My first object was the cathedral and the tomb of Columbus. In Catholic cities in Europe churches stand always open; the passer-by can enter when he pleases, fall on his knees and say his silent prayers to his Master whom he sees on the altar. In Havana I discovered afterward that, except at special hours, and those as few as might be, the doors were kept locked and could only be opened by a golden key. It was carnival time, however; there were functions going on of various kinds, and I found the cathedral happily accessible. It was a vast building, little ornamented, but the general forms severe and impressive, in the style of the time of Philip II., when Gothic art had gone out in Spain and there had come in the place of it the implacable sternness which expresses the very genius of the Inquisition. A broad flight of stone steps led up to the great door. The afternoon was extremely hot; the curtains were thrown back to admit as much air as possible. There was some function proceeding of a peculiar kind. I know not what it was; something certainly in which the public had no interest, for there was not a stranger present but myself. But the great cathedral officials were busy at work, and liked to be at their ease. On the wall as you entered a box invited contributions, as limosna por el Santo Padre. The service was I know not what. In the middle of the nave stood twelve large chairs arranged in a semicircle; on these chairs sat twelve canons, like a row of mandarins, each with his little white patch like a silver dollar on the crown of his black head. Five or six minor dignitaries, deacons, precentors, or something of that sort, were droning out monotonous recitations like the buzzing of so many humble-bees in the warm summer air. The dean or provost sat in the central biggest chair of all. His face was rosy, and he wiped it from time to time with a red handkerchief; his chin was double or perhaps treble; he had evidently dined, and would or might have slept but for a pile of snuff on his chair arm, with continual refreshments from which he kept his faculties alive. I sat patiently till it was over, and the twelve holy men rose and went their way. I could then stroll about at leisure. The pictures were of the usual paltry kind. On the chancel arch stood the royal arms of Spain, as the lion and the unicorn used to stand in our parish churches till the High Church clergy mistook them for Erastian wild beasts. At the right side of the altar was the monument which I had come in search of; a marble tablet fixed against the wall, and on it a poorly executed figure in high relief, with a ruff about its neck and features which might be meant for anyone and for no one in particular. Somewhere near me there were lying I believed and could hope the mortal remains of the discoverer of the New World. An inscription said so. There was written:
O Restos y Imagen del grande Colon
Mil siglos durad guardados en la Urna
Y en remembranza de nuestra Nacion.
The court poet, or whoever wrote the lines, was as poor an artist in verse as the sculptor in stone. The image of the grande Colon is certainly not 'guarded in the urn,' since you see it on the wall before your eyes. The urn, if urn there be, with the 'relics' in it, must be under the floor. Columbus and his brother Diego were originally buried to the right and left of the altar in the cathedral of St. Domingo. When St. Domingo was abandoned, a commission was appointed to remove the body of Christophe to Havana. They did remove a body, but St. Domingo insists that it was Diego that was taken away, that Christophe remains where he was, and that if Spain wants him Spain must pay for him. I followed the canons into the sacristy where they were unrobing. I did not venture to address either of themselves, but I asked an acolyte if he could throw any light upon the matter. He assured me that there neither was nor could have been any mistake. They had the right body and were in no doubt about it. In more pious ages disputes of this sort were settled by an appeal to miracles. Rival pretenders for the possession of the same bones came, however, at last to be able to produce authentic proofs of miracles which had been worked at more than one of the pretended shrines; so that it was concluded that saints' relics were like the loaves and fishes, capable of multiplication without losing their identity, and of having the property of being in several places at the same moment. The same thing has been alleged of the Holy Coat of Trèves and of the wood of the true cross. Havana and St. Domingo may perhaps eventually find a similar solution of their disagreement over the resting place of Columbus.
I walked back to my hotel up a narrow shady street like a long arcade. Here were the principal shops; several libraries among them, into which I strayed to gossip and to look over the shelves. That so many persons could get a living by bookselling implied a reading population, but the books themselves did not indicate any present literary productiveness. They were chiefly old, and from the Old World, and belonged probably to persons who had been concerned in the late rebellion and whose property had been confiscated. They were absurdly cheap; I bought a copy of Guzman de Alfarache for a few pence.
