Part 27 (1/2)
We wandered about this forlorn, abandoned garden, whose stillness equalled that of a Carthusian convent, till dusk, when a refres.h.i.+ng wind having risen, waved the cypresses and scattered the white jasmine flowers over the parterres of myrtle in clouds like snow. Don Pedro filled the carriage with flowery sprays pulled from mutilated statues, and we were all half intoxicated before we reached my habitation with the delicious but overcoming perfume.
LETTER XVIII.
Excursion to Cintra.--Villa of Ramalhao.--The Garden.--Collares.--Pavilion designed by Pillement.--A convulsive gallop.--Cold weather in July.
July 9th, 1787.
I was at the Marialva Palace by nine, and set off from thence with the Marquis for Cintra. Having the command of the Queen's stables, in which are four thousand mules and two thousand horses, he orders as many relays as he pleases, and we changed mules four times in the s.p.a.ce of an hour.
A few minutes after ten we were landed at Ramalhao, a villa, under the pyramidical rocks of Cintra, Signor S. Arriaga was so kind as to lend me a month or two ago, and which I have not had time to visit till to-day.
The suite of apartments are s.p.a.cious and airy, and the views they command of sea and arid country boundless; but unless the heat becomes more violent, I shall be cooler than I wish in them, as they contain not a chimney except in the kitchen.
I found the garden in excellent order, and flouris.h.i.+ng crops of vegetables springing up between rows of orange and citron. Such is the power of the climate, that the gardenias and Cape plants I brought with me from England, mere stumps, are covered with beautiful blossoms. The curled mallows, and some varieties of Indian-corn, sown by my English gardener, have shot up to a strange elevation, and begin already to form shady avenues and fairy forests, where children might play in perfection at landscape-gardening.
After I had pa.s.sed half-an-hour in looking about me, the Marquis and I got into our chair and drove to his own villa; a new creation, which has cost him a great many thousand pounds sterling. Five years ago it was a wild hill bestrewn with flints and rocky fragments. At present you find a gay pavilion designed by Pillement, and elegantly decorated; a parterre with statues and fountains, thick alleys of laurel, bay, and laurustine, cascades, arbours, clipped box-trees, and every ornament the Portuguese taste in gardening renders desirable.
We dined at a clean snug inn, situated towards the middle of the village of Cintra. The Queen has lately bestowed this house and a large tract of ground adjoining it, upon the Marquis. From its windows and loggias you look down deep ravines and bold slopes of woods and copses, variegated with mossy stones and ancient decayed chesnuts.
As soon as the sun grew low we went to Collares, and walked on a terrace belonging to M. la Roche, a French merchant, who has shown some glimmering of taste in the laying out of his villa. The groves of pine and chesnut starting from the crevices of rock, and rising one above another to a considerable elevation, give Collares the air of an Alpine village. Innumerable rills, overhung by cork-trees and branching lemons, burst out of ruined walls by the wayside, and dash into marble basins. A favourite attendant of the late king's, who has a very large property in these environs, invited us with much civility and obsequiousness into his garden. I thought myself entering the orchards of Alcinous. The boughs literally bent under loads of fruit; the slightest shake strewed the ground with plums, oranges, and apricots.
This villa boasts a grand artificial cascade, with tritons and dolphins vomiting torrents of water; but I paid it not half the attention its proprietor expected, and retiring under the shade of the fruit-trees, feasted on the golden apples and purple plums that were rolling about me in such profusion. The Marquis, who shares with most of the Portuguese a remarkable predilection for flowers, filled his carriage with carnations and jasmine. I never saw plants more conspicuous for size and vigour than those which have the luck of being sown in this fortunate soil. The exposition likewise is singularly happy; skreened by sloping hills, and defended from the sea-airs by several miles of thickets and orchards. I felt unwilling to quit a spot so favoured by nature, and M---- flatters himself I shall be tempted to purchase it.
The wind became troublesome as we ascended the hill, crowned by the Marialva villa. The sky was clear and the sun set fiery. The distant convent of Mafra, glowing with ruddy light, looked like the enchanted palace of a giant, and the surrounding country bleak and barren as if the monster had eaten it desolate. To repose ourselves a little after our rapid excursion we entered the pavilion I told you just now Pillement had designed. It represents a bower of fantastic Indian trees mingling their branches, and discovering between them peeps of a summer sky. From the mouth of a flying dragon depends a magnificent l.u.s.tre for fifty lights, hung with festoons of brilliant gla.s.s, that twinkle like strings of diamonds.
