To keep these lively youngsters from all sorts of monkeyisms, such as licking the dividing spoon, putting their knives into their mouths, and making as much noise over a plate of soup as one does in a bath, left the governess scant time to enjoy her meals, and such manners among children are not altogether exceptional in Argentine homes. Young people are pampered to a dangerous degree, and while still mere children they have more pocket money to dispose of on their own little selfish pleasures than many a well-to-do Englishman spends on himself.

Although there is great and growing popularity for all forms of English sport, and especially football, the boys of the moneyed classes are usually somewhat effeminate in their manners. Those of the household above mentioned who were old enough to go to school were taken there, a distance of about a quarter of a mile, under care of a nurse or the governess, in one of the various motor cars owned by the father, and at the hour of dismissal each day they were brought home in the same manner. I used to think it quite one of the characteristic sights of Buenos Ayres to notice the groups of nurses and governesses at the doors of the better-class schools, waiting to receive their little charges and conduct them as far as two or three squares away by electric tram, when the parents could not afford to send a motor or a horse-carriage for that purpose. Many of these helpless boys would be twelve years old! This is understandable in the case of the girls, nay imperative, but it tends to make the boys timorous and unmanly, afraid even to cross the street alone. In view of the universal pampering of the children, it speaks highly for the essential virility of Argentine character that the youth of the country cannot, as a whole, be said to lack in manliness; they seem to throw off in adolescence the effeminacy which their boyhood training is admirably adapted to foster in them.

Of familiar domestic intercourse, such as the social relationships of British and North American home-life make possible, there is absolutely none in the Argentine, or, indeed, throughout the whole of South America—excepting always those families in which Anglo-Saxon influence predominates. The drawing-room of most of the better-class houses is a gorgeously furnished chamber, in which the furniture, on most days of the year, is hidden under dust covers, and where the blinds are seldom raised. It exists for state occasions only, when the starchiest formality is observed, and these are by no means numerous and always duly announced in the social column of the daily papers. The lady of the house passes most of her time between her bedroom and her boudoir, and it is in the latter, if she cultivate a circle of lady friends, that she will sip afternoon tea with her callers, although you will occasionally come across an announcement in the social news stating that some lady is going to give a “five o’clock tea room” at four o’clock, and inviting her acquaintances to be present. There is a great partiality for the use of English phrases, and “five o’clock tea,” together with the addition of “room,” is often used without any clear understanding of its meaning.

But the Argentine mother, although her ways are not our ways, might in certain respects serve as an example to English and American mothers; entering not in the slightest degree into any of her husband’s concerns that lie outside of their home, her devotion is entirely to her children, who will in large measure reflect her standard of culture, and when the lady of the house has had a European training, there will be nothing lacking in the behaviour of her children.

This bond between the mother and children is very strong, reaching out through all the living generations, so that even a great-grandmother—and there are many, as the women marry young, grandmothers of forty being not uncommon—enters very intimately into the lives of all her progeny, who vie with each other in their love for her. The community of feeling between all members and branches of the family is most pronounced. The importance of this in knitting together the fabric of Argentine society cannot be overestimated.

Unlike the French housewife, the Argentine lady does not greatly concern herself about the finances of the household, merely giving directions for the expenditure, but usually leaving it to her husband to settle the accounts. In this she shows something of the “grand lady” and also something of the lady of the harem, acknowledging that it is no part of a woman’s business to understand the value of money. Her conception of her office is to be pleasing and attractive to her husband and devoted to her children, in which duties she finds her full content. The very formality of her name indicates how far the Argentine lady is removed from the possibilities of Pankhurstism. She is proud to be known as Señora María Martínez de Fuentes, thus indicating that she is María Martínez of Fuentes, the latter being her husband’s name. It is an admission of husband’s rights which could not exist in a country of self-assertive womenkind.

By the way, it may be interesting here to explain the peculiar customs that regulate family names in South America, and lead to continuous mistakes on the part of Englishmen and Americans, who have not taken the trouble to familiarise themselves with them. I have just explained that when a lady marries she retains her maiden name and adds to it, with the preposition de, the name of her husband. Almost certainly, however, her husband would have two family names; the paternal and maternal. Let us suppose his name was Fuentes Mattos, the first his father’s family name and the second his mother’s family name. His wife, in adding his name to hers, ignores his mother’s name, which is of secondary importance, and in many cases is entirely dropped. On the other hand, the children of this imaginary couple would be named Fuentes Martínez, thus indicating that the father was a Fuentes and the mother a Martínez, so that we have the following varieties of nomenclature in one family:

When we remember that the names of the grandparents and the grandchildren will all pass through similar changes, it will be seen how complicated South American family names may become. Still, always bearing in mind the simple rules I have illustrated, there is no difficulty in identification, and relationships can be much more clearly established than with our cruder system.

There is a tendency in the Argentine, due to admiration of British brevity, to ignore the maternal name entirely, whereas on the Pacific coast it is the universal practice to use only the initial, so that Señor José Fuentes Mattos would there be expected to sign himself José Fuentes M. As it is, in the Argentine a man will sometimes write his name in full and at other times use only the initial for the maternal name, or drop it entirely; but for Señor José Fuentes Mattos to receive a letter from England addressed Señor J. F. Mattos is an insult he does not readily forgive. Naturally, that is what happens daily in business correspondence between North and South America, and I well remember a traveller for an American firm coming to me to solve the difficulties of a long list of names he had received from his head office, in every one of which the surname was represented by an initial and the maternal name written in full.