The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses

It may be answered, and answered truly, that the old thing was dead. The Catholic faith, where it was left standing and where it still stands, produces now nothing higher, nothing better than the Protestant. Human systems grow as trees grow. The seed shoots up, the trunk forms, the branches spread; leaves and flowers and fruit come out year after year as if they were able to renew themselves for ever. But that which has a beginning has an end, that which has life must die when the vital force is exhausted. The faith of More, as well as the faith of Ken or Wilson, were elevating and ennobling as long as they were sincerely believed, but the time came when they became clouded with uncertainty; and confused, perplexed, and honestly anxious, humanity struggles on as well as it can, all things considered, respectably enough, in its chrysalis condition, the old wings gone, the new wings that are to be (if we are ever to have another set) as yet imprisoned in their sheath.

The same Sunday morning when I went in search of my sermon, the hotel was alive as bees at swarming time. There was to be a bull fight in honour of the carnival, and such a bull fight as had never been seen in Havana. Placards on the wall announced that a lady from Spain, Gloriana they called her, was to meet and slay a bull in single combat, and everyone must go and see the wonderful sight. I myself, having seen the real thing in Madrid many years ago, felt no more curiosity, and that a woman should be an actress in such a scene did not revive it. To those who went the performance was a disappointment. The bull provided turned out to be a calf of tender years. The spectators insisted that they would have a mature beast of strength and ferocity, and Gloriana when brought to the point declined the adventure.

There was a prettier scene in the evening. In the cool after nightfall the beauty and fashion of Havana turns out to stroll in the illuminated Alameda. As it was now a high festival the band was to play, and the crowd was as dense as on Exhibition nights at South Kensington. The music was equally good, and the women as graceful and well dressed. I sat for an hour or two listening under the statue of poor Queen Isabella. The image of her still stands where it was placed, though revolution has long shaken her from her throne. All is forgotten now except that she was once a Spanish sovereign, and time and distance have deodorised her memory.

CHAPTER XIX

Hotels in Havana – Sights in the city – Cigar manufactories – West Indian industries – The Captain-General – The Jesuit college – Father Viñez – Clubs in Havana – Spanish aristocracy – Sea lodging house.

There was much to be seen in Havana, and much to think about. I regretted only that I had not been better advised in my choice of an hotel The dining saloon rang with American voices in their shrillest tones. Every table was occupied by groups of them, nor was there a sound in the room of any language but theirs. In the whole company I had not a single acquaintance. I have liked well almost every individual American that I have fallen in with and come to know. They are frank, friendly, open, and absolutely unaffected, and, like my friend at Miss Roy's in Jamaica, they take cheerful views of life, which is the highest of all recommendations. The distinctness and sharpness of utterance is tolerable and even agreeable in conversation with a single person. When a large number of them are together, all talking in a high tone, it tries the nerves and sets the teeth on edge. Nor could I escape from them in any part of the building. The gentlemen were talking politics in the hall, or lounging under the colonnade. One of them, an absolute stranger, who perhaps knew who I was, asked me abruptly for my opinion of Cardinal Newman. The ladies filled the sitting rooms; their pianos and their duets pierced the walls of my bedroom, and only ceased an hour after midnight. At five in the morning the engines began to scream at the adjoining railway station. The church bells woke at the same hour with their superfluous summons to matins which no one attended. Sleep was next to an impossibility under these hard conditions, and I wanted more and not less of it when I had the duties upon me of sightseeing. Sleep or no sleep, however, I determined that I would see what I could as long as I could keep going.

