EÇA DE QUEIROZ,CONSUL AND WRITER

José Calvet de Magalhães

It is possible to analyse Eça de Queiroz’ consular work in the light of three different elements: firstly, the motives which led him to choose the consular career; secondly, the way in which he fitted into the consular profession; and lastly, the way in which he generally performed his duties.
Many professional diplomats were also writers. At the same time, a number of established writers, including Garrett, Tomás Ribeiro, Manuel Pinheiro Chagas, Guerra Junqueiro and Teixeira Gomes among others, occasionally exercised diplomatic functions. Of the diplomat-writers, there is no doubt that it was Eça de Queirós who distinguished himself most for his notable literary work. His renown as a writer almost completely obscured his function as a Portuguese consul – one that he fulfilled for around twenty-eight years.
Despite his fame as a writer, he did not look down on his work as a consul. In a letter he wrote to Ramalho Ortigão on the 28^th of November 1878, he said: "… I produce a work of art, whilst being both consul and writer…". He did conceal his literary activity from his consular colleagues, however. Following Eça’s demise, in Stockholm in 1901 the diplomat and poet António Feijó met a former Swedish consul who had been a colleague of Eça’s in Newcastle and who asked for news of his old friend. His name was the Count of Bankow and he had been very close to his Portuguese counterpart for years, but he was completely unaware that Eça had been a writer – and a famous one at that. He refused to believe it and was only convinced when Feijó showed him a postcard bearing a photograph of the monument to Eça in Largo do Barão de Quintela in Lisbon.
We do not possess any statements by Eça de Queirós or testimonies left by close friends of his as to the reasons why he applied to take up the consular career, but if we analyse the circumstances of his life at the time when he took this decision, it is not difficult to deduce the reasons that impelled him to do so.
The invitation to go on a trip to Egypt in the company of his great and intimate friend, the prominent nobleman Luís de Resende, certainly awoke a desire to undertake new voyages and get to know new places, peoples and customs.
A career as a consul naturally attracted Eça because, besides enabling him to get to know the world, it guaranteed him a stable job of a kind that would leave him enough leisure time to dedicate himself to his literary passion.

In  Camões - Revista de Letras e Culturas Lusófonas