Travels in My Homeland

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Travels in My Homeland

by Almeida Garrett

THE LITERARY WORK

A novel set in Santarém, a provincial town northeast of Lisbon, Portugal, in the first part of the nineteenth century; first published in Portuguese (as Viagens na minha terra) in 1646, in English in 1987.

SYNOPSIS

A traveler journeys to Santarém, where he is told a romantic story intertwined with a mysterious family tragedy set against the Portuguese civil war.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

Portuguese liberalism and disillusionment

The history and monuments of Santarém

The Novel in Focus

For More Information

Portuguese writer Almeida Garrett (1799–1854) was born in Oporto but spent most of his adolescence in the Azores, where he was deeply influenced by his well-read Franciscan uncle, the bishop Father Alexandre da Sagrada Família. On returning to mainland Portugal, Garrett studied law from 1816–21 at the university in Coimbra, where he was at the heart of the sociopolitical debates on the drafting of the first Portuguese constitution. Extremely active in favor of the liberal revolution, he is known to have charismatically proclaimed discourses on the streets of Coimbra and to have rallied together groups of students and political activists around the liberal ideals that he preached. Twice forced into exile for political reasons (in 1823 and 1828), Almeida Garrett came into direct contact with the works of seasoned Romantic writers such as Lord Byron and Walter Scott. His epic poem Camoes (1825), a tribute to the persecuted sixteenth-century Portuguese epic poet who was also forced into exile, is nowadays considered the first Romantic poem of the Portuguese language. (See The Lusiads by Camoes, also in WLAIT 5: Spanish and Portuguese Literatures and Their Times.)

Always seeking to punctuate his writing with personal convictions, Garrett worked in journalism, serving as editor and main writer for several political periodicals. In 1822 he established and entirely wrote one of the first feminist periodicals to ever be published in Portugal, O Toucador (The Hairdresser). Hoping to draw attention to the lack of modernization in Portugal, he also published an extensive essay on political history, Portugal na balança da Europa (1830; Portugal in Relation to the Rest of Europe). Garrett contributed as well to Portuguese theater, which stood in desperate need of drastic restructuring at the time, lacking actors, plays, stages, and funding. Along with the many initiatives he undertook in this area, Garrett founded the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts (O Conservatório Dramático) and acted in and wrote plays himself, winning most renown for his Frei Luis de Sousa (1844; Brother Luis de Sousa, 1907). His interest in preserving national culture as expressed in oral tradition led to his compilation of poems, legends, and folktales in the collection Roman-ceiro (1843), the first of its kind in Portuguese literature. Garrett’s novels are embedded in nationalistic ideas too, for example, his two-part historical novel O Arco de Santana (The Sant’Ana Arch, 1845, 1850). By far the most famous of his writings, Travels in My Homeland combines the popular nineteenth-century tastes for travel literature with eclectic digressions on arts, culture, history and politics, a romantic tale of unhappy love, and an acute assessment of Portugal in the civil war era.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The constitutional struggle

Travels in My Homeland is set during the constitutional fight and the Portuguese civil war that devastated the country in the first part of the nineteenth century. The liberals fought the monarchists, with the two groups following the leads of King John VI’s sons Dom Pedro and Dom Miguel, respectively. At the outset, the liberals favored a constitution; the monarchists, kingly rule—that is, Portuguese kingly rule, after years of foreign governance.

The years prior to the 1832–34 civil war are significant in order to fully understand the political backdrop of Travels. In 1807 the invasion of the Napoleonic troops led the Portuguese royal family to flee to Brazil, where they arrived the following year (1808), setting up court in Rio de Janeiro. Portugal, aided by its ally England, successfully ousted the French in 1812, whereupon in the absence of King John VI, the country was governed by the English marshal William Carr Beresford. The Portuguese, feeling abandoned by the monarchy and resenting the British rule, promoted the growth of the liberal movement, to which Almeida Garrett’s generation enthusiastically adhered. On August 24, 1820, the military revolted in Oporto, claimed full sovereignty in the north of Portugal, and formed a provisional junta. The instigators of this revolt, known as the Oporto Liberal Revolution, looked forward to adopting a constitution, holding elections, and welcoming back King John VI to act as the first Portuguese constitutional monarch.

