WHAT WE THOUGHT OF THE WEATHER AND THE MOSQUITOES
I cannot go further in the story of my stay in Buenos Ayres without
saying something very definite about the weather. Passing references have
already been made to that all-important topic; but it requires a chapter
to itself, and it insists on having it here and now.
As I have said, we were seekers of sunshine. Well, we found it—and also
some fine samples of most sorts of weather known between the Equator and
the Poles.
We arrived early in April, which is the beginning of autumn in the
Argentine. As the reader has heard, the morning of our arrival was a
“perisher.” Next day I found my hands, for the first time since boyhood,
sore and “chapped.” The cold wind was so keen that it had instantly
roughened all exposed parts of the skin, and I had recourse to lanoline
to soften my hands and to heal my cracked lips. But on the third day
the sun came forth again and for nearly a fortnight the heat was almost
as trying as in a New York summer. Everybody was mopping his forehead;
men who, a day or two before, had been going about in great-coats, were
walking the streets with handkerchiefs tucked inside their collars to
absorb the sweat. And suddenly it would change to a bitter night; or
perhaps one went forth in the sunny morning in summer clothes, and
by noon the temperature had precipitately dropped fifteen or twenty
degrees, so that one went shivering hotel-ward for lunch and a change of
clothes.
Yet a Scotsman, long resident in Chile, told me that I would find Buenos
Ayres had the finest climate in the world! I wonder where he will go to
when he dies.
For eight months I had occasion to comment on the weather and seldom in
terms of congratulation. The expatriated English and the few _porteños_
of British parentage with whom I came into frequent contact were
strangely prone to ask me what I thought of the weather, whenever it
happened to be a really fine day.
“Compare this,” they would say, “with the weeks of fog in London when the
gas has to be lighted all day long and one can’t breathe.”
“My dear sir,” (or “lady,” as the case more often was), I might
timorously make answer, “you speak of what is as much a tradition as the
red wig and beard for the part of Shylock, and moreover you speak to one
who has seen as great variety of weather in Buenos Ayres as in London.
Your memory is so short that you forget it rained monstrously for three
days last week, and for the other four days there was a white chilling
vapour over all the town, so that you could not see the length of two
squares in the forenoon, and when the vapour had cleared it was as though
you were walking on vaselined sidewalks.”
“Oh, but that was exceptional.”
“And so, it may be, are the fogs of London. But I’d much prefer a real
old London ‘particler’ to this marrow-searching, flesh-chilling, white
plague that comes up from the River Plate in your winter-time and gets
one by the throat.”
That fine line of Tennyson’s,
All in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom,
comes to mind in Buenos Ayres on one of these days, but, alas, the autumn
dripping is not from branchy trees to fragrant, leaf-laden loam, nor is
it “death-dumb.” It drips from gaunt iron frames, from broken plastered
walls, from tram-cars, from horses’ harness. A billiard cue taken from
the rack will feel as though it had been lying in the bath, and the boots
which you have not been wearing for a few days will show patches of white
and green mould.
But it is true that between April and November there may be many days
of sunshine; nay, even weeks of it at a stretch. And these days are
delicious. There is a tang of freshness in the air such as comes to one
on a fine frosty autumn morning on the heights of uptown New York.
Then towards the end of November the sun begins his yearly revel and
till the end of March Buenos Ayres swelters in the most oppressive heat
imaginable. Not that the barometer ever attains a greater height than it
frequently registers in New York City, but New York rarely experiences
such long-sustained periods of heat, and the humidity—due to the mighty
volume of the River Plate—makes the life of man and beast a burden. The
nights bring no surcease. Horses die in the streets by the score every
day, and you will see their carcasses in all parts of the town, awaiting
removal. Lucky are the inhabitants who can escape to Mar del Plata, to
Montevideo or to the Hills of Córdoba, but they are few compared with the
myriads who must remain in the monstrous stew-pot. “Long drinks” and two
or three cold shower baths are now the order of the day. But even the
cold douche has its snares. I was once severely scalded by taking one, as
the cistern was exposed to the sun and the water had been brought near to
boiling point without the aid of a “geyser”! There is nobody in Buenos
Ayres during the summer who attaches much importance to the scientific
wiseacres who tell us the heat of the sun is diminishing.