A few hundred yards off was one of the most famous of the Havana cigar manufactories. A courteous message from the manager, Señor Bances, had informed me that he would be happy to show me over it on any morning before the sun was above the roofs of the houses. I found the señor a handsome elderly gentleman, tall and lean, with Castilian dignity of manner, free and frank in all his communications, with no reserve, concealments, or insincerities. I told him that in my experience cigars were not what they had been, that the last good one which I had smoked I had bought twenty years ago from a contrabandista at Madrid. I had come to Havana to see whether I could find another equally good at the fountain head. He said that he was not at all surprised. It was the same story as at Jamaica; the consumption of cigars had increased with extreme rapidity; the area on which the finest tobacco had been grown was limited, and the expense of growing it was very great. Only a small quantity of the best cigars was now made for the market. In general the plants were heavily manured, and the flavour suffered. Leaf of coarse fibre was used for the core of the cigars, with only a fold or two wrapped round it of more delicate quality. He took me into the different rooms where the manufacture was going on. In the first were perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty sallow-faced young men engaged in rolling. They were all Cubans or Spaniards with the exception of a single negro; and all, I should think, under thirty. On each of the tables was one of the names with which we have grown familiar in modern cigar shops, Reynas, Regalias, Principes, and I know not how many else. The difference of material could not be great, but there was a real difference in the fineness of the make, and in the quality of the exterior leaf. The workmen were of unequal capacity and were unequally paid. The señor employed in all about 1,400; at least so I understood him.

The black field hands had eighteenpence a day. The rollers were paid by quality and quantity; a good workman doing his best could earn sixty dollars a week, an idle and indifferent one about twelve. They smoked as they rolled, and there was no check upon the consumption, the loss in this way being estimated at 40,000 dollars a year. The pay was high; but there was another side to it – the occupation was dangerous. If there were no boys in the room, there were no old men. Those who undertook it died often in two or three years. Doubtless with precaution the mortality might be diminished; but, like the needle and the scissor grinders in England, the men themselves do not wish it to be diminished. The risk enters into the wages, and they prefer a short life and a merry one.

The cigarettes, of which the varieties are as many as there are of cigars, were made exclusively by Chinese. The second room which we entered was full of them, their curious yellow faces mildly bending over their tobacco heaps. Of these there may have been a hundred. Of the general expenses of the establishment I do not venture to say anything, bewildered as I was in the labyrinthine complication of the currency, but it must certainly be enormous, and this house, the Partagas, was but one of many equally extensive in Havana alone.

The señor was most liberal. He filled my pockets with packets of excellent cigarettes; he gave me a bundle of cigars. I cannot say whether they were equal to what I bought from my contrabandista, for these may have been idealised by a grateful memory, but they were so incomparably better than any which I have been able to get in London that I was tempted to deal with him, and so far I have had no reason to repent. The boxes with which he provided me bettered the sample, and the price, duty at home included, was a third below what I should have paid in London for an article which I would rather leave unconsumed. A broker whom I fell in with insisted to me that the best cigars all went to London, that my preference for what I got from my señor was mere fancy and vanity, and that I could buy better in any shop in Regent Street. I said that he might but I couldn't, and so we left it.

I tell all this, not with the affectation of supposing that tobacco or my own taste about it can have any interest, but as an illustration of what can be done in the West Indies, and to show how immense a form of industry waits to be developed in our own islands, if people with capital and knowledge choose to set about it. Tobacco as good as the best in Cuba has been grown and can be grown in Jamaica, in St. Domingo, and probably in every one of the Antilles. 'There are dollars in those islands,' as my Yankee said, and many a buried treasure will be brought to light there when capitalists can feel assured that they will not be at the mercy of black constitutional governments.

