CHAPTER VI.
Social state of the Limenians under the Spaniards and Patriots.—Spanish colonists.—Style of conversation.—Improvements in female education.—Zamba attendants.—Omnipotence of the ladies at fifteen.—Esprit de corps of the fair sex.—Forgiving temper of public opinion.—Defective administration of justice.—Prerogative called Empeño.—God-fathers and god-mothers.—Saint-day parties.—Flowers and perfumes.—Limenian women excel in attention to the sick.—General character of the white women and dark races.—Boys of European race.—Few men of intellectual habits.—Promenade of Amencaes, as illustrative of national feeling and character.—Pillo and Pillo-fino.—Money a substitute for morality.—Relaxation of morals general, but not universal.
Persons of sufficiently mature age in Lima never fail to acknowledge, and often delight to tell us, that before the great revolution, and during the tranquil period of their own early recollections, their fellow-citizens and countrymen were in general fair and upright in their ordinary dealings; and that good humour, happiness, and gaiety of heart were inseparable from their frequent public meetings and social recreations.
But this sound and amicable spirit, which indeed appears to have diffused itself pretty generally in the time of the Spanish dynasty, we may trace as emanating from the many estimable and courteous qualities of those more enlightened Europeans, by whose superior capacity and direction the then existing order of society was so long and quietly upheld in this and in other sections of the New World. The past state of things was nevertheless faulty in many respects. It involved an uncontrolled indulgence in sensual gratification, though the memory of many a disappointed patriot likes to dwell on it as on the flowery retrospect of his happiest days. But Lima is no longer a garden of roses, or a bower of delight. One day, in speaking of the change to the worse that the revolution had brought about in the social system of his country, a venerable old man remarked, “Formerly there was a heart to feel, and a hand to give; but now they have left us neither friendship nor pity: you find not whom to trust; and men, without regard to right or justice, keep all to themselves with the close unyielding grasp of the ape when she clasps her young to her bosom.”
An unbounded love of superficial display engages the minds of the people so fully as to have superseded, to a great extent, active benevolence, and sterling, honourable dealing between man and man; and we must confess that the yet inexperienced creoles, left to themselves, show, in the management of their own affairs, slender political discretion and no shining public virtue.
But yet, as a whole, the Peruvians, for whose manifold faults very great allowances should be made, have, in an eminent degree, the redeeming qualities of soft, attractive manners, and a mild, prepossessing address. These agreeable characteristics, not so frequently as could be wished associated with a manly openness and frankness of mind, sometimes serve, in the present evil times, as a ready cloak to exclude the ken of those whom they are willing to deceive.
If these secluded people, too long accustomed to servitude and ease during the luxurious dynasty of their European masters, were once induced—which, under good moral management, they easily might be,—to make honesty and industry more prevalent virtues than they are at present among the bulk of the population, then they might realize, more largely than they have yet done, the advantages of that unsettled freedom, which, with feelings of pardonable exultation, they pride themselves in possessing; and, with such an amendment on their moral features, their richly varied country, with all its natural superiorities and improvable resources, might soon be transformed into an earthly elysium. But the germ of true political liberty must be better cultivated than it has yet been among them, and protected by a steady, disinterested, and patriotic government, before the soil can be made to throw out its latent luxuriance, or generous and noble virtues freely unfold themselves in the heads and hearts of a newly independent, uninstructed, and heterogeneous population.
The common race of Spaniards from old Spain, who established themselves and reared families in Peru, appear to have been, as we formerly signified, men of strict commercial integrity, scarcely requiring written obligations or acknowledgements in their pecuniary transactions one with the other; they are reported to have been friendly and charitable, always ready to assist a poor adventurer from the old country, or a needy friend, whenever he presented himself.
The houses of the affluent teemed with idle domestics and laughing loiterers, whose coarse merriment bespoke contentment and plenty; and the beggar, who sat in the back-court and corridor (the walls of which are still beautified with painted flowers and landscapes) to enjoy the cool of the artificial fountain, or who rested himself on the benches of the tesselated porchway, laughing with the merry fellows that were about him, felt not the miseries of pauperism; for, wherever the Limenian mendicant seated himself, there he was happy, and partook cheerfully of the abundant surplus from the rich man’s table, which was liberally bestowed on the poor.
But, generally speaking, delicacy of sentiment or refinement of education did not belong to the Spanish colonists; and though they acquired wealth by their moderate industry, reared costly edifices and churches, endowed convents and monasteries, and paid for numberless masses; though they befriended the poor, and filled their welcome guest’s cup to overflowing in a land of milk and honey; yet, be it spoken with candour, their summum bonum seems to have been something like a good Mussulman’s paradise.