Hotels in Havana--Sights in the city--Cigar manufactories--West
Indian industries--The Captain-General--The Jesuit college--Father
Vinez--Clubs in Havana--Spanish aristocracy--Sea lodging house.
There was much to be seen in Havana, and much to think about. I
regretted only that I had not been better advised in my choice of an
hotel The dining saloon rang with American voices in their shrillest
tones. Every table was occupied by groups of them, nor was there a sound
in the room of any language but theirs. In the whole company I had not a
single acquaintance. I have liked well almost every individual American
that I have fallen in with and come to know. They are frank, friendly,
open, and absolutely unaffected, and, like my friend at Miss Roy's in
Jamaica, they take cheerful views of life, which is the highest of all
recommendations. The distinctness and sharpness of utterance is
tolerable and even agreeable in conversation with a single person. When
a large number of them are together, all talking in a high tone, it
tries the nerves and sets the teeth on edge. Nor could I escape from
them in any part of the building. The gentlemen were talking politics in
the hall, or lounging under the colonnade. One of them, an absolute
stranger, who perhaps knew who I was, asked me abruptly for my opinion
of Cardinal Newman. The ladies filled the sitting rooms; their pianos
and their duets pierced the walls of my bedroom, and only ceased an hour
after midnight. At five in the morning the engines began to scream at
the adjoining railway station. The church bells woke at the same hour
with their superfluous summons to matins which no one attended. Sleep
was next to an impossibility under these hard conditions, and I wanted
more and not less of it when I had the duties upon me of sightseeing.
Sleep or no sleep, however, I determined that I would see what I could
as long as I could keep going.
A few hundred yards off was one of the most famous of the Havana cigar
manufactories. A courteous message from the manager, Senor Bances, had
informed me that he would be happy to show me over it on any morning
before the sun was above the roofs of the houses. I found the senor a
handsome elderly gentleman, tall and lean, with Castilian dignity of
manner, free and frank in all his communications, with no reserve,
concealments, or insincerities. I told him that in my experience cigars
were not what they had been, that the last good one which I had smoked I
had bought twenty years ago from a _contrabandista_ at Madrid. I had
come to Havana to see whether I could find another equally good at the
fountain head. He said that he was not at all surprised. It was the same
story as at Jamaica; the consumption of cigars had increased with
extreme rapidity; the area on which the finest tobacco had been grown
was limited, and the expense of growing it was very great. Only a small
quantity of the best cigars was now made for the market. In general the
plants were heavily manured, and the flavour suffered. Leaf of coarse
fibre was used for the core of the cigars, with only a fold or two
wrapped round it of more delicate quality. He took me into the different
rooms where the manufacture was going on. In the first were perhaps a
hundred or a hundred and fifty sallow-faced young men engaged in
rolling. They were all Cubans or Spaniards with the exception of a
single negro; and all, I should think, under thirty. On each of the
tables was one of the names with which we have grown familiar in modern
cigar shops, Reynas, Regalias, Principes, and I know not how many else.
The difference of material could not be great, but there was a real
difference in the fineness of the make, and in the quality of the
exterior leaf. The workmen were of unequal capacity and were unequally
paid. The senor employed in all about 1,400; at least so I understood
him.
The black field hands had eighteenpence a day. The rollers were paid by
quality and quantity; a good workman doing his best could earn sixty
dollars a week, an idle and indifferent one about twelve. They smoked as
they rolled, and there was no check upon the consumption, the loss in
this way being estimated at 40,000 dollars a year. The pay was high;
but there was another side to it--the occupation was dangerous. If there
were no boys in the room, there were no old men. Those who undertook it
died often in two or three years. Doubtless with precaution the
mortality might be diminished; but, like the needle and the scissor
grinders in England, the men themselves do not wish it to be diminished.
The risk enters into the wages, and they prefer a short life and a merry
one.
The cigarettes, of which the varieties are as many as there are of
cigars, were made exclusively by Chinese. The second room which we
entered was full of them, their curious yellow faces mildly bending over
their tobacco heaps. Of these there may have been a hundred. Of the
general expenses of the establishment I do not venture to say anything,
bewildered as I was in the labyrinthine complication of the currency,
but it must certainly be enormous, and this house, the Partagas, was but
one of many equally extensive in Havana alone.
