After a few busy days, I'm back to historical rantings. Today, I'm getting into a bit of a personal story. But as says the title, that personal story correlates to something a lot bigger. Isn't that the most interesting type of story? When a piece of you gets connected to something that is bigger than you? All our small stories are part of a larger story, all our small actions lead to the construction of this big puzzle that we call History of Mankind, and to understand it is nearly as hard as to piece together each and every individual strand of the world's most massive beehive. And I am terrified of bees.
When I was growing up, I lived near this mountain close to Lisbon, the Portuguese capital. It's called Sintra, as is the location which grew at its feet, and as is one of Lisbon's largest councils. I won't get into details about the national administrative system. From the back of my house, I could see this mountain very easily, which is always a pleasant sight when you live in a chaotic, disorganised area: a clear space with plenty of green. At some point in my life, when going to school, I would see this mountain every single day. Atop of the mountain sits a Palace, which is very much one of the main tourist attractions in the region. Honestly. The human flux here is insane. You can go there in the Winter at 10 AM, and you'll struggle to get in. Growing up with this beauty right here. Palácio da Pena, Sintra, Portugal September 2019 (Photo by LeMoi). It wasn't exactly like that when I was little. The tourism boom in Portugal did not happen until a few years ago, when Portugal suddenly became the jam. The real deal. The Hell to the Yes. Even though a lot of the world still looks at us as a small, even underdeveloped country, that's untrue. We have a few situations that made it an insanely difficult effort to keep up with the rest of the world (and I don't think our size is the issue), but somehow, we're one of the most tourist-friendly places I've ever seen! Seriously. I've been privileged enough to travel a little bit, and I've encountered severe struggles to find my way in the Northern European countries. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong places, perhaps it was the fact I was not visiting capitals, but in terms of easily available translations, goodness gracious (I'm not even requesting Portuguese ones, honestly, although I find it extremely unfair that you always find Spanish, English, French, German and Italian, but never Portuguese). In terms of actually finding directions to reach a place, goodness gracious. And in terms of the many things that help a tourist's life, GOODNESS GRACIOUS! But maybe I was especially unlucky, or maybe I was exhausted (very early flights have that property), or confused. Don't get me wrong, I thought those countries were beautiful. Would I go again? In a blink. But I think Portugal, at least in the capital, is one of the most tourist-friendly places you can visit. Anyway, this was all before the boom. I grew up before this boom, and I experienced the world before this boom. And I experienced Sintra, too. As I said, I grew up near Sintra. The site is known for being, amongst many other things, one of intense 19th century investment. This is not to say that it was empty before, far from it, but truth be told that most of the landscape landmarks you see today, those that draw people there, are 19th century creations, aside from one or two. Up in the very top of the mountain lies a castle, created in that fever to build architecture masterpieces with old-style revivals. It is no Neuschwastein, but I don't think it was trying to be. It's a very Portuguese thing, curiously ordered by a non-Portuguese person, our King Consort, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. First cousin to Prince Albert, a very blonde lad, handsome.... *Fun fact: if an individual marries a Queen Regnant (thus, in power) of the United Kingdom, he never becomes King. At most, he can become Prince Consort, like Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. However, if an individual married a Portuguese queen, according to custom and laws in the 19th century, he became a King Consort after the birth of their first child. Ferdinand's wife, Maria II of Portugal, was married three times; I won't get in detail now about her first marriage, but the second was to a VERY handsome fellow named Augustus (of Beauharnais), who did not become King Consort, as they did not have children. Ferdinand only became King consort after the birth of their first child, Pedro.