rapidly diminishing light, do produce a very novel impression--half
rural, half architectural. One may fancy aisles and naves, transepts and
choirs; the roofs, however, are real, made of leaves fourteen feet long,
drooping like the mitres of a groin, and gothicizing a roof through
which a few slender green rays penetrate--enough to reveal form without
detail. But no marble gives sound to our footsteps; grass, poor a cow
would say, but grass, for a carpet, and old cocoa-nuts to stumble over,
bring us down to earth again. Here we are rewarded by some pretty
flowers, which are the only beauties in this land of beauty who can
wander “in maiden’s meditation, fancy free.” It is an effort to mount
the Pisgah before us, but we must on to the very top, for our ankles are
goaded by living spurs that lie lurking in the grass.
But we are spaciously rewarded, for there lies Havana in its whole
extent before us; the level line of sea behind it; the Morro guarding
it; the Principe fort threatening it; the bay reflecting it and the
setting sun gilding it; palms on every hand outline their greens against
the intensely azure sky behind, and white walls glance out of the
luxuriant foliage, proud that humanity has a home within them. Low-like
mounds fill up the background like priests with shaven crowns, but all
with beauteous vestments sweeping to their feet, running over the plains
between them, up the adjacent ones, round the next--an interminable
reticulation of life and loveliness. The embroidery on God’s footstool
is here wrought with a lavish and loving hand.
Wonderful tropics! The normal home of man; the only soil and sun in
which could grow the fair and fatal tree of knowledge or of life.
No sinister cold, no smoke-tarnished atmosphere, no death-bearing fogs,
no fierce animal energy, no gross crimes; all is sunny and perpetual
youth. Eden unquestionably was not more than twenty-three or thirty
degrees from the equator. But the intermittent flash of the light in the
tower of the Morro startles every half minute the sudden nightfall, and
we hasten to return, in love with nature, and reconciled to ourselves.
_Monday, March 13th._--This morning came Mr. R----, bringing an
unexpected armful of books, with which we are to equip ourselves for a
visit to the country, where we are making arrangements to go. Commenced
the morning by chess, in which I am now habitually ruined, and ended, as
usual, by a long conversation, in which I am listener-in-chief, an
interested if not a brilliant or eloquent one.
Mr. R---- is a Romanist, but I learn from him more of the corruption of
the clergy of the island than an uninitiated Protestant or Romanist
either could invent. Priests in the country are badly salaried, often
unable to get enough to pay their cooking and washing. So they become
entangled in a peculiar kind of reciprocity with some negress or
quadroon, who in time comes to live openly with them, and is recognized,
and not unfrequently respected and acknowledged socially, as the mother
of their large families. I find residents here indignant at visitors who
come and skip over the surface of the country, necessarily, if they
write at all, as superficial as false and absurd. Madame ----’s book is
said to be a tissue of falsehoods, as well as that of D----, which I had
supposed photographic. Every one, in fact, but Humboldt, has assumed a
knowledge to hide ignorance. Cuba seems to be the least abused because
least investigated country which has got into books.
Mr. R---- accepted our invitation to dinner. Like all Frenchmen, he
prefers claret to other wines, and, like all old men who wish to live
long, eats nothing.
_Thursday, 15th._--Who can wonder that sailors never tire of seeing the
sea. With what a loyal instinct the old retired captain seeks the
shelter of some wave-worn cliff where the familiar spray may kiss his
weather-beaten cheek, and the cry of the deep be the lullaby of his last
sleep. Primeval forests want light; prairies are “stale and flat” if not
“unprofitable;” mountain ranges, those petrified waves of earth, are
groups of individuals: but ocean is one, an adequate expression of
extent illimitable, of bulk immeasurable, of depth unfathomable, of
force irresistible, of life everlasting. It is the eternity of time. But
here in Cuba, where so much is transitory and fugitive, where the
accumulation of wealth to expend elsewhere is the aim of all, the
æsthetic claims of the sea are unregarded. The backs of the houses are
universally turned towards it. The Cubans smother palaces in narrow
streets, rejecting the air which has learned purity and inspiration from
the sea, for siroccos of dust and heat. Ugly wharves abound, so do
batteries to make might right. It is only in refinement without
degeneracy, in taste without tinsel, in wealth without avarice, that you
find the loving adornment of ocean’s shores.
