean ; that it was attainable, that it was fertile, and finally, that it was inhabited. To few men has it been more fully given to prove the truth of their theoretical speculations.
The existence of a mine of quicksilver in Porto Santo is affirmed by some Portuguese writers. Mr. Yate-Johnson describes this as a figment of the imagination, and believes that it arose from the fact that a little mercury was
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found on the ground at the top of one of the hills, where a stranger had been unlucky enough to break an instrument — a curious instance of unconscious " salting."
Delightful as is the vicinity of Sta. Anna, the traveller who wishes to realize fully the beauty and grandeur of the north coast must travel further westward. In the course of his journey he will descend into the ravines of many rivers, crossing them perhaps not much above the sea-level, and ascend again and again by tortuous and steep paths the ridges which divide them. These wanderings will lead him along the face of headlands, against the base of which, perhaps a thousand or fifteen hundred feet directly below, the surf thunders un- ceasingly. In such awe-inspiring situations, along a rough and narrow path hewn in the rock, he may perhaps deem it wiser to lead his horse than to ride him. And the grandest and wildest path of all can only be traversed on foot.
West of Sta. Anna lies the village of St. Jorge, situate also about a thousand feet above the sea. It looks but a little way off, but it takes two or three hours to ride to it. It is the centre of a
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very fertile and beautiful district, with a fine air of prosperity ; the cottage gardens bright with flowers. The Bishop of Funchal owns a fair Quinta and a considerable estate here. From a point on the cliffs below the village the long line of surf-beaten cliffs may be seen in all their glory. As one looks southward, the great mass of Pico Ruivo dominates the scene, its sides scarred with the beginnings of those ravines which in their full development lower down cost us so much trouble to cross. From this pleasant village the traveller may ride in another three hours to Boa Ventura, passing on the journey one of those fearful headlands which I have described.
Where every prospect pleases, where you may make your choice between beetling crags and sylvan gorges, and flowery m.eads and sea- sprayed cliffs, it is difficult to select one spot on this northern shore as more truly delightful than another. Yet, if I must make a choice, I do not hesitate to choose the village of Boa Ventura, of " Good Fortune," as the very gem. The hamlet lies some 1400 feet above the sea- level, on a spur of mountain standing out into one of the main valleys of the island, perhaps
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the most glorious of all its valleys. The church is dedicated to Santa Quiteria, a Portu- guese virgin and martyr, whose aid may be invoked against the bite of mad dogs, an inter- vention of no great value here, as hydrophobia is unknown in the island ; although from another point of view this immunity may be held to be the result of her beneficent influence. It stands with its surrounding group of closely packed cottages a few hundred yards from the extreme point of the ridge, which is occupied by the churchyard. A pleasant and level path connects the two.
The Portuguese seem to have, consciously or unconsciously, a happy knack of selecting a fine and romantic position for the last resting-place of their dead. Does not the chief cemetery of Funchal fill the finest site of the town ? And the rude forefathers of Boa Ventura sleep amid a scene of beauty not easily matched. To sit in the evening hour by the churchyard wall and watch the shadows creeping upwards from the already dark valleys towards the reddening peaks, while far below the Atlantic rollers break and spirt in spume through the honeycombed reefs ; to note how the last lingering rays of
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the setting sun illumine the graves of the unnamed dead ; such is an experience not readily forgotten.
" Perchance the men who chose this sacred ground, Set high between the mountains and the sea, In that last radiance of the sunset found Some promise of a glory yet to be ;
" Some hope In that last burning sunset kiss
For those who nameless and unhonoured lie j Some fitting symbol of unearthly bliss For such poor fragments of humanity."
And it may be that as you stroll back along the level path — the path by which the villagers are borne to their long rest — the tower of Santa Quiteria will ring forth the Angelus, telling once more, as it has told through the centuries, its message of peace and consolation.
«' To me, a stranger, of an alien race.
Doubter, yet lover of the ancient ways,
It brought perchance some particle of grace,
Some reflex of the light of other days ;
" It stirred the feelings and it touched the heart j It told of causes lost and victories won ; It called up memories of the painter's art, The Virgin Mother and her wide-eyed Son,
" And of the artist's fancy fairest flower.
Those humble figures of poor human clay, That stand attentive at the evening hour, And bow their heads in reverence, and pray.
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" To many a toil-worn worker of the hills
It brought the message that for him was best ; It shed a bahn to cure his earthly ills ; It told of present and eternal rest."
From the village of Boa Ventura a path leads up the valley and over a high mountain-pass, called the Torrinhas, to the southern side and Funchal. This path, if in good order, is perhaps just passable for horses ; if landslips have occurred to damage it, it may be, as I once chanced to find it, scarcely passable on foot. From the village it descends a few hundred feet to the level of the little river, which in a more northern land would make an ideal trout stream. By the side of this it ascends for some miles, passing gradually from the cultivated lands to the region of primeval forest, the enclosing walls of rock becoming ever grander as we bore deeper into the mass of the central range. At length we appear to reach an impasse. The valley at its head widens into a circular amphitheatre, suggesting an extinct volcano, without reason, as the geologists tell us. The scene offers an unsur- passed combination of the stupendous and the picturesque. The mountain sides are clothed with forest, the aboriginal laurel-trees of the
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island, their trunks and the moss-clad rocks around them affording harbour for a surprising wealth of fern. Looking upwards through their branches, we catch glimpses of the crags and pinnacles above. There is no lack of water ; the " liquid lapse of murmuring streams" suggests the reason of this abounding vegetation. Up one of the slopes our path finds a way of interminable zigzags till we reach the level of the pass, nearly five thousand feet above the sea. A comparatively level stretch bordered here and there by great smooth rocks of un- usual form and affording views of the vale below, which fill us with awe and admiration, leads to the Torrinhas Pass itself. We hasten through a narrow opening in the jagged summit, and a different world lies at our feet. We are at the head of the greatest valley of the southern side, the Curral das Freiras, known to the tourists who visit its lower end from Funchal as the Grand Curral ; and beyond it stretches the Southern ocean. The general aspect of the two sides of the island is almost startling in its contrasts. Behind us is an amazing wealth of greenery ; in front the slopes are almost treeless, and their prevailing tint is
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brown. From the summit of the pass we may descend by a good road into the Curral, and ride in five hours to Funchal.
But the enterprising traveller will prefer to return to Boa Ventura and to continue his exploration of the north coast, of which the wildest portion still awaits him. In a few hours' ride from the fair village, which he will no doubt have left with regret, he will reach the little town of S. Vicente, lying at the narrow mouth of one of the grandest of the island's valleys. Here, too, a road leads up the ravine and over a high pass at its head to the west side of the Grand Curral and Funchal, one of the finest, some think the very finest, of the routes across the island. Opposite the extremely narrow opening in the line of coast- cliffs through which the river reaches the sea, on the very beach itself, stands a curious isolated rock, the interior of which has been hollowed out to form a chapel which is dedi- cated to the patron saint of the valley. This chapel was constructed in the year 1692, and is used for the celebration of mass on St. John's Day.
From S. Vicente westward a very remarkable
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*
%
" ,iB»^'sJ>' ^li-^,
ROAD NEAR liOA VENTURA Frotii a sA^eff/t hy Chevutier
The North Side
path, only passable on foot, has been hewn in the face of the precipitous cliffs. It leads in about two hours to the village of Seixal. It is never more than six feet wide and often much less, it has no parapet, and the overhanging rock sometimes makes it impossible for a tall man to walk upright. Here and there, where waterfalls descend from the hills above, the rock is tunnelled to afford protection. Some- times the path descends to the sea-level, only to ascend again several hundred feet. And always the cliffs are sheer, with the wild sea breaking at their base. It is not a path suited to the nervous. Wild gullies, deep gashes severing the line of cliff and extending far into the heart of the mountains, are passed on the way. The deepest and most precipitous is called, not inappropriately, Ribeiro do Inferno. The botanist will remark that the moist crannies in the rock are everywhere filled with splendid specimens of the sea spleenwort, Asplenium marinum ; and the cliffs are studded, as else- where on the north coast, with a species of houseleek, Sempervivum glandidosum^ varying in size from that of a small pincushion to that of the crown of a tall hat, or larger.
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In the pleasing jargon of the botanists the leaves of this plant are thus described —
" Rhomboidal-spathulate or obovate-ligulate inconspicuously or irregularly fringed with short subremote often clavate or capitate sub- cartilaginous ciliay bright green closely imbricate in a flat or discoidal sessile radical rosette lasting till the appearance of the single central succulent branched flower-stem."
This will enable the reader to picture to himself its appearance.
At Seixal this unique path comes to an end. Sheer clifl^s of great height bar all further passage along the coast, and the traveller bent on proceeding westward must either take boat, or ascend to the mountain plateau above. It is possible so to climb by a very rough path up the west side of the vale of Seixal, a valley seldom visited, but almost unrivalled in wealth of vegetation and wild rocky scenery. Above this gorge lies a lovely sylvan and ; park-like tract with scattered timber, across which a path may be followed to the far-famed water- falls of Raba^al, whence one of the little ports on the south coast may be reached.
For the prolonged exploration of the high
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land in the centre of the island, and the heads of the great ravines, the weather in winter is often unsuitable. But in summer tent life at this altitude must be very delightful. A de- scription of its charms may be found in the late Mr. Wollaston's volume on the insects of Madeira. Under such agreeable conditions he pursued his investigations. But from what I have observed, there are certain races of insects which may best be studied in the villages.
'.2^
Chapter X.ll-^<iAPRIL Holy-Days and Holidays
"She (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in un- diminished vigour, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." — Macaulay.
IN this Still Christian country, Holy Week is not the season of junketing and holiday-making which it has become in England. The Portuguese are by no means inclined to the strict formalism which distinguishes our neo-Catholics. Lent is doubtless a season of fasting and renunciation, though the practice does not appear to be carried to a very irksome degree. But the last days of the Holy Week are universally observed with a rigour and solemnity befitting their as- sociations. The outward sign which strikes the stranger most forcibly is an all-pervading silence. From Thursday to Saturday all sounds
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are hushed ; not a bell rings in church or house ; the bells are removed from the very oxen in the street. In a city of bells, religious and secular, among a people which loves and makes noise for its own sake, this has a very solemn and insistent effect. All self-respecting persons are clothed in black, and to the churches unending services and many symbolical repre- sentations of the events of the Passion attract throngs of sombre worshippers. Flags are at half-mast, and the general aspect is the very fitting one of a city mourning for her mighty dead.
Yet even during those solemn hours, when on shore all human noise is stilled, when even the roulette at the Casino ceases from spinning, and the decorously impious hide themselves in their houses and play bridge, the traffic of steamers to and from the port knows no cessation. The sanctity of the mail-service surpasses the sanctity of the Church ; and even the grimy tramp disdains to hush her hideous hooter. Why is the sea thus relieved from the conventions of the land ? Why, when the city is actually or officially on its knees in prayer, does Mammon, naked and unashamed, rule the
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waves ? To the faithful such blatant evidence of the triumph of the world must indeed be a stumbling-block and an offence.
By a convenient if somewhat illogical ar- rangement, the week of the Passion ends at the moment of noon on Saturday. The op- pressive silence changes suddenly to exuberant noise. The Alleluia is sung in the cathedral ; rockets and shells are discharged ; and the ringing of bells announces that the long period of mourning is over, and that the joyful cele- brations of Easter have commenced. The startling transition has that happy touch of dramatic effect in which the Roman Church excels. If the hour does not quite agree with the details of the gospel story, it is only one more instance of her perspicacity in adapting her service to human needs.
A great feature of the religious life of this as of other Catholic countries is the procession. Processions take place at all seasons, but they are especially used to relieve the monotony of Lent. On March 25, the feast of Our Lady, a day we unfortunately associate with the disagreeable incidents of rent and unpaid bills, takes place one of the most attractive of these
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functions, the procession of Our Lady of Lourdes. It starts from a chapel adjoining the suburban residence of the Bishop, and takes a circuitous route through the streets of the city and back again. It is composed for the most part of children — the little girls clothed in simple gowns of a violet hue, or of white, with chaplets of natural flowers. Some have wings of gauze, and represent angels. Elder girls, clothed in white as nuns, chant hymns at intervals. Few banners are borne in this pro- cession, the central feature being an image of the Virgin. Behind the long line of children come acolytes in robes of light blue and black, bearing candles ; then members of religious confraternities, gentlemen of the place ; and finally, with a bodyguard of stalwart canons, the bowed figure of the good old Bishop in his vestments. The whole affair is a model of order, simplicity, and good taste, without a single jarring note.
Pleasant as is the procession itself, a stranger may perhaps be even more impressed by the aspect and behaviour of the crowds which assemble to see it. The line of route is massed with townspeople in gay clothes, and
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country-folk in their best, the women still for the most part wearing bright shawls, their heads in kerchiefs of different colours, each colour representing to the initiated the parish of their residence. Every one is tidy and to all appearance clean ; no one wears the shabby cast-off clothing of a superior class, and the sunny street presents a brilliant kaleidoscope of colour which is quite astonishing to those accustomed to the squalid aspect of our dingy Northern crowds. And the orderly demeanour of the throng is even more surprising. No police or soldiers are required to keep the line, the people keep it for themselves. I chanced this year to be placed in a garden fronting a spot where two roads met and a sharp corner was turned by the procession — a point where there was naturally some extra pressure of spectators. One would have expected that two or three mounted men would have been necessary to control the crowd ; yet not a policeman was to be seen, and there was no trouble whatever in keeping the road open. And even when the procession had passed, and a surging mass of humanity filled the roadway, there was no rough horseplay and no undue
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pushing or scrambling. It was a fine example of give-and-take and self-control.
