CHAPTER XXOUR SUMMER IN MONTEVIDEO
No matter how little we may love a place, we shall surely feel some sentiment of regret at leaving. If I had been told after my first few weeks in Buenos Ayres that I might come to entertain a kindly feeling towards that stony-hearted city, I doubt not that I should have scouted the suggestion. And yet when it came to saying good-bye to the friends we had made, taking a farewell look at the scenes amidst which for eight months it had been our lot to live, and setting our faces towards another town, a different country, and new conditions of life, Buenos Ayres did appear almost friendly. The long, low line of flickering lights stretching for many miles by the riverside, and inland a myriad others picking out the topography of the great city, seemed more picturesque than I had hitherto thought, as we looked upon them that sultry December night when we steamed away from the Dársena Sud on our night journey to Montevideo.
During our stay in the Argentine, I had had occasion to make various journeys to and from Montevideo, nor was this to be our last sight of Buenos Ayres; yet the occasion was different from all others in so far as it betokened the completion of one stage of our life in South America and the beginning of another, to which we had long looked forward with the pleasantest anticipation, for Montevideo had left onus both a very favourable first impression when we spent a day there on our outward journey.
The dreaded summer heat, which makes life a burden in Buenos Ayres from the Christmas season until the end of March, was just beginning, but good fortune had decreed that we should spend our first South American summer in the airier city of Montevideo. It is surprising how greatly the towns with only some 125 miles of river between them may differ, not only in climatic conditions, but in general character. The peculiar position of Montevideo has given to the place its benigner climate, for it is in the same zone as Buenos Ayres, and the visitor might expect little difference in the climatic conditions of the two cities. Lying on the north bank of the River Plate estuary, at a point where it is difficult to tell, except by the tinge of the water, whether it is river or ocean that laves its shores, the older part of the town is built upon a little tongue of land that thrusts itself into the water, forming westward a very beautiful bay, with a picturesque cone-shaped hill at the western extremity, while seaward a smaller bay indents the rocky coast, and on another tongue of land the more modern suburbs of Ramírez and Pocitos have been built. The old town is thus a little peninsula, and in many of its streets one may look east and west to water. Hence there is hardly a day of the year when refreshing sea breezes do not send their draughts of ozone through the streets. The modern city has far outgrown its original site and extends now in many fine avenues of handsome suburbs for miles around the bay and inland.
The first impression of the Uruguayan capital is that of an essentially European city, clean and well built. Stone is employed to a greater degree in its architecture than in that of Buenos Ayres, though most of the modern structures are of the steel frame and cement variety. The older part is still regarded as “the centre,” chiefly for its nearness to the harbour, and because it contains most of the popular shopping streets, but in reality it is now the fringe, and with the future expansion of the city the centre of social gravity will surely shift a mile or more inland. Here are congregated all the banking establishments, theBolsa de comercio, the shipping offices, and the warehouses of the large importing firms. Here, too, in the Plaza Constitucion, we find the handsome, if somewhat modest, Cathedral, and the historic House of Representatives, an unimpressive, two-story building occupying the opposite corner of the plaza, its lower story being utilised by the police authorities as prison and court of justice. The Uruguay Club has an attractive building—far finer in every respect than that of theCámaras—in this plaza, while the friendly English Club looks across at it from its humbler but very cosy quarters on the opposite side of the square, hard by the offices ofEl SigloandLa Razon.
The streets in this neighbourhood are all of the narrow, colonial kind, and being chiefly paved with stone, the noise of the traffic, together with the continuous passing of electric trams, which run in almost every street and maintain a nerve-racking ringing of bells, is out of all proportion to the amount of business represented. “We are fast asleep here,” is afrequent saying of the self-depreciative natives, and if it be true, I can only suppose they are abnormally sound sleepers, as the noise of the streets, chiefly due to the tramways, might at times waken a cemetery.
When we two Gringos began our summer stay in the city, we chose what seemed to be extremely comfortable quarters in the best-known hotel, occupying an ideal position in the Plaza Constitucion, or Plaza Matriz (after the Cathedral or “mother church”), as it is indifferently called. There on the third story we had a spacious room with balconies overlooking the animated square, and a little writing-room set in a turret, whence the pleasantest glimpses could be obtained in many directions. The food of the hotel (as we knew from previous experience) was incomparably better than anything to be had in Buenos Ayres. Indeed, it is renowned throughout the River Plate district for its excellentcuisine, for which, by the way, its charges rival those of quite expensive New York restaurants, and that is saying a good deal.
Scene in the Parque Urbano of Montevideo.A Rural Glimpse in the Prado, Montevideo.
Scene in the Parque Urbano of Montevideo.
A Rural Glimpse in the Prado, Montevideo.
