FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF BUENOS AYRES
Our ship’s doctor, with whom I had passed many agreeable hours, and whose
efforts to practise the Spanish speech added not a little to the gaiety
of our voyage, was a plain-spoken young man, who assured me, when he
heard I was bound for Buenos Ayres, that I was going to “the rottenest
place in South America.” This was a blow that struck my puffed-up
admiration of the place under the belt. I had read in the papers before
leaving London that no fewer than fifteen stowaways from Glasgow had
reached the sunshine city of the River Plate on a merchant liner, and
of these thirteen were discovered on the same vessel when it was making
its homeward trip. Now, Glasgow is noted for its rain, but it had rained
in such an appalling manner all the time the vessel was discharging and
loading at Buenos Ayres that these sodden thirteen were homesick for the
milder rains that wash their native haunts! Doubtless, if the truth were
known, the other two had stowed away too much of the vile liquid sold
as “Eskotsh weeskee” in Buenos Ayres to be able to stow themselves away
a second time, and remained to swell the ranks of the Scotch and Irish
rascals who pester their fellow-countrymen for alms in Florida and San
Martín—the streets where most of the Britishers may be encountered.
But I had made light of both the doctor’s dictum and the experience of
the Glasgow stowaways. Nobody, nothing, was to rob me of my ideal city on
the Silver River!
The dirty porter who conveyed our hand-bags to a dirtier _coche_, with a
driver in the full regalia of “hobo” and two horses that ought to have
been taken straightway to the knacker’s yard, did his best to rob me of
five _pesos_ (value $2.10) for a task which would have been well paid at
a dime or a quarter and the money gratefully received. I had given him
one peso only (42 cts.) and so loudly and volubly did he denounce me for
a “mean, dirty German,” that I gave him one more for peace, and the sorry
nags were whipped up and we drove away on our great adventure.
The coach, typical of many I was to see and not greatly inferior to
scores it was to be my unhappy fate to ride in for many months, was
of the “Victoria” style, so pleasantly familiar to the frequenter of
Paris; but it was battered and tattered, the splash-boards broken, the
mud-encrusted wheels repaired with odd spokes, the upholstering faded
and torn, while the sight of the driver in his greasy rags and the poor
worn horses with projecting ribs, broken kneed, and raw flesh showing in
patches along their scraggy backs, mortified me that in such a manner
I should enter the city of my dreams. Yet the description may stand as
representative of a considerable percentage of the things then plying for
hire in Buenos Ayres. The tattered ruffian on the box-seat lashed the
moribund nags so unmercifully that I had to insist on his refraining, but
then, and often afterwards, it was clear to me that only by thrashing
could the hapless creatures be made to go.
And what a journey! The roadway reminded me of the Chinese saying, that
in China the roads are good for ten years and bad for ten thousand.
With a briefer history than China’s it may be said of Buenos Ayres that
its roads are good for ten days and bad for ten years. We had evidently
arrived on the eleventh day! Made of cobble stones, the road was as
choppy as the river on a windy day, the tram lines now projecting half
a foot above the level, now dipping into baked-mud hollows. Everywhere
the cracking of whips, the clanging of bells, the shouting of drivers,
the screeching of ungreased axles, and the slipping and straining of
sweating horses, harnessed in threes and fours to uncouth and overladen
wagons. A scene of brutal ugliness and sordid brute strife that filled
one’s mind with horror. We had plunged into the hell of the horse and
the mule. It was heart-rending to see the wretched creatures cut and
bruised, with open sores and swollen fetlocks, the cruel chain traces at
which they were straining often running in grooves which they had cut
in the creature’s flesh and ever the relentless whips descending on the
suffering backs with stings that would have touched the heart of any man
of feeling. But in all that strange, noisy medley of man and brute there
was no sign of feeling; nothing but a dull, blear-eyed urge forward.
Forward to what? Ah, he were a bold man who answered that. But what I
know and assert is that in a hundred thousand miles of world-travel, and
observation, I have never witnessed such a scene of brute suffering as
I did that autumn morning in our drive from the Dársena Sud, past the
Aduana, by the Paseo Colón and the Paseo de Julio to our hotel.
