Читать книгу The real Argentine: Notes and Impressions of a Year in the Argentine and Uruguay - J. A. Hammerton - Страница 11

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“Of course we all work in sham,” remarked a prominent Argentine architect to me, one clear, still night, as we leant together over the rail of a river steamer, discussing the pros and cons of Buenos Ayres—a subject as infinitely interesting to River Platers as the weather to the Englishman.

The “of course” was a kindly concession to some criticism of mine and showed an open and liberal mind. The architect was no self-deluding porteño to whom Buenos Ayres was everything good, true and beautiful. He was prepared to admit the warts.

He were, indeed, the blindest and most incompetent of observers who failed to notice at the end of his first hour in Buenos Ayres that it is a city of “sham.”

Its buildings are of no distinctive value architecturally—nay, not even the most notable. Without exception they follow European models in exterior treatment, no matter how widely they may differ from them interiorly. That many of the public buildings are imposing, and at first glance look like “the real thing,” no one will deny. Besides, he who were foolish enough to deny this could be confronted with the evidence of the official photographs which have conveyed to an envious Europe the idea that Buenos Ayres eclipses her worn-out old cities in its architectural glories. A photograph makes lath and plaster to look like granite and porphyry. Through the camera the graceful buildings of the St. Louis “World’s Fair” appeared as permanent as the pyramids, though a few score labourers with picks and shovels wiped them out in less time than it took to put them up.

Buenos Ayres is truly a city of sham. Nor is this to its shame. For it costs more to erect its steel-frame and cement structures than it does in Washington or London to rear solid piles of masonry. The country is destitute of workable stone, and the bricks made in the Argentine are so unsightly and spongy that they can only serve as a base for plaster. Wood also is scarce and the gorgeous doors, without which no fine building in Buenos Ayres would be considered complete, have to be imported at great cost from Europe. Many of these are beautiful and in this one respect the city may be said to outvie Paris, whence comes this taste for the grandeur in gates.

It may be a mere old-world prejudice on my part, but I have never been able to look with real interest on a building that has not been made of brick or stone. In Europe, in the United States, also, we are accustomed to historic buildings that have been reared by competent workmen with the idea that they were to last forever, which, as Ruskin reminds us, is the only true way to build. To come to a new land and find that the most pretentious efforts of the builder’s craft are chiefly stucco copies of European stone-work, leaves the beholder cold.

The Congreso has been trying for some years to become the pride of the town. It is the great marble-veneer palace where the legislators sit—in a literal sense, for they deliver their speeches seated—and it is effectively situated at the western end of the spacious Avenida de Mayo. It has been many years in course of construction and I am afraid to say how many millions of money have been spent upon it. At least, it has cost more than three times the amount originally voted for it, and there are few senators or deputies who have not had some pickings out of the “job.” No man knows when it will be finished, for it is said that as much material as would have built two such palaces has gone in at the front door of the works and been mysteriously absorbed. The explanation is that many a fine residence for a legislator with a “pull” has been built of the said material, after it had gone out a backdoor! Meanwhile the gorgeous Palacio del Congreso presents a noble marble front to the great Plaza Congreso and stares eastward along the Avenida without a blush for its ulterior nakedness. It is like the noble savage, “whose untutored mind clothes him in front and leaves him bare behind”; for when you have turned the corners from the plaza you discover that only the front part has been covered with marble slabs; behind there is naught but dirty naked bricks. So it has been for three or four years and so it is like to remain for some years to come; but meanwhile a photograph of the front does good service for sending abroad as an evidence of the architectural grandeur of the capital city.

