CHAPTER IX

MORE “PASEOS” IN BUENOS AYRES

Recoleta I have only mentioned in passing; but that offers a very interesting paseo to the visitor. My wife specialised on Recoleta and piloted many another lonely soul to that strange city of tombs! As they say in Scottish villages, “Let’s take a bit daunder in the kirk yaird.” Recoleta is certainly worthy of a “daunder.” This famous cemetery combines some features of Pere Lachaise with certain of the Campo Santo at Genoa. But it is really not like either. It is peculiarly Argentine. You can trace in it the progress of the national prosperity. It is essentially the creation of a people newly rich. Here and there we see in its crowded lines of tombs some mouldering memorial of the last generation, simple, unpretentious. But most of those that bear dates within the last twenty years or so are the last word in necrological “swank” or mortuary pomp. Not for nothing are funerals styled _pompas fúnebres_ in the Argentine. They do well by their dead. Millions of money have gone to the making of these splendid homes of the dead at Recoleta. For they are not buried in our “earth to earth” fashion. The bodies are merely encased in leaden shells, within gorgeous coffins of carved wood, and are laid on shelves within the mausoleums, so that for years to come the survivors may visit the tomb and mourn with no more than the thickness of the coffin between them and the departed. It is a horribly unsanitary system of burial and the smell in Recoleta on a hot summer’s day is distinctly “high.” How could it be else, with all these thousands of decaying corpses enclosed in boxes which, you may be sure, are not all air-tight? So intolerable is the savour of the dead, that the custodians—the cemetery pululates with uniformed custodians—have to “air” the tombs by opening the doors for several hours daily. When I went wandering in Recoleta, I used to think that Jacques’ words—

“And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot”—

would make a good motto for the place. How Shakespeare has a tag for everything, old and new!

But I must describe a typical tomb. It is built entirely of beautiful Carrara marble, and better built than most houses in Buenos Ayres. No “sham” here. It towers nearly twenty feet above the ground level, and its lower floor is eight or ten feet underground. It is beautifully designed, with delicately carved pilasters, and surmounted by a graceful cupola, bearing a decorative cross. The spacious entrance is fitted with a noble iron-work gate, lined on the inner side with plate glass, and bearing on a gilded boss in the centre the Christ-mark ☧ so familiar in all Latin cemeteries. In a word, save for the cross and the Christ-mark, it is outwardly such a monument as the wealthy Roman reared by the Appian Way, and surely there must be in Recoleta as many of these vanities as made that highway one of the great sights of Imperial Rome.

Let us peep within. In the upper chamber stands an elaborate altar of alabaster and brass, with an enamelled painting of the Virgin and Holy Child, encased in a massive frame of brass, before which, on the lace altar-cloth, spotlessly clean, are burning several candles. There are two or three _prie-dieus_ of mahogany and various wreaths of real flowers hung on the walls, as well as others of beads or immortelles. Below, down a flight of marble stairs with brass balustrades, one can see on shelves around the chamber, six, eight, perchance a dozen coffins, and several marble busts, portraits of the more notable occupants of the coffins, placed on pedestals, against which are heaped more wreaths. Every detail of the tomb is perfect in its way and no expense has been spared in the making of it. It is scrupulously clean, for here come dainty ladies to kneel on the praying chairs for an hour at a time, and on All Souls’ Day or the Day of the Dead (_El dia de los muertes_) the family interested in the tomb will pass most of the day here. Fifteen thousand dollars would probably be a fair estimate of the cost of this little palace of death—a few square yards in one of the main avenues of Recoleta will outvalue the same space in Florida!—but it remains a charnel house and it smelleth of things unclean. I often thought that the mourning ladies seen in these tombs were another of the many traces of the Moorish dominion in Spain that still show in the customs of Spanish America.

When I tell you that in Recoleta there are some ten thousand tombs, huddled together so closely that it is hardly possible to get an unembarrassed view of a single one, and that many of them are quite as splendid as the one I have described, you will understand what a prodigious expenditure Recoleta represents. Millions of money, much good taste and more bad, have gone to its making.