Thus it might have been supposed we were in for an agreeable change from our experiences on the other side of the river. Resembling a quiet backwater to the great turbulent main stream in comparison with its mighty commercial neighbour, one might have expected here in Montevideo to find quiet. Certainly, in some of its suburban districts, such a search would not be fruitless, but the restfulness once secured would only coexist with dulness, and after all it were thus a choice of evils. In any case, it better suited my affairs that we should live in the centre of the town, where, indeed, dwellings of all kinds mingle familiarly withshops and warehouses. How we fared at our hotel may be gathered from the following passages, with which I find I began an essay on a literary subject while living in the town:
I have left my room with the turret window that overlooked the pleasant Plaza Matriz. It was perfectly planned for the meditative life, and but for the vileness of man and the supineness of the municipal authorities one could have passed some months tolerably there, looking out upon the panorama of Montevidean life and setting one’s thoughts on paper when the mood came. But the men who drive motor cars in this far land are the vilest of the breed. The plaza is filled with gorgeous cars that ply for hire, each handled by a rascal who is no better than a highway-robber by day and a beast of prey by night. The law of the town prohibits the use of the “cut out,” or opening of the exhaust pipe of the motor, but no one respects the law, and it is the custom for the demons who drive these cars to keep one foot all the time on the pedal which opens the exhaust! The consequent noise is so appalling that the main streets of Montevideo have become a veritable pandemonium.Thus bad begins, but worse continues when the hour has passed midnight. The endless stream of electric “trams” with hideous clanging of superfluously clamorous bells goes on till two, mingled with every variety of motor noises; then between two and four the motorists delight to “test” their engines, running round the plaza with open exhausts! Sleep is impossible, especially when you add a temperature anywhere between 80 and 90, and mosquitoes buzzing through your room athirst for your blood.So we are no longer tenants of “the room with a view.” After some weeks of suffering bravely borne, we have fled the hotel and are now living seaward in the Calle Sarandí, where there is no view by day and few motors by night, and wherethe noise of theelectricosonly keeps one awake until two in the morning. How soon one becomes thankful for small mercies in lands of little comfort!
I have left my room with the turret window that overlooked the pleasant Plaza Matriz. It was perfectly planned for the meditative life, and but for the vileness of man and the supineness of the municipal authorities one could have passed some months tolerably there, looking out upon the panorama of Montevidean life and setting one’s thoughts on paper when the mood came. But the men who drive motor cars in this far land are the vilest of the breed. The plaza is filled with gorgeous cars that ply for hire, each handled by a rascal who is no better than a highway-robber by day and a beast of prey by night. The law of the town prohibits the use of the “cut out,” or opening of the exhaust pipe of the motor, but no one respects the law, and it is the custom for the demons who drive these cars to keep one foot all the time on the pedal which opens the exhaust! The consequent noise is so appalling that the main streets of Montevideo have become a veritable pandemonium.
Thus bad begins, but worse continues when the hour has passed midnight. The endless stream of electric “trams” with hideous clanging of superfluously clamorous bells goes on till two, mingled with every variety of motor noises; then between two and four the motorists delight to “test” their engines, running round the plaza with open exhausts! Sleep is impossible, especially when you add a temperature anywhere between 80 and 90, and mosquitoes buzzing through your room athirst for your blood.
So we are no longer tenants of “the room with a view.” After some weeks of suffering bravely borne, we have fled the hotel and are now living seaward in the Calle Sarandí, where there is no view by day and few motors by night, and wherethe noise of theelectricosonly keeps one awake until two in the morning. How soon one becomes thankful for small mercies in lands of little comfort!
But after all we were lucky in Montevideo, for by some providential arrangement it was decided to remake the principal streets of the city, relaying them with asphalt, and this involved the upsetting of the whole elaborate tramway system, whereby certain streets were for several months debarred the privilege of the electricos. Sarandí, where we had settled ourselves very comfortably in the home of a foreign consul, was thus, after our first few weeks, deprived of its tram-cars, and except during the time of Carnival, our surroundings there were as quiet as in a country village. Not until within a few days of the end of our stay of nearly five months did the cars begin again.
Montevideo, like most of the South American cities in which it has been my lot to linger for a time, seems to me to be greatly “over-trammed.” There is hardly a street along which tram-cars do not rattle at all hours of the day and night, and how they pay is to me something of a mystery, for they may be seen in streams going their noisy rounds, empty or with a mere handful of passengers. Many a time have I seen a half-dozen pass along at intervals of fifty yards, and the total passengers carried would be two or three negroes and a sleeping Italian. One street in particular, the Calle Rincón, where we narrowly escaped the calamity of renting rooms, is probably, for its length, without an equal in any city for the quantity of cars that pass through it per hour. It is a short and narrow street, and I doubt if at any moment of the day,from four or five in the morning till two the next morning, while the electric cars are running, Rincón can be seen without one. At times I have counted fifteen or sixteen, with only a few yards between each, and yet foot passengers in this street, as in most of the highways and byways of the city, are few.
The tramway system is curiously arranged, and while grossly oversupplying the business part of the town, undersupplies the farther suburbs. Imagine the aforesaid peninsula on which the older part of the city stands, as the handle of a fan, and all the outspread part of the fan as the remainder of the city, every rib extending from the handle as a tramline, and there you have very roughly a map of the Montevideo system. Picture, then, how congested the handle becomes as the cars rattle inward from all parts of the fan, turn round in the handle, and set forth once more to the outer parts! All the same, I am far from complaining about the service, for once the system is clearly understood, it is found to work admirably, and enables one to reach all parts of the wide-spreading town with comparative ease and at little expense, the regulation fare for a journey of a few hundred yards or two miles being 4 cts.
