Nobre (António)
Like many other illustrious patients, fatally wounded by an advanced and incurable pulmonary tuberculosis, the poet António Nobre (1867-1900) came to Madeira seeking a miracle that the excellent benignity of the climate could no longer provide, and he died a few months after leaving the island.
António Nobre resided in Funchal from February 3, 1898, to April 24, 1899, also seeking our privileged climate perhaps as a last resort to alleviate the ravages of the pulmonary tuberculosis that was fatally consuming him, after a stay in the mountains of Switzerland and a sea cure trip to the United States of America.
Our distinguished compatriot Dr. Alfredo de Freitas Leal, who passed away a few years ago, in his curious book "Coimbra nos Noventas...", provides us with some information about António Nobre's visit, of whom he was a particular friend, in the following expressive terms:
In Madeira, I will meet an old friend, the great poet António Nobre... I remembered then 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 tuberculosis patients. And I remembered that, not to discourage him, I had told him about cases of healing and the prolongation of the lives of tuberculosis patients who had settled in Madeira. António Nobre came to talk to me with a hint of joy and said to me: My dear Leal, I had the impression that I would never see you again. I followed your advice and here I am on your island. I have greatly enjoyed everyone on this island and all this beautiful landscape, but it seems to me that I have come too late to Madeira. You were right, if I were in the condition of those you mentioned to me... I felt a kind of inner tear that should not appear in my eyes... and we went to talk at the "Casa Havanesa"..., while I sensed that I would never see him again...
António Nobre suffered what has often been repeated with many other patients, who, in an advanced state of the most serious illnesses, want to find in the benignity of our climate the miracle of a complete resurrection. Upon returning to Portugal, sad and disheartened, he uttered this bitter complaint: "I come back worse than I was. Terrible climate. Warm and humid, just the opposite of what is good for my illness".
For these poor and hopeless patients, the doctors also suffer the consequences of a delicate morbid condition, which sometimes seeks to avenge the cruelty of fate with the most bitter and unfounded censures. The poet had as his attending physician in Madeira Dr. Vicente Cândido Machado, a distinguished clinician and a perfect gentleman, who could not entirely escape the bitter criticisms of his illustrious client, distressed by the unbearable hardships of the disease and perhaps disillusioned by the false hope that had forever eluded him... He could have then written the heartbreaking quatrain:
Several poets came to Madeira For its famous (seaside) airs Some to return soon to the fireside, Others, alas! to stay here.
António Nobre, in the incomplete fifteen months he lived in Funchal, resided in the old "Royal Hotel", now "Hotel Savoy", in the "Pensão Almeida", now "Atlantic Hotel", and in a house in the area of Boliqueme in the parish of Santo Antonio. He may have also resided in the old "Pensão Scheffield", which he refers to in a letter written in Lisbon on the eve of leaving for Madeira, or even in the "Quinta da Saudade", where the sonnet "Sestança" was written with the date of July 29, 1898, and included on page 33 of the book "Despedidas".
In the calm season of the year 1899, he spent some time in the parish of Santo António, living in a small house in the area of Boliqueme, which still exists there with no appreciable modification from the times when the illustrious and unfortunate poet lived there.
At that time, he frequently visited a house near the Quinta do Trapiche, where a distinguished family by virtue and blood temporarily resided, with whom he maintained relations of respectful and affectionate esteem, having left engraved on the trunk of a tree in the garden of that house the phrase "Thirst for immense light like that of lightning rods", which remained there for several years, as we have already mentioned at length in the book "Paróquia de Santo António" published in 1929.
The distinguished man of science and professor at the University of Porto, Dr. Augusto de Nobre, who has the most fervent devotion to the memory of his brother, the illustrious author of "O Só", visited that modest house in September 1927, accompanied by Adolfo de Noronha and the author of these untidy lines, and there he met the "network man" who had served the poet, and then learned that the old maid who had accompanied the patient during the weeks he lived there still existed. Due to her extreme poverty, he established a monthly financial subsidy, which upon her death was passed on to her daughter and has remained unchanged to the present day for the fourteen years that have already passed.
