THE ARGENTINE AT HOME
As we make no distinction in English between the name of the country
and that of its native, referring to both as “the Argentine,” I am
continually finding little difficulties present themselves in the
progress of my writing, involving circumlocutions which are obviated
in the Spanish. The Spaniard can never doubt the intention of a writer
about the Argentine, _la Argentina_ being the name of the country, or
of a female native, while _el Argentino_ indicates the male native. In
the English, we have to depend entirely on the context of the sentence
to make clear whether the reference is to the country or to a native
thereof. In the present chapter, of course, the title sufficiently
indicates that we are to look at the Argentine native in his domestic
relationships, and I must confess the subject is one that does not admit
of very extensive treatment, for the reason set forth by M. Jules Huret
in one of his admirable studies. The French writer observes (I translate
from the Spanish translation):
Only strangers of high social or official standing are received
with any active sympathy. It is a matter of pride to be able
to make these visitors realise the great progress of the
metropolis and to introduce them to two or three _salons_,
which are all precisely alike. But if the stranger, although he
be of good family, arrive at Buenos Ayres provided with letters
of introduction to real _criollos_ (natives with generations of
Argentine pedigree) he will receive cards in reply, and not
always that courtesy; rarely a word of friendship or welcome.
He will hear repeated on all hands _mi casa es suya_ (“my house
is yours”); there will even be the usual courtesies with him
should they meet, and he may even be asked to go to the Jockey
Club, if his stay in Buenos Ayres is not to be a long one.
With few exceptions, he will not be able to penetrate into the
intimacy of the “home” or of a family of _criollos_. Argentine
family life, especially of the better class, retains many of
the habits of the Spaniards and something of the customs of the
Arabs.
This is correctly observed, and if an amiable Frenchman found such
difficulty as M. Huret evidently experienced in penetrating within the
outer walls of Argentine domesticity, how shall the Anglo-Saxon succeed
where a Latin had to confess failure? It is to be borne in mind, however,
that this refers chiefly to the old families, who affect to despise
the motley rabble of newcomers, and while profiting enormously by the
industry and enterprise of the Gringo,—who has developed and exploited
the riches of their country, making them rich in the process,—do not wish
to be vulgarised by intercourse with the merely money-making element of
the population. The exclusiveness of such families is notorious, and
maintaining as they do the ancient patriarchal relationships, they are
sufficient unto themselves, so that any foreigner who seeks to force
himself into their small and narrow-minded circle is an ill-advised
mortal who will surely be snubbed for his pains. They are as truly
republican, these criollos, as the families of the Doges of Venice, but
politically, and even socially they are being overwhelmed by the great
tide of commercial prosperity on which all sorts and conditions of people
and the motliest mixtures of nationalities have floated into wealth and
power. Yet there is something austerely attractive in their dignified
isolation, their cold contempt of the ruck of the community. Like the
creole families of Louisiana, they are landmarks of the past, mouldering
memorials of a social system that has served its day and is ceasing to be.
We have really to go further back than Spanish origins to trace the
influences that have moulded the Argentine criollo into what we find him.
Just as it is a recognised law of heredity that certain characteristics
are apt to skip one generation and reappear in the next, so do we find
among these peoples of South America features that are more Moorish than
Spanish. In modern times, while the Spaniards at home have been ridding
themselves of many traces of the old Moorish dominion, those who settled
in their American colonies retained customs and habits of thought which
were disappearing in the home country, and owing to the isolated and
circumscribed colonial life, tendencies toward exclusiveness have become
emphasised to the point of exaggeration. Thus, in certain directions, the
dusky hand of the Moor is even more noticeable in South America to-day
than in Spain itself. This is a point of view which few Argentine writers
would be willing to endorse, as it is the claim of the Argentine that his
civilisation is purely European, though distinctive in its individuality.
The fact remains, however, that the position of the womenkind, legally
and socially, though now showing signs of rapid change, conforms more
to Moorish notions than to European ideals; the very arrangement of the
house is Moorish, disguised, it is true, by progression through Spanish
and French styles; the tribal dignity of the head of the family is nearer
to Arabic life than to anything still surviving in European civilisation.