There was no doubt about it—we had found the sunshine at last. And like
so many of the quests on which mankind sets out, our find was no better
than Dead Sea apples. What could we do with it? Why, we shut it out of
our rooms by every means in our power; we wore smoked glasses so that
we should not see it. We thought of the Kentucky nigger who was knocked
down by an autumnal blast and got up and shook his fist at the invisible
force, saying: “Wind, wheah wuz you dis time las’ July?”
[Illustration: THE NEW COURTS OF JUSTICE.
The “Tribunales” photographed just before the completion of the cement
work on the top storey. In the foreground, the fine monument to General
Lavalle, standing in the plaza named after him.]
It will be gathered from what I have said that the Argentine has no lack
of “weather,” wherein it resembles England, which Mark Twain alleged
had only “samples” of climate. It has all the essentials of the finest
climate in the world, but no wise Providence has blended these with any
discretion. In the course of one short day you will pass through all the
seasons of the year, and though it never snows, I have experienced cold
in Buenos Ayres equal to a sharp frost in New York. Nay, I will roundly
assert that no wind that sweeps across New York has a tooth so keen as
the _pampero_. One has to be out in Buenos Ayres when the wind from the
boundless pampas strikes the town to know how cold can rake through to
the marrow. Over the thousands of leagues of plains it blows, direct from
the snowy Andes, and stirring up the clammy effluvia of the River Plate
it breathes rheumatism, bronchitis, consumption over the city—the hateful
pampero!
Nor have the people learned how to combat their changeful weather. All
their houses are built for summer. They are excellent for four months
of the year, and uncomfortable for the best part of eight. The ceilings
of the rooms are usually five feet or more higher than the American
standard, which gives one a sporting chance of a breath of fresh air in
the torrid season, but when the wind blows and the rain pours, such lofty
rooms, tenanted by a myriad draughts, are veritable haunts of misery.
For they have neither fireplaces like English houses, nor stoves like
American, while steam heating is in its infancy. There are actually
modern houses in which “dummy” fireplaces have been built for show, but
a real genuine fireplace is a thing which most Argentines have only seen
on a visit to Europe. A well-known steam-heating expert from New York,
who was sent on a special mission of study to Buenos Ayres, told me that
in many of the new _departamento_ buildings which offer the attraction
of _calefacción central_ the steam heating installation is no more than
make-believe for selling or letting purposes, but never calculated to
supply the tenants with warmth. No, the Argentine either goes to bed
earlier or puts on extra clothing in the cold weather, lounges about
his house with an overcoat or a shawl above his winter suit, and tries
to warm his toes at an oil stove. The ironmongers make great display of
these stinking abominations at the first cold-snap, and the papers carry
many advertisements of their merits, their “odourless” quality being
insisted upon in every case. Electric stoves are largely and successfully
used, and as electric current is cheap they form the best substitute for
a coal fire—although the English believe there is no substitute in all
the world for a fine glowing fire of coal.
“Weather” is indeed a staple of talk in the Argentine, just as at home.
Indeed, to a greater degree does one hear people discussing the weather
in Buenos Ayres even than in London, and with very good reason. The
fortunes of all hinge on the state of the climate. Too much rain and the
harvests are spoiled; too much heat and horses, cattle and sheep perish
in their tens of thousands. And year after year the Argentine suffers
either way. Tell an _estanciero_ that you have seen two or three locusts
flying about in the street and his face will blanch, his lip quiver,
for already in imagination he sees the dreaded plague of these insects
devastating his crops. He is ever in a state of nervous fear as to
whether there is going to be too little rain or too much, and, poor man,
he will tell you with glee when he meets you on the beastliest of rainy
days that “it’s raining dollars.” If you meet him a fortnight later and
it is still raining, there will be no smile on his face, for he fears it
is to be the old, old story. “Last year and the year before the crops
were nearly in the bags for putting on the rail and yet we lost them
through the rain.” Raining dollars, forsooth! For a day or two that may
be so, for a week, perhaps; but later on it rains bankruptcy. _Que lindo
país_, as a dear old self-deluded lady used to say when telling me the
most atrocious untruths about her adopted country. What a lovely country!
The uncertainty of the Argentine weather is really incredible to any
one who has been fed on the pap of interested hack-writers. In the year
1911 the great national horse race at Palermo was three times postponed
on account of the course being dangerously heavy from excessive rain,
and in 1912 it was postponed once for the same reason, being run on
the succeeding Sunday on a course that was still sloppy. Was the Derby
ever postponed because of rain? I have no Derby lore, but I should be
surprised to learn that such a thing had ever happened in rainy England.