We rode, while thinking and saying these things, to Chomero, a little
bay with little cottages on its little sandy shore; little shrubs,
little shells, and little life. A square fort guards it in sinister
silence; a large railway station promises to turn the little Chomero
into the large suburban Carmelo, and straight streets, straight avenues,
and right angles threaten to make it as ugly as the tasteless plans of
architects could devise.
But deliciously sweet is the air; deliciously sweet the new old story
of the sea, and deliciously sweet the _mareschino_ with which we flavor
our _aqua pura_. All things return to their original starting point.
Existence is a rounding of circles. The sun, a tired prodigal, returns
to the parent arms of the horizon; like Socrates, his last act is to
bathe, which he does in the returning tide, and he returns to _el Hotel
de la Reina_, there to chat with Father, C---- or play with Señor R----,
or, better still, to lounge on the sofas and fan our tropical thoughts
into tropical dreams.
_Saturday, 17th._--At last our days are come to have a family
resemblance. I must even confess to a kind of monotony, a
stereotypedness, in their lineaments. I grow to look upon all these
extravagant novelties with _sang froid_, to ride through the streets
reclining in my volante with rarely being amused, and never startled,
that Spanish gentlemen sitting against the walls in rows, or standing at
the corners in groups, one and all, smile and bow, as if I were an old
friend. I am not a bit shocked to see negro and Creole and Spanish
little boys standing in the doors or running about at play with more
backs than shirts--in short, as innocent of clothing as their
great-greatest-grandpapa was when, overtaken by that unfortunate
after-dinner nap, and the angel performed the delicate surgical
operation of taking the still crooked rib from his side, and was not
obliged to waken him by unbuttoning his jacket. I can promenade the
balcony of our hotel without any uncomfortable nervousness because all
the upper and under clerks in the store opposite collect at once to
gape and criticize and express in some way the admiration a Cuban
gentleman is conscientiously bound to feel whenever he sees a wonder. I
can see the lottery venders thrust their tickets into my hand at the
corner of every street when going to church, in all public places and
most private ones, without one puritanical spasm. I am obliged to find
Sunday turned into a general holiday without thinking an earthquake is
coming to-morrow, and to hear the ship’s bell and car’s whistle mingling
with the church bell without expecting a consequent and immediate
steam-boiler explosion. I have even ceased wondering at this eternity of
sunshine, and find it is silly to keep expecting blindness from its
piercing light. I forgot to inquire why it cannot scald these
deliciously cool breezes, or why these strong airs, always blowing upon
the sunshine, as if it were a great plateful of hot gumbo soup, cannot
manage to cool it.
If it be true that many microscopic beings which are vegetables in the
shade become ripened into animals in the sun, then what happens to
animals that live in the sun as much as we do? what are we to ripen to?
Angels naturally--but sadly sunburnt.
This evening, my first acquaintance with a Creole, and one who is not
only willing, but proud, to own it. He speaks English hesitatingly and
solves a difficult riddle--it _is_ possible for a Creole countenance to
express, not only intellectuality, but genius, even spirituality. How
polite are these people! Being an amateur artist, he invited me
to-morrow to his studio; offered at once to contribute to my
portefolio, and to lend any pictures I may choose to copy while on the
island. Conversation turning upon the famous cascarilla, a powder made
of eggshells, and universally used on the skin by these ladies to make
black white, all the gentlemen, strange to say, advocated its use. Upon
this I expressed an intention of getting some immediately and using it
liberally. Señor at once replied, “Oh, I shall be only too happy to send
it to you!” and sure enough, after he left, a beautifully ornamented box
of the ornament, found itself on my dressing-table.
