Part 3
Having still twenty minutes before breakfast, we drove quickly to the fashionable church of San Filipo. Found it having more pretension than the Jesuit (“Belen”) church, but not more taste. Abundance of tinsel, plenty of yellowed grotesque, semi-arabesque carvings on tinselled columns and what-not, but no beauty, unless, perchance, under the happy veil of some worshipping angel.
_Sunday evening._--Is it a question of piety, or of taste, that so many places have holy names? “Jesus dil monto” “Jesus Maria,” “Las dace Apostles;” the latter being a battery of guns under the Morro, intended to convert enemies’ ships into enemies’ wrecks--a highly apostolic mode of conversion.
To end our Sabbath we ascended the Mount of Jesus and walked in a garden of cocoa-trees supposed to occupy relatively the position of Gethsemane.
Really the straight, tall lines of boles with their parachute tops, in a rapidly diminishing light, do produce a very novel impression--half rural, half architectural. One may fancy aisles and naves, transepts and choirs; the roofs, however, are real, made of leaves fourteen feet long, drooping like the mitres of a groin, and gothicizing a roof through which a few slender green rays penetrate--enough to reveal form without detail. But no marble gives sound to our footsteps; grass, poor a cow would say, but grass, for a carpet, and old cocoa-nuts to stumble over, bring us down to earth again. Here we are rewarded by some pretty flowers, which are the only beauties in this land of beauty who can wander “in maiden’s meditation, fancy free.” It is an effort to mount the Pisgah before us, but we must on to the very top, for our ankles are goaded by living spurs that lie lurking in the grass.
But we are spaciously rewarded, for there lies Havana in its whole extent before us; the level line of sea behind it; the Morro guarding it; the Principe fort threatening it; the bay reflecting it and the setting sun gilding it; palms on every hand outline their greens against the intensely azure sky behind, and white walls glance out of the luxuriant foliage, proud that humanity has a home within them. Low-like mounds fill up the background like priests with shaven crowns, but all with beauteous vestments sweeping to their feet, running over the plains between them, up the adjacent ones, round the next--an interminable reticulation of life and loveliness. The embroidery on God’s footstool is here wrought with a lavish and loving hand.
Wonderful tropics! The normal home of man; the only soil and sun in which could grow the fair and fatal tree of knowledge or of life.
No sinister cold, no smoke-tarnished atmosphere, no death-bearing fogs, no fierce animal energy, no gross crimes; all is sunny and perpetual youth. Eden unquestionably was not more than twenty-three or thirty degrees from the equator. But the intermittent flash of the light in the tower of the Morro startles every half minute the sudden nightfall, and we hasten to return, in love with nature, and reconciled to ourselves.
_Monday, March 13th._--This morning came Mr. R----, bringing an unexpected armful of books, with which we are to equip ourselves for a visit to the country, where we are making arrangements to go. Commenced the morning by chess, in which I am now habitually ruined, and ended, as usual, by a long conversation, in which I am listener-in-chief, an interested if not a brilliant or eloquent one.
Mr. R---- is a Romanist, but I learn from him more of the corruption of the clergy of the island than an uninitiated Protestant or Romanist either could invent. Priests in the country are badly salaried, often unable to get enough to pay their cooking and washing. So they become entangled in a peculiar kind of reciprocity with some negress or quadroon, who in time comes to live openly with them, and is recognized, and not unfrequently respected and acknowledged socially, as the mother of their large families. I find residents here indignant at visitors who come and skip over the surface of the country, necessarily, if they write at all, as superficial as false and absurd. Madame ----’s book is said to be a tissue of falsehoods, as well as that of D----, which I had supposed photographic. Every one, in fact, but Humboldt, has assumed a knowledge to hide ignorance. Cuba seems to be the least abused because least investigated country which has got into books.
Mr. R---- accepted our invitation to dinner. Like all Frenchmen, he prefers claret to other wines, and, like all old men who wish to live long, eats nothing.