But all this notwithstanding, the Congreso, as seen from almost any point of the Avenida, is an imposing building. Dignity and elegance are combined in its graceful proportions, and its elongated dome soars above the surrounding buildings with a fine sense of confidence. The Corinthian column is used very effectively in the façade and there are many—rather too many—statuary groups, in which winged figures and ramping horses are prominent. Grand stairways sweep up to the central door and inclined planes make possible the near approach of carriages. But immediately one steps inside there is disappointment. The central hall is of mean proportions, and in a few minutes all is confusion, as there is no real dignity of treatment, and certain inner courtyards are actually built with painted iron pillars hopelessly out of harmony with the prevailing style of the building. The Chamber of Deputies, in the form of an ellipse, is businesslike and handsome, but no more imposing than some of the council chambers of the great provincial cities at home. The Senate is a smaller and more elegant chamber, richly furnished with ample seats of ease and commodious desks for each of its distinguished members. There is another luxurious room, dedicated to special ceremonies, and the deputies’ lounge is immense and well-appointed, much after the style of some of the big New York clubs. It is, indeed, at once a club and an exchange, for here many of the “deals” by which some men make money in the Argentine, and others lose it, are consummated.

On the first floor are ranged all the different ministerial offices and committee rooms, and I think there were only two of these to which I did not gain admission. But there was little of interest to note in them. The fact that the rooms devoted to the affairs of the Army and Navy were about one-tenth the size of those required for the department of Public Works was eloquent and reassuring. But although I explored the whole building, high and low, I find I have retained only a very blurred impression of the interior with its bewildering passages, through which liveried servants bearing trays of tea dishes were constantly passing, as the Argentine deputy is a firm believer in getting all he can out of his country in addition to his annual salary of 12,000 pesos ($5,040), feeding at public expense, not only himself, but as many relatives and friends as have the good sense to find important business to transact in the lobbies of Congress at meal times.

A very handsomely furnished library is a notable feature of the palace. It is small, but admirably designed for the enshrinement of many books. One of the proudest possessions of the library, pointed out to me with much satisfaction, is a complete set of the Hansard Debates of the British Parliament. There are standard works on all sorts of social subjects and books of statistics enough to give a mere literary man a headache. I noted most of the books had a suspicious air of newness. There was a deputy busy consulting a volume of Hansard, but no other thirster after knowledge in the library at the time of my visit.

“You may come here often,” said the official who was showing me over the building, “and you will seldom see more than two people using the library,—perhaps three.”

The restaurant is much more popular with the deputies, but there is no doubt that if any of them ever by chance should wish to “verify his references” he would find no difficulty in performing that most laudable and improbable task with the aid of this well-stocked and well-managed library.

On the whole, the impression of the Palacio de Congreso upon the visitor is of a piece with the capital city. It is all so new, and all so unfinished, and promises to be rather shoddy when eventually it is finished. As a tall strapping doorkeeper, who showed me over the great rooms in the basement of the building, where are stored in iron chambers many official records, said, “when they’ve finished the building they will have to start all over again repairing it.”

I went outside on a balcony at the back to examine the still uncovered brick-work. It is of a quality which would not be used for workmen’s cottages in England, but once it has been hidden under plaster, with thin slabs of marble imposed thereon, it will doubtless present a brave appearance for some years. But not for all time!

The Palatial Home of “La Prensa.”

Façade of the great newspaper office on the north side of the Avenida de Mayo. Different interior views of this building are given at pages 80 and 81.

At the eastern end of the Avenida stands the more historic “Pink House” (Casa rosada), or government building. It occupies the whole width of the Plaza de Mayo and extends backwards to the Paseo Colón beyond—a mighty pile of plastered brick. Lacking in distinction and of no established style, it is chiefly notable for its abundance of windows. I remember counting about one hundred and twenty in the east front alone, so that the whole building probably contains upwards of six hundred, and, with so many piercings in its walls, it will be understood that little opportunity was left for architectural ingenuity. An immense group of statuary surmounts the central part of the building, and this too is most likely a stucco masterpiece, for if it were solid stone it would surely bring down the roof. The whole exterior is painted pink and on a bright day its appearance is undeniably pleasing, if you are content to take it as a whole and some little distance off, for a too close inspection will reveal many shabby patches and innumerable corners that are calling aloud for plaster and paint. Indeed, so large is the Pink House, it would only be possible to give it a coat of paint that would be fresh all over by employing an army of workers, for, ordinarily treated, the paint on one side has become old ere the painters have reached the other.

