or, more correctly, to see the people of Havana at an opera. The Teatro
de Tacón is closed for repairs. This is unfortunate, as it is said by
some to be the finest theater, and by all to be one of the three finest
theaters in the world. This, too, is attributed to Tacón; although it is
said to have been a speculation of a clever pirate turned fish-dealer,
who made a fortune by it. But I like well enough the Teatro de
Villanueva. The stage is deep and wide, the pit high and comfortable,
and the boxes light and airy and open in front, with only a light
tracery of iron to support the rails, leaving you a full view of the
costumes of the ladies, even to their slippers. The boxes are also
separated from the passage-ways in the rear, only by wide lattice work;
so that the promenaders between the acts can see the entire contents of
the boxes at one view; and the ladies dress and sit and talk and use the
fan with a full sense that they are under the inspection of a "committee
of the whole house." They are all in full dress, décolletées, without
hats. It seemed, to my fancy, that the mature women were divisible into
two classes, distinctly marked and with few intermediates--the obese and
the shrivelled. I suspect that the effect of time in this climate is to
produce a decided result in the one direction or the other. But a single
night's view at an opera is very imperfect material for an induction, I
admit. The young ladies had, generally, full figures, with tapering
fingers and well-rounded arms; yet there were some in the extreme
contrast of sallow, bilious, sharp countenances, with glassy eyes. There
is evidently great attention to manner, to the mode of sitting and
moving, to the music of the voice in speaking, the use of the hands and
arms, and, perhaps it may be ungallant to add, of the eyes.
The Governor-General, Concha (whose title is, strictly,
Capitan-General), with his wife and two daughters, and two
aides-de-camp, is in the Vice-regal box, hung with red curtains, and
surmounted by the royal arms. I can form no opinion of him from his
physiognomy, as that is rather heavy, and gives not much indication.
Between the acts, I make, as all the gentlemen do, the promenade of the
house. All parts of it are respectable, and the regulations are good. I
notice one curious custom, which I am told prevails in all Spanish
theaters. As no women sit in the pit, and the boxes are often hired for
the season, and are high-priced, a portion of an upper tier is set apart
for those women and children who cannot or do not choose to get seats in
the boxes. Their quarter is separated from the rest of the house by
gates, and is attended by two or three old women, with a man to guard
the entrance. No men are admitted among them, and their parents,
brothers, cousins and beaux are allowed only to come to the door, and
must send in refreshments, and even a cup of water, by the hands of the
dueñas.
Military, on duty, abound at the doors and in the passage-ways. The men
to-night are of the regiment of Guards, dressed in white. There are
enough of them to put down a small insurrection, on the spot. The
singers screamed well enough, and the play was a poor one, "María de
Rohan," but the prima donna, Gazzaniga, is a favorite, and the excitable
Cubans shout and scream, and throw bouquets, and jump on the benches,
and, at last, present her with a crown, wreathed with flowers, and with
jewels of value attached to it. Miss Adelaide Phillips is here, too, and
a favorite, and has been crowned, they say; but she does not sing
to-night.
VI.
HAVANA: A Social Sunday
To-morrow, I am to go, at eight o'clock either to the church of San
Domingo, to hear the military mass, or to the Jesuit church of Belén;
for the service of my own church is not publicly celebrated, even at the
British consulate, no service but the Roman Catholic being tolerated on
the island.