My letter of introduction to the Captain-General was still undelivered, and as I had made use of it on landing I thought it right at least to pay my respects to the great man. The Marques M – kindly consented to go with me and help me through the interview, being of course acquainted with him. He was at his country house, a mile out of the town. The buildings are all good in Havana. It was what it called itself, not a palace but a handsome country residence in the middle of a large well-kept garden. The viceroyalty has a fair but not extravagant income attached to it. The Captain-General receives about 8,000l. a year besides allowances. Were the balls and dinners expected of him which our poor governors are obliged to entertain their subjects with, he would not be able to make much out of it. The large fortunes which used to be brought back by the fortunate Captains-General who could connive at the slave trade were no longer attainable; those good days are gone. Public opinion therefore permits them to save their incomes. The Spaniards are not a hospitable people, or rather their notion of hospitality differs in form from ours. They are ready to dine with you themselves as often as you will ask them. Nothing in the shape of dinners is looked for from the Captain-General, and when I as a stranger suggested the possibility of such a thing as an invitation happening to me, my companion assured me that I need not be in the least alarmed. We were introduced into a well-proportioned hall, with a few marble busts in it and casts of Greek and Roman statues. Aides-de-camp and general officers were lounging about, with whom we exchanged distant civilities. After waiting for a quarter of an hour we were summoned by an official into an adjoining room and found ourselves in his Excellency's presence. He was a small gentlemanlike-looking man, out of uniform, in plain morning dress with a silk sash. He received us with natural politeness; cordiality was uncalled for, but he was perfectly gracious. He expressed his pleasure at seeing me in the island; he hoped that I should enjoy myself, and on his part would do everything in his power to make my stay agreeable. He spoke of the emancipation of the slaves and of the social state of the island with pardonable satisfaction, enquired about our own West Indies, &c., and finally asked me to tell him in what way he could be of service to me. I told him that I had found such kind friends in Havana already, that I could think of little. One thing only he could do if he pleased. I had omitted to bring a passport with me, not knowing that it would be required. My position was irregular and might be inconvenient. I was indebted to my letter of introduction to his Excellency for admission into his dominions. Perhaps he would write a few words which would enable me to remain in them and go out of them when my visit was over. His Excellency said that he would instruct the Gobierno Civil to see to it, an instruction the meaning of which I too sadly understood. I was not to be allowed to escape the fine. A fresh shower followed of polite words, and with these we took ourselves away.

The afternoon was spent more instructively, perhaps more agreeably, in a different scene. The Marques M – had been a pupil of the Jesuits. He had personal friends in the Jesuit college at Havana, especially one, Father Viñez, whose name is familiar to students of meteorological science, and who has supplemented and corrected the accepted law of storms by careful observation of West Indian hurricanes. The Jesuits were as well spoken of in Havana as the Moravians in Jamaica. Everyone had a good word for them. They alone, as I have said, took the trouble to provide the good people there with a sermon on Sundays. They alone among the Catholic clergy, though they live poorly and have no endowment, exert themselves to provide a tolerable education for the middle and upper classes. The Marques undertook that if we called we should be graciously received, and I was curious and interested. Their college had been an enormous monastery. Wherever the Spaniards went they took an army of monks with them of all the orders. The monks contrived always to house themselves handsomely. While soldiers fought and settlers planted, the monks' duty was to pray. In process of time it came to be doubted whether the monks' prayers were worth what they cost, or whether, in fact, they had ever had much effect of any kind. They have been suppressed in Spain; they have been clipped short in all the Spanish dominions, and in Havana there are now left only a handful of Dominicans, a few nuns, and these Jesuits, who have taken possession of the largest of the convents, much as a soldier-crab becomes the vigorous tenant of the shell of some lazy sea-snail. They have a college there where there are four hundred lads and young men who pay for their education; some hundreds more are taken out of charity. The Jesuits conduct the whole, and do it all unaided, on their own resources. And this is far from all that they do. They keep on a level with the age; they are men of learning; they are men of science; they are the Royal Society of Cuba. They have an observatory in the college, and the Father Viñez of whom I have spoken is in charge of it. Father Viñez was our particular object. The porter's lodge opened into a courtyard like the quadrangle of a college at Oxford. From the courtyard we turned into a narrow staircase, up which we climbed till we reached the roof, on and under which the Father had his lodgings and his observing machinery. We entered a small room, plainly furnished with a table and a few uncushioned chairs; tables and chairs, all save the Father's, littered with books and papers. Cases stood round the wall, containing self-registering instruments of the most advanced modern type, each with its paper barrel unrolling slowly under clockwork, while a pencil noted upon it the temperature of the air, the atmospheric pressure, the degree of moisture, the ozone, the electricity. In the middle, surrounded by his tools and his ticking clocks, sat the Father, middle-aged, lean and dry, with shrivelled skin and brown threadbare frock. He received my companion with a warm affectionate smile. The Marques told him that I was an Englishman who was curious about the work in which he was engaged, and he spoke to me at once with the politeness of a man of sense. After a few questions asked and answered, he took us out to a shed among the roof-tiles, where he kept his large telescope, his equatorial, and his transit instruments – not on the great scale of State-supported observatories, but with everything which was really essential. He had a laboratory, too, and a workshop, with all the recent appliances. He was a practical optician and mechanic. He managed and repaired his own machinery, observed, made his notes, and wrote his reports to the societies with which he was in correspondence, all by himself. The outfit of such an establishment, even on a moderate scale, is expensive. I said I supposed that the Government gave him a grant. 'So far from it,' he said, 'that we have to pay a duty on every instrument which we import.' 'Who, then, pays for it all?' I asked. 'The order,' he answered, quite simply.

