University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER V.

To a person unaccustomed to the tropics or
the south of Europe, I know of nothing more
discouraging than the arrival at the inn or
hotel. It is nobody's business to attend to
you. The landlord is strangely indifferent,
and if there is a way to get a thing done, you
have not learned it, and there is no one to
teach you. Le Grand is a Frenchman. His
house is a restaurant, with rooms for lodgers.
The restaurant is paramount. The lodging is
secondary, and is left to servants. Monsieur
does not condescend to show a room, even to
families; and the servants, who are whites, but
mere lads, have all the interior in their charge,
and there are no women employed about the
chambers. Antonio, a swarthy Spanish lad,
in shirt sleeves, looking very much as if he
never washed, has my part of the house in

charge, and shows me my room. It has but
one window, a door opening upon the veranda,
and a brick floor, and is very bare of
furniture, and the furniture has long ceased to
be strong. A small stand barely holds up a
basin and ewer which have not been washed
since Antonio was washed, and the bedstead,
covered by a canvas sacking, without mattress
or bed, looks as if it would hardly bear
the weight of a man. It is plain there is a
good deal to be learned here. Antonio is communicative,
on a suggestion of several days'
stay and good pay. Things which we cannot
do without, we must go out of the house to
find, and those which we can do without, we
must dispense with. This is odd, and strange,
but not uninteresting, and affords scope for
contrivance and the exercise of influence and
other administrative powers. The Grand
Seigneur does not mean to be troubled with
anything; so there are no bells, and no office,
and no clerks. He is the only source, and if
he is approached, he shrugs his shoulders and
gives you to understand that you have your
chambers for your money and must look to
the servants. Antonio starts off on an expedition
for a pitcher of water and a towel, with a
faint hope of two towels; for each demand
involves an expedition to remote parts of the
house. Then Antonio has so many rooms dependent
on him, that every door is a Scylla,
and every window a Charybdis, as he passes.
A shrill, female voice, from the next room but
one, calls "Antonio! Antonio!" and that
starts the parrot in the court yard, who cries
"Antonio! Antonio!" for several minutes. A
deep, bass voice mutters "Antonio!" in a more
confidential tone; and last of all, an unmistakably
Northern voice attempts it, but ends
in something between Antonio and Anthony.
He is gone a good while, and has evidently
had several episodes to his journey. But he is
a good-natured fellow, speaks a little French,
very little English, and seems anxious to do
his best.

I see the faces of my New York fellow-passengers
from the west gallery, and we come
together and throw our acquisitions of information
into a common stock, and help one another.
Mr. Miller's servant, who has been here

before, says there are baths and other conveniences
round the corner of the street; and,
sending our bundles of thin clothes there, we
take advantage of the baths, with comfort. To
be sure, we must go through a billiard-room,
where the Creoles are playing at the tables,
and the cockroaches playing under them, and
through a drinking-room, and a bowling-alley;
but the baths are built in the open yard, protected
by blinds, well ventilated, and well supplied
with water and toilet apparatus.

With the comfort of a bath, and clothed in
linen, with straw hats, we walk back to Le
Grand's, and enter the restaurant, for breakfast,
—the breakfast of the country, at 10
o'clock. Here is a scene so pretty as quite to
make up for the defects of the chambers. The
restaurant with cool marble floor, walls twenty-four
feet high, open rafters painted blue, great
windows open to the floor and looking into the
Paseo, and the floor nearly on a level with the
street, a light breeze fanning the thin curtains,
the little tables, for two or four, with clean,
white cloths, each with its pyramid of great red
oranges and its fragrant bouquet,—the gentlemen

in white pantaloons and jackets and white
stockings, and the ladies in fly-away muslins,
and hair in the sweet neglect of the morning
toilet, taking their leisurely breakfasts of fruit
and claret, and omelette and Spanish mixed
dishes, (ollas,) and café noir. How airy and
ethereal it seems! They are birds, not substantial
men and women. They eat ambrosia and
drink nectar. It must be that they fly, and
live in nests, in the tamarind trees. Who can
eat a hot, greasy breakfast of cakes and gravied
meats, and in a close room, after this?

I can truly say that I ate, this morning, my
first orange; for I had never before eaten one
newly gathered, which had ripened in the sun,
hanging on the tree. We call for the usual
breakfast, leaving the selection to the waiter;
and he brings us fruits, claret, omelette, fish
fresh from the sea, rice excellently cooked,
fried plantains, a mixed dish of meat and vegetables
(olla), and coffee. The fish, I do not
remember its name, is boiled, and has the colors
of the rainbow, as it lies on the plate. Havana
is a good fish-market; for it is as open to the
ocean as Nahant, or the beach at Newport; its

streets running to the blue sea, outside the harbor,
so that a man may almost throw his line
from the curb-stone into the Gulf Stream.