To-night there is a public máscara (mask ball) at the great hall, next
door to Le Grand's. My only window is by the side of the numerous
windows of the great hall, and all these are wide open; and I should be
stifled if I were to close mine. The music is loud and violent, from a
very large band, with kettle drums and bass drums and trumpets; and
because these do not make noise and uproar enough, leather bands are
snapped, at the turns in the tunes. For sleeping, I might as well have
been stretched on the bass drum. This tumult of noises, and the heat are
wearing and oppressive beyond endurance, as it draws on past midnight,
to the small hours; and the servants in the court of the hall seem to be
tending at tables of quarrelling men, and to be interminably washing and
breaking dishes. After several feverish hours, I light a match and look
at my watch. It is nearly five o'clock in the morning. There is an hour
to daylight--and will this noise stop before then? The city clocks
struck five; the music ceased; and the bells of the convents and
monasteries tolled their matins, to call the nuns and monks to their
prayers and to the bedsides of the sick and dying in the hospitals, as
the maskers go home from their revels at this hideous hour of Sunday
morning. The servants ceased their noises, the cocks began to crow and
the bells to chime, the trumpets began to bray, and the cries of the
streets broke in before dawn, and I dropped asleep just as I was
thinking sleep past hoping for; when I am awakened by a knocking at the
door, and Antonio calling, "Usted! Usted! Un caballero quiere ver á
Usted!" to find it half-past nine, the middle of the forenoon, and an
ecclesiastic in black dress and shovel hat, waiting in the passage-way,
with a message from the bishop.
His Excellency regrets not having seen me the day before, and invites me
to dinner at three o'clock, to meet three or four gentlemen, an
invitation which I accept with pleasure.
I am too late for the mass, or any other religious service, as all the
churches close at ten o'clock. A tepid, soothing bath, at "Los baños
públicos," round the corner, and I spend the morning in my chamber. As
we are at breakfast, the troops pass by the Paseo, from the mass
service. Their gait is quick and easy, with swinging arms, after the
French fashion. Their dress is seersucker, with straw hats and red
cockades: the regiments being distinguished by the color of the cloth on
the cuffs of the coat, some being yellow, some green, and some blue.
Soon after two o'clock, I take a carriage for the bishop's. On my way
out I see that the streets are full of Spanish sailors from the
men-of-war, ashore for a holiday, dressed in the style of English
sailors, with wide duck trousers, blue jackets, and straw hats, with the
name of their ship on the front of the hat. All business is going on as
usual, and laborers are at work in the streets and on the houses.
The company consists of the bishop himself, the Bishop of Puebla de los
Ángeles in Mexico, Father Yuch, the rector of the Jesuit College, who
has a high reputation as a man of intellect, and two young
ecclesiastics. Our dinner is well cooked, and in the Spanish style,
consisting of fish, vegetables, fruits, and of stewed light dishes, made
up of vegetables, fowls and other meats, a style of cooking well adapted
to a climate in which one is very willing to dispense with the solid,
heavy cuts of an English dinner.
The Bishop of Puebla wore the purple, the Bishop of Havana a black robe
with a broad cape, lined with red, and each wore the Episcopal cross and
ring. The others were in simple black cassocks. The conversation was in
French; for, to my surprise, none of the company could speak English;
and being allowed my election between French and Spanish, I chose the
former, as the lighter infliction on my associates.
I am surprised to see what an impression is made on all classes in this
country by the pending "Thirty Millions Bill" of Mr. Slidell. It is
known to be an Administration measure, and is thought to be the first
step in a series which is to end in an attempt to seize the island. Our
steamer brought oral intelligence that it had passed the Senate, and it
was so announced in the Diario of the day after our arrival, although no
newspaper that we brought so stated it. Not only with these clergymen,
but with the merchants and others whom I have met since our arrival,
foreigners as well as Cubans, this is the absorbing topic. Their future
seems to be hanging in doubt, depending on the action of our government,
which is thought to have a settled purpose to acquire the island. I
suggested that it had not passed the Senate, and would not pass the
House; and, at most, was only an authority to the President to make an
offer that would certainly be refused. But they looked beyond the form
of the act, and regarded it as the first move in a plan, of which,
although they could not entirely know the details, they thought they
understood the motive.
These clergymen were well informed as to the state of religion in the
United States, the relative numbers and force of the various
denominations, and their doctrinal differences; the reputations of
Brownson, Parker, Beecher, and others; and most minutely acquainted with
the condition of their own church in the United States, and with the
chief of its clergy. This acquaintance is not attributable solely to
their unity of organization, and to the consequent interchange of
communication, but largely also to the tie of a common education at the
Propaganda or St. Sulpice, the catalogues of whose alumni are familiar
to the educated Catholic clergy throughout the world.
