CHAPTER 4

1831, Year of Possibilities

SERGEANT MAJOR MARTINHO PEREIRA DE BRITO was a widower when he died at the venerable age of ninety-three, on July 4, 1830. Paula Brito, who had lived with his grandfather since he returned to Rio de Janeiro seven years earlier, may have spent his last moments at his side and attended his funeral—the sergeant major was buried in one of the tombs of the Hospício Church, enshrouded in the habit of the Conception confraternity.1 We do know that it was after his grandfather’s death that Paula Brito moved to the house of a cousin, the pardo bookseller Silvino José de Almeida, on Praça da Constituição, no. 51.

Silvino had been dealing in books in Rio de Janeiro since at least 1823. In 1824, his bookshop on Rua dos Inválidos was listed in the city’s Almanach as the only establishment that worked exclusively with the sale of books—unlike Plancher, for example, who was not only a bookseller but was also listed as a printer. In the 1825 edition of the Almanach, Silvino’s bookshop is shown at the same address, but that year his cousin Paula Brito’s name appeared as a “bookseller bookbinder.”² A bookbinder’s work was extremely important at a time when books, whether they were printed in Rio de Janeiro or imported, were stitched by hand and bound with a cover tailored to the customer’s taste and means. Silvino’s clientele included the Imperial and Public Library of Rio de Janeiro, whose collection contained 975 volumes bound by Paula Brito’s cousin between September 1823 and March 1832. In addition to the gazettes and almanacs of Rio de Janeiro, the inventory of works entrusted to the bookbinder include rare books printed between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Sabellii opera omnia (1560), the Cancionero general (1573) and Fundaciones de los mosteiros de S. Benito (1601), among other titles.3

In 1830, the advertisements for books and periodicals published in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro newspaper show that Silvino’s shop had moved from Rua dos Inválidos to Praça da Constituição. Thus, in March of that year, anyone interested in acquiring the reprinted edition of Regimento das câmaras municipais das cidades e vilas do império do Brasil (City councils of the cities and towns of the empire of Brazil) could find it “in the establishments of Mr. Veigas, Rua da Quitanda, corner of S. Pedro, and Rua dos Pescadores, no. 49; and Silvino José de Almeida, Praça da Constituição, no. 51; price 120 réis.”⁴ In April 1830, it was also at the bookstore of “Selvino Jozé d’Almeida” that one could subscribe to or purchase copies of Nova luz brazileira, a periodical written by the apothecary Ezequiel Correia dos Santos, the leader of the Exaltado faction in Rio de Janeiro.⁵

The radical liberals, or Exaltados, the group for which Nova luz brasileira was one of the main outlets, emerged in Rio de Janeiro in late 1829 amid the increased political strife that culminated in the fall of Pedro I in 1831.⁶ Silvino certainly maintained close ties with the Exaltados, especially if we observe that, by the end of August 1830, the Diário do Rio de Janeiro accused the bookseller of reluctance to sell a certain Resposta à Nova luz brasileira, ou, Desagravo de brasileiros e portugueses (Answer to the Nova luz brasileira, or, Redress of Brazilians and Portuguese). Although we do not know what that publication contained, its title was symptomatic of a time when the clashes between Brazilians and Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro had intensified. The Diário’s anonymous writer asked Silvino to shed light on the subject so as “to relieve the troubled public from its suspicions”—he suspects that the bookseller was politically biased when deciding what was sold at his establishment.⁷

Two days later, Silvino published a note in the Diário explaining that if he did not sell Resposta à Nova luz, it was simply because he had not received any copies of it. However, in case they still judged that he had arbitrarily refused to sell that publication, Silvino told the disgruntled reader to consult the first paragraph of Art. 179 of the “Constitution of the forever Independent Empire of Brazil and there they will find the answer.”8 With the Constitution in hand, the reader would see that the answer was short and sweet, since the paragraph cited states that “No Citizen may be compelled to do, or fail to do anything, except by Law.” Thus, Silvino made it clear to the “troubled public” that his shop sold whatever he pleased.

