CHAPTER 3

Apprentice Printer and Poet

FRANCISCO DE PAULA BRITO returned to Rio de Janeiro in about 1823. The thirteen-year-old boy was taken in by his maternal grandfather, the octogenarian sergeant major of the Pardos battalion, Martinho Pereira de Brito, possibly in the house on Rua do Piolho. There are no indications that Paula Brito’s parents returned to Rio after their leasehold of the cassava flour plantation expired. Between the time of his grandfather’s death and his marriage in May 1833, Paula Brito lived in the home of his cousin, the bookseller Silvino José de Almeida.1

At the time, working in the printing business must have been far beyond the expectations of that recent arrival to the city, as Paula Brito’s first job was in an apothecary shop. The Almanach do Rio de Janeiro para o ano de 1824 mentions one João d’Almeida Brito, who lived on Rua detrás do Carmo and is listed as the director of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia Apothecary. This may be a coincidence, but the surname Almeida, shared by his cousin Silvino, and Brito, the same as that of Sergeant Major Martinho, suggest that the young man may have had relatives who were involved in the pharmaceutical trade. However, we know that Paula Brito only spent a few months in that business, because in 1824 he began working at the Imperial and National Press (Tipografia Imperial e Nacional) as an apprentice printer.2

As Paula Brito recalled years later, at the time, the Imperial and National Press was run by Brás Antônio Castrioto, who had joined it as a typesetter in 1810, when it was still the Royal Press (Impressão Régia). Before rising to the administrative ranks, Castrioto was also a second clerk and payroll officer.³ Little is known about the working conditions for apprentices at the Imperial and National Press in Rio de Janeiro. Judging from the wages that apprentices received in another government department, the Imperial Kitchen—just 7,000 réis per month—those young men must have suffered financial hardship.⁴ However, the official government press was not the only place where one could learn to be a typesetter. When applying for a job at the workshop where the National and Public Library of Rio de Janeiro would be established in 1822, the typesetter Gaspar José Monteiro stated in his application that he had taught his craft to many people “who are plying their trade at different presses.” Gaspar also observed that shortly before, he had “trained several typesetters at the [press] of Silva Porto e Companhia, preparing the workshop for operation.”⁵

Certainly, Paula Brito did not decide to become a printer by chance. The considerable increase in the circulation of newspapers and pamphlets during the process of obtaining Brazil’s political independence must have stimulated his interest in typesetting and printing presses.⁶ From then on, typesetters and printers could find good work opportunities in Rio de Janeiro and beyond. In 1823, for example, the master printer José Francisco Lopes was hired “to direct the national press of the Province of Bahia” in the Town of Cachoeira, with a salary of 400,000 réis per year.⁷

When he started working at the National Press, Paula Brito must have had good knowledge of Portuguese grammar, as this was an essential requirement for aspiring printers. At least, this is stated in the Manual de typographia braziliense (Manual of Brazilian printing), published in Rio in 1832 by René Ogier. According to the manual, an apprentice printer’s duties ranged from cleaning the workshop to separating and sorting type, as well as copying original manuscripts that would be distributed to the typesetters. To teach the printer’s craft, Ogier advised that the process should be carried out slowly and carefully using large type to instill “good habits” and achieve “excellent composition.”⁸

However, while Ogier’s manual recommended that apprentice printers should have good reading and writing skills, Francisco de Paula Brito must have been outstanding in that regard, since he was given to writing verses. As we will see, at different times poetry played a very important part in Paula Brito’s career. As early as 1823, it helped bring him to the attention of the brothers Evaristo and João Pedro da Veiga. In the essay he published in O carioca, in which he tried to justify himself before the court of public opinion regarding his close relations with the Veigas—“Ripanso and his brother”—Paula Brito noted that at the age of “fourteen, when, already influenced by love of country, I had written a few verses, I submitted them to for editing to Mr. Evaristo [da Veiga], who will not refuse to confirm the truth of what I am saying.”9