The subject of slavery, and the condition and prospects of the Negro
race in Cuba, the probable results of the coolie system, and the
relations between Church and State in Cuba, and the manner in which
Sunday is treated in Havana, the public school system in America, the
fate of Mormonism, and how our government will treat it, were freely
discussed. It is not because I have any reason to suppose that these
gentlemen would object to all they said being printed in these pages,
and read by all who may choose to read it in Cuba, or the United States,
that I do not report their interesting and instructive conversation; but
because it would be, in my opinion, a violation of the universal
understanding among gentlemen.
After dinner, we walked on the piazza, with the noble sunset view of the
unsurpassed panorama lying before us; and I took my leave of my host, a
kind and courteous gentleman of Old Spain, as well as a prelate, just as
a few lights were beginning to sprinkle over the fading city, and the
Morro Light to gleam on the untroubled air.
Made two visits in the city this evening. In each house, I found the
double row of chairs, facing each other, always with about four or five
feet of space between the rows. The etiquette is that the gentlemen sit
on the row opposite to the ladies, if there be but two or three present.
If a lady, on entering goes to the side of a gentleman, when the other
row is open to her, it indicates either familiar acquaintance or
boldness. There is no people so observant of outguards, as the Spanish
race.
I notice, and my observation is supported by what I am told by the
residents here, that there is no street-walking, in the technical sense,
in Havana. Whether this is from the fact that no ladies walk in the
streets--which are too narrow for comfortable or even safe walking--or
by reason of police regulations, I do not know. From what one meets with
in the streets, if he does not look farther, one would not know that
there was a vice in Havana, not even drunkenness.
VII.
HAVANA: Belén and the Jesuits
Rose before six, and walked as usual, down the Paseo, to the sea baths.
How refreshing is this bath, after the hot night and close rooms! At
your side, the wide blue sea with its distant sails, the bath cut into
the clean rock, the gentle washing in and out of the tideless sea, at
the Gulf Stream temperature, in the cool of the morning! As I pass down,
I meet a file of coolies, in Chinese costume, marching, under overseers,
to their work or their jail. And there is the chain-gang! clank, clank,
as they go headed by officers with pistols and swords, and flanked by
drivers with whips. This is simple wretchedness!
While at breakfast, a gentleman in the dress of the regular clergy,
speaking English, called upon me, bringing me, from the bishop an open
letter of introduction and admission to all the religious, charitable,
and educational institutions of the city, and offering to conduct me to
the Belén (Bethlehem). He is Father B. of Charleston, S. C. temporarily
in Havana, with whom I find I have some acquaintances in common, both in
America and abroad. We drive together to the Belén. I say drive; for few
persons walk far in Havana, after ten o'clock in the morning. The
volantes are the public carriages of Havana; and are as abundant as cabs
in London. You never need stand long at a street door without finding
one. The postilions are always Negroes; and I am told that they pay the
owner a certain sum per day for the horse and volante, and make what
they can above that.
The Belén is a group of buildings, of the usual yellow or tawny color,
covering a good deal of ground, and of a thoroughly monastic character.
It was first a Franciscan monastery, then a barrack, and now has been
given by the government to the Jesuits. The company of Jesus here is
composed of a rector and about forty clerical and twenty lay brethren.
These perform every office, from the highest scientific investigations
and instruction, down to the lowest menial offices, in the care of the
children; some serving in costly vestments at the high altar, and others
in coarse black garb at the gates. It is only three years since they
established themselves in Havana, but in that time they have formed a
school of two hundred boarders and one hundred day scholars, built
dormitories for the boarders, and a common hall, restored the church and
made it the most fully attended in the city; established a missionary
work in all parts of the town, recalled a great number to the discipline
of the Church, and not only created something like an enthusiasm of
devotion among the women, who are said to have monopolized the religion
of Cuba in times past, but have introduced among the men, and among many
influential men, the practices of confession and communion, to which
they had been almost entirely strangers. I do not take this account from
the Jesuits themselves, but from the regular clergy of other orders, and
from Protestants who are opposed to them and their influence. All agree
that they are at work with zeal and success.