As is known, António Nobre only published in his lifetime his main work "O Só", published in Paris in 1892, with the volumes "Despedidas" in 1898 and "Primeiros Versos" in 1921 being posthumous. In the second edition of "Despedidas", there are fifteen poems written in Madeira in the years 1897 and 1899, eleven sonnets and four other small poetic compositions.
In the session of the Municipal Council of Funchal on October 24, 1927, at the proposal of the councilor Manuel Nunes Farinha, the current director of the customs of Luanda, it was resolved that the square adjacent to the Monumental Bridge and near the Hotel Atlântico, where the poet resided, should be named António Nobre.
In the mentioned square known by the name of Jardim do Ribeiro Seco, the Municipal Council of Funchal, on December 28, 1941, solemnly inaugurated a bust of the illustrious poet, and on that occasion the distinguished professor and writer Feliciano Soares delivered a splendid speech, which is published.
We will now transcribe, due to its relevance to our subject, some excerpts from a beautiful article that the distinguished writer Dr. Luís Vieira de Castro published in "O Jornal" on July 7, 1936.
"..... In the unpublished letters to which I refer, there are six written from Madeira, from May 25, 1898, to April 8, 1899 - a little less than a year before the death of the author of "O Só".
In January 1898, António Nobre declares himself "anxious to leave Lisbon". The doctor sends him to Funchal. A concern detains the family; the cost of living in Madeira. To this, António Nobre responds: as for the expensive life in Madeira, it is a crime for the rumors that spread everywhere... One lives in Funchal, as in Foz, as here; there are hotels, pensions for all prices". And this detail, particularly important for a patient: the doctors are inexpensive. In support of his opinion, he cites an authoritative testimony: "just yesterday I was with Dr. Athias, a native of there, and who was my contemporary in Paris - and he gave me the best information. It is expensive for the English and for those who buy gifts or lead a life of luxury".
On January 13, António Nobre announces to his brother the intention of coming to live in an excellent pension - "in a farm on the outskirts of the city of Funchal, belonging to D. Carolina Scheffield". This - in case he does not go to the Canaries, where some believe he should preferably reside.
In January, António Nobre announced to his brother his intention to come and live in an excellent boarding house - "on a farm in the outskirts of the city of Funchal, belonging to D. Carolina Scheffield". This was in case he did not go to the Canary Islands, where some believed he should preferably reside. But already in May, António Nobre was in Madeira, even planning to visit British Guiana aboard the sailboat Felisberta - of fond memory. It was a three-month trip, costing 100,000 réis, during which, in the long calms on the high seas, the passengers would "lower the lifeboat and go fishing and rowing out to sea"... According to António Nobre, "the natives of the island who fell ill were cured in this way". While he was not boarding for Georgetown, António Nobre mentioned to his brother the most remarkable things about the island... Thus, one day he told him: "There are in Madeira a kind of spiders, called tarantulas, very curious, that write their name on the web they make". Besides the tarantulas, there were the island girls... "When I arrived from Portugal, almost all the Madeiran girls came here a few days later, disguised, to meet me". And in the same letter, he concluded his reflections with: "This land is very curious and entertaining because of the local people - girls whose only existence consists of afternoon teas, lawn tennis, and fishing for a suitor who appears". How romantic this António Nobre was! The island girls were, moreover, very kind to the Poet. He himself tells it: "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 and sad loner aspire to?... To António Nobre, in his despair as a patient, the climate was the most distressing. "Madeira is terrible for my temperament". He complained to everyone: "Only now has Dr. Machado recognized it, after deceiving me for a year and a half". In another letter, he also says: "I fell ill as soon as I arrived on the island. And since then, I have always been ill". The revolt grows as the illness worsens: "the doctors here know the uselessness of this climate, but cynically hide it to maintain a good practice. My doctor has been and continues to be my downfall". Finally, António Nobre returns to Lisbon, because "he does not believe in Madeira at all". Poor poet! What remained of his life was a mixture of suffering and hopelessness. In March 1900, he writes from Seixo: "I am still unwell and I cannot stay here any longer". Nothing was capable of curing his miseries anymore! "The air is too strong. I will die if I continue". The end of his life was rapidly approaching - and not even in the agony of pain, could he count on the jelly and old wine from the island girls...