Every kind of stone seems to be used: alabaster, marbles, granites, freestone; and all have been imported from Europe. Nearly everything of artistic merit bears evidence of European craftsmanship. There is abundance of beautiful iron-work and bronze plaques, medallions, statues. The debased modern Italian work is very noticeable. Almost every atrocity is of Italian origin. But there are several mausoleums of black granite, in the style of Germany’s _art nouveau_, which show how beautifully that may be treated. They are so individual and yet so restrained and dignified that the good taste of the owners is as evident in them as the skill and genius of the designers. Strange to say, few of these really beautiful things bear the makers’ name, yet every ramshackle erection of the jerry-builders in the streets of Buenos Ayres displays in large concrete letters the name of the proud architects who committed it!

Naturally, in Recoleta repose many of the notable men in the recent history of Argentina. The great heroes, such as Belgrano, San Martín, Sarmiento, sleep elsewhere in lonely state; but here are many presidents, generals, statesmen, mingled with the rabble of the merely rich. There is also a quadrangle stuffed with hundreds of coffins let into niches in the walls, tier above tier, up to some thirty feet in height, but that is mossy and neglected, as it recalls the old days before the coming of the “boom”; yet it is there that the real “forefathers of the city sleep”; there you will find the true blue Argentine who in life to-day is _rara avis_.

One could write a whole chapter on Recoleta, while its history and the stories of its tombs are worthy of a book. But our purpose is a paseo, and enough has been said, perhaps, to indicate that in its narrow and crowded lanes of mausoleums a paseo no less interesting, but very different in kind, from that of Palermo, may be made. Unlike the theme of the popular song, however, it is not “all right in the summer time.” What one misses most is “the storied urn.” The “animated bust” there is and to spare; but the tombs are lacking in interesting inscriptions. Usually, _Propiedad de la familia Fulano de Tal_ is all that gives the wanderer a clue to the identity of the peaceful dwellers in these marble halls. The graveyard poet is unhonoured in Recoleta. One feature I had almost forgotten, and it is very much in tune with modern Buenos Ayres. Several magnificent tombs were unoccupied and bore tickets announcing that they were for sale. They had been erected by enterprising speculators. Thus the Argentine who has suddenly become wealthy by selling his “camp,” bought a fine mansion in Buenos Ayres, and joined the Jockey Club, may acquire a ready-made mausoleum for his “family.” Ah, the magic peso!

Chacarita, a long way westward from Recoleta, is the great general place of burial. It is many times larger than Recoleta and more varied in its memorials, though it also contains great avenues of handsome mausoleums. A portion of Chacarita is dedicated to the British and Americans, and here one encounters the names of many of one’s fellow-countrymen who have helped to build up the amazing prosperity of the Argentine and eventually laid their bones in its friendly soil. One grave, most likely to be passed unnoticed, bears a simple stone which records that he who sleeps beneath was the last lineal descendant of the Earls of Douglas. It’s a far cry from the historic haunts of the Black Douglas to Chacarita, but so runs the world away.

Still farther westward, yet within the boundaries of this wide-spreading city, is the _Parque del Oeste_, which covers even more ground than the _Parque 3 de Febrero_ at Palermo. We never met any Gringos who were in the habit of taking a paseo there; while in the pretty little park in the Boca, to which we occasionally wandered, my wife and I, we never saw anybody above the loafer class enjoying its leafy shade. In fact, this applies to all the parks of Buenos Ayres, if we except Palermo and the Botanical Gardens—they are the haunts of undesirables, and while they certainly beautify the city and look extremely well as green spots on the coloured plans, they might not exist so far as the decent population is concerned.

On a very tiny scale the picturesque Plaza Constitucion reminds one of the debaters’ ground at Hyde Park, for here come the socialist orators to harangue little groups of artisans and labourers, and here the tireless warriors of the _Ejercito de Salvacion_ raise the banner of “Blood and Fire” and wage an unequal battle against the forces of Unbelief, Idolatry and Indifference. To encounter these uniformed enthusiasts in the remotest corners of earth wrings even from the antipathetic a tribute of admiration for the genius of him who founded the strange movement and gave his life to a great idea. I am not sure but that the Salvation Army discharges a more urgent and useful social service in cities like Buenos Ayres and Montevideo than it does in the land of its birth. But it may be that the wanderer is apt to admire abroad qualities which at home would leave him cold.