These processions, and the festas of their parochial churches, are almost the only public amusements of the populace. They never lose their attraction. On every such occasion thousands of country-folk tramp many miles to the scene — romeiros (literally " pilgrims to Rome ") they call themselves. And the Church in no way frowns on a combination of innocent amusement with religious exercise. The ordi- nary adjuncts of a fair are present. Cheapjacks ply their trade, lottery-mongers conduct raffles for dolls and other toys, vendors of fruit and sweatmeats line the walls. The holy-day and the holiday are still one.
I append to this chapter a list of the Pro- cessions of Funchal, with which my friend Canon Homem de Gouvea, of the cathedral, has been good enough to furnish me. As far as I am aware, this information is not elsewhere to be found in print.
In the course of the year each important parish has its own procession. That of our parish, St. Martinho, takes place on Palm Sunday, and traverses the main roads of the
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district. It is headed by a large banner with the curious inscription " S.P.Q.R." There are life-size images of Christ in his agony, and of the Virgin with a dagger in her heart ; and a number of tiny children with angels' wings. Many of the poor little things grow tired with their long tramp, and are carried sleeping by their fathers. A feature of this as of some other processions is a band of female penitents who, closely veiled in black and bare-footed, walk the stony paths in much discomfort. The cortege reaches the steep road at the back of our house at nightfall, the candles and lanterns are lighted, and to the music of a monotonous dirge the long line of lights slowly ascends the hill, affording a very impressive spectacle.
In this sympathy, in the fullest sense, of Church and people, there is much to give us " emancipated " Northerners pause. To what are we tending with our new-born rejection of ancient conventions, our overthrow of long- accepted ethical standards, our zeal for progress progressing we know not whither ? Politically, we appear to be travelling as fast as we may to a State-organization of the whole community
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and Its affairs, to the crushing in civil life of the individual intellect and resource and spirit as they are crushed in armies ; and we are shouting ourselves hoarse in honour of our new deity the State — the State which is to provide us with everything we most want, whether it be a protected industry, an old-age pension, or a living wage. Externally we are engaged in a fierce and exhausting competition of armament with a nation somewhat further advanced in this business of State organization than our- selves. I once saw a game of golf played in an out-of-the-way part of Africa, when the players were armed with revolvers and the caddies carried rifles. "With the chance of an enemy lurking in every bunker, the eye was apt to wander from the ball. Not dissimilar appear to be the conditions of our national existence. And we may judge how serious is the outlook when the most trusted of our statesmen, a man of practical hard sense, litde given to imagi- native flights, does not hesitate to speak of the ever-increasing expenditure on armaments as likely to submerge our civiHzation.
And as regards our social future the hand- writing on the wall is plain for us to read.
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Our shrinking from discomfort, our fear of pain and trouble, already point to the dwindling, perhaps the extinction of our race. With so many of our women determined to avoid the trials of motherhood, of our men disinclined to be the fathers of sons for whom they cannot "adequately provide," we may not hope to retain permanently our place among the peoples of the earth.
And here in the Church founded on a rock, the Church which has withstood many assaults, and weathered many storms, and the gates of hell have not prevailed against her, — we may see the antithesis to the stream of tendencies on which we are drifting. Now as ever she stands in the main for peace against the sword, for the lowly against the mighty, for the raian against the State. "A tithe of your goods you shall give to the poor." Yes, but you shall keep the other nine-tenths yourself And perhaps the future may yet be hers ; for she sets her face sternly and successfully against any artificial limitation of the population, and her children will in due time outnumber and overwhelm the dwindling remnants of those who ignore her teaching on this point. While
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the Northern peoples are deliberately destroying the conditions which have made them dominant, it may be that the future of the Western world lies in the hands of the virile and reproductive lower orders of the Latin races.
Here it would indeed seem that religion is still religion, an end in itself, the greatest end. With us it appears to be materializing and rationaliz- ing itself into mere philanthropy ; the Churches to be in haste to become huge Charity Organiza- tion Societies, and to compete for public favour and support on that ground. This is quite in accordance with what we consider our practical good sense. If a Bishop spends the whole of his considerable income, and something over, in going about in motor-cars and doing good, we are disposed to judge the measure of his success by the actual tangible and weighable amount of "pfood" that he can be shown to have done. And in private life you may meet people who, believing themselves to be religious enthusiasts, will recommend their particular form of faith to you on the ground that it makes them cleaner, or fatter, or richer, or healthier, or something quite non-religious. So strong is the desire to establish " religion "
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firmly on a commercial basis, to be judged by results, as a sound dividend-paying con- cern.
Such considerations, and others, may lead some of us, trained in the traditional horror of the Scarlet Woman, to ask ourselves whether in truth the Roman Catholic Church is always in the wrong ; whether she is really, as our forbears honestly believed, the enemy of the human race. She is, as I have suggested, the main safeguard of the race's future among the peoples that call her mother. And she is perhaps the chief sanctuary in Europe of that spiritual side of human nature, which in the intoxication of our material progress we are more and more tending to ignore. Many who have no desire to subscribe to her doctrines, who distrust her dominance, may yet view not without sympathy the greatness of her ideals, the coherence of her ethical system, the whole- hearted devotion of her servants, her practical wisdom in dealing with human weakness. To her aesthetic charm, to the splendour of her world-wide pretensions, to the glamour of her hoary antiquity, few can be wholly insensible ; is she not the one unbroken link connecting
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the civilization of the ancient world and our own ? Perhaps, to compare small with great, there are some who feel to-day as did Michael Angelo in his patriarchal age, when he had outlived the exuberant and -imaginative spirit of the Renaissance, and was confronted with the "frozen orthodoxy" of the Catholic reaction. "And now he began to feel the soothing influence which since that time the Roman Church has often exerted over spirits too noble to be its subjects, yet brought within the neighbourhood of its action ; consoled and tranquillized, as a traveller might be, resting for one evening in a strange city, by its stately aspect and the sentiment of its many fortunes, just because with those fortunes he has nothing to do." *
Truly the earth is full of trouble. The nations rage furiously together and the peoples imagine a vain thing. In this secluded isle we get our newspapers in a lump once a week. This serves to heighten the effect of their terrific contents. At home the perusal of different editions hour by hour produces a comparatively listless frame of mind ; interest
* Pater, " the Renaissance." 239
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is staled by custom. Here six days of calm, broken only by inadequate press telegrams from Lisbon, which are generally more con- cerned with the numbers drawn in the State lottery, and such matters of urgent local in- terest, than with the politics of Europe, are succeeded by a day of shock. Some persons of well-regulated mind are able to read their papers in due succession, one a day, and so to take their daily dose of news like civilized folk. The more usual practice is to swallow the whole lot — to sup full of horrors — within an hour or two of the arrival of the mail. This spring we have scarcely recovered from the threat of Armageddon in Eastern Europe when we are confronted with the naval crisis, and our flesh is made to creep more than ever. The change which has come over the spirit and temper of our people in the last few years is extraordinary. Mr. Rudyard Kipling was perhaps not alone in deprecating the swagger and bounce of the Jubilee period, but his magnificent " Recessional " was the only urgent note of warning. Throughout history such insolence (in the Greek sense) has ever pro- voked a retribution. We paid our penalty in
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Natal, but the force of the reaction is not yet spent. The very men who a decade or two ago were prating of the irresistible force wielded by the mightiest empire the world had ever seen, are to-day groaning over our commercial and martial decadence, and prophesying our capitulation to the first comer. But it is a less unpleasant and sa^er mood than the other. And perhaps it is helping to evolve a more practical turn of mind. An excellent British boy was asked the other day why the sun never set upon the British flag. He replied, " Because it is usual to haul it down before sunset." And it may not after all be neces- sary for England to trust to the consideration advanced by my late gardener, Manoel, that Portugal is her friend.
Portugal herself, not to be behindhand in the race of sensation, is at the beginning of April in the throes of a ministerial crisis, and the political world is seething with excitement. It appears that an internal loan has recently been raised, and that the Minister of Finance's accounts;in connection with it have not given general satisfaction. The Opposition has as- serted that about twenty per cent, of it has
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disappeared, and has demanded an inquiry. Wild scenes have taken place in the Cortes, a duel or two has been fought without any- one being a penny the worse, and, finally, the ministry has resigned.
The mother of Parliaments would hardly recognize some of her children. In her com- paratively serene atmosphere it is inconceivable that the fall of a Government should be brought about by the persistent banging of desks by the Opposition. But other countries, other manners. And so the rotatory process is once more at work ; and behind all is the republican party, probably gathering fresh strength as the discredit of the monarchists deepens.
It is pleasant to turn from these jarring sounds of civil discord and international rivalry, *' the dreadful note of preparation," and to contemplate with due sympathy what is one of the common objects of the streets of Funchal, perhaps especially at this season. Portuguese women may seldom be beautiful according to our standards, though often endowed with very fine dark eyes, but they evidently possess a " sweete attractive kinde of grace." For in the
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spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of standing in the street beneath the window of his lady-love. The musical serenade has gone out of fashion, which is a pity ; and the lover sometimes cuts, it must be owned, a rather ridiculous figure kicking his heels in front of closed shutters, through which the lady, unseen herself, is probably inspecting him. As the shades of evening descend the fair often becomes more kind ; the shutters are thrown back and half a female form protrudes from the window. The lover stands im- mediately below with his head turned upwards at what must be a very uncomfortable angle, and courtship proceeds. This sort of thing may go on for an indefinite period. In the case of a great, and very coy, heiress, it is said to have lasted five hours a day for five years. Such love- making must be a monotonous, even if a very earnest, business. Of
" The love that's born of laughter,
The love that's fed on tears ; The cahn that reigncth after
A storm of hopes and fears : Eyes mutual longings darting.
And linked hands that burn ; The ' little death ' of parting.
The rapture of return j"
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— of such accessories of courtship these young people can know little. The man in the street commonly has an air of being rather bored ; but this may be " manners," and a mask to conceal the fierce tumult of his southern blood. When the affair has been officially brought to the notice of the lady's parents by some friend of the gentleman's family, and terms have been satisfactorily arranged, the lover is at length admitted to the house, an engagement is ratified, and marriage follows at no distant date. But here as elsewhere, following the American and English mode, the manners and customs of the jeune fille are becoming more free and easy, and probably before long the fashion of craning necks at windows will be a thing of the past. No doubt the ladies formerly led very secluded lives ; there is an old Portuguese saying that a woman should only leave home three times in her life — to be christened, to be married, and to be buried. If this is the correct form of it, the Portuguese would seem to own some affinity to the Irish.
Although the young lover does not make music to soften his lady's heart, the machete^ a small guitar of four strings peculiar to the
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island, is often heard in the streets. In the country peasants frequently beguile the tedium of a journey with its strains ; and on holidays bands of men, with perhaps half a dozen instru- ments and accompanied by an admiring throng, walking in step to the music, may often be met with. In skilled hands the machete is capable of much ; the peasants as a rule confine them- selves to striking an unending succession of simple chords, such as the following : —
:-J^==]Hi=ft==M7=rmqr=l^=?=l^=l^
It is " a measure full of state and ancientry," and the effect, if monotonous, is not un- pleasant.
THE PROCESSIONS OF FUNCHAL
Procession of the Ashes. — So called because it takes place on Ash Wednesday. It is promoted by the third order of S. Francis, at the begin- ning of Lent, as a stimulant to penitence, the principal penitent saints of the Catholic Church
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being carried on biers. Not only the brothers of the order take part in it, but many penitents and devotees. At present the procession takes place at the village of Camara de Lobos. It was formerly celebrated with great zeal at Funchal. Among the images carried are those of Our Lord on the way to Calvary, of S. Roque, Sta. Lucia, Sta. Bona, S. Antonio de Noto,* S. Louis of France, S. Henrique de Dacia, and Sta. Izabel, Queen of Portugal.
Procession " dos Passos,' of the way to Cahary. — This takes place on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, to commemorate the raising of the Cross. It is promoted by the Fraternity " do Senhor dos Passos," established at the Collegio Church. The fine images of Our Lord on the way to Calvary and of Our Lady of Solitude are carried. The civil, military, and ecclesiastical authorities, with the clergy, penitents, devotees, and members of the confraternity take part in the procession. A similar procession takes place at S. Roque, S. Antonio, S. Martinho, Camara de
* Santo Antonio de Noto is a black, and perhaps his image is a survival of the times when there were negro slaves in whom (levotion might be stimulated by the representation of a saint of their own colour.
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Holy-Days and Holidays
Lobos, Ponta do Sol, S. Cruz, and other parishes of the Island.
Procession of the Triumph. — To commemorate the Passion. It takes place on the fifth Sunday in Lent. Promoted by the Carmo Brotherhood, established at the church of that name. The Images carried are those of Christ in the garden, Christ being scourged, " Ecce Homo," Christ carrying the Cross, Christ Crucified, the dead Christ, and Our Lady of Solitude. It starts from the Carmo Church, and the various confraternities, devotees, and the clergy take part in it.