The senor was most liberal. He filled my pockets with packets of
excellent cigarettes; he gave me a bundle of cigars. I cannot say
whether they were equal to what I bought from my _contrabandista_, for
these may have been idealised by a grateful memory, but they were so
incomparably better than any which I have been able to get in London
that I was tempted to deal with him, and so far I have had no reason to
repent. The boxes with which he provided me bettered the sample, and the
price, duty at home included, was a third below what I should have paid
in London for an article which I would rather leave unconsumed. A broker
whom I fell in with insisted to me that the best cigars all went to
London, that my preference for what I got from my senor was mere fancy
and vanity, and that I could buy better in any shop in Regent Street. I
said that he might but I couldn't, and so we left it.
I tell all this, not with the affectation of supposing that tobacco or
my own taste about it can have any interest, but as an illustration of
what can be done in the West Indies, and to show how immense a form of
industry waits to be developed in our own islands, if people with
capital and knowledge choose to set about it. Tobacco as good as the
best in Cuba has been grown and can be grown in Jamaica, in St. Domingo,
and probably in every one of the Antilles. 'There are dollars in those
islands,' as my Yankee said, and many a buried treasure will be brought
to light there when capitalists can feel assured that they will not be
at the mercy of black constitutional governments.
My letter of introduction to the Captain-General was still undelivered,
and as I had made use of it on landing I thought it right at least to
pay my respects to the great man. The Marques M---- kindly consented to
go with me and help me through the interview, being of course acquainted
with him. He was at his country house, a mile out of the town. The
buildings are all good in Havana. It was what it called itself, not a
palace but a handsome country residence in the middle of a large
well-kept garden. The viceroyalty has a fair but not extravagant income
attached to it. The Captain-General receives about 8,000_l._ a year
besides allowances. Were the balls and dinners expected of him which our
poor governors are obliged to entertain their subjects with, he would
not be able to make much out of it. The large fortunes which used to be
brought back by the fortunate Captains-General who could connive at the
slave trade were no longer attainable; those good days are gone. Public
opinion therefore permits them to save their incomes. The Spaniards are
not a hospitable people, or rather their notion of hospitality differs
in form from ours. They are ready to dine with you themselves as often
as you will ask them. Nothing in the shape of dinners is looked for from
the Captain-General, and when I as a stranger suggested the possibility
of such a thing as an invitation happening to me, my companion assured
me that I need not be in the least alarmed. We were introduced into a
well-proportioned hall, with a few marble busts in it and casts of Greek
and Roman statues. Aides-de-camp and general officers were lounging
about, with whom we exchanged distant civilities. After waiting for a
quarter of an hour we were summoned by an official into an adjoining
room and found ourselves in his Excellency's presence. He was a small
gentlemanlike-looking man, out of uniform, in plain morning dress with a
silk sash. He received us with natural politeness; cordiality was
uncalled for, but he was perfectly gracious. He expressed his pleasure
at seeing me in the island; he hoped that I should enjoy myself, and on
his part would do everything in his power to make my stay agreeable. He
spoke of the emancipation of the slaves and of the social state of the
island with pardonable satisfaction, enquired about our own West Indies,
&c., and finally asked me to tell him in what way he could be of service
to me. I told him that I had found such kind friends in Havana already,
that I could think of little. One thing only he could do if he pleased.
I had omitted to bring a passport with me, not knowing that it would be
required. My position was irregular and might be inconvenient. I was
indebted to my letter of introduction to his Excellency for admission
into his dominions. Perhaps he would write a few words which would
enable me to remain in them and go out of them when my visit was over.
His Excellency said that he would instruct the Gobierno Civil to see to
it, an instruction the meaning of which I too sadly understood. I was
not to be allowed to escape the fine. A fresh shower followed of polite
words, and with these we took ourselves away.
