MORE SCENES FROM THE STREETS OF BUENOS AYRES
What fascinated me most in the streets of this motley town were the
bookshops. Who says there is no culture in Buenos Ayres has to reckon
with the evidence of these, for London itself has no more than you might
count on the fingers of one hand that excel the _librerías_ of the
Argentine capital. Many pleasant hours have I passed inspecting their
wonderfully varied stocks of books from all the countries of Europe where
the art of printing flourishes, as well as from North and South America.
In proportion to their populations, Buenos Ayres excels New York in the
number and character of its bookshops.
It was very encouraging to a literary worker to note how every country
has sent of its best (though Spain also of its worst) to keep alive the
taste for letters in those whom the eternal quest for the elusive dollar
has taken to far-away Argentina. There are many German bookshops, stocked
with wonderful collections of the classic literature of the Fatherland
and the latest works of its indefatigable authors of to-day in every
branch of thought and activity. Several admirable French shops there are
of which the same may be said; a few Italians—extremely few in proportion
to the vast Italian population—and several well-known British shops,
where cheap English and American fiction unfortunately outnumbers the
books of serious value, though practically no new book of real note that
saw the light in England or North America did not have at least a brief
showing on the shelves of the British bookshops during my stay. There is
even a bookshop where the strange literary products of the Turk and the
Syrian are sold to the oriental community.
But the native bookshops have nothing to learn from the foreigners,
unless it be a better taste in displaying their wares, which are usually
thrown into the window with all the _abandon_ of a country store. In
point of variety, they are as richly stocked as any of their colleagues
overseas, and it is clear from the most casual examination of their
shelves that all the principal French and German publishers are vieing
with each other in catering for this rich and ready market of golden
South America. I could fill pages with lists of “libraries” which are
being produced specially for Latin America (but chiefly for Buenos Ayres)
by famous Continental houses, who publish Spanish translations of all
their important new books, as well as of a bewildering number of old
books that first found popularity in French or German. Spanish publishers
lack enterprise, hence Buenos Ayres, where printing is excessively costly
and is used almost exclusively for business propaganda, has to get its
most worthy Spanish books by way of France or Germany.
I have said Spain also sends of its worst. Most of the trash comes
from Barcelona and Madrid houses. It consists chiefly of atrocious
translations of English and American detective tales of the crudest
“penny blood” variety, badly printed, and stitched within a gaudy and
often well-done coloured wrapper, with some preposterously sensational
picture thereon. These are sold, not at a penny, but at fourpence (twenty
centavos) and are read by young and old alike. There are many shops that
show nothing in their windows but this gutter literature, while the
kiosks on the Avenida—pale and shabby ghosts of the delightful Paris
kiosks these!—are stocked with them, and also with translations of the
pornographic French books which the shameless shopmen of the Palais Royal
display for the concupiscent foreigner.
Of old bookshops, alas, there are none. To the literary man, a city
without its dusty haunts of the bookworm lacks something that all the
loads of “latest books” cannot quite replace. Old books there are to be
found in the general bookshops, and they are usually offered at prices
so excessive that when I set about the formation of a library of South
American works, I was eventually forced to discontinue buying any but the
most essential, as they are to be picked up in Paris at a fifth the price
and with much less searching. I also found that I could secure in London
more and better photographs of Buenos Ayres than in the city itself, and
at less cost! One day, requiring urgently a photo of a certain aspect of
the statue of San Martín, I had all the likely shops and photographers
searched in vain, yet in London I could have got it immediately.
The English booksellers (who, of course, also cater for the small North
American “colony”) have the habit of hanging out a notice when the
English or North American mail has come to hand with its load of new
books and the latest periodicals. And once a week the exiles from Old
England or from the United States must feel a quickening of the pulse
when they see the announcement in good bold letters “MAIL DAY” or “MAIL
ARRIVED” at the doors of these thriving bookshops in the Calle Cangallo.