* Anyway. They got married, he went to Sintra, enjoyed the place and decided to make a Palace there (what a life, when you could just decide to make a Palace atop of a hill, eh?). And thus the Palace was born. And I grew up looking at it, but never visiting it. To my 7 or 8 year-old self, it looked like a fairytale place, as I am sure it still does to many of those who visit it today. And I so wanted to go there. There is another palace, close to the train station, which is far older. It is called the National Palace of Sintra. I went there about five thousand times, with my parents, on fieldtrips. But it did not look princessy, it did not look Disney! (You can easily find information on how Disney took inspiration from castles such as Neuschwanstein to create their iconic palaces in theme parks and the like, so there's actually an explanation to why the Pena Palace - let's begin using names - felt a lot more princessy to me than the National Palace of Sintra) And I wanted to go up. I didn't care too much for the one I'd already visited a thousand times, which did not look interesting, nor special, and was not on top of a massive hill! As any good 7-8 year old, I pestered, absolutely pestered my mother, to take me there. My mother is a very patient person with a very impatient daughter. I remember planning the trip. The idea was to take a day-trip, because it takes a while to get up there, and I remember going to one of the local supermarkets, a small thing, and getting a massive canteen. It was blue with a yellow lid and a 101 or 102 (whatever!) Dalmatians sticker on top of it, with a white chord that was really thin. When you filled it and placed it around your neck, it was the heaviest thing you can imagine, especially for a tiny child, but I felt so important and special with that blue Dalmatians canteen. I don't remember what we prepared to eat, I don't remember our clothes, I remember nothing, but I remember that canteen. And I remember being bitterly disappointed, because we had agreed to go the very next day, and unfortunately Ma had a headache. I remember I expected to be woken up early, which I hated, but was more than willing to endure for the sake of going to that palace, and being very surprised to see the sun up high when I did wake. And I remember being bitterly disappointed when my mother sweetly apologised and told me we would go another day, and soon. Which we did. And guess what? I don't remember a thing of it. I don't remember the first time I visited many places in my childhood. I don't even remember going to some of those places. I have some very vivid memories of some visits to monuments, especially during schooltrips, but I don't remember that visit, and I remember that silly blue canteen. Memory plays tricks on us. And yet, the palace did not stop being important to me. I think I vaguely remember being surprised at how small it was, now that I'm writing about it. It feels more like an overly imposing lordly house than an actual palace with a hundred bedrooms. But it is dear to my heart, because I grew up with it. It was my faithful companion growing up. For as long as I live, it is an image that is so deeply ingrained, and it is interesting to see that something that fascinates so many people has such a different meaning to me. It is not that I don't find it fascinating! By all means. But my feeling towards it is one of familiarity, of fondness, of past and present memory, of love, even, because it brings back a sense of continuity in my life. Wherever I am, wherever I go, that painting in my head goes with me. I know I called this post A Royal Family History and I haven't said a thing about the Royal Family yet, but I'll get there. I'll make plenty of posts about Royal Families, especially in the 19th century. This one was just to explain how I got there, and how it all started, and how my relationship with Genealogy (especially Royal genealogy) appeared. It all started with this palace. As I said in another post, my first actual contact with the kings started in primary school, with those charts of kings that were so popular in books by then. But that was not when I started taking an interest in the actual people behind it, because at 8 I lacked the maturity to fully understand and empathise with the actual historical people. Being a historian requires a lot of empathy and detachment from your current world vision, values and time. It requires understanding that people who lived in the Middle Ages did not have our time frame, and there were reasons why they couldn't have it if they wanted. I can safely say that my true journey in Historical Empathy only started after University, and it has been developing and brewing ever since. But there was another turning point, and that was High School. And that was Art. And that's what I'll be covering in the next post of this (hopefully) long thread. Historical Salutations.
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I've always had an interest in family history and genealogy. So a couple of years ago, I started doing my personal research. So far, I've tracked my family's line up to the late 1700s (in some cases, all the way back to 1640). These ancestors of mine were living, working and breathing in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were living in times of great changes in the world, and coexisted with many well-known figures that shaped the paths of History and brought us where we are today. The likelihood of any of those figures ever having heard of the mere existence of my ancestors, many of which lived in a small rural area in the North of Portugal, is practically inexistent. But my ancestors probably heard of a few of them. I doubt the name of Queen Victoria was never pronounced by any of them, especially considering the connections between Portuguese and British History.