However, besides his supposed affiliation to with the Exaltados, the bookseller Silvino José de Almeida was pardo, synonymous with Brazilian in those formative years of that which we now call national identity. To a large extent, that identity was forged in the conflict between Brazilians and Portuguese.⁹ The riots that took place on the streets of Rio de Janeiro between March 13 and 15, 1831, became the best-known incidents in that conflict. Involuntarily, according to his testimony in the Translado do processo a que deu motivo os tumultos das Garrafadas (Transcript of the inquest on the Bottle Riots), the bookseller Silvino José de Almeida took part in those events.¹⁰

At around 7 p.m. on the thirteenth, a Sunday, noticing the crowd that was forming in Praça da Constituição, Silvino went to the door of his bookshop and asked why all those people were gathering there. He was told that they were “on their way down,” meaning that they were heading for the central streets of the city. Silvino thought nothing of it, closed the shop, and went to bed. About two hours later, the bookseller noticed another gathering and opened his window. This time, he saw people filling the streets near the square between Beco da Rua do Piolho and the beginning of Rua do Cano. Once again, Silvino saw the crowd, closed his window, and went to sleep.¹¹ There is no indication of Paula Brito’s whereabouts that night. The gatherings in Praça da Constituição were composed mostly of blacks, pardos, and a few whites. They included the captain of the Third Hunters’ Battalion, Mariano Joaquim de Siqueira, the detachment of which Paula Brito was apparently an aide in the Second Company. But that says little, and it is difficult to ascertain if the young man was out in the streets mingling with the crowd, or safe at home with his cousin.

Unlike Silvino, his neighbor Juvêncio Pereira Ferreira, also a “resident of Praça da Constituição with a pharmacy apothecary shop” decided to join the crowd. According to the curious apothecary, there were over four hundred people in the streets, whom he followed on Rua do Piolho and further on. Near Rua das Violas, Juvêncio heard the people who had left Praça da Constituição shout “long live the Constitutional Emperor and the Constitution, the Freedom of the human race”; others “[hailed] the federation, the independence of Brazil, and those shouts were answered by the people who were in the townhouses.” It seemed that all was going well until shouts hailing “King Pedro IV and the Portuguese Constitution and the Portuguese” came from the townhouse of João Domingues de Araújo Viana on a corner of Rua das Violas, and a shower of bottles rained from the windows onto the crowd below.12

Possibly frightened, the apothecary turned around and was forced to take a different route, because he was told that Brazilians and Portuguese were clashing on Rua da Alfândega. When he got to Rua do Ouvidor, Juvêncio found “a Brazilian youth . . . hatless and very badly beaten so he could hardly walk.” The young man told him that he had been attacked by “a number of Portuguese armed with chuços and swords” who were shouting “kill the cabras [literally, goats] that want to screw us.” During the struggle, some of the Brazilians fled while the others confronted the Portuguese, seizing their chuços, which were handed over to the justice of the peace of Candelária parish.¹³ Meanwhile, Juvêncio was creeping cautiously along, and when he finally got to Praça da Constituição he saw “a lot of folks” calling for vengeance on the Portuguese. Juvêncio found some people in his apothecary shop who had been injured, “two with lead bullets and the others with blows and bruises,” who were being treated by a Navy surgeon. After everyone had gone, he followed the example of his neighbor the bookseller and, certainly unnerved by everything he had witnessed, closed the pharmacy.¹⁴

At around midnight on the fourteenth, Juvêncio awoke with a start, hearing “a crowd that seemed like the marching of regular troops.” It seemed like it, but it was not—instead, over two hundred Portuguese armed with chuços and swords were shouting “long live the Emperor and the Portuguese nation.” The furious crowd stopped outside the pharmacy, threatening to break down the doors and demanding that Juvêncio hand over the pimpões, that is, the Brazilians with whom they had clashed the day before, and whom they believed to be hiding there. The apothecary must have been terrified, followed by a sense of relief when he realized that the crowd had decided not to attack him and moved on to Silvino José de Almeida’s bookshop.¹⁵

That day, the bookseller had learned “through hearsay”—most likely from people exasperated by the events who came and went in the bookshop—about everything that had happened on Rua das Violas, as well as hearing about the wounded people treated in Juvêncio’s pharmacy. At around midnight, Silvino was also awakened by cries of “Long live His Majesty Emperor Pedro and the Portuguese” and “Brazilians, long live the Constitution,” followed by “kill the cabras.” Then, “during that affray, tremendous blows were struck against the window panes” of his shop. They were so strong that they shattered the glass. Silvino ran to one of the windows, and as soon as the crowd armed with sticks and swords had spotted him, their cries of “kill, kill” grew louder. The nightmare only ended when José Bernardes Monteiro shouted at them from his townhouse to put a stop to that mischief. The following day, anyone passing through Praça da Constituição could see the bookshop’s “broken window cases and panes.”16