The afternoon was spent more instructively, perhaps more agreeably, in a
different scene. The Marques M---- had been a pupil of the Jesuits. He
had personal friends in the Jesuit college at Havana, especially one,
Father Vinez, whose name is familiar to students of meteorological
science, and who has supplemented and corrected the accepted law of
storms by careful observation of West Indian hurricanes. The Jesuits
were as well spoken of in Havana as the Moravians in Jamaica. Everyone
had a good word for them. They alone, as I have said, took the trouble
to provide the good people there with a sermon on Sundays. They alone
among the Catholic clergy, though they live poorly and have no
endowment, exert themselves to provide a tolerable education for the
middle and upper classes. The Marques undertook that if we called we
should be graciously received, and I was curious and interested. Their
college had been an enormous monastery. Wherever the Spaniards went they
took an army of monks with them of all the orders. The monks contrived
always to house themselves handsomely. While soldiers fought and
settlers planted, the monks' duty was to pray. In process of time it
came to be doubted whether the monks' prayers were worth what they cost,
or whether, in fact, they had ever had much effect of any kind. They
have been suppressed in Spain; they have been clipped short in all the
Spanish dominions, and in Havana there are now left only a handful of
Dominicans, a few nuns, and these Jesuits, who have taken possession of
the largest of the convents, much as a soldier-crab becomes the vigorous
tenant of the shell of some lazy sea-snail. They have a college there
where there are four hundred lads and young men who pay for their
education; some hundreds more are taken out of charity. The Jesuits
conduct the whole, and do it all unaided, on their own resources. And
this is far from all that they do. They keep on a level with the age;
they are men of learning; they are men of science; they are the Royal
Society of Cuba. They have an observatory in the college, and the Father
Vinez of whom I have spoken is in charge of it. Father Vinez was our
particular object. The porter's lodge opened into a courtyard like the
quadrangle of a college at Oxford. From the courtyard we turned into a
narrow staircase, up which we climbed till we reached the roof, on and
under which the Father had his lodgings and his observing machinery. We
entered a small room, plainly furnished with a table and a few
uncushioned chairs; tables and chairs, all save the Father's, littered
with books and papers. Cases stood round the wall, containing
self-registering instruments of the most advanced modern type, each with
its paper barrel unrolling slowly under clockwork, while a pencil noted
upon it the temperature of the air, the atmospheric pressure, the degree
of moisture, the ozone, the electricity. In the middle, surrounded by
his tools and his ticking clocks, sat the Father, middle-aged, lean and
dry, with shrivelled skin and brown threadbare frock. He received my
companion with a warm affectionate smile. The Marques told him that I
was an Englishman who was curious about the work in which he was
engaged, and he spoke to me at once with the politeness of a man of
sense. After a few questions asked and answered, he took us out to a
shed among the roof-tiles, where he kept his large telescope, his
equatorial, and his transit instruments--not on the great scale of
State-supported observatories, but with everything which was really
essential. He had a laboratory, too, and a workshop, with all the recent
appliances. He was a practical optician and mechanic. He managed and
repaired his own machinery, observed, made his notes, and wrote his
reports to the societies with which he was in correspondence, all by
himself. The outfit of such an establishment, even on a moderate scale,
is expensive. I said I supposed that the Government gave him a grant.
'So far from it,' he said, 'that we have to pay a duty on every
instrument which we import.' 'Who, then, pays for it all?' I asked. 'The
order,' he answered, quite simply.
The house, I believe, _was_ a gift, though it cost the State nothing,
having been simply seized when the monks were expelled. The order now
maintains it, and more than repays the Government for their single act
of generosity. At my companion's suggestion Father Vinez gave me a copy
of his book on hurricanes. It contains a record of laborious journeys
which he made to the scene of the devastations of the last ten years.
