CHAPTER 16

The Petalogical Society

THE SOCIAL COLUMNS published in Marmota fluminense indicate that the Petalogical Society was born in the early 1830s, shortly after Paula Brito purchased his cousin Silvino’s bookshop, which gradually became a gathering place: “The Petalogical or Petalogy Society, a society that, as its name implies, deals only with petas, is an association of more-or-less educated people who have gathered for about twenty years in one of the loveliest and best-known venues in this city.”1 As the owner of that venue, the publisher became the founder of the society, an association that for more than two decades was based on the informal conversations of those who flocked to it—that is, until its sessions and news of its members’ participation in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival and civic festivities began appearing frequently in the press in the early 1850s.²

According to the Dicionário da Língua Brasileira, the Brazilian Portuguese dictionary compiled by Luiz Maria da Silva Pinto,³ a contemporary of the founding of the Petalogical Society, peta was synonymous with petorra, a kind of game that was very popular among young men of that time. It is also defined as “squid” and “a small hatchet used to prune trees,” as well as “a dark spot that occasionally appears in horses’ eyes.” Figuratively speaking, peta also meant “fabrication,” and this was the meaning employed when naming the society—that is, an association devoted to the study of lies. When its sessions and minutes began appearing in the Marmota fluminense as of January 1853, readers of Paula Brito’s bi-weekly could get a better idea of the topics discussed.

Generally speaking, the minutes of these meetings followed the format of the Annals of the Chamber of Deputies published in the Jornal do commercio. They even borrowed the procedural model for the Chamber’s sessions.4 Accordingly, the minutes contained some variation of a digest, a description of the topics for discussion, and the order of the day. At a session held in January 1853, one of the first to be documented, the topics for discussion consisted of “verbal offices” in which the members engaged in telling petas. Fabrications like these: “an end has been put to the capoeiras that had been disturbing the streets of the city of Rio de Janeiro, and not a single one has appeared since,” and “through the energetic measures taken by the authorities, naked men are no longer seen on the beaches, so that families can henceforth, without fear, appreciate the beautiful, fresh, and enjoyable scent afforded by the majestic, well-finished balcony of the Public Promenade.”⁵ That is, while the capoeira gangs continued to roam the city streets, matrons and young ladies were still exposed to the bare backsides of men enjoying a cooling dip at the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. The order of the day, in turn, invariably contained a joke.

Sessions of the Petalogical Society began informally. All it took was for a group, small or large, to enter the bookshop with a view to engaging in pleasant conversation. “At 7 p.m., with eighteen members present, the session opened without any formalities, that is, without reading and approving the minutes of the previous session.”⁶ “The session began without ceremony. Those present were members who wished to get together, and the lamp of style was lit.”⁷ In this sense, one of the most complete descriptions of what actually took place during Petalogical Society meetings was provided by Machado de Assis in one of his articles in the series “By Chance” published in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro four years after Paula Brito’s death. Although lengthy, this extract uniquely evokes the spirit of that society:

This book [Lembranças (Memories), by José Antonio] is a memoir—it is a memoir of the Petalogical Society in its earliest days, Paula Brito’s Petalógica—the Procópio Café its day—where all sorts of people gathered, politicians, poets, playwrights, artists, travelers, mere amateurs, friends, and curiosity seekers—where all topics were discussed, from the removal of a ministry to the pirouette of a fashionable dancer; where everything was debated, from the high C from the chest of [the Italian tenor] Tamberlick to the speeches of the marquess of Paraná, truly neutral ground where a budding writer came across a councilor, where an Italian singer conversed with a former minister.

Reading José Antonio’s book makes me nostalgic for the Petalogical Society—not because it contains all the characters in that association; I miss it because it was in the golden age of the original Petalógica that José Antonio’s poems were written and the first edition of Lembranças was born.

Everyone had their family at home; this was their family away from home—le ménage en ville—entering meant taking part in the same supper (the supper here is a metaphor) because the Lycurgus of that republic saw it that way, and that is how everyone who crossed that threshold saw it as well.