In the Plaza Constitucion there is an elaborate artificial hill, with the artificial ruins of a castle! As the whole erection is now girt about with barbed wire, I suspect its constructors builded better than they knew and, in attempting to imitate ruins, succeeded so well that “the ruins” speedily became “dangerous.” But the pathos of the sight will not escape the reflective eye.

Of the Paseo de Julio I have already written. It is a great blot on the municipality that this most beautifully laid-out promenade, with all its pleasant greenery, its banks of flowers, its very remarkable marble fountain of the seductive mermaids, should be a haunt of the vilest classes of the community. Yet it was here, I confess, that when I went a-wandering alone I most often strayed, and an elderly gentleman who lived at our hotel told me that it used to be his practice of an evening to smoke his after-dinner cigar in a stroll along the Paseo de Julio, until he was warned that some night perhaps he would be added to the long list of victims who had there received a knife in their vitals and been robbed while they breathed their last. The shops along the Paseo certainly contain enough daggers to kill off the whole community in a comparatively short time, if used with system. There were several cases of murder in the Paseo during my stay, a man being done to death, in one instance, for the equivalent of nine shillings.

As I have already hinted pretty broadly, if there is but little that the visitor can find to interest him in the way of paseos within the wide boundaries of the city, there is even less beyond. When we have enumerated the Tigre, Hurlingham, San Isidro and San Andrés, the list of pleasure resorts in the near neighbourhood is exhausted, and I have deliberately made the best of it by including San Isidro, which is merely a residential suburb prettily set on rising ground. I tramped all round San Isidro one lovely autumn day, hunting for a new golf course, which I found to be so new that the greens had not yet been laid. At that time the place, pretty as it was, could not be said to hold the slightest interest for the visitor. Its church is pleasantly situated on the high ground of the _barranca_, an elevated ridge which denotes the former river course. There is a dainty public garden trending downward from the church to the railway level, and one has a spacious view of the country, now bosky and broken towards the River Tigre. The President of the Republic had a house at San Isidro and there were some very charming villas to be noted. But it could scarcely be considered a “show place”—there are many New York suburbs far more beautiful—though the patriotic Buenos Ayrian would probably complain if I failed to include San Isidro among the charms of the countryside between the city and the Tigre.

At San Andrés there is a fine golf-course, with a Scots professional, and indeed a fine flavour of Scots even to the name, which is the Spanish for Scotland’s patron saint. There is naught else at San Andrés, save the usual vast acreage of flat uninteresting earth. Hurlingham is more varied in its interests and more picturesque. These resorts are almost exclusively British, with a very light sprinkling of Americans, who are usually classed as _ingléses_ by the natives. I have sunny—and also showery—recollections of both.

Remains the Tigre. And when all is said, the Tigre is the one playground of the Buenos-Ayrians, after Palermo. Of it I have many mingled memories. Some eighteen or twenty miles to the northwest of the city the River Tigre joins its turbid waters with the tawny flood of the River Plate. Near the junction, the Tigre is itself a river of considerable volume and it is broken up by numerous small islands, which, thanks to the frequent flooding in the rainy seasons, are rendered extremely fertile, as the river deposits coatings of rich soil upon them. It is the delta of the Nile on a miniature scale. Thus it is that these islands in common with the banks of the river for many miles are always clothed with verdure and all sorts of fruit trees flourish abundantly. The natural growth is low and bushy; the few clumps of taller trees have all been planted. But here at last we have something approaching “scenery.” Picturesque “back-waters” allure the oarsmen in all directions. There is no sensational beauty—not a vestige of anything unusual. Still the Tigre does offer to the hungry eye of the disillusioned wanderer some natural interest.

But let me tell you of the town that has sprung up here, before we go a-boating on the river. The railway approach to it is as unlike a pleasure resort as Newark, N. J., is unlike the Champs Élysées. In the town itself the streets are still to be made, and after a day or two of rain horses have to haul you through mud which reaches up to their knees, so that it is an agony to ride in a coach, as the animals can only be made to perform their terrible task by the most brutal thrashing. Once only did I consent to endure the experience of seeing two poor creatures flogged unmercifully to transport us a distance of about half a mile across the wooden bridge and through the monstrous mire to the Tigre Boat Club on the other side of the river.