In 1821 John VI returned to Portugal and, taken prisoner by the liberals, was forced to accept the new constitution. Meanwhile his son Dom Pedro declared the independence of Brazil and became Brazil’s first emperor. The Portuguese constitution of 1822 took effect for only about a year before the absolutists waged a counter-revolution known as the “Vilafrancada” in May of 1823, proclaiming the restoration of absolute monarchy. Dom John VI was again forced to act according to the dictates of the rebels, this time to abolish the constitution, and many liberals, including Garrett, were driven abroad in search of refuge. The conflict would persist despite their absence. The counter-revolution had begun a seesaw epoch of action and reaction: “This necessary and inevitable upheaval the world is going through will take a long time and will be resisted by a good deal of reaction before it is complete” (Garrett, Travels in My Homeland, p. 23).

Upon the death of John VI, the liberals rallied together around the second Portuguese constitution, the “Constitutional Charter,” sent from Brazil by the Emperor Dom Pedro. It was less democratic and extreme than the first constitution and so promoted a spirit of compromise between the absolutists and liberals. Approved in 1827, the Charter enabled exiled liberals to return to Portugal. Dom Pedro placed his seven-year-old daughter on the throne, having her marry her uncle Miguel, who was to be acting regent of the kingdom. The atmosphere of conciliation quickly disintegrated, however. The following year the absolutists proclaimed Dom Miguel the legitimate heir, forcing the liberals out of the country again and marking the beginning of Dom Miguel’s repressive six-year rule.

Thousands left the country, thousands were arrested and kept in jail in the worst possible conditions, dozens were executed and murdered. Repression hit every aspect of Portuguese life.… Yet the majority of the population applauded such measures, because they regarded the liberals as pure atheists, enemies of the country and guilty of the worst crimes.
(Marques, p. 60)

The Portuguese civil war

In the late 1820s, under the reign of Dom Miguel, many liberals fled to England and France. However, they did not give up hope and in exile organized an expedition to the island of Terceira (in the Azores) early in 1829. This explains the itinerary of the protagonist Carlos in Travels in My Homeland, who joins the liberals: “That night he was in Lisbon, a few days later in England and some months afterwards on the island of Terceira” (Travels, p. 100). At this point in the conflict, Emperor Pedro left Brazil in the hands of his son to undertake the direct leadership of the liberal cause in Europe, organizing troops in England and France. Following the French revolution of 1830, Dom Pedro’s strategy to liberate Portugal was well received by the French government; hundreds of French volunteers and mercenaries accompanied the sovereign to Terceira in March of 1832. Three months later Pedro formed an expedition of 7,500 men that landed on mainland Portugal near Oporto, taking the absolutist forces by surprise. In the novel, Friar Dinis condemns Carlos for his involvement in this attack.

Despite an outbreak of cholera, the liberals held strong in Oporto for about a year as the absolutists besieged the town. The liberal cause spread throughout the country, demoralizing the absolutists who were badly beaten in July of 1833. Dom Pedro assumed control of the government, and the absolutists evacuated the capital, suffering defeat after defeat as they retreated. Following the bloody battle of Asseiceira in May of 1834, Dom Miguel and his army finally conceded ultimate defeat. A general amnesty was granted on May 26 in the village of évora-Monte, northeast of évora.

Portuguese liberalism and disillusionment

Echoing the doctrines and privileges that had triumphed in America and France several years earlier, the ideals of Portuguese liberalism promised much needed progress: freedom of religion, press, speech, trade and industry; the restriction of royal prerogatives; the right of individual property; equality of rights and laws for all; the abolition of feudal rights; the end of property confiscations, torture, and other physical penalties; the union of Church and state, which weakened the heretofore dominant power of the Church; and the establishment of a hereditary constitutional monarchy.