In the article published in O carioca, Paula Brito associated his involvement in the events of the “glorious day April 7, 1831” with his desire to “get revenge on the Garrafistas of March, who intended to murder my cousin—Silvino José de Almeida—(with whom I was living at the time), breaking the windowpanes and wanting to invade his house.”¹⁷ Once again, it is difficult to ascertain whether Paula Brito was in the house at that perilous moment. In any case, he was so enraged by the attack by the emperor’s partisans on Silvino’s bookstore that the young man decided to take up arms and revolt against despotism. The weapon in question, however, would not be a sword or a chuço, in the fashion of the Portuguese Garrafistas, but a quill, the instrument with which Paula Brito wrote his “Hymn Offered to Brazilian Youth on March 25, 1831.”

As we have seen, since his return to Rio de Janeiro, Paula Brito had written verses that were read and edited by Evaristo da Veiga. In the “Hymn Offered to Brazilian Youth on March 25, 1831,” the young poet began by hailing the Brazilian Constitution granted seven years before, on March 25, 1824, a day remembered in the first stanza as “majestic” and “of eternal memory.” However, in later verses the tone of the “Hymn” changes, railing against “enemies” who plotted the “slavery” of the motherland:

In us, vengeance is reborn.

Sacred Heroism triumphs,

Free men do not bow

To the tyrant despotism.¹⁸

When reading “Hymn Offered to Brazilian Youth” from the perspective of the confrontations that rocked the streets of Rio de Janeiro in those days, it is easy to perceive the political meaning behind those verses. Young Paula Brito was openly inciting his compatriots to rise up against those who, in addition to attacking his cousin Silvino’s bookshops, loudly hailed the Portuguese Constitution and the Portuguese, attacked Brazilians, and threw bottles from the townhouses on Rua das Violas. It was therefore anti-Portuguese propaganda. In this regard, Paula Brito explained that the “Hymn” was written about “The matter of the day, defying the wrath of the enemy of Brazil and his Apostles,” meaning Pedro I and his supporters. The poem was well-received for that very reason, so much so that, after reading the manuscript, João Pedro da Veiga, Ripanso’s brother, had his clerk tell the young man that he would pay to have the verses printed, immediately offering him 40,000 réis. Paula Brito accepted the money and that very afternoon, put on his straw hat and went to meet his new patron in his bookshop.19

The problem was that straw hats were a symbol of the Exaltados. Wearing one was a political act and explains why Paula Brito, who was also pardo, was mocked by some residents and merchants as he walked to João Pedro da Veiga’s bookshop, which stood on the corner of Rua da Quitanda and Rua de S. Pedro. Four streets—Quitanda, Ourives, Direita, and Violas—marked the boundary of the Portuguese quarter of Rio de Janeiro, and once the details of publication had been agreed, the bookseller advised the young man to take a different route home to avoid being insulted by the “capitalists” on Rua da Quitanda. Even so, it is very likely that Paula Brito was left the shop a happy man, feeling that he was truly a poet in the service of the “nation and Brazilians.”²⁰

However, while the Garrafadas inspired Paula Brito’s verses, they also encouraged the emperor to take steps in response to the disturbances of the thirteenth to fifteenth of March, appointing a new cabinet on the nineteenth, which was then considered more Brazilian or less Portuguese than its predecessors. It was a palliative measure, because the political crisis in which Pedro I was embroiled had been going on since at least the middle of the previous decade, considerably exacerbated after the death of his father, João VI of Portugal, and his involvement in the succession to the Portuguese throne, to which he had a claim and which he had renounced in favor of his eldest child, Princess Maria da Glória. Notwithstanding, the gulf between the emperor and the General Legislative Assembly of the Empire widened during the second session of the legislature in 1830, increasing the monarch’s political isolation—difficulties that Pedro attempted to ease with an ill-fated visit to the province of Minas Gerais in early 1831.

The gathering that Silvino José de Almeida saw outside his bookshop in the evening of March 13 had formed precisely to put an end to the celebrations that supporters of Pedro I, gathered in the vicinity of Rua da Quitanda, were organizing to welcome him on his return. As we have seen, that confrontation resulted in smashed bottles and heads, without forgetting the windows of Silvino’s bookshop, which were shattered the following night when the emperor’s followers struck back. However, the situation came to a head on April 5, when Pedro I appointed a new cabinet made up of five marquesses and a viscount. The fall of the “Brazilian” cabinet of March 19 hastened the downfall of the emperor himself.21

On the sixth of April, “the people and troops,” as the saying went, came together in Campo de Santana, which became the Campo da Honra (Field of Honor), to demand that the monarch reinstate the cabinet that had been dismissed the day before. As José Murilo de Carvalho underscored, speaking to that assembly of nearly four thousand people, “it could be said that, in a moment rarely repeated in this country’s history, it was a gathering of the elite, politicians, military, and people.”²² However, refusing to accede to the wishes of the people and troops, the emperor eventually abdicated the throne in favor of his five-year-old son, Prince Pedro, in the early hours of April 7, 1831.