But perhaps a time may come to the exile when his pulse is so scant of
home-fed blood that he notes these signs with a dim unseeing eye and
feels no flush of the old love for his native land arise in him.
If horseshoes brought luck, every exile might be a millionaire, for
nowhere have I seen so many cast shoes in the streets. You could wager
on filling a cart with them in one day! The workmanship of the smiths is
evidently so crude or so little care is taken of the horses that their
shoes are allowed to loosen and fall off without any serious attempt to
preserve them. Whatever the reason, they are in all the streets like
“common objects of the seashore.” But the electric bulb is to Buenos
Ayres as the seaweed or the limpet to a rocky shore. Except along
Broadway, no New Yorker ever looks on such prodigality of electric lamps.
All the public buildings are permanently outlined with them, so often
have they to use them on anniversaries or centenaries; for the Argentine
dearly loves to celebrate the centenary of any old forgotten “battle”
in his glorious history and the anniversaries of all the “epoch-making”
events and great men’s birthdays, by illuminating his public buildings
and getting some great living Argentine to declaim a type-written speech
to an assembly of _distinguidos_. Even the Cathedral is garlanded with
rows of electric bulbs, so that it may take its part with the public
buildings and the retail shops in these extremely frequent electrical
celebrations. No wonder the electricians love Buenos Ayres! And very
beautiful is the city with its millions of little coloured lamps aglow.
I saw it many times thus in eight months; but could have wished for some
novelty after the fifth or sixth time.
While electricity is comparatively cheap, and the supply of glass lamps
evidently inexhaustible, the plate-glass used for lighting underground
warehouses from the sidewalk is evidently at a premium, as I noticed that
whenever one of these pavement lights was broken it was not replaced by a
piece of thick glass, but by wood covered with a layer of cement!
[Illustration: THE COLÓN THEATRE, BUENOS AYRES.
A general view of this fine cement-covered building, where a short season
of State-aided Opera is given each year.]
Having thus far dealt with the streets of Buenos Ayres in general
terms, let me now glance at certain of the more famous thoroughfares in
particular. Florida must naturally come first, for Florida is a microcosm
of Buenos Ayres. It is a tramless street, in so far as the _electricos_
only cross it at every 150 yards. It is, moreover, a “two ways” street,
traffic being allowed to pass along it in both directions. It is, as I
have already indicated, an extremely narrow street. But it is the great
highway of the city; its peculiar pride and joy. There throbs the great
heart of _el gran pueblo Argentino_. On a dry day the motors churn up
the dust and line the broken asphalt roadway with long tracks of oil, on
which the horses “slither” and fall. On a moist day the dust is converted
into a pasty coating, which makes progress on sidewalk or roadway a peril
to quadrupeds and bipeds alike. On a really wet day—and often it rains in
torrents for days on end—the windows of all the shops become obscured
with mud and pedestrians are bespattered from head to heels. The habit of
wearing waterproofs with hoods, which they flap over their hats, gives a
curious aspect to the men on wet days. I had been told in London that the
Anglo-Saxon was spotted in Buenos Ayres by his umbrella. My experience
was that the first things a newcomer bought in the month of May or June
were a waterproof and an umbrella, and it was comic to see the poor
Italian and Spanish immigrants disembarking, each clutching a real old
“gamp,” for which he was to find abundant use. The _coches_, being built
for fair weather, offer little protection when it rains, a crude apron
of leather being stretched in front of the “fare,” but leaving his head
and shoulders exposed to the deluge. Yet one is lucky indeed to secure
so much protection on a rainy night, and often have I had to walk to
my quarters in the drenching rain after shivering for half an hour in
a doorway in the vain hope of getting some condescending _cochero_ to
accept my patronage. At other times, when I have secured a coach, I have
regretted I have not boldly footed it in the rain, as there would be a
painful interlude on the journey while the driver struggled to raise
up his fallen steeds. They tumble about on the slippery streets like
beginners in a skating rink.
