The real Argentine: Notes and Impressions of a Year in the Argentine and Uruguay

by J. A. Hammerton

Of old bookshops, alas, there are none. To the literary man, a city without its dusty haunts of the bookworm lacks something that all the loads of “latest books” cannot quite replace. Old books there are to be found in the general bookshops, and they are usually offered at prices so excessive that when I set about the formation of a library of South American works, I was eventually forced to discontinue buying any but the most essential, as they are to be picked up in Paris at a fifth the price and with much less searching. I also found that I could secure in London more and better photographs of Buenos Ayres than in the city itself, and at less cost! One day, requiring urgently a photo of a certain aspect of the statue of San Martín, I had all the likely shops and photographers searched in vain, yet in London I could have got it immediately.

The English booksellers (who, of course, also cater for the small North American “colony”) have the habit of hanging out a notice when the English or North American mail has come to hand with its load of new books and the latest periodicals. And once a week the exiles from Old England or from the United States must feel a quickening of the pulse when they see the announcement in good bold letters “MAIL DAY” or “MAIL ARRIVED” at the doors of these thriving bookshops in the Calle Cangallo. But perhaps a time may come to the exile when his pulse is so scant of home-fed blood that he notes these signs with a dim unseeing eye and feels no flush of the old love for his native land arise in him.

If horseshoes brought luck, every exile might be a millionaire, for nowhere have I seen so many cast shoes in the streets. You could wager on filling a cart with them in one day! The workmanship of the smiths is evidently so crude or so little care is taken of the horses that their shoes are allowed to loosen and fall off without any serious attempt to preserve them. Whatever the reason, they are in all the streets like “common objects of the seashore.” But the electric bulb is to Buenos Ayres as the seaweed or the limpet to a rocky shore. Except along Broadway, no New Yorker ever looks on such prodigality of electric lamps. All the public buildings are permanently outlined with them, so often have they to use them on anniversaries or centenaries; for the Argentine dearly loves to celebrate the centenary of any old forgotten “battle” in his glorious history and the anniversaries of all the “epoch-making” events and great men’s birthdays, by illuminating his public buildings and getting some great living Argentine to declaim a type-written speech to an assembly of distinguidos. Even the Cathedral is garlanded with rows of electric bulbs, so that it may take its part with the public buildings and the retail shops in these extremely frequent electrical celebrations. No wonder the electricians love Buenos Ayres! And very beautiful is the city with its millions of little coloured lamps aglow. I saw it many times thus in eight months; but could have wished for some novelty after the fifth or sixth time.

While electricity is comparatively cheap, and the supply of glass lamps evidently inexhaustible, the plate-glass used for lighting underground warehouses from the sidewalk is evidently at a premium, as I noticed that whenever one of these pavement lights was broken it was not replaced by a piece of thick glass, but by wood covered with a layer of cement!

The Colón Theatre, Buenos Ayres.

A general view of this fine cement-covered building, where a short season of State-aided Opera is given each year.

Having thus far dealt with the streets of Buenos Ayres in general terms, let me now glance at certain of the more famous thoroughfares in particular. Florida must naturally come first, for Florida is a microcosm of Buenos Ayres. It is a tramless street, in so far as the electricos only cross it at every 150 yards. It is, moreover, a “two ways” street, traffic being allowed to pass along it in both directions. It is, as I have already indicated, an extremely narrow street. But it is the great highway of the city; its peculiar pride and joy. There throbs the great heart of el gran pueblo Argentino. On a dry day the motors churn up the dust and line the broken asphalt roadway with long tracks of oil, on which the horses “slither” and fall. On a moist day the dust is converted into a pasty coating, which makes progress on sidewalk or roadway a peril to quadrupeds and bipeds alike. On a really wet day—and often it rains in torrents for days on end—the windows of all the shops become obscured with mud and pedestrians are bespattered from head to heels. The habit of wearing waterproofs with hoods, which they flap over their hats, gives a curious aspect to the men on wet days. I had been told in London that the Anglo-Saxon was spotted in Buenos Ayres by his umbrella. My experience was that the first things a newcomer bought in the month of May or June were a waterproof and an umbrella, and it was comic to see the poor Italian and Spanish immigrants disembarking, each clutching a real old “gamp,” for which he was to find abundant use. The coches, being built for fair weather, offer little protection when it rains, a crude apron of leather being stretched in front of the “fare,” but leaving his head and shoulders exposed to the deluge. Yet one is lucky indeed to secure so much protection on a rainy night, and often have I had to walk to my quarters in the drenching rain after shivering for half an hour in a doorway in the vain hope of getting some condescending cochero to accept my patronage. At other times, when I have secured a coach, I have regretted I have not boldly footed it in the rain, as there would be a painful interlude on the journey while the driver struggled to raise up his fallen steeds. They tumble about on the slippery streets like beginners in a skating rink.

But let us look at Florida when the sun is shining. Its shops are full of interest to the curious. The jewellers are especially numerous, and vie with the best in London or Paris. And their contents are of the most beautiful, for the Argentines have taste in jewellery, even though they are inclined to display it with almost barbaric opulence. The furniture shops are equally prodigal in beautiful and unique wares, with perhaps too marked a tendency to the art nouveau, which has not yet grown old in Buenos Ayres. Comfortable chairs, luxurious lounges, no—their preference is for “style” rather than comfort. The milliners and modistas display the most tempting hats—I have seen one ticketed at 500 pesos—and dresses which are the last word in Parisian ingenuity. They have also a childish delight in grouping life-sized and very lifelike female figures arranged in these vanities in their windows. A waxen lady displaying her startling corsets and snowy underwear has a peculiar fascination not only for the women, but even for the men. One evening I overheard a little ragged urchin, who was standing before such a revelation, pressing his hands across his heart, like Caruso in a love scene, exclaiming to the wax idol of his adoration, “Ah, mi querida señorita!” They begin young in Buenos Ayres!

Florida is so much a Vanity Fair that the shops devoted to the more sober necessities of life seem out of place. Some of these still present a “Wild West” aspect in the motley assortment of their wares, cooking ranges, oil stoves, baths, cork-screws, infants’ foods, boots, bedsteads, and travelling trunks being mingled together in pleasing disorder. But such establishments are gradually being elbowed out by the pompous jeweller, the pianoforte-seller, whose chief business is in pianolas and musical boxes—crowds will stand around a shop door to listen to a musical box at work or an automatic organ, in the evening when the street has been closed to wheeled traffic—the furrier, the high-class stationer, the modista, the chemist, and the optician. Nowhere will you find such opticians. It may be that the syphilitic condition of the South American blood is responsible for the myopia of the Argentines, or it may be no more than a fashion, like the monocle with a certain type of Englishman; but the use of glasses is widespread. There is one establishment in Florida which is a veritable palace of optical appliances, employing many scores of assistants. A considerable part of this business is also associated with land-surveying and the most expensive instruments of that science may be seen for sale in many shop windows in Florida. A peculiarity of Buenos Ayres (and Montevideo also) is the public display of surgical appliances. Brilliantly lighted windows present you with the latest things in operating tables, glass service stands for the instruments, and all sorts of uncanny inventions for cutting you up.