Monteiro Teixeira (José António)

José António Monteiro Teixeira came of an old and distinguished Madeiran family and was born in Funchal on 27 December 1795. He was the son of the wealthy landowner José António Teixeira and his wife Dona Ana dos Anjos Teixeira. They gave him a sound and varied education, which he completed over the years through constant contact with books, long travels and extended stays in the most civilised centres of Europe, and also through the close friendship he kept up with some of the most celebrated French writers of his day.

In 1808, despite the uncertainty of the times and the general alarm that the Peninsular Wars and grave political upheavals had spread throughout Europe, Monteiro Teixeira, then little more than twelve years old, was sent to a college in the city of Pau, in France. The college then enjoyed a worldwide reputation and had pupils from various foreign countries.

He himself tells us, in his flawless French, of the struggles between a misguided paternal love and the fervent wishes of his mother. She was a caring and devoted mother who, silencing the tenderness of her maternal heart, wanted above all to give her sons the education that they could in no way receive in the public or private schools of the capital of Madeira.

It is worth hearing his own eloquent words, which we translate below:

Yet, pressed ever harder by the tenacity of this maternal self-sacrifice, my father was bound to give way. Holding out in his last redoubts, he wished to attempt one final effort: to overcome this mother’s heart through the very excess of its own love. ‘So you want’, my father said to her one day when she was weeping at the mere thought of this separation, ‘to send your two sons to France, to that France which is at war with the whole world (it was in 1807), to throw them as prey to that Napoleon who respects nothing in his tyrannical fits?! Think of the bitterness you are preparing for yourself, of the tears you will still have to shed! You will never see them again; I have a presentiment of it.’

“

The answer was not long in coming, and it was impetuous. “Napoleon”, she said, “is not a wild beast, and the innocence of childhood commands respect even from the fiercest animals. On that score I am at ease. And even though I too have a presentiment that I shall never see them again (and as she said this, tears once more bedewed her cheeks), I would rather never embrace them again than see them, up there, badly brought up, uneducated, depraved and idle, like most of your friends’ sons, who dishonour them by their ignorance and bad conduct. The heart of a true mother knows how to sacrifice itself for the welfare of her children. I want for José and for António a liberal education and the lessons of the school of the world in an enlightened country such as France.” ‘And we left. ‘This mother’s heart was to be put to harsh trials! ... No news of us at all! They managed to learn only that we had arrived in France.

“

The war, ever more ferocious, had cut off all means of communication with this island.

After their departure, two long years went by without the devoted parents having any news of their sons, because of the great turmoil raging throughout Europe as a result of the Napoleonic wars. The French invasions of Portuguese territory and France’s constant hostility towards Portugal made communications between the two countries even more difficult. It is easy to imagine the anguish suffered by those most loving parents, whose other children death had snatched away in the full bloom of life.

It was at this renowned college, where he remained until 1814, that his taste for the study of the French language was awakened. He came to know it thoroughly, to the point of writing it with the utmost correctness and elegance, according to the testimony of several notable French writers. It was also there that his poetic gift revealed itself very early, together with his marked inclination towards satire, which later made him one of the most distinguished disciples of Juvenal and Tolentino.

Having finished his schooling at the college, he stayed on in Paris for some years, devoting himself to various historical studies and to reading the French classics. At the same time he cultivated his literary inclinations with refined taste, above all poetry, in which satire and the epigram predominated. On his long visits to the French capital he formed friendships with some of the most illustrious men of letters of the day, who greatly admired the unsurpassed refinement of his manners and the flawless perfection with which he spoke and wrote French. Chateaubriand, a proud and not very approachable man, Béranger, Méry and above all Barthélemy felt a devoted admiration and the highest esteem for our illustrious fellow countryman; the last of these in particular remained on the most intimate terms with him for many years. In London too, which he visited frequently, he came to know closely some of the most notable men of the time, who likewise held Monteiro Teixeira in the regard due to the lofty qualities of his gifted mind and his uncommon learning. His close friendship with our great poet Castilho became widely known. In many places in his vast body of work Castilho refers to J. A. Monteiro Teixeira, not only with tender affection but also with the greatest admiration for the gifts of his cultivated intellect and his undeniable merits as a poet and man of letters. Our learned compatriot and great jurist Silvestre Pinheiro Ferreira, the distinguished man of letters and publicist José Liberato Freire de Carvalho and many others were also among Monteiro Teixeira’s intimates. If men of such intellectual stature, Portuguese and foreign alike, as well as others of the highest social rank, singled out our illustrious compatriot in this way – and at a time when the aristocracy of blood and of talent did not seek to place itself on a level with conceited mediocrity – we may well judge the merits of the man to whom such marks of regard, esteem and admiration were addressed.

After 14 years away in the leading cities of Europe, Monteiro Teixeira returned to his native land, where he devoted himself to literature and to his duties as consul of France on this island. He systematically refused every honour with which others sought to distinguish him, including a chair in parliament. Only to oblige some friends did he accept the post of councillor (vereador) of the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal do Funchal), at a time when only men of proven worth or high social standing were called to such positions.

As France’s representative, he rendered that country such outstanding services that the French government on several occasions sought to reward him with various honours, among them the Legion of Honour. He always refused them, on the grounds that he had not accepted such honours from the government of his own country either. In 1840 the frigate La Belle Poule called at Madeira, carrying the French mission charged with bringing back to France the remains of Napoleon, which had lain buried on St Helena since 1821. Monteiro Teixeira showered the members of this mission with the most refined courtesies and the most charming kindnesses. The mission was headed by the Prince of Joinville and included the great General Bertrand, Bonaparte’s most faithful and devoted friend, who had accompanied him in all his battles, followed him into exile and stood by him to his last moments. Wishing to give the subject of our biography a token of its gratitude for his services and of the high esteem in which it held his personal qualities, the French government had a special gold medal struck and awarded it to him, since, as stated above, he had flatly refused to accept any decorations or honorific distinctions.

It remains for us to consider Monteiro Teixeira as a poet, which we shall do briefly so as not to make this article overly long. He cultivated above all the epigram, and his volumes of poetry written in Portuguese contain hardly any compositions outside that genre. He was a distinguished disciple of Nicolau Tolentino, and many of his verses rival the master’s finest compositions. We are convinced that had he published his books somewhere other than Madeira, he would have won great renown as a satirical poet, and his name would not lie buried in the almost complete oblivion in which it now rests.

Some believe – and this seems to have been Monteiro Teixeira’s own opinion – that his poems written in French surpass in thought and form those he wrote in his native tongue. They include compositions of various kinds, and particular mention is due to certain odes and epistles, which seem to have attained remarkable perfection both in metrical technique and in the beauty of their ideas. As for the correctness of the language, the authoritative opinion of distinguished Parisian writers is that Monteiro Teixeira wrote a pure French of rare elegance, which a foreigner could hardly surpass or even equal.

In 1848 and 1849 Monteiro Teixeira published the two volumes of the Obras Poeticas; in 1861, the volume Oeuvres Poétiques; and in 1871, the Nouveau Récueil de poésies en français. He also published a few pamphlets of verse. Although he wrote so great a number of poems, we are not aware that he left any prose compositions apart from the prefaces to his books.

He died there, in Funchal, on 31 May 1876, at the age of 80.