Page 443 - The Secret Museum

BRAZIL WAS THE SECOND COUNTRY in the world, after Great Britain, to start using

national postage stamps, in 1843. Five curators led me into the storage room of the
museum to see the precious leaf of stamps, printed on fine, yellowing paper and kept
in a paper sleeve. It is so valuable that the museum has never exhibited it. They don’t
want the light to get in the goat’s eyes.

The first stamps issued in Brazil were called bull’s eye stamps because that’s
what they looked like. Apparently, these ones look like the eyes of a goat, but I can’t
say I’ve ever stared into a goat’s eye, so I wouldn’t really know. I’ll have to take
Brazil’s word for it. The stamps came from Rio and, when they were printed, in

1850, each one cost 30 Reales. Today, they would cost a lot more. This entire leaf of
200 stamps is hard to put a value on, because it is the only one that survives: it would
depend how much someone was willing to spend and how much competition there
was to buy it.

It’s interesting that Brazil introduced stamps before Portugal, its colonial ruler.
This was thanks to King Pedro II, known as ‘the Magnanimous’, the second and last
ruler of the Brazilian empire, whose reign lasted 58 years, from 1831 to 1889. His
mother died when he was very young, and his father and new stepmother left him

alone in Brazil while they went to Europe to try to restore his sister to the Portuguese
throne when he was only five years old. Young Pedro studied from seven in the
morning until ten at night, with two hours a day off for a bit of fun. Luckily, he loved
to learn.

As he grew up, Pedro filled his palace with books: he had three libraries,
containing 60,000 volumes, as well as a physics room, a telegraphic cabinet and an
observatory. He took Sanskrit lessons and could speak several languages, including
Tupi, which is now extinct but was once spoken by the Tupi people of Brazil.

Pedro liked to travel, and often came across innovations he thought would go

down well in Brazil. He became one of the first photographers in the country, buying
a daguerreotype camera in March 1840, and was certainly the first photographer who
was also a head of state. He saw telephones in Philadelphia and brought them to
Brazil and also imported rail, the telegraph and, of course, stamps.

He exchanged letters with scientists, intellectuals and artists such as Pasteur,
Alexander Graham Bell, Longfellow and Wagner. He once said: ‘Were I not an
emperor, I would like to be a teacher. I do not know of a task more noble than to
direct young minds and prepare the men of tomorrow.’ He financed scholarships for

Brazilian children to study in Europe and founded societies in Brazil for history,
geography, music and opera, and the Pedro II School, upon which schools across
Brazil were modelled.

It gets better. According to history, he was a popular, democratic ruler who
wanted to understand his country, so he went walking in the street without any of his
staff. He eliminated corruption from government, allowed the press freedom to write
what they liked about him, listened to advisors and hired the best to advise him.