But let us look at Florida when the sun is shining. Its shops are full
of interest to the curious. The jewellers are especially numerous, and
vie with the best in London or Paris. And their contents are of the
most beautiful, for the Argentines have taste in jewellery, even though
they are inclined to display it with almost barbaric opulence. The
furniture shops are equally prodigal in beautiful and unique wares,
with perhaps too marked a tendency to the _art nouveau_, which has not
yet grown old in Buenos Ayres. Comfortable chairs, luxurious lounges,
no—their preference is for “style” rather than comfort. The milliners
and _modistas_ display the most tempting hats—I have seen one ticketed
at 500 pesos—and dresses which are the last word in Parisian ingenuity.
They have also a childish delight in grouping life-sized and very
lifelike female figures arranged in these vanities in their windows. A
waxen lady displaying her startling corsets and snowy underwear has a
peculiar fascination not only for the women, but even for the men. One
evening I overheard a little ragged urchin, who was standing before such
a revelation, pressing his hands across his heart, like Caruso in a love
scene, exclaiming to the wax idol of his adoration, “_Ah, mi querida
señorita!_” They begin young in Buenos Ayres!
Florida is so much a Vanity Fair that the shops devoted to the more
sober necessities of life seem out of place. Some of these still present
a “Wild West” aspect in the motley assortment of their wares, cooking
ranges, oil stoves, baths, cork-screws, infants’ foods, boots, bedsteads,
and travelling trunks being mingled together in pleasing disorder. But
such establishments are gradually being elbowed out by the pompous
jeweller, the pianoforte-seller, whose chief business is in pianolas and
musical boxes—crowds will stand around a shop door to listen to a musical
box at work or an automatic organ, in the evening when the street has
been closed to wheeled traffic—the furrier, the high-class stationer,
the modista, the chemist, _and_ the optician. Nowhere will you find such
opticians. It may be that the syphilitic condition of the South American
blood is responsible for the myopia of the Argentines, or it may be no
more than a fashion, like the monocle with a certain type of Englishman;
but the use of glasses is widespread. There is one establishment in
Florida which is a veritable palace of optical appliances, employing
many scores of assistants. A considerable part of this business is also
associated with land-surveying and the most expensive instruments of
that science may be seen for sale in many shop windows in Florida. A
peculiarity of Buenos Ayres (and Montevideo also) is the public display
of surgical appliances. Brilliantly lighted windows present you with
the latest things in operating tables, glass service stands for the
instruments, and all sorts of uncanny inventions for cutting you up.
The craftsmen of Florence send much of their marble handiwork to Florida,
and some of the art shops are stocked with beautiful statues and bronzes,
while every variety of gorgeous inkstands may be seen in them. The
inkstand is an important item of the _chic_ Argentine home. But the taste
for graphic art is still undeveloped, and the pictures offered for sale
compare very unfavourably with the sculptures. I recall in particular a
hideous daub, which was alleged to represent two or three members of a
certain _familia distinguida_ (any family that can pay its way and afford
a seat at the Opera is so described), being the centre of admiration
in a Florida shop window for some days, while the newspapers gave
reproductions of it. In London or Paris no art-dealer would have allowed
it to be seen on his premises.
As I have already indicated, Florida has every day a brief surcease
from the battle of motors and coaches. From four o’clock until seven
no vehicles are allowed to pass along it, and only at the crossings is
there any traffic. These are the hours of the evening _paseo_. Ladies
and children are now at liberty to saunter along the pavements or in
the roadway, while the gilded youth of the town struts by and gazes at
them, or more often stands in stolid rows and admires. The ladies are
perhaps a trifle too well dressed and the children mostly over-dressed.
But this is their “life.” This paseo is what they live for, so they
strive to appear at their best and to display their possessions of silks
and satins, while the _jovenes distinguidos_ have all had their boots
polished to the _n_th degree just before they came into the street. And
the scene is undeniably enchanting, when the electric lights blaze out.
