MORE “PASEOS” IN BUENOS AYRES
Recoleta I have only mentioned in passing; but that offers a very
interesting paseo to the visitor. My wife specialised on Recoleta and
piloted many another lonely soul to that strange city of tombs! As they
say in Scottish villages, “Let’s take a bit daunder in the kirk yaird.”
Recoleta is certainly worthy of a “daunder.” This famous cemetery
combines some features of Pere Lachaise with certain of the Campo Santo
at Genoa. But it is really not like either. It is peculiarly Argentine.
You can trace in it the progress of the national prosperity. It is
essentially the creation of a people newly rich. Here and there we see
in its crowded lines of tombs some mouldering memorial of the last
generation, simple, unpretentious. But most of those that bear dates
within the last twenty years or so are the last word in necrological
“swank” or mortuary pomp. Not for nothing are funerals styled _pompas
fúnebres_ in the Argentine. They do well by their dead. Millions of
money have gone to the making of these splendid homes of the dead at
Recoleta. For they are not buried in our “earth to earth” fashion. The
bodies are merely encased in leaden shells, within gorgeous coffins of
carved wood, and are laid on shelves within the mausoleums, so that for
years to come the survivors may visit the tomb and mourn with no more
than the thickness of the coffin between them and the departed. It is a
horribly unsanitary system of burial and the smell in Recoleta on a hot
summer’s day is distinctly “high.” How could it be else, with all these
thousands of decaying corpses enclosed in boxes which, you may be sure,
are not all air-tight? So intolerable is the savour of the dead, that
the custodians—the cemetery pululates with uniformed custodians—have to
“air” the tombs by opening the doors for several hours daily. When I went
wandering in Recoleta, I used to think that Jacques’ words—
“And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot”—
would make a good motto for the place. How Shakespeare has a tag for
everything, old and new!
But I must describe a typical tomb. It is built entirely of beautiful
Carrara marble, and better built than most houses in Buenos Ayres. No
“sham” here. It towers nearly twenty feet above the ground level, and its
lower floor is eight or ten feet underground. It is beautifully designed,
with delicately carved pilasters, and surmounted by a graceful cupola,
bearing a decorative cross. The spacious entrance is fitted with a noble
iron-work gate, lined on the inner side with plate glass, and bearing on
a gilded boss in the centre the Christ-mark ☧ so familiar in all Latin
cemeteries. In a word, save for the cross and the Christ-mark, it is
outwardly such a monument as the wealthy Roman reared by the Appian Way,
and surely there must be in Recoleta as many of these vanities as made
that highway one of the great sights of Imperial Rome.
Let us peep within. In the upper chamber stands an elaborate altar of
alabaster and brass, with an enamelled painting of the Virgin and Holy
Child, encased in a massive frame of brass, before which, on the lace
altar-cloth, spotlessly clean, are burning several candles. There are two
or three _prie-dieus_ of mahogany and various wreaths of real flowers
hung on the walls, as well as others of beads or immortelles. Below, down
a flight of marble stairs with brass balustrades, one can see on shelves
around the chamber, six, eight, perchance a dozen coffins, and several
marble busts, portraits of the more notable occupants of the coffins,
placed on pedestals, against which are heaped more wreaths. Every detail
of the tomb is perfect in its way and no expense has been spared in the
making of it. It is scrupulously clean, for here come dainty ladies to
kneel on the praying chairs for an hour at a time, and on All Souls’ Day
or the Day of the Dead (_El dia de los muertes_) the family interested in
the tomb will pass most of the day here. Fifteen thousand dollars would
probably be a fair estimate of the cost of this little palace of death—a
few square yards in one of the main avenues of Recoleta will outvalue the
same space in Florida!—but it remains a charnel house and it smelleth of
things unclean. I often thought that the mourning ladies seen in these
tombs were another of the many traces of the Moorish dominion in Spain
that still show in the customs of Spanish America.
[Illustration: THE ENGLISH “PRO-CATHEDRAL” IN CALLE 25 DE MAYO, BUENOS
AYRES.]
[Illustration: THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL IN THE PLAZA MAYO, BUENOS
AYRES.
(Note the wreaths of electric bulbs which permanently entwine the columns
of the building.)]
When I tell you that in Recoleta there are some ten thousand tombs,
huddled together so closely that it is hardly possible to get an
unembarrassed view of a single one, and that many of them are quite
as splendid as the one I have described, you will understand what a
prodigious expenditure Recoleta represents. Millions of money, much good
taste and more bad, have gone to its making.