It will be at once obvious to the reader that in a country where we find
the very latest ideas of intellectual and industrial progress warring
with social conceptions which we have long come to esteem as essentially
oriental, we must have a very complex and unfamiliar system of family
life to consider. Indeed, while there is but little for the writer to
deal with, who confines himself to a record of familiar experiences,
the subject is extremely fascinating and capable of treatment at great
length. My present purpose, however, is to deal with the obvious, with
“things seen,” rather than to attempt in any detail the tracing of
origins of the Argentine social system. But the slight suggestion I have
thrown out will show the bent of my thought in this connection, and
perhaps help the reader to a better understanding of what is to follow.
It must be understood that the foreign resident actively engaged in
business affairs might not, in the whole course of a lifetime, come
in contact with any of the real criollos. Nor would it be matter for
surprise if he seldom or never encountered a real Argentine. Personally,
it was my good fortune to meet several gentlemen of eminent position and
influence in Buenos Ayres who were natives of the country, whose parents
in some instances had even been born there, and all were intensely proud
to be Argentines. It would be difficult, however, to determine to what
extent any one of them, had England been the scene of their lives, would
have been regarded as an Englishman. The extraordinary power of the
country to assimilate all races under the sun, the speed with which even
the most unpromising material of immigration seems to be transformed
into Argentine nationality, presents one of the greatest difficulties
to the foreigner in his search for national characteristics. I was told
by various English residents that they had only been able to make their
children grow up with the English tongue by thrashing them when they
spoke Spanish, and M. Huret mentions the typical case of a Frenchman
whose sons absolutely refused to learn their father’s language, and were
proud to speak only Spanish. He also tells how two sons of a wealthy
German resident in Rosario, who had been sent to a German University,
while staying at the Plaza Hotel in Buenos Ayres on their return, on
being mistaken for Germans, felt so mortified that they wept!
There are two immediate reasons for this fervid patriotism of the younger
generation: (1) the fact that all male children born in the Argentine are
regarded as Argentine citizens and must perform their military service;
and (2) the perfervid patriotism instilled into them at school, where the
national flag is exhibited in every room and receives the homage of a
sacred thing.
[Illustration: A SCENE IN THE “CAMP”—PEONES OUTSIDE A “PULPERIA,” OR
COUNTRY GROCERY AND LIQUOR STORE.]
It is perfectly understandable that a young man, feeling himself a
citizen of no mean country, in which his father is no more than a
foreigner—rarely does a Frenchman become officially an Argentine, as
that involves the renunciation of his own nationality; the Germans are
less squeamish in this respect; while the Italians and Spanish readily
nationalise themselves—will take a wholesome pride in his citizenship.
And as language is the greatest instrument for binding a people together,
and the predominance of Spanish in South America is unassailable, it is
not surprising that the native-born should even prefer the language of
his country to that of his father’s country. In the course of my stay
I met quite a number of persons bearing the most familiar English and
Scottish names, who could not even say “Good morning” in English. With
certain of these I had frequent transactions, and it was interesting
to study the racial characteristics of a gentleman named Campbell, a
fanatical Argentine, whose parents two generations back spoke nothing but
“braid Scots,” yet whose every action and trick of speech was peculiarly
Argentine. Another gentleman, one of the most able and businesslike men I
encountered, boasted the name of Harris (pronounced “Arrees”), which was
about the only English word he knew. Thus it happens there are unnumbered
thousands of Argentines without a single drop of Spanish blood, but with
all sorts of infusions of British, German, French, Italian, Belgian,
Russian, Scandinavian, etc. As regards the patriotic teaching, here is an
example of the catechism in daily use throughout the public schools:
_Question._ How do you esteem yourself in relation to your
compatriots?
_Answer._ I consider myself bound to them by a sentiment which
unites us.
_Q._ And what is that?
_A._ The sentiment that the Argentine Republic is the finest
country on earth.
_Q._ What are the duties of a good citizen?
_A._ First of all, to love his country.
_Q._ Even before his parents?
_A._ Before all.
Afterwards, the scholar responds in the following manner to another
question from the teacher:
In the veins of no human being ever flowed more generous blood
than ours; the origins of no people in the world ever shone
with a brighter aureole than that which illuminates the brow of
the Argentine Republic. I am proud of my origin, of my race,
and of my country.
Whenever the name of General San Martín is mentioned by the teacher in a
class, the scholars are expected to bob up and make the military salute,
at the same time saying _viva la pátria_! And very touching the extreme
gravity of all classes in uncovering and their prayerful homage when
the somewhat bizarre strains of the National Anthem, reminiscent of the
Marseillaise mixed with a Sankey hymn, are heard, while the national flag
borne through the streets or exhibited on an official occasion involves
the doffing of all hats.
