When the station of the Central Argentine Railway at Retiro has been completed, Buenos Ayres will possess one of the finest railway buildings in the world, but during my stay the termini of that railway and the B. A. P. were no better than some of the shabbier country stations in the United States, though the Southern, at Plaza Constitucion, has a handsome edifice, and the Western, at Plaza Once, quite a presentable railway station.
And talking of railway stations, I shall make this the end of my journey round the public buildings of Buenos Ayres—at least for the present. I have not sought to do more than to give the reader—as in the fleeting glimpses of a strange land from the window of a speeding train—a rapid outline of the material Buenos Ayres. This splendid city of sham! If I may not appear to have been deeply impressed with its beauties which have been so floridly pictured by more partial pens, that is probably because I have sought to bear in mind there are other great cities in the world. To the untravelled British provincial, who has shipped straight from some English port to the River Plate, I can well imagine the Argentine metropolis is the greatest wonder of the world. The most devoted admirer of Buenos Ayres that I met during my stay there was a gentleman from Kilmarnock, Scotland. He had never seen London; had never previously been out of his native Scotland; but his ten years in the Argentine capital had convinced him that it stood unique in the world and in all time as the most glorious example of the power of man in the making of cities. That renegade Scot, I quite believe, looks forward with satisfaction to living out his life there and being hurried one day, some twenty hours after he dies, to the sweet rest of Chacarita! But he is a type one may easily allow for (I always show a marked approval of their well-seasoned opinions) and pass on. The intelligent writer, however, who so often, from hasty observation or from interested motives, conveys a too flattering impression of a town does incomparably more harm than a whole wilderness of inexperienced and unobservant enthusiasts. So many such writers have already described the outward show of Buenos Ayres as a sun without spots, that my observations may at least restore the spots. They are set down in all honesty and with no desire to belittle the truly commendable things of Buenos Ayres, in appraising which I trust I shall not be held guilty of any niggard spirit. But, after all, the buildings of any city are no more than the husk, and though we must break the shell to come at the kernel, it is on the latter we have our mind in the progress of the operation. Thus I am in these chapters on the outward appearance of Buenos Ayres engaged in nothing more than the breaking of the shell—and perhaps a few well-established illusions at the same time.
CHAPTER VIII
SOME “PASEOS” IN AND ABOUT BUENOS AYRES
A paseo signifies no more than a stroll, a walk, a promenade. But the modern Argentine usually goes a-strolling in a coche or a motor-car. He has an ingrain horror of exercising his legs. The British resident soon falls into this modern manner, either out of a frank desire to ruffle it with the best of them or merely because one must eventually follow the line of least resistance. It demands a certain amount of will-power to walk when all the world’s on wheels. Thus, as there is but a single paseo where one can display one’s gorgeous motor-car, or hired carriage, all the world makes for that and stares at everybody else. Palermo! Oh, potent word to local minds! Palermo is the one paseo known to all. In that one word is summed up most of what the citizens of Buenos Ayres know of outdoor enjoyment. There are other paseos that do not call for a coche; where you don’t go merely to look at the crowd and be looked at; consequently these are left to the stray visitor or the Gringo, who knows no better.
But first let us talk of Palermo. It is as Hyde Park to London, as the Bois to Paris. And it is an infinitely greater source of pride to the Buenos-Ayrian than Hyde Park to the Londoner or the Bois to the Parisian. I met a young English lady who had been brought to the River Plate as a child and after growing to womanhood had returned to England for a year or two, but had now come back to Buenos Ayres again. “I just love Palermo,” she said ecstatically. “It is unique; there is nothing like it in all London.” I received the information with due humility.
Palermo consists of a mile or so of carriage driveway which is level and tarred (differing in these respects from every other bit of road in the Argentine), a pond or two, and some trees. Materially, that is all. But it is in the spirit of Palermo that lies its fascination, and it may truly be said of it that “for those who like this sort of thing it is just the sort of thing they will like,” as will presently appear when I endeavour to describe that spirit. No, outwardly there is nothing quite like it in London, nor in New York: the driveways in Hyde Park or in Central Park are immensely smoother, the lawns are incomparably more velvety, the trees more umbrageous, while a dozen or more Palermos could be cut out of a corner of the Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, without noticing the loss! But all that is by the way. Palermo is not to be sneered at as the lung of a stifling city. There are instances of people going along quite well with but one lung. The man with one lung, however, has scant reason for crowing over his normal fellow-creatures.
Palermo, taken at what it is and eschewing comparisons, is very fine and reflects the highest credit on the municipal authorities of Buenos Ayres. They have done wonders with the most unpromising material. Yet as it stands to-day it is nothing, I believe, to what it is likely to become.
To reach this haunt of River Plate fashion you will hire a coche (taking care to select one of the minority that are cleanly upholstered and well-horsed) or you may engage a motor-car, for there is an abundance of splendid automobiles to be hired by the hour, with nothing but the tell-tale taximeter to show that it is not a luxurious private car. Or you may take either train or trolley car. Nor is it any great distance to walk thither from the centre of the town. I have gone every way, for after a time it becomes “the only thing to do,” and when you have reached that stage you almost invariably take a coche. The favourite route is by way of the Plaza San Martín and the Avenida Alvear, the Fifth Avenue of Buenos Ayres. The district lying between the Plaza and Recoleta is the most fashionable residential quarter, and along the fine Avenida Alvear stand many of the most beautiful private mansions in Buenos Ayres. Here for the first time in wandering about the town one notes hardly any intermingling of the ostentatious and the mean. Everywhere else that strikes the observer most forcibly—the extraordinary way in which the palace is placed alongside the hovel, so that, separated only by a matter of two or three feet of distance and the thickness of a wall, may be a group of thieves discussing their affairs over drinks in an evil-smelling “dive” and a perfumed gathering of distinguidos. Time, of course, will cure this in the older quarters of the town, but the indifference to the nature of one’s neighbours is evidently deep-rooted, as in the Avenida Alvear itself there is at least one very common drinking saloon in the lower part of a handsome new building, and further out toward Palermo a fine new block of flats is disfigured by a noisy bar on the street level. On the whole, however, this district is so free from the lower class of trades people and the meaner sort of building that in this respect it reminds one of the aristocratic quarter of any great European town.
The Plaza San Martín is a noble square, plentifully studded with trees, flowering shrubs and flower beds. The grass is coarse and scraggy, the close-cropped, velvety lawn being here impossible of attainment owing to natural difficulties of soil and weather. In the centre of the plaza stands a splendid monument to the national hero. It is of the familiar equestrian type, showing San Martín, astride the usual prancing steed, pointing with his right hand to the path that leads to glory or the grave. The statue, a very spirited work, stands on a high pedestal of granite, in front of which a fine figure of a Roman warrior is seated holding aloft an oak branch, while four other bronze groups typifying military prowess and victory, each in itself a considerable monument, occupy granite pedestals at the extreme corners of the wide-spreading sculptured base. Inset in the main pedestal are battle groups in high relief and the lower parts of the stone-work are also enriched with many similar panels of smaller size, in which the stirring events of South America’s struggle for independence, so little known in North America or in Europe, are vigorously depicted. Withal, a very handsome and worthy memorial, of enduring stone and bronze. In art and craft it is French, having been transported from France with much ceremony and at no small cost. It is a noteworthy ornament of the city; a legitimate source of pride to the patriotic.