Nobre (António)

Like so many other illustrious invalids, mortally stricken by advanced and incurable pulmonary tuberculosis, the poet António Nobre (1867–1900) came to Madeira in search of a miracle that the excellent mildness of the climate could no longer work for him. He died a few months after leaving this island.

António Nobre lived in Funchal from 3 February 1898 to 24 April 1899. He too sought our privileged climate, perhaps as a last resort to ease the ravages of the pulmonary tuberculosis that was mortally undermining him, after a stay in the mountains of Switzerland and a curative sea voyage to the United States of America.

Our distinguished fellow Madeiran Dr Alfredo de Freitas Leal, who died a few years ago and was a close friend of António Nobre, gives us some information about the poet’s arrival in his curious book Coimbra nos Noventas..., in the following expressive terms:

‘In Madeira I am going to meet an old friend, the great poet António Nobre... I then remembered that in the spring of that year, 1897, we had met in Lisbon and that he had asked me many questions about the advantages of Madeira’s climate for consumptives. And I remembered that, so as not to discourage him, I had told him of cases of cure and of the prolonged lives of consumptives who had settled in Madeira. António Nobre came to talk to me with an attempt at cheerfulness and said: “My dear Leal, I had the feeling I would never see you again. I followed your advice and here I am on your island. I have liked everyone in this land and all this lovely scenery immensely, but it seems to me that I have come to Madeira too late. You were right, if I were in the condition of those you told me about...” I felt a kind of inner tear that must not show in the eyes. . . and we went to talk at the “Casa Havanesa” (‘Havana house’)..., while I sensed that I would never see him again...’

What happened to António Nobre has happened countless times to so many other patients who, at an advanced stage of the gravest illnesses, hope to find in the mildness of our climate the miracle of a complete resurrection. On returning to Portugal, sad and disheartened, he uttered this bitter lament: ‘I come back worse than I went. A dreadful climate. Warm and humid, exactly the opposite of what my illness needs.’

With these poor, hopeless patients, doctors too bear the consequences of a delicate morbid state, which sometimes seeks revenge for the cruelty of fate in the harshest and most unwarranted reproaches. The poet’s attending physician in Madeira was Dr Vicente Cândido Machado, a distinguished clinician and a perfect gentleman, who could not entirely escape the bitter criticism of his illustrious patient, anguished by the unbearable torments of his illness and perhaps disillusioned by the deceptive hope that had fled from him for ever... He might then have written the desolate quatrain:

During the not quite fifteen months he lived in Funchal, António Nobre stayed at the former ‘Royal Hotel’, now the ‘Hotel Savoy’, at the ‘Pensão Almeida’, now the ‘Atlantic Hotel’, and in a house in the locality (sítio) of Boliqueme in the parish (freguesia) of Santo António (‘St Anthony’). He may also have lived at the former ‘Pensão Scheffield’, to which he refers in a letter written in Lisbon on the eve of his departure for Madeira, or else at the ‘Quinta da Saudade’ (‘estate of longing’), where the sonnet ‘Sestança’ was written, dated 29 July 1898 and included on p. 33 of the book Despedidas.

In the hot season of 1899 he spent some time in the parish of Santo António, living in a small house in the locality of Boliqueme. It still stands there, with no appreciable change since the days when the illustrious and ill-starred poet lived in it.

At that time he was a frequent visitor to a house near the Quinta do Trapiche (‘sugar-mill estate’), where a family distinguished by both its virtues and its lineage was living for a time; he maintained relations of respectful and affectionate esteem with them. On the trunk of a tree in the garden of that house he carved the phrase ‘Sede de imensa luz como a dos pára-raios’ (‘A thirst for immense light, like that of lightning rods’), which survived there for some years, as we have already related at greater length in the book Paróquia de Santo António, published in 1929.

The eminent man of science and professor at the University of Porto, Dr Augusto de Nobre, who holds the memory of his brother, the illustrious author of Só, in the most fervent veneration, paid a moving visit to that modest house in September 1927, accompanied by Adolfo César de Noronha and by the writer of these unadorned lines. There he met the ‘hammock man’ who had served the poet, and learnt that the old maidservant who had looked after the invalid during the weeks he lived there was still alive. In view of her extreme poverty, he granted this former servant a monthly allowance, which on her death he transferred to one of her daughters, and which has continued unchanged to the present day over the fourteen years that have since passed.

