Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowlegdments
- Fundação Luso-Americana
- Preface
- A Note on this Volume
- Introduction
- Introduction
- 1 An invoice from Galignani's
- 2 The Revista de Portugal: an English-style review?
- 3 The Suplemento Literário da Gazeta de Notícias
- 4 ‘O Serão’: finally, an English-style magazine?
- Afterword
- Appendices
- Sources and Select Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowlegdments
- Fundação Luso-Americana
- Preface
- A Note on this Volume
- Introduction
- Introduction
- 1 An invoice from Galignani's
- 2 The Revista de Portugal: an English-style review?
- 3 The Suplemento Literário da Gazeta de Notícias
- 4 ‘O Serão’: finally, an English-style magazine?
- Afterword
- Appendices
- Sources and Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On 28 August 1888, José Maria Eça de Queirós was transferred from the Portuguese consulate in Bristol to the consulate in Paris. When he arrived to take up his new post, the ‘reception’ he was accorded by the Viscountess of Faria, ‘a sort of virago, of the potiche kind, with a thick, hoarse voice and awe-inspiring gestures’, is well known. His description of this remarkable episode in a letter to one of his friends, Joaquim Pedro Oliveira Martins, on 19 September is highly amusing and certainly does not lack the exaggeration of caricature:
She made a frightful scene, screaming and protesting, cursing and screeching, banging on the table – which I listened to dumbfounded, astonished, hat in hand, backing away when she raised a threatening fist, then taking a step towards the door, ready to flee, when she turned her back for a moment. In brief, the ghastly creature shouted that only she was the consul, that the consulate was hers, and that there wasn't a single minister, or legation, or indeed any authority that could make her hand over the keys. During a pause when she stopped for a minute exhausted, I jumped behind the curtains, shot through the door, leapt down the stairs, jumped into a fiacre and only stopped when I reached the valbom's house as if reaching a safe port.
(Correspondência, I, p. 583)This was the very same oliveira martins who, at Eça's own request, had managed to arrange for him to be transferred, which can be seen from the letter Eça wrote to him on 15 August 1888.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Eça de Queirós and the Victorian Press , pp. 3 - 4Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014