Do you want to know the latest news of parliament? You just had to go to the Petalógica. Of the new Italian opera? The new book just published? E***’s most recent ball? The most recent play by Macedo or Alencar? The state of the market? Rumors of all sorts? You didn’t need to go any further—just go to the Petalógica.

Scattered all over the surface of the city, the petalogicians would come and go there, just passing through, picking up and spreading gossip, analyzing rumors, sniffing out news, all that without taking a minute away from their own business.

Just as conservatives and liberals enjoyed free entry, lagruistas and chartonistas did so as well; on the same bench, at times, they discussed the superiority of the divas of the day and the advantages of the additional act; the sorbets of José Thomaz and confidential appointments equally warmed people’s spirits; it was a veritable pèle mèle of all things and all men.8

The press revealed few clues as to the identity of those men. Marmota fluminense generally used pseudonyms when referring to petalogicians, such as Carijó, Papagaio, and Cubatão.⁹ There was also a curious method for admitting new members. For example, a captain in the reserves was such a joker and liar that he merited a recommendation from a petalogician. On one occasion, the military man had told him that after coating the razor-sharp edge of his sword with oil to prevent it from rusting, the following day he found over five hundred severed tongues from mice that had licked the oil during the night.¹⁰ Similarly, for several months, from September 1853 to February 1855, readers of Paula Brito’s bi-weekly were able to read, with some interruptions, Memória sobre as manias do Mundo da Lua (Memoir of the manias of the Lunar World), written “in order to obtain the honorable title of Member” of the Petalogical Society. It was an anonymous account of a fantastic voyage by the author, his wife, and daughter through the routes of magnetism to the Lunar World. There, with the eye of an ethnographer, the traveler observed the customs of the Lunatics, “weak, bloated, and yellow folk” and watch a play—the comedy A. B. C. do amor, ou, A escola da roça (ABC of love, or The country school), which was also published in Marmota fluminense.¹¹

TABLE 10. List of some Petalogicians found in Rio de Janeiro newspapers

Sources:

1. “Notícias diversas,” Correio mercantil, 17 Sept. 1859, p. 1 (Thanks to the city’s public sanitation company containing a list of some members of the Petalogical Society).

2. “Discurso pronunciado na igreja do Santíssimo Sacramento, no dia 15 de janeiro de 1862, por ocasião da missa e funeral que a sociedade Petalógica mandou celebrar em comemoração a alma do seu finado fundador e sócio o Sr. Francisco de Paula Brito,” Correio mercantil, 16 Jan. 1862.

3. Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 22 Sept. 1863, p. 3 (Announcement of a mass for the soul of João Caetano dos Santos ordered by the Petalogical Society).

4. “O Carnaval,” Gazeta de notícias, 21 Feb. 1887, pp. 1–2 (Memorial text by Mello Morais Filho about Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1850s).

5. “O Sete de Setembro,” A marmota, 16 Sept. 1859, p. 1 (Transcript of a chronicle from Revista popular signed Carlos, certainly Carlos José do Rosário, identified as a member of the society).

6. “Herculano Lima,” Gazeta de notícia, 1 Feb. 1888, p. 1 (Obituary for Herculano Luiz de Lima).

There are indications that the society had over a hundred members,12 which corroborates Machado de Assis’s report that petalogicians were “scattered all over the surface of the city,” However, only the major daily newspapers occasionally make it possible to identify some of those individuals. Consisting of twenty-three names, the list shown in Table 10 is quite short. However, mainly combined with information provided by Almanak Laemmert, it gives us an idea of the backgrounds of some of the associates.

Table 10 demonstrates that the society’s membership included well-known men from the literary world, such as novelists Joaquim Manuel de Macedo and Antonio Gonçalves Teixeira e Souza, both of whom were published by Paula Brito, as well as eminent politicians like Eusébio de Queirós and José Maria da Silva Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco. However, the Petalogical Society also welcomed doctors, lawyers, civil servants, teachers, actors, and musicians.