The interior of the Government House, Casa de gobierno—which is the official designation of the Casa rosada—contains many fine apartments, richly furnished. The great ballroom where the President gives his grave and stately entertainments from time to time is of elegant proportion and beautifully decorated.

At the northwest corner of the Plaza de Mayo stands the Cathedral. Although I passed it daily for some eight months, I never mustered up sufficient interest to go inside—I who have spent so many months of my life among the musty old cathedrals and churches of France. I felt there was little historic about this common and defective imitation of a Grecian façade, vulgarised by wreaths of electric bulbs around its Corinthian columns. At first glance it suggests a stock exchange rather than a place of Christian worship. There is a dome of glazed tiles, so far away from the low and squat entrance colonnade—which faces due south—that it seems to have no relation to it. I do not remember noting the material of the building—so little did it attract me—but I fancy it consists of the usual plastered brick. One day I did seek to enter, but could find no door that was open and never do I remember to have seen the main door open on a week day. This is characteristic of the churches of South America, where one misses that generous invitation of the fine old fanes of France. Mainly, the Cathedral of Buenos Ayres will stay in my memory as a great stock exchange building gone wrong, or—illuminated on any of the numerous national feast days—as a municipal theatre on a noche de gala.

A stone-throw from the Cathedral stands the Municipal Building, or Intendencia, at the corner of the Avenida and the Plaza de Mayo. It is of no account, and does not compare in interest with the splendid palace of La Prensa adjoining it. I confess that as a journalist I had more desire to inspect the famous building of the great Buenos Ayres daily than any other sight in the city. During my stay I had frequent business with the management of La Prensa and was privileged to examine every corner of its wonderful home, on one occasion spending some hours in the building after midnight, when the sight of Buenos Ayres from the globe on which stands the Prensa’s Goddess of Light, who holds aloft her flaring torch over the restless city, is surely one that can be rarely equalled in the world. No doubt if one were to look at Paris by night from the apex of the dome over the Sacré Coeur, or London, say from the Clock Tower at Westminster, the sight would be more beautiful, but it could scarcely be more impressive, as the extraordinary flatness of Buenos Ayres permits the observer on the Prensa tower to survey the whole vast city to its utmost limits and even to distinguish the twinkling lights of La Plata, the provincial capital, twenty-four miles away. I shall not readily forget that starry night when, at two o’clock, I stood up there in the lookout beneath the Goddess of Light and saw the great noisy, cruel city as a prodigious map of stars. The prodigality of Buenos Ayres in electric light was evident even at that hour, for mile upon mile the eye could follow the main streets with their double lines of radiant dots, thinning gradually as they flickered into the boundless plain beyond, while on the fringes of the mighty metropolis appeared numerous constellations betokening the suburbs which the Federal Capital threatens to engulf.

The interior of the Prensa building would require a chapter to itself to describe it with any attempt at detail. That is not possible here and a mere glimpse of it must suffice. It is almost everything that our English ideas would expect a newspaper office not to be. If you enter from the front, there is nothing in the business department to strike your attention. There are many newspaper offices in the United States quite as imposing. Nor is there anything particularly worthy of note in the reportorial rooms, the library, or any of the workaday departments, though the note of luxury is probably more pronounced in the apartments of the editor and the editorial writers than in most American offices. The machine room is splendidly equipped. The overseer, I was told, was an Argentine, but I suspect he was of British or German parentage, for the native has little aptitude for mechanics. His assistant was a Britisher.