Then an aide in the Second Company of the Third Hunters’ Battalion, Paula Brito arrived in Campo de Santana at around 1:00 p.m. on the sixth, by which time fewer than one hundred people had gathered there. The young man spent the afternoon and night in the square, where he wrote “some simple poems” on the spot, celebrating Pedro I’s abdication. A few days later, Paula Brito went back to João Pedro da Veiga, who once again agreed to pay for the publication of his verses, this time “The Hymn to the Memorable Day April 7, 1831.”²³ Printed by Émile Seignot Plancher, the poem began by congratulating the “brasília people” who had finally rid themselves of the “ferocious enemy” Pedro I and his “servile party”:

Congratulations, brasília people,

FREEDOM flourishes!

The perverse one has fallen from the Throne

Iniquity has succumbed.

Far from us the traitors,

Far away the servile party,

INDEPENDENCE triumphed

On the seventh of April.²⁴

In the “Hymn to the Memorable Day April 7, 1831,” Paula Brito was caught up in the “fraternal union” of the people and the troops, which in “singular equality” raised the “voice in the New World” against tyranny. There are three references to the new emperor in verses that somehow foreshadow a series of laudatory poems to Pedro II that Paula Brito wrote in the course of his life. In one of those references, the truly Brazilian boy emperor was hailed by the “liberated nation”:

Behold the Liberated Nation

Hails PEDRO THE SECOND

Born on the fertile Shores

Of gold-rich Brazil.25

The new emperor was, in fact, hailed on the Field of Honor on April 7, amid cries of “Long Live Pedro II,” started up by General Manuel da Fonseca Lima e Silva. The congressional deputies and senators in Rio de Janeiro immediately officialized the succession, as well as electing the Trine Provisional Regency, made up of the Marquess de Caravelas, Senator Vergueiro, and General Francisco de Lima e Silva.²⁶ They were hailed as the “wise regency” in Paula Brito’s “Hymn to the Memorable Day April 7, 1831.”

The days that followed the “Glorious Seventh of April” were ripe with possibilities for those who lived them. As a result, the young Exaltado Francisco de Paula Brito and most of those who had joined the throng on the Field of Honor believed that a promising new era lay ahead.²⁷ In addition to better days for the nation, it was also thought that real opportunities in daily life, within the reach of the citizens who took part in the movement, were also in the offing. For Paula Brito, and perhaps many others, those opportunities took the form of a job in the civil service. After all, once Pedro I and his “servile party”—most of whom were Portuguese—had been vanquished, perhaps Brazilians of all colors would have unrestricted access to the bureaucracy. There was no harm in trying, and the young man did just that.

This story would have been different—and might not even have been written—if Regent Lima e Silva had given Paula Brito a position that had opened up in the Senate a few days after the emperor’s abdication. In a badly degraded section of the article published in O carioca, Paula Brito complained that, after the Seventh of April, “The times and things changed, and because the presses went into decline (as a consequence of the [illegible] revolutions [illegible] my situation was critical).”28 There is no doubt that the times changed after the Seventh of April, but it does not seem that the presses went into decline at that time. In “Origem e desenvolvimento da imprensa no Rio de Janeiro” (Origins and development of the press in Rio de Janeiro), an article published in 1865, Moreira de Azevedo stated that “the exaltation of the press did not cool but increased in 1831.” The historian from the Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute (IHGB) identified forty-five periodicals circulating in Rio de Janeiro that year, compared with just nine in 1830 and sixteen in 1832.²⁹

However, Paula Brito’s critical situation was another story. After all, although we know little about what transpired, it could be that Paula Brito’s career as an aide in the Second Company of the Third Hunters’ Battalion had ended badly. If that was the case, the young man would soon discover that there was little advantage in offering his life to the “beloved country.” Thus, going back to his article in O carioca, we find that Paula Brito complained about his situation to some friends, saying that he was “unsettled.” The young man was advised to go to Regent Lima e Silva regarding “a vacancy in the Senate Chamber.” They also told him that Evaristo da Veiga could be very helpful in that regard. Paula Brito sought out the editor of Aurora Fluminense, with whom he was close, as we know. Evaristo told him that, although “he did not [have] any friends in the Government”—an observation that was strange, at the very least, since he was a deputy elected by the province of Minas Gerais, and as such, had helped vote in the Trine Provisional Regency³⁰—he would give him a “testimonial” that, according to Paula Brito, “not only praised my conduct, but even thought me worthy of employment due to my talents.”