Though initially these promises and the constitutions united liberals around shared ideals, the only partial implementation of hoped-for structural changes together with egoistic and diverging interests caused dissension and internal division among the constitutionalists after their 1834 victory. The situation was aggravated by

LIBERALISM AND THE EXPATRIATE COMMUNITY

“Other vehicles for spreading liberal thought were the exiles (mostly in London and in Paris) during John’s regency. They encountered the realities of Liberalism, watched the function of parliamentary institutions, and conceived a whole program of political and economic reforms to be established in their country. Their revolutionary newspapers (O Correio Braziliense, London, 1808–22; O investigator Por- tuguez em Inglaterra, London, 1811–19; O Portuguez, London, 1814–23; Annaes das Sciencias, das Artes e das Letras, Paris, 1818, among many others) and pamphlets managed to enter Portugal, despite police controls, and were widely read. Some of those exiles returned to Portugal after the Napoleonic wars and became leaders or at least influential figures among those who opposed the existing regime,”.

(Marques, p. 43)

the often unreasonable expectations of the military who, having played leading roles in the war, wanted rewards for their services and considered themselves the natural leaders of the country. These deep-rooted internal divisions within the liberal ranks came to a head in September of 1836 when a rising in favor of the more radical constitution of 1822 was organized by extreme liberals, thereafter referred to as “Septembrists.” Their opponents, the more conservative liberals, or “Chartists,” were in favor of Pedro’s 1826 constitution, the Charter, that granted more extensive powers to the king. The victory of the Sep-tembrist movement was short-lived, lasting only until 1842, when more internal divisions led to the dissolution of the Septembrist Party.

The secretary of Justice and the Chartist politician Antonio Bernarda da Costa Cabral stepped in to take over the country by a bloodless coup d’etat and, prompting a political about-face, created a radical right-wing reform government. Costa Cabral ruthlessly imposed order and economic development in an unashamed despotic authoritarian rule. Those for whom the revolution and the principles for which it stood were still valued ideals deeply despised the “cabralist” political dictatorship and the liberal factions who let themselves be manipulated by financial benefits and lamentable political games.

Travels in My Homeland has a frame story containing the novel proper. In this frame story, the traveler journeys to Santarém approximately ten years after the signing of the amnesty of Évora-Monte. Comments made during the narration reflect the disillusionment with the state of affairs in Portugal in contrast to the protagonist Carlos’s enthusiasm for the liberal cause, expressed in the novel within the novel. In Garrett’s own life this contrast is equally apparent. Once an adamant liberal, following the liberal victory of 1834 Garrett came to realize that ungodliness, greed, ambition, and immorality had replaced freedom and equality, mere ideals of a thwarted liberal cause.

The history and monuments of Santarém

Travels in my Homeland is set in the town of Santarém and its surrounding valley, situated along the Tagus River, approximately 50 miles northeast of Lisbon. Santarém is the capital of the Ribatejo (banks of the Tagus) province, a fertile region that is one of the gentlest and greenest in Portugal. Once a flourishing medieval center of 15 convents, this provincial town is known for its abundance of monuments and ruins, each disclosing part of the town’s history. Over the centuries the richness of Santarém’s history and legends has maintained a captivated audience, inspiring visitors, writers and artists from all walks of life.

Travels in My Homeland combines an appreciation of historical and cultural markers in Santarém with its significance as a metaphor for the glorious past of Portugal. The narrator’s visit becomes a pilgrimage to historical places as well as a motive for exploring the Portugal of today and yesterday.

During the medieval era, in the course of the wars between Moors and Christians, Santarém became a capital fortress city, with the Christians effecting Reconquest and renewed control in 1147. Some of the buildings retain a distinctively Mozarabic style, that is, the adaptation by Christian artists of many Islamic features creating a unique colorful style; the style recalls the years of the Muslim occupation in Portugal (from 711 to 1249), which left an indelible mark on the architecture of the town. A strategic stronghold, Santarém became fundamental in expelling the Moors from Portuguese territory; from Santarém Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, and his warriors progressively gained ground, conquering Lisbon and moving southward. In Travels references to Afonso Henriques as the founder of Portugal in connection with Santarém emphasize the historical origins of the town, symbolizing a new beginning, nostalgically evoking the memory of a united country heralded around the still vital ideals of freedom and independence.