The scientific value of the Father's work is recognised by the highest
authorities, though I cannot venture even to attempt to explain what he
has done. He then conducted us over the building, and showed us the
libraries, dormitories, playgrounds, and the other arrangements which
were made for the students. Of these we saw none, they were all out, but
the long tables in the refectory were laid for afternoon tea. There was
a cup of milk for each lad, with a plate of honey and a roll of bread;
and supper would follow in the evening. The sleeping gallery was
divided into cells, open at the top for ventilation, with bed, table,
chest of drawers, and washing apparatus--all scrupulously clean. So far
as I could judge, the Fathers cared more for the boys' comfort than for
their own. Through an open door our conductor faintly indicated the
apartment which belonged to himself. Four bare walls, a bare tiled
floor, a plain pallet, with a crucifix above the pillow, was all that it
contained. There was no parade of ecclesiasticism. The libraries were
well furnished, but the books were chiefly secular and scientific. The
chapel was unornamented; there were a few pictures, but they were simple
and inoffensive. Everything was good of its kind, down to the gymnastic
courts and swimming bath. The holiness was kept in the back ground. It
was in the spirit and not in the body. The cost of the whole
establishment was defrayed out of the payments of the richer students
managed economically for the benefit of the rest, with complete
indifference on the part of the Fathers to indulgence and pleasures of
their own. As we took leave the Marques kissed his old master's brown
hand. I rather envied him the privilege.
Something I saw of Havana society in the received sense of the word.
There are many clubs there, and high play in most of them, for the
Cubans are given to the roulette tables. The Union club which is the
most distinguished among them, invites occasional strangers staying in
the city to temporary membership as we do at the Athenaeum. Here you meet
Spanish _grandes_, who have come to Cuba to be out of reach of
revolution, proud as ever and not as poor as you might expect; and when
you ask who they are you hear the great familiar names of Spanish
history. I was introduced to the president--young, handsome, and
accomplished. I was startled to learn that he was the head of the old
house of Sandoval. The house of Columbus ought to be there also, for
there is still a Christophe Colon, the direct linear representative of
the discoverer, disguised under the title of the Duque de Veragua. A
perpetual pension of 20,000 dollars a year was granted to the great
Christophe and his heirs for ever as a charge on the Cuban revenue. It
has been paid to the family through all changes of dynasty and forms of
government, and is paid to them still. But the Duque resides in Spain,
and the present occupation of him, I was informed, is the breeding and
raising bulls for the Plaza de Toros at Seville.
Thus, every way, my stay was made agreeable to me. There were breakfasts
and dinners and introductions. Don G---- and his brother were not fine
gentlemen only, but were men of business and deeply engaged in the
active life of the place. The American consul was a conspicuous figure
at these entertainments. America may not find it her interest to annex
these islands, but since she ordered the French out of Mexico, and the
French obeyed, she is universally felt on that side of the Atlantic to
be the supreme arbiter of all their fates. Her consuls are thus persons
of consequence. The Cubans like the Americans well. The commercial
treaty which was offered to our islands by the United States would have
been accepted eagerly by the Spaniards. To them, the Americans have, as
yet, not been equally liberal, but an arrangement will soon be
completed. They say that they have hills of solid iron in the island and
mountains of copper with fifty per cent. of virgin ore in them waiting
for the Americans to develop. The present administration would swallow
up in taxation the profits of the most promising enterprise that ever
was undertaken, but the metals are there, and will come one day into
working. The consul was a swift peremptory man who knew his own mind at
any rate. Between his 'Yes, sir,' and his 'No, sir,' you were at no loss
for his meaning. He told me a story of a 'nigger' officer with whom he
had once got into conversation at Hayti. He had inquired why they let so
fine an island run to waste? Why did they not cultivate it? The dusky
soldier laid his hand upon his breast and waved his hand. 'Ah,' he said,
'that might do for English or Germans or Americans; we of the Latin race
have higher things to occupy us.'
I liked the consul well. I could not say as much for his countrymen and
countrywomen at my hotel. Individually I dare say they would have been
charming; collectively they drove me to distraction. Space and time had
no existence for them; they and their voices were heard in all places
and at all hours. The midnight bravuras at the pianos mixed wildly in my
broken dreams. The Marques M---- wished to take me with him to his
country seat and show me his sugar plantations. Nothing could have been
more delightful, but with want of sleep and the constant racket I found
myself becoming unwell. In youth and strength one can defy the foul
fiend and bid him do his worst; in age one finds it wiser to get out of
the way.
