The King’s Continental Tour.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XV, 11 April 1903, Page 1018

The King’s Continental Tour.

His Gracious Majesty’s visit to Lisbon and beautiful Cintra, where he has been received with boundless enthusiasm, will give much interest to the pictures given on this -nid the following pages. The King of Portugal, who recently visited England, is one of the pleasantest of European monarchs. He was born on September 28, 1863, and succeeded his father, the late King Louis L, in October, 1889. His mother, Queen Maria Pia, who is still living, is a daughter of the late King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, and therefore aunt to the present King. Carlos I. is also connected with the Teutonic sovereigns through his paternal grandfather, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the husband of Maria de Gloria, who reigned as Queen of Portugal in her own right from 1826 to 1853; it is also through this union that the King is related to the English Royal Family, his grandfather being a brother of the Duchess of Kent, and therefore uncle to our late Queen Victoria, who always took great interest in her Portuguese relations.. The last intermarriage between our Royal House and that of Braganza was that between King Charles IL and Catherine of Braganza. On May 22, 1886, His Majesty, at that time the Duke of Braganza, married the beautiful and gracious Marie Amelie, daughter of Philippe, the late Duke of Orleans, Comte de Paris; her sister Helene is the wife of the Duke of Aosta. By a curious coincidence their Majesties were born on the same day of the year,

though the Queen is two years younger. They have two sons—(l) Louis Philippe, Duke of Braganza, born in 1887, and (2) Manuel, born in 1889. The King’s Civil List is 365,000 milreis, or about £80,604. the milreis being 4/5. The Queen has about £13,250 a year. The population of the country is about five millions, and the army, on a peace footing, is over 30,000 men with 312 guns.

His Majesty is a good shot with a sporting gun, and at the rifle-butts ean beat any marksman in Portugal. He rides hard and can drive a pair of horses through the narrow streets of Lisbon with great skill, and also plays lawn tennlis fairly well. Besides these accomplishments he paints m water-colour, is a clever sculptor, and an accomplished musician. But his forte is languages, of which he speaks seven —five of them fluently—a very useful gift for a King. He is a great admirer of Shakespeare, and in conjunction with the late King he translated several of his plays into Portuguese. As Duke of Braganza he had hardly been married a month before he was called upon to serve his apprenticeship as ruler during the temporary absence of his father, on account of illhealth. The Portuguese were very well pleased with the way in which the Duke acquitted himself of his task, and seem to have had every confidence that the government of Dom Carlos, now their Sovereign, would be characterised by a peaceful policy and a sound administration. Great were the rejoicings throughout the land at tne birth of his first son, in whose honour the late King gave a series of State banquets. On these occasions was used that far-famed service

of plate which is of such rare workmanship and of such costly material that it is seldom removed from the strong rooms in which it is kept. During the fatal illness of Dom Louis, the King’s father, his brother Augustus also lay dying; and the one passed away but a few days before the other, the good Queen Maria Pia being with each of them at the close. Deaths seem always to come together in this Royal house, for about the time of his coronation, the new King’s aunt —the lately exiled Empress of Brazil — died suddenly. When Dom Louis had breathed his last, Queen Maria Pia called her eldest son to the bedside, addressing him as follows: “I desire that you should be a King, like your father, just and loyal, and I bless you.” The King has a great admiration for his mother, regarding her always as his best counsellor, and she has secured the affection of a singularly warm-heart-ed people. Tall and elegant, with a graceful manner, she is reserved, and yet not without some of the bonhomie of her father, Victor Emmanuel of Italy, whose intelligence she inherits; but she is not talkative, and timid persons feel themselves silenced by her curt replies. “Politikos” says of her: “Philanthropy is with her as much a passion as hunting, music or painting. She is at the head of all Portuguese charitable establishments, which she directs in person even to the minutest details. Many and many a time she will quit the palace at some early morning hour, unaccompanied, simply dressed in black; and none of the household dare ask whither goes Her Majesty, for all know she is bound on some secret errand of mercy. Once when a civic guard, recognising her and seeing ' her enter one of the lowest quarters in Lisbon, followed her to watch over her safety, she sternly forbade him to divulge what he had seen, or to unmask her annonymity. It is no uncommon sight to see her, on quitting the cathedral after morning mass, surrounded by a crowd of poor people, who kneel as she passes, kiss the hem of her dress, or present some petition.”

Before his marriage Dom Carlos was passionately fond of the excitement of the bull-ring, which he would enter incognito, not as a spectator, but to take an active part in this savage sport. Tn

the Portuguese method of bull-fighting neither bulls nor horses are killed, and to prevent ' he possibility of a bull goring a horse, his horns are covered with padded guards. One element of danger which is present in the Spanish method is thus removed. Now, the King is nothing if not brave; and when one of the beautiful Court ladies remarked that it was not fair to the bull, and thoughtlessly dared the Duke of Braganza (as he then was) to face the animal with its sharp horns unguarded, he gallantly replied that he would do so at the next bull-fight, and

invited the lady to witness his doings from the Royal box. In Portugal the regulations of the ring strictly enjoin that no hull he fought “with points unbated”; but in spite of this orders wen 1 given that a bull was to be admitted into the arena with his horns unguarded. Doni Carlos took his stand before the swinging doors, with the frilled darts ready in his hand, and waited for the bull. But a bull rarely charges home at the first attempt; and this one stopped, snortc<l angrily, and threw up the sand with its front hoofs. The Duke waxed his arms, made a feint to lure it on. and then, as it charged again, sprang to one

side to avoid it, but in the very act of springing, slipped on a wet place left by the watering-hose, and fell! The whole audience rose with a simultaneous cry of horror; for though the Duke fought incognito, everyone knew who the too bold banderillo was. Another fighter waved his red capa in the bull’s face; the animal’s attention was diverted for a second, and the Duke rose. But, unfortunately, the bull saw the movement, and made once more for his first adversary. Then came a moment of breathless suspense while the Duke ran for his life towards the timber barricade, which he cleared at a bound; a second or two la-

ter the bull’s horns made splinters in the woodwork just below where the Duke’s heels had passed over! Since her father’s banishment from France Queen Amelie has spent a great part of every year with her parents in England, and thus learned to love England and English customs, both she and her sister, the Duchess of Aosta, having always taken a keen delight in the pleasures of English country life. The Queen, who was born at Twickenham, was educated for the most part in England, though she spent a part of each year in France and Spain with her parents’ relations. She was the favourite grand-

child of her maternal grandmother, a most talented Princess, the late Duchesse de Montpensier, younger sister of the ex-Queen Isabella of Spain, who had her chief residences in Spain. It was through the Duchesse that the marriage of Princess Amelie to the future King of Portugal was arranged, her Royal Highness having been on terms of intimate friendship with his father and mother. The Crown Prince was but twenty-two years of age when he came in 1885 to the English Court to woo the lovely Princess. He was received with great friendliness by Queen Victoria, who did all in her power to help him in his suit.