Most certainly flattered and armed with that testimonial, the young man knocked on the door of General Francisco de Lima e Silva, a member of the Trine Provisional Regency. Paula Brito handed the document to the regent, who asked him to return the following day with a memorial, “because if there was a vacancy,” it would be his. Writing a memorial in less than twenty-four hours, no matter what the subject, may have been the least of his problems. The issue was whether there was a “vacancy” in the Senate Chamber, as Paula Brito’s friends had claimed. Therefore, either the regent was unaware of that vacancy or had disingenuously refused to employ Paula Brito, who wrote nearly two years later: “I never again sought out his Excellency and sought to make an honorable living with my labor while continuing the small studies I had begun earlier.”³¹

In 1857, the American missionaries Daniel Kidder and James Fletcher were surprised by the number of “mulattos”—“these men with negro blood”—whom they saw studying in the National and Public Library of Rio de Janeiro.32 The scene the reverends observed in the late 1850s may have been the same twenty years earlier. If it was, young Paula Brito would probably have been one of the “mulattos” in the National Library, absorbed in his studies—“small studies” that could produce big ideas.³³ However, just days after his unsuccessful attempt to enter the civil service, a fresh prospect opened up for the young man: São Paulo.

Although it was an important trading center and a provincial capital, São Paulo was a fairly small city in the early 1830s, nothing compared to Rio de Janeiro and what São Paulo itself would become by the late nineteenth century. In comparison, in 1827, the year when José da Costa Carvalho founded the first press and published the first printed newspaper in São Paulo, the Farol Paulistano, there were five printing presses in Rio and twelve newspapers in circulation. However, in 1828, São Paulo became the home of the Law School, consequently becoming an important market for books and other publications.³⁴ As the Jornal do commercio reported on April 19, 1831, it was this prospect that led Paula Brito to plan his move to that city:

Bookstores and presses are being established in many provinces. In S. Paulo M. Joly, in concert with a business in Rio de Janeiro, brought together a beautiful collection of books and formed a reading cabinet, of which the foremost commercial houses are already subscribers, as well as many university students, which finally had to occur in a city where liberal ideas have developed so readily. But as just one press does not suffice in S. Paulo, Mr. Francisco de Paula Brito, a young Brazilian who is well known for his patriotic poetry, will establish himself in that city and add to the vogue of the reading cabinet of M. Jules Joly. A press and bookstore combined in one establishment must necessarily be very successful in a country where education is so ardently desired.³⁵

Just twelve days had elapsed between the publication of “Glorious Seventh of April” and this announcement. Paula Brito’s return to the printing business was therefore directly related to Regent Lima e Silva’s refusal to give him a job in the Senate Chamber. Far removed from the competitive printing market in the imperial capital, scholarly São Paulo seemed promising. Thus, according to the announcement, Paula Brito planned to start a bookshop and printing press “in one establishment” that specialized in selling and printing books and periodicals.

Nevertheless, Paula Brito’s move to the Piratininga highlands never took place. In 1834, when defending himself from accusations of being a Restorationist in the pages of O carioca, the “young Brazilian” gave his reasons for refusing to go to São Paulo:

If I had wanted to be a burden on my friends, I would have used the gift they wanted to give me in May 1831, offering to help with the expenses I would incur at the “C. J. de S. Paulo,” where they wanted to send me, which I entirely rejected because I did not want to be a burden on anyone, although with that rejection I helped bring about my own misfortune.36

Could “C. J. de S. Paulo” be the Curso Jurídico de São Paulo, the city’s law school? In addition to establishing a bookshop and printing press, had Paula Brito planned to study law? If the young man was engaging in scholarly pursuits, why not become a lawyer? There were pardo students at the law school. According to José Murilo de Carvalho, one of the lecturers at that institution refused to speak to those students, alleging that blacks could not be university graduates.³⁷ No matter what his intentions, Paula Brito clearly had friends who were willing to cover his travel expenses. Nevertheless, as he explained, although it added to his “misfortune,” he rejected their aid and decided to stay in Rio de Janeiro.

