The Tigre is reached by railway in twenty minutes, and a skiff bespoken in advance awaits you at the station. But Señor Villanueva, whom nothing can daunt, wanted to try a new road, said to be just finished, in his motor-car. Now, carriage roads are not a strong point in this country, where no stones are to be found. However, after a journey that recalled at times the passage over the rollers at Auteuil Lock, we duly and miraculously reached the Tigre without quite wrecking the car, but not without some damage to our more sensitive and intimate organs. Wherefore we were assailed by a longing for the chaises-longues and easy-chairs of our hotel, which drew us forthwith to the booking-office of the railway-station, whence modestly and quickly we made our way back.
Since the subject of hotel furnishings thus comes under my pen, why not say at once that in the Argentine, as in Brazil, the internal arrangements of the houses show that the greater part of the time is spent out of doors? Italy, with its open-air life, was naturally the land to which the Argentino turned for architects to supply florid furniture, meant rather to look at than to use; and when to this is added cheap German goods with their clumsy designs, one may be pardoned for finding a lack of grace as of comfort, to a French way of thinking. [20] In aristocratic salons the best Parisian upholsterers have at least left their mark—with a little overcrowding in effect, if the truth must be told. In a few, where "antiques" were discernible, there were evidences of an appreciation of just proportions and simplicity. But my criticisms must be taken in the most general way possible.
It is in the hotels that one feels the farthest from Europe, and this in spite of a manifest attempt to do things well. A continual change of servants and a bad division of labour ensure infinite discomfort for the traveller. There is, it is true, central heating, but it works badly. Is the pampero blowing? The pipes of the radiators shake the window-panes with their tempestuous snorting and bubbling, waking you out of your sleep with the suddenness of their noise; but they diffuse only cold air. [21] An electric heating apparatus, hastily put in, must be used to supplement the other. Do you want to lock up some papers? You may, perhaps, after a long search, find a key in your room, but it will assuredly fit none of the locks. As I was tiresome enough to insist, the manager, anxious to oblige me, ordered his own safe to be placed in my apartment, with all his accounts therein. When I found the drawer that was placed at my disposal, I found money in it! Oh, marvellous hospitality!
To the new houses in the town chimneys are being added. The European who comes to the Argentine for the winter months—June, July, August—can be delighted with the change. But, meantime, he suffers keenly from the cold, for if the sun shines perseveringly in a cloudless sky, an icy south wind will prove very trying to Europeans who are not accustomed to such sharp contrasts. [22] As for the summer season, which I have not tried, every one talked of its charms, the greatest being, apparently, to go and wipe one's brow at the Tigre, at Mar del Plata, or on the estancia, in default of the mountain resorts within reach of the Brazilians.
It is difficult to speak of Argentine cookery—which is rather international than local—always excepting those households that boast a French chef. The influence of Italy, with her macaroni and her cheese, predominates. The vegetables are mediocre; the fruit too tropical, or, if European, spoilt by the effect of the tropics. Lobsters and European fish, imported frozen, are not to be recommended; table water is excellent. The national dishes, puchero, or boiled beef, good when the animal has not been slaughtered the same morning; asado, lamb, roasted whole—savoury souvenir of my excursions in Greece, where it is to be met under the name of lamb à la palikare. I might add a long list whose sole interest would be the strange-sounding names given to familiar dishes. Still, as the main conditions of man and communities are necessarily unvarying, is it not in appearances and forms of expression that we find variety?
FOOTNOTES:
[15] I might instance a statesman who has all the externals and probably also the prudent wisdom of a pure cacique of olden times.
[16] I shall not take the liberty of attempting a description of Argentine beauty. Let me only mention their large black eyes, heavily shaded, the delicately golden skin, beneath which there pulses a generous blood, and the sweet and ever youthful smile.
[17] "Six dresses are sufficient for me for one season in Paris; in Buenos Ayres I want quite a dozen," says an Argentine belle who was until recently a member of the Parisian diplomatic world. The more limited circles of Argentine society and the proportionately keener rivalry of personal luxury may explain the difference.