As I have indicated, there is no lack of public motor cars for hire, but the rate is so excessive that, except for those on holiday bent, it is prohibitive. Personally, I made occasional use of them, though the necessity of paying something like $4 or $5 for a journey of some three or four miles from the Plaza Matriz and back, with a comparatively short wait, added to the reckless manner in which the car would be driven,did not commend them to me for frequent use, while the stony streets made a journey in a coche extremely unpleasant. The native newspapers were continually agitating against the iniquitous charges of the hired motor cars, whose tariff was based upon the cupidity of the highwayman in charge, and what he deemed the limit he might bleed from his victim, the fare. I remember one evening being attracted to a large crowd assembled around one of these cars, and found an Irish porteño from Buenos Ayres in the hands of the police, while his wife and sister-in-law were in a state of great excitement at the possibility of losing that night’s steamer. It appeared that the driver of the car he had hired to take him and the ladies to the landing stage had marked up on the taximeter certain charges warranted by his tariff, but so grossly excessive even to Buenos Ayres ideas, that the porteño immediately protested and would not proceed in the car. He also refused to accept my advice to pay up and catch his boat. I did not linger to see the final issue of the dispute, but the cause of it was typical of many little differences one was to discover which made life in Montevideo considerably more expensive than in Buenos Ayres.
Mention of the police, by the way, reminds me that they are one of the most engaging features of the town to the Gringo. If the authorities had advertised for the most undersized, debilitated and ignorant members of the community that could be found, they could not possibly have excelled the extraordinary collection of miserable humanity, clothed in ill-fitting uniforms, used as sentinels at every other street corner. Many of these police are Indian half-castes or Negro-Indianmeztísos. They are wretchedly paid, and seem incapable of all responsibility, as their efforts to direct the traffic are ignored, and were they followed would lead to more confusion than order. Hardly any of them—with helmets two or three sizes too large, their trousers so long that they bag about their boots, over which, by the way, they wear white spats, their ill-fitting coats of blue caught at the waist with a belt, from which depends a sword—is sufficiently educated to write his name.
There are two classes in the service, however, the superior policeman, with sufficient education to write a report of any occurrence and exercise authority, being mounted, and when anything happens, the mannikin at the corner blows his whistle (which he uses to the disturbance of the town at frequent intervals through the day and night, merely to advertise that he is still at his corner) and presently, answering the call, along clatters on horseback one of the superior class, presumably competent to deal with the case. On the whole, the police service struck me as inferior to that of Buenos Ayres, and I imagine that, shameful though the wages of the Buenos Ayres police may be, those of the lower class in Montevideo must be still less. Yet these policemen are regarded as so much fighting material for the Government, and it used to be the practice, on the outbreak of a revolution, to send forward the police as the first objects (objects, indeed, they are!) to be fired at by the revolutionaries. The organisation is a quasi-military one, and so fond do some of the agentes appear to be of saluting, that every time I crossed the Plaza Zabala, I had to undergo theordeal of receiving a full military salute from the elderly policeman at the corner of one of the streets converging on that square, so that to avoid this attention I frequently chose another route.
The people that pass in the street present certain points of contrast with the passers-by in Buenos Ayres. Clearly the writer in a North-American encyclopædia who stated that Montevideo was “one of the most cosmopolitan towns in South America” was scarcely entitled to the editorial description of “authority on Latin America.” I remember also that the same writer alleged there were no fewer than sixteen public squares in the city, which assertion, together with that already mentioned, leads me to suspect he never saw it with his own eyes. Cosmopolitanism is precisely the last impression one is likely to carry away from Montevideo. Italians are to be seen in considerable numbers, but the appearance of the people as a whole is essentially Spanish. The Iberian type has been better preserved here than on the other side of the river; Spanish character informs the life of the people to a larger extent. French and German residents there are, but in numbers so inconsiderable that, even together with the English and American population, they represent a very small percentage of the whole. After the Italians and Spaniards, the largest foreign element is probably Brazilian, which in the general population of the country exceeds the French and all other nationalities combined, exclusive of the Argentines. In fact, there is little similarity in the composition of the populations that exist on the opposing banks of the River Plate.
Such foreign element as one sees in the streets is chiefly representative of the casual visitors brought to the town for a few hours, a day or so, by the numerous steamers that make it a port of call on their way to or from Buenos Ayres or, by the Straits of Magellan, to or from the Pacific Coast. Groups of fair-headed Germans and fresh-complexioned Britons are thus frequently to be met wandering about from plaza to plaza during the brief stay of their ships in the roadstead. Australian vessels also touch at Montevideo, and then one will notice groups of twenty or thirty odd-looking people straying somewhat timorously along the unfamiliar streets, their garb leaving one in doubt as to whence they hail, though the usually dowdy appearance of their womenkind permits no possible doubt of their Anglo-Saxon origin.