There are hundreds of projecting shops-signs, in which changing electric
lights are now revealed and now occluded, and the great warehouses are
all illuminated as though it were another _centenario_, news vendors are
calling _La Razon_, _El Diario_, _Caras y Caretas_, or _Fray Mocho_, and
the whole has the atmosphere of some brilliant bazaar, rather than of the
highway of a great city. It is a feast of light, but not of gaiety, for
the Argentines are not given to joyousness and are strangely lacking in
humour; everybody is frightfully formal and all are obviously conscious
of being well dressed. It is Vanity Fair with the fun left out!
Towards the river, the street of San Martín (inescapable national hero
who pursues you everywhere in statue, in street and place-name, in
“cocktails,” in every conceivable connection) runs parallel to Florida
but bears no resemblance to it except in being equally narrow. It is
essentially an earnest business thoroughfare, lined with many fine
office buildings, and choking perpetually with traffic. But, by the
way, many of these business buildings that look so “up-to-date” from
the outside are antiquated within. It is a fact that up to so recently
as a year ago builders were in the habit of erecting large tenements
which they well knew would be utilised for nothing but offices, yet they
built them deliberately for “flats,” or _departamentos_, as these are
called, fitting each with its kitchen and bathroom and disposing the
apartments as for bedrooms and salons. Thus you will find to-day hundreds
of business firms using such modern flats as offices,—in some cases the
bathrooms remaining, in others converted into “enquiry office,” or the
like,—all extremely uncomfortable in conditions entirely foreign to
their requirements. But San Martín contains several imposing blocks of
real office buildings and will presently contain more, for the builders
are busy here, as everywhere else, with their work of transformation. A
friend of mine, when I called on him at the beginning of May, 1913, had
just received notice to quit, by the demolishers arriving and starting
to unroof his office! That was his first intimation that the landlord
purposed clearing away his old property and putting up a great new
business building. Argentine methods are not ours.
One “square” nearer the river runs Reconquista, dignified by the
presence of the principal bank buildings, many of which are real
ornaments of the town and all suggest a sense of opulence and financial
solidity it would be hard to match even in New York or London. Yet the
best of them, the richest and the most substantial, are no more than the
branches of the Tree of English Gold which has its roots deep-struck in
London City. It is a street of all nations this Reconquista. England,
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the rest have their banking houses
here, and there is no more encouraging sight in this remorseless city
than to witness the many ill-clad Spanish and Italian labourers going
through the long and intricate operation of sending drafts home to
those they have left in the old country. Many hundreds have I seen with
eager, straining faces, scanning the pink or green slips of paper that
would mean so much to some one far away in Lombardy or in Catalonia, and
represented so much of the sweat of his brow to the poor sender.
The practice of keeping a bank account is very general, even among the
labouring classes, as the poor _peon_ has nowhere to hide his little
hoard, living as he does in the most shameful conditions, where a
square yard of living-room is more costly than a cottage would be in
his native village, and among people who do not hesitate at murder to
gain a few pitiful pesos. Thus you will often see a lean and hungry
labourer, dressed no better than an English tramp, scrutinising his
bank book in the corridor of one of the great banking houses, and the
sight is a strange one to English eyes. Turks, Polish Jews, Norwegians,
Russians, Cingalese, Swedes, Armenians, all the nations of the world
are represented daily in the teeming throngs that flock to the banks
in Reconquista, where the innumerable clerks are puffing steadily at
cigarettes and attending to their clients with a charming ease that
has in it a pleasant suggestion of eternity. For the simplest banking
operation will eat away twenty minutes of your time, as your account is
balanced whenever you withdraw or lodge any sum, and to secure a draft on
London at ninety days, calls for the patience of Job and three-quarters
of an hour. Much of this formality is the result of the system of issuing
open checks, which makes swindling delightfully simple, and the bank
always stands to lose, as there is extreme difficulty in bringing a
swindler to book.