Along the river banks there is foot-room enough, recalling the curate’s egg, in being good in parts. On the left bank there are the beginnings of what some day may be very pretty riverside gardens, but the roadway for vehicles is merely mother earth in her changing varieties of mud and dust. After rain it is impassable for motor cars and in dry weather it is covered with train-loads of dust. In its former state I have seen a large motor-car imbedded up to the level of the chassis and two other cars on drier ground, with ropes attached, utterly powerless to move it one foot, and I have seen it when the passage of an automobile meant “a pillar of cloud by day” which the Buenos Ayres Israelites—whose name is legion—might have descried in the wilderness of the city! Most of the _quintas_ or country residences are situated on the left bank, in streets that run at right angles to the river, and many of these country chalets are very charming, both in architecture and rustic surroundings, but assuredly an aeroplane would be the most practical way of reaching them after a shower. I noticed a childish affection for plaster effigies of dogs and other animals in the gardens, one quinta achieving the limit of bad taste with a perfect stucco menagerie dotted about the garden. There were dogs, cats, geese, foxes, storks, hens, and many other “strange wild fowl,” to say nothing of the little gnomes, so popular as garden ornaments in Switzerland. A more ludicrous exhibition could not be imagined. The houses are built of many different materials, but stucco prevails, and they are painted in all the colours of the spectroscope, some of them rivalling the garish exterior effects of Italian ice cream saloons; but others, not a few, charming in every detail.

The river banks are occupied chiefly by numerous boat clubs, some of which possess very fine buildings, with every kind of modern luxury. All the nations of Europe seem to be represented in this way and so far as I could gather the Germans vie with the British in their devotion to the river sport, though the native Argentines can pull an oar with the best of them and have several handsome club houses. There is a large and well-appointed hotel and a magnificent home for the Tigre Club was nearing completion before I left Buenos Ayres. This is the fashionable resort of the smart set, who are infinitely more interested in the roulette table and baccarat than in anything so wholesome as the manly sport which the other and less gorgeous club-houses represent. They motor down the sixteen miles from Buenos Ayres on Sunday afternoon, after the races at Palermo are over; get inside the Tigre Club as quickly as possible, and so away from the mosquitoes; spend the evening in “play”; stay the night and so to Buenos Ayres in the morning.

But the scene along the river on a Sunday afternoon is bright with life. Crews practising in outriggers, lonely canoeists, loaded boats of trippers beating the water with ill-timed blades, motor-launches scurrying along well-laden with passengers and delightfully oblivious of the “rules of the road,” the gilded youth showing the pace of his new motor-boat and translating his Florida swagger into terms of the river. An animated and pleasing scene.

There are leafy shades on many of the islands where teas may be served or where you may picnic if you be so minded, just as at home. To one of these we went occasionally on our boating excursions. It is a little island orchard. The catering is excellent and among the spring-blossoms,—“under boughs of breathing May” used to ring strange in the memory when one knew it was October, though the conditions were May—it was pleasant to sip the fragrant herb, which in the Argentine they can brew as well as in England and better than I found elsewhere in South America. This particular island is the property of a certain lady who in the wicked past was a dancer at the Casino, when that was probably the most notorious entertainment in any civilised city (“according to information received”) but who is now a douce and not unattractive widow “with a past,” and with a present which includes good teas and a hearty welcome. Everything is so lacking in historic interest out in the Argentine that I found myself not a little piqued by the story of the ex-_bailarina_ and her island retreat, to which she had withdrawn with a husband when her dancing days were done, and the husband dying soon thereafter, she added the tea-garden to her well-stocked orchard and new interests to her widowhood.

Such, then, is the Tigre, of which I had heard so much before I set sail for the River Plate. “There’s such a charming place called the Tigre, to which everybody goes boating and picnicking,” I used to be told. But I was not told that in the summer its mosquitoes’ sting was sharper than serpent’s tooth, or that in the winter you had to wade to the river through mire and thank the gods for a fine dry day when it pleased their extreme sulkinesses to vouchsafe so great a favour.

Still, given the right day, the exile may bless the Tigre and may there dream dreams of home.