The women of Montevideo are celebrated throughout South America for their beauty and elegance of manners. In this regard, the town enjoys something of the European fame of Buda-Pesth, and certainly no Oriental (the Uruguayan, by the way, likes to be known as an Oriental, the proper style of the republic beingRepública Oriental del Uruguay) ever talks to a Gringo about his capital city without mentioning that it is celebrated for itslindas mujeres. True enough, it deserves its reputation as a town of beautiful women, for most of the Montevidean ladies have a beauty that is curiously in keeping with the official name of the Republic,—oriental! They are of the languorous, dark-eyed type—beauty that has a touch of the Jewish in it—and they are far more naturally graceful than the ladies of Buenos Ayres, whom they make noeffort to imitate in the matter of elaborate dress, their tastes running on simpler lines, with the exception, perhaps, of a notable fondness for elaborate coiffures. I was told by my Spanish lady secretary, who had lived for some years in Buenos Ayres before coming to Montevideo (and to whom I owed a good deal of my information on the domestic habits of the people), that those charming ladies of Montevideo completely outdid the Argentines in the matter ofpostizos, as many as seven or eight different pieces of made-up hair being added to their natural tresses. The signpostizos(false hair) was one of the most familiar in the streets of Montevideo, wherecoiffeursabound.
Cattle assembled on “La Tablada,” near Montevideo, for conversion into “Extract of Beef.”
Cattle assembled on “La Tablada,” near Montevideo, for conversion into “Extract of Beef.”
Fresh from Buenos Ayres, it was particularly pleasing to us to observe the marked respect which the women of Montevideo received from the male population. Nothing that I observed during my wanderings about South America seemed to me to present a greater contrast in manners than this. Across the river, a few hours’ journey, it has been made possible for women to walk about the streets in the daylight only by passing and strictly enforcing an Act againstfalto de respeto á la mujer. Within recent years this instrument has materially improved the liberty of women in Buenos Ayres, as all that a lady has to do, who is molested in the street by a man, is to call a policeman, give the man in charge, and walk away. The molester is then marched to the police station, fined substantially, and his name and address published in all the journals next morning, the lady suffering no further inconvenience than the momentary trouble of telling the policeman the man has annoyed her. No such lawhas ever been necessary in Montevideo, where one was reminded of home by noting how women unaccompanied, and young girls, could freely go about the streets at all hours of the day, even until midnight, it being not uncommon to see mothers with their children sitting in the plazas enjoying the cool sea-borne breeze as late as eleven or twelve o’clock at night. In this alone I think there is evidence of a subtle difference of character between the peoples of the two cities.
We do not see the same bustling crowds, nothing remotely suggestive of the great business interests at stake across the river. The atmosphere of Montevideo is essentially that of leisure, of a people engaged in affairs that do not imply any particular hurry. “Spanish to-morrows” are familiar here—mañanais a potent word! The total population being only some four hundred thousand, signifies localism, especially as there is no great influx of foreign immigration, and most people of any position in the town know everybody “who is anybody.” I have read in “authoritative” works that the population exists in a continual state of vendetta between the two political parties, the Blancos and the Colorados. As I purpose showing in my next chapter, politics are undoubtedly the great passion of the Orientals, but nothing could be more misleading than this conception of bitter enmity between ordinary citizens of different politics, for I personally became acquainted with many natives of the opposing camps, and among them found the most intimate friends who differed radically. Two of the twelve or thirteen daily papers published in the city are printed in the same offices and on the same presses,though they represent antagonistic political parties.
The whole atmosphere of the town in its social life was to me infinitely more pleasing than that of Buenos Ayres. It is a friendly town. It is more—a town of homes. The ambition of the Montevidean is to secure a comfortable berth in the Government as quickly as he can, and build for his family a comfortable home in which he will take a genuine pride and where a real home feeling will exist. There are, of course, many natives engaged in flourishing commercial enterprises, and these are probably among the wealthiest, but this ambition to get something out of the Government is universal, and while it may lead to very pleasant conditions of life for the successful ones, it is extremely bad from the point of view of national progress. That, however, is a subject which properly belongs to the following chapter. Remains the fact that there is an air of comfort, of leisure, and of life being pleasantly lived in Montevideo.
The city itself, far more than Buenos Ayres, is entitled to be described as “the Paris of South America.” From the ample Plaza Independencia, the Avenida 18 de Julio extends eastward for miles in a vista essentially Parisian. Around the arcaded plaza are many cafés, with their chairs and tables streaming over the wide pavements, while along the avenida, at the beautiful Plaza Libertad (or Cagancha), and still farther east, following the course of this splendid avenue, with its theatres and bright little cafés, the scene is one entirely reminiscent of the Paris boulevards. There is also an air of substantiality about the buildings,which seldom rise higher than two or three stories, and more often are content with one, due, I think, to a larger employment of stone, though the country still lacks enterprise to make the fullest use of its natural riches in building-stone. These are bound to be developed in due time, and will greatly add to the endurance of its cities.
