FIGURE 11. Portrait of Francisco de Paula Brito by Louis Alexis Boulanger (1842), courtesy of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB; Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute)
“A Very Well Set-Up Establishment”
THE JUNE 22, 1844, issue of O Brasil, a Conservative newspaper edited by Justiniano José da Rocha, contained an advertisement on page four titled “Aproveitável Aula de Meninas” (Useful class for girls). It was for a girls’ school that had been located on Rua do Piolho, no. 118, for a time and had just moved to Beco da Barreira, no. 23. At that institution, “run by a respectable lady and her daughters,” the students learned “reading and writing, four types of mathematics, needle and scissor work in the known styles and tastes,” “music, dancing, etc. etc. ensuring strict education in the civil, moral and religious parts.” The ad honestly admitted that the establishment did not have “the renown of the great schools” of Rio de Janeiro. Nevertheless, it promised “reasonable prices” and the advantage of having the “students entrusted to the care and vigilance of yet another person.” However, the part that really interests us is this: to bolster the school’s credibility, the ad listed some of the “gentlemen” whose daughters studied there: “and this can be certified, among many others, by the [following] gentlemen—Major Schoukow (of Largo de S. Francisco de Paula), Lieutenant Colonel F. Ferreira Gomes, José Pedro Fernandes, Cantalice, Manuel Alexandre da Silva, José Maria de Sousa and Francisco de Paula Brito, all of whom have their daughters or persons belonging to them [enrolled there].”1
FIGURE 11. Portrait of Francisco de Paula Brito by Louis Alexis Boulanger (1842), courtesy of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB; Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute)
Paula Brito’s daughters, Rufina and Alexandrina, whose birth we will discuss further on, were respectively nine and six years old. It may be that only the older girl attended lessons in Beco da Barreira when the ad was published. At any rate, by the mid-1840s, their father already served as an role model—he was a “gentleman” whose example should be followed by his peers. Broadly speaking, the following chapters deal precisely with this question—that is, they attempt to understand how, from the mid-1830s to the 1840s, Francisco de Paula Brito managed to establish himself as a merchant, printer, and publisher with a reputation in Rio de Janeiro that qualified him as a “poster child” for his daughters’ school.
FIGURE 12. Portrait of Rufina Rodrigues da Costa Brito, Paula Brito’s wife by Louis Alexis Boulanger (1842), courtesy of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB; Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute)
FIGURE 13. Portrait of Rufina, Paula Brito’s “fille aimée” (beloved daughter) by Louis Alexis Boulanger (1842), courtesy of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB; Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute)
That story may well have begun in October 1835, when, after closing the Fluminense Press, Paula Brito became the sole owner of his business, changing its name and address. As announced in the Diário, the press was still in the same old Rocio, as some still called the Praça da Constituição. However, the new establishment was bigger, with two entrances, one on the tree-shaded plaza and the other on Rua de São Francisco de Paula. Maps of the city show that this was Rua da Lampadosa, which, running parallel to Praça da Constituição, ended in Largo de São Francisco de Paula. In any event, Paula Brito’s “private office,” to which anyone interested in “secret publications” should go, was strategically set up on that street, far from the curious eyes on Praça da Constituição. In times of press persecution, discretion was essential. The announcement also showed that Paula Brito’s partner’s departure from the business was not recent. His name is still unknown to us, preserved in a sheaf of yellowed pages or a roll of microfilm that is yet to be found. However, of all these changes, the most significant was the name of the press, which went from Fluminense to Tipografia Imparcial de Brito, or Brito’s Impartial Press.2
FIGURE 14. Portrait of Alexandrina, Paula Brito’s youngest daughter by Louis Alexis Boulanger (1842), courtesy of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB; Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute)
Above all, this new name suggests political neutrality. It was certainly a proactive way of preventing assaults like those of December 1833, which may have still been fresh in the publisher’s mind, and possibly of avoiding lawsuits. We should recall that, at the time, there was another press with the same name in São Paulo, owned by Silva Sobral.3 Furthermore, being “Impartial” might be very good for business. Our publisher had been aware of that since he started printing periodicals—although he proclaimed himself an Exaltado, he always stressed that he was “a free printer.” Thus, we will see, just like the former Fluminense Press, true to its name the Impartial Press would produce Regressionist (later known as Conservative) newspapers, as well as Liberal ones. However, there was nothing impartial about the press’s owner. After his Exaltado years during the Regency, the publisher initially flirted with the Liberals, particularly during the campaign to declare Emperor Pedro II an adult. However, he moved on to the Conservatives and stuck with them for the rest of his life. These alliances were key to the printer’s social ascent, which can be gauged by Paula Brito’s performance as a merchant selling a range of wares, as well as the technical improvements made at his printing press.