As is well known, the only work António Nobre published in his lifetime was his principal one, O Só, issued in Paris in 1892; the volumes Despedidas (1898) and Primeiros Versos (1921) appeared posthumously. The second edition of Despedidas contains fifteen poems written in Madeira in 1897 and 1899: eleven sonnets and four other short poetic compositions.

At the session of the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal do Funchal) on 24 October 1927, on the proposal of councillor (vereador) Manuel Nunes Farinha, now director of the customs house at Luanda, it was resolved that the square adjoining the Ponte Monumental (‘monumental bridge’), near the Hotel Atlântico, where the poet had lived, should be given the name of António Nobre.

In this square, known as the Jardim do Ribeiro Seco (‘dry brook’), the Funchal Municipal Council ceremonially unveiled a bust of the illustrious poet on 28 December 1941. On that occasion the distinguished teacher and writer Feliciano Soares delivered an exquisite speech, which has been published.

Because of the interest it holds for our subject, we shall now transcribe some passages from a fine article that the distinguished writer Dr Luís Vieira de Castro published in O Jornal (‘The Newspaper’) of 7 July 1936. ‘….. Among the unpublished letters to which I refer, six were written from Madeira, between 25 May 1898 and 8 April 1899 – a little less than a year before the death of the author of Só.

In January 1898 António Nobre declared himself ‘anxious to leave Lisbon’. His doctor sent him to Funchal. One concern held the family back: the cost of living in Madeira. To this António Nobre replied: as for the high cost of living in Madeira, the rumours spreading everywhere are little short of a crime… In Funchal one lives as in Foz, as here; there are hotels and boarding houses at every price’. And there was this detail, of great importance to a sick man: the doctors were cheap. In support of his opinion he cited an authoritative witness: ‘only yesterday I was with Dr Athias, a native of the island, who was my contemporary in Paris – and he gave me the best information. It is expensive for the English and for those who buy presents or lead a life of luxury’.

On 13 January António Nobre told his brother of his intention to come and live in an excellent boarding house – ‘on a quinta on the outskirts of the city of Funchal, belonging to Dona Carolina Scheffield’. That is – if he did not end up in the Canary Islands, where some believed he would do better to live.

But by May António Nobre was already in Madeira, and was even planning to visit British Guiana aboard the sailing ship Felisberta – of fond memory. It was a three-month voyage costing 100,000 réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis), during which, in the long calms on the high seas, the passengers would ‘have the boat lowered and go off fishing and rowing out to sea’… According to António Nobre, ‘that was how the natives of the island who fell ill were cured’.

While he had not yet sailed for Georgetown, António Nobre told his brother about the most remarkable things on the island… Thus one day he wrote: ‘In Madeira there is a kind of spider, called tarantulas, very curious, which write their name in the web they spin’. Besides the tarantulas, there were the young ladies of the island… ‘When I arrived from Portugal, a few days later almost all the Madeiran girls came here, in masks, to meet me’. And in the same letter he concluded his reflections thus: ‘This place is very curious and amusing because of the people here – young ladies whose sole existence consists of afternoon teas, lawn tennis and catching whatever fiancé comes their way’. How romantic this António Nobre was!

The young ladies of the island were, moreover, most kind to the Poet. He tells us so himself: ‘the ladies of Funchal have been very kind to me; they send me beef tea, custard, old wine, jelly, etc.’. What more could the elegant, sad recluse have wished for?… What afflicted António Nobre most, in his invalid’s despair, was the climate. ‘Madeira is dreadful for my constitution.’ He complained of everyone: ‘Only now has Dr Machado acknowledged it, after deceiving me for a year and a half’. In another letter he says further: ‘As soon as I reached the island, I fell ill. And ever since, I have been ill’. His resentment grew as his illness worsened: ‘the doctors here know how useless this climate is, but they cynically hide it from me, to keep their practice going. My doctor has been, and continues to be, my ruin’.

Finally António Nobre returned to Lisbon, because ‘it is in Madeira that he has no faith at all’. Poor poet! What remained of his life was a mixture of suffering and hopelessness. In March 1900 he wrote from Seixo (‘pebble’): ‘I am still unwell and cannot stay here any longer’. Nothing could cure his miseries any more! ‘The air is too strong. I shall die if I stay.’ The end of his life was fast approaching – and not even in the pains of his last agony could he count on the jelly and old wine of the young ladies of the island…’