Some day, perhaps, the Plaza Independencia of Montevideo will be one of the finest public squares in any great city. I have seen many projected designs for its reformation, and there is no doubt that every building at present surrounding it, including the Government House, is bound to disappear. They are all unworthy of the plaza, and must some day make way for structures of greater dignity and beauty. The design for the new Government House is so ambitious in comparison with the common little stucco erection which at present very inadequately serves that purpose, that I doubt if it is ever destined to be realised in its entirety. Builders are now busy, however, on the new Legislative Palace, which will supersede the present little building in the Plaza Matriz. In accordance with the modern development of the town already mentioned, the site of the new Palacio Legislativo lies away to the northeast of the present national building, a distance, I should judge, of nearly two miles. Work on this magnificent new pile was progressing steadily, and before long I expect to hear of its inauguration. With its completion, the political centre will change entirely, and a new importance will be given to the vicinity of the Legislative Palace, which is at the junction of thegreat Avenidas Agraciada and Sierra, at present chiefly occupied by private residences and small dwellings of the colonial type.
The Uruguayan methods of dealing with these great public works are not precisely ours, for it was originally intended to erect the new home of the Cámaras on the Avenida 18 de Julio, where that bifurcates with the Avenida Constituyente, and the foundations of the great building, and indeed a considerable portion of the first story, were erected. Then there was a change of opinion—the imperious President Batlle was, I think, responsible for that—and the whole work was stopped. There stand to-day these temporary memorials of national extravagance, while the new building is being erected a mile away to the north. Some day the foundations of the unfinished masonry on the Avenida 18 de Julio are to be taken away and the site laid out as another great square, to be known as the Plaza de Armas—a warrior race must needs have its Plaza de Armas!
Everywhere one is impressed by the energy that is going to the beautifying and enlarging of the city. The extensive Boulevard Artigas, which on the eastern extremity runs north and south for several miles, and to the north, forming a right angle with itself, runs westward nearly to the bay, in its present half-finished state, is one of the finest thoroughfares in the whole continent. But the city is so well supplied with wide and far-reaching boulevards that its population is not dense enough to give to these an appearance of animation, except for a mile or so to the east of the PlazaIndependencia, and seaward for some little distance beyond the Plaza Constitucion.
The town boasts many theatres—more proportionately than any other South American city—several of these, such as the Solis, the Politeama, and the Urquiza being commodious and well built. The dramatic instinct is pronounced in the natives, and there is quite a considerable band of literary enthusiasts in Montevideo working to create a body of national dramatic literature—surely a remarkable ambition for a nation, whose total population is 1,100,000 people! The late Florencio Sanchez and the late Samuel Blixen, both Montevidean dramatists of distinction (the former died at an early age a few years ago after winning an international reputation), were two of the chief forces in this modern movement which has resulted in so keen an interest in the drama that a local publisher has been able to issue quite a long series of plays written by Uruguayan authors.
Noteworthy among the public edifices of the city are the handsome buildings of the University, where the faculties of medicine, mathematics, law, and commerce are all splendidly housed. During our stay, a further extension of the university accommodation was made in the shape of a plain, modest, two-story building,—la Universidad de Mujeres, or Women’s University, which began its career under the most promising auspices. Other branches of public education, such as the fine School of Agriculture, splendidly equipped, and the great Veterinary School, where the very latest appliances of veterinary surgery are at thedisposal of the students, would be worthy of detailed description, did the limits of my space permit. The Uruguayans are enthusiasts for public education, and relatively to the Argentines stand much as the Scots to the English. One might write at great length of the excellent educational facilities that exist in Montevideo, but perhaps the best proof of their efficiency is the fact that we find so many Uruguayans occupying positions of importance in the Argentine, especially among the learned professions. Uruguayans swarm in Argentine journalism, just as Scots in that of England. These beautiful buildings of the University, and that devoted to the Faculty of Secondary Education (Facultad de Enseñanza Secundaria) are no mere vanities, but centres of most active educational life.
There is little to interest us in the churches of the town, though the Cathedral, with its ever-open door, and the absence of that tawdriness which one is apt to associate with the material evidences of religion in South America, always seemed to me in harmony with the sane and orderly character of the city. The English Church, which stands on a rocky eminence at the south end of the Calle Treinta y Tres, with the waves of the estuary splashing at its base, is probably as historical as any other in the city. For more than half a century it has existed much as it is to-day, a neat little building of the basilica type—which in Roman Catholic countries usually distinguishes Protestant churches from Roman Catholic. In the course of that time, however, the character of the surrounding neighbourhood has greatly changed, and it is now the lowest quarter of the town, chiefly occupied by licensed brothelsand the low resorts of the mariners whom the winds of chance blow into the port of Montevideo. In the same locality I found the old British Hospital, an establishment entirely inadequate for its purposes, but then in the last days of its long existence, as a commodious new hospital was being built on the Boulevard Artigas, and, if I am not mistaken, was inaugurated before we left.