On the sea, seven miles from Havana, and connected with it by a
convenient railway, at a place called Vedado, I found a lodging house
kept by a Frenchman (the best cook in Cuba) with a German wife. The
situation was so attractive, and the owners of it so attentive, that
quiet people went often into 'retreat' there. There were delicious
rooms, airy and solitary as I could wish. The sea washed the coral rock
under the windows. There were walks wild as if there was no city within
a thousand miles--up the banks of lonely rivers, over open moors, or
among inclosures where there were large farming establishments with
cattle and horses and extensive stables and sheds. There was a village
and a harbour where fishing people kept their boats and went out daily
with their nets and lines--blacks and whites living and working side by
side. I could go where I pleased without fear of interference or
question. Only I was warned to be careful of the dogs, large and
dangerous, descendants of the famous Cuban bloodhounds, which are kept
everywhere to guard the yards and houses. These beasts were really
dangerous, and had to be avoided. The shore was of inexhaustible
interest. It was a level shelf of coral rock extending for many miles
and littered over with shells and coral branches which had been flung up
by the surf. I had hoped for bathing. In the open water it is not to be
thought of on account of the sharks, but baths have been cut in the rock
all along that part of the coast at intervals of half a mile; deep
square basins with tunnels connecting them with the sea, up which the
waves run clear and foaming. They are within inclosures, roofed over to
keep out the sun, and with attendants regularly present. Art and nature
combined never made more charming pools; the water clear as sapphire,
aerated by the constant inrush of the foaming breakers, and so warm that
you could lie in it without a chill for hours. Alas! that I could but
look at them and execrate the precious Government which forbade me their
use. So severe a tax is laid on these bathing establishments that the
owners can only afford to keep them open during the three hottest months
in the year, when the demand is greatest.
In the evenings people from Havana would occasionally come down to dine
as we go to Greenwich, being attracted partly by the air and partly by
my host's reputation. There was a long verandah under which tables were
laid out, and there were few nights on which one or more parties were
not to be seen there. Thus I encountered several curious specimens of
Cuban humanity, and on one of my runs up to Havana I met again the cigar
broker who had so roughly challenged my judgment. He was an original and
rather diverting man; I should think a Jew. Whatever he was he fell upon
me again and asked me scornfully whether I supposed that the cigars
which I had bought of Senor Bances were anything out of the way. I said
that they suited my taste and that was enough. 'Ah,' he replied, '_Cada
loco con su tema._ Every fool had his opinion.' 'I am the _loco_
(idiot), then,' said I, 'but that again is matter of opinion.' He spoke
of Cuba and professed to know all about it. 'Can you tell me, then,'
said I, 'why the Cubans hate the Spaniards?' 'Why do the Irish hate the
English?' he answered. I said it was not an analogous case. Cubans and
Spaniards were of the same breed and of the same creed. 'That is
nothing,' he replied; 'the Americans will have both Cuba and Ireland
before long.' I said I thought the Americans were too wise to meddle
with either. If they did, however, I imagined that on our own side of
the Atlantic we should have something to say on the subject before
Ireland was taken from us. He laughed good-humouredly. 'Is it possible,
sir,' he said, 'that you live in England and are so absolutely
ignorant?' I laughed too. He was a strange creature, and would have made
an excellent character in a novel.
Don G---- or his brother came down occasionally to see how I was getting
on and to talk philosophy and history. Other gentlemen came, and the
favourite subject of conversation was Spanish administration. One of
them told me this story as an illustration of it. His father was the
chief partner in a bank; a clerk absconded, taking 50,000 dollars with
him; he had been himself sent in pursuit of the man, overtook him with
the money still in his possession, and recovered it. With this he ought
to have been contented, but he tried to have the offender punished. The
clerk replied to the criminal charge by a counter-charge against the
house. It was absurd in itself, but he found that a suit would grow out
of it which would swallow more than the 50,000 dollars, and finally he
bribed the judge to allow him to drop the prosecution. _Cosas de
Espana_; it lies in the breed. Guzman de Alfarache was robbed of his
baggage by a friend. The facts were clear, the thief was caught with
Guzman's clothes on his back; but he had influential friends--he was
acquitted. He prosecuted Guzman for a false accusation, got a judgment
and ruined him.