All this, to Europeans, exaggerated patriotism, will appear far less so
to the citizen of any young country, and is not vastly more pronounced
than that of the United States, but it is probably necessary to the
fomenting of a proper sentiment of nationality. Time will adjust the
untrue perspective of the present day, which elevates the most trumpery
shooting affairs into heroic combats and successful soldiers of no
dazzling genius with Wellington and Napoleon, if not with Julius Cæsar
and Alexander the Great!
These, then, are two very potent factors in the making of the Argentine
patriot: the claiming of every male child born in the country as a
national unit and the determined inculcation of a vigorous patriotism.
We have to add to them the influence of the language and also that
natural love of country which makes the human being prefer even the most
forbidding and unattractive scenes, if they happen to be the first on
which his dawning mind has looked. So strong is this feeling, that I have
found it quite impossible to utter a single word in criticism of Buenos
Ayres in the presence of young people, the children of British subjects,
who had been born there and had never seen a European city. Nay, they
are to be met in England, full of contempt for poor old London and all
things English, and fired with the most unreasoning love of their native
Buenos Ayres. Thus in a country where “the melting pot” so quickly turns
all that is thrown therein into the same mould, it is almost futile to
go searching for “the real Argentine,” and we must be content to attempt
no delicate differentiations, but simply to accept in the broadest and
loosest way the Argentine residents as the Argentine people, excluding,
perhaps, the larger portion of the British community.
Early discovering the fact that there was no possibility of the average
stranger being admitted into the charmed circle of the private family,
I turned to other methods of discovering something of the family life,
and confess that I did not even despise the observations of English
governesses, whose services are in keen demand among the well-to-do.
Some of these ladies might do the necessary picture of the inner life of
the Argentine family which no ordinary visitor is ever likely to be able
to draw from personal observation.
Let me give one glimpse of an Argentine interior, as I had it from a
very able teacher of languages—an English lady who had spent a number of
years in the homes of different families. Unlike most Argentine families,
this was self-contained, the father and mother with their brood of young
children, and a considerable retinue of servants, occupying an immense
house in the fashionable district, with no other relatives sharing it.
The gentleman derived a large income from his estates and was above the
need to do more than draw his money periodically from the agents into
whose hands he had placed their management. The wife, still under thirty,
was the mother of some eight or nine children, and she had already
attained to that condition of adipose tissue which is the ambition of
every respectable Argentine lady. Her mornings were spent in aimless
lolling about the house in a state of undress, her toilet being a matter
for the afternoon, when she went for a short run in their big limousine,
or visited some lady friends to take afternoon tea. In the evenings, she
had her children with her until a comparatively late hour, her husband
spending almost every evening at his club, and he too would attend to
his toilet in the afternoon, thinking nothing of sitting down to lunch
in his shirt-sleeves with his suspenders hanging from the back of his
trousers, while his wife would be in her dressing gown. The children were
not admitted to meals, but took their food with the governess and one or
two nurses in a special dining-room, into which papa would occasionally
wander at meal time, still in his shirt sleeves, and help himself to
scraps from the dishes on the table or perhaps a spoonful of soup from
the tureen! This the governess found somewhat trying in her efforts to
instil manners into the children, whose conduct at table was deplorable.
Once when one of the elder girls was picking the bread on the governess’s
plate, that much-tried lady explained to her gently that such was not
considered good manners, to which the bright young girl replied: “In
England, yes; but here, no.”
To keep these lively youngsters from all sorts of monkeyisms, such as
licking the dividing spoon, putting their knives into their mouths, and
making as much noise over a plate of soup as one does in a bath, left the
governess scant time to enjoy her meals, and such manners among children
are not altogether exceptional in Argentine homes. Young people are
pampered to a dangerous degree, and while still mere children they have
more pocket money to dispose of on their own little selfish pleasures
than many a well-to-do Englishman spends on himself.
Although there is great and growing popularity for all forms of English
sport, and especially football, the boys of the moneyed classes are
usually somewhat effeminate in their manners. Those of the household
above mentioned who were old enough to go to school were taken there,
a distance of about a quarter of a mile, under care of a nurse or the
governess, in one of the various motor cars owned by the father, and
at the hour of dismissal each day they were brought home in the same
manner. I used to think it quite one of the characteristic sights of
Buenos Ayres to notice the groups of nurses and governesses at the doors
of the better-class schools, waiting to receive their little charges
and conduct them as far as two or three squares away by electric tram,
when the parents could not afford to send a motor or a horse-carriage
for that purpose. Many of these helpless boys would be twelve years old!
