Melo (Dom Francisco Manuel de)

We have already dealt with this illustrious writer in the article on Robert Machin, because it was he who, in his third Epanaphora, gave the widest currency to the poetic and well-known tale whose protagonist is that legendary figure. Other reasons, however, call for a fuller account of the author of the Carta de Guia de Casados and the Apologos Dialogaes, and so we return to him here.

Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, the second son of the illustrious discoverer of Madeira, was the third captain of the island of São Miguel, having bought that important donatary captaincy (donataria) from João Soares. Rui Gonçalves’s second son, Antão Rodrigues da Câmara, who had married a noblewoman from the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), founded a great entailed estate on the island of São Miguel, whose present representative is the Count of Silvã; and it is to this distinguished family that the great writer Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo belongs.

Concerning this Antão Rodrigues da Câmara, we find the following curious episode in the ‘Island History’ (Historia Insulana) of Father António Cordeiro:

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. . . and he became so fine a horseman that on one occasion, when he was riding with many others escorting King Manuel I, who was also on horseback in the court city of Lisbon, an Indian happened to pass in front of them with an elephant that he was taking to show, and at that sight all the horses, even the King’s own, took fright and bolted, and some riders fell; but Antão Rodrigues so mastered his horse that, charging the elephant, he made his horse put its mouth on the elephant’s haunch, and, giving the beast a light stroke with his cutlass, he turned to the King saying that it was nothing: and the King at once ordered his master of the horse to buy that horse from Antão Rodrigues at any price; Antão Rodrigues immediately offered it, but as a gift, yes, and for no price at all; and as the King would not agree to this, nor would Antão Rodrigues sell it, he returned with the horse to the island from which he had brought it, already trained for him . . .

Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo refers to his ancestry, tracing it back to the discoverer of Madeira:

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. . . João Gonçalves Zarco, a man famous among our people, for, leaving aside the more ancient houses, of which no record is kept because they are uncertain, we have had few men in Portugal with such opulent descendants, to whom three counts of this surname owe their male line: Calheta (‘small cove’), Vila Franca and Atouguia. . . And through marriages 21 titles of this kingdom descend from João Gonçalves . . . And since my testimony does not seem invalid in matters concerning him, it is right that I should count myself in the very list of his successors, with no less claim than some I have mentioned; for, apart from those who hold the entails (morgados) of his male lines, I am the one who enjoys the greatest entail of the Câmara family, founded by António Rodrigues da Câmara, who was the maternal grandfather of my paternal grandfather and grandson of João Gonçalves da Câmara, son of his second son Rui Gonçalves da Câmara, lord of the island of São Miguel. . .’.

Among the large and brilliant progeny, spread across mainland Portugal, the Azores, Madeira and Brazil, that descends from the great navigator and discoverer of Madeira, there is certainly no figure as distinguished as Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo. According to the testimony of his contemporaries he was the greatest talent of his time, and he was also a most remarkable writer, an illustrious soldier and a skilful politician and diplomat.

Dr Azevedo notes Melo’s deliberate inaccuracy in making himself a descendant of Zarco in the legitimate male line, when it is certain that Luís Gonçalves da Câmara (see vol. 1, p. 206) had no issue from his only marriage, to Dona Maria Bettencourt.

In his notable work D. Francisco de Mello, Edgar Prestage, dealing with the writer’s exile to Brazil, describes the illustrious writer’s passage through this island in the following terms:

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On Saturday, 17 April 1655, the fleet left Lisbon with thirty-six ships, and in four days it reached Madeira, where it was to take on the Company’s wines. News arrived there that an English fleet had put to sea with more than forty galleons and twelve thousand men, intending to cross to Brazil. Doubts at once arose as to whether, in view of this circumstance, the King’s regulations (regimento) should be obeyed, which ordered the general to proceed to Rio de Janeiro with the largest galleons, dividing the rest of the fleet into two squadrons, one bound for Pernambuco and the other for Bahia. The senior commanders, among them no doubt Dom Francisco Manuel, were called to a council. Opinions differed, but in the end it was resolved that the fleet should keep to its course for Cape Verde and gather information there about the English fleet.

‘The stay of almost a month in Madeira must have been agreeable to the writer, for it gave him the opportunity to see the natural beauties of the island. These certainly held a particular interest for him, not only because the island had been occupied by his ancestor João Gonçalves Zarco, who became its captain and the founder of the city of Funchal, but also because a year earlier he himself had recounted, in the 3rd Epanaphora, the supposed discovery by the runaway lovers Roberto Machim and Anna de Arfet. Leaving Madeira on 15 May, the fleet sighted the island of La Palma on the 19th and that of Cape Verde on the 26th....','

As already stated, Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo deals with the discovery of the island of Madeira in the third part of the Epanaphoras, which became very well known here after Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo included long extracts from it in one of his notes to the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra).