I met my distinguished acquaintance of yesterday, the rector, who took
me to the boys' chapel, and introduced me to Father Antonio Cabre, a
very young man of a spare frame and intellectual countenance, with hands
so white and so thin, and eyes so bright, and cheek so pale! He is at
the head of the department of mathematics and astronomy, and looks
indeed as if he had outwatched the stars, in vigils of science or of
devotion. He took me to his laboratory, his observatory, and his
apparatus of philosophic instruments. These I am told are according to
the latest inventions, and in the best style of French and German
workmanship. I was also shown a collection of coins and medals, a
cabinet of shells, the commencement of a museum of natural history,
already enriched with most of the birds of Cuba, and an interesting
cabinet of the woods of the island, in small blocks, each piece being
polished on one side, and rough on the other. Among the woods were the
mahoganies, the iron-wood, the ebony, the lignum vitæ, the cedar, and
many others, of names unfamiliar to me, which admit of the most
exquisite polish. Some of the most curious were from the Isla de Pinos,
an island belonging to Cuba, and on its southern shore.
The sleeping arrangement for the boys here seemed to me to be new, and
to be well adapted to the climate. There is a large hall, with a roof
about thirty feet from the floor, and windows near the top, to give
light and ventilation above, and small portholes, near the ground, to
let air into the passages. In this hall are double rows of compartments,
like high pews, or, more profanely, like the large boxes in restaurants
and chop-houses, open at the top, with curtains instead of doors, and
each large enough to contain a single bed, a chair, and a toilet table.
This ensures both privacy and the light and air of the great hall. The
bedsteads are of iron; and nothing can exceed the neatness and order of
the apartments. The boys' clothes are kept in another part of the house,
and they take to their dormitories only the clothes that they are using.
Each boy sleeps alone. Several of the Fathers sleep in the hall, in
curtained rooms at the ends of the passage-ways, and a watchman walks
the rounds all night, to guard against fire, and to give notice of
sickness.
The boys have a playground, a gymnasium, and a riding-school. But
although they like riding and fencing, they do not take to the robust
exercises and sports of English schoolboys. An American whom I met here,
who had spent several months at the school, told me that in their
recreations they were more like girls, and like to sit a good deal,
playing or working with their hands. He pointed out to me a boy, the son
of an American mother, a lady to whom I brought letters and kind wishes
from her many friends at the North, and told me that he had more pluck
than any boy in the school.
The roof of the Belén is flat, and gives a pleasant promenade, in the
open air, after the sun is gone down, which is much needed, as the
buildings are in the dense part of the city.
The brethren of this order wear short hair, with the tonsure, and dress
in coarse cassocks of plain black, coming to the feet, and buttoned
close to the neck, with a cape, but with no white of collar above; and
in these, they sweep like black spectres, about the passage-ways, and
across the halls and court-yards. There are so many of them that they
are able to give thorough and minute attention to the boys, not only in
instruction, both secular and religious, but in their entire training
and development.
From the scholastic part of the institution, I passed to the church. It
is not very large, has an open marble floor, a gallery newly erected for
the use of the brethren and other men, a sumptuous high altar, a
sacristy and vestry behind, and a small altar, by which burned the
undying lamp, indicating the presence of the Sacrament. In the vestry, I
was shown the vestments for the service of the high altar, some of which
are costly and gorgeous in the extreme, not probably exceeded by those
of the Temple at Jerusalem in the palmiest days of the Jewish hierarchy.
