Ignoring the news (Part 1 of…..)

I’ve started the new novel – fiction, humour, working title “The Grape Unwashed”. For the prospective first chapter, I had to place a character in Lisbon at the end of the summer of 1879. A lowly second lieutenant in the army, he is on his way back with his regiment from a successful campaign against the Zulu, when the boiler of their steamship packs in, and they limp into Lisbon.

Lisbon Rail station c.1880

So, what would Lisbon have been like in 1879? Where would our here have gone when he disembarked, and what happened to him?

Well, to help put him in his place, as it were, and without the distractions of 2020 news (see last blog), I have had time to find out about or expand on all sorts of details. I had heard from someone that Portugal was England’s oldest ally (I think it was after my Mum went there for a holiday). Now, I find it’s true. More specifically (and perhaps less romantically), the Aliança Luso-Britânica is the oldest treaty still in existence, having been ratified in 1386. It has been tested severely a couple of times – once over Africa and once over Goa – and our character is gambling in a public house at a time when relations are strained over the African imperialism rampant in both the UK and Portugal in the nineteenth century.

Now, how would it have been for our youthful subaltern? I need him to get off the ship, stay a night in Lisbon, win a specific bet, and get away up north before anyone can steal his winnings and confound my plot. So, I find out, for example, that there was no electric light in Lisbon at the time, although there was in London and Paris. There were 19,000 Spanish immigrants in Portugal. There was a new rail service from Lisbon to Porto. The place was full of drunkeness and crime. It was possible to take a carriage from Oporto to Leon, to Vitoria, to Bayonne and on towards the north of France. But would it be faster to take a ship from Oporto?

José Maria de Eça de Queiroz

I read wonderful, evocative descriptions of Lisbon from the writer José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, in his book O Crime do Padre Amar. It was, according to many, a dark, crime-ridden, melting-pot of human unhappiness, thick with smoke and with a river black with human excrement and detritis (a bit like, London, then…).

In the end, it takes me three days before I can put pen to paper to begin the story, such is the extent of my immersion in the Lisbon of Luís I of Portugal. I also have to sort out my character’s rank, his role at the battle of Ulundi, and how he gets from South Africa to Lisbon, to Spain, through France, to London… and ultimately deliver the seed he carries, to Sheffield.

Clearly my work interferes with my writing, but I am nonetheless consumed by the world of my character. I can often forget contemporary politics and the imbeciles we allow to run our world, and look back at a world full of… um, politics, and a lot of imbeciles we allowed to run our world.

Nonetheless, it gives perspective. It is somewhat comforting to think that in 250 years’ time, kids will have to be constantly drilled in order to remember the chronological order of semi-literate, midget, non-entitities, like trump and johnson and putin, in order to remember the people who actually made a fucking difference. 😉