Every kind of stone seems to be used: alabaster, marbles, granites,
freestone; and all have been imported from Europe. Nearly everything
of artistic merit bears evidence of European craftsmanship. There is
abundance of beautiful iron-work and bronze plaques, medallions, statues.
The debased modern Italian work is very noticeable. Almost every atrocity
is of Italian origin. But there are several mausoleums of black granite,
in the style of Germany’s _art nouveau_, which show how beautifully
that may be treated. They are so individual and yet so restrained and
dignified that the good taste of the owners is as evident in them as the
skill and genius of the designers. Strange to say, few of these really
beautiful things bear the makers’ name, yet every ramshackle erection
of the jerry-builders in the streets of Buenos Ayres displays in large
concrete letters the name of the proud architects who committed it!
Naturally, in Recoleta repose many of the notable men in the recent
history of Argentina. The great heroes, such as Belgrano, San Martín,
Sarmiento, sleep elsewhere in lonely state; but here are many presidents,
generals, statesmen, mingled with the rabble of the merely rich. There
is also a quadrangle stuffed with hundreds of coffins let into niches in
the walls, tier above tier, up to some thirty feet in height, but that is
mossy and neglected, as it recalls the old days before the coming of the
“boom”; yet it is there that the real “forefathers of the city sleep”;
there you will find the true blue Argentine who in life to-day is _rara
avis_.
One could write a whole chapter on Recoleta, while its history and the
stories of its tombs are worthy of a book. But our purpose is a paseo,
and enough has been said, perhaps, to indicate that in its narrow and
crowded lanes of mausoleums a paseo no less interesting, but very
different in kind, from that of Palermo, may be made. Unlike the theme of
the popular song, however, it is not “all right in the summer time.” What
one misses most is “the storied urn.” The “animated bust” there is and to
spare; but the tombs are lacking in interesting inscriptions. Usually,
_Propiedad de la familia Fulano de Tal_ is all that gives the wanderer
a clue to the identity of the peaceful dwellers in these marble halls.
The graveyard poet is unhonoured in Recoleta. One feature I had almost
forgotten, and it is very much in tune with modern Buenos Ayres. Several
magnificent tombs were unoccupied and bore tickets announcing that they
were for sale. They had been erected by enterprising speculators. Thus
the Argentine who has suddenly become wealthy by selling his “camp,”
bought a fine mansion in Buenos Ayres, and joined the Jockey Club, may
acquire a ready-made mausoleum for his “family.” Ah, the magic peso!
Chacarita, a long way westward from Recoleta, is the great general place
of burial. It is many times larger than Recoleta and more varied in its
memorials, though it also contains great avenues of handsome mausoleums.
A portion of Chacarita is dedicated to the British and Americans, and
here one encounters the names of many of one’s fellow-countrymen who have
helped to build up the amazing prosperity of the Argentine and eventually
laid their bones in its friendly soil. One grave, most likely to be
passed unnoticed, bears a simple stone which records that he who sleeps
beneath was the last lineal descendant of the Earls of Douglas. It’s a
far cry from the historic haunts of the Black Douglas to Chacarita, but
so runs the world away.
Still farther westward, yet within the boundaries of this wide-spreading
city, is the _Parque del Oeste_, which covers even more ground than the
_Parque 3 de Febrero_ at Palermo. We never met any Gringos who were in
the habit of taking a paseo there; while in the pretty little park in
the Boca, to which we occasionally wandered, my wife and I, we never saw
anybody above the loafer class enjoying its leafy shade. In fact, this
applies to all the parks of Buenos Ayres, if we except Palermo and the
Botanical Gardens—they are the haunts of undesirables, and while they
certainly beautify the city and look extremely well as green spots on the
coloured plans, they might not exist so far as the decent population is
concerned.
On a very tiny scale the picturesque Plaza Constitucion reminds one of
the debaters’ ground at Hyde Park, for here come the socialist orators to
harangue little groups of artisans and labourers, and here the tireless
warriors of the _Ejercito de Salvacion_ raise the banner of “Blood and
Fire” and wage an unequal battle against the forces of Unbelief, Idolatry
and Indifference. To encounter these uniformed enthusiasts in the
remotest corners of earth wrings even from the antipathetic a tribute of
admiration for the genius of him who founded the strange movement and
gave his life to a great idea. I am not sure but that the Salvation Army
discharges a more urgent and useful social service in cities like Buenos
Ayres and Montevideo than it does in the land of its birth. But it may be
that the wanderer is apt to admire abroad qualities which at home would
leave him cold.
