MONTEVIDEO AND BUENOS AIRES
Montevideo, the first discovered point of the River Plate countries, is
also the first stopping-place for passenger boats from Europe; and if the
traveller from thence be in no immediate hurry to reach Buenos Aires he
might do much worse than spend, say a week, in the clean, cool, pleasant
capital of LA REPUBLICA DE LA BANDA ORIENTAL DEL URUGUAY.
Leaving his baggage to be sent for later, he will walk, or take a
convenient tram, from the harbour up the fairly steep incline of a narrow
street and find himself at a corner of the ancient Plaza of the City; the
Plaza with History represented on two of its sides, to his right and left
respectively, by the Cathedral and the old Congress buildings. Facing
him, he will see modernity embodied in the palatial CLUB URUGUAYO, while
immediately on his left hand, at his back, is a little front door and
staircase leading to the comfortable and hospitable English club.
The middle of the square is occupied by fine subtropical and other plants
surrounding a band-stand from which very sweet music indeed proceeds at
night in the summer-time; which, including Spring and Autumn, lasts for
nine months of the year.
Afterwards, he will find his way to the Plaza Independencia on one side
of which is Government House, and almost behind which is Montevideo’s
Opera House, the Soler Theatre. Later he can visit Pocitos, Ramirez and
other delightful, white-sanded bathing beaches, with which Montevideo
abounds; for this city on a hill occupies a small peninsula which juts
out just where the estuary of the River merges into the Atlantic Ocean.
All the streets leading from three sides of the old Plaza go downhill
to the sea; and up one parallel set or another of them comes a fresh
breeze at all times of the day and night and at all seasons of the year.
One seldom or never suffers in Montevideo from the stifling oppression
sometimes so painful in the dog-days of Buenos Aires.
With so many natural advantages, it can be readily understood that
Montevideo has an ambition and that that ambition should be to become
_the_ seaside resort of South America.
Towards the realization of this desire the Government and the
Municipality spare no expense at all commensurate with their means.
Fine broad motor drives and promenades run, or are being constructed to
run, all round the three water-bound sides which, by the test of school
geographies, indicate a true peninsula.
Gaily striped bathing tents can be hired by the hour, day, week or season
on what have just been said to be delightful soft, warm, sandy beaches.
To come out of the water and roll oneself dry in this fine clean sand is
an experience not to be missed and certainly to be remembered, apart from
its proclaimed virtues as a sovereign cure for rheumatism.
That malady must, however, surely be an imported article; one does not
naturally associate it with the bright dry climate of Montevideo.
Municipal bands, good operatic and dramatic companies are added lures for
holiday-makers of the wealthier class from neighbouring Republics; while
Montevideo sustains the ancient custom of keeping carnival, masked and
with illuminations, flower-throwing and costumed _corsos_, in a fashion
which entirely throws into the shade the now moribund carnival of Buenos
Aires.
[Illustration: THE PLAZA LIBERTAD, MONTEVIDEO]
At Montevideo, all is done to please and nothing to annoy, so that the
throwing of water which was a leading feature of the old-time carnival is
now strictly prohibited by authority enforced by the police; as is also
the case in Buenos Aires.
Thousands of people cross each year from Buenos Aires for the Montevideo
carnival, the whole available fleet of the company which runs luxurious
boats between the two cities are pressed into the service of this
occasion and become floating hotels; the normal hotel accommodation of
Montevideo being insufficient to meet such an influx of visitors during
these few days.
By the way, the origin of this fine steamboat service is an interesting
example of the progress made by the two countries and the fortunes which
have been amassed in them during existing lifetimes.
Before the building of the present dock system of Buenos Aires, one
of the boatmen who used to land and embark passengers from or on the
ocean-going ships was a man named Nicolas Mihanovich; evidently a very
level-headed and at that time at least, a very frugal and saving person
indeed.
With his row-boat he gained sufficient to enable him to purchase a
sailing vessel which he used for regular traffic to and fro across the
broad mouth of the River Plate. So, his enterprise grew; and only a very
few years ago he turned his own private company into a public one with
larger aims, in which latter company he nevertheless retains a very large
interest. The one-time boatman is now a multi-millionaire. The present
service leaves Buenos Aires, or Montevideo as the case may be, at about
ten o’clock each evening and lands its passengers, after a good sleep in
comfortable beds, on the other side at about seven o’clock the following
morning.
Many are the true tales of fortunes amassed, sometimes one may almost say
won, in Argentina, especially, within living memory.