This is understandable in the case of the girls, nay imperative, but it
tends to make the boys timorous and unmanly, afraid even to cross the
street alone. In view of the universal pampering of the children, it
speaks highly for the essential virility of Argentine character that the
youth of the country cannot, as a whole, be said to lack in manliness;
they seem to throw off in adolescence the effeminacy which their boyhood
training is admirably adapted to foster in them.
Of familiar domestic intercourse, such as the social relationships of
British and North American home-life make possible, there is absolutely
none in the Argentine, or, indeed, throughout the whole of South
America—excepting always those families in which Anglo-Saxon influence
predominates. The drawing-room of most of the better-class houses is a
gorgeously furnished chamber, in which the furniture, on most days of
the year, is hidden under dust covers, and where the blinds are seldom
raised. It exists for state occasions only, when the starchiest formality
is observed, and these are by no means numerous and always duly announced
in the social column of the daily papers. The lady of the house passes
most of her time between her bedroom and her boudoir, and it is in the
latter, if she cultivate a circle of lady friends, that she will sip
afternoon tea with her callers, although you will occasionally come
across an announcement in the social news stating that some lady is going
to give a “five o’clock tea room” at four o’clock, and inviting her
acquaintances to be present. There is a great partiality for the use of
English phrases, and “five o’clock tea,” together with the addition of
“room,” is often used without any clear understanding of its meaning.
But the Argentine mother, although her ways are not our ways, might in
certain respects serve as an example to English and American mothers;
entering not in the slightest degree into any of her husband’s concerns
that lie outside of their home, her devotion is entirely to her children,
who will in large measure reflect her standard of culture, and when the
lady of the house has had a European training, there will be nothing
lacking in the behaviour of her children.
This bond between the mother and children is very strong, reaching out
through all the living generations, so that even a great-grandmother—and
there are many, as the women marry young, grandmothers of forty being
not uncommon—enters very intimately into the lives of all her progeny,
who vie with each other in their love for her. The community of feeling
between all members and branches of the family is most pronounced. The
importance of this in knitting together the fabric of Argentine society
cannot be overestimated.
Unlike the French housewife, the Argentine lady does not greatly concern
herself about the finances of the household, merely giving directions
for the expenditure, but usually leaving it to her husband to settle
the accounts. In this she shows something of the “grand lady” and also
something of the lady of the harem, acknowledging that it is no part of a
woman’s business to understand the value of money. Her conception of her
office is to be pleasing and attractive to her husband and devoted to her
children, in which duties she finds her full content. The very formality
of her name indicates how far the Argentine lady is removed from the
possibilities of Pankhurstism. She is proud to be known as Señora María
Martínez de Fuentes, thus indicating that she is María Martínez of
Fuentes, the latter being her husband’s name. It is an admission of
husband’s rights which could not exist in a country of self-assertive
womenkind.
By the way, it may be interesting here to explain the peculiar customs
that regulate family names in South America, and lead to continuous
mistakes on the part of Englishmen and Americans, who have not taken the
trouble to familiarise themselves with them. I have just explained that
when a lady marries she retains her maiden name and adds to it, with the
preposition de, the name of her husband. Almost certainly, however, her
husband would have two family names; the paternal and maternal. Let us
suppose his name was Fuentes Mattos, the first his father’s family name
and the second his mother’s family name. His wife, in adding his name to
hers, ignores his mother’s name, which is of secondary importance, and in
many cases is entirely dropped. On the other hand, the children of this
imaginary couple would be named Fuentes Martínez, thus indicating that
the father was a Fuentes and the mother a Martínez, so that we have the
following varieties of nomenclature in one family:
Father: José Fuentes Mattos.
Mother: María Martínez de Fuentes.
Son: Alfonso Fuentes Martínez.
When we remember that the names of the grandparents and the grandchildren
will all pass through similar changes, it will be seen how complicated
South American family names may become. Still, always bearing in
mind the simple rules I have illustrated, there is no difficulty in
identification, and relationships can be much more clearly established
than with our cruder system.