The last of the narrow streets riverward is Calle 25 de Mayo, so called
from the day in the year 1810 when the movement for Independence began,
although the actual date of the Declaration of Independence is 9th July,
1816. They have a curious habit of thinking in dates in Latin countries.
Both Paris and Rome give us examples of famous dates as street names, but
in South America dates are honoured to a degree that is comic. One of my
friends in Montevideo has an office in 25 de Mayo, a show-room in 18 de
Julio, and warehouses in 21 de Agosto and in 15 de Octubre! By some odd
chance he always found what he needed most in one of the streets named
after Uruguay’s historic dates. There was another such, 1 de Mayo, but
it offered him no accommodation else he should have taken premises there
also, just to complete the series. Calle 25 de Mayo in Buenos Ayres has
long been one of the degenerate parts of the town, entirely unworthy of
the historic event it commemorates. But it is being gradually reformed
and may yet take on an aspect of decency. Near the Plaza de Mayo it
contains some fine new buildings, but westward it is still the haunt of
undesirables, although the English pro-cathedral stands there, a plain
and not undignified structure with which I made no close acquaintance.
[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE JOCKEY CLUB, BUENOS AYRES.
A good photograph of this famous building cannot be made, the street
being too narrow to admit of focus, even from the upper storeys opposite.
In the right bottom corner part of a window-sill, or ledge of roof, on
the opposite side of the street, appears in this photograph.]
From 25 de Mayo the ground falls quickly, to the Paseo de Julio, the
former street occupying the level of what, no doubt, was long ago the
bank of the river. This is the only semblance of a hill in all the
district. Inland for leagues, the city lies flat as the proverbial
pancake, while below towards the river, the Paseo and the gardens beyond,
with the buildings of the port in the further distance, occupy a lower
level of land reclaimed from the river. If anybody wants an enemy “put
out of the way” for a matter of twenty dollars or so, he will have no
difficulty in finding a villain ready for the job somewhere along the
arcaded haunts of the Paseo. In one respect the Paseo de Julio resembles
Princess Street, Edinburgh, which, as the Irishman said, “is no more
than half a strate, as it has only one side to it.” The Paseo has only
one side to it, and it is a bad one. The second stories of the buildings
that stand between the Paseo and 25 de Mayo are on the road level of the
higher street. Thus it might be possible, for aught I know, to enter one
of the low dens on the Paseo and mounting two or three floors within
its evil and mysterious interior, emerge on the level of 25 de Mayo.
The lower stories of these buildings on the Paseo side are arcaded,
and these arcades are the haunt of “all things perverse, abominable.”
According to the local press, after nightfall no man dare appear there
wearing a collar, and any one who requires the aid of eye-glasses must
not venture thither. Often have I wandered among the stinking peones and
cosmopolitan criminals who throng the arcades by day, but I know not
the Paseo by night. The shops are kept by all sorts of cheap clothiers,
general dealers, and many cutlers, whose windows are exclusively given
over to the display of long knives or daggers. Probably sixty per cent.
of the frequenters of the arcades carry one of these dirks, like the
old Scottish Highlander, and the other forty per cent. are armed with
revolvers, of which hundreds are exposed for sale in the arcades. There
is no lack of “cheap Jacks” with “special lines” to clear at a sacrifice.
There are many filthy looking restaurants and provision shops; and more
_librerías_, which expose nothing but the filth of the Continental press
translated into Spanish and Italian. If you look at one of their windows
for a minute, out pops the greasy owner, spiderlike, to enquire if by any
chance you would like to inspect his more secret stock of _fotografías
muy curiosas_, while youths will thrust under your nose an envelope of
obscene photographs, with a particularly offensive one exposed. The whole
atmosphere is vile. The cinematographs and raree shows that also abound
in these arcades may be no more pernicious than many in the Bowery, but
that is a matter on which no decent visitor can speak, as none such could
risk the contamination of entering therein. It is a male crowd that is
always circulating in the Paseo. Never have I seen a decent woman there,
and indeed no more than a half-a-dozen hatless sluts are ever to be
noticed under its arcades.