There is a series of “show” rooms which made it hard for one, like myself, whose life has been spent in newspaper offices at home amid the well-loved odour of printer’s ink, to imagine himself within a building devoted to the production of a daily newspaper. At two o’clock in the morning what a scene of hustle is a daily newspaper office in New York! Here everything was as quiet and orderly as in a museum when the visitors have gone! And in truth it reminded me not a little of a museum. There was a magnificent concert hall, superbly decorated, with painted panels for the doing of which artists had come especially from France. Here many of the most famous operatic stars who have visited Buenos Ayres have appeared before select audiences invited by the Prensa; celebrated actors have tried new plays and illustrious visitors from foreign lands have addressed privileged audiences in many different tongues. The value of such a hall to a newspaper is so obvious that it is surprising none of the New York journals has yet attempted anything of the kind. I think the Prensa salon accommodates an audience of some five hundred, and it is smaller than the very charming little theatre of Femina, the Paris ladies’ journal, in the Champs Élysées.

Then there is a suite of living-rooms, fronting to the Avenida, worthy of a prince. These have been placed at the disposition of distinguished visitors to the Argentine with a liberality that has not always been duly appreciated, for I was told that this very pleasant custom of honouring the country’s guests has more than once been abused by a visitor staying so long that he threatened to become a permanent boarder of the Prensa. Hence, it may be, that the custom is no longer to be maintained, and I can imagine the business side of the newspaper can make even better use of the space. A sports-room for the staff includes appliances for every variety of indoor sport and exercise, from billiards to fencing, nor need one ever be at a loss for a cooling bath in the hot summer days, as the bathrooms and lavatories are worthy of a first-class New York hotel. But, most curious of all, perhaps, are the medical and dental departments. The rooms for the physicians and surgeons on the staff of the Prensa are supplied with all the latest medical and surgical appliances, and readers of the paper can come here free of charge for advice and treatment. There is also a legal department, where skilled lawyers look into the troubles of the newspaper’s subscribers!

In short, the Prensa building is one of the most interesting sights of Buenos Ayres and a notable ornament of the Avenida. It is an epitome of Argentine progress, for less than fifty years ago the journal was a humble little four-page sheet, issued from some scrubby little shanty, while to-day it is one of the wealthiest, as it is one of the largest, newspapers in the world, housed in a palace that cost $1,500,000 to build. Its enterprising founder, the late Dr. José Paz, died at Nice a week or two before I left England and I was later present at the ceremony of receiving his remains in Buenos Ayres for interment at Recoleta, the last resting place of the Argentine’s aristocrats. He had built another palace for the whole Paz family in the Plaza San Martín, one of the most magnificent buildings in the city and one of the most princely private residences I have ever seen in any land, but he was not spared to see it occupied.

If we cross the Avenida and go some four squares down the Calle Defensa we shall come to one of the few historic buildings in the city—the church of Our Lady of the Rosary—Nuestra Señora del Rosario.

There is nothing worthy of note in its architecture, but in the tower which surmounts the front entrance—to the north—a number of cannon balls are embedded in the mortar of which the church is built. These are said to be relics of the British bombardment of 1806 and within are the flags which the Spanish viceroy, Liniers (a Frenchman, by the way), took from the British troops under General Carr Beresford when they were compelled to surrender to superior forces after their brief and ill-advised occupation of the citadel from June to August of that year. Liniers promised the flags of the conquered British to Nuestra Señora del Rosario before he went forth to engage Beresford on the 12th of August, and there they hang, objects of no small pride to the patriotic Argentine. (This on the authority of the native historian, Señor José Manuel Eizaguirre, though Mr. Cunninghame Graham states that the flags were taken from the incompetent General Whitelock in his disastrous attempt to retake the town in 1807, and that they hang in the Cathedral.)