You must never express a particular admiration for any thing one of
these people possesses, or he will at once present it to you, from his
plantation to his pipe; and the latter is the surer test of his
politeness. The other day I asked Mr. R---- where I could find a
bookstore keeping some little views of Havana. The same evening came a
great book containing all I wished, beautifully executed. Last evening
on the _Cortena_, he took out a little microscope to examine some
parasitic flowers I had gathered from the walls of the Cathedral (all
the old walls of buildings are covered with such plants). I could not
help exclaiming at the great power and convenience of the little
instrument, when, what should come this morning but Mr. R---- with a
bright new microscope in his hand, begging I would do him the favor to
accept it!
With all our interest in this Creole, I could not help a sensation of
relief, when he rose to bid us good-night. It is so difficult talking
with a foreigner who can only comprehend your simplest words, which
express your simplest ideas. You feel like a child talking to a child,
knowing all the time that you are without the innocence or beauty of
children. And this repression of thought, instead of repressing the
voice, gives one an unconquerable instinct to raise it to its highest
pitch. One seems to think that an immense quantity of sound will hide an
immense lack of sense; that they do not understand because they do not
hear; that one is not so dumb as _they_ are deaf.
_Sunday, March 18th._--For the first time the heat is oppressive,
enervating. We did not even summon courage for the early mass, the only
religious service in a city which can boast one distinguishing
peculiarity--it practises as much as it preaches, for it almost never
preaches at all. What is better than the _Cortina_ when you talk of
fresh airs, and fresh shade, and fresh silence? So for the _Cortina_ we
set out, stopping by the way at the Cathedral. Here we find half a dozen
sincere-looking devotees kneeling in different parts of the quaint,
cool, serene temple; humble their birth, no doubt, as well as posture,
for they kneel upon the bare marble, with no mat and no appearance of
discomfort. When prayers are said and crossing done, they depart, silent
and unnoticed as they enter; and we, with only the gratification of
curiosity where worship should be, do the same.
Arrived at the promenade, we find an insinuating mist and an unusual
event, a south wind, legitimatizing all this languor. Everybody in
Havana pouts when the wind hails from the equator, and shivers when it
comes out of a temperate zone. Both changes are so slight that a
Northerner, accustomed as he is to the fiercely rapid changes at home,
observes nothing different from usual. The ordinary wind here, which
baffles all the scorching proclivities of this sunshine; which comes
fresh and unworn over the salt and laboring seas; which makes this
island an Eden of never-failing green,--this strong and pure, and
gentle, as all that is strong should be, angel of mercy, is always an
east wind. I am glad that I came to Havana to learn that the sole errand
of an east wind in the world is not to manufacture influenzas,
consumptions, gout-twinges, blue devils, and growlery-mongers.
To-night a long conversation with Father C---- who has just returned from
an expedition to the interior for the purpose of collecting
contributions for “me chur-r-r-rch” in Ireland. We talked of the
Eucharist, of confessions, of indulgences, of rites and popes; in half
an hour I learned more of Romanism from a Romanist’s point of view, than
in a liberal share of twenty-eight years of my former life. He confessed
that the corruptions of the church forced on the Reformation. I am sure
the wary priest rather more than half expected to convert me, and I
amused myself down in my sleeve at his amiable hallucination, while at
the same time I reflected how surely the fogs of prejudice and
sectarianism clear away before the inevitably advancing sun of
knowledge.
[Illustration]
IV.
_Departing Guests--The Varieties--On Board, but not Gone--No
Chimneys--Dog-Pails--Horses’ Tails--Tall Negroes--Ecclesiastical
Torch-light Procession--Watchmen--Leaving Havana--In the
Country--Stopped--Seeking a Breakfast--A Cuban Village--A Primitive
Well--A Peculiar Palm--Guiness--Our Quarters Therein._
MONDAY, March 19th.
One by one, our guests have left the hotel. The swarthy Portuguese
gentleman whose acquaintance we made on shipboard, and who told us so
much of the interiors of Asia and Africa, where he has spent much time.
