Our Lady of the Pillar

Being in Lisbon in October last, I sauntered one evening into the Livraria Bertrand, a recognised meeting-place of men of letters in the Chiado, still the principal street of the Capital, and now known officially as the Rua Garrett, though, in practice, the greater poet has not displaced the lesser. There I found Senhor Francisco Ramos Paz, proprietor of the Gazeta de Noticias of Rio de Janeiro, and our conversation turned on Eça de Queiroz. I happened to say that I had recently published an English version of the Suave Milagre and had one of the Defunto ready for the press, whereupon Senhor Ramos Paz told me that the original MS. of the latter story belonged to him, it having been written for his paper, and that Queiroz had expressed the opinion to his publishers, MM. Lugan et Genelioux of Oporto, that it was his best short story. Finding my own opinion unexpectedly confirmed by so keen a self-critic as the Founder of the Realist School in Portugal, I have the less hesitation in submitting the Defunto (which I have ventured to re-name Our Lady of the Pillar) to your appreciation. In the Preface to The Sweet Miracle I referred to some of the leading works of Queiroz, and would only add that those who desire to know more of him and of the romance in Portugal might read with advantage the Revista Moderna for November 20th, 1897, and the suggestive series of essays by Senhor J. Pereira de Sampaio (Bruno) entitled A Geração Nova (Porto, 1886).

The frontispiece of the present volume shows the monument in the Largo do Quintella in Lisbon raised to Queiroz by the devotion of the Conde de Arnoso and other admiring friends. The bust is generally agreed to be an excellent likeness, though the face perhaps wears a severer expression in marble than it did in life, and it has not therefore the photo-*graphic accuracy of the bust by Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro, a replica of which faces me as I write. The woman symbolises Reality, and her attitude shows her revealing the secrets of life to Eça’s scrutinising gaze, while the inscription at the base sums up his ideal and achievement, and reads: 'Over the forceful nakedness of truth, the diaphonous mantle of fantasy.’ The monument is the work of Senhor Antonio Teixeira Lopes, the creator of those two masterpieces, the bronze figure of History[1] erected in memory of the historian Oliveira Martins in the Prazeres Cemetery in Lisbon, and the statue in wood of St. Isabel in the Church of Santa Clara at Coimbra.

[1] Pictured in the notable study by Senhor Antonio Arroyo, Soares dos Reis e Teixeira Lopes, Porto, 1899.

He learned his business at the Academia Portuense de Bellas Artes under the well-known sculptor Soares dos Reis, and at eighteen went to the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he worked under Cavelier and Barrias, though the man who taught him most was Donatello. He exhibited at the Salon in his first year in France, and since then has advanced from one artistic triumph to another. His group 'A Viuva’ gained him a gold medal at the International Exhibition in Berlin in 1896, his statue 'A Dôr’ obtained a Grand Prix at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1900, and now, at the age of forty, he is hailed as an original genius and as Portugal’s greatest sculptor.

CHILTERN, BOWDON.

March 1906.

'Erasmus was wont to affirm that, in his studies, he had not found anything more arduous than translation, nor a thing worthy of greater praise, if well done, nor of greater blame, if ill done.'--Damião de Goes (the friend of Erasmus) in the dedication of his version of Cicero’s De Senectute.

OUR LADY OF THE PILLAR

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