It takes a stranger from the North some little time to accustom himself to the inversion of seasons and of the points of the compass in the southern hemisphere. For instance, "a lovely spring day in October," or "a chilly autumn evening in May," rings curiously to our ears; as it does to hear of a room with a cool southern aspect, or to hear complaints about the hot north wind. Personally I did not dislike the north wind; it was certainly moist and warm, but it smelt deliciously fragrant with a faint spicy odour after its journey over the great Brazilian forests on its way from the Equator. All Argentines seemed to feel the north wind terribly; it gave them headaches, and appeared to dislocate their entire nervous system. In the Law Courts it was held to be a mitigating circumstance should it be proved that a murder, or other crime of violence, had been committed after a long spell of north wind. Many women went about during a north wind with split beans on their temples to soothe their headaches, a comical sight till one grew accustomed to it. The old German housekeeper of the Chancery, Frau Bauer, invariably had split beans adhering to her temples when the north wind blew.
The icy pampero, the south wind direct from the Pole, was the great doctor of Buenos Ayres. Darwin used to consider the River Plate the electrical centre of the world. Nowhere have I experienced such terrific thunderstorms as in the Argentine. Sometimes on a stifling summer night, with the thermometer standing at nearly a hundred degrees, one of these stupendous storms would break over the city with floods of rain. Following on the storm would come the pampero, gently at first, but increasing in violence until a blustering, ice-cold gale went roaring through the sweltering city, bringing the temperature down in four hours with a run from 100 degrees to 60 degrees. Extremely pleasant for those like myself with sound lungs; very dangerous to those with delicate chests.
The old-fashioned Argentine house had no protection over the patio. In bad weather the occupants had to make their way through the rain from one room to another. Some of the newer houses were built in a style which I have seen nowhere else except on the stage. Everyone is familiar with those airy dwellings composed principally of open colonnades one sees on stage back-cloths. These houses were very similar in design, with open halls of columns and arches, and open-air staircases. On the stage it rains but seldom, and the style may be suited to the climatic conditions prevailing there. In real life it must be horribly inconvenient. The Italian Minister at Buenos Ayres lived in a house of this description. In fine weather it looked extremely picturesque, but I imagine that his Excellency's progress to bed must have been attended with some difficulties when, during a thunderstorm, the rain poured in cataracts down his open-air staircase, and the pampero howled through his open arcades and galleries.
The theatres at Buenos Ayres were quite excellent. At the Opera all the celebrated singers of Europe could be heard, although one could almost have purchased a nice little freehold property near London for the price asked for a seat. There were two French theatres, one devoted to light opera, the other to Palais Royal farces, both admirably given; and, astonishingly enough, during part of my stay, there was actually an English theatre with an English stock company. A peculiarly Spanish form of entertainment is the "Zarzuela," a sort of musical farce. It requires a fairly intimate knowledge of the language to follow these pieces with their many topical allusions.
The Spanish-American temperament seems to dislike instinctively any gloomy or morbid dramas, differing widely from the Russians in this respect. At Petrograd, on the Russian stage, the plays, in addition to the usual marital difficulties, were brightened up by allusions to such cheerful topics as inherited tendencies to kleptomania or suicide, or an intense desire for self-mutilation. What appeals to the morbid frost-bound North apparently fails to attract the light-hearted sons of the southern hemisphere.
Buenos Ayres was also a city of admirable restaurants. In the fashionable places, resplendent with mirrors, coloured marbles and gilding, the cooking rivals Paris, and the bill, when tendered, makes one inclined to rush to the telegraph office to cable for further and largely increased remittances from Europe. There were a number, however, of unpretending French restaurants of the most meritorious description. Never shall I forget Sir Edward's face when, in answer to his questions as to a light supper, the waiter suggested a cold armadillo; a most excellent dish, by the way, though after seeing the creature in the Zoological Gardens one would hardly credit it with gastronomic possibilities. The soil of the Argentine is marvellously fertile, and some day it will become a great wine-growing country. In the meantime vast quantities of inferior wine are imported from Europe. After sampling a thin Spanish red wine, and a heavy sweet black wine known as Priorato, and having tested their effects on his digestion, Sir Edward christened them "The red wine of Our Lady of Pain" and "The black wine of Death."
When the President of the Republic appeared in public on great occasions, he was always preceded by a man carrying a large blue velvet bolster embroidered with the Argentine arms. This was clearly an emblem of national sovereignty, but what this blue bolster was intended to typify I never could find out. Did it indicate that it was the duty of the President to bolster up the Republic, or did it signify that the Republic was always ready to bolster up its President? None of my Argentine friends could throw any light upon the subject further than by saying that this bolster was always carried in front of the President; a sufficiently self-evident fact. It will always remain an enigma to me. A bolster seems a curiously soporific emblem for a young, enterprising, and progressive Republic to select as its symbol.
It would be ungallant to pass over without remark the wonderful beauty of the Argentine girls. This beauty is very shortlived indeed, and owing to their obstinate refusal to take any exercise whatever, feminine outlines increase in bulk at an absurdly early age, but between seventeen and twenty-one many of them are really lovely. Lolling in hammocks and perpetual chocolate-eating bring about their own penalties, and sad to say, bring them about very quickly. I must add that the attractiveness of these girls is rather physical than intellectual.
The house Sir Edward and I rented had been originally built for a stage favourite by one of her many warm-hearted admirers. It had been furnished according to the lady's own markedly florid tastes. I reposed nightly in a room entirely draped in sky-blue satin. The house had a charming garden, and Sir Edward and I expended a great deal of trouble and a considerable amount of money on it. That garden was the pride of our hearts, but we had reckoned without the leaf-cutting ant, the great foe of the horticulturist in South America. At Rio, and in other places in Brazil, they had a special apparatus for pumping the fumes of burning sulphur into the ant-holes, and so were enabled to keep these pests in check. In private gardens in Brazil every single specially cherished plant had to have its stem surrounded with unsightly circular troughs of paraffin and water. In front of our windows we had a large bed of gardenias backed by a splendid border of many-hued cannas which were the apple of Sir Edward's eye, He gazed daily on them with an air not only of pride, but of quasi-paternity. The leaf-cutting ants found their way into our garden, and in four days nothing remained of our beautiful gardenias and cannas but some black, leafless stalks. These abominable insects swept our garden as bare of every green thing as a flight of locusts would have done; they even killed the grass where their serried processions had passed.
For me, the great charm of the Argentine lay in the endless expanses of the "Camp," far away from the noisy city. The show estancia of the Argentine was in those days "Negrete," the property of Mr. David Shennan, kindest and most hospitable of Scotsmen. Most English residents and visitors out in the Plate cherish grateful recollections of that pleasant spot, encircled by peach orchards, where the genial proprietor, like a patriarch of old, welcomed his guests, surrounded by his vast herds and flocks. I happen to know the exact number of head of cattle Mr. Shennan had on his estancia on January 1, 1884, for I was one of the counters at the stocktaking on the last day of the year. The number was 18,731 head.