Near to the latter, another fine new hospital had just been erected by the Italian community. This occupies a very extensive site, the buildings exceeding those of the British Hospital by several times, to meet the needs of the large Italian Colony. But in the care of the sick the city as a whole is well provided, the great Hospital de Caridad, which occupies an entire square in the Calle Maciel, in the very heart of the poorer districts whence come most of the patients, being largely supported from the proceeds of the frequent public lotteries held on its behalf. There is also a service of Asistencia Pública, organised on the same method as that which plays so notable a part in the life of Buenos Ayres.
Scattered among the different public buildings, the city possesses a few paintings of historic value, but, on the whole, it may be said to be destitute of art treasures, while the little museum that occupies a wing of the Solis Theatre is scarcely worthy of even a little nation. The National Library and various other libraries associated with the different faculties of the University, and that of the Cámaras, as well as the excellent institution known as the Ateneo, which occupies an attractive building in the Plaza Libertad, areall evidences of the remarkable literary culture of the Republic, probably superior to that of any other modern people so small in numbers; but of sculpture and the graphic arts there is very little indeed to be discovered in the city. Perhaps, after all, these are more often evidences of commercial prosperity, for art flourishes best where there is ample money to purchase its products. And for reasons which I shall endeavour to explain in my next chapter, the time of commercial expansion and the enrichment of the people in Uruguay is not yet.
This the observer will also note by contrasting the private residences of the wealthier classes with those of the Argentine. Montevideo contains many beautiful homes, but few of those grandiose palaces which are so familiar a feature of Buenos Ayres. At the bathing suburb of Pocitos, and on the road thither, especially along the Avenida Brasil, many charmingquintasare to be seen, but most of them are of modest size and quite unpretentious, although occasionally some successful Italian has had his suburban villa decorated in the loud style of an ice-cream saloon exterior with elaborate iron-work railings and balconies designed in the most debased style of theart nouveau, and painted a vivid blue. The house of the late President Williman at Pocitos is merely a pretty little suburban villa, with no undue ostentation; in fine, one discovers in the domestic architecture of Montevideo something of that essentially democratic spirit which informs the character of the people.
In the older part of the town, the pleasant old custom, which used to be universal throughout Europe,of the merchant or tradesman residing on the premises where he plied his business, still lingers. The successful lawyer lives right in the heart of the business district, and has his office in his house. So, too, the doctor, while the printer, bookseller, and the importer often have their private residences on the floors above their business premises. One of the wealthiest families of bankers thus live over their bank, not far from the docks, in a street so noisy that the unceasing rattle of its traffic still sounds disturbing in my memory of the busy days I spent there. But this old custom is rapidly giving way before the attractions of the beautiful suburbs that have opened up along the sandy shores of Pocitos and inland as far as the charming little town of Villa Colón, with its great avenues of trees, its rippling streams, and leafy, undulating landscapes.
There are strange tastes to be noted, for one of the most imposing private residences in the city, indeed the most remarkable of all, worthy to be used as the Government House, has been built within recent years by a successful Italian in the Plaza Zabala, almost within hail of the docks, and in the very centre of that fan handle which I have already described as the turning point of the multitudinous trams. The frequent visitors who leave their ships for a short ramble round the town are always arrested by the imposing appearance of this building, and often little groups of them are to be seen discussing what it may be. Never by any chance did I notice visitors pausing before the plain little colonial residence a few paces westward in the same street, where a tablet records the interestingfact that it was the lodging of the great Garibaldi when, during the final struggle between Rivera and Oribe (1843-1851), the hero of Italy for a time commanded the Brazilian regiment, which, with the Italian and French legions, defended Montevideo against the leader of the Blancos.
So far as fresh air is concerned, there is certainly no reason for preferring one part of Montevideo over another, as the whole town is so accessible to the sea breezes that even in the height of summer, when the population of Buenos Ayres is gasping for breath, there is always fresh air in Montevideo—infinitely more than the Argentine capital is it the city ofbuenos aires(good airs). As forpaseos, there is no lack. Many a pleasant evening did we lonely Gringos pass at one or other of theplayas, as the waterside resorts are termed. Thanks to a public commission, which takes in hand the organisation of the summer fêtes, there is always something going on at one or other of these resorts, and half an hour in the tramway suffices to transport one to Remírez, Pocitos, or Capurro, as the occasion serves. Each has its respectivenoches de moda, when the promenade pier is illuminated with the usual prodigality of electricity, and a band plays for some hours, during which thepaseanteswander up and down to the strains of the music, and after the last number has been played, hasten to the homeward trams—the mildest and most innocent form of pleasure imaginable, and entirely at variance with European notions of South American life.
Of Pocitos, I retain the most agreeable memories,for many was the night we lingered on its gaily lighted pier, listening to the band, watching the throng of idlers, or “looking lazy at the sea,” where the light-house on the Isla de Lobos (the island of sea-lions, where many thousands of these animals are killed every year for the oil they yield, and for their skins) was throwing its beams across the dark waters of the estuary—a signal post to the broad Atlantic and to Home! The water front at Pocitos has been turned into a splendid promenade, comparable almost with the Marina at Rio de Janeiro, and among the little rocky prominences are many charming glimpses to remind the exile of the shores of his homeland.