Procession of the Burial. — On Good Friday ; it commemorates the burial of Our Lord. The Cathedral authorities, the Bishop presiding, various fraternities, and the faithful in great numbers take part. It starts from the Cathedral.
Procession of the Resurrection. — From the Cathedral on Easter Sunday at nine a.m. In memory of the Resurrection of the Divine Master. The ecclesiastical, civil, and military authorities take part.
Procession of Lourdes. — On March 25 ; to commemorate the appearance of the Blessed
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Virgin to Bemadette Soubirous in 1858. Fine banners and a beautiful statue appear in this procession. As well as the clergy and the con- fraternities, the children of the Catholic schools take part. It starts from the Chapel of the Penha.
Procession of the Penha de Franca. — On the first Sunday in May ; in memory of the ap- paritions of Our Lady at Penha de Franca. The clergy, fraternities, and faithful take part. Starts from the Chapel of Penha de Franca.
May-day Procession. — In honour of S. Thiago Minor (St. James the Less), in fulfilment of a vow made by the Camara and the authorities of the town on the occasion of the plague which ravaged Madeira in 1523. It proceeds from the Cathedral to the Soccorro Church and back. In it take part the ecclesiastical, civil, and mili- tary authorities, with the fraternities, each person carrying a wreath of natural flowers.
St. James the Less is the patron saint of the City of Funchal. He was selected by lot from among the twelve apostles, St. John the Baptist, Our Lady, and her Son, on the occasion of the above-mentioned pestilence.
Fifteen years later another pestilence raged,
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and a procession took place at the saint's altar at the Soccorro Church, where the Chief Officer of Health addressed him this, " Sir, until now, I have guarded this city as well as 1 could ; I can do no more. Here, take this wand of office, and be you our Officer of Health." He threw his wand on to the steps of the altar ; and so the plague was stayed.
Procession of Corpus Christi. — Ordered by the laws of the realm in commemoration of the In- stitution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and carried out at the public expense. In it take part the ecclesiastical, civil, and military autho- rities, all the fraternities of the Holy Sacrament, all the clergy, and all the military contingent available.
Procession of the Protection of Our Lady of the Mount. — In fulfilment of a vow of the Bishop and Chapter on the occasion of a flood in 1803, which destroyed more than five hundred persons, completely inundating the greater part of the City of Funchal, and carrying many houses into the sea. It is celebrated on the first Sunday after October 9 ; the clergy and fraternities and a great concourse of people take part in it.
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Procession of the Carmo. — Celebrated on July 1 6, at the expense of the Carmo con- fraternity. It starts from the Carmo Church. Various fraternities of Our Lady take part.
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Chapter XUl—zAPRIL
Mountains and Islands
" Laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect." — Milton, " Of Education**
THE lengthening of the days, and the greater likelihood of settled weather are a temptation to " step a little aside from the noisy crowd and the incumbering hurry of the world," and to seek the majestic solitude of the hills. To do so does not necessitate any so elaborate or prolonged a journey as the exploration of the north side of the island. In the course of a day's excursion from Funchal some of the finest mountain scenery in Madeira may be visited without undue exertion. If these spacious moorlands and rocky crags are less characteristic and less lovely than the wooded valleys of the north, they have a charm, a sense of freedom, and a breeziness which are their own.
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The best known and perhaps the oftenest attempted excursion from Funchal is to the Grand Curral, called by the Portuguese Curral das Freiras, " the Nuns' Fold," from the Convent of Santa Clara having formerly possessed considerable property in it. It is a deep valley, of more or less circular shape, almost in the centre of the island, and bounded on its northern curve by the highest peaks. At its lovrer end it contracts to a gorge too narrow to admit of a road. It is therefore necessary to ascend the enclosing hills on one side or the other, east or west, to obtain a view of the valley. Neither excursion conducts the traveller to any great height, the former to an altitude of about 3300 feet, the latter to about 4400 feet. The eastern side being the nearer to Funchal is more often visited. It is perhaps the pleasanter ride, but the western side affords the finer viev/. From either point one looks down into the great basin, with its strip of cultivation and its little church standing on its floor 2000 feet above the sea ; the encircling mountains scarred with fissures from base to summit, and culminating on all sides in towers and pinnacles of rock. The form of the valley
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Moitntains and Islands
suggests to the untrained eye an extinct volcano as do other Madeira valleys, a suggestion fortified in the Grand Curral by the bareness of most of the mountain sides ; but the geologists tell us that it is the result of denuda- tion rather than of volcanic action. Perhaps the volcanos began its construction, and denudation contributed its present form.
But the easiest way of reaching the hill country is by means of the Mount Railway, which takes you 2000 feet up, into the cooler air, without trouble. Hence you may take a hundred walks, to little peaks and minor valleys. The country is wcU-wooded, every point has its own view, and ther^ are no noxious beasts. Chapter Ixxii., "Concerning Snakes," of the " Natural History of Iceland," which chapter Dr. Johnson boasted he knew by heart, applies here. " There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island." If you are more ambitious, you may ascend from the Mount by what I have already described as the main road to the north side. When you emerge from the pine woods on to the moor- land you will see the track ahead of you tor miles, skirting ridge after ridge, and ever
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ascending. Not long since it was a mere horse-path, but it is gradually being paved, and is attaining to the dignity of a road. To the contemplative mind it will suggest something of the past history of the island. Doubtless the early settlers would not be long before they strove to cross the mountains, and it is not improbable that this was the route they would take, and that to-day we are treading in their footsteps.
In his great prose epic, " The Old Road," Mr, Hilaire Belloc has pointed out to us the true significance of The Road ; " the most im- perative and the first of our necessities." And not only is it the most ancient of the works of man ; it is perhaps the longest to endure. Considering the length of the Roman occupa- tion of Britain, more than twice that of our rule in India, and the solidity of Roman build- ing, it is surprising that we have not more remains of Roman work than we have. A few villas, a few buried towns, a bath or two, the northern wall, — there is not much else, except the roads, and they are everywhere. You may meet with forgotten traces of them in remote fields and unfrequented woods ; and many of
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Mountains and Islands
the highways of our own day follow their course, and are laid on their very foundations. The genesis of the road, not the great trunk- roads deliberately made for military or trade purposes, but of the ordinary highways, takes us back to the very beginning of things. The first man took the easiest route, the line of least resistance, skirting the hills or descending into the vales as appeared to him least trouble- some ; his successor followed in his footsteps, and so the road was made. Man and beast conspired to give it its permanent direction ; succeeding generations spent their labour in strengthening its foundations, improving its surface, and bridging the obstacles in its course. It was once my lot to take an ox-waggon through an out-of-the-way corner of Matabclc- land. Probably no white man had ever ex- plored the district, and of course there was no road. So we had to make one. M}' "mate" and I rode ahead with axes ready to cut down obnoxious trees, and the waggon drawn by eighteen oxen came lumbering after, the whole "outfit" crashing over minor shrubs and leaving an obvious trail behind. When we came to a river we had to make a " drift,"
■03
Leaves from a Madeira Garden
or ford, by shovelling down the steep banks on either side to make the water shallow, and provide a means of descent and ascent, a some- what lengthy job. So we made a road. And the next man who passed that way no doubt followed in our tracks ; why should he trouble to cut fresh trees and make fresh drifts } And with each succeeding traveller the road became better defined. I should not be surprised to hear that it is now frequented by motor-cars.
To return to our Madeira road. If you follow its course across the moorland, and turn westv7ards into a mountain track a little short of the top of the pass, you will not be long in reaching a plateau of considerable extent on which stands an unused observatory. Here if you are riding you will leave your horse, and an easy climb will take you in an hour, first through some giant bilberry bushes, and then up a stony slope to the summit of Pico Arriero. This point is 5893 feet above sea-level, and considered the second highest in the island. The view is very fine ; both the northern and the southern seas are spread before you and all around are jagged peaks, some of them quite inaccessible. You are at the head of the Grand
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Mountains and Islands
Curral on the one side, though little of it can be seen for an intervening peak ; on the other you may peer over a giant precipice into the awful depths of the Metade valley, not so supremely lovely as when seen from below, but full of grandeur and mystery. No general survey of the mountain scenery can be so easily and satisfactorily obtained as this.
It frequently happens that while a thin belt of clouds hangs round the mountains and over the sea at an elevation of three or four thousand feet, the peaks themselves stand clear above it.
" As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, — Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
And then perchance the spectator may behold a wonderful sight ; gazing out to sea, as far as the eye can reach, he may look down upon the sunlit upper surface of the cloud-belt, an ocean of fleecy brilliance. Such a glorious spectacle is no mean compensation for the loss of a view of the lower hills and the coast.
Few Englishmen are now found to confess agreement with Lord Chesterfield that "all those country sports, as they are called, are the
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effects of the ignorance and idleness of country esquires, who do not know what to do with their time, but people of sense and knowledge never give in to those illiberal amusements." The poor country esquire is now constrained to let his sporting rights to " people of sense and knowledge" — great lawyers, "captains of in- dustry," and even distinguished men of letters. And however much an Englishman may delight in these mountain solitudes, however highly he may appreciate the contrast of the stern rocks above and the sylvan shades below, he will generally regret the absence of something to kill. The uninhabited islands, the Desertas, which are such a prominent object in the view from Funchal and the hills above it, are free from this reproach. They contain a race of wild goats, descendants, it is said, of domestic goats placed on them by Columbus. Columbus is, of course, the magnet to which local traditions attach themselves, like Homer in ancient Greece, and Jowett in modern Oxford. These goats are fine big fellows, carrying grand heads, and often nearly black in colour. The islands are private property and the shooting is pre- served, a fairly easy matter considering the
=58
Mountains and Islands
difficulty of access to them. It is a journey of some three hours in a steam-launch from Fun- chal to the usual landing-place, and if there is much surf, landing there is by no means a certainty at the end of it, and it may be neces- sary to scramble ashore at the foot of some inhospitable cliff, and make one's way up as best one can. The islands have very little vegetation and less fresh water, but goats arc not very particular. The scenery has a very weird, unfinished appearance, suggesting a pic- ture of the world after the subsidence of the Deluge. The usual method of shooting is to take one's stand on the narrow plateau at the top of the island, almost iioo feet above the sea-level, and to shoot down at the goats which are driven along the rocks almost perpen- dicularly below — not a very easy kind of shootino; for those unaccustomed to it.
The caves of the larger island are inhabited by a species of seal (Monac/ius albiventer)^ the only mammal, with the exception of two species of bat, indigenous to the Madeiras. Mr. Yate Johnson states that the caves they haunt have their mouths under water, and can only be approached by diving. When the fishermen,
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
who regard the seals as enemies of their nets, and wage war upon them, enter the caves, they find the seals stretched asleep on the floor, and he appropriately quotes Virgil —
" Sternunt se somno diversae in Htore phocae."
Sometimes a seal is captured alive. A year or two ago one was offered for sale in Funchal. It was purchased and placed in a pond in a garden some four hundred feet above the sea. It speedily became very tame, and would take its food from the hands of the young ladies of the house. But it sighed (if seals sigh) for the freedom of its native Atlantic, and the comfort- able cave in the Desertas wherein to repose, perhaps for the society of its kind. And one night it made a dash for liberty. It was un- aware of the uses of roads, or it might have frightened the late-returning roysterer out of his remaining senses. It took the right direct- tion, but alas ! it fell over a cliff, and through a pergola into a peasant's garden. It must have astonished the good man in the morning ; truly a strange animal to have fallen from the clouds. It was brought back to its pond, but its plea for liberty was not in vain ; and shortly
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Mountains and Islands
after a British admiral undertook to return it to the sea in the neighbourhood of the Desertas, where we may hope it found its mate still faithful to its memory, and lives happy ever after.
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Chapter XIY—^^PRIL
The Garden tn its Glory
"When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything."
Shakespeare. Sonnets.
THE Madeira garden in April exhibits at once a high midsummer pomp, and the exuberant if delicate fresh- ness of spring. Most of the stan- dard garden flowers, however manfully they have striven to shed glory on the winter months, are greeting April with a redoubled show of vigour. The garden beds are a mass of brilliant colour — salvias, petunias, stocks, snapdragons, geraniums, pelargoniums, and a hundred others are in full bloom. And to the gardener it is a joy to see his children so strong and healthy and happy.
" For 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes."
Various kinds of mesembryanthetnum are flower-
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The Garden in its Glovij
ing. Their artificial-looking blooms, suggest- ing straw as their material, are of diverse hues ; one of a brilliant magenta almost hurts the eye, so strong is its metallic lustre. An extensive tract among palms and shrubs we have planted with a small and simple red pelar- gonium. This in the freshness of its foliage and the profusion of its pretty little blossom makes a very attractive carpet. Another useful plant for the same purpose is a small-growing mauve lantana^ which flowers throughout the winter and the spring. And heliotrope, if it likes its situation, above all if It is permitted to hang over a wall in full sun, will grow to a .great size, and exhibit a surprisingly lovely mass of sweet-scented blossom.