In addition to the meetings held at Paula Brito’s bookshop, where these men told tall tales and enjoyed a good laugh, there were times when the Petalogical Society engaged in philanthropic activities. This was the case in April 1855, when two enslaved children were manumitted through a subscription among its members.13 In January 1859, the society organized a benefit at the São Pedro Theater for Filipo Tati, an Italian opera singer who was experiencing serious hardship in Rio de Janeiro.¹⁴ However, in the 1850s the Petalogical Society began playing an increasingly prominent role in the daily life of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in the two most important events in the city’s calendar: Carnival and civic festivities commemorating Brazil’s Independence.

Regarding Carnival, the Petalogical Society’s participation coincided with the ramifications of an official attempt to do away with the traditional Entrudo. According to historian Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha, who studies the samba of Rio de Janeiro, the Entrudo could be summed up as the “custom of getting wet and filthy with wax limes or satsumas filled with scented water, using needles, wooden bowls, tubes, and even bath tubs—every sort of container imaginable that could hold water and be thrown.” In addition to the water sports, it involved “the use of talcum powder, ‘vermilion,’ paint, flour, eggs, and even mud, tar, and fetid liquids, including urine or ‘wastewater.’”¹⁵ Like Pedro II, Paula Brito loved the merrymaking that was considered by many to conflict completely with the ideals of civilization that some intended to impose on the Empire of the Tropics. The publisher was so fond of the Entrudo that he must have been seen soaking wet, throwing and being hit by wax limes during the revels. At least, an article published in Marmota fluminense after the first police onslaught against those festivities during the 1854 Carnival allows us to form that mental picture.¹⁶

Paula Brito’s carnivalesque side was certainly not unknown to his contemporaries, as he also employed his poetic talents to write lyrics for its songs—lundus and modinhas. One of them, the lundu “A marrequinha” (The little duck), set to music by the maestro Francisco Manuel da Silva, was sold “exclusively” at his bookshop in early August 1853. In a playful tone, the lyrics alluded to the curvaceous lines of young ladies:

The flirtatious eyes

Of the charming young lady

Make me think of

Her lovely little duck

Young lady, have no fear,

Release the duck,

If not I will die,

I will be no more.

If dancing Brazilian style

The young lady moves her body

How she plays by jumping

Her lovely little duck.

Young lady, have no fear, etc.17

The 1854 ban on the Entrudo was one of several repressive measures carried out by Alexandre Joaquim de Siqueira, a judge in Vassouras parish who had become Rio’s chief of police in April 1853. The new chief’s eagerness to regulate the city was soon felt by different segments of society. First, by sellers of lottery tickets, who were forbidden to sell their wares in the streets of Rio de Janeiro; then, by coachmen, all of whom were supposed to register with the police department and undergo tests of aptitude and skill.¹⁸ The edict that decreed the end of the Entrudo was first published in the press in January 1854, warning revelers that “anyone who takes part will be fined four to twelve [thousand réis], and if they cannot pay it, will spend two to eight days in jail.” Slaves caught enjoying themselves could be sentenced to up to “eight days in jail if their master does not have them punished in the prison with one hundred lashes.” The edict was also clear when ordering the destruction of all wax limes found by the police.¹⁹

Some people went to jail during Carnival because they insisted on taking part in the Entrudo.²⁰ However, opinions differed as to the repressive measures. Some believed that they were a sign of progress because, as one journalist remarked, “the masked balls for Carnival were magnificent; from the barbaric game of limes everyone has gone on to [engage] in the entertainments of civilized countries.”²¹ Nevertheless, some disagreed: “Our Entrudo was no good because innocent little oranges gave some profit to [Brazilians]. Then came the foreign masks, the dominoes, and the immoral masked balls.”22 As we have seen, Paula Brito was most certainly a fan of the Entrudo. In Marmota fluminense, he lamented the suppression of the revels, observing that he felt a “strong attachment to the Entrudo,” and adding, “we feel [this] in our soul, because for us, there is nothing better.” The publisher believed that the ban on the Entrudo directly affected the poor residents of the capital: “In Rio de Janeiro, the upper class and middle classes have a surfeit of entertainments; but the poor folk—the people—per se, lead a dog’s life; they eat, because they must eat to live; and they sleep because they have nowhere to kill time: aside from that, they are permitted no other enjoyments.”²³ However, despite the best efforts of Chief Siqueira and his men, with every passing year it became clear that the Entrudo had not died. To the joy of people like the publisher Paula Brito, the revels had “nine lives.”²⁴