Señor Santamarina, now deceased, left on his huge estate at Tandíl, one
of his many properties, the original two-wheeled high cart which was his
only fortune when he commenced life as what in other countries would be
called a transport rider. This cart is, or till recently was, preserved
in a glass house erected specially by him to house and exhibit it to all
visitors to the estancia.
Another history is that of a millionaire family whose immediate ancestor
certainly won fortune by an astuteness which may or may not be considered
commendable.
He rented a large—large even for the Argentina of those roomy days—tract
of land from a man who foresaw wealth in tree-planting. The latter was
right; but his personal calculations did not, as will be seen, turn out
as he had planned. He made it a condition that not less than a certain
number of trees should be planted on the land within the period of the
lease, and that for every tree above that number planted he should, on
the termination of the lease, pay the sum of $1 to the outgoing tenant.
The wily lessee immediately set to work to plant trees as fast as ever
he could, and at the expiration of his lease had millions of them, over
and above the stipulated number, to show for his pains. The unfortunate
lessor could not pay so many million dollars, and to end the affair was
glad to let his former lessee have full freehold possession of the land
and so call quits.
That land, still in the possession of the original lessee’s family, is
worth a huge fortune to-day, and its produce represents a very large
income indeed—forestry apart.
And now, as these stories have taken us to Argentina, the reader may
as well prepare to follow them by embarking on one of the “Mihanovich”
boats; as they still are and probably always will be called, in spite of
the longer name of the new company, and find himself in Buenos Aires next
morning.
By leaving his baggage for further consideration, as he did at
Montevideo, he can go on foot in about five minutes from the
landing-place across the gardens of the PASEO DE JULIO, which name is a
first reminiscence of the birth of the Republic, round one or the other
side of the “Casa Rosada” or pink-coloured Government House, and find
himself immediately in the Plaza Victoria with on his right the Stock
Exchange lying between the Calles 25 de Mayo and San Martin—further
reminiscences of the wars of Liberty. Keeping his back towards the Casa
Rosada, he will look straight up the broad Avenida de Mayo with the
historic old CABILDO or Town Hall on the left corner of the commencement
of the avenue and the fine new Municipality opposite.
At the far end of the avenue rises the splendid edifice of the new
Congress Building, the “Palace of Gold” as it is called in quasi-humorous
reference to its costliness. This is, however, not a new joke. Formerly
it was applied to the Casa Rosada, now become a comparatively humble
edifice. Besides, if an Argentine calls one’s attention to the scandalous
cost of a public monument or building, it does not necessarily mean that
he is really so very angry about it. On the contrary, it may well be
that he is proud of belonging to a Nation which can bravely bear such
expenditure.
Under the Avenida de Mayo is the “tube” which runs from the ONCE station
(which is situate on the western side of the town and is the terminus of
the Buenos Aires Western Railway) to the Docks. The Once marks the point
of departure of the first six miles of Railway built on the River Plate.
The new-comer will at once notice that the City of Buenos Aires is laid
out on the chessboard pattern with its streets running North and South
and East and West, a variation of the pattern being now introduced by the
new diagonal avenues converging towards the Plaza Victoria, in course of
construction.
Along almost every street, except Calle Florida, the Avenida de Mayo, and
the diagonal avenues, runs a tramline on which the cars all go in one
direction in one street and in the contrary direction in the next and so
on. Ten cents is the fare for a single journey anywhere within the length
or breadth of the Federal Capital, but one cannot take tickets entitling
one to any change of car; and for that one must buy another ten cents
ticket.
This matter of change of car may have been overlooked by the Municipality
when the concession was granted to the Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company,
of which concession the universal 10 cent fare was a _sine qua non_
condition; perhaps, on the other hand, the Company stuck out on that
point. Anyhow, if one wishes to get full value for his 10 cents on a
Buenos Aires tramline he must stick to the car in which he has begun his
ride. By doing so, he can often take a long round trip and come back to
his point of departure. This observation also applies to the Tramways in
Montevideo, but there, with due knowledge and careful selection, one can
practically get all over the place, without changing; owing to the more
erratic routes taken by the lines.
For a variety of reasons, the Buenos Aires Tramway system is considered
by authorities on such matters to be the best in the world. It is mostly
in the hands of the Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company.
Another company is the Lacroze, a private company largely interested also
in the Buenos Aires Central Railway. Its trams run through the Capital
and to the Western suburban districts.
A third company runs trams out of the Capital to the Southern Suburban
districts.