There is a tendency in the Argentine, due to admiration of British
brevity, to ignore the maternal name entirely, whereas on the Pacific
coast it is the universal practice to use only the initial, so that Señor
José Fuentes Mattos would there be expected to sign himself José Fuentes
M. As it is, in the Argentine a man will sometimes write his name in full
and at other times use only the initial for the maternal name, or drop
it entirely; but for Señor José Fuentes Mattos to receive a letter from
England addressed Señor J. F. Mattos is an insult he does not readily
forgive. Naturally, that is what happens daily in business correspondence
between North and South America, and I well remember a traveller for an
American firm coming to me to solve the difficulties of a long list of
names he had received from his head office, in every one of which the
surname was represented by an initial and the maternal name written in
full.
Returning to the Argentine at home, we have to consider for a moment that
patriarchal system of living, to which I have already made reference as
one of the legacies of the remote past. Formerly universal in Spain,
had it not existed in the mother country before the colonising days,
it would almost certainly have been forced upon the colonial pioneers.
For protection against the marauding Indians, the colonists, even for
many years after gaining their national independence in 1810, had to
maintain themselves in closely banded communities. Even so recently as
the year 1860, the now thriving city and port of Bahía Blanca, which
may yet rival Buenos Ayres as a great centre of shipping, was no more
than a military outpost to keep the Indians from penetrating too near
the townships in the province of Buenos Ayres. Thus we might have
attributed to the influence of environment the system of one family with
all its connections, interested in the work of a large estancia, as
extensive, perhaps, as an English county, living together under the one
paternal roof, did we not know that it has a remoter origin. Now that
the conditions which justified it have entirely passed away, its true
origin is not only forgotten, but would probably be denied by those who
observe the custom, which survives in the very heart of the metropolis,
and among the best families of the land. I remember well how impressed
we were with some of the private palaces in Buenos Ayres, many of which
rival in size and architectural ostentation the great public buildings.
It was a matter for wonder how any ordinary family could tenant a house
large enough to serve as the town hall of an important city. But all was
made clear when we knew that in many of these private palaces there was
not merely one solitary family nestling away in some corner of the huge
building, but probably anything from six to a dozen related families,
living under one roof, so that I used to think of the head of the family
in Gilbertian rhyme, abiding in peace, not only with wife and children,
but with
His sisters and his cousins,
Whom he reckons up by dozens,
And his aunts!
To Britishers especially, it is a surprising fact that there are brethren
in the world who can dwell together in harmony, to whom propinquity does
not lead to family bickerings. That would be notoriously impossible
in Great Britain, and I suspect equally so among the Anglo-Saxons of
America. Our nature prompts to the independent life and an early good-bye
to the parental roof. Surely, then, there must be something radically
different in the Argentine character which can enable half a dozen or
more interrelated families to live harmoniously in the same house. Of
course, each family unit has its own particular quarters, and in some
of the more stately residences each family is really self-contained
as to its house accommodation, but more usually they will have common
dining-rooms and sitting-rooms, the women folk passing practically all
their time in each other’s company. As a people they must either be
abnormally good-natured, family affection must be developed beyond
anything familiar among us, or their racial inclination to indolence
makes them so tolerant of one another that they do not have the spirit
to quarrel. I suspect that something of all three, interacting on their
lives, makes possible the existence of this unusual condition of happy
family life.
The system is one that has much to be said for it, and fostering, as
it does, an intense feeling of family pride, which is reflected in the
patriotism of the country, it must be regarded as a valuable asset of
national character. If it happens that any member of the composite
family meets with misfortune, he can be sure of the immediate sympathy
and practical help of his relatives within the domestic circle, for they
would deem it an indignity that one of their family should be known to
be in difficulties. If one of the married sons dies, leaving a widow
with several children, there will never be a moment’s doubt as to what
the widow will do. She will continue in precisely the same position
within the family, and even if her husband has left no money at all,
his brothers will consider it their bounden duty to maintain her and
her children in the same comfort as her husband would have done. Nor is
there any charity in this, as there would be with us. It is a natural
concomitant of the family system. What we should consider generosity, the
Argentine brother-in-law regards as a simple duty, and there is hardly
a limit to what he will do in the shape of service to the family of his
dead brother.