The question was, whether if the Cubans could make themselves
independent there would be much improvement. The want in Cuba just now,
as in a good many other places, is the want of some practical religion
which insists on moral duty. A learned English judge was trying a case
one day, when there seemed some doubt about the religious condition of
one of the witnesses. The clerk of the court retired with him to
ascertain what it really was, and returned radiant almost immediately,
saying, 'All right, my lord. Knows he'll be damned--competent
witness--knows he'll be damned.' That is really the whole of the matter.
If a man is convinced that if he does wrong he will infallibly be
punished for it he has then 'a saving faith.' This, unfortunately, is
precisely the conviction which modern forms of religion produce hardly
anywhere. The Cubans are Catholics, and hear mass and go to confession;
but confession and the mass between them are enough for the consciences
of most of them, and those who think are under the influence of the
modern spirit, to which all things are doubtful. Some find comfort in
Mr. Herbert Spencer. Some regard Christianity as a myth or poem, which
had passed in unconscious good faith into the mind of mankind, and there
might have remained undisturbed as a beneficent superstition had not
Protestantism sprung up and insisted on flinging away everything which
was not literal and historical fact. Historical fact had really no more
to do with it than with the stories of Prometheus or the siege of Troy.
The end was that no bottom of fact could be found, and we were all set
drifting.
Notably too I observed among serious people there, what I have observed
in other places, the visible relief with which they begin to look
forward to extinction after death. When the authority is shaken on which
the belief in a future life rests, the question inevitably recurs. Men
used to pretend that the idea of annihilation was horrible to them; now
they regard the probability of it with calmness, if not with actual
satisfaction. One very interesting Cuban gentleman said to me that life
would be very tolerable if one was certain that death would be the end
of it. The theological alternatives were equally unattractive; Tartarus
was an eternity of misery, and the Elysian Fields an eternity of ennui.
There is affectation in the talk of men, and one never knows from what
they say exactly what is in their mind. I have often thought that the
real character of a people shows itself nowhere with more unconscious
completeness than in their cemeteries. Philosophise as we may, few of us
are deliberately insincere in the presence of death; and in the
arrangements which we make for the reception of those who have been dear
to us, and in the lines which we inscribe upon their monuments, we show
what we are in ourselves perhaps more than what they were whom we
commemorate. The parish churchyard is an emblem and epitome of English
country life; London reflects itself in Brompton and Kensal Green, and
Paris in Pere la Chaise. One day as I was walking I found myself at the
gate of the great suburban cemetery of Havana. It was enclosed within
high walls; the gateway was a vast arch of brown marble, beautiful and
elaborately carved. Within there was a garden simply and gracefully laid
out with trees and shrubs and flowers in borders. The whole space
inclosed may have been ten acres, of which half was assigned to those
who were contented with a mere mound of earth to mark where they lay;
the rest was divided into family vaults covered with large white marble
slabs, separate headstones marking individuals for whom a particular
record was required, and each group bearing the name of the family the
members of which were sleeping there. The peculiarity of the place was
the absence of inscriptions. There was a name and date, with E.P.D.--'en
paz descansa'[14]--or E.G.E.--'en gracia esta'[15]--and that seemed all
that was needed. The virtues of the departed and the grief of the
survivors were taken for granted in all but two instances. There may
have been more, but I could find only these.
One was in Latin:
AD COELITES EVOCATAE UXORI EXIMAE IGNATIUS.
_Ignatius to his admirable wife who has been called up to heaven._
The other was in Spanish verse, and struck me as a graceful imitation of
the old manner of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. The design on the monument
was of a girl hanging an immortelle upon a cross. The tomb was of a
Caridad del Monte, and the lines were:
Bendita Caridad, las que piadosa
Su mano vierte en la funerea losa
Son flores recogidas en el suelo,
Mas con su olor perfumaian el cielo.
It is dangerous for anyone to whom a language is only moderately
familiar to attempt an appreciation of elegiac poetry, the effect of
which, like the fragrance of a violet, must rather be perceived than
accounted for. He may imagine what is not there, for a single word ill
placed or ill chosen may spoil the charm, and of this a foreigner can
never entirely judge. He may know what each word means, but he cannot
know the associations of it. Here, however, is a translation in which
the sense is preserved, though the aroma is gone.