_Thursday, 15th._--Who can wonder that sailors never tire of seeing the sea. With what a loyal instinct the old retired captain seeks the shelter of some wave-worn cliff where the familiar spray may kiss his weather-beaten cheek, and the cry of the deep be the lullaby of his last sleep. Primeval forests want light; prairies are “stale and flat” if not “unprofitable;” mountain ranges, those petrified waves of earth, are groups of individuals: but ocean is one, an adequate expression of extent illimitable, of bulk immeasurable, of depth unfathomable, of force irresistible, of life everlasting. It is the eternity of time. But here in Cuba, where so much is transitory and fugitive, where the accumulation of wealth to expend elsewhere is the aim of all, the æsthetic claims of the sea are unregarded. The backs of the houses are universally turned towards it. The Cubans smother palaces in narrow streets, rejecting the air which has learned purity and inspiration from the sea, for siroccos of dust and heat. Ugly wharves abound, so do batteries to make might right. It is only in refinement without degeneracy, in taste without tinsel, in wealth without avarice, that you find the loving adornment of ocean’s shores.
We rode, while thinking and saying these things, to Chomero, a little bay with little cottages on its little sandy shore; little shrubs, little shells, and little life. A square fort guards it in sinister silence; a large railway station promises to turn the little Chomero into the large suburban Carmelo, and straight streets, straight avenues, and right angles threaten to make it as ugly as the tasteless plans of architects could devise.
But deliciously sweet is the air; deliciously sweet the new old story of the sea, and deliciously sweet the _mareschino_ with which we flavor our _aqua pura_. All things return to their original starting point. Existence is a rounding of circles. The sun, a tired prodigal, returns to the parent arms of the horizon; like Socrates, his last act is to bathe, which he does in the returning tide, and he returns to _el Hotel de la Reina_, there to chat with Father, C---- or play with Señor R----, or, better still, to lounge on the sofas and fan our tropical thoughts into tropical dreams.
_Saturday, 17th._--At last our days are come to have a family resemblance. I must even confess to a kind of monotony, a stereotypedness, in their lineaments. I grow to look upon all these extravagant novelties with _sang froid_, to ride through the streets reclining in my volante with rarely being amused, and never startled, that Spanish gentlemen sitting against the walls in rows, or standing at the corners in groups, one and all, smile and bow, as if I were an old friend. I am not a bit shocked to see negro and Creole and Spanish little boys standing in the doors or running about at play with more backs than shirts--in short, as innocent of clothing as their great-greatest-grandpapa was when, overtaken by that unfortunate after-dinner nap, and the angel performed the delicate surgical operation of taking the still crooked rib from his side, and was not obliged to waken him by unbuttoning his jacket. I can promenade the balcony of our hotel without any uncomfortable nervousness because all the upper and under clerks in the store opposite collect at once to gape and criticize and express in some way the admiration a Cuban gentleman is conscientiously bound to feel whenever he sees a wonder. I can see the lottery venders thrust their tickets into my hand at the corner of every street when going to church, in all public places and most private ones, without one puritanical spasm. I am obliged to find Sunday turned into a general holiday without thinking an earthquake is coming to-morrow, and to hear the ship’s bell and car’s whistle mingling with the church bell without expecting a consequent and immediate steam-boiler explosion. I have even ceased wondering at this eternity of sunshine, and find it is silly to keep expecting blindness from its piercing light. I forgot to inquire why it cannot scald these deliciously cool breezes, or why these strong airs, always blowing upon the sunshine, as if it were a great plateful of hot gumbo soup, cannot manage to cool it.
If it be true that many microscopic beings which are vegetables in the shade become ripened into animals in the sun, then what happens to animals that live in the sun as much as we do? what are we to ripen to? Angels naturally--but sadly sunburnt.