In the Plaza Constitucion there is an elaborate artificial hill, with the
artificial ruins of a castle! As the whole erection is now girt about
with barbed wire, I suspect its constructors builded better than they
knew and, in attempting to imitate ruins, succeeded so well that “the
ruins” speedily became “dangerous.” But the pathos of the sight will not
escape the reflective eye.
Of the Paseo de Julio I have already written. It is a great blot on the
municipality that this most beautifully laid-out promenade, with all
its pleasant greenery, its banks of flowers, its very remarkable marble
fountain of the seductive mermaids, should be a haunt of the vilest
classes of the community. Yet it was here, I confess, that when I went
a-wandering alone I most often strayed, and an elderly gentleman who
lived at our hotel told me that it used to be his practice of an evening
to smoke his after-dinner cigar in a stroll along the Paseo de Julio,
until he was warned that some night perhaps he would be added to the
long list of victims who had there received a knife in their vitals and
been robbed while they breathed their last. The shops along the Paseo
certainly contain enough daggers to kill off the whole community in a
comparatively short time, if used with system. There were several cases
of murder in the Paseo during my stay, a man being done to death, in one
instance, for the equivalent of nine shillings.
As I have already hinted pretty broadly, if there is but little that
the visitor can find to interest him in the way of paseos within the
wide boundaries of the city, there is even less beyond. When we have
enumerated the Tigre, Hurlingham, San Isidro and San Andrés, the list
of pleasure resorts in the near neighbourhood is exhausted, and I have
deliberately made the best of it by including San Isidro, which is merely
a residential suburb prettily set on rising ground. I tramped all round
San Isidro one lovely autumn day, hunting for a new golf course, which I
found to be so new that the greens had not yet been laid. At that time
the place, pretty as it was, could not be said to hold the slightest
interest for the visitor. Its church is pleasantly situated on the high
ground of the _barranca_, an elevated ridge which denotes the former
river course. There is a dainty public garden trending downward from
the church to the railway level, and one has a spacious view of the
country, now bosky and broken towards the River Tigre. The President
of the Republic had a house at San Isidro and there were some very
charming villas to be noted. But it could scarcely be considered a “show
place”—there are many New York suburbs far more beautiful—though the
patriotic Buenos Ayrian would probably complain if I failed to include
San Isidro among the charms of the countryside between the city and the
Tigre.
At San Andrés there is a fine golf-course, with a Scots professional, and
indeed a fine flavour of Scots even to the name, which is the Spanish
for Scotland’s patron saint. There is naught else at San Andrés, save
the usual vast acreage of flat uninteresting earth. Hurlingham is more
varied in its interests and more picturesque. These resorts are almost
exclusively British, with a very light sprinkling of Americans, who are
usually classed as _ingléses_ by the natives. I have sunny—and also
showery—recollections of both.
Remains the Tigre. And when all is said, the Tigre is the one playground
of the Buenos-Ayrians, after Palermo. Of it I have many mingled memories.
Some eighteen or twenty miles to the northwest of the city the River
Tigre joins its turbid waters with the tawny flood of the River Plate.
Near the junction, the Tigre is itself a river of considerable volume
and it is broken up by numerous small islands, which, thanks to the
frequent flooding in the rainy seasons, are rendered extremely fertile,
as the river deposits coatings of rich soil upon them. It is the delta
of the Nile on a miniature scale. Thus it is that these islands in
common with the banks of the river for many miles are always clothed
with verdure and all sorts of fruit trees flourish abundantly. The
natural growth is low and bushy; the few clumps of taller trees have all
been planted. But here at last we have something approaching “scenery.”
Picturesque “back-waters” allure the oarsmen in all directions. There is
no sensational beauty—not a vestige of anything unusual. Still the Tigre
does offer to the hungry eye of the disillusioned wanderer some natural
interest.
[Illustration: “LA MERCED,” A TYPICAL BUENOS AYRES CHURCH.]
[Illustration: “TEATRO DE LA OPERA,” OFFICIAL HOME OF OPERA BEFORE THE
BUILDING OF THE COLÓN.]
But let me tell you of the town that has sprung up here, before we
go a-boating on the river. The railway approach to it is as unlike a
pleasure resort as Newark, N. J., is unlike the Champs Élysées. In the
town itself the streets are still to be made, and after a day or two of
rain horses have to haul you through mud which reaches up to their knees,
so that it is an agony to ride in a coach, as the animals can only be
made to perform their terrible task by the most brutal thrashing. Once
only did I consent to endure the experience of seeing two poor creatures
flogged unmercifully to transport us a distance of about half a mile
across the wooden bridge and through the monstrous mire to the Tigre Boat
Club on the other side of the river.