Often we rambled, too, on foot along the coast to Ramírez, over fields and rocks and patches of sandy shore, catching sight at times of the big ocean liners slowly creeping up the river on their way to the great city of the southern shore.
Ramírez is not so fashionable as Pocitos, being rather the resort of the multitude. At the latter playa during the season, when the fine hotel is thronged with visitors, one may see the latest Parisian modes, exhibited chiefly by Argentine lady visitors, who are nearly always distinguishable from the quieter and slimmer belles of Montevideo, but at Ramírez we have a miniature Blackpool, with open-air theatres, merry-go-rounds, shooting galleries, and such-like diversions of the mob. Here, too, is the fine Parque Urbano, beautifully laid out on bosky, undulating ground, with devious little waterways, where pleasure boats, shaped like swans, ply for hire. Hard by the pier, stands the great Parque Hotel where the chief attractions are thegambling tables, mainly patronised by wealthy Argentines.
At both places there is bathing throughout the summer, after the water has been duly blessed by the Bishop, on (I think) the eighth of December—for the native does not venture to dip himself until that ceremony has been performed. Long rows of bathing boxes line the beach at Pocitos, but the local authorities are curiously indifferent to the interests of the bathers in choosing a little promontory about half a mile from the pier for burning the refuse of the city and throwing it into the water, so that the whole of the little cove shows along high water mark a thick line of dirt washed up after the ill-advised sanitary efforts at the point! It is thus customary for the bathers, on emerging from the salty waves, to wash themselves from pails of clean water, in order to remove the traces of burnt refuse from their bodies. This is a little touch that is quaintly South American.
Capurro, the third of the suburban resorts, is prettily situated on the bay, about midway between the city and the Cerro. It serves the western part of the city, which stretches out along the bay, and did not seem to be much frequented by the summer visitors, though on a noche de moda we used to see its numerous electric lights blazing like a little constellation as we looked westward from our windows in the plaza.
Finest of all the paseos is the Prado. This splendid public park lies in the same direction as Capurro, and through its undulating grounds runs the little river Miguelete. It is the pride of the Montevideans, and fully merits the charming adjectives they apply to it,for it abounds in fine avenues of century-old trees, and winding walks among rich and varied vegetation, while itsrosariumis very extensive and contains an infinite variety of roses. Well kept, provided with a good restaurant, and seats for the weary, with boating on the Miguelete among the swans, the Prado is certainly a great possession for any town, and will compare with most North American or European resorts of the kind. It is favoured by the residents more than by the visitors, and on Sundays is the scene of innumerable picnic parties.
Nor must I forget, in recalling the scenes among which we spent our summer at Montevideo, the curious little Zoo at Villa Dolores, some little distance from Pocitos. Here again, we encounter one of the many evidences of difference in the Uruguayan and Argentine characters. This institution, originally a portion of a large private estate, and established entirely as a private collection by the owner, has recently been made over to the Government, who are continuing its maintenance in a praiseworthy manner. It is the outcome, not merely of the educational side of zoology, by which I mean the illustrating of animal life by living specimens, but of a desire to promote a friendly interest in the animals. Among the many curiosities it contains is a little cemetery, with monuments to departed pets. Some of these are quite elaborate affairs, with inscriptions full of naïve tenderness, though it is difficult to suppress a smile at a memorial to a pet serpent! Dogs, cats, monkeys, donkeys, parrots, and I think even a lion are among the departed whose memories are here preserved.
The collection of wild animals is not so large as that at Buenos Ayres, but their houses are of the cleanest and most varied character, imitating in cement all sorts of quaint dwellings, such as caves, kraals, beehives, and the most fanciful structures in which animals ever were housed. Great artificial grottoes and craggy peaks of cement decorate the grounds, while the water-fowls have all manner of queer little islands, with strange figures of gnomes dotted about them, in the lakelets and canals. The whole place is inspired with the feeling of kindness to animals, but I was never quite able to understand why it contained such large numbers of valuable dogs penned up in great airy cages, unless they were for sale. One of the apes was so well trained, that he used to wander about the grounds free from his keeper and make friends with visitors, often to their discomfiture. On holidays he would go a-cycling, to the delight of the children, and was an expert on roller skates, being in every sense as clever and intelligent as the famous Max and Moritz. The admission to this most interesting public exhibition is only a few pence, and its refining influence on the public cannot be overestimated.
It will be seen from this rough and haphazard sketch of the attractions of Montevideo that we two Gringos had good reason to congratulate ourselves on being able to spend our summer there, rather than in Buenos Ayres. I am free to confess, however, that during the period of Carnival, which lasted for the greater part of February, there were times when we were inclined to think that we had almost too much of a good thing. All those pleasure resorts figure moreor less prominently in the long list of festivities arranged by the Carnival Committee, and the town itself becomes one vast exhibition of illuminations. The three principal plazas are decorated with the most elaborate designs in arches of electric lamps. The avenida is festooned from side to side, and all the way from the Plaza Libertad to the Plaza Independencia, with lamps innumerable, while Venetian masts, carrying huge comic faces that are illumined by night, line the pavements.
