At the south-western corner of central Lisbon, Rua do Alecrim climbs straight and steep from the waterfront area around Cais do Sodré up to the Chiado. Most of the stone-built shops and offices that line it are old enough to remember the days when coaches bearing characters from the novels of Eça de Queiroz used to rattle past their doors. A short distance from the top end of Rua do Alecrim is Largo Barão de Quintela, a small square with, in its centre, a grassy hummock, a clump of palm trees and a statue of a bewildered man.
His reaction is not without cause, for he seems to have found himself unexpectedly clasping a woman, naked above the hips and diaphanously veiled below, who leans back and gazes up at him with a quietly triumphant expression.
The man is Eça de Queiroz, and the usual interpretation of the statue is that the naked represents truth, i.e. Realism, and the covered represents fantasy, i.e. Romanticism, the two poles of the literary dispute that played such an important role in his career.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the publication of novels in serial form in newspapers or magazines was common practice in Western Europe and the United States. In some countries the serial was a more frequent road to readership than individual publication.
Portuguese readers avidly embraced foreign, especially French, serial publications (roman-feuilletons) and by 1870 had become aware of a new style: the crime and detection novel.
In the summer of that year, José Maria de Eça de Queiroz and José Duarte Ramalho Ortigão, aged 24 and 33 respectively, decided to try their hands at just such a novel, to be published as instalments in the newspaper, Diário de Notícias, with the intention of stirring up Lisbon, which they saw as a city overcome by inertia, and showing its people how literary styles were changing. The two had met several years previously and shared a passion for a move away from classical romanticism and towards modernist realism. Neither had previously written a novel but both had experience as journalists. At the time they discussed their plan, Ramalho was on the staff of the Academy of Sciences in Lisbon, and Eça had been appointed Administrator of the Municipal Council in Leiria, a full day’s travel from the capital.
Eça and Ramalho lost no time in calling upon Eduardo Coelho, editor of the Diário de Notícias. As well as being its editor, he had founded the paper himself only six years before, and, as one would expect, he readily agreed to take part in a project that would boost circulation.
Eça was not an unknown quantity. He was well enough connected through his father to have been sent by Eduardo Coelho to accompany the Count of Resende to the ceremonial opening of the Suez Canal in November 1869, and to write news chronicles for publication on his return to Lisbon. The four reports that Eça brought back show that Coelho had chosen well. Eça clearly had a talent for telling a colourful story, and the experiences he had, along with the images he retained in his mind, were now forming themselves into aspects of a novel. The Mystery of the Sintra Road contains phrases that are hardly changed from the Suez Chronicles.
Out of whatever arrangements Eça and Ramalho made came O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra (The Mystery of the Sintra Road). It was unlike any serial novel that had been published. In most cases, instalments were printed monthly, though a few appeared weekly, and unless the author had an established reputation, they were chapters of a completed work. The Mystery of the Sintra Road appeared daily, and its superbly confident authors wrote the instalment the previous day with clear ideas as to style but only a vague idea as to where the plot was heading.
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Eça de Queiroz was born on 25 November, 1845, in Póvoa de Varzim, north of Oporto. His parents, both from influential families, were not married at the time of his birth. Eça was nearly four years old when they finally married, and he did not live with them until he was twenty-one.
Ramalho Ortigão was born in Oporto on 24 October 1836. He was privately educated at his grandmother’s estate by his great-uncle and godfather. Ramalho briefly attended the course in Law at the University of Coimbra before he decided to take a position as a teacher of French at the Colégio da Lapa in Oporto, where his father was head-master. There, his work brought him into contact with Eça de Queiroz who was a boarder at the Colégio from 1855 to 1861. For at least some of that period, Ramalho was Eça’s French master. At the same time he began to submit copy to the newspaper Jornal do Porto.
Literary Lisbon during the 1860s was a kaleidoscope of ideas and theories, a city where quickly printed pamphlets and more substantial newsletters circulated, and meetings – often rowdy and inconclusive – were commonplace. Ramalho Ortigão briefly became the centre of attention in 1865 when he challenged a friend and fellow-poet to a duel with swords for calling him a coward. Honour was satisfied when the first blood (Ramalho’s) was drawn. In the same year he published Literatura de Hoje (Today’s Literature), a polemic aimed at the conservatism of the older writers and the disrespect of the young.