As for my first impressions of the city, I comforted myself with the
reflection that the neighbourhood of docks is in all great seaports the
least favourable point of view. Everything that met one’s eyes was mean,
or makeshift. The shops along the Paseo were of the lowest class; most
of the buildings were crumbling plaster shanties. The people trafficking
in them were the dredgings of a lower life than one sees in the region
of the Bowery—incomparably more villainous in mien. It is true that the
gardens, which adorn the Paseo Colón and the Paseo de Julio and make
these appear (in a photograph) one of the pleasantest thoroughfares in
all the world (the one is a continuation of the other), looked beautiful,
yet none but foul Italians and Semitic scum were to be seen walking there.
It would be all right when we got into the city itself, for had we not
feasted our eyes times out of number on alluring pictures of the imposing
buildings of this wonder city sent broadcast to the ends of earth by
official propagandists? A huge pink-painted plaster building, with the
“sham” flaking off in places, showed its spacious back to the green
palm-dotted gardens of the Paseo. Was it—could it be?—the famous Casa
Rosada, the official home of the president? It was. A little cold shiver
zig-zagged down my back, and I ticked off in my mind the Casa Rosada as
one of my dream pictures of Buenos Ayres that had not come true.
Presently, up a side-street, crowded with struggling wagons, coaches and
clamorous tram-cars, where small buildings were being torn down and
large steel-frame ones were being stuck up, we came to our hotel.
The roadway in front was so narrow, the traffic so insistent, and the
tramways so continuous, that the mere act of stopping our coach for
a minute blocked the whole ill-regulated, restless mass. Nor in the
hotel did we find peace. It was in the hands of repairers, who, as we
afterwards learned, had been repairing it for three years, and in all
that time did no more than could have been achieved in New York inside
of a month. As to the moderation of this statement, not only can I
vouch from a careful and intimate study of the work of those blundering
incompetents through eight long months of residence there, but I
could call a cloud of witnesses, whose fate it was to live through a
considerable part of the weary years of alteration, as the discomforts we
had to suffer were a frequent topic of the “stayers” in what, with all
its faults, was at that time the most comfortable and reasonable hotel
in Buenos Ayres. (I hear that it has since been much improved in its
appointments.)
In the small and crowded lounge, where we humbly waited for the privilege
of securing accommodation, there was a mingling of the coming and the
parting guests. The former one could recognise at a glance by their
creased clothing, the latter notably chiefly for their bucolic touches.
The room was uninviting, the shabby wallpaper in pendulous bulges,
mouldy with damp, every item worthy only of a small country hotel. The
gentleman in the temporary office, who carried out his duties amidst
plasterers’ ladders and plumbers’ tools, was willing to concede us a
small room with a bath for twenty-six pesos ($11) per day, including
“board” but excluding certain “extras.” The terms would be the same for
a stay of one night or for a stay of one year. I accepted with a feeling
of disappointment, after discovering that a bedroom and a sitting-room of
the most ordinary description were to cost me seventeen dollars per day.
And had I to stay again for eight whole months in Buenos Ayres I should
most willingly return to the same conditions which at first I regarded
with frank contempt. It is a sadder and a wiser man that writes these
lines than he who stepped hopefully into the best-recommended hotel in
Buenos Ayres that chill morning of autumn.
The window of our room looked upon a street so narrow that, when all
the high buildings in process of erection are completed, no faint ray
of sun will ever enter it. At the corner immediately opposite stood
one of the old single-story structures of the colonial type, which in
the centre of the city are giving way to the multi-storied edifices
of steel and concrete. This old shanty-like building was a centre of
swarming life—Turks, Greeks, Swedes, Syrians, Italians, in short, the
off-scourings of all nations, were to be our neighbours, and their babel
of tongues sounded from the little drinking den into which our window
looked as though the brawlers were in the hotel itself. A nice quiet
neighbourhood! Being so near the corner, we had the advantage of two
sets of tramways, and with the windows open it was almost necessary to
use a megaphone to make one’s voice heard in the bedroom. The narrow
streets intensified all noises to an extraordinary degree. Bedlam must be
peaceful compared to that corner—and that is but one of thousands similar.
“We _must_ clear out of here as soon as possible,” said my wife. But a
woman’s “must” dwindles into the meekest acquiescence when pitted against
the “must” of Buenos Ayres. “There _must_ be quieter places in the centre
of the town, away from these cramped and crowded back streets,” she
opined. Alas, there are no back streets in Buenos Ayres. Or rather, there
are few other.