Evaristo da Veiga was not much older than Paula Brito. Born in 1799, he was twenty-four years old when he met the young man who had just returned from the countryside. Despite his youth and although he had not attended a European university, Evaristo displayed outstanding erudition—he spoke Greek, Latin, French, and English—acquired by reading the books sold by his father, the Portuguese Luís Saturnino da Veiga, who became a bookseller in Rio de Janeiro after retiring as a royal teacher. In 1823, the year he began reading and editing Paula Brito’s poetry, Evaristo and his older brother, João Pedro da Veiga, left their father’s business to open their own bookshop on Rua da Quitanda, on the corner of Rua de São Pedro. The brothers worked together until November 1827, when Evaristo purchased the bookshop of the Frenchman Bompard, on Rua dos Pescadores, no. 49.¹⁰ The following month, Evaristo began writing for Aurora Fluminense, the newspaper that would make him one of the most influential journalists in Brazil, elected twice to the legislature of Minas Gerais province. However, back in 1823, when the future politician was still a fledgling bookseller, it was poetry that brought him and the grandson of the sergeant major of the Pardos together. Like Paula Brito, Evaristo had begun writing poetry at an early age. His first Arcadian poems date from 1811, when he was twelve years old. Therefore, young Paula Brito, “influenced by love of country,” found in Evaristo da Veiga the ideal reader, editor, and possibly mentor.

Probably with Evaristo’s encouragement, Paula Brito must have written and rewritten verses during the nearly four-year period he spent at the Imperial and National Press. After his apprenticeship, as his first biographer noted, the young man is believed to have found a job, first at the press of René Ogier, and then at that of Pierre Plancher, both French printers.¹¹ After three decades of experience in the printing business in Europe, Ogier had arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1826 and thrived there. Twelve years later, when he was applying to be naturalized, he informed the authorities that he owned “a large printing house” as well as “two warehouses of books for sale, paper, and a printing factory,” and all of those establishments employed “Brazilian workers.”12 However, Paula Brito did not mention Ogier when he recounted the beginning of his career in O carioca. He only named Pierre Plancher, whose esteem he must have gained, as he was “employed for years as the director of the printing press department.”

Paula Brito may have worked for Plancher between 1827 and 1830, when he briefly joined the Second Company of the Third Hunters’ Battalion of Rio de Janeiro as an aide. In 1827, Plancher founded the newspaper Jornal do commercio in Rio de Janeiro, along with his son Émile Seignot-Plancher and the physician, Joseph Sigaud. That date could coincide with the hiring and inclusion of Paula Brito as a typesetter on the new payroll.¹³ In any case, the years he worked with Plancher were important, because as he noted in O carioca, Paula Brito owed the Frenchman “in addition to an enormous debt, the first elements of my little or no wealth.”¹⁴

Pierre-René-François Plancher de la Noé was born in Mans in 1779. After starting out in the typographic arts in 1798, the bookseller-publisher eventually established himself in Paris, more precisely in the Latin Quarter, in 1815. Over the course of seven years of activity in the French capital, Plancher published 150 titles, including works by important names in liberal thinking, such as Benjamin Constant, François Guizot, Madame de Staël, and the Marquis de Lafayette, among others. However, competition in the Parisian publishing market was fierce. In 1820, the year Paula Brito’s benefactor gained his brevet, there were 254 printer-booksellers in that city, most of them concentrated in the Latin Quarter. Furthermore, Plancher began having serious problems with the law due to the political writings that left his presses. In light of these circumstances, it is easy to infer why Plancher, his wife, Jeanne Seignot, and his son Emile packed up their books, dismantled the presses, and crossed the ocean in search of new markets, arriving in Rio de Janeiro in February 1824.¹⁵