Their lives couldn't be more different, separated by their condition and living space. But while I can visit Queen Victoria's ancestral households and they could most certainly not, they have an advantage: there is no time to separate them. Their family history was developing at the same time: they were getting married and having their children simultaneously. I have an ancestor born around 1803; Queen Victoria was born in 1819. When Her Majesty was born, my ancestor was already sixteen years old. I find the overall family history of Queen Victoria an oddity in the general course of the 19th century. I'm not going to debate her married life in this piece, because that is a whole other article in itself. Her motherhood, however... there are many of her remarks circulating on-line, about how she disliked children, how difficult of a mother she was. And yet, she went on to have nine children. This goes far beyond the heir and the spare. She had five girls and four boys. Most of my family members, even back in the 19th century, did not have more than 4-5, and some died in childhood. All of Queen Victoria's children lived to adulthood, and every single one was married. She was nearly 21 when she married, whereas my ancestors, surprisingly or not, usually married a little later, in their mid-late 20s or even 30s; the number of fertile years is slightly reduced. Coincidentally, my ancestors, overall, also seem to birth more girls than boys. They would go on to have very similar lives to those of their parents, but Queen Victoria's children all had their own path, however sheltered. Here are their names: Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa. She received the title of Princess Royal (attributed to the eldest child of a sovereign and currently held by HRH the Princess Anne). Born on the 21st November 1840, she died on the 5th August 1901, at the age of 60, in what is currently German territory; she married the Prussian Emperor Frederick (Friedrich) III and had 8 children (four girls, four boys). Albert Edward. Later King Edward VII, had a relatively short reign (22nd January 1901 to 6th May 1910). He was born on the 9th November 1841, less than a year after his sister, and died on the 6th May 1910, at the age of 68; his wife was the popular Queen Alexandra, born Princess Alexandra of Denmark. They had six children (three girls and three boys). Alice Maud Mary. Born on the 25th April 1843 (the day of a Portuguese revolution, occurred more than two-hundred years later), she died on the 14th December 1878 at the young age of 35, becoming the first of the Queen's children to die. She married Louis (Ludwig) IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and had seven children (five girls and two boys). She died in what is currently German territory as well. The difference between Alice and Albert Edward is of little more than a year. Alfred Ernest Albert. Born on the 6th August 1844, he died on the 30th July 1900, also in modern-day Germany, at the age of 55. He married Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (they named a biscuit after her!), and they had five children (a single son and four daughters, one of which Queen Marie of Romania, daughter-in-law to Princess Antónia of Portugal; couldn't resist adding this detail). Helena Augusta Victoria, born on the 25th May 1846; she died in the United Kingdom at the age of 77, on the 9th June 1923. Married to Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (Frederick Christian), she had four children, two girls, two boys. Louisa Carolina Alberta, better-known as Louise, born on the 18th March 1848; she died in the United Kingdom at the age of 91, on the 3rd December of 1939. She married John, Marquess of Lorn and heir to the Duchy of Argyll. They had no children together. I abstain from comments to Louise's alleged pregnancy prior to her marriage, as there is nothing proven in regard to its existence or the contrary. Arthur William Patrick Albert, born on the 1st May 1850; he died in the United Kingdom on the 16th January 1942, at the age of 91. He married the Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia, and together they had one son and two daughters. Leopold George Duncan Albert, born on the 7th April 1853; he died on the 28th March 1884, at the age of 30 in Cannes, France; Prince Leopold was a haemophiliac. He married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont and had two children, a girl and a boy. The boy was born postumously. Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, the youngest of all children, born on 14th April 1857; she died in the United Kingdom on the 26th October 1944, at the age of 87. She married prince Henry of Battenberg and had four children, three sons and a daughter; her daughter, Victoria Eugenie, would go on to become Queen of Spain, and the current Royal Family descends from her. So in terms of birthdates we have: 1840 - 1901 (Vicky, fourth to die, at 60) 1841 - 1910 (Bertie, as he was known in the family, fifth to die, at 68) 1843 - 1878 (Alice, first to die, at 35) 1844 - 1900 (Alfred, third to die, at 55) 1846 - 1923 (Helena, sixth to die, at 77) 1848 - 1939 (Louise, seventh to die, at 91) 1850 - 1942 (Arthur, eighth to die, at 91) 1853 - 1884 (Leopold, second to die, at 30) 1857 - 1944 (Beatrice, last to die, at 87) Queen Victoria died on the 22nd January 1901, at the age of 81. Hence, three of her children died before she did (Alice, Leopold and Alfred), and one right afterwards (Vicky). It seems that most of her children who went on to have descendants had more girls than boys, with the particular exception of Princess Beatrice; it also seems that the group of the five younger children, with the exception of Leopold, who had haemophilia, lived to older ages than their four oldest siblings. Another interesting point is that the Princess Royal was already sixteen-going-on-seventeen (ha) when her last sibling was born; Vicky was married on the 25th January 1858, so Beatrice was not even one year old when her sister left for Prussia. Their relationship must have been very different from that of the group born between 1840 and 1844. Beatrice would grow up aware of the existence of a sister nearly seventeen years her senior, who lived in a country far away. She was closer in age to Vicky's children than to her own brothers and sisters: Wilhelm II (Kaiser Wilhelm) was born on the 27th January 1859, Charlotte on the 24th July 1860. A stark contrast to my own family's reality, with a smaller number of children, although also distanced in years; and whereas many of Queen Victoria's children ended up spending part of their lives abroad, my own relatives did not usually dislocate themselves (note, usually) more than a few quilometres. A twist of History, a little turn on the right or the left, a little accident of fate and who knows? They may have been practically side-by-side, without ever even knowing. When we are walking along a city landscape, we often admire its old buildings, isn't it? We're walking past and our minds are thinking "Woah, 200 years ago this building was already here. I'm walking someone's steps and seeing what they must have seen". If you're visiting Lisbon, and depending on the time of the year, you're either thinking that or cursing the decision to walk instead of getting a tram. There's a reason it's called the City of Seven Hells Hills, after all (really, don't come for a walk in Lisbon without comfortable shoes).
This assumption is only natural, since the idea that is sold to us upon a visit to certain locations is their nearly timeless existence. But that isn't usually that linear. One of my favourite hobbies is to try and figure out how things actually were (yes, I am the life of the party). More often than not, what you are looking at is nothing like what your ancestors would have seen if they'd visited the very same place. It's natural. Look at your own house: how many items are in the same place as they used to be ten years ago? My own bedroom has been changed so many times that future alien archaeology will struggle to identify it with its old pictures. What I'm bringing to you today is a small part of Lisbon's past, not the visible past - the one that you can see while you walk by - but that past that is only alive in old imagery, books and memoirs. I'm bringing you the Hotel Francfort. There are loads of Portuguese blogs talking about the Hotel Francfort and giving you a little bit of its History. They all agree on the basic data: that this hotel was founded by António José da Silva and his wife, Joaquina Pereira da Silva, in 1867; that they owned a firm; and that the following year this hotel was moved to a different location, occupying the same building as one of the famous Marrare cafés (more on that later). In 1906, you could see two different hotels, the Hotel Francfort and the Francfort Hotel, belonging to two brothers, Arthur da Silva and João Narciso da Silva, the latter being proprietor of the one close to the Santa Justa Elevator (INFO from the Restos de Colecção BLOG). Back to the Marrare. As you see, the Hotel Francfort started its official life in the second half of the 19th century, and went on into the 20th. However, its existence, or, better yet, that of the building, started way before. I'm translating this for you, because I know that not too many people speak