The importance of beating Ernesto: making the facts fit the story in Eça's A Ilustre Casa de Ramires

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

 1. All further references to A Ilustre Casa de Ramires will be made to the edition listed and indicated simply by page numbers in parentheses in the text.

 2. Of all of these analyses adopting this perspective, Pinto Coelho's shows the greatest level of sophistication in its argument, recognising that ‘a ironia queirosiana poderá … fazer-nos duvidar da possível regeneração da personagem central … Mais uma vez Eça deixa que a ambiguidade se instale e que os próprios arquetipos e símbolos ligados ao esquema da ascensão possam ser lidos de duas formas’ (1996, p. 231).

 3. Cruz (2000, p. 149) and Pinto Coelho recognise the cruelty of the treatment meted out to Ernesto by Gonçalo, with the latter critic pointing out in addition that the weapon used is ‘inferior à espada pois, embora se afirme como fonte de energia, falta-lhe o lado místico que se associa à pureza espiritual da espada’ (1996, p. 231). Padilha (2000, p. 177) also stresses the excessive force used here and sees a parallel with the widespread use of the whip in Portuguese Africa to exercise control over black workers, thus creating a deeper-lying parallel between the defeat of Ernesto and Gonçalo's subsequent move to Mozambique, as well as casting a much more negative light on this period in his life than that offered by the narrative of Maria de Mendonça at the end of the novel.

 4. The relevant lines spoken by Inês de Castro in Camões (at Canto III, Stanza 127 of Os Lusíadas) are as follows: ‘“A estas criancinhas tem respeito, / Pois o não tens à morte escura dela; / Mova-te a piedade sua e minha, / Pois te não move a culpa que não tinha”’ (1992, p. 90).

 5. Earle (1993, p. 518) points out that even this unlikely story (in which Gonçalo apparently continues to express belief, even when faced with the sight of the bones of his ancestor in his tomb [pp. 230–231]) is largely derived from Luís Augusto Rebelo da Silva's Ódio Velho Não Cansa of 1848, a similar claim to that also made by Earle (1993, p. 518) regarding Gonçalo's own literary ‘creation’, A Torre de D. Ramires, where he suggests that the episode of the death of the Bastard of Baião is taken from Herculano's História de Portugal. In this sense, Pageaux is incorrect to declare that the particular method of the Bastard's death in Gonçalo's tale is ‘fruto da imaginação pessoal de Gonçalo’ (1990, p. 194), although he is correct to point out that this aspect of his story at least is not copied from his uncle Duarte's work.

 6. For an association of Gonçalo's concerns in this respect with a possible incestuous desire for his own sister lurking behind his wish to protect her from the advances made to her by André, see Padilha (1989, pp. 27–31), as well as Pageaux (1990, p. 193).

 7. The Bastard of Baião, as Gonçalo's fictional transformation of Ernesto, is said to possess a ‘beleza loura de fidalgo godo’ (p. 120); Lourenço's insult in calling Lopo a ‘marrano’ within the story (p. 124) should be viewed in the context of Gonçalo's need to denigrate as an interloper a man who is simultaneously the object of his fear and his fascination.

 8. A precise correlation between the events of the novel and those surrounding the conflict of interests between Britain and Portugal in Africa at the time is impossible in view of the vague and, indeed, contradictory allusions to historical events within the text when these are studied in detail. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that A Ilustre Casa de Ramires is set in the period around 1890, and, of course, it was written during the 1890s, when the author could not have helped but be aware of the wider ramifications of all allusions to Africa within it.

 9. As is noted by Pinto Coelho (1996, p. 249), hardly any critical attention has been paid to this allusion in previous work on the novel. Pinto Coelho goes on to discuss the relations between the two works at some length (1996, pp. 249–257). Padilha (2006, pp. 40–42) also makes brief mention of the possible links between the two texts, although her reading of Haggard is based primarily on the translation of it which was either carried out by Eça or revised by him; for a discussion of the issues surrounding the attribution of this translation to Eça himself as well as some of the more significant changes made to the text in preparing it for a Portuguese-reading public, see Freeland (2007).

10. Pinto Coelho (1993, p. 595) points out that much of the key action of Haggard's novel takes place in Mashonaland, one of the territories from which the British Ultimatum effectively expelled Portugal, and suggests that part of the instant success of the work amongst the Victorian British reading public was due to its justification of the principles which informed the Berlin Conference of 1885 (those relating to effective occupation of territory, which were more favourable to stronger powers such as Britain) rather than those defended by Portugal, of historical claims to possession (1993, p. 593).

11. Pakenham (1991, p. 392) reports that, by as early as 1892, the hollowness of the rewards resulting from Cecil Rhodes’ opportunistic land-grab associated with the Ultimatum was becoming apparent to both the British government and to the shareholders of his own charter company.

12. This remedy is wrapped up in an old document said to date from the period of D. Sebastião. It might be thought potentially ominous in terms of later developments in the novel that Gonçalo does not appear to see any relevance for him in a document written shortly before the young king's disastrous departure for Africa (p. 31).

13. Sousa makes a particularly pertinent comment on this point: ‘A part of that outlook had it, in fact, that there was no content in Africa itself. … That conflation comes grounded in the presumption of absence of any African content that might intervene and create different conditions for metropolitan modernity and colonial activity’ (2000, p. 76).

14. The reference to the controversy earlier in the century surrounding Herculano's denial of the factual truth of the legends surrounding the divine revelation given to Afonso Henriques before the battle of Ourique in 1139 is prefaced by Gonçalo's dream of his ancestors, where he sees one of them pass on to him the sword used at that battle (p. 279).

15. Cândido (2000, p. 22) also notes the lightness of touch of the character, which he says bestows a comic element on him, as with Teodorico in Eça's earlier novel A Relíquia (1887); however, this element of the text should not detract from the serious conclusions to be drawn from the undoubted character defects of the novel's protagonist.