This abomination must pass. It exists merely because landowners have
preferred to hold their old rotten properties, and allow them to be used
by the scum of the population, until such time as it would pay them to
sell out. The transformation has already begun; the pestiferous old
buildings are giving way to modern ones, devoted to cleaner purposes.
Some day the haunts of the criminals may be utterly wiped out and the
Paseo de Julio become, what it might well be, one of the pleasantest
thoroughfares of a great city.
Up the little hill from the Paseo, one gains the Plaza de Mayo, whence
stretches for a mile and a half in the most approved Haussmannesque
straightness the Avenida de Mayo, ending in the massive palace of
Congreso. Lined with many handsome buildings, of six, eight, or even a
dozen stories, whose shadows are falling athwart the broad and teeming
roadway, while the westering sun is making iridescent the white marbles
of the great domed Congreso in the far distance, here in the new land
of South America is at least one fine city highway that may hold up its
head among the world’s best. There is a suggestion of a Paris boulevard
in the Avenida; a suggestion of form, but assuredly not of life nor of
“atmosphere.” And there the rivalry between the two great Latin cities
begins and ends!
The great Avenida Callao runs at right angles with the Avenida de Mayo
from the Plaza Congreso. It is badly paved, but contains many attractive
buildings of cement. Some day perhaps it may become the central
thoroughfare of the city. There are those who believe it will, but in
my judgment it will call for a greater revolution than they have ever
known in Argentina to shift the centre of gravity from the Calles Maipú,
Florida, and San Martín to Callao. Between Florida and Callao there are
eleven parallel streets. All are incessantly busy from early morning
till nightfall, while Maipú, Esmeralda, and Suipacha, in the order given
parallel to Florida, are busy even through the night. All sorts of shops
abound in these thoroughfares and business offices innumerable, as well
as many places of entertainment, restaurants, and cafés. But, apart
from Florida, all these streets that lie to the north of the Avenida de
Mayo are so characterless that after many years of residence it would
puzzle even those with an abnormal “bump of locality” to say in which
street they found themselves if they stepped from a cab in any one of
them without having noted some landmark on the way. In the suburbs it
is even more difficult to realise at a glance where you may happen to
be, and the policeman often cannot tell you the name of the street he
is patrolling. I remember asking a policeman in a street near the Plaza
Libertad for Frank Brown’s Circus (Brown is an American or an Englishman
who has made and lost fortunes in circuses throughout South America).
“Oh,” said he, “you are going the wrong way. It is at the corner of
Florida and Córdoba.” Now, I knew that some eighteen months or two years
before it had stood there, but was deliberately burned to the ground by
the jingo youths of the city, who were offended by some quite innocent
action of the unfortunate Brown. This policeman, some eight or ten
squares away from the scene, had not yet heard the news, and meanwhile a
magnificent pile of ferro-concrete architecture, the Centro Naval, had
been reared on the spot! I found the new circus by describing to another
policeman, who at first denied all knowledge of it, a big building to
which thousands of people had been flocking for two or three nights past.
Then a light dawned on his Indo-Spanish soul. “_Entonces, señor_,” said
he, “_se encuentra sin duda, a la esquina de esta misma calle, porque se
ha concurrida mucha gente, por alla, estas ultimas noches_.” It was even
so, three squares away at the corner of the street in which I had speech
with the policeman, I found the circus.
There is no end to what I might write about the streets of Buenos
Ayres, but there must be speedily, if not already, to the interest of
the reader. I who have tramped them, in fair weather and in foul, on
busy week days and on the deadest of dull dead Sundays, mile upon mile,
seeking for interest and finding but little, now discover many forgotten
impressions coming up on the films of the mind, which, so to say, I have
been putting into the developer, and though these amuse me, I doubt if
they would equally entertain others.