All are presents from wealthy devotees. One, an alb, had a circle of
precious stones; and the lace alone on another, a present from a lady of
rank, is said to have cost three thousand dollars. Whatever may be
thought of the rightfulness of this expenditure, turning upon the old
question as to which the alabaster box of ointment and the ordained
costliness of the Jewish ritual "must give us pause," it cannot be said
of the Jesuits that they live in cedar, while the ark of God rests in
curtains; for the actual life of the streets hardly presents any greater
contrast, than that between the sumptuousness of their apparel at the
altar, and the coarseness and cheapness of their ordinary dress, the
bareness of their rooms, and the apparent severity of their life.
The Cubans have a childish taste for excessive decoration. Their altars
look like toyshops. A priest, not a Cuban, told me that he went to the
high altar of the cathedral once, on a Christmas day, to officiate, and
when his eye fell on the childish and almost profane attempts at
symbolism--a kind of doll millinery, if he had not got so far that he
could not retire without scandal, he would have left the duties of the
day to others. At the Belén there is less of this; but the Jesuits find
or think it necessary to conform a good deal to the popular taste.
In the sacristy, near the side altar, is a distressing image of the
Virgin, not in youth, but the mother of the mature man, with a sword
pierced through her heart--referring to the figurative prediction "a
sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." The handle and a part
of the blade remain without, while the marks of the deep wound are seen,
and the countenance expresses the sorest agony of mind and body. It is
painful, and beyond all legitimate scope of art, and haunts one, like a
vision of actual misery. It is almost the only thing in the church of
which I have brought away a distinct image in my memory.
A strange, eventful history is that of the Society of Jesus! Ignatius
Loyola, a soldier and noble of Spain, renouncing arms and knighthood,
hangs his trophies of war upon the altar of Monserrate. After intense
studies and barefoot pilgrimages, persecuted by religious orders whose
excesses he sought to restrain, and frowned upon by the Inquisition, he
organizes, with Xavier and Faber, at Montmartre, a society of three.
From this small beginning, spreading upwards and outwards, it
overshadows the earth. Now, at the top of success, it is supposed to
control half Christendom. Now, his order proscribed by State and Church
alike and suppressed by the Pope himself, there is not a spot of earth
in Catholic Christendom where the Jesuit can place the sole of his foot.
In this hour of distress, he finds refuge in Russia, and in Protestant
Prussia. Then, restored and tolerated, the order revives here and there
in Europe, with a fitful life; and, at length, blazes out into a glory
of missionary triumphs and martyrdoms in China, in India, in Africa, and
in North America; and now, in these later days, we see it advancing
everywhere to a new epoch of labor and influence. Thorough in education,
perfect in discipline, absolute in obedience--as yielding, as
indestructible, as all-pervading as water or as air!
The Jesuits make strong friends and strong enemies. Many, who are
neither the one nor the other, say of them that their ethics are
artificial, and their system unnatural; that they do not reform nature,
but destroy it; that, aiming to use the world without abusing it, they
reduce it to subjection and tutelage; that they are always either in
dangerous power, or in disgrace; and although they may labor with more
enthusiasm and self-consecration than any other order, and meet with
astonishing successes for a time, yet such is the character of their
system that these successes are never permanent, but result in
opposition, not only from Protestants, and moderate Catholics, and from
the civil power, but from other religious orders and from the regular
clergy in their own Church, an opposition to which they are invariably
compelled to yield, at last. In fine, they declare, that, allowing them
all zeal, and all ability, and all devotedness, their system is too
severe and too unnatural for permanent usefulness anywhere--medicine and
not food, lightning and not light, flame and not warmth.
Not satisfied with this moderated judgment, their opponents have met
them, always and everywhere, with uniform and vehement reprobation. They
say to them--the opinion of mankind has condemned you! The just and
irreversible sentence of time has made you a by-word and a hissing, and
reduced your very name, the most sacred in its origin, to a synonym for
ambition and deceit!
Others, again, esteem them the nearest approach in modern times to that
type of men portrayed by one of the chiefest, in his epistle: "In much
patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in
imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; by
pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering; ... by honor and dishonor; by
evil report and good report; as deceivers and yet true; as unknown, and
yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not
killed; as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many
rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."
VIII.
MATANZAS