Eca

JOSE MARIA ECA DE QUEIROS (1845 - 1900)

Eca (pronounced Essa) is the classic among Portuguese novelists, and one of the great figures of 19th century European fiction. Zola remarked of Eca: 'He is far greater than my dear master Flaubert.' Others rank him alongside Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy.

Eca worked in the consular service at 53 Grey street in Newcastle from late 1874 until April 1879, where his diplomatic duties involved the dispatch of detailed reports to the Portuguese foreign office concerning the unrest in the Northumberland and Durham coalfields - in which, as he points out, the miners earned twice as much as those in South Wales, along with free housing and a weekly supply of coal. The Newcastle years were also among the most productive of his literary career. Among his celebrated novels, he published the second version of O Crime de Padre Amaro (1876), and O Primo Bazilio (1878) as well as working on a number of other projects including his fifteen 'Cartas de Londres' for a Portuguese newspaper. He even mentions the title of his masterpiece Os Maias in 1878, though this was largely written during his residence in Bristol. There is a plaque to Eca in that city and another was unveiled in Grey Street in 2001.

Eca, a cosmopolite widely read in English literature, was not enamoured of English society. Like Zamyatin (q.v.) however, he was fascinated by 'the sheer planetary distance of its oddity and unpredictability', as Jonathan Keates puts it. In Bristol he wrote: 'Everything about this society is disagreeable to me - from its limited way of thinking to its indecent manner of cooking vegetables.' As often happens, when a writer is unhappy, the weather is endlessly bad. Nevertheless, he was rarely bored and was content to stay in England for some fifteen years. 'I detest England, but this does not stop me from declaring that as a thinking nation, she is probably the foremost.' It may be said that England acted as a constant stimulus and a corrective to Eca's traditionally Portuguese francophilia. Nevertheless, Eca was not the man for a boozy Saturday night out in Newcastle, especially when the hit song of the day spawned the word jingoism:

'An enormous brutish crowd, rough and noisy, fills the wide streets, harshly lit by shining gas lamps and shop windows; the bars, the gin palaces are ablaze with light... drunks stagger about, punching each other; on a street corner a preacher ... howls verses from the Bible... Prostitutes pester insolently, demanding money... two enormous policemen drag an old woman away, drunk and cursing; groups of miners, pipes in their mouths, greyhounds at heel, talk in the rough speech of Northumbria; amorous couples go by, arms round each other, kissing shamelessly; the whistles of locomotives pierce the thick air... and in the squares and alleys, on restaurant pianos, drunken patriots sing the new war song 'We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do...!' shouting that 'the Russians shall not have Constantinople!'

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
JOSE MARIA ECA DE QUEIROS (1845 - 1900) Eca (pronounced Essa) is the classic among Portuguese novelists, and one of the great figures of 19th century European fiction. Zola remarked of Eca: 'He is far greater than my dear master Flaubert.' Others rank him alongside Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. Eca worked in the consular service at 53 Grey street in Newcastle from late 1874 until April 1879, where his diplomatic duties involved the dispatch of detailed reports to the Portuguese foreign office concerning the unrest in the Northumberland and Durham coalfields - in which, as he points out, the miners earned twice as much as those in South Wales, along with free housing and a weekly supply of coal. The Newcastle years were also among the most productive of his literary career. Among his celebrated novels, he published the second version of O Crime de Padre Amaro (1876), and O Primo Bazilio (1878) as well as working on a number of other projects including his fifteen 'Cartas de Londres' for a Portuguese newspaper. He even mentions the title of his masterpiece Os Maias in 1878, though this was largely written during his residence in Bristol. There is a plaque to Eca in that city and another was unveiled in Grey Street in 2001. Eca, a cosmopolite widely read in English literature, was not enamoured of English society. Like Zamyatin (q.v.) however, he was fascinated by 'the sheer planetary distance of its oddity and unpredictability', as Jonathan Keates puts it. In Bristol he wrote: 'Everything about this society is disagreeable to me - from its limited way of thinking to its indecent manner of cooking vegetables.' As often happens, when a writer is unhappy, the weather is endlessly bad. Nevertheless, he was rarely bored and was content to stay in England for some fifteen years. 'I detest England, but this does not stop me from declaring that as a thinking nation, she is probably the foremost.' It may be said that England acted as a constant stimulus and a corrective to Eca's traditionally Portuguese francophilia. Nevertheless, Eca was not the man for a boozy Saturday night out in Newcastle, especially when the hit song of the day spawned the word jingoism: 'An enormous brutish crowd, rough and noisy, fills the wide streets, harshly lit by shining gas lamps and shop windows; the bars, the gin palaces are ablaze with light... drunks stagger about, punching each other; on a street corner a preacher ... howls verses from the Bible... Prostitutes pester insolently, demanding money... two enormous policemen drag an old woman away, drunk and cursing; groups of miners, pipes in their mouths, greyhounds at heel, talk in the rough speech of Northumbria; amorous couples go by, arms round each other, kissing shamelessly; the whistles of locomotives pierce the thick air... and in the squares and alleys, on restaurant pianos, drunken patriots sing the new war song 'We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do...!' shouting that 'the Russians shall not have Constantinople!'
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