Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

Modern Brazilian history begins with Napoleon. Everyone knows that he created an Empire and crowned himself Emperor. But it is not so well known that as a sort of by-product of the Napoleonic Empire the Empire of Brazil was also created, and lasted much longer than Napoleon’s — sixty-seven years, to be exact. Not to be compared to the Roman Empire, to be sure, but remarkably long to have held out in the 19th century with revolutions crashing like thunderstorms in all the neighboring countries, and the forces of liberalism, equalitarianism, and republicanism growing stronger and more articulate all the time.

Many of the new countries of the West felt that the old monarchical system might still be the best way of stabilizing their governments. Argentina shopped around unsuccesfully for years for a suitable European prince, and the experiment was tried in Mexico and failed dismally, with Maximilian. Even the United States had its small movement to make Washington the founder of a dynasty. But in the paradoxical way things often seem to happen in Brazil, what brought the country eventual political independence from Portugal was the arrival of the Portuguese royal family.

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In 1807 Napoleon was trying to force Portugal to join his blockade against England and the Napoleonic armies were closing in on Lisbon. Maria I, the Queen, had long been insane, and her son, Dom João, was Regent. Portugal had been almost a protectorate of England for a hundred years. Caught, as the historian C. H. Haring puts it, “between the military imperialism of Napoleon and the economic imperialism of Great Britain,” Dom João, never decisive at best, shilly-shallied. At the last possible moment he settled for Great Britain, and Britain decided for safety’s sake to move the whole royal family and court to Brazil.

It was one of the strangest hegiras in history. In a state of near panic, the mad Queen, Dom João, his estranged wife (who was a little mad, too), their children, and the entire Portuguese court, — some fifteen thousand people — were squeezed aboard forty-two or — three merchant vessels. Under British escort they took off for Brazil, the unknown, romantic colony where all their wealth — and all their sugar — came from. The voyage was a nightmare of storms, sea-sickness, short rations, and stinking water. The courtiers behaved so badly that a royal command was issued that “only nautical subjects” were to be discussed. Meanwhile, Pedro, the nine-year-old heir-apparent, discoursed learnedly with his tutors on the Aeneid (according to the tutors’ reports) and compared his father’s plight to that of Aeneas. However, as Octavio Tarquinio de Souza, the best Brazilian historian of the Empire period, says: “Dom João saved the dynasty, and took with him intact the greatest treasures of the kingdom, including art, jewels, and books [sixty thousand of them, the nucleus of the present National Library] to the lands where he would found a great empire.”

After fifty-two hideous days they reached Bahia, but it was not considered safe enough for them, so they went on to Rio. They were received with mad rejoicing. Only poor distracted Queen Maria, seeing Negros prancing around her sedan-chair, thought that she was in Hell and screamed that the devils were after her. Almost immediately Dom João issued his first Royal Letter, declaring the ports of Brazil open to “all friendly nations” (meaning England, mostly); he also won more popularity by allowing printing-presses, newspapers, goldsmiths, and many small industries to be set up. Brazil felt itself changed from a much-abused colony to an independent power, almost over-night.

Rio was a hot, squalid, waterfront city of about twenty thousand inhabitants, without sewage or water-supply. The royal family, oddly enough, settled down and began to like their new home and its easy-going ways. But the court in general hated everything and were hated in return by the Brazilians — a reaction that was to have serious political consequences. There were no carriages; the food was bad; they were afraid of the thunderstorms that bounced from peak to peak around the bay (the way they still do), afraid of the Negro slaves, afraid of the tropical diseases, — and it is true that they died off like flies during the first few years.

But the thirteen-year stay of the court changed Rio into a capital city and changed the state of affairs in much of Brazil. The administration of justice was somewhat improved; taxes lowered; the first bank founded; the naval academy and schools of medicine and surgery were established, as well as a library and the Botanical Gardens (still famous). The Regent was fond of music and the theatre. He brought an orchestra with him; he also became an addict of Negro music and entertainments. In 1815 Portugal was rid of the French, and in 1816 he invited a French Commission, architects, musicians, painters, and sculptors, to visit Brazil. He started a royal palace on the outskirts of the city. The mad Queen died, and the Regent became Dom João VI of Portugal and I of Brazil.

But by 1820 the liberal forces in Portugal made it necessary for Dom João to return, if he wanted to save his throne. Again he shilly-shallied, apparently partly because he could not face that ocean voyage a second time. But again under British auspices and promptings, he finally announced one constitution for Portugal, another one for Brazil, and sailed away. Before he left he wrote a letter to Dom Pedro, weeping as he wrote, in which he prophesied the secession of Brazil from Portugal and advised his son to take the crown for himself. He also cleaned out the treasury and took with him all the jewels he could collect, — and about three thousand Portuguese. This departure established a sort of precedent, unfortunately, for later abdications or “renunciations” (under the Republic), which are always discussed in terms of João I’s sad career. Not all of them have filled their pockets as liberally as he did, and they have left for very different reasons, but the peculiarly Brazilian institution of leaving-the-country-in-order-to-govern-it-better had been established.

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Dom Pedro had been badly brought up; he had led the luxurious but slovenly life of the small upper-class of Brazilians of his day; he had been friends with slaves and stable boys, and a notorious womanizer from the age of thirteen or so. He is, nevertheless, a fascinating character: brilliant, in spite of his faulty education, energetic, spoiled, dissipated, neurotic — and suffering from occasional epileptic fits. [Maria Graham, the Scottish woman who stayed in Rio in the 1820s and was even tutor to Dom Pedro’s children for a brief period, has left a good account of his personality and the life of the court and city.] He was fundamentally kind-hearted (he was devoted to all his children and provided for them well, legitimate and illegitmate alike) and he wanted to be a good ruler, but the “court” still meant the hated Portuguese to many of the Brazilians. Dom Pedro still favored them, and things started to go badly for him almost immediately. Brazil wanted a king, but not too much of a king; and Dom Pedro was autocratic.

Orders started coming from Portugal; some of the hated taxes and restrictions were restored. While he was away in São Paulo an order came for him to return to Portugal immediately, to finish his education. It was handed to him as he sat on his horse on the banks of a little stream, the Ipiranga. Dom Pedro read it, waved his sabre in the air, and shouted “Independence or death!” This is the famous grito, or cry, of Ipiranga, and the day on which Dom Pedro gave it, September 7th, is the Brazilian 4th of July. The first lines of the Brazilian national anthem — even more complicated and difficult than “The Star-Spangled Banner”—describe this scene. The simple word grito is a by-word and has as many overtones for a Brazilian as, say, “cherry-tree” has for an American.