Travels in My Homeland mentions a host of people of historic importance, including the following:

Friar Gil (1190–1265) An infamous friar who allegedly made a pact with the devil and lived a licentious life set on accumulating wealth and fame, until, smitten with remorse, he repented and entered the Dominican order in Paris.
King Fernando (1345–83) and Queen Leonor Teles (7–1386) Widow of King Fernando I, Leonor Teles arrived at Santarém and from here sought revenge for usurpation of the throne and for the assassination of the widow’s lover, appealing to her daughter Beatriz and son-in-law, John I, king of Castile, to come to aid her against Portugal. For over a year Leonor and her partisans held strong in the Castle of Santarém and Alcagova until their defeat in the Battle of Afjubarrota in 1385.
Nun’ Álvares Pereira (1360–1431) A heroic soldier and constable of the Portuguese kingdom. His warfare strategy was fundamental in helping John of Avís secure the throne from the threat of John of Castile, the son-in-law of Leonor Teles and the deceased King Fernando I.
Pedro Alvares Cabral (1467–1520) A key navigator during the Age of the Discoveries mostly remembered as the founder of Brazil. He landed there April 22, 1500, then returned to Portugal. Several years before his death, he moved to Santarém, where he was buried.
Friar Luís de Sousa (1555–1632). A monk formerly named Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, who served as a knight against the Moors and, after being imprisoned, returned to Portugal to marry the widow of King John of Portugal, who had been presumed dead but later was discovered alive in the Holy Land. On mutual accord, Sousa Coutinho and his wife decided to take religious vows, after which he became a convent chronicler known for his eloquent prose and adamant patriotism.
Luís de Camões (15247–80) Author of the great Portuguese epic poem The Lusiads and corpus of lyric poetry. The poet was allegedly sent into exile from Santarém. He is frequently mentioned in Travels in my Homeland as the father of all Portuguese literature and the essence of the Portuguese era of glory and prosperity.

The Novel in Focus

Plot summary

Divided into 49 short chapters, each prefaced by a brief synopsis, the narrative of Travels progresses on several different levels. First there is the narrator’s journey from Lisbon to Santarém, interspersed with digressive comments on what he sees and thinks. The story of Joaninha and Carlos told to the narrator by his traveling companion in the valley of Santarém brings in a second level. Finally, there is the letter that Carlos writes to Joaninha and that the narrator comes across at the conclusion of the narrative.

In 1843 the narrator travels by boat up the Tagus River from Lisbon to Azambuja and then on to Cartaxo by mule. Along the way, he discusses a wide variety of topics, seemingly unrelated, imparting a distinct casualness throughout the rambling discourse. The issues he raises range from the question of whether civilization progresses through spiritualism or materialism, to the perfect recipe for composing original literature, to the work of the Portuguese writer Camões, to philosophical considerations. Leaving Cartaxo, the traveler passes the site of one of the civil war battles and condemns the senselessness of war. These digressions set the scene for the story he is about to hear.

At this point of the narrative, the traveler discovers the paradisiacal valley of Santarém and becomes intrigued by an old cottage whose half-open window sparks his interest. As he conjectures about the inhabitants of the cottage he becomes lost in his meditations, transported by the chirping of the nightingales. With his travel companion he dismounts, and the companion proceeds to relay a tale about the maiden of the nightingales.

The story begins in the summer of 1832 with an old blind woman spinning her reel of yarn on the porch of the cottage. She lives with her 16-year-old granddaughter Joaninha, who is “the embodiment of sweetness, the ideal of spirituality,” raised amidst the natural setting of Santarém and for whom “nature had done it all, or nearly all, and education nothing, or close to nothing” (Travels, p. 74).

The only regular visitor to the cottage is Friar Dinis, who stops by the home of the old lady Francisca every Friday. It becomes apparent during one of the conversations between Friar Dinis and Francisca that there is an absent member of the family. It is Francisca’s grandson, Carlos, whom Friar Dinis accuses of being “with those miscreants who have come from the [Azorean] islands [and] who disembarked in Oporto” (Travels, p. 86). Friar Dinis heartlessly claims that because of Carlos’s political affiliation with the liberals, the “boy is damned and between him and [them] is the abyss of hell” (Travels, p. 88). It is evident that Friar Dinis represents the voice of the Old Regime. He defends the principles of the monarchy and regards the doctrines of the constitutionalists as mere senseless abstractions.