Portuguese, and I find the opportunity to share this delightful. «At the Street of the Arco da Bandeira, where nowadays is the dinning room of the Francfort, it still existed, and that, since the earliest moments of the century, the Marrare of the seven doors - one of the four cafés that were founded then in Lisbon by the napolitan António Marrare. Watched by the Police in the first few years of its existence, as the francophile ideas of its regulars were known, it was later a favourite centre of the partidarians of the Vintismo. In the mid of the century, already owned by Manuel António Peres, the Spanish Manuel, the Marrare of the seven doors was the first café downtown. Palmeirim, at Excentrics of my time, reminds us of its existence as a famous botequim: «One would play billiards amongst artists, there was plenty of betting, and people would take their coffee, before the theatre, the Epifânio and the Tasso. At night you had a real supper, and Domingos, the household manager, would open credit to the fancy dandies that asked for it and never paid him back.» (Revista Municipal de Lisboa, Ano 14, n.º 56, 1º trimestre de 1953. Os cafés da Lisboa romântica, por Ferreira de Andrade.) So the story starts long before. Part of the building was a café, This café belonged to an Italian named Antonio Marrara, known in Portugal as Marrare, who owned several establishments in Lisbon during the 19th century. This man came from Calabria to Lisbon in the late 18th century and served the Marquis of Nisa, and after a short stay in Brazil, he returns to Lisbon in the year 1800 and begins his career as entrepreneur (Carsinno 2015, 197-198). The Marrare cafés were interesting centres. You can still find old advertising for them in Portuguese newspapers of the time: in 1830, he announced in the Gazeta de Lisboa (Num. 137, 12th June) that one of his stores, at the Portas de Santa Catharina Street, number 25, from 5 o'clock in the afternoon onwards, would start selling hand-made snow and accept orders for ice-cream and jam, as long as they were done in opportune times; later, in 1830 (number 141, 17th June), the same café would start selling "carapinhada" from 11 a.m. onwards. As the hotel Francfort (and its twin, the Francfort Hotel, at the central square D. Pedro IV) grows, the memories of the Marrare cafés will slowly fade. When Portugal enters the 20th century and the years of Salazarism, it's still there: it is described in the memoirs of Humberto Delgado, for instance. He dined there, and the PIDE, the security agency of the Estado Novo, was there waiting for him. Those were the 60s, not that long ago at all. And yet, if you cross that street today, you don't see the Hotel Francfort anymore. It's so close in time that we can almost see it; if our grandparents visited Lisbon, they'd remember it. But if not for historical records, we'd know nothing of it, and even less that it was born from the Italian cafés of Marrara. I still know little about that transition, and even less of what existed in that building before Marrara founded the café. But one thing is certain: the feeling that you and I have while walking that street, the vibe, has got to be completely different from the one there used to be sixty years ago, when you had one of those old-fashioned hotels with a restaurant at the ground floor and what is now considered vintage decoration but was all the hype back then. And after all this, I'm sitting here and cannot help but wonder where are the beds, the lamps, the armoirs that existed in the Hotel Francfort, who were the people that worked there, where are the records of those who rented a room, were there little children running along the halls, what sounds, which scents, what was the essence of this hotel of times gone by? A bit of Bibliography Revista Municipal de Lisboa, Ano 14, n.º 56, 1º trimestre de 1953. Os cafés da Lisboa romântica, por Ferreira de Andrade. Carmine Cassino's thesis, 2015: https://repositorio.ul.pt/bitstream/10451/23962/1/ulsd072775_td_Carmine_Cassino.pdf Gazeta de Lisboa, several issues: https://books.google.pt/books?id=qewvAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA572&lpg=PA572&dq=antonio+marrare&source=bl&ots=XCfsavmWmZ&sig=ACfU3U0LetRRawdIRXYeoFcpFE5SvoUhIw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiV5Lj4he_lAhUtAWMBHdE7B444ChDoATALegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=antonio%20marrare&f=false Humberto Delgado's Memoirs: https://books.google.pt/books?id=uBkOAQAAIAAJ&q=hotel+francfort+santa+justa&dq=hotel+francfort+santa+justa&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUj-qZ_O7lAhVLOBoKHVZeASU4ChDoAQg8MAI |
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