There are indeed few churches in Buenos Ayres that will repay a visit. All are edifices of little note and, almost without exception, stuck rather shamefacedly among other buildings where you may pass a dozen times and never notice them once. Buenos Ayres has other business in hand than matters of the soul. No one could describe it as an aggressively religious city. The Jockey Club is more to its taste. It stands rather more than half-way along the Calle Florida, going from the Avenida towards the Plaza San Martín. That admirable English word of recent invention, “swank,” was surely coined by some one familiar with the Jockey Club of Buenos Ayres. But for the moment I shall not seek to illustrate this by attempting to describe the spirit that animates this bizarre and curious institution. In this chapter I am concerned only with its outward appearance. That is by no means unpleasing, though the façade of the building is constricted and the narrowness of the street prevents one from obtaining a satisfactory view of it. It is covered with an infinity of electric bulbs and no occasion to light these is ever allowed to pass unregarded. Often have I seen the building aglow like Aladdin’s Palace in a Drury Lane pantomime and scarce a soul within sight to feast his eyes on the outward magnificence of this great national institution which exists for the maintenance of the best breeds of man’s devoted servant, the horse (no me parece, as they say in Buenos Ayres, or “I don’t think,” as they say elsewhere).

Westward some six or seven squares from Florida one encounters in the Plaza Lavalle several noteworthy buildings. On the west side of that fine plaza the new Tribunales, or Law Courts, have just been completed, and Buenos Ayres has nothing finer in the way of architecture to show. Conceived on a massive scale and carried out with unusual thoroughness of detail, this is a magnificent palace for the housing of Justice, and as Justice is by no means blind in the Argentine she will find much in her palace to occupy her attention, even to distract it from those duties which in other lands she is supposed best to perform with shut eyes. Why a style that is reminiscent of Assyria and Byzantium should have been chosen, I know not, unless Argentine Justice is of Oriental origin; but the effect is undoubtedly imposing. The six massy columns of the central façade spring upwards to the height of five tall stories, with a large sense of strength and permanence, though it is true they begin in noble stone only to continue upward in concrete. The five entrances are generously inviting, but every Argentine knows that when he enters there to lodge a suit Heaven alone can guess how old he will be, how grey his hairs, when he comes out again with a verdict. Three more stories tower above the great plinth of the pillars, and over the entrance runs a fine, spacious colonnade of Ionic columns.

The building of the Tribunales is, in truth, one of the finest palaces of justice in any great city of the world, exceeded in sheer bulk, so far as I can remember, only by the Palais de Justice of Brussels, which is colossal beyond all reason. Even though a vast deal more cement than enduring stone has gone to its making, it will long remain the most noteworthy architectural effort in Buenos Ayres, and one cannot look upon it without feeling a certain reverence for the intentions of its builders. If Argentine Justice will only endeavour to “live up to” the dignity of her new home, the citizens of the great young republic will have reason to congratulate themselves.

A Princely Sanctum—Room of the “Prensa’s” Chief Editor.

A Corner of the Medical Consulting Room of the “Prensa.”

On the opposite side of the same ample plaza stands the Teatro Colón (Columbus Theatre), the home of the state-aided opera. The citizens are immensely proud of this fine building and with good reason. Always allowing for the difference between stone and cement, neither Paris nor London has anything finer than this palatial theatre. Admirably situated, it is no less admirably designed. It seems large enough to contain half a dozen opera houses, and indeed the theatre proper occupies less than half of the great building. Near the Colón rears its more modest head the Colegio Sarmiento. Sarmiento was one of the greatest men the Argentine or any other country has produced in modern times. No one did more than he for the advancement of his native land, and while I would have preferred to see the Colón dedicated to the memory and the educational ideals of the famous president, it is perhaps only in accord with the lessening ideals of our day that amusement and social pretentiousness should outvie the merely intellectual and useful.

The old Teatro de la Opera still stands and thrives under private management. No doubt when it was first built it was thought to represent the last word in architectural grandeur, but a glance at its rococo façade, wedged between two other buildings in the Calle Corrientes, after having looked at the Colón, will show how rapidly Argentine ideas have expanded in recent years.