We loitered in this saloon till it was pitch-dark. The pages riding full speed before us with flaming torches, and the wind driving back sparks and smoke full in our faces, I was stunned and bewildered, and experienced, perhaps, the sensations of a novice in sorcery, mounted for the first time behind a witch on a broomstick. In less than an hour we had rattled over twelve miles of rough, disjoined pavement, going up and down the steepest hills in a convulsive gallop, so that I expected every instant to be thrown flat on my nose; but, happily, the mules were picked from perhaps a hundred, and never stumbled. I found the air on the heights above the Ajueda very keen and piercing.
It sounds strange to be complaining of cold at Lisbon on the ninth of July.
LETTER XIX.
Sympathy between Toads and Old Women.--Palace of Cintra.--Reservoir of Gold and Silver Fish.--Parterre on the summit of a lofty terrace.--Place of confinement of Alphonso the Sixth.--The Chapel.--Barbaric profusion of Gold.--Altar at which Don Sebastian knelt when he received a supernatural warning.--Rooms in preparation for the Queen and the Infantas.--Return to Ramalhao.
July 24th, 1787.
There exists, I am convinced, a decided sympathy between toads and witch-like old women. Mother Morgan[16] descended this morning, not into the infernal regions, but into the cellar, and immediately five or six spanking reptiles of this mysterious species waddled around her. She rewarded the confidence the poor things placed in her rather scurvily, and laid three of the fattest sprawling. I saw them lying breathless in the court as I got on horseback; the largest measured seven inches in diameter. Portuguese toads may be more distinguished for size, but are not half so amiably speckled as those we have the happiness to harbour in England.
I was some time hesitating which way I should turn my horse's steps, whether to the Pedra d'os Ovos, or on the other side of the rock to the Peninha, a cell belonging to the Hieronimites, and dependent upon their princ.i.p.al eyry, Nossa Senhora da Penha. Marialva, whom I met with all his train of equerries and picadors coming forth from his villa, decided me not to take a clambering ride, but to accompany him to the palace, the interior of which I had not yet visited.
The Alhambra itself is scarcely more morisco in point of architecture than this confused pile, which seems to grow out of the summit of a rocky eminence, and is broken into a variety of picturesque recesses and projections. It is a thousand pities that they have whitened its venerable walls, stopped up a range of bold arcades, and sliced out one end of the great hall into two or three mean apartments like the dressing-rooms of a theatre. From the windows, which are all in a fantastic oriental style, crinkled and crankled, and supported by twisted pillars of smooth marble, striking, romantic views of the cliffs and village of Cintra are commanded. Several irregular courts and loggias, formed by the angles of square towers, are enlivened by fountains of marble and gilt bronze, continually pouring forth abundant streams of the purest water.
A sort of reservoir, almost long enough to be styled a ca.n.a.l, is continued the whole length of the great hall, and serves as a paradise for shoals of the largest and most brilliant gold and silver fish I ever set eyes upon. The murmur of the jets-d'eau which rise from this ca.n.a.l, the ripple of the water undulating against steps and slabs of polished marble, the glancing and gleaming of the fish, and the striking contrast of light and shade produced by the intricate labyrinth of arches and columns, combine altogether to form a scene of enchantment such as we sometimes dream of, but hardly suppose is ever realized. There is a sobriety in the hues of the marble, a mysteriousness in the dark recesses seen in perspective, and a solemnity in the deep colour, approaching to blackness, of the water in that part of the reservoir which is overshadowed by lofty buildings, I cannot help thinking superior to all the flutter and glitter of the most famous Moorish edifices at Granada or Seville.
The flat summit of one of the loftiest terraces, not less than one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, is laid out as a neat parterre, which is spread like an embroidered carpet before the entrance of a huge square tower, almost entirely occupied by a hall encrusted with glistening tiles, and crowned by a most singularly-shaped dome. Amidst the scrolls of arabesque foliage which adorn it, appear the arms of the princ.i.p.al Portuguese n.o.bility. The achievement of the unfortunate house of Tavora is blotted out, and the panel it occupied left bare.