"As Barbas do Imperador" em inglês

Brazil's last and fondly remembered emperor

THE EMPEROR'S BEARD: DOM PEDRO II AND THE TROPICAL MONARCHY OF BRAZIL
By Lilia Moritz Schwarcz
Hull and Wing, $35, 436 pages
REVIEWED BY BART McDOWELL

Imagine the voluptuous harbor of Rio de Janeiro in the year 1808.
Past Sugarloaf mountain, ships of the British navy enter under full
sail. Napoleon's armies have just overrun the whole Iberian
Peninsula, and these ships are ferrying the entire royal court of
Portugal to their Brazilian colony — 15,000 exiled people crowding
into Rio with its population of 60,000. Instantly, the colony has
become a seat of empire.

"It is difficult to imagine a greater cultural shock," writes the
author Lilia Moritz Schwarcz in her strange book with its strange
title. Partly, this book is a biography of the man who was emperor of
Brazil from the age of five until his exile 58 years later. Partly,
it is a history, telling the story of Brazilian independence, how one
ruler from the House of Braganca abdicated and returned to Lisbon,
leaving his toddler son to reign in the New World.
But this book and its copious illustrations — paintings,
drawings, portraits, old photographs, maps, cartoons — also serve as
a kind of Rorschach slash of the past — visual semantics that reveal
the making of a myth. And its unmaking.
The author has used many of the 20,000 illustrations given to the
Republic of Brazil by Dom Pedro II, after his exile. The collection,
Mrs. Schwarcz notes, is "an effort to construct and perpetuate a
certain national memory . . . . It shows us what the emperor saw and
what he did not see or wanted to forget....Slavery is absent, like an
actor hidden in the wings....More than 600 Pedros observe us as we
observe him...in his evolution as a symbol of the state."
The reader sometimes feels like an intruder in a neighbor's
family album. We start with the baby Pedro, crying pitifully. His
mother died, "of sadness," said court gossips, just nine days after
Pedro's first birthday. Many Brazilians blamed the child's father Dom
Pedro I, whose rascally reputation had grieved the queen. The little
prince was called "the nation's martyr." Soon the first Pedro
remarried — and was forced to abdicate and leave the country.
Portrayed on medals, plaster busts, and postcards, the chubby-
cheeked young prince grows as we watch. Always there are uniforms and
crowns and other symbols of the monarchy. The regent is doing his
job, and young Pedro seems ever the serious ruler-in-waiting. Though
during this Regency period, insurrections and rebellions are breaking
out in other places, the palace presents a great silence, and "the
secrecy of the monarchy gave it a sacred quality." (Not bad advice
for modern royalty: just shut up.)
Pedro's image was being minted: "his impassive mien, his care in
choosing his words, his enigmatic character" and his
appearance, "prominent chin, very blue eyes,...blond hair." He stood
out in a population made up "of mestizos and mulattos." As a symbol
of stability, the court moved up Pedro's consecration and coronation
to 1841, and pictures soon show him wearning a youthful beard "though
it did not disguise the emperor's callow youth." The ceremonies
show "the poor, frightened lad, fifteen years old...tangled up in
clothes too big for him" with a gold crown 16 inches high and "heavy
for the little emperor's head."
It was a good two years later when the Brazilian press took note
that "at last our monarch has a beard." Notes Mrs. Schwarcz, "The
beard was part of a political iconography." It grows longer with the
years, and portraits begin to show his adult interests: a telescope
for his study of astronomy, a book for which wide scholarship in
philosophy and languages.
Then, finding a wife and consort for the emperor presented
problems. His realm was exotic and far away from proper princesses in
Europe. Many thought the Brazilian court both primitive and poor. And
Pedro was so shy "that he blushed at the idea of marrying." But
treaties and social acceptance were important to the young nation.
Diplomats arranged Pedro's marriage to Teresa Cristina Maria,
princess of the Two Sicilies, a Bourbon by three of her grandparents
and a Habsburg by one grandmother. She was four years older than
