The House with a History of Books
How a bishop's library from the Algarve found its way onto the Bodleian's first shelves
A story of synchronicity
For all of you who have been to Casa Fuzetta, you will know our library is in the heart of the house and invites you to pick a book, kick off your shoes and settle in to one of the comfiest sofas ever made - the aptly named “white cloud” sofa.
What you may not know is that Portugal and Britain have the oldest alliance in the world still in force. It dates back to 1373. A Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Alliance, mirroring our own house toast of Love and Friendship.
Treaty of alliance between king Edward III of England and Ferdinand I of Portugal, 16th June 1373 (The National Archives- E 30-275)
Churchill said it is “without parallel in world history”.
Quite incredible that even now new bonds of friendship get to form between our family, who fell in love with Olhão over 10 years ago now and the local community.
We came not knowing much (if anything) about England’s long history with Portugal - that Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt was married off to the King of Portugal, John I, to seal the Treaty of Windsor and would in due course give birth to and raise Portugal’s “illustrious generation” including Prince Henry the Navigator, proclaimed leader of the Voyages of Discovery.
Fast forward a few centuries, the English returned to the Iberian peninsula in their long battles with Napoleon. Who would have thought it, but Napoleon was duly pushed out of the Algarve by the fishermen from the very town we would come to call home.
English historian Richard Lodge put it well when he said, “there is no state in Europe with which our relations have been on the whole so continuously intimate and friendly”.
Stories
The stories we tell over centuries, over campfires, over long nights on our terraces drinking wine, over lazy days stretching out to greet the sun.
In our podcast, Casa Fuzetta - The House of Stories, we often talk about moments that trigger unforgiving deja vu; people who arrive just at the right time; people who reveal connections we could never have imagined. We call them moments of synchronicity.
As we restart our Book and Arts Club, we can look at the beginnings of revered institutions and recognise a little slice of the Algarve running down the seam of the culture we love to cherish but sometimes forget to care for.
The Bodleian Libraries hold more than 14 million printed items and its rotunda architecture is now famous the world over.
However, their beginnings were far from auspicious. When Sir Thomas Bodley conceived their creation, he was forced to rely on friends, acquaintances and anyone with a book worth buying to fill his shelves,
Perhaps we will see history rhyme itself here in Casa Fuzetta?
Bodley described the old university library as a great desolate room, a ruin. He set out to restore it and to stir up other men’s benevolence, to help to furnish it with books.
Among those men was Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex and a favourite privateer of Elizabeth I.
And at the very moment Sir Thomas needed them, a shipload of books from the Algarve found their way to the empty shelves. “Among the books presented to the Library by the Earl of Essex were those formerly in the library of Fernão Mascarenhas, Bishop of Faro and Grand Inquisitor, which Essex removed from the episcopal library during one of his buccaneering raids in 1596.” This was when Spain had seized the Portuguese crown, the friendship between England and Portugal broke, the books were taken, and they've never come home.
What a house like ours can do is the reverse, gather books and stories freely given, in Portugal, among friends and share them with all those who come with an open mind and an open heart.
Casa Fuzetta is proud to be relaunching its Casa Fuzetta Book & Arts Club
It is in this spirit that we are proud to relaunch our Casa Fuzetta Book & Arts Club.
It will be run by our son Will; part pirate, part protector in his own right. He has a First Class Degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies and a Master’s Degree from the University of Amsterdam in Literature.
We invite you to share your favourite recommendations - for books, poems, plays, galleries, exhibitions and more. You can send them to Will at: stories@casafuzetta.com
Our club has no fees and no obligations, just a hope that our physical and virtual library will build and flourish over the years to come, fuelled by love, friendship and synchronicity.
So when you fly to Casa Fuzetta next, pass through Faro’s old town or sit on an island thumbing the latest Elif Shafak (one of our very favourite authors), remember that come heaven or low tide, books run through the very core of where you are and that synchronicity is worth reading for.
Together, let’s build something worth protecting from pirates. Or at least something worth guiding you back home here.
If you would like to deep dive into the Casa Fuzetta - House of Stories podcast. We invite you to explore the current two series via the links below.