This evening, my first acquaintance with a Creole, and one who is not only willing, but proud, to own it. He speaks English hesitatingly and solves a difficult riddle--it _is_ possible for a Creole countenance to express, not only intellectuality, but genius, even spirituality. How polite are these people! Being an amateur artist, he invited me to-morrow to his studio; offered at once to contribute to my portefolio, and to lend any pictures I may choose to copy while on the island. Conversation turning upon the famous cascarilla, a powder made of eggshells, and universally used on the skin by these ladies to make black white, all the gentlemen, strange to say, advocated its use. Upon this I expressed an intention of getting some immediately and using it liberally. Señor at once replied, “Oh, I shall be only too happy to send it to you!” and sure enough, after he left, a beautifully ornamented box of the ornament, found itself on my dressing-table.
You must never express a particular admiration for any thing one of these people possesses, or he will at once present it to you, from his plantation to his pipe; and the latter is the surer test of his politeness. The other day I asked Mr. R---- where I could find a bookstore keeping some little views of Havana. The same evening came a great book containing all I wished, beautifully executed. Last evening on the _Cortena_, he took out a little microscope to examine some parasitic flowers I had gathered from the walls of the Cathedral (all the old walls of buildings are covered with such plants). I could not help exclaiming at the great power and convenience of the little instrument, when, what should come this morning but Mr. R---- with a bright new microscope in his hand, begging I would do him the favor to accept it!
With all our interest in this Creole, I could not help a sensation of relief, when he rose to bid us good-night. It is so difficult talking with a foreigner who can only comprehend your simplest words, which express your simplest ideas. You feel like a child talking to a child, knowing all the time that you are without the innocence or beauty of children. And this repression of thought, instead of repressing the voice, gives one an unconquerable instinct to raise it to its highest pitch. One seems to think that an immense quantity of sound will hide an immense lack of sense; that they do not understand because they do not hear; that one is not so dumb as _they_ are deaf.
_Sunday, March 18th._--For the first time the heat is oppressive, enervating. We did not even summon courage for the early mass, the only religious service in a city which can boast one distinguishing peculiarity--it practises as much as it preaches, for it almost never preaches at all. What is better than the _Cortina_ when you talk of fresh airs, and fresh shade, and fresh silence? So for the _Cortina_ we set out, stopping by the way at the Cathedral. Here we find half a dozen sincere-looking devotees kneeling in different parts of the quaint, cool, serene temple; humble their birth, no doubt, as well as posture, for they kneel upon the bare marble, with no mat and no appearance of discomfort. When prayers are said and crossing done, they depart, silent and unnoticed as they enter; and we, with only the gratification of curiosity where worship should be, do the same.
Arrived at the promenade, we find an insinuating mist and an unusual event, a south wind, legitimatizing all this languor. Everybody in Havana pouts when the wind hails from the equator, and shivers when it comes out of a temperate zone. Both changes are so slight that a Northerner, accustomed as he is to the fiercely rapid changes at home, observes nothing different from usual. The ordinary wind here, which baffles all the scorching proclivities of this sunshine; which comes fresh and unworn over the salt and laboring seas; which makes this island an Eden of never-failing green,--this strong and pure, and gentle, as all that is strong should be, angel of mercy, is always an east wind. I am glad that I came to Havana to learn that the sole errand of an east wind in the world is not to manufacture influenzas, consumptions, gout-twinges, blue devils, and growlery-mongers.
To-night a long conversation with Father C---- who has just returned from an expedition to the interior for the purpose of collecting contributions for “me chur-r-r-rch” in Ireland. We talked of the Eucharist, of confessions, of indulgences, of rites and popes; in half an hour I learned more of Romanism from a Romanist’s point of view, than in a liberal share of twenty-eight years of my former life. He confessed that the corruptions of the church forced on the Reformation. I am sure the wary priest rather more than half expected to convert me, and I amused myself down in my sleeve at his amiable hallucination, while at the same time I reflected how surely the fogs of prejudice and sectarianism clear away before the inevitably advancing sun of knowledge.