Along the river banks there is foot-room enough, recalling the curate’s
egg, in being good in parts. On the left bank there are the beginnings
of what some day may be very pretty riverside gardens, but the roadway
for vehicles is merely mother earth in her changing varieties of mud and
dust. After rain it is impassable for motor cars and in dry weather it
is covered with train-loads of dust. In its former state I have seen a
large motor-car imbedded up to the level of the chassis and two other
cars on drier ground, with ropes attached, utterly powerless to move it
one foot, and I have seen it when the passage of an automobile meant “a
pillar of cloud by day” which the Buenos Ayres Israelites—whose name is
legion—might have descried in the wilderness of the city! Most of the
_quintas_ or country residences are situated on the left bank, in streets
that run at right angles to the river, and many of these country chalets
are very charming, both in architecture and rustic surroundings, but
assuredly an aeroplane would be the most practical way of reaching them
after a shower. I noticed a childish affection for plaster effigies of
dogs and other animals in the gardens, one quinta achieving the limit of
bad taste with a perfect stucco menagerie dotted about the garden. There
were dogs, cats, geese, foxes, storks, hens, and many other “strange
wild fowl,” to say nothing of the little gnomes, so popular as garden
ornaments in Switzerland. A more ludicrous exhibition could not be
imagined. The houses are built of many different materials, but stucco
prevails, and they are painted in all the colours of the spectroscope,
some of them rivalling the garish exterior effects of Italian ice cream
saloons; but others, not a few, charming in every detail.
The river banks are occupied chiefly by numerous boat clubs, some of
which possess very fine buildings, with every kind of modern luxury.
All the nations of Europe seem to be represented in this way and so far
as I could gather the Germans vie with the British in their devotion to
the river sport, though the native Argentines can pull an oar with the
best of them and have several handsome club houses. There is a large
and well-appointed hotel and a magnificent home for the Tigre Club was
nearing completion before I left Buenos Ayres. This is the fashionable
resort of the smart set, who are infinitely more interested in the
roulette table and baccarat than in anything so wholesome as the manly
sport which the other and less gorgeous club-houses represent. They motor
down the sixteen miles from Buenos Ayres on Sunday afternoon, after
the races at Palermo are over; get inside the Tigre Club as quickly as
possible, and so away from the mosquitoes; spend the evening in “play”;
stay the night and so to Buenos Ayres in the morning.
But the scene along the river on a Sunday afternoon is bright with
life. Crews practising in outriggers, lonely canoeists, loaded boats
of trippers beating the water with ill-timed blades, motor-launches
scurrying along well-laden with passengers and delightfully oblivious of
the “rules of the road,” the gilded youth showing the pace of his new
motor-boat and translating his Florida swagger into terms of the river.
An animated and pleasing scene.
There are leafy shades on many of the islands where teas may be
served or where you may picnic if you be so minded, just as at home.
To one of these we went occasionally on our boating excursions. It
is a little island orchard. The catering is excellent and among the
spring-blossoms,—“under boughs of breathing May” used to ring strange
in the memory when one knew it was October, though the conditions were
May—it was pleasant to sip the fragrant herb, which in the Argentine
they can brew as well as in England and better than I found elsewhere in
South America. This particular island is the property of a certain lady
who in the wicked past was a dancer at the Casino, when that was probably
the most notorious entertainment in any civilised city (“according to
information received”) but who is now a douce and not unattractive
widow “with a past,” and with a present which includes good teas and a
hearty welcome. Everything is so lacking in historic interest out in the
Argentine that I found myself not a little piqued by the story of the
ex-_bailarina_ and her island retreat, to which she had withdrawn with
a husband when her dancing days were done, and the husband dying soon
thereafter, she added the tea-garden to her well-stocked orchard and new
interests to her widowhood.
Such, then, is the Tigre, of which I had heard so much before I set sail
for the River Plate. “There’s such a charming place called the Tigre, to
which everybody goes boating and picnicking,” I used to be told. But I
was not told that in the summer its mosquitoes’ sting was sharper than
serpent’s tooth, or that in the winter you had to wade to the river
through mire and thank the gods for a fine dry day when it pleased their
extreme sulkinesses to vouchsafe so great a favour.
Still, given the right day, the exile may bless the Tigre and may there
dream dreams of home.