Lilies of many kinds are coming up, though May is perhaps the month of their pre-emi- nence. But a beautiful speckled amaryllis, of which we imported a few bulbs some years ago, has multiplied Itself a hundred-fold, and has chosen April as its flowering season. Azaleas flower earlier if planted out, but they do not do so well as those in pots. Some of Messrs. Veitch's red varieties, double and single, are now making a very fine show. It
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is always a matter of doubt at what season a new importation will flower or fruit in this climate. The absence of well-defined seasons causes many newly introduced plants to lose their heads, and it may be years before they settle down to a regular life. Some time ago a very learned horticulturist im- ported a number of gooseberry bushes, and their first crop was produced in the month of February. The grower sent a basket to Covent Garden, and received in reply a tele- gram asking him to send more, as they had fetched a high price. Our cultivator hugged to himself visions of an easy fortune ; London's welcome to gooseberries in February would no doubt continue to be a warm one, the only trouble was to grow enough. But he reckoned without his bushes ; the following year they produced their fruit in May, when it did not pay for the carriage, and the year after in July, when it was valueless. Yet perhaps a gardener with ample leisure and some ingenuity would discover how to bend the seasons to his will. Something remains to be essayed in this direc- tion, as in many others here.
In a sense we have no spring ; we have no
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The Garden in its Glorij
winter to make a true spring possible. For that splendid awakening from a long sleep we must go north — to England It may be In late April or early May ; better still perhaps to Norway In early June. We have a semblance of it In the upland gardens, where daffodils and anemones and violets rival or surpass their English brethren, and the leafless branches of the magnolias are smothered in delicate blossoms. But In the lowlands spring smiles perennial — wherefore It Is not spring.
" Hie ver assiduum, atque alienis raensibus aestas,"
if It be permissible to disregard the parlia- mentary maxim, " Don't quote Latin," a tongue no longer generally understanded of the members. We miss that peculiar freshness of the spring-flowering shrubs, the sudden burst of colour in the rock-garden, the rainbow tints of the spring bulbs. Even tulips are implacable. Such spring flowers as we have, if they have not bloomed at Intervals during the winter months, lack the foil which the still wintry aspect of the surrounding vegetation supplies at home. Nor does the countryside show anything to approach that glorious wealth
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of wild flowers which in Alpine countries suc- ceeds the melting of the snow, when all the little becks are coming down in flood, and the snow still lingers in patches among the topmost fir-trees. One spring delight we may indeed enjoy ; the flowering of some of the fruit trees, especially the peach, is magnificent. They have had the good sense to retain their due seasons of flowers and fruit.
Roses we have had always with us, but since December not in such a glorious profusion as now. An arch clothed with Marechal Niel, hano-in^ its delicate blooms in hundreds is a very beautiful sight. "William Allen Richardson has risen from a well-earned repose to cover a long pergola with buds of a richer and deeper hue. The single white le-vigata is sprinkling our fences with discs of snow-white purity ; Reine Marie Henriette queens it among her rivals ; in velvety richness Bardou Job asserts an unquestioned pre-eminence. April is here certainly
" the month of leaves and roses, When pleasant sights salute the eyes And pleasant smells the noses."
Three very beautiful species of Bignonia are
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WISIAUIA
The Garden in its Glonj
now flowering. The splendid chirere is in perfection, but not very commonly seen. The soft yellow Tweediana is everywhere, a blaze of colour at many a street-corner. If less insistent in colour than the glorious orange venustiij the queen of December and January, it may yet in its great refinement be more pleasing to many eyes. Purpurea^ a species with mauve flowers of exquisite refinement, offers a pleasant contrast.
At nightfall these climbers are visited by flights of the Convolvulus Hawk Moth, which, poised on fluttering wings, shoot an uncoiled proboscis inches long into the heart of flower after flower. I have counted a score of these interesting insects at work within a few paces.
At this season nothing is more supremely lovely than the IVistaria, now in the full pride of its vernal freshness, and endowed with a notable grace and distinction which are all its own. Its delicate shading and its variations of hue in difl^erent lights, make it the despair of almost all the many artists whose efibrts to depict it we watch with interest. It has been freely planted of recent years, and may now be seen everywhere, with a serene impartiality hangino: over dull walls in mean streets, and
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clambering over tall magnolia trees in stately gardens. Perhaps it is most charming when covering a long railing on a terrace. In such a situation you may look down upon, or up to, its dense masses of bloom, as the fancy takes you. Where with constricting coils it over- masters a growing tree, there is a note of cruelty, a shadow of impending doom, a hint of that desperate struggle for life which fills with sadness the tropical forest — a struggle in which at last the destroyed and the destroyer fall together. The variety alba is remarkable for the quality of its pure opaque white, but it fails to wrest the palm of loveliness from its better-known cousin. Nor does it grow with such strength and freedom.
Of white blossoms none surpass in delicacy and grace the hanging bells of the Datura. Throughout the winter they have appeared once a month to greet the full moon, but for the April moon they have reserved their most liberal profusion. And now they give forth their most pungent odours — odours almost overpowering at nightfall, when all the garden scents are strongest. This habit of flowering at the full moon appears to be not merely
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legendary, but fact ; and the Datura would seem to be gifted with a feminine capacity for knowing what becomes her, for she never shows her beauties to greater advantage than by moonlight. The rise of the full moon over the Desertas, with a garden for foreground, and her broad belt of silvery light upon the sea beyond, Is indeed a glorious spectacle, perhaps hardly to be matched elsewhere. And the splendid sky of the northern hemisphere, " the mild assem- blage of the starry heavens," is to be seen at its best in this clear air. The heavenly bodies are not merely points of light on a flat surface, they appear almost in perspective ; you feel that there is space behind them. And the brightness of the planets is extraordinary. You may make out Jupiter's moons quite easily with a race- glass ; some persons of abnormal vision are said to have seen them with the naked eye. Pro- bably ordinary people are able to see far more stars than in England. Moon or no moon, the hours
" From evensong to daytime When April melts in Maytime,'
are fairer than the day, however fair. And the pleasant hour of nightfall lacks in this equable
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
climate that dangerous chill which is common in Mediterranean and African countries. The twilight is, of course, less prolonged than in more northern lands, but the night comes with less haste than in the tropics ; and even if clouds have obscured the mountain-tops during the day, they generally disperse at sunset, and the line of peaks stands hard and clear against the sky.
The gardens of Funchal and Its neighbour- hood are not only, as noted in a former chapter, all different, they are, in fact, of quite sur- prisingly various character. Some are remark- able especially for their collections of trees and shrubs from many countries and many climes ; others for the dignity imparted by the growth of a century ; others again for the success with which flowering plants are cultivated, the plants, not only of our English gardens, but of our stoves and greenhouses. Some own the special charm of that heightened repose which the contrast of busy streets immediately adjacent suggests. The garden of the Quinta do Deao, "the Deanery," perhaps bears the palm in more than one of these qualities. It is situate close
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The Gaj'den in its Glory
to a busy part of the town, from which it is secluded by trees and shrubs of considerable age, and the whole earth has been laid under contribution to fill it with the wonders of the vegetable kingdom. Not only the garden- lover but the trained botanist will find plenty of food for admiration and study. The Quinta d'Achada, "the Level," is described by its name. It is unique among Madeira gardens in occupying a nearly level tract on the top of a ridge between two ravines. With its fine and spacious old house, its magnificent groups of such shrubs as Strelitzia augusta, here of a size and perfection not to be met with elsewhere, its pleasant walks, its wealth of water, and the view from its terrace over the eastern half of the city and of the hills above, it may perhaps strike the visitor as the most desirable of all the Quintas of Funchal. The Quinta da Sta. Luzia is noteworthy as the typical Madeira garden, evolved by the in- clusion of terraced land on a steep hillside. This formation has the advantage that from an upper terrace you may look down upon roses and other climbers growing on pergolas, and appreciate the abundance of their bloom,
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
often missed when looked at from below. This garden has long been kept with intelligent care at the very acme of cultivation, and it is unrivalled in the richness of its colour, the luxuriance of its creepers, and the profusion of its flowering plants of every description. It enjoys that pleasant element of surprise to which the terraced formation especially lends itself. You turn the angle of a wall and find yourself in a Moorish garden of blue flowers, with tiled walks and a tiled fountain in the centre — suggesting memories of Granada ; you descend a few steps from a croquet-lawn, and enter a little pleasance with flagged paths and box-edged beds, bright with flowers of every hue, recalling with a difi^erence an old- fashioned English garden of herbaceous flowers. This Quinta, in this happy month of April, presents a series of pictures not readily sur- passed or forgotten. The Quinta do Til has a charming formal garden, suggesting in its structure, in the architecture of its buildings, and in the pleasant plash of its fountains the gardens of Italy. If one may make believe that the sea is the Campagna, it is possible, with no great stretch of the imagination, to
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dream that one is standing on the terrace of a sixteenth-century villa at Frascati. The Quinta S. Joao is remarkable for the quiet dignity of the approach from the entrance gate to the house — a perfectly level and straight road bordered by palms and tropical trees, a delicious line of restful greenery. The Quinta Vigia, possessing in former days perhaps the most admired and famous of Madeira gardens, has fallen from its high estate. It was put for some years to the base uses of a Casino, and subsequently was purchased by the German company. Having been first vulgarized, and since left more or less derelict, it has lost much of the beauty which it once enjoyed. But its fine trees still remain, and nothing can impair the charm of its unique position on a cliff above the port.
These gardens are but a tithe of those which surround the town on all sides, gardens greater and less, gardens English and Portuguese, gardens of varying purpose and differing ideals. But the traveller who is fortunate enough to see them will carry away an impression of horti- cultural variety and beauty which is probably unique. And of each it may be emphatically
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
said that it is the right thing in the right place. Each is appropriate to the position it occupies, to the house of which it is the pleasure ground ; there is no straining after unnatural effect; no "laying-out" by a land- scape gardener with theories to illustrate.
With the ancient contest between the "formalist" and the "naturalist" we have little concern. The gardens are one and all of necessity formal ; the retaining wall insures that. They are also, judged by an English standard, quite small ; and ground is too valu- able, and the result too poor, to induce the wise man to try for large stretches of lawn. " Naturalization " is quite out of place where the soil has to be held in terraces. Where it is appropriate, as on the rocky cliffs of ravines, which sometimes serve as boundaries of gardens, it may be eminently successful. In such situa- tions aloes, and cactus, and "Pride of Madeira," and valerian, and heliotrope will clothe the rocks with wild luxuriance, and fight a desperate struggle for the mastery. A charming effect of this sort may be seen at the Quinta Palmeira, which lies behind the town, bowered in its ancient trees, some seven hundred feet above
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The Garden in its Glonj
the sea. Here are a few fine old cypresses, the general absence of which is a serious loss to the Madeira landscape. Those who can recall the dignity which they lend to certain Medi- terranean cities, such as Constantinople, and the fine contrast of their dark foliage in a sunny land will regret that they are not planted on many of the hills above Funchal.
The pergola, or corridor, is here in its natural home. It was primarily built in the unso- phisticated days for one of two purposes, often combined, either to shade a path from the hot summer sun, or to afford a support for vines. It was then constructed of square stone pillars with an open roof of chestnut wood. It has unfortunately been found cheaper, and in native opinion neater, to substitute iron rods for the stone columns. A more sightly, if rougher, pergola may be made with the uprights as well as the roof of chestnut, and with some attention it will last for many years. There has been a great vogue of building pergolas in England in recent years ; but they are, as a rule, a sad travesty of the real thing. For roses they seem in the English climate distinctly inferior to pillars with or without connecting rods or
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
chains. If solidly built and densely covered they suggest a certain dankness. If lightly built of fir-poles they are often of a flimsy appearance, and too soon become rickety. In Madeira, where the chief glory of our gardens is their wealth of brilliant-flowered climbers, and shade from the sub-tropical sun is a necessity, there is no question as to their appropriateness. And the hilly nature of the country constantly affbrds an opportunity of seeing them from above. To present a really fine appearance a pergola should be solid and long and level, and be covered from end to end with one kind of climber. Such a long line of Bignonia venusta in January, or of Solandra grandiflora in March, is one of the most charming garden sights imaginable.
The arrangement of garden paths is a some- what elaborate and expensive business, but it is a matter of first cost only. No gravel is to be had, and the small pebbles from the sea-beach or river-beds do not bind and are unpleasant to walk upon. The orthodox plan is to pave the paths with small flattish cobble-stones which are rammed into the earth in close proximity, so as to form a solid pavement. According to
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TJie Garden in its Glory
ancient custom, patterns are formed of lines and circles, often of lighter coloured stones. The effect is pleasing, and a good solid path is the result. If it is laid in cement it is free from the trouble of weeds, but wanting the slight "give" of the natural earth it is not so agree- able in use. The public roads are paved in the same way with large cobble-stones, or with chipped blocks of quarried rock, which, if rough and unpleasant for wheeled vehicles, are very- suitable for the sledges drawn by oxen, which are the staple means of transport in the island. Hundreds of miles of country roads are so paved, representing in the aggregate an enormous amount of labour. With the retaining walls, the paved paths, and the cemented channels for irrigation purposes, the building of a garden is almost as serious a matter as the building of a house. To these must be added the outer walls — hedges or fences are not the fashion except for humble properties — and a solidly built tank for storing water. It is no wonder that the mason's trade is a very important one, and that the craftsmen exhibit a high pitch of efficiency. The "maestro" is usually a very intelligent and obliging workman ; his work as
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
far as I have had experience of it is well and solidly done, with no suspicion of scamping. From the gardener's point of view it is all too neat ; it lacks that element of roughness which suits a garden best ; but neatness and symmetry are Portuguese ideals. The Portuguese house to be in the mode must have the same number of windows each side of a central door, and they must be equi-distant. Bacon's dictum that houses are built to live in, not to be looked upon, wherefore let use be preferred before uniformity, finds no echo here.