IV.
_Departing Guests--The Varieties--On Board, but not Gone--No Chimneys--Dog-Pails--Horses’ Tails--Tall Negroes--Ecclesiastical Torch-light Procession--Watchmen--Leaving Havana--In the Country--Stopped--Seeking a Breakfast--A Cuban Village--A Primitive Well--A Peculiar Palm--Guiness--Our Quarters Therein._
MONDAY, March 19th.
One by one, our guests have left the hotel. The swarthy Portuguese gentleman whose acquaintance we made on shipboard, and who told us so much of the interiors of Asia and Africa, where he has spent much time. I am meditating the purchase of a camel to take home with me, to ride for health and pleasure. Think of the panic of the unsophisticated people of E---- at seeing a genuine live dromedary, philosophically promenading their streets with the valley on his back populated by your rejoicing and philosophical humble servant. Soon after this departure went the handsome and villainous-looking Russian, whom we suspect to have been a serf, because he told B---- one evening a long story of his feats and difficulties on leaving Russia without a passport. He has travelled all over the world, but in intellect will perpetually live, and irremediably die, a serf. The young, honest-eyed Scotchman, too, who played operas for me all one morning with so much skill and amiability, who has had his throat ventilated by three bullets in three battles, and is travelling--not consequently--for health, is gone to New Orleans. The diamond-labelled widow from Boston, worth an undoubted million, is gone to Matanzas, accompanied by her much-smiling daughter, and the daughter’s blue-nosed governess. The latter should always be seen with the ears, for she talked well. The gentleman with consumption is gone from the adjoining room, so that my nights are no longer made hideous by his sepulchral cough. He goes to the south of France--so expect his wife and daughter--I expect to an ocean grave. Also is departed the dandy from New York, having, like the beast in Daniel’s vision, a mouth speaking great things, but differing from that other biblical beast, the Israelites’ calf, in that the ancient calf was _made_ of ornaments, while this modern one only _wears_ them. The aldermanic Englishman, with ruddy wife, are gone like a comfort from the other end of the table, leaving us to their roast beef and ale. The pretty school-girl and incipient belle from Baltimore, has relieved the parlor atmosphere of the perfumery of her beaux, and the piano of gymnastic or belligerent manipulations extraordinary, but not, alas! unheard of. Indeed, we are left almost alone, for mine hostess declares she is losing money at four dollars per day in gold. Cannot afford it; disinclines any longer to endure the imposition of servants and shopmen--retires to the United States in disgust. Meanwhile the chamber-maid, having taken a fancy to me, opens for my use the large parlor in front of my bedroom, where I receive friends and reign supreme in a room spacious and lofty enough for a church, and retaining all the odor of sanctity left in it by the Bishop.
This evening we are to pack our trunks, to put on travelling attire, to say good-by to our friends, to fee the servants who have served us, and to take a volante for the steamer to Matanzas; but to say we leave here to-night for Matanzas, would be a choice and especial piece of presumption. I will tell you why. Last Saturday evening, we rehearsed all the above-mentioned performance. Our Havanese friends came to say adieus. Mr. P---- so full of regrets and kind speeches. Mr. M---- sitting by the parlor table, so long writing letters of introduction, that we did not ask for, to his friends in Matanzas, and then hurrying down to see that the state-rooms we had secured in the morning were all right, and to introduce us to the captain. Mr. R---- accepted B----’s invitation to take a seat in my volante. These public volantes never hold more than two, and consequently, B---- paid for his amiability by walking. Nothing doubting, we arrived at the steaming steamer; luggage is unfastened in great haste; we quickly alight, when, forsooth, the steamer does not particularly go to-night, not indeed until Monday next. The wind, it is said, took it in its head this morning to blow a suggestion breath for an hour; a prophetic flash of lightning was supposed to have been seen about four o’clock. Every body takes it as a matter of course, and I am obliged to smother my vexation behind an appearance of amiability.