In a flashback the narrator reverts to Friar Dinis’s secular life before he entered the monastery and explains his transformation from Dinis de Ataldé to Friar Dinis da Cruz, and the settlement he gave to provide for Dona Francisca and her family because of some past injury. Presently her family consists of her orphaned granddaughter Joaninha, the only child of her son, and her orphaned grandson, Carlos, the issue of her daughter. Carlos was born after his father’s death and his birth cost his mother her life. Anxiously concerned with Carlos’s upbringing, Friar Dinis grew utterly dismayed at the boy’s transformation in the summer of 1830 from a God-fearing, truthful, cheerful youth into a politically engaged liberal, set on emigrating to England after publicly declaring his allegiance to the liberal cause. On the Friday following Carlos’s departure Friar Dinis came to speak with Dona Francisca; for the next three days she remained locked up in her room and from then on lost her sight. Since then the friar briefly visits the old cottage each Friday, bringing news of the civil war. Though Carlos departed thinking he knew the family secret concerning the deaths of his father and uncle, he really only knows part of the mystery and Dona Francisca vows that one day she will reveal all the truth to her grandson, against the will of Friar Dinis.

Following this flashback, the story continues as the valley of Santarém becomes a strategic point in the civil war—“before long all the power and interest of the war centred on that once peaceful and delightful, now desolate and turbulent, valley” (Travels, p. 110). Despite the proximity of the war, Dona Francisca refuses to leave the only house she has ever known. Also, deep in her soul, she entertains the hope that her grandson will soon find his way back to the family cottage. “Joaninha’s frank, innocent dignity and the old woman’s sober appearance and serene, kindly melancholy made them so respected by the soldiers that… they were as safe and undisturbed, in the small part of the house they had reserved for themselves, as was possible in such circumstances” (Travels, p. 111). War and its consequences become a familiar sight, and Joaninha, always accompanied by chirping nightingales as she wanders through the valley, is known to both camps by the suggestive and poetic name “maiden of the nightingales.” She wins their respect for her altruism as she cares for the sick and the wounded, wandering freely among both camps.

One afternoon as the constitutional army is receiving reinforcements, Joaninha falls asleep on the hillside near the cottage and to her surprise is awoken by her cousin, Carlos, now an officer in the constitutional army. When the army leaves, Joaninha promises, on Carlos’s request, to say nothing of his presence in the valley to their rapidly failing grandmother. Carlos reflects on the transformation of his cousin, two years ago still a child, but now “a sweet, beautiful young woman. … He did not expect … the impression he received: it was a surprise, a shock, a confused upset of all his ideas and feeling” (Travels, p. 125). His heart is spoken for by another, a beautiful young Englishwoman named Georgina who preferred him, a lowly foreign fugitive, to other, higher-born suitors. Through the protagonist’s meandering thoughts the reader learns partial truths about the past and Carlos’s feelings towards his grandmother and Friar Dinis. As much as he loves his grandmother, Carlos has promised himself never to return to the family cottage that he believes to be “contaminated, dishonoured, blood-stained, and defiled with shame and disgrace” (Travels, p. 129). In order to justify not seeing his grandmother, he uses the excuse of the war and his military affiliation with the liberals (at this point the monarchists occupy Santarém and going to the cottage is fraught with danger). The next day he returns to meet Joaninha. They discuss the past, Friar Dinis’s role in their grandmother’s blindness, and Friar Dinis’s accusations against Carlos. Relieved, Carlos realizes that his cousin completely ignores the family’s deepest secrets. Joaninha declares that she loves him, only him, and that she will never love any man but him.

At this point, the narrator leaves the story of Joaninha and Carlos and reverts back to his trip to Santarém, interspersed with diverse digressions. He draws attention to the charm and strength of narrating a story in the actual place where it took place. That is why he remains in Santarém listening to his traveling companion and writing down the “fascinating story of the maiden of the nightingales” (Travels, p. 148).