It had been represented to me before I went to Buenos Ayres that, so
reliable was the climate, one could make engagements for outdoor sports
months ahead, with the certainty of weather conditions being favourable.
During my stay there, numerous lawn tennis, golfing, boating and picnic
engagements were postponed from time to time because of the rain.
In short, Argentine weather is either too much of a good thing or too
much of a bad thing. The dear old lady already mentioned told me that
she had to live in Buenos Ayres during the winter because the roads to
her estancia were quite impassable whenever it rained, but it was lovely
there for a few weeks in the spring, though she had to clear out as soon
as summer came, as the place was so infested by flies and mosquitoes that
the family had to live in darkness, never daring to raise the blinds!
Buenos Ayres being equally obnoxious in summer, she went to the Hills
of Córdoba, and came back to town with the autumn. Thus she was able
to spend a few short weeks of each year at her home in the “Camp,” and
the rest of the year, from a chair in the hotel drawing-room she sang
the praises of the glorious Argentine weather and of the country that
blossoms as the rose.
The final touch of unloveliness is the loss of the ruddy glory of the
fall. In the province of Buenos Ayres especially, there is no gorgeous
funeral for King Summer; no shimmering gold of hedge and bough. The
leaves rot on the trees suddenly, wither into pale colourless things that
to-morrow’s wind sweeps away and, behold, so many gaunt and shivering
skeletons of trees. When man dies in Buenos Ayres, they coffin him and
consign him to his corner of Chacarita within twenty-four hours. Summer
dies and is buried with similar despatch, but Nature relatively provides
less pomp at the funeral of Summer than the experts in _pompas fúnebres_
supply for the average Argentine who yesterday was and to-day is not.
Insect life is, of course, conditioned by the weather. Yet the Argentine
mosquito has a wonderful power of surviving into the winter. It is a
worker. Its industry is unquestionable. I shall not readily forget how
I was plagued by this small product of a great country. On various
occasions I had to limp about my affairs with absurdly swollen feet,
thanks to the attentions of these tiny pests. An afternoon _siesta_ could
only safely be indulged in under a mosquito net. Even as I write I still
bear traces on my right foot of a particularly venomous bite that dates
back more than six months!
“Haw, yes, the mosquitoes always get the Gringos,” said a pimply faced
young Englishman to me, when I was mentioning my first experiences nearly
a year later in Montevideo.
“How long have you been out here?” I inquired.
“Oh, nearly three years now,” said he.
“So that you are a three years’ Gringo, I suppose.”
The English youth makes haste to range himself with the “old timers”
and will lie to you abominably to convey the impression that he is no
longer a tenderfoot (though a Gringo he must ever be), and tell you that
the mosquitoes never touch him, while you can see him scratching his
latest bite! The fact is that some people are more subject than others
to mosquito bite and there are many thousands of native-born who never
outgrow the susceptibility. I sincerely sympathise with all such, as
the mosquito has the power to make their lives a misery for at least
six months of the year. Fleas and bugs (the loathsome bed-hunter) also
abound in the City of Good Airs. A gentleman of my acquaintance who
took lodgings in a native doctor’s house was told by the housekeeper,
when he complained about the bugs in his bed, that she couldn’t help
them—“they were natural.” That was his complaint; he would rather they
had been artificial. The _bicho colorado_ is another busy little fellow,
the size of a pin-head. He haunts the grass and as you walk over that he
removes his _habitat_ to your foot, bores a hole in your skin, burrows
merrily into your flesh and produces a sore which you will have cause
to remember for many a day. The chemists do brisk business in selling
innumerable “preventatives” and “cures” for the bites of mosquitoes
and _bichos colorados_, but all that I tried were failures, until I
discovered in that familiar product, liquid ammonia, a really effective
banisher of the pain.
On the whole, I do not seem to have formed an extremely favourable
opinion of the weather in Buenos Ayres. Like that famous little girl,
“when it is good it is very, very good; but when it is bad it is
horrid.” And I have a notion that the little girl in question was none
too often “good.” As for the insects; well, Stalky’s pet aversions, the
“bug-hunters,” can always be sure of a busy time in and around Buenos
Ayres.