I have been unable to determine the identity of those friends. However, Paula Brito related in O carioca that he once again received the providential aid of João Pedro da Veiga, the patron who had paid for the publication of his “patriotic poetry” in April 1831. If my calculations are correct, this occurred after he had called off his plans to move to São Paulo, sometime between May and October of that year. Thus, without being able to say exactly when, once again we find young Paula Brito on Rua da Quitanda, walking resolutely toward João Pedro da Veiga’s bookshop. We do not know if the young man wore his Exaltado straw hat this time, but one thing we can be sure of is that, instead of poetry, he carried a piece of jewelry in his pocket. It might have been a family heirloom, possibly inherited from his maternal grandmother, the wife of Sergeant Major Martinho Pereira de Brito who, as we know, was a renowned silversmith in Rio de Janeiro. Suppositions aside, at that moment, the young man needed money and sought to use it as collateral for a loan from João Pedro da Veiga.³⁸

Paula Brito wanted to borrow “a small sum” from the bookseller. In addition to those funds, the young man may have built up his own savings, possibly from the time when he worked for Plancher. However, the answer to the purpose of the money can be read in the “Notícias particulares” (Private news) column in the November 10, 1831, issue of Jornal do commercio:

Francisco de Paula Brito hereby notifies the public, and in particular his friends, that he has purchased from Mr. Silvino José d’Almeida the store located in Praça da Constituição, no. 51, and therefore has the honor to inform publishers and the other customers of said store, that it is still accepting all newspapers and other publications for sale, and, in addition, will produce a new assortment in said establishment. The advertiser hopes to deserve all the esteem he has so far achieved from his friends and countrymen, to whom he will be eternally grateful.39

After trying to get a job as a civil servant and planning to move to São Paulo, Paula Brito ended up buying his cousin Silvino’s shop. Relying on the esteem of the public in Rio de Janeiro, he also promised to make improvements to that establishment, as we will see in the next chapter. First, however, it would be interesting to answer a question: why did Silvino José de Almeida decide to sell the business after so many years?

Five days after the publication of Paula Brito’s announcement in the Jornal do commercio, Silvino declared in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro that he no longer had any association with the bookshop: “seeing that some gentlemen as still advertising Published works on sale at Praça da Constituição no. 51, and still supposing that the shop belongs to this advertiser . . . hereby declares that the shop is no longer under his management, because he has sold it to Mr. Francisco de Paula Brito.” Silvino took the opportunity to ask the editor of Clarim da liberdade to pay more attention when producing advertisements because “the manner in which those published in the Diário are conceived . . . under the heading Published Works implies that the advertisement was published by the writer [Silvino], who has had no dealings nor could have any dealings with the Editor.”⁴⁰ As Marcello Basile suggests, the editor of the Clarim da liberdade, an Exaltado newspaper published with some interruptions between November 1831 and June 1833, could have been José Luiz Ferreira, a mulatto. The Clarim was openly opposed to the moderate government and, in effect, the way Silvino attempted to disassociate himself, not just from the bookshop, but chiefly from the newspaper and its editor, sounded like a political act.41

FIGURE 9. Signature of Silvino José de Almeida, Paula Brito’s cousin (1834)

Nonetheless, we would be attributing too much altruism to Silvino if we imagined that he had only sold the bookshop to help a young cousin find a career. The shop was not one of the most important establishments of its kind in Rio de Janeiro and, as we shall see, it was facing strong competition at the time. It might not have been a profitable venture, so much so that Silvino, it seems, believed it would be a promising opportunity to go from being a bookseller to a jailer.

We have seen that immediately after the Seventh of April, Paula Brito had unsuccessfully sought a post in the civil service from Regent Lima e Silva. There are no signs that Silvino followed the same course but, unlike his cousin, he found a job as a “[civil] servant for life in the position of jailer at the Prisons of this Court, by his Imperial Majesty, may God save him.”42 In February 1832, three months after the sale of the bookshop, the lists of slaves sent to the prison by justices of the peace of Rio parishes were signed “Silvino José de Almeida, Jailer of the Prisons.”⁴³ All indications are that Paula Brito’s cousin never returned to the trade of selling or binding books.44 At the end of 1831, having been appointed by the Moderates, it was not at all strange that the former bookseller should seek to distance himself from the Exaltados, as he did in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, as he had not been honored with a government post by the chimangada, Francisco de Paula Brito, the city’s newest merchant, remained loyal to the Farroupilhas.⁴⁵