I had brought letters of introduction to several distinguished people in Havana; to one especially, Don G——, a member of a noble Peninsular family, once an officer in the Spanish navy, now chairman of a railway company and head of an important commercial house. His elder brother, the Marques de ——, called on me on the evening of the day of my arrival; a distinguished-looking man of forty or thereabouts, with courteous high-bred manners, rapid, prompt, and incisive, with the air of a soldier, which in early life he had been. He had travelled, spoke various languages, and spoke to me in admirable English. Don G——, who might be a year or two younger, came later and stayed an hour and a half with me. Let me acknowledge here, and in as warm language as I can express it, the obligations under which I stand to him, not for the personal attentions only which he showed me during my stay in Havana, but for giving me an opportunity of becoming acquainted with a real specimen of Plato's superior men, who were now and then, so Plato said, to be met with in foreign travel. It is to him that I owe any knowledge which I brought away with me of the present state of Cuba. He had seen much, thought much, read much. He was on a level with the latest phases of philosophical and spiritual speculation, could talk of Darwin and Spencer, of Schopenhauer, of Strauss, and of Renan, aware of what they had done, aware of the inconvenient truths which they had forced into light, but aware also that they had left the most important questions pretty much where they found them. He had taken no part in the political troubles of the late years in Cuba, but he had observed everything. No one knew better the defects of the present system of government; no one was less ready to rush into hasty schemes for violently mending it.
The ten years' rebellion, of which I had heard so much and knew so little, he first made intelligible to me. Cuba had been governed as a province of Spain, and Spain, like other mother countries, had thought more of drawing a revenue out of it for herself than of the interests of the colony. Spanish officials had been avaricious, and Spanish fiscal policy oppressive and ruinous. The resources of the island in metals, in minerals, in agriculture were as yet hardly scratched, yet every attempt to develop them was paralysed by fresh taxation. The rebellion had been an effort of the Cuban Spaniards, precisely analogous to the revolt of our own North American colonies, to shake off the authority of the court of Madrid and to make themselves independent. They had fought desperately and had for several years been masters of half the island. They had counted on help from the United States, and at one time they seemed likely to get it. But the Americans could not see their way to admitting Cuba into the Union, and without such a prospect did not care to quarrel with Spain on their account. Finding that they were to be left to themselves, the insurgents came to terms and Spanish authority was re-established. Families had been divided, sons taking one side and fathers the other, as in our English Wars of the Roses, perhaps for the same reason, to save the family estates whichever side came out victorious. The blacks had been indifferent, the rebellion having no interest for them at all. They had remained by their masters, and they had been rewarded after the peace by complete emancipation. There was not a slave now in Cuba. No indemnity had been granted to their owners, nor had any been asked for, and the business on the plantations had gone on without interruption. Those who had been slaves continued to work at the same locations, receiving wages instead of food and maintenance; all were satisfied at the change, and this remarkable revolution had been carried out with an ease and completeness which found no parallel in any other slave-owning country.
In spite of rebellion, in spite of the breaking up and reconstruction of the social system, in spite of the indifferent administration of justice, in spite of taxation, and the inexplicable appropriation of the revenue, Cuba was still moderately prosperous, and that it could flourish at all after trials so severe was the best evidence of the greatness of its natural wealth. The party of insurrection was dissolved, and would revive again only under the unlikely contingency of encouragement from the United States. There was a party, however, which desired for Cuba a constitution like the Canadian—Home Rule and the management of its own affairs—and as the black element was far outnumbered and under control, such a constitution would not be politically dangerous.
If the Spanish Government does not mend its ways, concessions of this kind may eventually have to be made, though the improvement to be expected from it is doubtful. Official corruption is engrained in the character and habits of the Spanish people. Judges allowed their decisions to be 'influenced' under Philip III. as much as to-day in the colonies of Queen Christina; and when a fault is the habit of a people, it survives political reforms and any number of turnings of the kaleidoscope.
The encouraging feature is the success of emancipation. There is no jealousy, no race animosity, no supercilious contempt of whites for 'niggers.' The Spaniards have inherited a tinge of colour themselves from their African ancestors, and thus they are all friends together. The liberated slave can acquire and own land if he wishes for it, but as a rule he prefers to work for wages. These happy conditions arise in part from the Spanish temperament, but chiefly from the numerical preponderance of the white element, which, as in the United States, is too secure to be uneasy. The black is not encouraged in insubordination by a sense that he could win in a contest of strength, and the aspect of things is far more promising for the future than in our own islands. The Spaniards, however inferior we may think them to ourselves, have filled their colonies with their own people and are reaping the reward of it. We have so contrived that such English as had settled in the West Indies on their own account are leaving them.
Spain, four centuries ago, was the greatest of European nations, the first in art, or second only to Italy, the first in arms, the first in the men whom she produced. She has been swept along in the current of time. She fought against the stream of tendency, and the stream proved too strong for her, great as she was. The modern spirit, which she would not have when it came in the shape of the Reformation, has flowed over her borders as revolution, not to her benefit, for she is unable to assimilate the new ideas. The old Spain of the Inquisition is gone; the Spain of to-day is divided between Liberalism and Catholic belief. She is sick in the process of the change, and neither she nor her colonies stand any longer in the front lines in the race of civilisation; yet the print of her foot is stamped on the New World in characters which will not be effaced, and may be found to be as enduring as our own.