When the narrator resumes the tale of Joaninha and Carlos, preparations for battle are underway. Carlos envisions death as the only way out of such tragic circumstances, preferring to die rather than face the bizarre love triangle in which he is now involved and the truth of his family’s misfortune. In the battle Carlos is wounded. He awakens in a cell in the convent of St. Francis in Santarém, where he is being tended by Georgina and Friar Dinis. As Carlos recuperates, Georgina explains the events of the past few weeks and how she came to be nursing him in Portugal. Georgina reveals that though she loves him dearly, she now realizes that he loves his cousin Joaninha. Friar Dinis begs Carlos for his forgiveness and mercy, beseeching him to lift the curse placed upon him, preferring to die by Carlos’s hand than continue to live under his curse. The reader then learns that Friar Dinis had an affair with Carlos’s mother. He was the one who murdered her husband, blinded Carlos’s grandmother, and covered the whole family with ignominy. After a moment of tenderness between Carlos, Friar Dinis, and Georgina, Carlos recalls his mother and throws himself at the monk, intending to kill him. Dona Francisca and Joaninha arrive at the crucial moment, revealing a truth about Friar Dinis that stops Carlos in the heat of his fury: Friar Dinis is Carlos’s father. Georgina bids Joaninha farewell and leaves Carlos in his cousin’s loving hands, whereupon the whole truth concerning the deaths of Carlos’s mother’s husband and his uncle (Joaninha’s father) is revealed: Dinis killed them both in self-defense, not knowing who the two men were who intended to murder him on that dark night. “The two of them joined together to murder me and ambushed me on the heath. I did not recognize them—it was night and pitch black. I defended myself not knowing against whom and had the misfortune to save my life at the cost of theirs” (Travels, p. 185). Friar Dinis confesses, and expresses his remorse and pain at prompting and witnessing the death of Carlos’s mother and the sorrow heaped on the grandmother. Carlos then takes his leave, rejoining the constitutional army to be stationed in the proximity of Évora.

Once again the narrator pauses before continuing with the story. He wanders through Santarém recounting legends and historical facts related to the sights and monuments he sees. The following day, weary of the town, he heads back to the valley, attracted again by the window that had previously caught his attention. Here both levels of the narrative merge as the traveler encounters Dona Francisca winding her skein of yarn in the company of Friar Dinis. Friar Dinis hands the traveler a letter that Carlos wrote to Joaninha from Évora. In this letter Carlos reveals his past, his adventures in England with the three young ladies of a rich, highly sophisticated family—Julia, Laura, and Georgina—and the false persona he adopted to be accepted by them: “my true spirit and character were not what they were taken for. I lied: men are always lying.… So I lied and I was liked because I lied” (Travels, p. 225). Though fond of all three sisters, at first Carlos loved Laura. She, however, was engaged to be wed. After her departure, he fell more in love with Georgina than he had been with Laura, a romance that lasted for three months until he departed to the Azores. Then, on returning to Santarém, he fell in love with Joaninha: “I realized, the moment I saw you among those trees, in the starlight, I realized that it was you I had always loved, that I was born to love you, if my soul was capable and worthy of being united with the angelic soul that dwells in you” (Travels, p. 242). But he explains that he could not pursue this love, for any woman whom he loves “will inevitably be unhappy” (Travels, p. 242).

The novel concludes as the narrator hands the letter back to Friar Dinis and identifies himself as one of Carlos’s comrades. Carlos is now a fat, rich baron, Joaninha died in a state of madness, and Georgina confined herself to a convent in England where she became a Catholic abbess. As Friar Dinis returns to his breviary and the old woman continues her winding, the narrator departs and rides to Cartaxo and then travels on to Lisbon. He concludes that “I have seen some parts of the world and recorded something of what I saw. Of all my travels, however, those which have interested me most were still my travels in my homeland” (Travels, p. 246).

Of barons and monks

The clergy, often considered a dangerous and powerful symbol of past injustices, is embodied in Travels in my Homeland by Friar Dinis. “The monk was the first to err, by not understanding us, our century, our inspirations and aspirations; that way he put himself in a false position, cut himself off from social life and made his demise a necessity. … He was afraid of freedom, which was friendly to him, but meant to reform him, and he joined forces with despotism. …” (Travels, p. 81). The monk, destitute of the political and social power once conferred upon him, becomes a figure of yesterday, and the baron, a symbol of the rising bourgeois society, takes his place. “An awful substitute!” says the monk (Travels, p. 245).

