Poor there are in abundance, and very much in evidence. Take a walk along the Paseo de Julio and you will see as many of the tattered army of Poverty as you will encounter in London, and in London you should see exactly five times as many, to maintain a proportion relative to the size of the cities. Beggars are less noticeable, chiefly, I fancy, because there is no room for them in the streets; yet I have often been asked for alms in Florida, while looking at a shop window—the only chance the beggar has of practising his (more often her) profession, as to stand in the gutter for more than a minute would be to invite a violent death. To Britishers, a saddening sight is presented by the gin-sodden Irishmen and abandoned Englishmen who pester their fellow-countrymen in Florida and San Martín, with the old familiar yarn about losing their job as ship’s carpenter and the certainty of getting a new start if they can only raise the money for a suit of clothes. Scores of times have I had to turn these British rascals away, and some of them became as familiar in my daily walks as old friends. If ever one saw a face that had been made repulsive by drink, a nose that was reddening with malt, it was invariably the guilty possession of a Britisher.
Mention of familiar faces reminds me of one of the most disagreeable features of the Buenos Ayres streets. In this matter I am a thoroughly prejudiced witness, so I must explain my attitude. To me, one of the abiding charms of London is that I can walk its dear familiar streets with their ever changing throngs, without having momently to raise my hat, or to stop every few yards to endure the idle chatter of some acquaintance. I love London for itself and I know where to find my friends when I want them. To have them bumping up against me at every corner would come between me and my London. It would destroy completely that feeling of immensity, that sobering sense of the greatness of humanity, which London imposes on the reflective mind. But in Buenos Ayres, if you have noticed a man in a railway train, if you have spoken to a passenger on the river boat, if you have been introduced to somebody at a Belgrano dinner-party, you will surely see them all in Florida next day. This parochial condition is the result of the central part of the town being confined to a few narrow streets. In all Latin countries there is also a sheep-like flocking to certain beaten tracks, as in Paris every boulevardier and almost any visitor is sure to be “spotted” if you but sit long enough at the Café de la Paix. Although the admirably planned and imposing Avenida de Mayo was opened some twenty years ago to give Buenos Ayres a new heart, it is still comparatively unpopular, while the congested Calle Florida is more congested than ever.
Other faces that grow familiar to one in the streets are those of the porters or changadores. Brawny Italians or Gallegos usually, these lazy and exigent vendors of unskilled labour stand in braces at the corners of many of the central streets, a nuisance to passers-by. They are armed with a rope or with a large piece of packing cloth folded and laid across their left shoulder. This is at once their instrument and their insignia. If you want anything removed, you send out for one of these gentry, and if he is feeling strong enough he may condescend to oblige you for a fee which would command a visit from a skilled medical man in New York. They will fuss and blow over a little job which should be no more than a mere incident in the day’s work. Once I was so fortunate as to get one to carry a box of books for me up three flights of stairs, for a trifle—five pesos, or two dollars—which he pocketed without a word of thanks. They must be prosperous villains these street porters and the malorganisation of labour gives them their opportunity, as nobody sending you any moderately heavy article will undertake to do more than leave it at the foot of the stairs. If you happen to require it three stairs up that is entirely your affair.
Turning from the people in the streets to the shops, one is struck by the extraordinary preponderance of chemists and druggists. Almost every other cornershop is a farmacia. And it is pretty certain to be a farmacia inglésa or francesa, or alemana, or italiana—rarely española! But all the same the “English chemist” may be an enterprising Argentine who knows no more than “zank you ver’ mooch,” which he will utter with a self-satisfied smile after you have conducted all your business in his own language. And he ought to “zank you” in half a dozen languages at once for what you have to give him in exchange for what you get. The farmacia is to Buenos Ayres, and indeed to the whole of the Argentine and Uruguay, what the public-house is to England—the “corner shop.” In the country towns it actually takes the place of the village inn and is the rendezvous of the local gossips. Magnificent establishments are these farmacias. New York has nothing to show in the line of artistic shops that will excel the best of them. Indeed, in no other great city have I seen drug-stores to be compared with certain of these in respect to the grandeur of their carved wood adornments and the completeness of their equipment. Their numerous assistants usually wear long white linen coats, after the style of hospital doctors, which give them a pleasant air of cleanliness they might otherwise lack.
With a drugshop at every corner, buzzing with customers, the unconscious liar who can speak no ill of Buenos Ayres will blandly tell you it is “the healthiest city in the world.” As a matter of undiluted fact, it is a paradise of the doctor and the patent-pill-man, largely due to its curiously trying climate. One often comments on the abundant evidence of the patent medicine seller in the United States—in the advertising columns of the newspapers, on the hoardings in the streets—but nothing we have amongst us in that respect equals the insistence with which you are reminded of your aching stomach at every turn in Buenos Ayres—if, by lucky chance, your stomach itself has forgotten for a moment to remind you of its troubles.
Statute of San Martín in the Plaza named after that Hero of the Republic.
On the left, the domes of the Art Gallery are to be seen, and on the right a portion of the Plaza Hotel.