From flag to flag

by Eliza Ripley

On those lovely winter days, when the roads were dry and smooth, and the skies cloudless, and the sun warm, the air redolent with the nameless odors of tropical fruits and flowers blended with the all-pervading aroma of boiling cane-juice, there was much visiting and entertaining, much galloping about in gay cavalcades from house to house, calling and extending invitations to breakfasts and dinners, and offering one’s home with all that therein is to each other.

Ladies in flowing robes of every bright color, gracefully seated on elaborately decorated left-sided saddles of similar pattern to those used by Catharine of Aragon and her maids of honor in their triumphant entry into London four centuries ago; their gallant cavaliers in spotless linen from top to toe, Panama hats, and clanking silver spurs—the party, all mounted on blooded stallions, came galloping up the long avenue of palms. Caridad and Pancho, Manuel and Reglita, Leon and Félicia, and so on to the number of fifteen or twenty, alighted for a moment, accepted a cup of coffee, and off again like a bright vision of brave knights and fair ladies.

A dinner at the Josefita’s was the social event of the year to us eagerly accepted. When we arrived, resplendent in our best clothes, the house was already filled with guests. The Josefita family and their city visitors numbered a score, with a score more of the neighbors, and perhaps a half-score of the plantation dependents. It reminded one of the feudal feasts Scott so loved to describe, where the honored guests sat above, and the followers of the chief below, the salt. The long table was spread on the front veranda; so, in order to avoid a sight of the preparations, guests were invited to enter at the rear of the house—a table was pieced out by various devices below the salt, as it were, some lower, some wider than the table proper; but the food was the same, and the boundless hospitality of the host reached all. The entire dinner was placed upon the board before the company was seated. The odor was not quite appetizing to us, where every dish had a dash of garlic or the unsavory scent of crude olive-oil.

Great heaping piles of blood-colored rice, dressed with a vegetable that imparts that vivid tinge, glistened with lard; chickens, garnished with olives, raisins, prunes, and blanched almonds; sausages, no larger than one’s little finger, in dear little links, served with a fringe of garlic; beautiful dishes of omelet, streaked with the blood of all the fowls sacrificed for the banquet, with just enough garlic to impart to them the prevailing flavor; slices of meat, fearfully and wonderfully prepared with red wine and sugar; various salads, served in oils; ripe bananas, stewed in wine and sirup; green bananas, fried dry and crisp like Saratoga potatoes; a whole roast pig, decorated with ribbons and brilliantly colored, impossible paper-flowers; vegetables, whose unpronounceable names I have forgotten; varieties of tropical fruits, all juicy, all delicate, all more or less insipid, all tasting somewhat alike; sweets of cocoanut, guava, sweet-potato, pineapple, marmocilla—no end of sweets; no end of delicate Spanish wines; no end of cigars; no end of cigarettes; no end of gay, little, feathered tooth-picks, made from the plumage of the most brilliant birds; no end of talk. A confusion as of Babel—so fast, emphatic, loud, and so full of gestures, of Ave Marias! “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” bursts and ripples of laughter that we, not to the manor born, had not half an idea what was being said, and not the remotest idea what we were eating.

The custom of helping another at table, and then smelling of the plate; the custom of raising a dish to one’s nose, and, with an audible sniff and a shrug, replacing it untouched, or, if favorably impressed, helping one’s self, arose, I presume, from the desire to know by the surest channel if the right quantity of oil and garlic were present.

Don Pancho sat by Ellie, and it seemed his duty to assume charge of her and smell of her plate, and, when he found a particularly appetizing morceau in his own, to transfer it to her mouth; she playfully resisted, telling me afterward that she hoped they did not think her rude, but she could not eat from Don Pancho’s fork. Caridad, the hostess, placed me at her right hand, and hospitably heaped my plate with the choicest of the viands.

And so we dined. At the improvised end of the table sat the mayoral and his assistant, the boyero (herdsman), the little, old, dried-up doctor, who administered herb-teas and foot-baths at the plantation hospital, the two sugar-makers and two engineers, of various dusky, olive shades, all clean and orderly, quiet and voracious. They took their seats with a dignified salutation, and retired when cigars and tooth-picks were passed around, accompanied with coffee.

A score of darkies, in various stages of inexperience, waited upon us, under the vigilant, outspoken directions of the host and hostess. There was no attempt at style or ceremony, no whispering of orders or sly hints as to duties, no gestures or winks; everything was free and open, every order given in an unmistakable key; so that there was an abandon at one of these country festivals absolutely bewitching.

Scarcely a country that boasts of the luxuries and elegancies of life had so poorly performed domestic service as Cuba. Servants, moving leisurely about, were seen everywhere, but there was no running to do one’s bidding. A lady’s-maid did not serve more than one in her capacity. A nurse cared only for one child. One cook could not prepare the meals unaided, be they ever so simple. One scullion was not sufficient for kitchen-cleaning. A seamstress could only do the sewing and repairing for one señora. A family, a type of the best, though not the wealthiest, of the island, that I visited, at their quinta at Madruga, had twenty-five servants about the house! a much smaller retinue than in their city residence, and therefore considered themselves rather unattended and uncomfortable. The family consisted of a mother and six children, ranging from eight to eighteen, and an intelligent American governess, gifted with an infinite tact and the convenient attribute of ubiquity, on whom the burden of the entire establishment seemed to rest, and her cheerful presence and systematic rule were everywhere visible. The father for political reasons was banished to Spain, and for social reasons the mother, still a young woman, could not go into society in his absence. Their domestic arrangements were a never-ceasing wonder to me. The mother and two daughters each had a maid in constant attendance, to pick up a handkerchief or arrange a stray ribbon when not employed in dressing and undressing their ladies, whose principal occupation was the toilet. The ebony butler had three white-coated assistants. One cook prepared the meats, another made the sweets and refrescos; neither of them had time to wash a pan or wipe a cup; so several scullions were sitting around waiting to help. There was a laundress for household linens, another for skirts and dresses, a third for servants’ washing, and a Chinaman who only laundried pantaloons, vests, and coats. None of them had time to make fires or bring the water they used, servants of lower degree doing this for them. Washing and ironing were in progress from one end of the week to the other. Servants, servants everywhere and very little done. All seemed acting their parts in a comedy of “how not to do it.”

One of our neighbors, Don Pedro, with so limited an estate that an ox-mill was used to grind his cane, had to hire a large percentage of his force in order to make a few hogsheads of sugar, and frequently wound up the season by selling the remainder of his crop standing, because he had not sufficient labor to cut and grind it. Don Pedro had a wife and several grown-up daughters, and fourteen servants about the premises to wait upon the ladies, oftentimes the house servants outnumbered the field-hands. A visit to their hospitable home revealed an untidy parlor with a dog curled asleep on each chair—vicious game-cocks secured by long strings, roosting on the window-shutters, or strutting in their red and naked splendor about the veranda, a half-dozen frouzy, half-clad negroes standing at open doors whispering their admiration of the visitors. Nobody seemed to be working, every living thing had a lazy, idle air, and poor Don Pedro who belonged to a race that could not economize time, labor, or anything else, was harassed because he could not get his cane cut, for lack of help. When plans involving economy of time and curtailment of domestic service were suggested, to help him out of his financial difficulties, his doleful answer was ever “No se puede!” (“Impossible!”).