The Almanak administrativo, mercantil e industrial do Rio de Janeiro (Business, commercial and industrial almanac of Rio de Janeiro) was first published by the Laemmert brothers, Henrique and Eduardo, in 1843 and circulated for forty-five years, virtually throughout Pedro II’s lengthy reign. Better known as the Almanak Laemmert, it provides a fairly complete picture of the establishments that published and sold printed materials in the imperial capital in most of the 1840s. Table 3 shows that, less than ten years after he founded the Impartial Press, Paula Brito was facing growing competition in Rio’s printing sector. We can see that the number of presses listed in the Almanaque for 1844 grew steadily until 1850.
Competition certainly gave newspaper editors and owners an edge in negotiations with the printers. As a result, they could hire the ones that tendered the best offer. This may have been the case with O cidadão, a weekly newspaper published between December 1838 and May 1839—a respectable output of fifty-seven issues. Proclaiming itself to be “yet another soldier that joins the ranks of the friends of truth and the prosperity of our nation,”4 the newspaper was printed by three different presses. The first three issues were printed by the Crémière Press, the fourth to eighth by Paula Brito’s Impartial Press, and the ninth and tenth by the Brasiliense Press. The paper went back to the Crémière Press to print its eleventh to thirty-first issues before once again turning to the Impartial Press for the remainder of its run.
TABLE 3 Establishments printing and distributing printed matter in Rio de Janeiro (1844–1850)
Source: Almanak Laemmert, Seções Tipografias, litografias e livrarias das edições de 1844 a 1850.
This was not the case with lithographers, because the number of establishments changed very little during that period. Until Brito & Braga lithographers opened on Rua do Ouvidor, no. 51, the foreign-owned establishments of Heaton & Rensburg, Ludwig & Briggs, and Victor Larée held the monopoly on producing prints, portraits, maps, and bills of exchange in Rio de Janeiro.
Following the trend observed for printing presses, between 1844 and 1850 the number of bookshops rose somewhat steadily. Some booksellers had been active since the first Regencies, such as Albino Jordão and João Pedro da Veiga. However, like lithography, the book market in the imperial capital was dominated by foreign merchants—about 60 percent of the fifteen bookshops listed in the 1850 almanack.5 The number of foreign booksellers, particularly from France and Belgium, also grew over the course of the 1840s. Without a doubt, this phenomenon played a major role in galvanizing that sector. Booksellers such as the Garnier Brothers, Firmin Didot, and Desiré Dujardin mainly established themselves as affiliates of major European companies interested in expanding their markets. As a result, it could be difficult to compete with these marchands de livres, who were directly connected to their Parisian suppliers.6
Clashes involving municipal authorities and French printers residing in Rio may have occurred on occasion, as the case of the typographer Bintot in May 1848 attests. On that occasion, the representative of the French Legation in the capital sent a confidential note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting explanations about the violence perpetrated against Bintot by city council bailiffs, as well as his imprisonment in the Aljube prison. The previous year, the French citizen had been charged with not officializing the operating permit for his business and repeatedly ignoring notifications to negotiate the fees and outstanding fines. Finally, when a bailiff sought him out at his press, there was an argument and the Frenchman tried to pull the papers from the official’s hand, for which he was arrested. Only later was it discovered that the permits for Bintot’s press were entirely in order, and the bailiff was at fault for not having duly checked the accounting department’s records. Therefore, the city council attorney who drafted the report on the case did not rule out the possibility that the bailiff “was engaging in corruption,” trying to take advantage of the foreigner.7
Going back to the data for the 1850s, it is important to note that five of the fifteen booksellers were also printers like Bintot. Agostinho de Freitas Guimarães owned a bookshop on Rua do Sabão, no. 26, as well as a printing press further down the same street, at no. 135. The Laemmert brothers owned the Universal Bookshop on Rua da Quitanda, no. 77, and the Universal Press on Rua dos Inválidos, no. 61B. Junius Villeneuve, the owner of the newspaper Jornal do commercio, had a bookshop and press at the same address, Rua do Ouvidor, no. 65, as did Crémière, at Rua da Alfândega, no. 135, and Soares e Cia, on Rua da Alfândega, no. 6.8
This was the case with Francisco de Paula Brito as well, although the owner of the Impartial Press does not appear even once among the “book merchants” listed in the Almanak Laemmert. We know this because an extensive catalog of books for sale at the shop on Praça da Constituição, no. 64, appeared in the Gazeta dos tribunais in early May 1845 (see Appendix 3).9 This catalog presented the readers with a list of over two hundred books, originally divided into the main languages read in nineteenth-century Brazil. The predominance of French—65 percent of the catalog, or 131 titles—suggests that, like his competitors, Paula Brito may have maintained contact with European suppliers. However, some Portuguese titles, such as Cânticos Líricos, O Filho do Pescador, and Três dias de um noivado by Teixeira e Sousa, Marins Pena’s farces, and Olgiato by Gonçalves de Magalhães, were printed by Brito’s press.