It may here be said that a good supply of taxi-cabs is to be found both
in Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
One advantage, suggested by the mention of taxi-cabs, of visiting
Montevideo before Buenos Aires, is that that way one feels richer after
the journey between the two than one would if the itinerary had been
reversed.
[Illustration: THE AVENIDA DE MAYO, BUENOS AIRES]
Living is not cheap in Buenos Aires, but its cost is a relief after
a sojourn in the Uruguayan Capital; though expense there is again as
nothing if one has experienced that of Rio de Janeiro, the dearest place,
probably, in the whole world, and the one in which, scenery apart, one
gets as little satisfaction for one’s money as anywhere.
In Montevideo one has, it is true, plenty of satisfaction of a quiet,
pleasant kind, but those (actually, although founded on a firm gold
basis) paper dollars—only four of them and 70 cents worth of mixed change
for a British Sovereign—melt quickly into inappreciable small silver
and nickel; none of which seems to be worth much, though a 50-cent bit
is really worth more than a British florin. For exchange purposes that
is; in its native land its purchasing power is strikingly small. After
Montevideo, there is some satisfaction about the feel of the bundle of
Argentine paper dollars one gets for one’s Uruguayan money. And in Buenos
Aires several quite useful things can be got for $1, National (paper)
money. Although the purchasing power of this last (its exchange value is
1s. 8¾d.) is not that of one shilling in England.
In neither country does one often see an actual gold coin, in Argentina
practically never in ordinary everyday life; most of the gold against
which the current paper is issued going, as will be seen in the Chapter
on Finance and Commerce, into the “Conversion” strong rooms and staying
there.
The passion for amusement must indeed be overpowering in anyone who
is not satisfied with what Buenos Aires provides of all kinds in that
regard. Two Opera Houses, the older one, stately and comfortable in its
interior arrangements, and the new Municipal Opera House, the COLON
Theatre, gorgeous in velvet and marble; and powdered, gold-mace bearing
lackeys to bow one in at its wide portals.
Great is the rivalry between these two houses to secure the best stars
and companies; and between them they certainly get the best that Europe
can provide. In some cases they have anticipated Europe, notably in
the instances of Caruso and Maria Gay, both of whom appeared in Buenos
Aires before Europe had even heard _of_ them. One feature is common to
the policy of both Opera Houses, viz., a scale of charges for admission
so high that it is impossible for anyone who wishes to be considered
somebody not to have his or her box at one or both of them for the season.
After the Opera House comes, in degree of prestige, perhaps, the Odeon
Theatre; most frequently devoted to the representation of classic or
serious drama. After it come many theatres; the finest among them being
the Coliseo in which good companies, chiefly Italian, give first-rate
performances of every kind from Grand Guignol to Light Opera. After
these, again, come the purely Argentine Theatres; in which drama and
comedy faithfully reflecting the true native life are performed.
Such performances should not be missed (as they too often are because
they are not fashionable in a country where fashion’s favour is almost
exclusively bestowed on imported wares) by anyone having sufficient
Argentine Spanish to appreciate the purport and point of their dialogue;
which, in true Argentine fashion, includes a liberal use of words and
phrases capable of double meanings.
Brilliantly lighted, sumptuously panelled and upholstered cafés with
tables spreading over the pavement outside them, tend to keep life in
Buenos Aires awake till the wee sma’ hours begin to grow large.
“See Naples and die” runs the Neapolitan saying. “See Buenos Aires and
stop there as long as you can” is likely to prove acceptable advice to
anyone with a taste for easy gaiety and with a disposition for not doing
to-day anything of an irksome or disagreeable nature which can possibly
be put off till the morrow. Much native encouragement will be afforded
him to postpone it till the Greek Kalends; and then to change his mind
about doing it at all.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA VICTORIA, BUENOS AIRES]
Till the morrow’s sun shines, that is. Then he will see the City, which
overnight he may have thought wholly absorbed by pleasure-seeking,
transformed into a quick-moving, alert commercial centre. Surely the
Argentine when in Buenos Aires burns his candle at both ends. The
well-to-do have, however, their Estancias on which to vary town life
with mentally restful, if often physically laborious, days spent in
superintending their agricultural interests.
Fine-looking new buildings are ever springing up in Buenos Aires with
such surprising suddenness and rapidity as to render any description of
the chief edifices of that city out of date almost before it can get into
print. Even the palatial home of the Jockey Club, renowned as the most
splendidly luxurious Club House in the world, is soon to be abandoned by
its members for another more gorgeously wonderful still.
