The challenge to a giant

According to Carmen Dolores, the Singapura article caused a sensation in Rio de Janeiro, not on account of its qualities, but rather because of the perplexity it generated and the objections it received. Initially recognising the merits of the journalist, who had many friends and held important positions, the columnist addressed him directly, comparing him to artists he had attacked:

For Carmen Dolores, both those who overstated their praise, as Medeiros e Albuquerque had alleged, as well as those who denied ‘what cannot be denied’ were backwards in their thinking. In defence of Bernhardt, who was actually under seventy, as she recalled, the columnist said that Edmond Rostand chose her to play the lead in La princesse Lointaine (1895) and, more recently, despite the actress’s age, the lead in Aiglon (1900), a play written especially for her. Such a distinction, bestowed by one of France’s most important writers, would, according to the Rio de Janeiro chronicler, placed Bernhardt ‘far above the ugly and unjust discourtesies of our little local critics’.3 Carmen Dolores, ‘A semana’, O País, 8 Oct. 1905, p. 1.

The following week, Carmen Dolores reported that, at the French artist’s premiere, the atmosphere at the Lírico theatre seemed tense with anticipation for Bernhardt’s performance due to the debates in the press. It was, however, a complete triumph:

In the next instalment of her chronicle, she talked about a lecture given by Medeiros e Albuquerque at the National Music Institute on the Saturday afternoon when she was writing. For Carmen Dolores, the ‘good finale’ of the presentation had made up for the ‘monotony of the general exposition’ on the subject of kissing. She thus artificially created another pretext for exalting the great French artist:

Carmen Dolores and Rufiúfio Singapura would square up again the following year, as the columnist for the evening newspaper A Notícia, keen to promote the Italian actress Tina di Lorenzo, who was performing at the Lírico before an insignificant audience,6 Olavo Bilac, ‘Crônica’, Kosmos, 3, 6 (Jun. 1906). had decided to investigate the morality of French actresses, whom, in his ‘Notas’, he had addressed as ‘brothel women’ under the complicit or cowed silence of the Rio de Janeiro locals, who had been admirers of the performers up to that point. The O País columnist comically imagined her antagonist aboard a black ‘conduct police’ speedboat,7 Carmen Dolores, ‘A semana’, O País, 17 Jun. 1906, p. 1. in charge of examining the morality of transatlantic liners with actresses about to disembark, just like the public health inspectors’ boats – public health was at the time led with an iron fist by Osvaldo Cruz – that examined the sanitary state of the ships anchored in front of Rio’s harbour.

On the subject of the allegedly exemplary behaviour of Italian actresses, he recalled the case of Eleonora Duse, who landed in Rio de Janeiro arm in arm with a certain Chechi. To all effects and purposes, he was presented as her husband, and the actress therefore adopted the double-barrelled surname of Duse-Chechi at the time. One night, however, a fight broke out backstage at the Lírico between the alleged husband and the actor Andò. The two men, as the scandal revealed, were competing on equal terms for the heart of the same woman. It then became known that free love prevailed in the Italian company and the great actress, received with honour in aristocratic salons, was still single despite the hyphen in her name.

For Carmen Dolores, moral concerns in the artistic world were misguided and should not obscure what matters most:

Following on from her chronicle, she defended the superiority of French art over Italian and, with sharp irony, attributed Singapuras’ hyperbolic praise of di Lorenzo to unworthy motives:

A week later, Carmen Dolores reported that, according to a colleague from the newspaper, the controversy had served to promote di Lorenzo’s season. The columnist was indifferent to the outcome, but again provoked her adversary:

Sometime later, ‘A semana’ would turn its focus back to di Lorenzo, who continued to enthuse the Rio public and was the target of tributes and expressions of appreciation, probably led by Medeiros e Albuquerque or, at least, with his contribution. The movement in favour of the Italian artist peaked with the initiative to install a plaque at the Lírico to leave on record her triumphant passage through Rio de Janeiro. Carmen Dolores could not ignore what she probably thought was a nonsense:

Carmen Dolores opened her chronicle by recalling Ramalho Ortigão’s definition of success as ‘a charade’, since it often depended on a ‘negligible incident’ and not on the ‘affirmation of talent’. For the columnist, the surprising privilege granted to the Italian actress would further support this conviction: ‘success does not depend on the exclusive affirmation of merit, but on a special concourse of circumstances, of invisible causes that act outside the clear domain of logic, justice and reason’.12 Carmen Dolores, ‘A semana’, O País, 19 Aug. 1906, p. 1.

Had the chronicler been satisfied with these words, she would only have made a more or less subtle insinuation about the cabal that, in her view, was forming to favour di Lorenzo. However, she would subsequently be very clear that, for her, that was precisely what it was all about. The other actresses, of greater talent, who failed to achieve the honour of a plaque at the Lírico, lacked, in her words, ‘the master of ceremonies’ voice, that announces the customary ‘hip hip hurray’ at public parties’.13 Carmen Dolores, ‘A semana’, O País, 19 Aug. 1906, p. 1. The reference to Medeiros e Albuquerque was blatant ….

