Part III
Europe and America
I
THE AMERICAN DEFINITION OF PROGRESS
The two visits I paid to South and North America between 1907 and 1909 were the result of a lucky chance, not of a prearranged plan. In 1906, after having been plunged for ten years in the study of Roman history, I had no idea of crossing the Atlantic, much less of writing a book on America and Europe. I had never dreamt that my long researches in the great cemetery of the ancient world might start me suddenly one day along the road which leads to the New World. But destiny willed it so. In November of 1906, by invitation of the Collège de France, I delivered in Paris a course of lectures on the history of Augustus, in which I summarised the fourth and fifth volumes of my Greatness and Decline of Rome. There happened to be at Paris at that time a distinguished Argentine, Señor Emilio Mitré, son of that General Mitré who was one of the Republic’s most conspicuous politicians during the second half of the nineteenth century. He himself was a man of importance in the political world, and proprietor of the Nacion, which is not only the biggest, most serious, and most authoritative newspaper in Latin America, but one of the leading newspapers of the world. I had contributed to this paper for years, so I called on Mitré in Paris. He came to hear my lectures, and the day before the concluding one, November 29th,—he was due to sail for Buenos Aires on December 1st,—he came to me with a proposal that I should go to Argentina and there deliver some lectures. I accepted, impelled chiefly by curiosity to see that vast and rich country which, for the last ten years, had been so much talked about in Italy, and to which during the last half-century so many Italians had emigrated. I accordingly prepared my lectures, and on June 7, 1907, I sailed from Genoa for Buenos Aires with my wife and little boy. Every European who crosses the Atlantic and can wield his pen with any sort of effect writes his impressions when he gets back. Naturally, therefore, I too had promised several reviews and one publisher to bring back with me a volume of “Impressions of Argentina.”
At six P.M. on June 8th, we put in to Barcelona. Directly the steamer came alongside, the Brazilian consul came on board in search of me. He handed me a despatch from Baron di Rio Branco, the Brazilian Minister of Foreign affairs, who invited me in the name of the Brazilian Academy to stop at Rio, and read a paper there. I begged the consul to telegraph to Baron di Rio Branco that I could not stop on my voyage out, as I was expected at Buenos Aires; but that on my return I should be delighted to accept his kind invitation. As the steamer was to put in at Rio, I could arrange matters with him en route. As the steamer resumed her journey, and passed out of the Mediterranean into the vast wilderness of the ocean, I busied myself with some books of philosophy which I had brought along, amongst them, some of Buddha’s discourses, which had just been published in an Italian translation.
On June 24th, at 5 P.M., we reached the bay of Rio, one of the most marvellous spots in the world. But while we were gazing from the deck in admiration at the gloomy mountains standing round about and the woods which covered them, at the city rising from the sea towards the mountains, and the roseate glow of the setting sun upon the bay, we descried a steam launch laden with people coming towards us. It was a deputation from the Brazilian Academy and from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was coming to take us for a motor tour through the city, and afterwards to take us to dinner at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where Baron di Rio Branco was expecting us. We hastened ashore, and found some motors waiting for us at the Pharoux jetty. We jumped in, and were off.
As long as life lasts, I shall never forget that drive at sunset, between the dying light of evening and the first gleams of the electric lamps, which were just beginning to light up the marvellous city built in the midst of the remains of the primeval forest on the borders of the sea, on the hills, and on the mountains. I shall never forget our dash through endless streets, with hurried glimpses of multi-coloured houses, sumptuous palaces half hidden in superb gardens, avenues of gigantic palms which stretched far away into the night, glorious promenades along the seashore, and mountain peaks which beetled above the city. I longed to stop the car. But time pressed, and after having hurriedly traversed the whole city, we reached, about 7.30 P.M., Itamaraty (as the palace of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is called), where a select company of men and women were awaiting us in rooms ablaze with light. As soon as we had been introduced, dinner was served; a most sumptuous dinner, into which, among the most luscious ragoûts of the French cuisine, the thoughtful Minister of Foreign Affairs had introduced several Brazilian dishes. I remember the palmiti, a dish of palm-pith, cooked as we cook asparagus, and really delicious; and bakury, a white fruit from the equator, preserved in syrup, which reminded me strongly of the smell of magnolia and gave me the illusion of eating marvellous flowers.