The city’s first major Carnival associations emerged in the void left by the police chief’s bans in 1854. This was the case with the Congresso das Sumidades Carnavalescas (Congress of Carnival Luminaries), a society created by a group of young writers and poets linked to the Correio mercantil.²⁵ The Sumidades Carnavalescas’ objective was clear: “the enthronement of European carnival . . . whose splendid purple [will drive away] forever the ragged cloak of the cursed Entrudo.”²⁶ During the Carnival of 1855 they paraded opulently through the streets of Rio for the first time, displaying the “sumptuousness and brilliance of the costumes . . . all historical, all with the greatest propriety.” Although it failed to exterminate the Entrudo, the Congresso das Sumidades Carnavalescas inspired the creation of the Sociedade União Veneziana (Venetian Union Society), which paraded along similar lines for the first time during the 1857 Carnival.²⁷

In 1854, the Petalogical Society planned to present the public with “a triumphal float” the following year, possibly inspired by the innovations promised by the Congresso das Sumidades Carnavalescas. However, despite the enthusiasm of over one hundred of its members,²⁸ the society did not parade through the streets, instead focusing its activities on the area outside its headquarters on Praça da Constituição. From that time forward, the doors of the Petalogical Society were an obligatory stop for the parades of all the main Carnival associations. These occasions were generally well documented in the newspapers, such as the Carnival of 1857, when the Sociedade União Veneziana and Congresso das Sumidades Carnavalescas stopped there, while “numerous rockets rose in the air amid enthusiastic cries and thunderous applause.”29

Such congratulations were to a certain extent natural, since many petalogicians belonged to the Congresso das Sumidades Carnavalescas.³⁰ However, because of the crisis that struck the Dous de Dezembro company that year, the Carnival of 1857 was not the happiest of times for Paula Brito. “Due to lack of money, the heat, the yellow fever [epidemic], and many other circumstances, all of this passed us by,” wrote the publisher, who confessed that he had no heart for the festivities: “Because we have not left the house, we find no pleasure in any of these things, for our minds are tirelessly occupied by others.”³¹ The Petalogical Society halted its activities for a few months after Dous de Dezembro went bankrupt. Its meetings only resumed the following year, after Paula Brito had reopened the bookstore. On September 7, 1858, five months after the resumption of its meetings, the Petalogical Society played a more active role in the civic celebrations of Brazil’s Independence.³²

As Hendrik Kraay indicates in a book on the political ramifications of civic celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, in 1848 the number of national holidays was reduced from seven to three days: March 25, September 7, and December 2. The historian points out that this apparent streamlining was possibly linked to the rise of the Conservative cabinet that marked the beginning of that party’s dominance in the ensuing years. Thus, establishing as national celebration days the anniversaries of the Constitution and Brazilian Independence and the Emperor`s birthday followed a specific interpretation and political instrumentalization of the festivities.³³ In the case of September 7, between mid-1850 and mid-1860 unofficial celebrations flourished in Rio de Janeiro, organized by civic associations. The first of these, established in 1855, was the Ipiranga Society, which was linked to the Liberal Party and brought together nearly nine hundred members. In 1856 and 1857, the celebrations organized by the Ipiranga Society included nocturnal lighting, bands, fireworks, artillery salutes, parades, and a Te Deum. This initiative was such a success that it inspired the creation of similar associations, such as the Sociedade Independência Brasileira (Brazilian Independence Society), Sociedade Festival 7 de Setembro (Seventh of September Festival Society) and Sociedade Independência Juvenil (Young People’s Independence Society).³⁴