In Brazil, Plancher established good relations with Pedro I, which was very good for business, as he soon boasted the title of Imperial Printer. According to Marco Morel, if “Plancher was a plebeian and sans-culotte in Europe, he became a nobleman in Brazil”—or a “hunchback,” the opposition’s unflattering term for those who bowed to the emperor. In 1830, the liberal extremist Ezequiel Correia dos Santos openly derided him as an “ugly, hunchbacked, and shameless Frenchman.”¹⁶ That may have been when Pierre Plancher suffered the attack that Moreira de Azevedo mentions in his biography of Paula Brito. On that occasion, the young typesetter apparently dispersed—“with complete poise and calm”—a furious crowd that had broken into Plancher’s workshop, incensed by an article published in the Jornal do commercio. Moreira de Azevedo may have overstated Paula Brito’s heroism, but the difficult political situation in which Pedro I found himself in the late 1830s makes this story credible, at the very least. In any event, it must have been after that incident, in recognition of his bravery, that Paula Brito was promoted to “director of presses” at Plancher’s workshop.17

It was, therefore, while working for Pierre and Émile Seignot-Plancher that Paula Brito began amassing his “little or no wealth.” But a no less important part of the “enormous debt” that Paula Brito owed to the Planchers was the vast technical and above all cultural framework that the Frenchmen had introduced to Rio de Janeiro. It may have been at the Planchers’ workshop that Paula Brito learned or improved his knowledge of French—the language from which he would translate some short stories and plays. It may also have been during that period that he was introduced to or established closer ties with freemasonry.¹⁸

Around 1834, by which time Francisco de Paula was a partner in the Tipografia Fluminense, Plancher returned to France after selling the Jornal do commercio and his press to his fellow countrymen Junius Villeneuve and Maugenol for over 50,000,000 réis.¹⁹ When Plancher died in Paris nine years later, Paulo Brito—then the sole owner of the Tipografia Imparcial—was becoming a major businessman and printer in Rio de Janeiro. But let us not get ahead of ourselves, as Francisco de Paula Brito may have not only left Plancher’s workshop but the printing business entirely in the late 1830s, if only for a while.

We have more than enough information about the period in which the young printer served as an aide with the Second Company of the Third Hunters Battalion of Rio de Janeiro. In the article he published in O carioca, referring to his participation in the overthrow of Pedro I on April 7, 1831, Paula Brito observed: “and as an aide in the 2nd Comp. of the 3rd Battalion of Hunters, I no longer had a life of my own—it was entirely given up to my beloved country.” This statement implies that, during the period in which he served as an aide, Paula Brito may have actually set his compositor’s tray and type aside altogether. After all, until the creation of the National Guard in 1832, military service was still an important means of social advancement for freedmen and pardos, as it had been for Sergeant Major Martinho Pereira de Brito decades before.²⁰

However, with a certain margin of safety, we can surmise that Paula Brito’s armed service only lasted from the end of 1830 to April 1831. This supposition is mainly due to the lack of any mention of Second Company in the official records. For example, in 1825, the Almanach do Rio de Janeiro only listed the Third Hunters Battalion of Rio de Janeiro, commanded by Colonel Manuel Antonio Leitão Bandeira, whose aide was Gregório Álvaro Sanches. The company which Paula Brito joined may have been formed later. In any event, the young man must have been proud to wear the uniform of the Third Hunters Battalion, which may have been similar to the one advertised in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro in March 1837: “For Sale: an embroidered uniform, bandolier, leather cap, and beret, all in good condition, which can serve for any cadet in the 3rd Hunters Battalion; interested parties should go to Rua do Sabão between Ourives and Vala streets, no. 174.”21 The last reference I have found to this subject is in “Hino ao memorável dia 7 de abril de 1831” (Hymn to the memorable day 7 April 1831), written by Paula Brito and printed by Émile Seignot-Plancher. The poem is signed: “Francisco de Paula Brito/Aide to the 2nd Company of the 3rd Hunters Battalion.”²² Therefore, on April 6 and 7, 1831, when the people and the troops came together in Campo de Santana to depose the emperor, we know that Paula Brito was among the troops. He was a soldier-poet.