After breakfast, I take a volante and ride
into the town, to deliver my letters. Three
merchants whom I call upon, have palaces for
their business. The entrances are wide, the
staircases almost as stately as that of Stafford
House, the floors of marble, the panels of
porcelain tiles, the rails of iron, and the rooms
over twenty feet high, with open rafters, the
doors and windows colossal, the furniture rich
and heavy; and there sits the merchant or
banker, in white pantaloons and thin shoes and
loose white coat and narrow neck-tie, smoking
a succession of cigars, surrounded by tropical
luxuries and tropical defences. In the lower
story of one of these buildings is an exposition
of silks, cotton and linens, in a room so large
that it looked like a part of the Great Exhibition
in Hyde Park. At one of these counting-palaces,
I met Mr. Theodore Parker and Dr.
S. G. Howe, of Boston, who preceded me, in
the Karnac. Mr. Parker is here for his health,
which has caused anxiety to his friends lest his

weakened frame should no longer support the
strong intellectual machinery, as before. He
finds Havana too hot, and will leave for Santa
Cruz by the first opportunity. Dr. Howe likes
the warm weather. It is a comfort to see
him,—a benefactor of his race, and one of the
few heroes we have left to us, since Kane
died.

The Bishop of Havana has been in delicate
health, and is out of town, at Jesus del Monte;
and Miss M—is not at home, and the
Señoras F—I failed to see this morning;
but I find a Boston young lady, whose friends
were desirous I should see her, and who was
glad enough to meet one so lately from her
home. A clergyman to whom, also, I had
letters, is gone into the country, without much
hope of improving his health. Stepping into a
little shop to buy a plan of Havana, my name
is called, and there is my hero's wife, the accomplished
author and conversationist, whom
it is an exhilaration to meet anywhere, much
more in a land of strangers. Dr. and Mrs.
Howe and Mr. Parker are at the Cerro, a
pretty and cool place in the suburbs, but are

coming in to Mrs. Almy's boarding-house, for
the convenience of being in the city, and for
nearness to friends, and the comforts of something
like American or English housekeeping.

In the latter part of the afternoon, from
three o'clock, our parties are taking dinner at
Le Grand's. The little tables are again full,
with a fair complement of ladies. The afternoon
breeze is so strong that the draught of
air, though it is hot air, is to be avoided. The
passers-by almost put their faces into the
room, and the women and children of the
poorer order look wistfully in upon the luxurious
guests, the colored glasses, the red wines,
and the golden fruits. The Opera troupe is
here, both the singers and the ballet; and we
have Gazzaniga, Lamoureux, Max Maretzek
and his sister, and others, in this house,
and Miss Ada Phillips at the next door, and
the benefit of a rehearsal, at nearly all hours
of the day, of operas that the Habaneros are
to rave over at night.

I yield to no one in my admiration of the
Spanish as a spoken language, whether in its
rich, sonorous, musical, and lofty style, in the

mouth of a man who knows its uses, or in the
soft, indolent, languid tones of a woman,
broken by an occasional birdlike trill—

but I do not like it as spoken by the common
people of Cuba, in the streets. Their voices
and intonations are thin and eager, very rapid,
too much in the lips, and, withal, giving an
impression of the passionate and the childish
combined; and it strikes me that the tendency
here is to enfeeble the language, and
take from it the openness of the vowels and
the strength of the harder consonants. This is
the criticism of a few hours' observation, and
may not be just; but I have heard the same
from persons who have been longer acquainted
with it. Among the well educated Cubans,
the standard of Castilian is said to be kept
high, and there is a good deal of ambition to
reach it.

After dinner, walked along the Paseo de
Ysabel Segunda, to see the pleasure-driving,
which begins at about five o'clock, and lasts
until dark. The most common carriage is the

volante, but there are some carriages in the
English style, with servants in livery on the
box. I have taken a fancy for the strange-looking
two-horse volante. The postilion, the
long, dangling traces, the superfluousness of a
horse to be ridden by the man that guides the
other, and the prodigality of silver, give the
whole a look of style that eclipses the neat,
appropriate English equipage. The ladies
ride in full dress, décolletées, without hats.
The servants on the carriages are not all negroes.
Many of the drivers are whites. The
drives are along the Paseo de Ysabel, across
the Campo del Marte, and then along the
Paseo de Tacon, a beautiful double avenue,
lined with trees, which leads two or three miles,
in a straight line, into the country.

At 8 o'clock, drove to the Plaza de Armas,
a square in front of the governor's house, to
hear the Retreta, at which a military band
plays for an hour, every evening. There is a
clear moon above, and a blue field of glittering
stars; the air is pure and balmy; the band
of fifty or sixty instruments discourses most
eloquent music under the shade of palm-trees

and mangoes; the walks are filled with promenaders,
and the streets around the square lined
with carriages, in which the ladies recline, and
receive the salutations and visits of the gentlemen.
Very few ladies walk in the square, and
those probably are strangers. It is against the
etiquette for ladies to walk in public in Havana.

I walk leisurely home, in order to see Havana
by night. The evening is the busiest
season for the shops. Much of the business
of shopping is done after gas lighting. Volantes
and coaches are driving to and fro,
and stopping at the shop doors, and attendants
take their goods to the doors of the carriages.
The watchmen stand at the corners
of the streets, each carrying a long pike and a
lantern. Billiard-rooms and cafés are filled,
and all who can walk for pleasure will walk
now. This is also the principal time for paying
visits.

There is one strange custom observed here
in all the houses. In the chief room, rows
of chairs are placed, facing each other, three
or four or five in each line, and always running

at right angles with the street wall of
the house. As you pass along the street,
you look up this row of chairs. In these,
the family and the visitors take their seats,
in formal order. As the windows are open,
deep, and large, with wide gratings and
no glass, one has the inspection of the interior
arrangement of all the front parlors of
Havana, and can see what every lady wears,
and who is visiting her.

To-bed early, after so exciting a day as
one's first day in the tropics.