Lima always has been noted for its cultured society. The Spanish spoken is the purest heard in South America. It is as pure as that of Andalusia or Madrid. Music, art, and literature,—these always have had their place. At the hospitable board of Dr. Isaac Alzamora, the former Vice-President, the wittiest host in Peru, I met many persons whose talents and accomplishments hardly could be equalled. The life of the rich families is refined, and notwithstanding its seclusion comes nearer to the American ideal of home than anywhere else in Spanish America.
Lima has two leading clubs. The National is the more conservative, and is where all that is solid in business, politics, and professional life is met. The Union Club is composed of the younger element, and one of its attractions is that more liberty is permitted in gambling.
The foreign society of Lima I found to be more in sympathy with the native society than almost any other place. Its dean, and the most popular foreigner, is Mr. Richard Neill, for twenty years the Secretary of the American Legation, affectionately called Don Ricardo by his Peruvian friends. French, Germans, Italians, even the English, find something in common with the Peruvians. The British colony is numerous enough to be split into factions. The Scotch element, very masterful in business, predominates.
Among the Europeans the Italians are by far the most numerous. They have very largely the retail trade and they are property-holders in an unusual degree. A Little Italy lies across the Rimac River.
A very large Chinese population exists in Lima. Much of it is the second and third generation. Originally the Chinese were brought to Peru as contract coolie laborers, but of late years the immigration has been of a normal kind. The Chinese of this period have discarded the queue and have adopted the conventional dress. Some wealthy Chinese merchants have an appreciable influence in the commerce of the country. These rich merchants are antagonized by another faction which objects to their assumptions of superiority. This element also is getting rich. China keeps a Consul-General in Peru with semi-diplomatic functions, and usually he has enough to do.
I went one day in company with Minister Dudley to call on one of the notable figures in the cultured life of Lima. This was Dr. Ricardo Palma, Director of the National Library, the learned author of an instructive History of the Inquisition and of many other books, both historical and literary. Dr. Palma, during the war with Chile, lost his own library and had the anguish of seeing the accumulated historic treasures of the National Library sacked by the victorious invaders, but he set to work at once to form a new collection. He has gathered together 400 manuscripts, and the Library itself is the best arranged and most easily accessible that can be consulted on the West Coast.
The University of San Marcos also has played a notable part in the intellectual life of Peru.
Of the many churches, convents, and monasteries, the most interesting is that of San Francisco. I went there one afternoon with Mr. Alejandro Garland, the best-informed man in Peru, to learn in a scant half-day something of the ancient institution, though a week would not have been long enough to wander through the cloisters.
Church of San Francisco, Lima