Also inspired by the Ipiranga Society, according to Kraay, the Petalogical Society also played an active role in the Independence Day festivities. Thus, on September 7, 1858, the Rio de Janeiro press reported that the petalogicians had gathered in “a permanent session at their headquarters in Largo da Constituição, which was brilliantly lit and adorned with Brazilian flags, flowers, patriotic couplets, etc.”35 The following year, the society attracted attention by lighting its headquarters entirely with gas lamps, according to a correspondent from Rio Grande do Sul who was passing through the city.³⁶ Not only that, but the petalogicians illuminated the entire Praça da Constituição in the same fashion. This was a somewhat expensive gesture that was nevertheless feasible thanks to the contributions that poured in from every part of Rio de Janeiro, including Quinta da Boa Vista, the imperial palace, from the purses of Pedro II and Empress Teresa Christina. Some criticized the fact that Paula Brito and company should have importuned their majesties with a request for money for the lighting project. Thus, in the columns of Correio mercantil, a reader signing himself Epaminondas registered this protest:

FIGURE 23. Constitution Square shortly after the unveiling of an equestrian statue of Pedro I in 1862

We will be permitted to criticize the procedure of the worthy members of the Petalogical society when they asked Their Imperial Majesties for a financial contribution to the festivities. . . . Church feasts, rockets, and cherry bombs are in fashion [illegible], spending money on that and abandoning the unfortunate who are in such need of the aid of others.37

On the other hand, a columnist for Revista popular, Carlos José do Rosário, who has been identified as a petalogician, defended the society in one of his fortnightly columns: “With limited resources, it first turned to it friends to help it with its efforts to illuminate Praça da Constituição. . . . The Petalogical Society has performed a blameless act, highly praiseworthy and unmerited [sic] of any criticism.”³⁸

After Paula Brito’s death, the Petalogical society also took part in festivities such as the unveiling of the controversial equestrian statue of Pedro I in Praça da Constituição. It was controversial because it was not just a decorative monument portraying the first emperor mounted on a handsome steed and holding the constitution in his hand, surrounded by Amerindians symbolizing Brazil’s main rivers. Above all, the statue was a specific interpretation of the nation’s history, according to which its independence was viewed as the work of Pedro I and the constitution a mere concession from that monarch. Therefore, the active participation of Conservatives in the construction of that monument and the staunch opposition of the Liberals regarding its political significance set the tone for the intense debate in the newspapers that marked the unveiling of the statue.³⁹

Hewing closely to the political leanings of its departed founder, the Petalogical Society sided with the Conservatives by celebrating the monument. In fact, its members lavished praise on the French sculptor Louis Rochet. In the evening of March 22, 1862, the petalogicians were invited to gather outside the society’s headquarters “to attend the event they intend to hold on that same day for Mr. Rochet, for his magnificent work on the equestrian statue.” On that occasion, when the anthem of the arts was sung and Eusébio de Queirós, the president of the committee charged with commissioning the monument, gave a speech, Rochet was presented with a bust of himself sculpted by Chaves Pinheiro. Shortly thereafter, on April 1, the Frenchman received the title of honorary member of the Petalogical Society.⁴⁰

Nevertheless, although the Petalogical Society had inspired the creation of other associations, such as the Palestra Fluminense Society in Rio de Janeiro and the Petalogical Societies of Niterói and Pernambuco,⁴¹ all indications are that the organization founded by Paula Brito did not live on for many years after his death. In Diário do Rio de Janeiro, Machado de Assis once again reported on the Petalogical Society’s participation in celebrations of Independence in 1864, the year that it ordered masses for its founder’s soul.42 Soon, references to it became increasingly scarce until they disappeared entirely. The society’s existence ended up being intertwined with that of Paula Brito, making them inextricably associated elements.⁴³

However, the Petalogical Society’s activities were not limited to lively sessions, carnivals, civic festivities, and occasional philanthropy. As we have seen, if political alliances were vital to the publisher’s business, the society was no less important. “So, you see, my friend, that this useful institution will have produced no small number of benefits,” Paula Brito observed in 1853. “It gives rise to patrons, projects, employees, jobs, everything, in short, that it, those who turn to it, or those who take part in it could want.”⁴⁴ In fact, Paula Brito turned to the Petalogical Society as early as October 1860 to carry out another publishing venture, the last in his lifetime: the Auxiliary Fund for Dramatic and Musical Compositions.