The flowers which thou, oh Blessed Charity,
With pious hand hast twined in funeral wreath,
Although on earthly soil they gathered be,
Will sweeten heaven with their perfumed breath.
The flowers, I suppose, were the actions of Caridad's own innocent life,
which she was offering on the cross of Christ; but one never can be sure
that one has caught the exact sentiment of emotional verse in a foreign
language. The beauty lies in an undefinable sweetness which rises from
the melody of the words, and in a translation disappears altogether. Who
or what Caridad del Monte was, whether a young girl whom somebody had
loved, or an allegoric and emblematic figure, I had no one to tell me.
I must not omit one acquaintance which I was fortunate enough to make
while staying at my seaside lodging. There appeared there one day,
driven out of Havana like myself by the noise, an American ecclesiastic
with a friend who addressed him as 'My lord.' By the ring and purple, as
well as by the title, I perceived that he was a bishop. His friend was
his chaplain, and from their voices I gathered that they were both by
extraction Irish. The bishop had what is called a 'clergy-man's throat,'
and had come from the States in search of a warmer climate. They kept
entirely to themselves, but from the laughter and good-humour they were
evidently excellent company for one another, and wanted no other. I
rather wished than hoped that accident might introduce me to them. Even
in Cuba the weather is uncertain. One day there came a high wind from
the sea; the waves roared superbly upon the rocks, flying over them in
rolling cataracts. I never saw foam so purely white or waves so
transparent. As a spectacle it was beautiful, and the shore became a
museum of coralline curiosities. Indoors the effect was less agreeable.
Windows rattled and shutters broke from their fastenings and flew to and
fro. The weathercock on the house-top creaked as he was whirled about,
and the verandahs had to be closed, and the noise was like a prolonged
thunder peal. The second day the wind became a cyclone, and chilly as if
it came from the pole. None of us could stir out. The bishop suffered
even more than I did; he walked up and down on the sheltered side of the
house wrapped in a huge episcopalian cloak. I think he saw that I was
sorry for him, as I really was. He spoke to me; he said he had felt the
cold less in America when the thermometer marked 25 deg. below zero. It was
not much, but the silence was broken. Common suffering made a kind of
link between us. After this he dropped an occasional gracious word as he
passed, and one morning he came and sat by me and began to talk on
subjects of extreme interest. Chiefly he insisted on the rights of
conscience and the tenderness for liberty of thought which had always
been shown by the Church of Rome. He had been led to speak of it by the
education question which has now become a burning one in the American
Union. The Church, he said, never had interfered, and never could or
would interfere, with any man's conscientious scruples. Its own
scruples, therefore, ought to be respected. The American State schools
were irreligious, and Catholic parents were unwilling to allow their
children to attend them. They had established schools of their own, and
they supported them by subscriptions among themselves. In these schools
the boys and girls learnt everything which they could learn in the State
schools, and they learnt to be virtuous besides. They were thus
discharging to the full every duty which the State could claim of them,
and the State had no right to tax them in addition for the maintenance
of institutions of which they made no use, and of the principles of
which they disapproved. There were now eight millions of Catholics in
the Union. In more than one state they had an actual majority; and they
intended to insist that as long as their children came up to the present
educational standard, they should no longer be compelled to pay a second
education tax to the Government. The struggle, he admitted, would be a
severe one, but the Catholics had justice on their side, and would fight
on till they won.
In democracies the majority is to prevail, and if the control of
education falls within the province of each separate state government,
it is not easy to see on what ground the Americans will be able to
resist, or how there can be a struggle at all where the Catholic vote is
really the largest. The presence of the Catholic Church in a democracy
is the real anomaly. The principle of the Church is authority resting on
a divine commission; the principle of democracy is the will of the
people; and the Church in the long run will have as hard a battle to
fight with the divine right of the majority of numbers as she had with
the divine right of the Hohenstauffens and the Plantagenets. She is
adroit in adapting herself to circumstances, and, like her emblem the
fish, she changes her colour with that of the element in which she
swims. No doubt she has a strong position in this demand and will know
how to use it.