I am meditating the purchase of a camel to take home with me, to ride
for health and pleasure. Think of the panic of the unsophisticated
people of E---- at seeing a genuine live dromedary, philosophically
promenading their streets with the valley on his back populated by your
rejoicing and philosophical humble servant. Soon after this departure
went the handsome and villainous-looking Russian, whom we suspect to
have been a serf, because he told B---- one evening a long story of his
feats and difficulties on leaving Russia without a passport. He has
travelled all over the world, but in intellect will perpetually live,
and irremediably die, a serf. The young, honest-eyed Scotchman, too,
who played operas for me all one morning with so much skill and
amiability, who has had his throat ventilated by three bullets in three
battles, and is travelling--not consequently--for health, is gone to New
Orleans. The diamond-labelled widow from Boston, worth an undoubted
million, is gone to Matanzas, accompanied by her much-smiling daughter,
and the daughter’s blue-nosed governess. The latter should always be
seen with the ears, for she talked well. The gentleman with consumption
is gone from the adjoining room, so that my nights are no longer made
hideous by his sepulchral cough. He goes to the south of France--so
expect his wife and daughter--I expect to an ocean grave. Also is
departed the dandy from New York, having, like the beast in Daniel’s
vision, a mouth speaking great things, but differing from that other
biblical beast, the Israelites’ calf, in that the ancient calf was
_made_ of ornaments, while this modern one only _wears_ them. The
aldermanic Englishman, with ruddy wife, are gone like a comfort from the
other end of the table, leaving us to their roast beef and ale. The
pretty school-girl and incipient belle from Baltimore, has relieved the
parlor atmosphere of the perfumery of her beaux, and the piano of
gymnastic or belligerent manipulations extraordinary, but not, alas!
unheard of. Indeed, we are left almost alone, for mine hostess declares
she is losing money at four dollars per day in gold. Cannot afford it;
disinclines any longer to endure the imposition of servants and
shopmen--retires to the United States in disgust. Meanwhile the
chamber-maid, having taken a fancy to me, opens for my use the large
parlor in front of my bedroom, where I receive friends and reign supreme
in a room spacious and lofty enough for a church, and retaining all the
odor of sanctity left in it by the Bishop.
This evening we are to pack our trunks, to put on travelling attire, to
say good-by to our friends, to fee the servants who have served us, and
to take a volante for the steamer to Matanzas; but to say we leave here
to-night for Matanzas, would be a choice and especial piece of
presumption. I will tell you why. Last Saturday evening, we rehearsed
all the above-mentioned performance. Our Havanese friends came to say
adieus. Mr. P---- so full of regrets and kind speeches. Mr. M----
sitting by the parlor table, so long writing letters of introduction,
that we did not ask for, to his friends in Matanzas, and then hurrying
down to see that the state-rooms we had secured in the morning were all
right, and to introduce us to the captain. Mr. R---- accepted B----’s
invitation to take a seat in my volante. These public volantes never
hold more than two, and consequently, B---- paid for his amiability by
walking. Nothing doubting, we arrived at the steaming steamer; luggage
is unfastened in great haste; we quickly alight, when, forsooth, the
steamer does not particularly go to-night, not indeed until Monday next.
The wind, it is said, took it in its head this morning to blow a
suggestion breath for an hour; a prophetic flash of lightning was
supposed to have been seen about four o’clock. Every body takes it as a
matter of course, and I am obliged to smother my vexation behind an
appearance of amiability.
A few more novelties, before going, I must bequeathe to you and to my
memory, putting them in the hands of paper and ink for my safe
keeping--then we will have done for the present with Havana. Did you
ever think of one curious result of being really a city of the sun,
viz., it is a city without chimneys. All the box stoves, and air-tight
stoves, and best parlor ditto, were cast, if at all, in the foundry of
Jupiter; all the steam and hot-air furnaces, instead of being interred
in the cellars, are placed in the topmost garret of all garrets; the
great vanity of inventions and ornaments in the shape of fireplaces,
grates with their artistic devices, their pretty screens and shades, and
the glowing faces and toasting feet before them. All these are snugly
built in an architectural niche not made with hands, while their fires
are kindled and formed not by the lungs of bellowses, but by the
early-rising wings of enterprising angels. Ever since making this
discovery I feel quite philosophically inclined to regard the fact that
every man, or at any rate every man and a half you meet, carries his
household fire about with him, using a cigar for fuel, and his devoted
nose for a chimney.
