"The Last Old Place"
Type of work: Travel literature
Author: Datus C. Proper
Locale: Portugal
First published: 1992
Twenty years ago I attended a writing course in Corte Madera, California, taught by the esteemed Welsh historian, author and travel writer Jan Morris.
Upon hearing of my interest in writing about travel and fly-fishing, Morris suggested I read a book called “The Last Old Place: A Search Through Portugal” by a writer named Datus Proper.
“He’s a wonderful American author who travels the length of Portugal and does some fishing along the way,” said Morris, who wrote the forward for “The Last Old Place.”
"The Last Old Place" by Datus C. Proper.
Now, years later, I am planning my first-ever trip to Portugal, so I figured it was finally time to take up Jan Morris on her book recommendation.
In “The Last Old Place,” the author Proper takes readers along as he and a Portuguese friend named Adriano (a loveable old-timer) crisscross their way from the far south of Portugal to the northern frontier with Spain, a journey across time and space, with some trout fishing thrown in for good measure.
Proper and Adriano start in the port of Sagres, where we learn about Portugal’s Age of Discovery, from the end of the 15th century to the 18th century when “the Portuguese took their sphere’s measure, found the relation of its pieces, and tied them together with maps.”
Next up was the arid and off-the-beaten path region of Alentejo, where we follow the duo wandering the cobblestoned streets of ancient walled villages, dining in humble pensaos and exploring hilltop castles.
When Adriano hosts Proper at his family’s country home outside the college town of Coimbra, the fishing begins. Fly-fishing for brown trout, to be specific, on the Rio Mandego and some of its tributaries.
“Trout fishing is, in Portuguese, apaixonante. The translation would be ‘passion-inducing’ in our tongue, which is shy in curling around such thoughts … Passion was interrupted by the donkey and the miller, in that order. The burro was plodding up the trail under two sacks smelling of ground maize.”
Ultimately, as a fisherman myself, these were my favorite passages in “The Last Old Place.” Proper, who lives in Bozeman, Montana, writes with a self-deferential tone that is endearing to both the reader and the Portuguese he meets along the way. He shines a light on little-known Portugal – “a land that is all heroes and no resources” – and its historical destiny of achieving independence from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, on the flank of Spain.
In her forward, Morris explained that good travel books strike a subtle balance between description and self-portrait. The best travel books, she theorized, go one step further and made the reader feel that writer and destination were made for each other. Bruce Chatwin and Patagonia. Paul Theroux and the Chinese rail system. Bill Bryson and the Appalachian Trail.
The Portuguese-speaking, fly-casting Datus Proper achieves, in my view, travel-writing immortality with “The Last Old Place,” a perfect partnership between the writer and the Portuguese Republic.
“But then it is really hardly a travel book at all, in any conventional sense,” Morris wrote, “but more the record of an easy friendship between a man and nation – the man’s emotions, the nation’s presence, inextricably blended.”