TABLE 4 Catalog of Paula Brito’s bookshop, Gazeta dos tribunais, 1845
Source: Gazeta dos tribunais, no. 227, vol. III, 6 May 1845, pp. 3–4 (appendix 3).
Even so, according to the Almanak Laemmert, Paula Brito was only a bookseller ipsis litteris as of 1852, because his name finally appears in the “Book Merchants” section after he founded the Dous de Dezembro company.10 However, the Laemmert brothers’ omission in the 1840s is significant, as it suggests that Paula Brito’s activities as a bookseller were far from his main priority. Therefore, books were just another type of merchandise among the many others for sale in his shop. These included tea—“the best,” as Paula Brito advertised in verse and prose in the newspaper O farol in August 1844:
The best Brazilian tea, as well as tasty tea from India, are on sale at Paula Brito’s shop selling paper, books, snuff, office items, etc., Praça da Constituição, no. 64.
Those who have the good taste to enjoy
The good taste of tea
May leave a good taste by showing,
They have good taste as well.
It is the house style to have blue paper bags with a printed label.11
In 1834, the Fluminense Press’s situation had been far from ideal. As we have seen, there was a sharp drop in the number of new titles being printed, certainly due to the prosecution of printers and newspaper owners. Furthermore, Paula Brito was having a hard time receiving payment from some debtors,12 who must have included newspaper editors. The situation would have been dire if the printer had depended solely and exclusively on the press for his living. But he did not, because most of his income came from the “bookshop,” or better yet, the “shop selling paper, books, snuff, office items, etc.” There is no record of Paula Brito having sent books to the National and Public Library of Rio de Janeiro, but in 1853, the merchant did send a bill for “several objects for a total of 14,000 réis” to the librarian Friar Camilo de Monserrate.13 Therefore, it was thanks to the diversification of his business that Paula Brito managed to get through that difficult period for newspaper publishers and grow. In other words, during and after the storm of the latter years of the Feijó Regency and through most of the 1850s, the merchant’s success subsidized the success of the printer.
That he was indeed successful is attested by the fact that, in late October 1844, Paula Brito purchased a “large mechanical press.” Described as “the biggest and most complete [equipment] from Europe, transported to the Americas,” it originally belonged to the owners of O Despertador. When that newspaper ceased publication, the press—“without ever having operated in the hands of its first owner”—came into the possession of Paula Brito. Barely disguising his enthusiasm, the printer announced in the first column of O Brasil on October 31, that finally his establishment was “now able to produce all kinds of printed materials, no matter how many copies, with the ease and advantages that can be obtained from such machines.” And he added: “From now on, not only will this paper [O Brasil] be distributed as early as possible, but the public will soon have other larger publications for which the entire establishment is already very well set up.”14
According to the Manuel nouveau de typographie, until the mid-1830s there were basically three types of printing presses. The wooden kind were widely used; all-iron presses, or Stanhopes, were made in the UK; and finally, there were mechanical steam-driven cylinder presses.15 There are no indications that Paula Brito’s acquisition was a two-cylinder press like the one invented by the German watchmaker Friedrich Köenig. That steam-powered press revolutionized the publishing sector, printing up to 1,300 sheets per hour. Dupont observed that Köenig’s press was first used to publish the London Times in 1814.16 However, it was certainly expensive. In 1853, the editor of Correio do Brasil estimated that importing and setting up a new mechanical press would cost a considerable five million réis.17 In 1848, Justiniano José da Rocha, then the owner of the Brazil Press, calculated that investing in that sort of equipment would only be feasible if his newspaper managed the feat of garnering two thousand subscriptions. Only then, said Rocha, would “a mechanical press [provide] advantages that compensate for its higher price and other inconveniences.” In the same article, in response to the editor of the Correio da tarde, who had accused him of being envious by making his newspaper a daily, Justiniano said that even if he managed to get two thousand subscribers, he would not need the equipment because “one of the best mechanical presses in Rio de Janeiro is the property of our personal friend.”18 Francisco de Paula Brito? Very likely, the answer is yes.
Paula Brito may have been one of the first printers in Rio de Janeiro to own a mechanical press. When he purchased his, not even the National Press had anything like it. It was only the following year that the Finance Minister and Secretary of State, Manuel Alves Branco, authorized the purchase of a mechanical press for the National Press.19 The Correio mercantil, one of the daily newspapers circulating in Rio, would only buy one a decade later.20 It was therefore by selling tea, books, office supplies, and other products that, by the mid-1840s, Paula Brito had surely become the owner of one of the finest presses in Rio de Janeiro, for a time superior to the National Press. In the next chapter, we will see what was printed at that “very well set-up establishment.”