This passion for regularity is one of our minor garden troubles. If you tell your gardener to plant out fifty stocks in a bed, you will find them in rows at equal distances, care- fully measured to an inch. And if he can stick a fuchsia in between each pair he will be the better pleased. He will perhaps learn in time that you like them planted irregularly in clumps, but the practice will never have his approval, and he will regard it as only one more of your incomprehensible fads. One of our gardeners had an appalling taste for build- ing wooden supports for climbing roses in the shape of gigantic chairs, tables, and such
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The Garden in its Glory
irrelevant articles — a very nightmare of ugliness. It is cruel work having to order the demolition of such erections in which the creator takes an artist's pride.
It may be that a reliance on regularity and symmetry in decoration is a note of an un- educated mind or an unimaginative nature. Certainly to arrange things in pairs, lines, or rows, or circles calls for less intellectual effort than arranging them unsymmetrically. It is easy to set out daffodils in a border ; it calls for some ingenuity to plant them in the grass with a natural "drift." Yet it seems also to be a trait of the educated Latin mind, for nowhere may it be seen in greater perfection than in Italian architecture. Perhaps we may conclude that it has its due place, but that it is unsuitable to the arrangement of plants in a garden.
Great as is the garden's April glory, we are conscious that we are in the habit of leaving it a little short of perfection. Perfection, we are told, is to be found in May. After that the heats of summer prevail, the garden is dried up, and, until the autumn rains come, no great wealth of garden flowers is to be looked for,
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
however brilliant the wild flowers of the hills. But May has its charms elsewhere ; even the London parks are " bad to beat." The truth is that the perfect gardener should never leave his garden ; every month, every day has its due labour and its due reward. But this is an impossible ideal, and all we can do is to make the best of what we have and be thankful.
2S0
Chapter XV—z^PRIL Departure
" Absence makes the heart grow fonder ; Isle of Beauty, fare thee well ! "
T. H. Bayley.
THE winter has passed without any of the excursions and alarms which have provided excitement in former years. Plagues and rumours of plagues have been happily absent ; and after the terrible catastrophe of the Franco regime last February, Portuguese politics have only reached the simmering point of a ministerial crisis, and have left us cold. All fears of German aggression, whether they were well- founded or baseless, seem to have been dis- pelled for the time, and the absurd buildings which the German company erected stand tenantless as a monument of folly, or worse. And it is noticeable that the number of German visitors is far smaller than in the palmy days of the German bubble, a fact not regretted by
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
the English community, to which the German language and German middle-class manners are unpleasant. But every year the German flag becomes a closer rival of the English on the vessels calling at the port, a phenomenon doubtless to be observed elsewhere. And it is said that the small import commerce of the island becomes Increasingly German, a result due to superior methods of business and to our stupid retention (alone amongst civilized nations) of a non-decimal system of weights and measures and currency. The Portuguese importer knows what a kilo is, and finds it no great matter to turn a quotation in marks Into terms of mj, even If the German shipper does not do it for him ; but a quotation of so many tons, hundredweights, quarters, and pounds, at so many pounds, shillings, and pence per ton, is a problem which no foreigner can be expected to grapple with. But one who is not engaged In business will properly speak with diffidence of such high matters.
If the German visitors diminish, there Is no doubt that the English increase. The old days when families came here for the winter and rented Quintas and set up house are past.
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Departure
Not only is the servant difficulty acute, but the world is in too great a hurry nowadays for such leisurely experiments. But the number of strangers who pay a visit for a few weeks or a month or two is ever growing. There was a period this winter when the hotel accom- modation was strained to the utmost. The hordes of strangers which now swarm in the more attractive parts of the earth's surface, in their due season, suggest a question as to the future of these resorts. These crowds tend to destroy the very amenities of which they are in search, to reduce everything to the same dead level of vulgarity. Perhaps in a better organized world the choicest spots will be reserved for those who can prove that they possess an aesthetic faculty of duly appreciating the beauties of the earth, and an inclination to treat them reverently. It is sad to think of the Victoria Falls becoming a second Niagara. Here the absence of roads, the expense of travel, and the want of enterprise of the country folk in the matter of accommodation act as a natural protection to the mountain fastnesses, a fact which the lover of primitive nature will not deplore. And doubtless the " Casino
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Leaves from a Madeira Gay^den
habit " anchors many to Funchal. Towards the middle of April the pressure diminishes ; the homeward-bound steamers are full of passengers, and for eight or nine months the land will have rest.
The number of more or less leisured people, or people who are able to take a holiday of some weeks at this season, appears to have increased enormously of recent years. And the money they spend abroad even for food alone must represent a serious loss to our purveyors, perhaps inadequately made up by the money strangers spend in the British Isles. When we have a Tariff Reform Government it might appropriately ordain that every British subject temporarily absenting himself from British soil should be required to procure a permit, costing, say, a pound sterling for each week. This would make up to the country what it loses by his absence ; It would enable the tourist to feel that he was leaving his country for his country's good ; it would produce a considerable revenue, and tend at the same time, with that happy double- barrelled effect of protective measures, to protect the English hotel industry — and, it must
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Departure
unfortunately be added, the German waiters. But it would then be not unreasonable to put an import tax on such introductions. And re- ciprocal arrangements might be entered into with the colonies, and help to promote mutual knowledge among citizens of the Empire. It is a beautiful idea. Indeed, the possibilities that present themselves as soon as one begins to consider the reform on scientific lines of our antiquated and unimaginative fiscal system are endless. And, as the reader will have gathered, there is much to be learned from a study of Portuguese models. A visit to Madeira is recommended to politicians in search of rest and recreation combined with instruction. Mr. Chamberlain himself (more fortunate than Napoleon Bonaparte) spent some hours on shore here in the course of his voyage from South Africa, spoliis oneratus opimis^ a few months before he promulgated his great scheme to make the foreigner pay for old age pensions. Alas ! how far off it all seems now. And it is not to be supposed that he neglected the opportunity of inquiring into the workings of " Insular Protection " which such a remarkable and compact example affords.
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Leaves from a Madeira Garden
With such musings beguiled, the time draws on to the day of our departure. The garden we have tended for four months will be handed over to the unrestrained care of our excellent Carlos for the next eight, and Heaven only knows what he will do with it. He will be busy with his marrying, and it may be that we shall suffer. But we must take our chance, and in this easy-going land it is quite useless to fuss. We ourselves have other fish to fry, and to catch before we fry them. And until the fogs of November fill us with a longing for the sun, and send us to the steamship office for our passages, Madeira will be but a distant isle of the sea, an isle of pleasant memories and flattering hopes. So may our lives be divided into water-tight compartments.
And as the picture of his mistress that the lover carries in his heart may be fairer than the lady herself, so it may be that in the blue haze of the distance the Isle of Beauty will loom more lovely even than she appears to a closer view. We may recall the never-failing perfume of the flowers and forget the occasional odours of the streets ; memory may revel in the golden haze of a sunset, and find no place for the mist
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Departure
that chilled us on the hills. In memory which dwells on the agreeable and dismisses the un- pleasant, in hope which anticipates as good or better days to come, are to be found two chief ingredients of happiness. It is wiser to forget than to repent, whatever the preachers may say ; better to be confident of heaven than apprehen- sive of hell.
The months of our sojourning have hurried by too quickly ; and no public or private calamity has marred their passage. Disappoint- ments there have been, cherished projects of mountain excursions and " north-side " explora- tions have had, for one reason or another, to be deferred. I had nourished a hope of being able to fish with rod and line for the gigantic tunny which visit the coast in spring. The professional fishermen catch them with coarse hand-lines ; the more sporting method of rod and fine line has never as far as I am aware been tried with success in these waters ; but I have no doubt it can be done. These fish sometimes weigh several hundred pounds ; they are reported to fight with great dash and endurance, and they have the inestimable advantage over the tarpon of being useful as
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human food. To kill for the mere sake of killing, and to leave your gallant quarry to rot upon the strand when killed, must surely be repugnant to the sportsman's instincts. All sport has its origin and its excuse in a desire inherited from barbaric forefathers either to rid the earth of vermin, whether lions or foxes, or to procure food, whether deer or salmon. And any sport which does not however remotely fulfil one condition or the other, lacks senti- mental justification. But the tunny is a very warrantable prey. Perhaps the wise angler who goes forth to angle for these gigantic fish will not use too fine a tackle, even if he does not equip himself as suggested by Sir William Davenant —
*' For angling rod he took a sturdy oake ; For line, a cable that in storm ne'er broke ; His hooke was baited with a dragon's tail, And then on rock he stood to bob for whale."
As the " run " only occurs at the moment of my departure, I have an opportunity to exercise those distinguishing qualities of the angler, patience and hope. He is held by the un- sympathetic to possess at least one vice ; no one denies him these virtues.
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Departure
It may not be a universal truth that absence makes the heart grow fonder ; it may even rather be that partir cest mourir tin pen ; yet whatever may be the case as regards human relations, on some natures countries, places, or climates once visited and enjoyed exercise a powerful attraction. In our hot youth perhaps ** the call of the wild " is strongest ; it may be the abounding waters, the sombre fells, the deep-set fjords of Northern Europe that summon us most loudly ; it may be the limit- less distances of the African veldt sweltering beneath its pitiless sun. In our later age we may be drawn rather to reseek the shady side of Pall Mall, the quays by the Arno, or a Madeira garden. And perhaps he is a wise man who cultivates, and represses not, such cat-like attachments. To every one upon this earth death cometh soon or late ; but before it comes it is given to some to reach old age, not it may be the least pleasant period of life, but depending for much of its contentment on simple joys. And among these not the least may be reckoned the love of a garden, a pride and pleasure in the successful growth of the trees and shrubs and flowers you have planted
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Leaves from a Madeira Gai^den
yourself, in the smiling plenty of the wilderness you have tamed.
From faery lands forlorn we take ship upon perilous seas. We leave our garden and our well-beloved island at their best ; never has spring smiled a sunnier smile ; never has a garden been more prodigal of colour and perfume. In the turmoil of the busier life to which we are returning, we shall surely keep their memory green.
THE END
WALKS AND PEOPLE IN TUSCANY. By
Sir Francis Vane, Bart. With numerous Illustrations by Stephen Haweis and S. Garstin Harvey. Crown 8vo. 5^. net.
*„,* This hook treats of many walks and cycle rides, practically describing, if not co-icring, the whole of Tuscany. It has been written with the especial object of setting before the reader not only the characteristics of the landscape, but no less the ifihabitants of all classes, whom the author encountered. Not only, how- ever, does he describe the people afid the scenety, but he has placed on record his thoughts about them in a frank and bold manner. The author also has a cotisiderable acquaintance with history, heraldry and genealogy, which proves usefttl to him in dealing zvith the social system of Italy in the past and of to-day. The general scheme of the work is to take the two centres, Florence the capital, and the siiinmer resort, Bagi de Lucca, and he has made his expeditions from these, consequently cover- ing with an effective network of raids the inountains and valleys between.
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA. By Maud M. HoLBACH. With 48 Illustrations by Otto HoLBACH and a Map. Uniform with " Dal- matia." Crown Svo. ^s. net.
*^* This interesting companion volume to Mrs. Ilolbach's "Dalmatia" will appeal to a xvider public than did its forei-tinner, for political eve?tts recently awakened a world interest in this part of the Balkans, and, now that peace is restored, doubtless many travellers will want to visit the scenes where history has so recently been made, and welcome the author's guidance to what is best worth seeing in this part of the Near East. Nor is ''Bosnia" lacking in interest for those who stay at home, for the author has as happy a knack of making her pen pictures real as her husband of interpreting the life of a country through the medium of his camera, so that those who cannot go to Bos?iia in person will not have much difficully in transplanting themselves thither in imagination as they turn the pages of this bright little book.
THE ISLE OF MAN. By Agnes Herbert, Author of " Two Dianas in Somaliland " and " Two Dianas in Alaska " (in collaboration with a Shikari). With 32 full-page Illustra- tions in colour by Donald Maxwell. Demy 8vo. loi-. dd, net.
*^* Hitherto our journeys with Diana of Somali- land fame have been to distant lands, where " the great waste places " merge 2vith the far-fu7ig line of zuilderness, but on this travel-tour Miss Herbert takes her readers Oft a?i alluring ramble over her island set in the Irish Sea, the fascinating little world tuhose rocky shore is beloved of so very matiy. In swift baninous aerial phrases, a?id glintitig flashes of nature'' s metaphors, *^ the qualities of the isle ^' are brought to our notice ifi engaging kaleidoscopic array, and this magnetic colour book, touched by remembrance, will appeal to all who have ever seen Manxland, and ?nake those who stand upon the order of their going, go at o?tce. Of the charms and natural beautifs, the ancient and royal history of the small territory of the Phynnodderees and mermaids, custo?ns grave and gay, worthies high and loiv. Miss Herbert writes as one who holds them dear. The inter- mediate something between a thought a?id a thing is provided by Mr. Maxwell. The Immortal One asked ^^ Dost thou love pictures?'''' ^' Here, then, are works of air, earth, sea, and sufi,^' full of picturesque character, and artistic purpose — an idyll of Manx beauty.