But I was surprised to hear even a Catholic bishop insist that his
Church had always paid so much respect to the rights of conscience. I
had been taught to believe that in the days of its power the Church had
not been particularly tender towards differences of opinion. Fire and
sword had been used freely enough as long as fire and sword were
available. I hinted my astonishment. The bishop said the Church had been
slandered; the Church had never in a single instance punished any man
merely for conscientious error. Protestants had falsified history.
Protestants read their histories, Catholics read theirs, and the
Catholic version was the true one. The separate governments of Europe
had no doubt been cruel. In France, Spain, the Low Countries, even in
England, heretics had been harshly dealt with, but it was the
governments that had burnt and massacred all those people, not the
Church. The governments were afraid of heresy because it led to
revolution. The Church had never shed any blood at all; the Church
could not, for she was forbidden to do so by her own canons. If she
found a man obstinate in unbelief, she cut him off from the communion
and handed him over to the secular arm. If the secular arm thought fit
to kill him, the Church's hands were clear of it.
[Illustration: PORT AU PRINCE, HAYTI.]
So Pilate washed his hands; so the judge might say he never hanged a
murderer; the execution was the work of the hangman. The bishop defied
me to produce an instance in which in Rome, when the temporal power was
with the pope and the civil magistrates were churchmen, there had ever
been an execution for heresy. I mentioned Giordano Bruno, whom the
bishop had forgotten; but we agreed not to quarrel, and I could not
admire sufficiently the hardihood and the ingenuity of his argument. The
English bishops and abbots passed through parliament the Act _de
haeretico comburendo_, but they were acting as politicians, not as
churchmen. The Spanish Inquisition burnt freely and successfully. The
inquisitors were archbishops and bishops, but the Holy Office was a
function of the State. When Gregory XIII. struck his medal in
commemoration of the massacre of St. Bartholomew he was then only the
secular ruler of Rome, and therefore fallible and subject to sin like
other mortals. The Church has many parts to play; her stage wardrobe is
well furnished, and her actors so well instructed in their parts that
they believe themselves in all that they say. The bishop was speaking no
more than his exact conviction. He told me that in the Middle Ages
secular princes were bound by their coronation oath to accept the pope
as the arbiter of all quarrels between them. I asked where this oath
was, or what were the terms of it? The words, he said, were unimportant.
The fact was certain, and down to the fatal schism of the sixteenth
century the pope had always been allowed to arbitrate, and quarrels had
been prevented. I could but listen and wonder. He admitted that he had
read one set of books and I another, as it was clear that he must have
done.
In the midst of our differences we found we had many points of
agreement. We agreed that the breaking down of Church authority at the
Reformation had been a fatal disaster; that without a sense of
responsibility to a supernatural power, human beings would sink into
ingenious apes, that human society would become no more than a
congregation of apes, and that with differences of opinion and belief,
that sense was becoming more and more obscured. So long as all serious
men held the same convictions, and those convictions were embodied in
the law, religion could speak with authority. The authority being denied
or shaken, the fact itself became uncertain. The notion that everybody
had a right to think as he pleased was felt to be absurd in common
things. In every practical art or science the ignorant submitted to be
guided by those who were better instructed than themselves. Why should
they be left to their private judgment on subjects where to go wrong was
the more dangerous. All this was plain sailing. The corollary that if it
is to retain its influence the Church must not teach doctrines which
outrage the common sense of mankind as Luther led half Europe to believe
that the Church was doing in the sixteenth century, we agreed that we
would not dispute about. But I was interested to see that the leopard
had not changed its spots, that it merely readjusted its attitudes to
suit the modern taste, and that if it ever recovered its power it would
claw and scratch in the old way. Rome, like Pilate, may protest its
innocence of the blood which was spilt in its name and in its interests.
Did that tender and merciful court ever suggest to those prelates who
passed the Act in England for the burning of heretics that they were
transgressing the sacred rights of conscience? Did it reprove the
Inquisition or send a mild remonstrance to Philip II.? The eyes of those
who are willing to be blinded will see only what they desire to see.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] He rests in peace.
[15] He is now in grace.