Pedro, and her dowry was modest, but she was said to be a good
singer, and her portraits showed a pretty face. Misleadingly.
The wedding was performed by proxy in Naples, and the newly wed
Teresa sailed off to Brazil to meet her new husband. the meeting was
disastrous. Teresa was small, fat, ugly, and lame. Pedro wept. But he
was enjoined to "do your duty, my son." And he did.
The royal family welcomed a baby son in 1845, but the child died
a year later of yellow fever. Two daughters followed, then another
boy, who also died in his first year. Newspapers grieved at "the sad
fate of the few male children of the House of Braganca." Little
Princess Isabel remained the heiress-presumptive.
Official portraits record the changing image of the emperor.
While the fortunes of European monarchs suffered with the revolutions
of 1848, Brazil became suddenly prosperous with a rising price of
coffee in world markets. Dom Pedro and his court began traveling
abroad.
That invisible actor in the wings — slavery — also began to
trouble the Brazilian conscience. Planters, of course, depended on
the labor of slaves. Dom Pedro himself owned slaves, but the
emperor's educational institutions were fomenting talk of
emancipation.
There were distractions. There were railroads and palaces to
build, festivals to attend, laboratories and libraries to open. The
emperor was always interested in novelties, and was deeply bored by
politics and economics.
"If I were not emperor of Brazil," he wrote in his diary, "I
would like to be a schoolmaster." And, indeed, he closely supervised
the education of his daughters. he summed up his routine in this
way: "Get up at 6 and study Greek and Hebrew until 7. Lunch at
10....On Fridays I am present at English and German lessons given to
my daughters....Greek verbs at night."
The contemplative life was interrupted in 1864 when Brazil, with
its allies Argentina and Uruguay, went to war against Paraguay. Dom
Pedro — as "Volunteer Number One" — suited up in full uniform and
went to the southern front. He received his allies in a royal tent,
complete with steward. The war lasted far longer than the generals
had predicted, the cost was high, and the prestige of the emperor
declined.
Increasingly, Dom Pedro turned to foreign travel, leaving the
Princess Isabel as regent in his absence. He captivated Paris as he
strolled the streets dressed simply in black. In Germany, he avoided
a meeting with Bismarck, but was thrilled to meet one of his favorite
composers, Richard Wagner. When he attended the Philadelphia
Exposition of 1876, he was the first monarch ever to visit the United
States. There he met Alexander Graham Bell, who asked him to speak
over his new telephone. "To be or not to be," the emperor jokingly
quoted, then observed with delight that the device "did indeed
speak."
During Dom Pedro's frequent absences, as the old man's beard grew
white, Brazil itself was changing. Slavery, the economic mainstay of
wealthy planters, was inevitably ending. It fell to the regent
Princess Isabel to announced and proclaim the abolition of slavery.
The monarchy ended soon after, and Dom Pedro went gracefully into
exile, and not long afterward, to his Heavenly reward.
I have always felt a fondness for Dom Pedro. During each of the
three Brazilian carnivals I have attended in Rio, effigies of Dom
Pedro have always received loud applause. He was a special favorite
of the freed slaves and their descendents, an icon somehow related to
their own monarchical heritage in Africa. He, too, was a captive of
history.
In the zeal of republican reform, a law was passed to prevent Dom
Pedro and his heirs from owning any lands in Brazil. In 1978, I
happened to meet the great-grandson of Dom Pedro II, Dom Pedro Gastao
de Orelans e Braganca, princely heir to the abolished throne of
Brazil. Other nations have sent their rulers to the headsman or the
firing squad. Brazil asked only abdication. And that he and his heirs
not own Brazilian lands. But that, too, has changed. The Dom Pedro I
met in 1978 did not claim a throne. He drove a Volkswagon beetle —
and owned a small real estate company.

Bart McDowell is a former editor of National Geographic.

The Washington Times

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