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

by J. A. Hammerton

The collection of wild animals is not so large as that at Buenos Ayres, but their houses are of the cleanest and most varied character, imitating in cement all sorts of quaint dwellings, such as caves, kraals, beehives, and the most fanciful structures in which animals ever were housed. Great artificial grottoes and craggy peaks of cement decorate the grounds, while the water-fowls have all manner of queer little islands, with strange figures of gnomes dotted about them, in the lakelets and canals. The whole place is inspired with the feeling of kindness to animals, but I was never quite able to understand why it contained such large numbers of valuable dogs penned up in great airy cages, unless they were for sale. One of the apes was so well trained, that he used to wander about the grounds free from his keeper and make friends with visitors, often to their discomfiture. On holidays he would go a-cycling, to the delight of the children, and was an expert on roller skates, being in every sense as clever and intelligent as the famous Max and Moritz. The admission to this most interesting public exhibition is only a few pence, and its refining influence on the public cannot be overestimated.

It will be seen from this rough and haphazard sketch of the attractions of Montevideo that we two Gringos had good reason to congratulate ourselves on being able to spend our summer there, rather than in Buenos Ayres. I am free to confess, however, that during the period of Carnival, which lasted for the greater part of February, there were times when we were inclined to think that we had almost too much of a good thing. All those pleasure resorts figure more or less prominently in the long list of festivities arranged by the Carnival Committee, and the town itself becomes one vast exhibition of illuminations. The three principal plazas are decorated with the most elaborate designs in arches of electric lamps. The avenida is festooned from side to side, and all the way from the Plaza Libertad to the Plaza Independencia, with lamps innumerable, while Venetian masts, carrying huge comic faces that are illumined by night, line the pavements.

The Carnival proper, with its processions of decorated coaches and symbolical cars, its battles of flowers, and its comparsas, or companies of masqueraders, lasts only throughout the first week of February, but for a fortnight or more in advance and for a good fortnight afterwards, every boy in the town possesses himself of a tin can and a stick, and as single spies or in battalions, they make night hideous. A passion for causing a noise by any means seems to seize the lower orders, and the whole month of February is practically wasted so far as business and serious affairs are concerned. The newspapers teem with announcements from the secretaries of the different clubs that have been organised to take part in the competition of the comparsas, as prizes are offered for the company making the bravest show as courtiers of Louis XIV, mounted gauchos, warriors of the Cannibal islands, or whatever guise they may determine upon. Albanians, Montenegrins, Rumanians, and other foreign residents who boast a picturesque national costume, don it for the Carnival; girls of the populace, dress up as boys, and boys as girls; false faces of every conceivable kind are worn by merry-makers, who, so disguised, may “chivy” the staider passers-by to their hearts’ content. There are great masque balls in the Solis Theatre, balls for children, and dances innumerable in private houses, into which masqueraders often enter and take part in the fun uninvited and unknown.

The real old spirit of Carnival is abroad, and the whole thing is conducted with so much good taste and with so little rowdyism that it is easy to see why it attracts such large numbers from Buenos Ayres, where the low class element so abused the liberties of Carnival in past years that it was prohibited, and is observed only to a small extent in some of the suburbs. The use of paper confetti and serpentinas, of which tons must be sold during the festivities, litters the streets and festoons lamp-posts, telephone wires, and window railings with streamers which, in the less accessible places, hang for months afterwards as mournful reminders of the merry time that was; but the municipal authorities show a remarkable celerity in clearing away all their temporary provisions for the festivities. By the beginning of March, Montevideo was its own staid self again, and by the end of that month the short holiday season had utterly passed, the bands at the playas had played their last tunes, the Hotel Pocitos and the Parque Hotel had closed their doors, no gaily-dressed throngs were to be seen on the promenades, and people were beginning to think of their social engagements for the coming winter; for it is in the autumn and winter season that the Montevideans themselves enjoy most their social round, when their theatres are occupied by numerous dramatic and operatic companies from Italy, Spain, and France, when political enthusiasts harangue their audiences, and lecturers give their conferencias on literary and scientific subjects.

On the whole, you will see we had not so bad a time in the capital of Uruguay. Memories of our pleasant days and nights there crowd so thickly on me as I write that it is difficult to set them down, and I feel that the most I can do is to touch in the briefest way upon those that come uppermost, leaving it to the reader to imagine how our time was passed. We never seemed to tire of wandering the streets, as the avenida and the two central plazas retained an air of brightness and friendliness to a late hour, and often a military band would be playing between nine and eleven o’clock at night. Until a late hour, the town never assumed the extraordinary nightly dulness of Buenos Ayres, and very pleasant it was, night after night, to see the little family groups meet and gossip with the familiarity of a village. The Bohemian element, represented here, as elsewhere, by wide-awake hats and pendulous locks, had its habitat at the Café Giralda, at the corner of the Plaza Independencia, where most evenings the local poets—it rivals Paisley as a nest of singing birds—journalists, and “coming men” in politics, looked in for a coffee and a chat.

Surely there never was such a town for journalists. I believe you could not throw a stone down any street without hitting a journalist. An American city of the same size would probably possess not more than five or six daily newspapers; Montevideo has a dozen or more! Many of the journalists do not limit their activities to that profession, but are also engaged as lawyers, accountants, and in other businesses, as it is very common to combine several occupations; the warehouse clerk may possibly play in an orchestra in the evenings, and make up some tradesman’s accounts on the Sundays. Which reminds me that every place of business is closed on Sunday, only the restaurants, cafés, and theatres being open.

The shops, of course, do not compare favourably with those of the great metropolis further up the river, for there is not the wealth in the country to justify anything approaching the luxury and plenitude of the Buenos Ayres shopping marts. The largest establishment of the drapery kind is owned by an English firm, and there are several fine warehouses run by French and Italian firms, as well as some of considerable size under native proprietorship. But for the most part, the shops, among which jewellers’ abound, have a provincial rather than a metropolitan touch, though the newer establishments along the Avenida 18 de Julio are coming into line with the most modern ideas of shopkeeping. The habit of the tradesman living on his premises is probably one of the reasons why the early closing, so remarkable in Buenos Ayres, is not observed in Montevideo, to the consequent brightness of the streets. I remember how we used to be misled in our window gazing by the prices of the wares, soon after our arrival, as everything appeared so much cheaper than in Buenos Ayres, until we had become accustomed to the fact that the Uruguayan peso is worth exactly 62 cts. more than the Argentine, being equal to $1.02 United States money. Then we discovered that most things were somewhat more expensive!

Types of the Fantastic Domestic Architecture of Montevideo.