STAINED GLASS TOURS IN ENGLAND. By C. E. Sherrill, Author of '• Stained Glass Tours in France." With 15 full-page Illus- trations. Demy 8vo. 7^. 6d. net.
*^* There are here set forth a series of delightful excursions in search of stained glass. Although the writer brings to this book thorough kfiowledge of his subject, he suppresses as 7nuch as possible of technical detail, ajid his artistic enthusiasDi is so catholic that afiy one interested in the fascinating remains of the historic past will find delight in rambling with him thfvtigh the cathedrals, churches, universities, guild- halls, etc., visited in the course of the tours here described. It is the first attempt to tell those who love stained glass ruhere they tnay find the best examples iti Englarid a?ui how they may most easily be visited. Many novel bits of history, etc., are introduced, so that the book is not only a useful and valuable companion to the traveller, but is likewise distinctly readable beside the library fire.
SECOND EDITION.
LEAVES FROM A MADEIRA GARDEN
By Charles Thomas -Stanford, F.S.A,, Author of " A River of Norway," etc. With 1 6 Full-page illustrations. Crown 8vo, 5/- net.
PRESS OPINIONS.
Daily T'elegrap/i. — " Mr. Stanford knows his Madeira, and he writes of it with the easy confidence of an habitue. An unfailing vivacity lends charm to every page."
Li-verpool Courier. — " One of the most charming books of this sort we have ever met. ' Leaves from a Madeira Garden ' is a book to take up at any time."
Sunday Times. — " Mr. Stanford deals entertainingly with Madeira. He is at home when he is telling us of the splendours of its gardens."
Liverpool Post. — " All through this delightful volume we feel the charm of the island. A special word of praise is due to the author for his charming and appropriate quotations. A really admirable piece of work."
Daily Nenvs. — "This is a pleasant, chatty book. It will appeal to all garden lovers, even to those ot them who have never owned a garden. The book contains many excellent and artistic photographs."
PRESS OPINIONS
{continued^)
Daily Mirror. — " A delightful book. Far superior to anything that has been done in the same style. Many people will learn much from this charming essay,"
Daily Graphic. — " This charming book."
Morning Post. — " The book is full of facts and serious interest."
Standard. — " The delights of a Madeira garden are allur- ingly described in this delightfully written volume."
Morning Leader. — " A pleasanter, fresher little volume could scarcely be found. The highest compliment that can be paid to Mr. Stanford's descriptions of Madeira gardens is that they positively make one yearn to see them."
Western Morning Neivs. — " A pleasant, discursive story. It is a book which any lover of nature and of garden may read with great enjoyment."
Trut/i. — " A delightful book."
Westminster Gazette. — " Any one thinking of visiting Madeira cannot do better than invest in the book."
World. — " One of the pleasantest books we have read for a long time is ' Leaves from a Madeira Garden/ "
Spectactor. — "There is much pleasant reading in the book."
Pall Mall Gazette. — " A great deal of interesting informa- tion, pleasantly given, is to be found in the book."
Globe. — " This delightful description of a delightful land."
Manchester Courier. — " The book is written brightly, and with charm, and its fascination will extend to many who are not gardeners. Many illustrations supple- ment this delightful volume."
JOHN LANE, BoDLEY Head, Vigo St., W.
THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
i] T has long been a reproach to England that only one volume by ANATOLE FRANCE has been adequately rendered into English ; yet outside this country he shares with TOLSTOI the distinction of being the greatest and most daring student of humanity living.
II There have been many difficulties to encounter in completing arrangements for a uniform edition, though perhaps the chief bar- rier to publication here has been the fact that his w^rirings are not for babes — but for men and the mothers of men. Indeed, some of his Eastern romances are written with biblical can- dour. " I have sought truth strenuously," he tells us, " I have met her boldly. I have never turned from her even when she wore an
THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
unexpected aspect.** Still, it is believed that the day has come for giving English versions of all his imaginative v/orks, as well as of his monumental study JOAN OF ARC, which is undoubtedly the most discussed book in the world of letters to-day.
^ MR. JOHN LANE has pleasure in announcing that the following volumes are either already published or are passing through the press.
THE RED LILY
MOTHER OF PEARL
THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS
THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRK HONNARD
BALTHASAR
THE WELL OF ST. CLARE
THAIS
THE WHITE STONE
PENGUIN ISLAND
THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNE
BROCHE JOCASTA AND THE FAMISHED CAT THE ELM TREE ON THE MALL THE WICKER-WORK WOMAN AT THE SIGN OF THE REINE PEDAUQUE THE OPINIONS OF JEROME COIGNARD MY FRIEND'S BOOK THE ASPIRATIONS OF JEAN SERVIEN LIFK AND LETTERS (4 vols.) JOAN OF ARC (2 vols.)
^ All the books will be published at 6/- each with the exception of JOAN OF ARC, which will be 25/- net the two volumes, with eight Illustrations.
II The format of the volumes leaves little to be desired. The size is Demy 8vo (9 x 5|), and they arc printed from Caslon type upon a paper light in weight and strong of texture, with a cover design in crimson and gold, a gilt top, end-papers from designs by Aubrey Beardsley and initials by Henry Ospovat. In short, these are volumes for the biblio- phile as well as the lover of fiction, and form perhaps the cheapest library edition of copyright novels ever published, for the price is only that of an ordinary novel.
^ The translation of these books has been entrusted to such competent French scholars as MR. Alfred alunson,
THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
MR. FREDERIC CHAPMAN, MR. ROBERT B. DOUGLAS, MR. A. W. EVANS, MKS. FARLEY, MR. LAFCADIO HEARN, MRS. W. S. JACKSON, MRS. JOHN LANE, MRS. NEWMARCH, MR. C. E. ROCHE, MISS WINIFRED STEPHENS, and MISS M. P. WILLCOCKS.
^ As Anatole Thibault, dit Anatole France, is to most English readers merely a name, it will be well to state that he was born in 1844 in the picturesque and inspiring surroundings of an old bookshop on the Quai Voltaire, Paris, kept by his father. Monsieur Thibault, an authority on eighteenth-century history, from whom the boy caught the passion for the principles of the Revolution, while from his mother he was learning to love the ascetic ideals chronicled in the Lives of the Saints. He was schooled with the lovers of old books, missals and manuscript ; he matriculated on the Quais with the old Jewish dealers of curios and objels d'art; he graduated in the great university of life and experience. It will be recognised that all his work is permeated by his youthful impressions ; he is, in fact, a virtuoso at large.
II He has written about thirty volumes of fiction. His first novel was JOCASTA & THE FAMISHED CAT (1879). THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD appeared in 1881, and had the distinction of being crowned by the French Academy, into which he was received in 1896.
H His work is illuminated with style, scholarship, and psychology ; but its outstanding features are the lambent wit, the gay mockery, the genial irony with which he touches every subject he treats. But the wit is never malicious, the mockery never derisive, the irony never barbed. To quote from his own GARDEN OF EPICURUS : " Irony and Pity are both of good counsel ; the first with her smiles makes life agreeable, the other sanctifies it to us with her tears. The Irony I invoke is no cruel deity. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her mirth disarms anger and it is she teaches us to laugh at rogues and fools whom but for her we might be so weak as to hate."
f Often he shows how divine humanity triumphs over mere asceticism, and with entire reverence ; indeed, he might be described as an ascetic overflowing with humanity, just as he has been termed a " pagan, but a pagan constantly haunted by the pre-occupation of Christ." He is in turn — like his own Choulette in THE RED LILY— saintly and Rabelaisian, yet without incongruity.
THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
At all times he is the unrelenting foe of superstition and hypocrisy. Of himself he once modestly said : " You will find in my writings perfect sincerity (lying demands a talent I do not possess), much indulgence, and some natural affection for the beautiful and good."
H The mere extent of an author's popularity is perhaps a poor argument, yet it is significant that two books by this author are in their HUNDRED AND TENTH THOU- SAND, and numbers of them well into their SEVENTIETH THOUSAND, whilst the one which a Frenchman recently described as " Monsieur France's most arid book " is in its FIFTY-EIGHT-THOUSAND.
^ Inasmuch as M. FRANCE'S ONLY contribution to an English periodical appeared in THE YELLOW BOOK, vol. v., April 1895, together with the first important English appreciation of his work from the pen of the Hon. Maurice Baring, it is peculiarly appropriate that the English edition of his works should be issued from the Bodley Head.
ORDER FORM.
To Mr :' ___ „_.... _.„
Bookseller.
Please send me the following works oj Aiuihle France:
THAIS PENGUIN ISLAND
BALTHASAR THE WHITE STONE
THE RED LILY MOTHER OF PEARL
THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS
THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD
THE WELL OF ST. CLARE
THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNE-
BROCHE THE ELM TREE ON THE MALL THE WICKER-WORK WOMAN JOCASTA AND THE FAMISHED CAT JOAN OF ARC (2 Vols.) LIFE AND LETTERS (4 Vols.)
for vohich I enclose ^ .
Name _ _ _
Address _ _
JOHN LANE, Pl BLisHER The Bodlev Head, Vigo St.. London.VV.
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY ARTHUR H. ADAMS.
GALAHAD JONES. A Tragic Farce. Crown 8vo. 6/-
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A TOUCH OF FANTASY. Crown 8vo. 6/-
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A CHILD OF THE AGE. Crown 8vo. i/- net
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THE DIVERTING ADVENTURES OF MAURIN. Cr. 8vo. 6/-
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]Vestmi)istci Gazette — Maurin, hunter, poacher, boaster, and lover of women, is a magnificently drawn type of the Meridional, who is in some ways the Irishman of France. . . . a fine, sane, work. . . . The translation is excellent."
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MAURIN THE ILLUSTRIOUS. Crown Svo. 6/-
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JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
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Moniiiig Post— " Pi. fine drama, finely conceived and finely executed AUicnaum—" Eminently picturesque . , . gorgeous colouring."
A WHIRL ASUNDER. Paper Cover. i/- net
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LIFE IN A GARRISON TOWN. Crown Svo. i/- net
The suppressed German Novel. With a preface written by the author whilst in London, and an introduction by Arnold White.
7,-„/;j_" The disgraceful exposures of the book were expressly admitted to be true by the Minister of War in the Reichstag. What the book will probably sus/gest to you is. that German militarism is cutting its own throat, and will one day be hoist with its own petard."
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY HORACE BLEACKLEY.
A GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD. Crown 8vo. 6/-
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ADVENTURES OF AN A.D.C. Crown 8vo. 6/-
VVestniinster Gazette—" . . . makes better and more entertaining reading than nine out of every ten novels of the day. . . . Those who know nothing about Anglo-Indian social life will be as well entertained by this story as those who know everything about it."
Times—" Full of delightful humour."
BY JOHN BUCHAN.
JOHN BURNET OF BARNS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
7/-H//1— "In short, this is a novel to lay aside and read a second time, nor I should we forget the spirited snatches of song which show that the winner of the j Newdigate has the soul of the poet."
A LOST LADY OF OLD YEARS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Atheiiceum—" Written in strong and scholarly fashion."
Morning Post—" We have nothing but praise for Mr. Buchan. The book is of sterling merit and sustained interest."
Evening Standard—" Stirring and well told."
BY DANIEL CHAUCER.
SIMPLE LIFE LIMITED. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Moriiing Post.—" One of the most delightful novels we have read tor a long time."
Pail Mall Gazette.- ' So distinguished in style that the reader devours it with avidity. It is a modern novel with a sparkle'and freshness which should set everybody perusing it. The author ought to feel proud of his achievement."
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THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL. Crown 8vo. 6/-
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Datl^'AIail—" Mr. Chesterton, as our laughing philosopher, is at his best in [this delightful fantasy." i> s f f ,
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THE LOVE CHILD. Crown 8vo. 6/-
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^Z'^-y Telegraph— " A strong and interesting story, the fruit of careful thought and conscientious workmanship. . . . Mr. Clegg has presented intensely dramatic situations without letting them degenerate into the melodramatic."
THE WILDERNESS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
^"I^V Telegraph—" A really admirable story." I Athenceum— "Mr. Clegg claims the gift of powerful and truthful writing."
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY T. B. CLEGG — continued.
THE BISHOP'S SCAPEGOAT. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Athenceum — " Inspired with a deep sense of the beautiful in Nature and the instinctive goodness of the human heart, and the divine meaning of life."
Daily Mail — " A really good novel. It is so good that we hope Mr. Clegg will give us some more from the same store."
JOAN OF THE HILLS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Tinics — "Another of Mr. Clegg's admirable novels of Australian life." Globe— " A good story, interesting all through."
BY W. BOURNE COOKE.
BELLCROFT PRIORY. A Romance. Crown 8vo. 6/-
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BY E. H. COOPER.
MY BROTHER THE KING. Crown 8vo. 6/-
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Daily Telegmp/!.— "The story is admirable, full of life and touched with real feeling "
BY FREDERICK BARON CORYO-
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BY VICTORIA CROSS.
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BY A. J. DAWSON.
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JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY GEORGE EGERTON.
KEYNOTES. Crown 8vo. Ninth Edition, 3/6 net
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SYMPHONIES. Crown 8vo. Second Edition. 6/-
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HAND OF THE NORTH. Crown Svo. 6/-
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THE MAULEVERER MURDERS. Crown Svo. 6/-
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THE FINANCES OF SIR JOHN KYNNERSLEY.