Speeches followed the dinner, whereupon we returned on shipboard, but before doing so I had arranged in a corner of the drawing-room with Baron di Rio Branco, Giuseppe Graça Aranha, now Brazilian Minister at the Hague, and a distinguished writer, who was then the Minister’s secretary, and Machado de Assis, the great writer who was then President of the Brazilian Academy, that I would stop a couple of months in Brazil on my way back, repeat my Buenos Aires lectures, and visit the country. At 11 P.M., the steamer weighed anchor and left the dark bay, in which there was nothing now to be seen but the glitter of an infinite number of tiny lights.
That night, however, I did not sleep, so stunned and dazzled was I by that first fantastic glimpse of America, which will remain one of the most singular experiences of my life, though, so far, my life has not been devoid of strange and curious chances. I had started from Europe with no, or practically no, knowledge of the two Americas, excepting the little I had picked up here and there in books and papers which I happened to read. Consequently, my opinion of America was the same as that formed by other Europeans: that it was the country of material realities, of business, of fortunes made rapidly, of wealth stripped of every ornament, poetry, beauty, and ideal refinement; that rude and bustling America with which all cultured Europeans love to contrast Europe as the continent of the Ideal, where beauty, wisdom, and every refinement of civil life flourish. And behold! my first impression of America was as of a strip of India, and the first American city I had seen reminded me of the East, and especially, for some reason or other, of Bagdad, or rather, of the somewhat fantastic idea of Bagdad which I had conceived in the days when I read more often and more ardently than I do now, the Orientales of Victor Hugo, and the other romantic poets of the middle of the nineteenth century. And in that city, I had been present at a succulent and magnificent banquet, at which, amidst the refinements of the old civilisation of Europe, I had tasted the unknown rarities of the tropics, in the company of elegant, cultured, and refined guests, with whom I had discussed in French the latest literary and artistic novelties, as if we had been on the banks of the Seine. Was it a reality or a dream?
Quite other surprises were, however, in store for me on my wanderings in America. Four days later, on June 27th, we reached Buenos Aires, where we were joyfully welcomed by a number of kind folk, who had spared neither trouble nor care to make our stay agreeable to us. Then began four months of really strenuous life, to borrow Theodore Roosevelt’s favourite expression. Conferences, receptions, banquets, visits to hospitals, schools, factories, workshops, and ranches; trips by boat, train, and motor-car. It was a real moto perpetuo. I passed the month of July at Buenos Aires. In August, I plunged into the interior, visiting successively Rosario, Mendoza, Cordova, Tucuman, Santiago, dell ’Estero, Santa Fé, Paraná, and penetrating right up to the foot of the Andes. I travelled about ten thousand kilometres in the railway train, observing, collecting documents, asking and answering questions, and discussing problems. All these, however, were labours less tiring than another, which became by degrees the principal preoccupation of my mind during those two months: the endeavour to put to flight a demon which kept obstinately springing up before my eyes, in conversations, on journeys, during visits, during dinner-parties, notwithstanding all the efforts I made to keep it at a distance; and which seemed determined to reappear at every moment and wound me in the inmost recesses of my European pride and in my most touchy European susceptibilities. What was this demon? It was American progress. Every day I had pointed out to me on my rapid journeys, immense and marvellous ranches, herds of many thousand head, markets overflowing with wealth, magnificent schools, and superb hospitals. I was given descriptions and demonstrations, in figures and in fact, of the rapid spread of cultivation, the increase of production, the bewildering prosperity of the banks, the expansion of Buenos Aires, now become the second city of the Latin world in wealth and population, after Paris. They were all interesting things to observe and study. Nevertheless, too many of those who showed them to me implicitly or explicitly established comparisons between this rapid increase and transformation in everything Argentine, and the more deliberate advance of the great nations of Europe, and deduced the conclusion that Argentina was a more progressive and advanced country.