Carlos embodies the baron, the successor. He belongs to the generation that applauded the liberal revolution, refuses to take ecclesiastical vows, and ultimately joins the ranks of the minor nobility. As portrayed in Travels in My Homeland, the barons represented the material corruption that distorted the liberal ideals and characterized this new social class. Lisbon, under the government of Costa Cabral, became the domain of the hated barons. “The monk did not understand us, and so he died, and we did not understand the monk, so we made the barons, and we shall die from them. They are the disease of the century: it is they, the barons, who are the cholera morbus of present-day society, not the Jesuits” (Travels, pp. 80–81). The narrator laments the lack of spiritualism that he witnesses in Portugal, as well as the lack of respect for the values of the past as materialism comes to dominate the newly founded society. “In Portugal there is no religion of any sort. Even its false shadow, hypocrisy, has disappeared. Another ten years of barons and their materialist regime and the last sigh of the spirit will inevitably flee from Portugal’s dying body” (Travels, p. 217). The baron, “usuriously revolutionary and revolutionarily usurious,” is presented as opposed to the march of progress which the narrator associates with liberal ideals (Travels, p. 80).

On a par with the general sentiment widespread throughout other parts of Europe, anticlerical feeling had slowly emerged in Portugal during the late eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. As the liberal movement gained momentum and came into power, several reforms directly affected the power of the ecclesiastical orders. Among the measures implemented by the constitutionalists were the abolition of tithes, along with several other taxes, that deprived clerics of important sources of revenue. The Church also became subject to land reform. In a series of decrees enacted during the early 1830s, victorious liberals confiscated the extensive properties and estates of the Church. The desired land-reform resulted in the rise of a new class of wealthy landowners, the barons. Their landownership would confer on this group a dominant position in political life for the rest of the century.

Sources and literary context

Of all his writings, Travels in My Homeland seems by far the work most closely inspired by Almeida Garrett’s personal life. The first chapter of Travels appeared in 1843, just weeks after Garrett set out to visit his old university friend, Passos Manuel, in Santarém. The narrator of Travels in My Homeland states: “For a long time I had had this vague idea, more of a notion than a plan, of touring the rich plains of our Ribatejo and paying my respects to the most historical and monumental of our towns on its lofty height. I am prevailed upon by the insistence of a friend” (Travels, p. 22). Passos Manuel’s letter of invitation is dated July 6 of that year, thus it is most likely that the literary rendition of the trip to Santarém was inspired by the author’s visit with him.

PASSOS MANUEL

Manuel da Silva Passos (1801–62), known as Passos Manuel, was Almeida Garrett’s friend and university colleague in law school at the University of Coimbra. A leading liberal politician, he played a key role in the Portuguese Revolution of 1820. Exiled for political reasons in 1828, he later returned and fought against the absolutist forces until 1834. As one of the most active liberals of the second quarter of the nineteenth century he was often in the limelight of public affairs and is remembered for his role in restructuring the ministries of education and culture. He later became governor of Santarém. The fact that he retired to Santarém and became removed from the center of public life and national government is symbolic of the disillusionment and indifference felt by many liberals following the failure of the “Septembrist” government.

Garrett’s political affiliations vibrate strongly throughout the work, with his views closely paralleling those of the protagonist Carlos. Both received a traditional education before going on to study law at the University of Coimbra, and it is during these Coimbra years that author and protagonist alike became enthusiastically involved with the liberal cause. Dom Miguel’s victory and the triumph of absolutism forced Garrett into exile first in 1823 and then in 1828, which happens also to the fictional Carlos. Similarly, in March of 1832 Garrett joined Dom Pedro’s constitutional army that had taken refuge in the Azores, as Carlos does: “The tyrannical law of honour obliged … me to leave for the Azores. I went. … I still do not know how I left, how I arrived, how I lived those first weeks of my stay on that rock in the middle of the sea called Terceira Island, where the unhappy remains of the constitutional army had taken refuge” (Travels, p. 241). Both author and protagonist belonged to the small constitutional army of 7,500 men who landed in northern Portugal in July 1832 and occupied Portugal’s second largest city, Oporto.