At the time, newspapers and magazines were the preferred medium for polemics such as this, which did not aim to achieve any understanding or consensus as a result of mutual considerations and concessions, but rather take advantage of public debate as an opportunity to skilfully employ aggressive rhetoric and display encyclopaedic knowledge. The contenders faced each other according to a standard that Roberto Ventura called ‘reflexive’, in other words, each attack deserved an equivalent response in terms of length and aggressiveness, which took on the appearance of a real counter attack.14 Roberto Ventura, Estilo tropical: história cultural e polêmicas literárias no Brasil 1870–1914 (São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 1991). Medeiros e Albuquerque, however, decided to hit back when Carmen Dolores could no longer respond to him. A few days after Emília Moncorvo Bandeira de Melo’s death, the journalist published in A Imprensa, under another pseudonym, Carlos Eduardo, an obituary in which he recognised in her a ‘French writer, for the clear clarity of her style, the conciseness and plastic beauty of her wording’. This conventional praise, however, was followed by the condemnation of her limited cultural horizons: ‘Outside of French art, Carmen Dolores found not a single beauty worth contemplating for a long time’. The restriction served as a pretext for revisiting the controversy that had enveloped the pair, since, for Carlos Eduardo, the woman writer’s Francophilia led her to champion the actor Coquelin, ‘a mediocre celebrity’, and the playwright Henri Bernstein, ‘an artful master builder of theatre’.15 Medeiros e Albuquerque refers to a profession in civil construction—that of the master builder—which today would be simply called a builder. He had not, therefore, intended to praise Bernstein, given the criticism such professionals faced during those euphoric times. They were blamed for the supposed architectural monstrosities of old Rio, which were being ruthlessly demolished by Mayor Pereira Passos to make way for palaces designed by university-trained engineers and architects. Ascribing to the recently deceased writer an ‘excessively combative spirit’, he recalled the old controversy, which, by his own account, had spilled over into the personal sphere:

With the death of his adversary, he probably felt free of the obligation to respect … or fear her ire, so much so that he indicated her susceptibility to taking offence at being called old and feeling disgusted with ageing. This belatedly provided a psychological explanation for Dolores’ exalted defence of French artists treated with contempt due to their advanced age.

Medeiros e Albuquerque also fell victim to truth revealed after his death in 1934. In 1907, he had presented a proposal for spelling reform to the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and he fought to the death for this measure, which broke with the etymological principle, basing it on phonology. His proposals would even have guided a similar reform in Portugal but, decades later, having worked intensively for an orthographic agreement between Brazil and the European country, he saw this new project rejected by the Constituent Assembly in 1934. Prevented from taking part in debates in parliament due to his illness, he reportedly told his friends on the very day he died: ‘I’m a liquidated man. This spelling thing has killed me’.17 ‘A morte de Medeiros e Albuquerque’, Jornal do Brasil, 10 Jun. 1934, p. 6.

Judging by the accounts of witnesses, one can ascertain the importance that Medeiros e Albuquerque had attached to the spelling reform, and this issue would once again place Carmen Dolores in his path. In ‘A semana’, the O País columnist claimed she feared that the proposed change would result in an invasion of words of indigenous origin. In her line of reasoning, she recalled that José Veríssimo had argued that the Portuguese language was based on ‘the classical purism of its Latin origin’, and had criticised the Brazilianisations practised by José de Alencar, whose language to her, Dolores, was ‘insufferably oversentimental and incorrect’.18 Carmen Dolores, ‘A semana’, O País, 5 May 1907, p. 1. In her opinion, the ‘vernacular Portuguese of Portugal’ was the ‘mother tongue’ for Brazilians and served as ‘the source of any study, of any correction of the vices acquired by our Brazilianism’.19 Carmen Dolores, ‘A semana’, O País, 12 May 1907, p. 1. Another of her speeches made it clear that, for her, Portuguese writers were still considered the undisputed masters of Brazilians:

As discussions about the reform continued, and leading figures such as Machado de Assis lent their support for the proposal, Carmen Dolores expressed her fear that the implementation of the measure would have harmful consequences for teaching, as it would impose ‘a monstrous spelling on children, which everyone repels even as ridiculous’. In short, it would amount to ‘the assassination of our admirable Portuguese language’, from which the former mother country would benefit: ‘Portugal alone will be in possession of the pure, correct, grammatical language, while we Brazilians, as a result of a whim, will be left only with the defective and the ridiculous’.21 Carmen Dolores, ‘A semana’, O País, 15 Sep. 1907, p. 1.