“On Tuesday Rundell goes. To-morrow I have an engagement for the day, and lack of paper has till now prevented me from preparation; so now for a galloping letter!
“Thursday last we saw the long-looked-for Procession of
the Body of God. The Pix is carried in all other processions empty; in this
only it has the wafer,—this is the only Real Presence. The Pix is a silver
vessel; and our vulgarism, ‘please the pigs,’ which has sometimes
puzzled me, is only a corruption, and that an easy one, of ‘please the
Pix,’—the holiest church utensil. So much for the object of this
raree-show. On the night preceding, the streets through which it is to pass are
cleaned: the only miracle I ever knew the wafer perform is that of cleaning the
streets of Lisbon: they are strewn with sand, and the houses hung with crimson
damask, from top to bottom. When the morning arrived, the streets were lined
with soldiers; they marched on, filing to the right and left: their new
uniforms are put on this day, and their appearance was very respectable: this
alone was
| 84 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 85 |
“Scarcely any part of the procession was more beautiful
than a number of very fine led horses, their saddles covered with rich
escutcheons. All the brotherhoods then walked,—an immense train of men in
red or grey cloaks; and all the friars. Zounds, what a
regiment! many of them fine young men, some few ‘more fat than friars
became,’ and others again as venerable figures as a painter could wish:
among the bearded monks were many, so old, so meagre, so hermit-like in look,
of such a bread-and-water diet appearance, that there needed no other evidence
to prove they were indeed penitents, as austere as conscientious folly could
devise. The knights of the different orders walked in their superb
dresses—the whole patriarchal church in such robes! and after the Pix
came the Prince himself, a group of nobles round him closing the whole. I never
saw aught finer than this: the crowd closing behind, the whole street, as far
as the eye could reach, above and below, thronged, flooded, with people—and the
blaze of their dresses! and the music! I pitied the friars—it was hot,
though temperate for the season, yet the sun was painful, and on their shaven
heads; they were holding up their singing-books, or their hands, or their
handkerchiefs, or their cowls, to shade them. I have heard that it has been
death to some of them in a hot season. Two years ago, at this very procession,
a stranger received a stroke of the sun, and fell down apparently dead. The
Irish friars got hold of him and carried him off to be buried. The coffins here
are like a trunk, and the lid is left open during the funeral service; before
it was over, the man moved—
| 86 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
“Had this been well managed, it would have been one of the finest conceivable sights; but it was along procession broken into a number of little pieces, so irregularly they moved. On the Prince, and the group about the Body of God—I like to translate it, that you may see the nakedness of the nonsensical blasphemy—they showered rose-leaves from the windows. The following day St. Anthony had a procession, and the trappings of the houses were ordered to remain for him: this was like the Lent processions, a perfect puppet-show—the huge idols of the people carried upon men’s shoulders; there were two negro saints, carried by negroes—I smiled to think what black angels they must make. We have got another raree-show to see in honour of the Heart of Jesus; this will be on Friday next; and then we think of Cintra.
“This has been a busy time for the Catholics. Saturday, the 7th of this month, as the Eve of Trinity Sunday, was a festival at the Emperor’s* head quarters; his mountebank stage was illuminated, and pitch barrels blazing along the street, their flames flashing finely upon the broad flags that floated across the way. It was somewhat terrible; they were bonfires of superstition, and I could not help thinking how much better the spectators would have been pleased with the sight had there been a Jew, or a
* The Emperor of the Holy Ghost, as he is called; see antè, p. 71. |
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 87 |
“In the course of a conversation, introduced by these
processions, I said to a lady, who remembers the auto-da-fes, ‘What a
dreadful day it must have been for the English when one of these infernal
executions took place!’ ‘No,’ she said,
‘not at all; it was like the processions, expected as a fine
sight, and the English, whose houses overlooked the streets through which
they passed, kept open house as now, and made entertainments!!’
They did not, indeed, see the execution,—that was at midnight; but they
should have shut up their houses, and, for the honour
| 88 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
“Portugal is certainly improving, but very, very, very slowly. The factories have been long declining in opulence; and the Portuguese, who had some years since no merchants of note, have now the most eminent and wealthy in the place. They are beginning to take the profits themselves, which they had suffered us to reap: this is well, and as it should be; but they have found out that Cintra is a fine place, and are buying up the houses there as they are vacant, so that they will one day dispossess the English, and this I do not like. Cintra is too good a place for the Portuguese. It is only fit for us Goths—for Germans or English.
“Your Thalaba is on the stocks. You will have it some six months before it can possibly be printed, and this is worth while. I this morning finished the Tenth Book—only two more; and at the end of a journey Hope always quickens my speed. Farewell. I am hurried, and you must and may excuse (as Rundell is postman extraordinary) a sheet not quite filled. God bless you! Edith’s love.