The house, I believe, was a gift, though it cost the State nothing, having been simply seized when the monks were expelled. The order now maintains it, and more than repays the Government for their single act of generosity. At my companion's suggestion Father Viñez gave me a copy of his book on hurricanes. It contains a record of laborious journeys which he made to the scene of the devastations of the last ten years. The scientific value of the Father's work is recognised by the highest authorities, though I cannot venture even to attempt to explain what he has done. He then conducted us over the building, and showed us the libraries, dormitories, playgrounds, and the other arrangements which were made for the students. Of these we saw none, they were all out, but the long tables in the refectory were laid for afternoon tea. There was a cup of milk for each lad, with a plate of honey and a roll of bread; and supper would follow in the evening. The sleeping gallery was divided into cells, open at the top for ventilation, with bed, table, chest of drawers, and washing apparatus – all scrupulously clean. So far as I could judge, the Fathers cared more for the boys' comfort than for their own. Through an open door our conductor faintly indicated the apartment which belonged to himself. Four bare walls, a bare tiled floor, a plain pallet, with a crucifix above the pillow, was all that it contained. There was no parade of ecclesiasticism. The libraries were well furnished, but the books were chiefly secular and scientific. The chapel was unornamented; there were a few pictures, but they were simple and inoffensive. Everything was good of its kind, down to the gymnastic courts and swimming bath. The holiness was kept in the back ground. It was in the spirit and not in the body. The cost of the whole establishment was defrayed out of the payments of the richer students managed economically for the benefit of the rest, with complete indifference on the part of the Fathers to indulgence and pleasures of their own. As we took leave the Marques kissed his old master's brown hand. I rather envied him the privilege.

Something I saw of Havana society in the received sense of the word. There are many clubs there, and high play in most of them, for the Cubans are given to the roulette tables. The Union club which is the most distinguished among them, invites occasional strangers staying in the city to temporary membership as we do at the Athenæum. Here you meet Spanish grandes, who have come to Cuba to be out of reach of revolution, proud as ever and not as poor as you might expect; and when you ask who they are you hear the great familiar names of Spanish history. I was introduced to the president – young, handsome, and accomplished. I was startled to learn that he was the head of the old house of Sandoval. The house of Columbus ought to be there also, for there is still a Christophe Colon, the direct linear representative of the discoverer, disguised under the title of the Duque de Veragua. A perpetual pension of 20,000 dollars a year was granted to the great Christophe and his heirs for ever as a charge on the Cuban revenue. It has been paid to the family through all changes of dynasty and forms of government, and is paid to them still. But the Duque resides in Spain, and the present occupation of him, I was informed, is the breeding and raising bulls for the Plaza de Toros at Seville.

Thus, every way, my stay was made agreeable to me. There were breakfasts and dinners and introductions. Don G – and his brother were not fine gentlemen only, but were men of business and deeply engaged in the active life of the place. The American consul was a conspicuous figure at these entertainments. America may not find it her interest to annex these islands, but since she ordered the French out of Mexico, and the French obeyed, she is universally felt on that side of the Atlantic to be the supreme arbiter of all their fates. Her consuls are thus persons of consequence. The Cubans like the Americans well. The commercial treaty which was offered to our islands by the United States would have been accepted eagerly by the Spaniards. To them, the Americans have, as yet, not been equally liberal, but an arrangement will soon be completed. They say that they have hills of solid iron in the island and mountains of copper with fifty per cent. of virgin ore in them waiting for the Americans to develop. The present administration would swallow up in taxation the profits of the most promising enterprise that ever was undertaken, but the metals are there, and will come one day into working. The consul was a swift peremptory man who knew his own mind at any rate. Between his 'Yes, sir,' and his 'No, sir,' you were at no loss for his meaning. He told me a story of a 'nigger' officer with whom he had once got into conversation at Hayti. He had inquired why they let so fine an island run to waste? Why did they not cultivate it? The dusky soldier laid his hand upon his breast and waved his hand. 'Ah,' he said, 'that might do for English or Germans or Americans; we of the Latin race have higher things to occupy us.'