Crown Svo. 6/-
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JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY HAROLD FREDERIC-co/;//»;(.</. MRS. ALBERT GRUNDY. Observations in Philistia.
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THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS AND OTHER STORIES
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Times — " Here is learning in plenty, drawn from all ages and most languages, but of dryness or dulness not a sentence. The book bubbles with laughter. . . . His sense of humour has a wide range."
BY ELIZABETH GODFREY.
THE WINDING ROAD. Crown Svo. 6/-
Literary WoWt/—" A carefully written story. . . . Miss Godfrey has the mind of a poet ; her pages breathe ot the beautiful in nature without giving long description, while the single-hearted love between Jasper and Phenice is des- cribed with power and charm."
THE BRIDAL OF ANSTACE. Crown Svo. 6/-
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THE CRADLE OF A POET. Crown Svo. 6/-
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Pall Mall Gazette— "■' . . . the charm of beautiful writing, which cannot fail to enhance Miss Godfrey's literary reputation.
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MRS. GRAMERCY PARK. Crown Svo. 6/-
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Observer — " Fresh and amusing."
THE LASS WITH THE DELICATE AIR. Crown Svo. 6/-
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6
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY HENRY HARLAND.
THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF BOX. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Ulustrated by G. C. Wilmhurst. 165th. Thousand.
.,4a7rft'wi>'— "The drawings are all excellent in style and really illustrative oJ the tale."
Pall Mall Gazette—" Dainty and delicious." Tinus—" A book among a tnousand."
MY FRIEND PROSPERO. Crown 8vo. Third Edition. 6/-
J UHLS—" There is no denying the charm of the work, the delicacy and fragrancy of the style, the sunny play of the dialogue, the vivacity of the wit, and the graceful flight ot the fancy.' ,^
IVorld— "The reading of it is a pleasure rare and unalloyed.
THE LADY PARAMOUNT. Crown 8vo. 55lh Thousand. 6/-
Times — "A fantastic, delightful love-idyll."
Spectator—" A roseate romance without a crumpled rose leaf."
Daily Mail—" Charming, dainty, delightful."
COMEDIES AND ERRORS. Crown Svo. Third Edition. 6/-
Mr. Henry James, in Fortiiiiihtly Review— "Ur. Harland has clearly thought out a form. . . . He has maslerecl a method and learned how to paint. . .. His art is all alive with felicities and delicacies."
GREY ROSES. Crown Svo. Fourth Edition. 3/6 net
Daily Telegraph—" ' Grey Roses ' " are entitled to rank among the choicest flowers of the realms of romance. "
Spectator-" Really delightful. ' Castles near Spain ' is as near perfection as it could well be."
Daily Chronicle—" Charming stories, simple, full of freshness."
MADEMOISELLE MISS. Crown Svo. Third Edition. 3/6
Speaker—" All through the book we are pleased and entertained." Bookman-" An interesting collection of early work. In it may be noted the undoubted delicacy and strength of Mr. Harland's manner."
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HENRIETTA. Crown Svo. 6/-
BY ALICE HERBERT.
THE MEASURE OF OUR YOUTH. Crown Svo. 6/-
Evening Standard — "A very human, intelligible book. . . . exceedingly clever and earnestly real."
Morning Post — " Reveals an unusual clearness of vision and distinction ol style and thought."
BY MURIEL HINE.
HALF IN EARNEST. Crown Svo. 6/-
Daily Telegrafih— "This is written with great spirit and a considerable power ot story-telling. It has sufficient attractive qualities to make it a readable piece of work."
Pall Mall Gazette. — " The character-drawing throughout, indeed, is of unusual merit."
Mornins Post. — " Miss Muriel Hine is to be congratulated."
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY ARNOLD HOLCOMBE.
THE ODD MAN. Crown Svo. 61-
Monnng Post — " One of the most refreshing and amusing books that we have read for some months. ... ' The Odd Man ' is a book to put on one's shelves and Mr. Holcombe's is a name to remember.'
BY ADELAIDE HOLT.
THE VALLEY OF REGRET. Crown Svo. 6/-
Timcs. — " Strong individualities, freshlj' conceived and firmly drawn. . . . The book is one which augurs well for the writer; for she certainly has the gift of reaching the reader's heart."
BY WILFRID SCARBOROUGH JACKSON.
NINE POINTS OF THE LAW. Crown Svo. 6/-
Manchesler Guardian — "The kindly humorous philosophy of this most divert- ing story is as remarkable as its attractive style. "There is hardly a page without something quotable, some neat bit of phrasing or apt wording of a truth."
HELEN OF TROY. N.Y. Crown Svo. 6/-
Daily Chronicle— '■^ The story is at once original, impossible, artificial, and very amusing. Go, get the work and read."
TRIAL BY MARRIAGE. Crown Svo. 6/-
J-f^orld—" One can confidently promise the reader of this skilfully treated and unconventional novel that he will not find a page of it dull. It is one that will be not only read but remembered."
BY MRS. JOHN LANE. |
KITW^^K. Crown Svo. 6/-
A Story with numerous illustrations by Howard Pyle, Albert Sterner and George Wharton Edwards.
Times — " Mrs. Lane has succeeded to admiration, and chiefly by reason of being so much interested in her theme that she makes no conscious effort to please. . . . Everyone who seeks to be diverted will read ' Kitwyk ' for its obvious qualities of entertainment."
THE CHAMPAGNE STANDARD. Crown Svo. 6/-
Morning Post — " The author's champagne overflows with witty sayings too numerous to cite."
Pall Mall Gazette — " Mrs. Lane's papers on our social manners and foibles are the most entertaining, the kindest and the truest that have been oflered us for a longtime. . . . The book shows an airy philosophy that will render it of service to the social student."
BALTHASAR AND OTHER STORIES. Crown Svo. 6/-
Translated by Mrs. John Lane from the French of Anatole France
Daily Graphic — "The original charm and distinction of the author's style has survivedf the difficult ordeal of appearing in another language. . . . 'The Cure's Mignonette" is as perfect in itself as some little delicate flower."
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY MRS. JOHN LAIHE— continued.
ACCORDING TO MARIA. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Daily Telegraph— " A more entertaining, companionable, good-natured, and yet critical piece of portraiture we have not had the good luck to encounter these many seasons. . . . 'According to Maria' is as fresh, amusing, and human a book as any man, woman, or girt could desire to bewitch a jaded moment, or drive away a fit of the dumps."
Daiiy Chronicle— ''This delightful novel, sparkling with humour. . . . Maria's world is real. . . . Thackeray might have made such sheaves if he had been
a woman.
TALK O' THE TOWN. Crown 8vo. 6/-
BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.
THE BOOK BILLS OF NARCISSUS. Crown 8vo. 3/6 net
Second Edition.
C. di B. (Mr. Bernard Shaw) in the S/ar—" If an unusually fine literary instinct could make it a solid book, Mr. le Gallienne would be at no loss lor an enduring reputation . . . Nothing could be prettier than his pleas and persuasions on behalf of Narcissus and George Muncaster."
THE WORSHIPPER OF THE IMAGE. Crown Svo. 3/6
Daily Chronicle— " Coniains passages of a poignancy which Mr. Le Gallienne hus never before compassed.'"
THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN GIRL. Cr. Svo. 6/-
Fifteenth Edition. Daily News— ''A piece of literary art which compels our admiration." Mr. May. Beerhohm in Daily Mail— " Mr. Le Gallienne's gentle, high spirits, and his sympathy with existence is exhibited here. . . . His poetry, like his humour, sufi'uses the whole book and gives a charm to the most prosaic objects and incidents of life. . . . The whole 'book is delightful, for this reason, that no one else could have written a book of the same kind."
THE ROMANCE OF ZION CHAPEL. Crown Svo. 6/-
^-^———^■^——^-^^—^~~^~^~'~^~' Second Edition.
St. James's Gazette—" Mr. Le Gallienne's masterpiece."
Times—" Extremely clever and pathetic. As for sentiment Dickens might have been justly proud of poor Jenny's lingering death, and readers whose heai ts I have the mastery over their heads will certainly weep over it."
PAINTED SHADOWS. Crown Svo. 6/-
Scotsman—" Material and workmanship are of the finest." , Queen—" Really delightful stories, Mr. Le Gallienne writes prose like a poet."
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY RICHARD LE GALLlE^UE-conUnncd.
LITTLE DIXXERS WITH THE SPHINX. Cr. 8vo. 6/-
Daily Telegraph — " Here is the same delicate phrasing, the same tender revela- tion of emotions, always presented with a daintiness of colouring that reveals the true literarj' artist."
Star — " Mr. Le Gallienne touches with exquisite tenderness on the tragedy of things that change and pass and fade."
BY A. E. J. LEGGE.
MUTINEERS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Speaker — "An interesting story related with admirable lucidity and remark- able grasp of character. Mr. Legge writes with polish and grace."
BOTH GREAT AND SMALL. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Saturday Review — " We read on and on with increasing pleasure." Tunes — " The style of this book is terse and witty."
THE FORD. Crown 8vo. Second Edition. 6/-
SUindard — "An impressive work . . . clever and thoughtful. 'The Ford," deserves to be largely read."
BY W. J. LOCKE.
DERELICTS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Daily Chronicle — "Mr. Locke tells his story in a very true, very moving, and very noble book. If anyone can read the last chapter with dry eyes we shall be surprised. ' Derelicts ' is an impressive and important book."
Morning Post — Mr. Locke's clever novel. One of the most effective stories that have appeared for some time past."
IDOLS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Punch — " The Baron strongly recommends Mr. W. J. Locke's ' Idols ' to all novel readers. It is well written. No time is wasted in superfluous descriptions; there is no fine writing for fine writing's sake, but the story will absorb the reader. ... It is a novel that, once taken up, cannot willingly be put down until finished."
A STUDY IN SHADOWS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Daily Chronicle — "Mr. Locke has achieved a distinct success in this noveL He has struck many emotional chords and struck them all with a firm sure hand."
Athcnauni—^^The character-drawing is distinctly good. All the personages stand out well defined with strongly marked individualities."
THE WHITE DOVE. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Times — "An interesting story,, full of dramatic scenes."
Morning Post — "An interesting story. The characters are strongly con- ceived and vividly presented, and the dramatic moments are powerfully realized."
THE USURPER. Crown 8vo. 6/-
IVorld — "This quite uncommon novel."
Spectator — " Character and plot are most ingeniously wrought, and the con- clusion, when it comes, is fully satisfying." Times — "An impressive romance."
10
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY W. J. LOCKE— continued. THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE. Cr. 8vo. 3/6
AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Daily C/;)-o«!V/e— "The heroine of this clever story attracts our interest. . . She is a clever and subtle study. . . . We congratulate Mr. Locke."
Morning Post— " A cleverly written tale . . . the author's pictures of Bohemian life are bright and graphic."
WHERE LOVE IS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Mr. James Douglas, in Star—" I do not often praise a book with this e.Kultant gusto, but it gave me so much spiritual stimulus and moral pleasure that I feel bound to snatch the additional delight of commending it to those readers who long tor a novel that is a piece of literature as well as a piece of lite."
Si'.riidaid—" A brilliant piece ol work."
7"n;;ts— " The author has the true gift ; his people are alive."
THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE. Cr. 8vo. 6/-
Mr. C. K. Shorter, in 5/</i(.)t—" A book which has just delighted my heart.
Truth.—'' Mr. Locke's new novel is one of the most artistic pieces ol work I have met with for many a day.'
Daily C/iroiiicie.—" Mr. Locke succeeds, indeed, in every crisis of this most original story."
THE BELOVED VAGABOND. Crown Svo. 6/-
7-,-,<//j._" Certainly it is the most brilliant piece of work Mr. Locke has done." Evening Standard.—'' Mr. Locke can hardly fail to write beautitully. He has not failed now."
SIMON THE JESTER. Crown Svo. 6/-
Dailv Tflfgraph.—" . ■ . something of the precision of the pendant, com- bined with an'easy garrulity which is absolutely charming, and a literary style which carries us from the beginning to the end with unfailing verve and ease . . . Certainly you will not put down the book until you have read the last pacje . . . The style, the quality of the writing, the atmosphere of the novel, the easy, pervasive charm . . . make us feel once more the stirring pulses and eager blood of deathless romance."
THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA WING. Crown Svo. 6/-
BY INGRAHAM LOYELL.
MARGARITAS SOUL. Crown Svo. 6/-
Pm»67;.— "There have been a great many ingenues (mock or real) in modern fiction, and doubtless one or two in actual lite ; but there never was one inside a book or out of it who came within a four mile cab radius ot Margarita. 1 he book is well worth reading." , , • n
Westminster Gazette.— " A book which does not let the readers interest flag for a moment. It is full of laughter and smiles, of seriousness, comtortable philo- sophy and a few tears."
BY CHARLES LOWE.
THE PRINCE'S PRANKS. Crown Svo. 6/-
Evenmg Standard-" The 'pranks' are good reading. All his adventures go with a swing, and the escapes are as exciting as anything we have read lor a long time." . ,_ •,,
Daily Ch'onicle—" The book is always bright and often brilliant. Globg — "A very readable and pleasant book."
II
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTIO
BY LAURA BOGUE LUFFMAN.
A QUESTION' OF LATITUDE. Crown 8vo. 6,
BY A. NEIL LYONS.