One leaves the City for a few weeks in the _Camp_ wondering what the
former will look like on one’s return.
That is one did, until very recently. Just now, the War has called a
temporary halt in the commencement of many projected building operations.
One cannot, however, leave Buenos Aires without mention of the beautiful,
park-like suburb of Palermo; with the broad Avenida de Alvear leading
from the northern part of the City to it. It may here be observed that
fashion has not travelled westward in Buenos Aires; the Northern parts of
the City being the most fashionable and adorned with the most palatial
new dwellings.
A wide palm-bordered avenue leads to others winding round grassy spaces
in which backwaters of the Tigre River glint under overhanging trees;
amid all of which is a great restaurant, after the fashion of those in
the Parisian Bois de Boulogne.
That restaurant is, to the author’s mind, the one great tawdry blot on
the picture; but it is only fair to add that every afternoon and evening,
during a long season, it is crowded with gaily dressed people who all
seem happy and vociferously contented with the refreshments and music it
provides.
The Palermo Avenue is the fashionable drive, the Corso of the Élite of
Buenos Aires Society; and also of others desirous of attracting attention
to their equipages and themselves. Everyone the aspirant to social
distinction ought—and ought not—to know is to be seen at Palermo on a
fine late afternoon or evening in Spring. In Summer most of them are,
naturally, at Mar-del-Plata.
Adjoining the Park is the Palermo race-course, over which the Jockey Club
rules absolute. It should be added that the Buenos Aires Jockey Club
is not only an association of racing men, but is in reality the hub of
social intercourse in Buenos Aires.
Its large and small dining-rooms are available to members, and even to
very distinguished strangers, for private dinners; which are exquisitely
cooked and served by the numerous and highly expert staff of the Club.
In fact the Jockey Club is a very influential body indeed; quite apart
from racing matters.
There can be no manner of doubt that the gambling element in racing is
far too popular in Buenos Aires. There is a race meeting on every day
in the week, Sundays, of course, included, during a season which lasts
nearly all the year round. And these meetings are thronged by youths and
other people who most certainly should be, and would much better be, at
work.
Whatever may be thought of the system of weekly National Lotteries (these
are at least carried on with unimpeachable fairness and 10% of the
amounts subscribed to them, in payment for tickets, goes, after paying
working expenses, printing, etc., to charity) the totalizer appeals far
too sympathetically to the Latin-American natural love of gambling; and
that love, as always in a new country where so many fortunes seem to have
had their origin in luck, has developed dangerously on the right bank of
the River Plate.
Close also to Palermo Park is the scene of the annual Agricultural and
Live Stock Show; now a world-renowned Exhibition of as fine cattle and
sheep as can be seen anywhere. Horses and Poultry also are splendidly
represented at this show; which is perhaps the greatest event in the
Argentine Calendar.
Further out from the city, past and beyond Palermo, is Hurlingham; an
ever-enlarging group of English red-brick villas inhabited for the most
part by English people. These villas surround the ample grounds of the
Hurlingham Club, where polo and riding and driving competitions, etc.,
follow the lines of its English prototype. The Club house is comfortable,
the food good, and a huge swimming bath is among its many undoubted
attractions. It also has a drag hunt.
Further out again are beautiful reaches of the Tigre River, famous for
boating; and on which an annual regatta, the Henley of South America, is
held.
The Avenida de Alvear, above referred to, runs through the most
fashionable residential quarter of Buenos Aires, a quarter filled with
veritable huge palaces which with their gardens surround the Recoleta,
the fashionable cemetery. A strange city of the dead in which the coffins
are seen on shelves contained in small plate-glass fronted temples, so
that all may view the last outward casings of generations.
On “The Day of the Dead” (All Saints’ Day) the Recoleta is a blaze of
beautiful wreaths and floral tributes; afterwards too often replaced,
alas, by ugly contrivances in porcelain or, worse still, enamelled iron.
Returning to Buenos Aires proper one must not, cannot, forget CALLE
FLORIDA, “The Bond Street of the South.” So called because in it are
situate most of the finest shops in South America for the sale of what
are sometimes officially described as articles of luxury; wearing apparel
of the best and costliest, for both sexes, jewellery, stationery, etc.
It is, in fact, to Buenos Aires all Bond Street once was, and old Bond
Street to some extent still is, to London.