As soon as possible I went forth to find the great open avenues where,
perchance, I could move at my ease and enjoy the spectacle of the myriad
life of the great metropolis. I half hoped that we had entered the
hotel by a back door and would find on turning the corner that it had a
noble frontage to some spacious street. Vain hope of a “Gringo”—as the
native dubs the foreigner in South America. I found myself in a buzzing
thoroughfare, where there were no tramways, but where coaches and motor
cars were dashing along in the most reckless manner and with quite
superfluous speed, as at nearly every corner they had to pull up suddenly
in muddled mobs to allow the streaming traffic of the cross-streets to
pass. The street was lined with splendid shops, many displaying the most
luxurious articles of furniture, jewellery, or wearing apparel, and
reminding one of London’s Bond Street. It was about the width of Wall
Street, New York City. It was the Calle Florida, the very core and pride
of Buenos Ayres!
[Illustration: THE CHANGING HEART OF BUENOS AYRES.
Plaza de Mayo, looking westward along the Avenida towards Congreso.
The appearance of this square has recently been modified, and two great
diagonal avenues are now in construction, the one starting from the
right-hand corner of the square and running northwest, the other from the
left-hand corner southwestward.]
As I went along, stepping off the narrow sidewalk every few yards
to pass any two people inconsiderate enough to walk side by side, I
recalled the one spark of wit I had heard from a youth of the “Rube”
variety who had been a shipmate of ours. We were having dinner on board
the river steamer and had reached the fifth or sixth course of the
weirdest mixtures, when he said, “I wonder when they are going to bring
us something to eat.” In all these thoroughfares, I wondered when I was
going to find a street. I had heard much of the famous Avenida. That at
least would not disappoint me.
The sun was now strong and the temperature must have risen fifteen or
twenty degrees since the bitterly cold morning. Horses were sweating and
giving off an offensive odour—the result, I fancy, of their “alfalfa”
feeding—and were covered with a thick white lather along the parts of
their bodies where the harness rubbed. I, too, was perspiring, though I
was conscious of a brisk buoyancy in the air, as I continued southwards
towards the Avenida.
Near the end of Florida, I noticed among the throng an acquaintance of
mine who lives a few streets from me and whom I had not seen at home
for more than two years. He was only on a short visit to the country,
but I was soon to find that New Yorkers and Londoners who have business
anywhere in Argentina and may never see each other for years at home are
certain to meet in Calle Florida, which is a sort of funnel through which
the whole stream of Argentine traffic must pass.
The Avenida at last! Except where the narrow cross-streets debouched
into it, every inch of the splendid roadway was boarded up and only the
sidewalks, crowded with jostling humanity, remained. They were then
making the underground railway from the Plaza Mayo to the Estacion Once.
In this state for many months it continued, an eyesore and a source of
illimitable dust and dirt to all the centre of the city. No more than
a scrap of the dome of Congress, away to the west, was visible above
the earthworks and barricades, while the Plaza Mayo, with the historic
Independence Monument, was a scene of shapeless confusion.
I ventured along Maipú, where the ceaseless rattle of traffic is surely
more disturbing than the battle whence it takes its name could have been.
Longing for a quiet corner to rest, I regained my hotel, where my wife
reminded me of a certain old Scotswoman who came to visit her daughter
in London and was taken to Westminster Abbey. She had got as far as the
choir and stood looking quietly at the massy columns and noble spring of
the arches, the iridescent beauty of the windows, before she spoke, and
then she said: “Weel, do ye ken, Jeenie, I’m awfu’ disappointed!”
The afternoon was unpleasantly hot and enervating, but the evening was
cool with a fresh and pleasant breeze. We were in a Latin city—the Paris
of South America, we had heard it called—we were both lovers of Paris,
my wife and I; so we sauntered out after dinner to take our ease at
“some café, somewhere, in one of the squares.” But all seemed dead. A
mere handful of stragglers in Florida; in the Avenida a few soft-hatted
loungers, who stared at my wife with rude animal interest; no café
anywhere in any square, where we were tempted to linger for a moment. So
a _coche_ rattled us back as quickly as possible to the already friendly
hotel, going by way of Esmeralda and Corrientes, where the bright
exteriors of some cinemas and other places of amusement punctuated the
dulness with points of brightness.
It was no later than half-past nine, and we thought once more of that old
Scotswoman in Westminster Abbey.