The English soon get into the fashion; and most of them are as fond of the segar as the natives, who are smoking from the time they get up, until they go to bed. If they ride on horseback, a segar is in their mouths. Should they want a light in the streets, it is only to stop the first person they meet smoking, to obtain one. I have often smiled to see a first-rate Creolian dandy lighting his segar from that of some dirty black fellow.
Havannah segars are the favourites; but they are dear, and not at all times to be had in perfection. The paper ones, or segars de Hoja, made from the tobacco-leaf, are mostly used, and by many preferred. The manufacture of them affords employment to a great many people, including females.
So refined are their ideas of politeness, that a person smoking invariably takes the segar from his mouth, when passing another in the street.
In another branch of politeness, Buenos Ayres is not outdone, even by Paris itself; viz. the constant custom of taking off the hat, when meeting each other in the street. The English mode of touching the hat is too groom and footman-like, to be followed here: their’s is taken entirely from the head; and, when in compliment to ladies, they remain uncovered until the objects of their politeness have passed. It is managed gracefully—removing the hat from behind, similar to those who are accustomed to wear wigs; it may be, to save the fronts from dilapidation, which such continual calls on them would occasion.[16]
The plant called yerba, the growth of Paraguay and the Brazils, is the tea of Buenos Ayres. They drink it out of a small globe, to which a tube is fixed, nearly as long as our tobacco-pipe; it is called the matté-pot, and the beverage drawn from the yerba, is the matté. These pots are generally of silver; and they hand them from one to the other, in drinking—a practice not the most cleanly. When I first saw the tubes in the ladies’ mouths, I conceived they were smoking. Matté has not a bad flavour, but nothing equal to tea. It is reported by some to be pernicious to the teeth. In visiting parties it is always handed round. It carries such an idea of the tobacco-pipe, that I do not much admire seeing these matté-pots in the hands of ladies.
The general time of meals in Buenos Ayrean families is pretty nearly as follows:—They have matté the first thing, which they often take in bed; at eight or nine, they have what we should call breakfast, beef-steaks, &c.; dinner at two and three; matté at six and seven, followed often by a supper. The fashionable London hours of breakfasting at one and two in the afternoon, and dining at eight and nine in the evening, have not travelled to this quarter of the globe yet. They drink wine out of tumbler glasses.
The siesta, or afternoon nap, is not so regularly taken as formerly: they have got more into the habits of business, and cannot afford time for sleeping in the day; and it does away with the remark, that, during siesta time, nobody is to be seen in the streets, but Englishmen and dogs. The siesta has its regular season; it is supposed to begin with the summer season, in October, and end at the close of the summer, or passion week. The plodding and industrious world cry out against this practice, as encouraging sloth; but I think a nap after dinner, in warm latitudes, both refreshing and conducive to health.
Houses are not provided with the convenience of bells: their servants are summoned either by calling, or making a noise upon the tables. At meals, the servants and slaves are in attendance at the table.
They retire to rest, in winter, at ten or eleven; in summer, later, as at this season they enjoy the cool of the evening from the azoteas, or from seats near the windows.
A walk in the streets on a fine summer’s night is not uninteresting, from the number of ladies walking and at the windows. Evening is the time devoted by ladies to shopping. A night previous to a holiday or Sunday, the shops are crowded.