It is scarcely possible to continue an orderly commentary on the public buildings of Buenos Ayres until one has passed them all in review. There are too many for that, and many are too similar. Others that I call to mind particularly at the moment, are the great offices of the Water Works (Aguas corrientes) and the Board of Education (Junta de education), both of which are fine examples of the stately manner in which the Argentine houses its public departments. The same cannot be said for the Art Gallery. I am willing to concede that in a young country the essential things, such as good drinking water and elementary education, should take precedence over the fine arts, but when so noble a building as the Colón could have been erected merely to provide society with a short season of social diversion each year (for we must frankly admit that it is more a society haunt than a temple of the muse), surely it might have been possible to do something worthier of the graphic arts! The art gallery occupies a commanding site on the northeast side of the Plaza San Martín, but the building is only a second-hand pavilion, bought from some exhibition (that of St. Louis, I was told) and re-erected here. It is a gimcrack affair of iron frame, wood and gaudy tiles. Although it looks quite attractive in a photograph, the shoddy workmanship, the great chunks of coloured glass, used as items of the decorative scheme, and the general air of temporariness inseparable from the purpose for which it was originally designed, leave one with the impression that the Argentines set a very low value on their art treasures. Yet there are several canvases in the collection that may be worth more than the building that houses them. The sooner this trashy pavilion is thrown on the scrap-heap and a worthy gallery erected, the better for the reputation of the country in respect to the fine arts.

One other public building there is that calls for note. It is known as the Casa de expósitos, and occupies an airy position on the great thoroughfare that runs through the district of Barracas—Montes de Oca. It is an immense building, larger than some of the great London workhouses, and seems to have an infinity of rooms within. There is no fanciful treatment of the exterior; all is plain, massive, substantial. The purpose of this institution is to rear the undesired children of Buenos Ayres. An expósito is a foundling, and this is the Foundling Hospital of Buenos Ayres. Unwilling mothers bring their offspring here, leave them at the door, where they are willingly received “and no questions asked.” The state does not despise this means of fostering the population, though it leaves many thousands of infants to die annually for lack of popular instruction on the rearing of the young and also by permitting the continuance of social conditions which make the survival of most children of the labouring class something of a miracle.

When the station of the Central Argentine Railway at Retiro has been completed, Buenos Ayres will possess one of the finest railway buildings in the world, but during my stay the termini of that railway and the B. A. P. were no better than some of the shabbier country stations in the United States, though the Southern, at Plaza Constitucion, has a handsome edifice, and the Western, at Plaza Once, quite a presentable railway station.

And talking of railway stations, I shall make this the end of my journey round the public buildings of Buenos Ayres—at least for the present. I have not sought to do more than to give the reader—as in the fleeting glimpses of a strange land from the window of a speeding train—a rapid outline of the material Buenos Ayres. This splendid city of sham! If I may not appear to have been deeply impressed with its beauties which have been so floridly pictured by more partial pens, that is probably because I have sought to bear in mind there are other great cities in the world. To the untravelled British provincial, who has shipped straight from some English port to the River Plate, I can well imagine the Argentine metropolis is the greatest wonder of the world. The most devoted admirer of Buenos Ayres that I met during my stay there was a gentleman from Kilmarnock, Scotland. He had never seen London; had never previously been out of his native Scotland; but his ten years in the Argentine capital had convinced him that it stood unique in the world and in all time as the most glorious example of the power of man in the making of cities. That renegade Scot, I quite believe, looks forward with satisfaction to living out his life there and being hurried one day, some twenty hours after he dies, to the sweet rest of Chacarita! But he is a type one may easily allow for (I always show a marked approval of their well-seasoned opinions) and pass on. The intelligent writer, however, who so often, from hasty observation or from interested motives, conveys a too flattering impression of a town does incomparably more harm than a whole wilderness of inexperienced and unobservant enthusiasts. So many such writers have already described the outward show of Buenos Ayres as a sun without spots, that my observations may at least restore the spots. They are set down in all honesty and with no desire to belittle the truly commendable things of Buenos Ayres, in appraising which I trust I shall not be held guilty of any niggard spirit. But, after all, the buildings of any city are no more than the husk, and though we must break the shell to come at the kernel, it is on the latter we have our mind in the progress of the operation. Thus I am in these chapters on the outward appearance of Buenos Ayres engaged in nothing more than the breaking of the shell—and perhaps a few well-established illusions at the same time.