A few more novelties, before going, I must bequeathe to you and to my memory, putting them in the hands of paper and ink for my safe keeping--then we will have done for the present with Havana. Did you ever think of one curious result of being really a city of the sun, viz., it is a city without chimneys. All the box stoves, and air-tight stoves, and best parlor ditto, were cast, if at all, in the foundry of Jupiter; all the steam and hot-air furnaces, instead of being interred in the cellars, are placed in the topmost garret of all garrets; the great vanity of inventions and ornaments in the shape of fireplaces, grates with their artistic devices, their pretty screens and shades, and the glowing faces and toasting feet before them. All these are snugly built in an architectural niche not made with hands, while their fires are kindled and formed not by the lungs of bellowses, but by the early-rising wings of enterprising angels. Ever since making this discovery I feel quite philosophically inclined to regard the fact that every man, or at any rate every man and a half you meet, carries his household fire about with him, using a cigar for fuel, and his devoted nose for a chimney.
Last night, while passing some highly respectable shops, we saw a pail of water standing in the door of each. B---- said, “Can you guess what those are for?” Of course I could not. He replied, “The law commands them to be provided in every house at certain seasons, so that all dogs may drink when they wish, and thus diminish the danger of hydrophobia.”
It is not less curious that horses’ tails are braided by law, a fine following each omission. For aught I know, the law dictates the member of strands in the braid; that it must be done by a governmental barber, greased as if it were human, and always tied, as it is, to the left side of the saddle. This hen-hussy government also directs at what precise age children must cease to be models for statues and become the victims of tailors and dress-makers.
I wonder nobody seems to have observed how remarkably tall the larger number of these negroes are. The women particularly are not only tall and erect, but magnificent in outline, having an eye to which their dresses are exceedingly low in the neck and short in the sleeves. They are absolutely statuesque. The Spanish and Creole ladies look dumpish, I might say dwarfish, beside them.
But the drawback upon all goings forward, the voluminous reiteration of feminine folking, must be performed; and we must again test the frailty of tropical locomotive veracity and steamboat protestations.
_Tuesday, 20th._--We simply didn’t go last night because the steamer didn’t; reason not yet transpired. I am becoming so used to these failures of plans and probabilities, that I think nothing would disappoint me now, but a want of disappointment. However, I was not sorry that this last detention gave me an opportunity to witness a very interesting spectacle. A torchlight procession of priests and friars and mourners and friends, to say mass over a dying person. We were first drawn to the balcony by the incessant singing of a peculiarly toned bell, and then we saw them slowly and solemnly marching far below us, down the dark and narrow street, heralded by the strange bell in the hands of one of the novices, and going with devout faith in its absolute efficacy to shrive a human soul--its last earthly help in its last earthly extremity. The effect was much like that of the _Misericordia_ in the cities of Italy, except that you miss here the quaintness and impressiveness of the black or white dominos. I did not care for the superstition; I only felt a profound awe, a solemn sense of mystery and fitness; I only marvelled that people can ever scorn or ridicule any faith that is sincere in heart.
At half-past ten we retired, just as the watchman was commencing his round of duty. Few things are more novel to us than this. The curious whistle is a kind of prelude to the monotonous tone with which he, every half-hour, slowly pacing up and down, lantern and spear in hand, announces the hour of the night and the state of the weather. He keeps a sharp lookout on the weather as well as other vagrants, and clearly feels a responsibility in the matter. I have learned all the words he uses to tell us that the moon is shining, or clouds are obscuring it; if it is cold enough to encourage an extra blanket, or if a norther or _sérocco_ is getting the upper hand of things; which hour is giving up the ghost, or which is like a soul “rolling from out the vast.” But I can never comprehend what he says, the words are so drawled and twisted to suit the tune, which my English ears understand to be musical and not unsuited to a lullaby, and at the same time so many other watchmen in neighboring streets are mingling their echoes and refrains.