This narrative, with its florid and imaginative language, the implausibility of many of the facts and episodes it presents, and even its frequent digressions wholly unrelated to the subject, gives us the clear impression of a description of one of those fantastic love adventures with which the medieval romances of chivalry are filled. At first glance, and without any lengthy critical study of the text, it is evident that the illustrious writer did not write history but merely produced a work of pure romantic fiction. Soldier and poet, man of the world and gallant, of fiery and ardent imagination, he let himself be set alight by the lava of his fantasy. He so impressed the minds of his readers that, two and a half centuries later, his narrative still attracts, if not fervent believers, at least impressionable souls who find true allure and charm in it. Various prose writers and poets have found in it a source of inspiration for some of their finest literary compositions.

It was not Melo, however, who invented the story of Robert Machin, for before him, beginning with António Galvão (1563), several writers had referred to it. He sought to give it the standing of historical truth by basing his narrative on a manuscript which he claimed to possess, written by Francisco Alcoforado, one of the companions of João Gonçalves Zarco. Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo himself, who treats Dom Francisco Manuel with so little indulgence, admits that he may have been deceived in good faith regarding the existence of this manuscript. Yet there is not the slightest doubt that he gave free rein to his ardent imagination in the account of the discovery of Madeira that he left us in his third Epanaphora.

As for the Relation Historique de la découverte de l'isle de Madère, published in Paris in 1671, whose preface claims it to be Alcoforado’s manuscript itself, it is nothing but a scandalous literary fraud, as Dr Álvaro de Azevedo amply demonstrates. Melo, however, bears not the slightest blame for it, since the illustrious writer died in 1666 and the Relation was published in 1671.

It is possible that, even in Melo’s time, word had spread, however vaguely, that the Madeira archipelago had been discovered in the 14th century, so that Zarco and his companions would not have been the first to land on these solitary shores. Over time this assertion has been supported by weighty arguments, without the fact diminishing the glory of Zarco as navigator, discoverer and first coloniser of Madeira.

In 1873 Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo was the first to bring to light the probable idea that the cession of Madeira to England had been contemplated, and perhaps even negotiated, as an integral part of the dowry of Queen Catherine.

In one of his annotations to the work of Gaspar Frutuoso, Dr Azevedo writes: ‘And the queen regent Dona Luísa, since any price seemed cheap to her to secure this marriage for the infanta, was secretly preparing the sacrifice of yet another valuable and coveted Portuguese colony, should it prove necessary: that of the island of Madeira… There is no record of this fact in the historians of the time, whether Portuguese or English, not even in the memoirs of Lord Clarendon, who deals at length with the said marriage and who, as chancellor to Charles II, even took an effective part in the diplomatic negotiations for it. So cautious was Queen Luísa that she managed to conceal her plan to cede the island of Madeira in this way; but, from the evidence we have found, we are convinced that such a plan really existed.’

In support of his assertion, Dr Rodrigues de Azevedo then enlarges on some extremely interesting considerations. Although they do not amount to decisive arguments or fully conclusive reasons, they are nonetheless conjectures and presumptions of great weight in favour of the idea of ceding this island, had England demanded this further sacrifice of Portugal. We do not reproduce Dr Azevedo’s sensible reflections in this place (lugar), because of their excessive length and because they can easily be found on p. 381 and following of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’.

The same illustrious annotator also maintains, though with less weighty arguments, that Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo collaborated with Queen Luisa de Guzmán in the plan for that cession by writing his Epanaphora and presenting Madeira as discovered by Englishmen, so as to make its handover to England more feasible and less odious to the Portuguese. It is only fair to hear Edgar Prestage, the learned biographer of Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo: ‘… the annotator of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ of Gaspar Frutuoso alleges that Dom Francisco, having received the legend of the island’s discovery by the two English lovers Roberto Machim and Anna de Arfet, turned it into a romance in order to popularise this story and make the handover of Madeira to Charles II of England less hard on Portuguese pride, should that prove necessary. Now in our view this argument is somewhat forced, not to say fantastic, and Mr A. R. de Azevedo, in order to sustain it, has to press the charge further, saying that the Epanaphora, which in the printed book is dated from Belas in 1654, was deliberately antedated, having been written after Dom Francisco’s return from Brazil. But he forgets that he has previously stated that the Epanaphora shows, on its author’s part, an ignorance of the island’s topography, a circumstance that was natural in 1654 but could hardly have arisen afterwards, since, as we have already related, Dom Francisco stayed there for a month on his way into exile.

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It was therefore Portugal’s absolute need to obtain England’s military and diplomatic support that justified the cession of Tangier and Bombay, besides an enormous dowry that was never paid in full, and the same need would have justified the cession of Madeira, had it been demanded. Whether the queen regent was ready to cede it, as Mr Azevedo argues, we cannot say, given the silence of the historians; but that Dom Francisco de Melo was Dona Luisa de Guzmán’s partner in the plot there is no proof whatever. For our part, it is a gratuitous assertion that deserves no credence. We are of the opinion that the subject of our biography genuinely believed in the original English discovery, as renowned historians before him had believed, even though he embroidered the details of the narrative’.

This is a point that may perhaps be impossible to clear up today, but it is not, in truth, of capital importance. The same cannot be said of the supposed cession of Madeira to the English, because that is of considerable interest to Madeiran history and still more to the general history of our country. Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo did not settle the matter sufficiently, establishing only a probable hypothesis, and the talented author of the pamphlet Um ponto de história pátria added nothing essential to the considerations of the annotator of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’.