The Carnival proper, with its processions of decorated coaches and symbolical cars, its battles of flowers, and itscomparsas, or companies of masqueraders, lasts only throughout the first week of February, but for a fortnight or more in advance and for a good fortnight afterwards, every boy in the town possesses himself of a tin can and a stick, and as single spies or in battalions, they make night hideous. A passion for causing a noise by any means seems to seize the lower orders, and the whole month of February is practically wasted so far as business and serious affairs are concerned. The newspapers teem with announcements from the secretaries of the different clubs that have been organised to take part in the competition of the comparsas, as prizes are offered for the company making the bravest show as courtiers of Louis XIV, mounted gauchos, warriors of the Cannibal islands, or whatever guise they may determine upon. Albanians, Montenegrins, Rumanians, and other foreign residents who boast a picturesque national costume, don it for the Carnival; girls of the populace, dress up as boys, and boys as girls; false faces of every conceivable kind areworn by merry-makers, who, so disguised, may “chivy” the staider passers-by to their hearts’ content. There are great masque balls in the Solis Theatre, balls for children, and dances innumerable in private houses, into which masqueraders often enter and take part in the fun uninvited and unknown.
The real old spirit of Carnival is abroad, and the whole thing is conducted with so much good taste and with so little rowdyism that it is easy to see why it attracts such large numbers from Buenos Ayres, where the low class element so abused the liberties of Carnival in past years that it was prohibited, and is observed only to a small extent in some of the suburbs. The use of paper confetti andserpentinas, of which tons must be sold during the festivities, litters the streets and festoons lamp-posts, telephone wires, and window railings with streamers which, in the less accessible places, hang for months afterwards as mournful reminders of the merry time that was; but the municipal authorities show a remarkable celerity in clearing away all their temporary provisions for the festivities. By the beginning of March, Montevideo was its own staid self again, and by the end of that month the short holiday season had utterly passed, the bands at the playas had played their last tunes, the Hotel Pocitos and the Parque Hotel had closed their doors, no gaily-dressed throngs were to be seen on the promenades, and people were beginning to think of their social engagements for the coming winter; for it is in the autumn and winter season that the Montevideans themselves enjoy most their social round, when their theatres are occupied by numerous dramatic and operaticcompanies from Italy, Spain, and France, when political enthusiasts harangue their audiences, and lecturers give theirconferenciason literary and scientific subjects.
On the whole, you will see we had not so bad a time in the capital of Uruguay. Memories of our pleasant days and nights there crowd so thickly on me as I write that it is difficult to set them down, and I feel that the most I can do is to touch in the briefest way upon those that come uppermost, leaving it to the reader to imagine how our time was passed. We never seemed to tire of wandering the streets, as the avenida and the two central plazas retained an air of brightness and friendliness to a late hour, and often a military band would be playing between nine and eleven o’clock at night. Until a late hour, the town never assumed the extraordinary nightly dulness of Buenos Ayres, and very pleasant it was, night after night, to see the little family groups meet and gossip with the familiarity of a village. The Bohemian element, represented here, as elsewhere, by wide-awake hats and pendulous locks, had its habitat at the Café Giralda, at the corner of the Plaza Independencia, where most evenings the local poets—it rivals Paisley as a nest of singing birds—journalists, and “coming men” in politics, looked in for a coffee and a chat.
Surely there never was such a town for journalists. I believe you could not throw a stone down any street without hitting a journalist. An American city of the same size would probably possess not more than five or six daily newspapers; Montevideo has a dozen or more! Many of the journalists do not limit their activitiesto that profession, but are also engaged as lawyers, accountants, and in other businesses, as it is very common to combine several occupations; the warehouse clerk may possibly play in an orchestra in the evenings, and make up some tradesman’s accounts on the Sundays. Which reminds me that every place of business is closed on Sunday, only the restaurants, cafés, and theatres being open.
The shops, of course, do not compare favourably with those of the great metropolis further up the river, for there is not the wealth in the country to justify anything approaching the luxury and plenitude of the Buenos Ayres shopping marts. The largest establishment of the drapery kind is owned by an English firm, and there are several fine warehouses run by French and Italian firms, as well as some of considerable size under native proprietorship. But for the most part, the shops, among which jewellers’ abound, have a provincial rather than a metropolitan touch, though the newer establishments along the Avenida 18 de Julio are coming into line with the most modern ideas of shopkeeping. The habit of the tradesman living on his premises is probably one of the reasons why the early closing, so remarkable in Buenos Ayres, is not observed in Montevideo, to the consequent brightness of the streets. I remember how we used to be misled in our window gazing by the prices of the wares, soon after our arrival, as everything appeared so much cheaper than in Buenos Ayres, until we had become accustomed to the fact that the Uruguayan peso is worth exactly 62 cts. more than the Argentine, being equal to $1.02 United States money. Then we discovered that most things were somewhat more expensive!