In 1866, after graduating in Law at Coimbra, Eça de Queiroz went to Lisbon intending to practise both law and journalism. An assignment as a lawyer found him on his way to the provincial city of Évora. Once there, he took the opportunity to distribute the first edition of what he intended to be a bi-monthly political newsletter. At the end of the case, he abandoned the newsletter and returned to Lisbon to write for the Gazeta de Portugal, the periodical in which his first published work had appeared.
The following year, Ramalho temporarily left his family in Oporto and moved to Lisbon, where he and Eça renewed their acquaintance and a lifelong friendship developed.
All this time, the Questão Coimbrã (Coimbra Debate) – an amorphous movement to discuss social changes and trends in literature – continued to ferment in the background. It had been bubbling since 1862 as former Coimbra students tried to perpetuate their salad days by taking their theories to Lisbon. The two men became vital members of groups of like-minded others who argued the concerns of the Questão.
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On Sunday 24 July, 1870, a lengthy letter to the editor appeared in the Diário de Notícias. It was apparently from a doctor who had been kidnapped at pistol-point, blindfolded, bundled into a coach and taken to the site of what looked to be a serious crime. He had been released unharmed, but through fear of retribution for having written to the newspaper, he had not dared to sign his letter.
It was not an authentic letter; it was the first instalment of the Mystery of the Sintra Road, and it made an immediate impression on the public. Further instalments appeared in the Diário de Notícias every day until 27 September, 1870. In all, there were sixty-seven including ‘The Final Letter’ that formally identified Eça and Ramalho as the authors of The Mystery of the Sintra Road. Evidently, the instalments used for the newspaper serial were consolidated into the 49 sections and chapters of the book version.
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From the day the truth came out as to the authors of the serial, controversy surrounded the question of ‘who wrote what’. Eça de Queiroz’s standard response when the question was put to him, seems to have been (no first-hand instances can be quoted) that they took it in turns.
The received wisdom, based on a study by writer and philosopher José Sampaio Bruno in 1885, was that Ramalho Ortigão wrote only three chapters: F.’s letter to the Doctor and A.M.C.’s two separate contributions. Sampaio based his conclusions on an analysis of the two writers’ very different styles, describing Ramalho Ortigão’s as ‘stiff’ and ‘dull’.
To state categorically that Ramalho wrote just three chapters is to over-simplify the matter, and seems intended to denigrate Ramalho’s role. It is a rare duo whose members play equal parts.
From the point of view of the translators of this book, we certainly noticed differences of style and vocabulary in those three chapters, and in other places such as the soliloquy on the death of Carmen, and the ‘dreadful letter’ that Rytmel sent to the Countess, but we both agree that Eça dominated the project and left his mark on every page.
Within ten years, José Maria de Eça de Queiroz had developed a literary style that blended Realism and Romanticism, coloured with social satire and ironic humour, and he was being taken very seriously indeed, having published The Crime of Father Amaro, Cousin Bazílio and The Mandarin, as well as serving as Portuguese Consul in three countries. Later works included The Relic and The Maias (considered to be his finest novel). In all, Eça published six novels/novellas during his lifetime, and a further seven were published posthumously. On his death in 1900, he was honoured with a state funeral as Portugal’s greatest nineteenth-century novelist.
Ramalho Ortigão became one of the principal figures in the so-called ‘Generation of the Seventies’ which was dedicated to bringing the culture of an underdeveloped Portugal into line with that of the more progressive European countries – and then back-pedalling for fear the pan-European approach would rob Portugal of its individuality! Ramalho died in 1915 after a successful career as a poet, journalist and political writer.
After appearing in the Diário de Notícias to great public acclaim in 1870, The Mystery of the Sintra Road was twice published in book form during the years immediately following, and for a third time in 1884. It is still in print.
Despite certain defects that come from the breakneck speed of its writing and publication, The Mystery of the Sintra Road is an entertaining story with a good measure of ironic humour and social observation. We cannot accept the authors’ (doubtless tongue-in-cheek) description of their work as ‘atrocious’. Deliberately clichéd at times, it is perceptive and moving at others. It is also an important part of the Eça de Queiroz canon.
Nick Phillips