Needless, almost, to say, Florida deals exclusively in imported goods
and a very great majority of its shopkeepers are foreigners; among whom
the purveyors of “Modes,” “Robes” and “Lingerie” are, naturally, mostly
French.
No vehicular traffic whatever is now allowed in Calle Florida between
certain hours of the afternoon; in order not to incommode the throngs
of fashionable shoppers with whom it is usually crowded. It is the only
street in which Argentine ladies of high degree are to be seen on foot.
In bygone and less crowded times it was the scene of the afternoon Corso;
when play was made with fans and gallants ogled from the edges of the
pavement.
There is at present still a lack of Hotel accommodation suitable for
Europeans of moderate means. There are great numbers of Hotels in Buenos
Aires, but the good ones are very expensive while the cheaper ones are
not very good. That is to say, one must have got accustomed to the South
American haphazard fashion of service and general arrangements before
being able to regard the latter as in any way comfortable. Montevideo is
still worse off; having few Hotels which can be regarded as good (though
there are one or two), while prices, as in everything else, run higher
than in Buenos Aires.
A word must be said in defence of the latter City against a prevailing
impression, created, goodness knows how, of its intense immorality. This
charge simply is not true. Buenos Aires is no more immoral than and
certainly not as vicious as are most European Capitals.
True, it is not in South American human nature to be puritanical but
the lower classes in Argentina and Uruguay are but non-moral, to use a
somewhat fashionable term, with the non-morality of grown-up children,
which they are. They have not the faintest idea of the vice which abounds
in the great cities of the Northern Hemisphere. Montevideo is more staid
than cosmopolitan Buenos Aires; even at Carnival time the former City
seems to take its merrymaking seriously. Any real vice which can be
found in either Capital is an imported article.
If among the lower classes of both countries the whole advantages of
the marriage ceremony seem not to be duly appreciated, this is due, in
the vast majority of cases, to motives of economy. A religious marriage
service is a costly item in the equipment of a young couple, and a purely
civil ceremony is even less favourably looked on by neighbours than a
postponement of any ceremony at all. Later, such couples usually do marry
with due pomp and circumstance, including the invitation of all and
sundry to the humble wedding feast. After that, all is in order in the
case of the death of the husband and father; for marriage legitimatizes
previously born children. Indeed, the writer was once present at a
_fiesta_ in a rural district, not forty minutes’ run by train from the
City of Buenos Aires, organized to honour the occasion of the visit
of a Priest who in a very short space of time married the parents and
christened a whole batch of their children.
An old custom still chiefly prevailing among the humbler classes, both
urban and rural, is one which may be called the “waking” of the dead.
The news of a bereavement spreads quickly among neighbours; who do not
wait to be invited but arrive, in groups organized extemporaneously by
themselves, at the house of mourning. There, one of such groups succeeds
another, and so on throughout the night after a death; sitting silently
and only moving to partake of the necessary refreshment provided in view
of their sure coming.
As in most other countries where modernity has not yet suppressed all
local colour with its neutral tints, the lower classes in both Argentina
and Uruguay are much the most interesting. The free-and-easy Bohemian
sort of life in a _conventillo_[16] is curious. In each of its many
rooms lives a family, while the court is common to all for cooking (a
charcoal brazier usually stands at the side of each door), washing of
clothes and, last but not least, the discussion of _mate_ and gossip.
All sorts of people dwell in a single conventillo, artisans, hawkers,
washerwomen, milliners, factory hands, poor employees, etc. etc., and all
group themselves in the common courtyard of an evening when work is done,
frequently to the music of a guitar.
The upper classes, on the other hand, strive chiefly to reflect the
latest moods of European fashion in general and of that of Paris in
particular—even, since the War, to the extent of making retrenchment
in living expenses the fashion. A fashion which, if it last, will not
be the least of the good which has come to Argentina from the European
upheaval which has forced the River Plate countries to learn to rely
on their own resources and individual efforts. Gone, already, are the
battalions of motor-cars of very latest pattern with which every wealthy
Argentine family has hitherto thought it necessary to its dignity to be
provided—one each for father, mother and each son and daughter—economy
is now “De Moda” and ostentation therefore become old-fashioned and bad
taste. An immense change to have taken place, as it did, in the course of
only a few months.
Montevideo had no need of such a _volte face_ of habit. Uruguayans never
developed the love of display so characteristic of Argentine aristocracy.
With its some 1½ million inhabitants, Buenos Aires has the largest
population of any Capital City in America. Montevideo, with some 400,000
inhabitants, surpasses Washington in this respect.