In this connection, I recall a very interesting illustration of the
racial differences between Argentine and English. An English settler in
Buenos Ayres had five daughters born there, four of whom married British
residents or the children of British residents. The one exception married
an Argentine gentleman, and so narrowly British were her relatives that
at first they looked with disfavour on the match. After some years, the
English husband of one of the daughters died, leaving her with four
children and an empty purse, having wasted all his wife’s patrimony in
foolish speculation—there is no Married Women’s Property Act, the husband
becoming sole arbiter of his wife’s fortune! Her English brothers-in-law
and her own sisters were more or less sympathetic, but the despised
Argentine brother-in-law immediately made a home for her and her children
with his own family, and, as one of her relatives told me, seemed to
think he was only doing his bare duty. This is a very pleasant trait
of character, and from all that I was able to gather it is entirely
characteristic of the better-class Argentine. Certainly, wherever I
found that British women had married natives, they had good reason for
happiness, and too often were able to commiserate with their own sisters
and women friends who had married Englishmen.
Another noteworthy resultant of the strength of the family bond is
its influence for good on the men. In a country where, thanks to the
cosmopolitan rabble of rogues and tricksters who swarm in every quarter,
dishonesty abounds in all its guises, the temptations to most men are
greater than in the older and more firmly established countries of the
world. Pride of family very often keeps a man in the straight path. It
is a little reminiscent of the ancient system of the Japanese, which
involved the entire family in the disgrace and punishment of any one
member who transgressed the laws of honour. The strongest deterrent to
one tempted towards a wrong course is not what the community at large
will think of him, but how his action will embarrass and humiliate his
whole family. And when a member of one of these composite family circles
is guilty of embezzlement or any misdeed which can be rectified by the
self-sacrifice of the others, the matter seldom reaches the public; his
father and his brothers and other relatives willingly make good his
defalcations. Quite a number of cases of this kind came to my personal
knowledge, and I believe it is a fact that the law has seldom to be
appealed to when any one has suffered a loss through an employee, or a
partner who is “well connected.” For this reason, astute business men are
always careful to inquire into the family connections of any person with
whom they purpose having transactions, these connections being their best
guarantee. It will usually be found that the most barefaced swindlers are
either foreigners, or of foreign parentage, and not seldom have they a
good deal of British blood in their veins.
[Illustration: A “RAMADA,” OR SHADED RESTING-PLACE FOR MEN AND HORSES IN
THE ARGENTINE “CAMP.”]
As to the “homes” of the Argentine, they approach more nearly Anglo-Saxon
ideas of “comfort” than the French, Spanish, or Italian notions of
“home.” French styles of furniture and interior decoration still
predominate. There is, however, a growing appreciation of the more solid
comfort of English styles, and popularity for these is assured. Our
capacious easy chairs are ousting the dainty, elegant and abominably
unrestful French affairs. Little progress, however, has been made in the
direction of heating the houses, and an Argentine interior in winter, as
I have said in an earlier chapter, is apt to be a picture of shivering
cheerlessness. But there are signs that even this will be remedied in the
increasing approval of what may be described as “English comfort.”
That the Argentine’s home is likely, however, to be thrown open to the
freedom of the North American home is inconceivable. His exclusiveness
is a heritage of the past. He could not rid himself of it, even though
he tried. Nor is he trying very hard. He may in time come to follow
European customs in the ordering of his meals, which still remain, in
real Argentine homes, a topsy-turvy wonder to the European, the soup
usually appearing about the end of the dinner, and the cheese being eaten
indiscriminately between the earlier courses. This is no more than a
fashion, but the other matter is “bred in the bone.”
Knowing this, it seems quaint to receive from a native a letter on some
ordinary affair of business, bearing his home address with the initials
“s.c.” or “s.c.u.” appended. Here we have an old Spanish formality,
and one of the emptiest of courtesies. The initials stand for _su casa
de usted_, meaning “Your house.” That is to say, he informs you his
house is your house! But he has no more intention of ever asking you to
enter his house than you have of going there to stay. It reminds one of
Mark Twain on his travels in Spain, when expressing admiration for a
Spaniard’s jacket, the owner retorted, “It is yours, sir,” and further
assured him when he also admired his beautiful waistcoat that it also was
at his disposal, so that Mark, out of consideration of the Spaniard’s
convenience, refrained from admiring anything else he wore. This is a
custom of very primitive peoples, and I am told that something similar
obtains among the Maoris of New Zealand, one of whose chiefs pressed
upon King George, when, as Prince of Wales, he visited the colony, the
acceptance of some venerated object, and was greatly chagrined by the
royal visitor, in all innocence and wishing not to offend the chief,
accepting the quite useless gift. We must never take Spanish courtesy
literally, and we must remember in South America that their courtesy is
one of the things they have imported from Spain.
