The sculpture mania has Buenos Ayres in its grip. The Latin peoples have ever been more partial to that art than the Anglo-Saxon, but the Argentines are in danger of touching an extreme that borders on the foolish. Here in the Plaza San Martín there are two more groups—in marble these—one being a very striking work indeed, entitled La Doute. It stands near the southeast corner of the plaza and is so shadowed by trees that it baffled all my efforts to secure a really good photograph of it. A little reminiscent of the Rodin manner—Rodin is one of the gods of the Buenos Ayrians—this work represents a great muscular young man, semi-nude, with perplexed brow, pondering a book, to which an old wizened figure points with skinny finger while he peers into the face of the young man. “Doubt” is writ large thereon; but whether the old man seeks to dispel the doubt or is the cause thereof I am myself in doubt. His old face always reminded me of the bust of Voltaire in the Louvre. Perhaps there’s a clue in that. The other group is called Los primeros fríos (The first cold winds) and represents a naked old man seated with a naked child at his knee. It always impressed me as a peculiarly stupid work, though technically good, and beyond reminding perspiring humanity in the suffocating summer time that there are occasions when the cold winds blow, I can imagine no good purpose that it serves.
Another feature of the plaza is an artificial rockery which, with another of the same, though somewhat higher, in the Plaza Constitucion, is the only thing in the shape of a mountain for scores of miles round about Buenos Ayres!
Bedroom of Distinguished Visitors’ Suite in “Prensa” Office.
The Gorgeously Decorated Salon in the “Prensa” Office.
Such is the Plaza San Martín—as handsome a public square as you will find in any great city. The pity is that it is frequented chiefly by riff-raff, and the footways being laid with tiny pebbles, one would fain don his golf-shoes to walk thereon. It is surrounded by a series of private palaces, notably those of Mihanovich, a millionaire whose life-story is a romance, and that of the Paz family, already mentioned.
We continue towards Palermo by the Avenida Alvear, noting the many mansions on the way in which good taste and vulgar ostentation often stand side by side, though, on the whole, good taste prevails. These gorgeous homes are frequently left to the care of a few servants for twelve months on end, as the wealthy Argentine says to his native town, “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not Paris more!” And while he does homage to his homeland by adorning the Avenida Alvear with a palatial residence, he spends most of his time in Paris—and I don’t blame him. The late Dr. Paz lived for twenty years on the Riviera and there he died. Good Americans, ’tis said, go to Paris when they die. Wealthy South Americans go to Paris when they live and are brought back to Buenos Ayres when they die!