A particularly à propos review: ROSE MACAULAY, They Went to Portugal (1946)

I owe all of you lovely readers (if, indeed, there are any of you who haven't written me off forever by now) a sincere apology for vanishing for far longer than I had ever intended. I do apologize, and I feel terrible if any of you were fretting about us. It has been an extraordinarily eventful year—exciting and wonderful, but also logistically intense and requiring a fair amount of mental readjustment. No excuse for leaving friends hanging as I have done, but I can only say I have often been in a bit of a peculiar headspace and have had trouble focusing. Without dragging it out any further, then, the particularly à propos thing about reviewing Rose Macaulay's lovely book (I might get to actually talking about it somewhere in this post) is that, for those of you wondering, "What the heck has been happening to Scott and Andy?", dear Dame Rose's title succinctly answers the question!

Yes, though I'm finding it a bit hard to wrap my head around even as I'm typing this, Andy and I are now Lisboans (or Lisbians even?). We arrived in late April, just over two months ago now, having got rid of most of our worldly belongings (including books, I shudder to report, though fear not, I still have my complete FM collection of course), and have been loving (almost) every moment of getting settled in and exploring. To some extent the process of getting here was so long in the works and we were so ready to be here by the time we finally were, that the actual adjustment to living here has been small potatoes by comparison. We live in a wonderful quiet neighborhood outside of the tourist craziness (naturally we're not tourists ourselves…), and have both been more or less diligently studying Portuguese—Andy is far better at speaking than I am, having worked harder at it before we moved, while I may be a bit better at reading signs and other text, having studied French in the past. 

Why this dramatic and exciting upheaval, you might ask? I can say first off that it was already well in the planning stages by the time of the US election last year, so had nothing to do with that (though I can't say we're not relieved, reading the news from day to day, that we're not experiencing it first hand…). In fact, we had long harboured a hope of moving to Europe when we retired, and we fell in love with Portugal when we visited a couple of years ago. So when Andy's retirement date came around last June, we decided not to delay—life is short and we want to travel and enjoy life while we can!

So here we are, and things have settled enough and I have stabilized enough after all the adjustments that I've started feeling lonely without you lovely readers in my life. The prodigal blogger returns... But to be honest I'm still feeling just a bit blocked, writing-wise, and I'm not completely sure of the future of the blog—what I want it to be, what you would enjoy, etc. We've discussed ideas of doing a travel blog (or vlog?!), as a way of sharing our adventures, but neither of us is totally invested in the idea and it feels like a lot of work. Or perhaps this blog could just become a bit wider in scope to cover some travel adventures? 

As for reading, I have actually been doing loads of it, but the content has shifted. In anticipation of moving and since we've been here, I've been particularly focused on European history, biography, and European literary classics. I finally, just the other day, started reading The Maias (1888), the most famous novel by Portugal's most internationally acclaimed 19th century author, José Maria de Eça de Queiroz—try saying that several times quickly (though I am happy to say, offhand, that I do now more or less know how to pronounce it once, slowly)—and am loving it. If you're a fan of big 19th century novels and haven't discovered him yet, check it out. I'm still finding time for some middlebrow reading as well, of course—just before the move, I re-read Ngaio Marsh's Surfeit of Lampreys and Rachel Ferguson's The Brontës Went to Woolworths to distract me from the anticipation, and just a day or two ago I finished a re-read of Elizabeth von Arnim's Enchanted April. I seem to have turned to my own Middlebrow Syllabus to keep myself grounded! But I haven't exactly been blazing a trail as far as the unearthing of fabulous unknown authors. Would you be interested in hearing a bit here and there about my reading, even if it's a bit more varied in content than my old, middlebrow-obsessed self?

Oh, and as for publishing… I promise I'll do another post soon with some exciting news along those lines—in fact a couple of pieces of exciting news, though one you may already know…

But now, I feel I should at least gesture toward reviewing the wonderful Rose Macaulay's book, since I've used it as a convenient means of telling my news.

They Went to Portugal (1946) is actually in print (golly!) from the wonderful Daunt Books in the UK, and it may have been Dame Rose's project for staying sane after being bombed out of her apartment (see her lovely story, "Miss Anstruther's Letters," from 1942 if you're not already familiar with it) during World War II. Portugal was neutral in the war (and though Macaulay doesn't discuss it, for obvious reasons, I will say that learning about Portugal during WWII, with Allies and Nazis and refugees and spies and actors and heaven knows who else all associating freely, is almost as fascinating as reading about the British home front). This allowed Macaulay to make research trips there for her rather unusual subject—the experiences of Brits both famous and infamous who spent time in Portugal over the course of several centuries. She was so enthusiastic about her research, in fact, that in addition to the 600+ pages of They Went, she had to edit out a great deal of other material, most of which (some 300 pages worth) was finally published by Carcanet Press in 1990 as They Went to Portugal Too (not in print now, but I've snagged a copy, so you might hear more about it some day).

The voyagers discussed are grouped thematically—royalty, writers, clergy, tourists, military men, etc.—and as might be expected most readers will find some chapters more interesting than others, though I found all, in Macaulay's charming style, highly readable. My favorite was her longish chapter on author, critic, and all-round eccentric character William Beckford, whose determination to be received in the British high society in Lisbon, and envoy Robert Walpole's determination that he should not be, reads quite like a novel itself. There's a chapter on Byron (I already know quite well that one can't spit in beautiful Sintra, on the coast not far from Lisbon, without hitting a place where Byron is alleged to have stayed, or at least a business taking advantage of his name), and a very short one on Henry Fielding, who came here for his health ... and promptly died. Perhaps the exact location of his grave wouldn't have been of primary concern to Fielding, but because he died just a few months before the massive earthquake of 1755, all that is known today is that he's buried somewhere in the British Cemetery here, but the tomb that honors him probably doesn't mark the correct spot.

Several short chapters in the book about visitors to Lisbon at the time of the earthquake are also of particular interest—though perhaps a bit harrowing for one who is now living where it all happened. But for about a quarter of a century of living in San Francisco, I wondered how I would react to "the big one," so I can just continue doing so here. I do hope that I would have a bit more chutzpah than King José I, king of Portugal in 1755, whom a tour guide here referred to as their "coward king," who, for the 20+ years remaining in his life after the quake refused to ever live indoors again, residing instead in a series of tents along with his court!

If you have an interest in Portugal, or in British travelers, do invest in a copy of Dame Rose's book. And now, after a year or so of radio silence, this long post is quite enough out of me for now!