Among the minor characteristics of the Argentine which frequently
interested me and for which I endeavoured to find a reason, was the habit
of repeating the most ordinary phrases in much the manner of a doddering
old person reiterating the same story. Let me try to express this in
English. A lady is telling how she narrowly escaped being run down by a
tram in the street:
It would be about four o’clock in the afternoon, when I was
going down Calle Sarmiento. There was a lot of traffic in
the street, and without looking backwards I stepped off the
pavement. Just as I stepped off the pavement, I heard the bell
of a tram, and looking back, it had nearly reached me, so I
gave a scream and stepped back on the pavement, just as the
tram passed me, in the Calle Sarmiento, at about four o’clock
in the afternoon, when it was very crowded and I had only just
stepped off the pavement, when I heard the bell, and had only
time to step back when the tram passed me. If I hadn’t heard
the bell, I might have been run over, and I gave a scream just
as I stepped back on the pavement.
That is no burlesque version of how this most thrilling story would
be told. Then, suppose you have to arrange with one of your native
employees to purchase a box of purple carbon paper and three shorthand
note-books on his way to the office to-morrow morning. You will tell
him so, and expect that to be an end of the matter—when you are fresh
to Buenos Ayres. But no, after listening attentively to your elaborate
instructions, he will then repeat:
So, when I am coming in to-morrow morning, I will go to the
stationer’s, and I will get a box of purple carbon paper and
three shorthand note-books—a box of carbon paper, purple, and
shorthand note-books, three, to-morrow morning on my way into
the office. Three note-books and a box of purple carbon paper.
Bueno!
This most tantalising habit of trivial repetition is universal, and so
endemic that English-born residents speaking both languages translate
this mode of thought into the English tongue, with the quaintest results.
There is surely no people in the world who can take a longer time to
explain a little matter than the South American, and I have often thought
that the volume of the Spanish language, which frequently calls for
three or four times the number of words that would be used in English
to express a simple idea, must have had some influence in producing
this strange habit of repetition, in order to fix in the mind precisely
what is wanted and the condition under which it is to be secured. The
only satisfactory method of conveying ideas from mind to mind was to
assume that the person you were addressing was still under fifteen
years of age. The swift exchange of thought flashes which is possible
between Anglo-Saxons is unknown to users of the Spanish tongue, but the
more go-ahead Argentine, who really represents to-day the brightest
intelligence that expresses itself in Spanish, is deliberately aiming
at the Anglo-Saxon ideal, and, disregarding the circumlocutions of his
native speech, is endeavouring to bend that to the brisker uses of modern
commercial life. This theory of mine may be entirely wrong, but the
facts, as I have endeavoured to illustrate them above, are substantially
correct.
If anything is likely to seduce the Argentine away from his oldest and
most honoured customs of life, it is the spirit of emulation which
pervades the whole social system, though it is present to a much greater
degree in those of mixed parentage than in the _criollos_. By no means
peculiar to the Argentine, it attains to almost equal strength in the
United States, nor is it at all uncommon in English society. Social
rivalry is really the motive force behind much of the commercial activity
of the country. The family of Sanchez have just built a swagger new
house and bought a 25 horse-power limousine. The Alonso family, having
quite as much money and perhaps a trifle more than the Sanchez, cannot
brook this ostentation to pass without reply, so up goes a still more
florid mansion, a 40 horse-power car is bought, and the chauffeur wears
a dozen more brass buttons. This game of “Beggar my Neighbour” in social
ostentation is being played merrily through every grade of Argentine
society. It is extremely good for business. Not only does it create
a brisk demand for luxuries, but it lays upon those who play it the
necessity of energising to secure the wherewithal, and is thus productive
of creative effort in the making of wealth where formerly the impetus
was lacking. So that perhaps it might not be wrong to suppose that what
the European observer would write down in the one case as the vulgar
striving of social “climbers,” and as rotten economics in the other,
is economically good in the development of a young country. But it is
imitative and nothing else, for there is as yet no evidence of the growth
of a distinctively national taste, and this imitative tendency of the
people is destined to bring them steadily nearer to European ideas, so
that they will probably emerge with a social system that will bear the
same relationship to that of all the European nations as a composite
photograph does to all the portraits that have been overlaid on the
negative.