ARTHUR'S. Crown 8vo. 6,
Tunes. — " Not only a very entertaining and amusing work, but a very kind and tolerant work also. Incidentally the work is a mirror of a phase of the lo London life of to-day as true as certain of Hogarth's transcripts in the eighteeni century, and far more tender."
Punch. — " Mr. Neil Lyons seems to get right at the heart of things, and I co: fess to a real admiration tor this philosopher of the coflTee-stall."
SIXPENNY PIECES. Crown 8vo.
3/
Pall Mall Gazette. — " It is pure, fast, sheer life, salted with a sense of humour
Evening Standard. — "' Sixpenny Pieces' is as good as 'Arthur's', and th;
is saying a great deal. A book full of laughter and tears and hits innumerab
that one feels impelled to read aloud. ' Sixpenny Pieces ' would be very hai
indeed to beat."
COTTAGE PIE. A Country Spread. Crown 8vo. 6/
Daily Graphic. — "Mr. Lyons writes w-ell and has literary talent." Daily Express. — "Every story is masterly, clear, clean, complete. Mr. Lyor is a rare literary craftsman and something more." Athcncemn. — " 'Cottage Pie' is an achievement."
BY FIONA MACLEOD (William Sharp).
THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS. Crown 8vo. 6/ 1
Literary World. — " We eagerly devour page after page; we are taken captiv by the speed and poeti-j' of the book."
Graphic. — '" It is as sad, as sweet, as the Hebridean skies themselves, bt , with that soothing sadnessof Nature which is so blessed a relief after a prolonge dose of the misery of ' mean streets.' "
BY FREDERICK NIYEN.
THE LOST CABIN MINE. Crown 8vo. 6/ 1
Athenceuni. — " The book should be read by lovers of good fiction." Westminster Gazette. — "The whole story is told with an amount of spirit an realism that grips the reader throughout." !
THE ISLAND PROVIDENCE. Crown 8vo. 6/
Daily Graphic. — " Its descriptive power is remarkable. The author 'spring imagination,' to use George Merediths words, and springs it with no more tha;, the lew words prescribed ty that master."
Academy. — " Vigorous writing."
BY FRANK NORRIS.
THE THIRD CIRCLE. Crown Svo. 6/-
Morning Post. — "As a sketch by a great artist often reveals to the amateu , more of his power and skill than a large finished work in which the effect is con; cealed, so in these virile little studies we are made to realise quite clearly wha. powers of observation and what a keen eye for effective incident Mr. Norris had.
Spectator. — "A series of remarkable sketches and short stories by the lat< Mr. Frank Norris . . . well worth reading."
12
ii
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION BY JOHN PARKINSON.
A REFORMER BY PROXY. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Daily Chronicle. — " For a first it is quite an excellent effort.
Morning Leaiiei . — "A very promising book."
Literary World. — "A thoroughly sound, matured piece of work.
OTHER LAWS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
*jf* This book is distinctly the outcome of the latest "intellectual" move- ment in novel-writing. The hero, Hawkins, is an African explorer. During a holiday in England he falls in love with and captivates Caroline Blackwood, a woman of strong personality. Circumstances prevent him from entering upon a formal engagement ; and he departs again lor Africa, without proposing marriage. Caroline and Hawkins correspond fitfully for some time; but then a startling combination of events causes Hawkins to penetrate further and further into the interior ; a native village is burned, and a report, based apparently upon fact is circulated of his death. Not until seven months have elapsed is he able to return to E gland. He finds Caroline married to a man who has found her money useful. Here the story, strong and moving throughout, moves steadily to the close, describing delicately and analytically the soul conflict of a man and a woman, sundered and separate, with a yearning for each other's love.
BY F. J. RANDALL.
LOVE AND THE IRONMONGER. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Daily Telegraph. — "Since the gay days when Mr. F. Anstey was writing his inimitable series of humourous novels, we can recall no book of purely farcical imagination, so full of excellent entertainment as this first effort of Mr. F. J. Randall. ' Love and the Ironmonger' is certain to be a success."
Times — " As diverting a comedy of errors as the reader is likely to meet with for a considerable time."
Mr. Clement Shorter in The Sphere — " I thank the author for a delightful hour's amusement."
THE BERMONDSEY TWIN. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Pall Mall Gazette. — " Merry and bright farce. The incidents are most deftly handled."
Westminster Gazette. — "There is a good deal of humour in some of the situations."
Daily Telegraph. — "Mr. Randall has written a wonderfully clever and thoroughly aniusing humorous novel. The Bermondsey Twin is a notable addition to the ail-too-sparse ranks of novels that are frankly designed to amuse."
BY HUGH DE SELINCOURT.
A BOY'S MARRIAGE. Crown 8vo. 6/-
£w;n';;i,' iVrtwrffrrrf—" Exceedingly realistic . . . but does not give the impres- sion that anything is expatiated upon for the sake of effect. A daring but sincere and simple book. . . . likely to attract a good deal of attention."
Athenaeum — "The best points in Mr. de Selincourt's novel are his delicacy of treatment and sense of character. . . . He has the making of a fine novelist."
THE STRONGEST PLUME. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Academj—" An uncomfortable story for the conventionally minded. It deals a deadly blow to the ordinary accepted notions of the respectable."
Daily Telegrapfi—'' The story is a very commendable as well as a very inter- esting piece of work."
Daily Mail—^^ A neat, artistic story."
13
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY HUGH DE SELmCOURT— continued. THE HIGH ADVExNTURE. Crown 8vo. ej-
Eveiiing Standard.— " A. novel for all lovers of the poetry of life ' uttered or unexpressed."
Morning Post.—'' Mr. de Selincourt certainly has a talent for describing rather nice young men.'
Observer. — "A clever and refreshing story.'
THE WAY THINGS HAPPEN. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Morning Post. — " Ihe book has moments of grace and charm that few contem- porary writers give us."
Pall Mall Gazette. — " ' The Way Things Happen ' confirms a long-settled con- viction that among the young generation of writers there are lew who can compete with Mr. de Selincourt ior pride of place."
Times. — " Reading this book is a surprising and a rare experience."
A FAIR HOUSE. Crown 8vo. 6/-
At/ienoeian.^-- 'ihe book is tender and pathetic, and occasionally exhibits considerable literary skill.'
Evening Standard.— "A skilful study of life. Mr. de Selincourt has a graceful style and moreover, he possesses the power to make his reader share in his emotions. The book is clever, and something more and better "
Morning Post.—" 'A Fair House' undoubtedly is a pretty book."
BY G. S. STREET.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BOY. F'cap. Svo. 3/6 net
Fifth Edition.
Pall Mall Gazette. — " A creation in which there appears to be no flaw." Speaker.— " The conception is excellent and the style perfect. One simmers with laughter from first to last."
THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS. Crown Svo. 3/6
IVestnunster Gazette. — '' Since Mr. Matthew Arnold left us we remember nothing so incisive about the great British Middle, and we know of nothing ot Mr. Street's that we like so well."
Saturday Review.—" Mr. Street has a very delicate gift of satire." Times.-" A piece of irony that is full of distinction and wit."
BY HERMANN SUDERMANN.
REGINA : or THE SINS OF THE FATHERS. 6/-
Crown Svo. Also Canvas Back Library t/6 net. Third Edition.
A Translation of " Der Katzensteg," by Beatrice Marshall.
St. James's Gazette.— " A striking piece of work, full of excitement and strongly drawn character. "
Globe.— "The novel is a striking one, and deserves a careful and critical attention."
BY MARCELLE TINAYRE.
THE SHADOW OF LOVE. Crown Svo. 6/-
Translated from the French by A. R. Allinso.n, M.A. *^f* Of the newer French novelists Marcelle Tinayre is perhaps the best known. Her work has been crowned by the French Academy and she possesses a very large public in Europe and in America. The story deals with a girl's love and a heroic sacrifice dictated by love. "The Shadow of Love" is a book of extraordinary power, uncompromising in its delineation of certain hard, some might say repulsive facts of liie, yet instinct all through with an exquisitely tender and beautiful passion of human interest and human sympathy.
14
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY CLARA YIEBIG.
ABSOLUTION. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Timcs.—" There is considerable strength in 'Absolution' . . . As a realistic study the story has mnch merit."
Dailv Telegraph.— The tale is powerfully told . . .^ the tale will prove absorb- ing with'its mmute characterisation and real passion." OUR DAILY BREAD. Crown 8vo. 6/-
AthenauMt.—" The story is not only of great human interest, but also extremely valuable as a study of the conditions in which a large section of the poorer classes and small tradespeople of German cities spend their lives. Clara Viebig manipu- lates her material with extraordinary vigour. . . . Her characters are alive.
Daily Telegraph.—" Quite excellent."
BY H. G. WELLS.
A NEW MACHIAVELLI. Crown 8vo. 6/-
1 Mr. Robert Ross in Bvslander.—'' It may safely be prophesied that igii is not
'likely to produce another literary sensation of so permanent a kind. It is
1 impossible to lay down ' The New Machiavelli' for longer than a few moments.
. . . The most various novel that has appeared since -Vanity Fair. ... A
great piece of literature." . • /• i
The Tillies.— ''The book is without doubt the most important piece of work that Mr. Wells has yet given us. . . . The most finished example of the form which the novel has gradually arrived at in his hands. . . . Margaret, the betrayed and deserted wife, is possibly, the most finely touched portrait that Mr. Wells has drawn."
BY MARGARET WESTRUP.
ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN. Crown 8vo. 6/-
i3«i7j' rf/<7e>-a*A.-', The book is charming . . . the author . . . has a delicate fanciful touch, a charming imagination . . . skilfully suggests character and moods . . . is bright and witty, and writes about children with exquisite know- ledge and sympathy." HELEN ALLISTON. Crown 8vo. 6/-
i Pall Mall Gazette.— "The book has vivacity, fluency, colour, more than a touch of poetry and passion. ... We shall look forward witn interest to future work by the author of ' Helen Alliston.' " THE YOUNG O'BRIENS. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Saturday Review.— " •De\\gh\.i\A . . . the author treats them (the Young O'Briens) very skilfully." PHYLLIS IN MIDDLEWYCH. Crown 8vo. 6/-
■ Daily Telegraph.-" The author of ' Elizabeth's Children 'has really excelled herself in this" volume of stories in which Phyllis Cartwnght figures. Fhyllis who is called a little angel by her mother and a little devil by her lather, has cer tainly a double share of the power of moving people to wrath or mirth.
BY EDITH WHARTON.
THE GREATER INCLINATION. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Daily Telegraph.—" Teems with literary ability and dramatic force." OM//oo/t.— ^' ^Iiss Wharton writes with a sympathy, insight and understanding that we have seldom seen equalled."
JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION
BY IDA WILD. "
ZOE THE DANCER. Crown 8vo. 6/-
Tinics. — "The literary style is a feature. There is a pleasing originality about the arcTunt of the career of Zoe." We should certainly like to hear again from the author-"
Morning Lender. — " Miss Wild can write, not only English, but good English. Her style is often clever and brilliant. It shews a real sense and mastery of words and idiom."
BY M. P. WILLCOCKS.
WIDDICOMBE. Crown Svo. 6/-
Evening Standard.—'^ Wonderfully alive and pulsating with a curious fervour which brings round the reader the very atmosphere which the author describes. . . . A fine, rather unusual novel. . . . There are some striking studies of women."
Queen. — " An unusually clever book."
THE WIXGLESS VICTORY. Crown Svo. 6/-
Ttntes.—" ."juch books are worth keeping on the shelves even by the classics, lor they are painted in colours that do not fade."
Daily Telegraph. — "A novel of such power as should win for its author a position in the front rank of contemporary writers of fiction."
A MAN OF GENIUS. Crown Svo. 6/-
Daily Tclcgiaph.—" 'V>J\dLd\comhe' was good, and 'The Wingless Victory" was perhaps better, but in ' A Man of Genius ' the author has given us something that should ssure her nlace in the front rank of our living novelists.
Punch.—"' There is no excuse for not reading ' A Man of Genius ' and making a short stay in the 'seventh Devon of delight."
THE WAY UP. Crown Svo. 6/-
Morning Pos/.— " Admii-able . . . 'The Way Up' grips one's attention more completely than any of Miss Willcocks' three previous novels."
World. —'•'t\\c author has given us her best. This is a real literary achieve- ment, a novel in a thousand and a work of art."
Literary IVorld.— "This is a novel that on every page bears the hall-mark of a genius."
BY F. E. MILLS YOUNG.
A MISTAKEN MARRIAGE. Crown Svo. 6/-
Pall Mull Gazette. — " It is a very sincere and moving story. The heroine claims our sympathies from the first, and we follow her fortunes with absorbed interest."
CHIP. Crown Svo. 6/-
Morning Post. — " Original, vivid and realistic." Athenaiim. — "A tale . . . of unusual romantic interest."
ATONEMENT. Crown Svo. 6/-
Morhing Leader.—" The book is certainly very powerful, and the end is extraordinarily moving. The characters are human beings, and the wholte thing has the stamp of strong rugged life. ... an exceptional and strong book,'^
Daily Chronicle, — " A vigorous and striking story . . . unusally wfell told. The author's power to describe places is as clear and incisive as it is in defining his characters."
SAMS KID. Crown Svo. ,r '^ * " 6/-
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