I liked the consul well. I could not say as much for his countrymen and countrywomen at my hotel. Individually I dare say they would have been charming; collectively they drove me to distraction. Space and time had no existence for them; they and their voices were heard in all places and at all hours. The midnight bravuras at the pianos mixed wildly in my broken dreams. The Marques M – wished to take me with him to his country seat and show me his sugar plantations. Nothing could have been more delightful, but with want of sleep and the constant racket I found myself becoming unwell. In youth and strength one can defy the foul fiend and bid him do his worst; in age one finds it wiser to get out of the way.

On the sea, seven miles from Havana, and connected with it by a convenient railway, at a place called Vedado, I found a lodging house kept by a Frenchman (the best cook in Cuba) with a German wife. The situation was so attractive, and the owners of it so attentive, that quiet people went often into 'retreat' there. There were delicious rooms, airy and solitary as I could wish. The sea washed the coral rock under the windows. There were walks wild as if there was no city within a thousand miles – up the banks of lonely rivers, over open moors, or among inclosures where there were large farming establishments with cattle and horses and extensive stables and sheds. There was a village and a harbour where fishing people kept their boats and went out daily with their nets and lines – blacks and whites living and working side by side. I could go where I pleased without fear of interference or question. Only I was warned to be careful of the dogs, large and dangerous, descendants of the famous Cuban bloodhounds, which are kept everywhere to guard the yards and houses. These beasts were really dangerous, and had to be avoided. The shore was of inexhaustible interest. It was a level shelf of coral rock extending for many miles and littered over with shells and coral branches which had been flung up by the surf. I had hoped for bathing. In the open water it is not to be thought of on account of the sharks, but baths have been cut in the rock all along that part of the coast at intervals of half a mile; deep square basins with tunnels connecting them with the sea, up which the waves run clear and foaming. They are within inclosures, roofed over to keep out the sun, and with attendants regularly present. Art and nature combined never made more charming pools; the water clear as sapphire, aerated by the constant inrush of the foaming breakers, and so warm that you could lie in it without a chill for hours. Alas! that I could but look at them and execrate the precious Government which forbade me their use. So severe a tax is laid on these bathing establishments that the owners can only afford to keep them open during the three hottest months in the year, when the demand is greatest.

In the evenings people from Havana would occasionally come down to dine as we go to Greenwich, being attracted partly by the air and partly by my host's reputation. There was a long verandah under which tables were laid out, and there were few nights on which one or more parties were not to be seen there. Thus I encountered several curious specimens of Cuban humanity, and on one of my runs up to Havana I met again the cigar broker who had so roughly challenged my judgment. He was an original and rather diverting man; I should think a Jew. Whatever he was he fell upon me again and asked me scornfully whether I supposed that the cigars which I had bought of Señor Bances were anything out of the way. I said that they suited my taste and that was enough. 'Ah,' he replied, 'Cada loco con su tema. Every fool had his opinion.' 'I am the loco (idiot), then,' said I, 'but that again is matter of opinion.' He spoke of Cuba and professed to know all about it. 'Can you tell me, then,' said I, 'why the Cubans hate the Spaniards?' 'Why do the Irish hate the English?' he answered. I said it was not an analogous case. Cubans and Spaniards were of the same breed and of the same creed. 'That is nothing,' he replied; 'the Americans will have both Cuba and Ireland before long.' I said I thought the Americans were too wise to meddle with either. If they did, however, I imagined that on our own side of the Atlantic we should have something to say on the subject before Ireland was taken from us. He laughed good-humouredly. 'Is it possible, sir,' he said, 'that you live in England and are so absolutely ignorant?' I laughed too. He was a strange creature, and would have made an excellent character in a novel.