A Theory of Madeira
By WOLF MANKOWITZ N English lady, attempting to introduce the restful cult of knitting to the peasant women of Madeira, dis- covered that due to having specialised in embroidery for the past hundred years, her otherwise willing pupils were incapable of using their left hands. This seems a pity, for knitting would certainly suit a people who have brought to perfection several other obsessional arts.
The preparation of Madeira's principal fish, the espada, a white, firm-fleshed deep-sea nightmare of neutral flavour, itself constitutes a triumph of obsession over nature, for the creature is eaten every day and I'there are, typically, 365 ways of encouraging it to emulate some other fish. Yet culinary inspiration is not the source of this extravagance. It is simply that there happen to ,be that number of days in most years. Portuguese obsession and the ease with which the insipid espada is caught, explain the rest.
If the visitor remains unconvinced by the case of the multi- purpose espada, he may look about him at the very landscape of the " Pearl of the Atlantic." A mountainous island of arid volcanic formation, has been transformed ' by obsessive husbandry into a highly productive market garden. Terracing cp-opts the smallest parcels of land (at an average price of Ll a square metre) into prosperous productivity. And when the terraces do not require their diligent attention, the peasants visit their longing for the symmetrical upon mosaic pave- ments and dry stone work.
And then there is the undeniable evidence Of the wicker and basket work home industry. Watching the peasants weave dog- baskets from .Funchal to infinity, always in the same patterns, always in the same way, always singing the same sad songs, yet always experiencing (it seems) the same phlegmatic satisfac- tion, the amateur anthropologist wonders why exactly similar mechanical performances in factories at home fail to give the performers an abiding sense of achievement. No doubt the comic strip is partially to blame. Certainly the films, probably television, and maybe the weather. In Madeira the weather is almost always fine. This is so relaxing that after a couple of weeks basket-making becomes exciting and barbola-work a dynamic nightmare. There appears in the Portuguese peasant a solemn pedantry, compelling him to be symmetrically thorOugh in his work (at about £2 a week). A Yorkshire pudding served with sinewy beef at a Sunday lunch " in the hills " was carefully concocted by the cook (who renamed it " beef-cake "): It was a more exactly Yorkshire pudding than can be found in most places out of that county. As the flowers die in the hotel's eleven- • acre gardens, the, Portuguese gardeners deftly replace them with healthy seedlings all exactly the same size and at regular intervals. The driver of one of the large old-fashioned and highly dignified open tourers from which visitors view the strange, temperate to sub-tropical landscape, takes the steep and narrow roads carefully, and is outraged by the least demonstration of jay-walking or bad driving. Throughout the island the impression of carefully thought-out work repeated for ever in precisely the same way, conveys a sense of secure equability. Maybe it is a natural admiration of this quality which makes the' English so acceptable to the Portuguese, enabling a wealthy community of some three hundred British nationals to live harmoniously in a country already so densely populated that with a population of 260,000 it can export 1,000 able-bodied men a month to South America and the West Indies. Not that emigration is unprofitable. The emigrants, forbidden to take their families with them, send back a million and a quarter pounds a year. • The money comes in useful because Portuguese family life is intense. An amazing proportion of the women seen from the open tourer (usually collecting kindling) are pregnant. " What else," asked an eminent member of the Funchal Rotary Club—which an Englishman chairs—" what else do they marry for ? " If this question rhetorically answers itself, then it is not surprising that courtship should be as attenuated as possible. The two-part courting songs, improvised at the wine festivals which continue up and down the island through August to October, obsessively hold marriage back. Girl and boy dance backwards and forwards. The discussion goes :
Girl: If you want to marry me You must ask my dear old dad.
Dear old dad is ninety-three And he is a little mad.
Boy: I have asked your dear old dad Who you say is ninety-three; If he is mad, then you are mad, And mad enough to marry mc.*
The dialogue gives great satisfaction to both the participants and the surrounding crowd, except for the few who, appalled at the participants' stamina, chafe to exhibit their own powers of improvisation. Meanwhile, to assuage the thirst generated by all this eroticism must is a must.
Must is the natural liquor of the grape, and, at this stage, sweet and undistinguished as passion-fruit juice. But not for long. The wine-merchants buy it from the vine-culturalists (of whom the most important is the only Englishman in the island with a Portuguese title). Carried from the presses in goatskins, the must is casked and transported to the wine- lodges, where within a few days it is fortified to the extent of about nineteen per cent. It is the first stage in the most obses- sive of all Madeira crafts, the preparation of Madeira wine. To give the wine traditional quality it has to be kept at a balanced ' temperature in an artificial ship's hold for six months, casked in antique woods, and carefully blended. It is in the blending that the Madeira genius rejoices—because it is so exacting, so difficult, and so specifically Madeira's own obsessional way of doing things. The wine lodges prepare their dry Sercials and Verdelhos, and their sweeter Buals and Malmseys with, such precise comprehension of the nature of the local vines, that from the oldest vintage still extant, the 1792, to the most recent, the quality is even and scarcely varied. The trick is all in the blending of " solera " wines, for because of the extra- ordinary longevity of Madeira a mixing process is possible which traditionalises " the wine. In one room of the lodge of the principal association of wine-growers in Madeira there is £30,000-worth of wine in casks bearing dates which on other wines mean death. For Madeira, as a merchant informed me, " they are the life of the business." With this stock the obsessive artists of the island work to produce—as in wicker work, or embroidery, or mosaic—a commodity of regular, high, specifically Madeira, quality. While the must is being fortified, the caked remains of the pressed grapes are broken up and water poured upon them. As the boys jump bare-footed on the dark crimson mess, an anaemic wine leaks through the channel. This the peasants call foot-water. As they jump they sing:
Give me a vineyard, Give me a grape.
My father can't afford wine, So we drink foot-water instead.
The average consumption during the wine festival is about two gallons a day. After standing for a few weeks foot- water is said to make an excellent vinegar, which almost certainly would improve fried espada.
* Free translation.
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