Could this be Saint Valentine's Day? Here in a dreary looking dock with a
surplus of sun but a seeming lack of oxygen, and only a sort of amphibious
race as company? Newspapers were at any rate valentine enough. They
were read with real care, football results being perhaps the consolation
most sought.
Hosea showed me the way into the town. We turned out over the docks, out
at last from a kingdom of coal-dust, over a swing bridge; took a tram,
and were soon at the shipping agents' offices. He spent some time in
earnest conference here, and the visit ended with a visit to other agents'
offices, and that again with an adjournment with a serene member of the
staff to a bar. In this excellent place, my ignorance of a kind of
drink, saffron in colour and with a piece of pineapple submerged, was
soon dispelled. The collection of olives, biscuits, monkey-nuts and
flakes of fried potato which the waiter brought with the drinks was to
me unexpected. We went, with our good-natured guide, to lunch in a huge
hotel. Gaining the top of the building by the lift, we sat at a table
near the windows of a luxurious room filled with luxurious people, and
had the pleasure of looking as we ate over the less celestial roofs of
the town to the calm flood of the River Plate beyond. Distance lent
enchantment to this view also. The conditions were good for eating, our
friend's romantic tales apart.
We departed from this commendable place, and, there being still
engagements for Hosea with the shipping agents, we went there. Emerging,
he had to go to the British Consulate. We hired a taxi. The traffic of
Buenos Aires, or practice and precept differ, was free from irksome
restrictions of speed; and we were whirled over the cobblestones and
tramlines and round trams, horsemen, wagons, rival cars and everything
else in a breath-taking rush. "I get in these things," said Hosea,
"saying to myself, If I don't come out of this alive, then I shan't."
We got out alive. The Consul's workshop (it was perhaps known by a
more dignified name) was in a scrubby street; and the young man in
charge had my sympathy. However, it was not my fault that he was being
slowly roasted.
That call left Hosea at liberty to explore the town. We walked on and
on, looking at the shops, and be it acknowledged at the beauties who went
by, until we arrived at the small park over which the Museum rises to that
southern sun, ornate and massy. Here we entered to spend the afternoon
among a few visitors and as many official incumbents. We entered solemnly
resolved to find a Palace of Art--Hosea putting away from him all his
connection with ships and the worries of that next necessity, the "charter
party."
Plaster casts and original statuary were plentiful in the Museum. The eye
of the weary mariners rested none too long upon these. The multitude of
paintings, however, were considered gently and methodically: Hosea would
stand before the weakest trying to comprehend the artist's intention,
and to claim something in his daub as a virtue. Sometimes he would put
on his eyeglass to survey the subject. To me, there seemed no such
quality here--I speak as a scribe, without authority--as there was
quantity.
There have been many energetic and accomplished administerings of paint,
but to what purpose? The eternal allegory, demanding one nude figure or
more, and justifying by the general level Hosea's praise of a well-known
picture called "September Morning," or sweetened description of evening,
with its cows coming home under its warped moon, its ploughman in a vague
acre, and the rest. Was this the southern genius?
One or two modern pictures here revealed a strength and idiosyncrasy
beyond almost all the rest. A portrait of six youths, drawn with fierce
intensity of colour and of line, expressing distinctions of character
in subtle vital sharpness, long detained me. Another untypical picture,
as recent as the last, was based upon a rustic festival or ritual with
which I of course was unacquainted; but the epic lives of peasant men and
women in their long combat with the stern giver of grain were legible in
the strange georgic faces and the mysterious melancholy glory of their
assembly.
--Seemed listening to the earth,
Their ancient mother, for some comfort yet.
Among the many harmless little pieces representing vases of flowers,
woodland melody, and other conventions, I caught sight of a portrait of a
young girl ("My lady at her casement" type) drawn with mild ability.
The signature, very large and clear, was