The visiting and visitable part of the native community, form a most interesting and agreeable feature in Buenos-Ayrean society. Thanks to civil wars, and to Rosas, the females vastly preponderate in numbers over the males. You may visit five or six families, and meet five or six ladies in each, and not a single gentleman; partly from the reasons we have given above, and partly because to ladies appear exclusively to be allotted the duties of ceremonial reception—husbands and brothers, if there be any, remaining in their studies, or back rooms, even when the sala, or reception room, is crowded with visitors or a small evening party. Oh, how pleasant and agreeable are these Senoras, and Senoritas! how sweetly they help you out with a sentence when you are at a loss! how freely they suggest subjects of conversation! how good-humouredly they smile at your awkward mistakes, and make you fancy that you will soon be a perfect proficient in Spanish—as indeed you soon would be under their tuition; how soon you forget that you have never seen them before! how soon you learn to suck matte, and to pay compliments! and when you are about to leave, and a flower is agreeably presented to you by a smiling Senorita, with an assurance that the house and every thing in it is entirely at your disposal, you bow your way out with a profusion of promises to return, with a rose at your button-hole, a smile on the face, and an elasticity of step that will last half the day. Oh, Tom Thorne! Tom Thorne! how could you resist so many dimpling smiles and sweet compliments? How could you flirt away the forenoons in the circles of beauty, look the language, breathe the gay atmosphere, reflect the glad glances, enjoy the warm enlivening glow of youthful feelings, bask in the sunshine of favour streaming upon you from the eyes of youth, innocence, and beauty, and then cool down your feelings with cigars and brandy?
But we are forgetting our subject. Among each of the great national families we have classed together, there were particular sets and circles, out of which many would seldom or never move, while some would be nearly equally familiar with all: and this mixture of different nations, tinctured with a dash of republicanism, gives a tone of metropolitan urbanity and courtesy to Buenos-Ayrean society, which is very agreeable. All being dependent on their own exertions, there can be little affectation of superiority; and all being occupied through the day, they are the more inclined to relax into the agreeable in the evening: and perhaps there are few places under the sun where there are more or merrier evening reunions than there were in the city of Buenos Ayres before the blasting tyranny of Rosas decimated the natives, made fathers suspicious of sons, brothers spies upon brothers, Frenchmen arm themselves for mutual protection, Englishmen almost afraid of the name, and banished wealth and security from the province.
The sala of Senora Tertulia was brilliantly lighted up and brilliantly filled with youth and beauty; the atmosphere was loaded with rich perfumes from the gay and gaudy festoons that adorned the massy chandeliers, and from the sweet little bouquets that heaved on the bosoms of the fair dancers. Knights of every order of chivalry were strutting through the room. Priests were listening to innocent confessions. Don Juans were whispering sweet compliments into willing ears. Dominoes were playing at cards with Italian Counts. Turks were drinking the firewaters of the Franks at side-tables. Gauchos were there rigged out in all the finery of the Pampas; and every masquerade-shop in the town had been ransacked by those whose wit could not supply, or whose means could not afford new or appropriate costumes. And so there was a fair proportion of clowns, harlequins, starved apothecaries, and Highlanders with cotton drawers. Many old gentlemen with the long ruffles, the broad skirts, powdered wigs, and jockey looking waistcoats of the sixteenth century, were seen bowing, scraping, and taking snuff: in fine, every one either was or ought to have been enjoying himself. The music struck up, and off they went.
A quadrille had just finished. Lords wore handing dames and ladies fair to their seats, which the polite old gentlemen of the sixteenth century vacated for them; that short interregnum was commencing in which young ladies study attitudes and young gentlemen compliments, when a scream of surprise and a loud roar of laughter at one of the doors of entrance attracted the attention of all. There appeared to be a struggle for admission on one part and a dubious attempt at exclusion on the other. The lady of the house hurried to the spot; a card was secretly shown to her; and the cloud of doubt that hung over her brow at the first sight of the strange spectacle before her was exchanged in a moment for the warm sunshine of a kindly welcome. “Walk in, pray—walk in, Mr Bruin,” and a tall slim figure in a strange dress, the front of which was buttoned behind, with a mask on the back of his head, and long hair streaming all over his face so as completely to conceal his features, led into the room a great white bear. The conductor carried a huge high baton, surmounted by a garland of flowers; and the neck of Bruin was attached to the baton by a chain of the same materials. The Bear and his conductor soon became the centre of attraction.
“Now, Mr Brain, show the ladies how you can dance, sir;” and the shaggy hero stumped on his huge hind paws, shook his head and his tail, and dangled his fore flippers, to the admiration of all.
“Now for a waltz, Mr Bruin.”
“Bur wur hough,” growled the bear in guttural accents, very like German.
“Mr Bruin says he must have a partner,” drawled the conductor from the back of his head; and Bruin, clutching the garland of flowers from the top of the pole, stumped round the circle of fair by-standers, with the view apparently of suiting his fancy.
“I presume, Mr Bruin, you are dazzled with such a galaxy of bright star-like eyes,” said a wag.
“Bur wur hur ough,” growled Bruin.