There are similarities in the romantic lives of author and character too. As a young man, the fictional Carlos flutters from passion to passion. Garrett’s marriage to the young and beautiful Luisa Midosi in 1822, when she was merely 15, did not prevent his becoming a philanderer, and the marriage finally ended 14 years later. Garrett would engage in several different love affairs at once, the most famous of which was his adulterous relationship with the Viscountess da Luz, car-icaturized in the newspapers of the period. “He always loved many woman who easily surrendered to his charming gallantries. He loved each and every one of them and had a notable preference for younger women.… While in close association with a respectable English family he courted three charming sisters at the same time and was seriously involved with one of them” (Santos, p. 11). Indeed, when Garrett was in exile in England in 1823 he stayed in the home of Thomas Haddley in Warwick and his relationship with the Haddley daughters was more than just friendship, a reality echoed by Carlos’s relationships with the three English sisters in the novel.

As noted, Garrett was strongly influenced by his uncle Friar Alexandre da Sagrada Família while living in the Azores as a teenager. Friar Dims may well have been inspired by this association; the novel’s description of Friar Dinis points very clearly to Garrett’s Franciscan uncle: “Such was Friar Dinis, a man of austere principles, of rigid beliefs and of a stubborn, inflexible logic” (Travels, p. 90). Friar Alexandre da Sagrada Familia is described by his nephew in a letter written to a friend in April of 1853 as the man “who educated me and taught me the humanities. An austere and even violent character. A true Bishop and religious man” (Garrett in Monteiro, p. 1). Garrett also referred to his uncle as his educator, and a second father. In the novel Friar Dinis fulfills the role of a “second father” in relation to Carlos’s education and upbringing, until it is revealed that he is in fact Carlos’s real father. Furthermore, on a political level, Friar Dinis’s opposition to the liberal ideology echoes that of Friar Alexandre: both saw the constitutionalists as visionaries ultimately driven by material gain.

Generally considered the first contemporary Portuguese novel, Travels in My Homeland distinguished itself in the context of Portuguese Romanticism for its innovative structure and modern use of colloquial language. The narrator converses freely with the reader, moving loosely from theme to theme as the short chapters progress, and it is this level of colloquiality that dominates the discourse. As Carlos Felipe Moisés states, “all of the great modern Portuguese prose, from Camilo to Eça, from Julio Dinis to Saramago, stems from the mold generously distributed by Garrett in the apparently unpretentious pages of these Travels in my Homeland” (Moisés in Garrett, Viagens, p. 16; trans. K. Bishop Sanchez).

Publication and reception

The circumstances of the original publication of Travels seem to reveal a certain hesitance on behalf of the Portuguese readers to accept this ideologically eclectic novel. The first chapters of the novel initially appeared in a weekly magazine, the Revista Universal Lisbonense, in 1843. However, either due to the lack of response from the readers or possibly to reservations on behalf of the magazine’s director, the poet António Feliciano Castilho, publication of the novel was suspended. In June of 1845, with the magazine under new ownership, it undertook a second publication of the novel, this time printing a revised version of the first chapters, followed by the remaining chapters periodically through the end of 1846, at which time Travels in My Homeland also appeared in book form. As the prologue of the original edition of the book states (a prologue that does not appear in the English translation), “the editors of this work, seeing the extraordinary popularity that it received when published in fragments in the Revista, thought it fit to render a service to the letters and glory of this country, printing it now in book form” (Garrett, Viagens, p. 19; trans. K. Bishop Sanchez). This prologue, thought to have been written by Garrett himself, suggests that the second publication in the Revista Universal Lisbonense met with some success.

Multifaceted and complex, Travels is the first novel of its kind in the Portuguese language and this may explain the readers’ initial reluctant response: “Because of the complex narrative structure, the audacity of many of the ideological affirmations, the eclecticism of the discursive genres and the diversity of the themes evoked, and even the casual interpolations to the reader and lady reader.… Travels in My Homeland was indeed an eccentric work, that did not correspond to readership expectancies of the time period” (Reis, p. 20). Yet, despite its complexity, Travels in My Homeland remains an essential work in the Portuguese literary canon, because of its richness as a testament to Portuguese culture and literary legacy. With this novel, Garrett becomes the “creator of modern literary Portuguese prose, rejecting typical archaisms and linguistic conventionalities. This revolution, initiated by Garrett and continued by Eça [see The Maias , also in WLAIT 5: Spanish and Portuguese Literatures and Their Times], opened the way to the current form of writing in Portuguese” (Silvestre in Cruz, p. 39).

—Kathryn Bishop Sanchez