Last night, while passing some highly respectable shops, we saw a pail
of water standing in the door of each. B---- said, “Can you guess what
those are for?” Of course I could not. He replied, “The law commands
them to be provided in every house at certain seasons, so that all dogs
may drink when they wish, and thus diminish the danger of hydrophobia.”
It is not less curious that horses’ tails are braided by law, a fine
following each omission. For aught I know, the law dictates the member
of strands in the braid; that it must be done by a governmental barber,
greased as if it were human, and always tied, as it is, to the left side
of the saddle. This hen-hussy government also directs at what precise
age children must cease to be models for statues and become the victims
of tailors and dress-makers.
I wonder nobody seems to have observed how remarkably tall the larger
number of these negroes are. The women particularly are not only tall
and erect, but magnificent in outline, having an eye to which their
dresses are exceedingly low in the neck and short in the sleeves. They
are absolutely statuesque. The Spanish and Creole ladies look dumpish, I
might say dwarfish, beside them.
But the drawback upon all goings forward, the voluminous reiteration of
feminine folking, must be performed; and we must again test the frailty
of tropical locomotive veracity and steamboat protestations.
_Tuesday, 20th._--We simply didn’t go last night because the steamer
didn’t; reason not yet transpired. I am becoming so used to these
failures of plans and probabilities, that I think nothing would
disappoint me now, but a want of disappointment. However, I was not
sorry that this last detention gave me an opportunity to witness a very
interesting spectacle. A torchlight procession of priests and friars
and mourners and friends, to say mass over a dying person. We were
first drawn to the balcony by the incessant singing of a peculiarly
toned bell, and then we saw them slowly and solemnly marching far below
us, down the dark and narrow street, heralded by the strange bell in the
hands of one of the novices, and going with devout faith in its absolute
efficacy to shrive a human soul--its last earthly help in its last
earthly extremity. The effect was much like that of the _Misericordia_
in the cities of Italy, except that you miss here the quaintness and
impressiveness of the black or white dominos. I did not care for the
superstition; I only felt a profound awe, a solemn sense of mystery and
fitness; I only marvelled that people can ever scorn or ridicule any
faith that is sincere in heart.
At half-past ten we retired, just as the watchman was commencing his
round of duty. Few things are more novel to us than this. The curious
whistle is a kind of prelude to the monotonous tone with which he, every
half-hour, slowly pacing up and down, lantern and spear in hand,
announces the hour of the night and the state of the weather. He keeps a
sharp lookout on the weather as well as other vagrants, and clearly
feels a responsibility in the matter. I have learned all the words he
uses to tell us that the moon is shining, or clouds are obscuring it; if
it is cold enough to encourage an extra blanket, or if a norther or
_sérocco_ is getting the upper hand of things; which hour is giving up
the ghost, or which is like a soul “rolling from out the vast.” But I
can never comprehend what he says, the words are so drawled and twisted
to suit the tune, which my English ears understand to be musical and not
unsuited to a lullaby, and at the same time so many other watchmen in
neighboring streets are mingling their echoes and refrains.
_Guiness, Wednesday, March 21st._--At last! With the earliest dawning of
the dawn we found ourselves actually leaving Havana, and that not by the
boat, which it had become our turn to disappoint. How tired the watchmen
looked as we passed them! lantern lights burnt out, long ancient looking
spears carried listlessly by their sides, the guardianship of the
weather left in the hands of the coming Apollo. The busy markets are
already open; shopmen unfastening shutters; life beginning to awake and
throb through the great body of Havana. Its soul, whether great or
small, is scarcely yet awakened into any circulation through the
channels of art or literature. The bells are ringing, drums beating, and
guns firing, for it is five o’clock. The day is up betimes. The
_morning_ and _evening_ here are the first day, and every day. Noon is
but a shorter panting, gilded, interluding night, when all sleep who
can, and all long for sleep who cannot. But the carriage stops in the
midst of an articulating human mass. How it hurries and bustles! how
many faces it has, and every one a different variety of brown or a new
invention in the shades of black.