The History of Cuba Volume II Part 13

It is more difficult to understand the object of this policy than to realize its effect upon the country's growth and progress. M. Ma.s.se says in his book "L'Isle de Cuba et la Havane":

"No Spaniard was allowed to sail for America without permission of the king, a permission granted only for well-defined business reasons, and for a period limited to two years. The agreement to settle there was even more difficult to obtain. A special permission was needed even to pa.s.s from the province first chosen to another. Priests and nuns were subject to the same rule."

These restrictions were enforced even at the beginning of the nineteenth century. M. Ma.s.se continues to say that travelers were detained on board several days before they were allowed to land in Havana. They had to present a pa.s.sport, a certificate of birth and baptism and a certificate of respectable life and good conduct, all signed by a consul of Spain.

In individual cases these severe requirements may have been evaded--M.

Ma.s.se mentions the fact that minor functionaries were ready to do the foreigners any favor--for a consideration. But upon the whole it must be admitted that their observance tended to keep up a certain moral standard in the colonies, which may not have been without some good influence in moulding the character of the people. While other powers of Europe allowed--and even encouraged--their colonies to become dumping-grounds for human refuse, to populate them with their derelicts and those of other nations, until America was spoken of by the Germans as the big reformatory, Spain made an attempt at what some centuries later, in our scientific age, might have been called "race culture."

CHAPTER XIV

The conditions which we have described did not, however, prevent the colony, when prosperity came to her, from succ.u.mbing to the evils which invariably follow in the wake of new wealth. The historian Blanchet reports that there existed in Cuba towards the end of the century a strange mixture of immorality and piety. Religious enthusiasm rose to an unusual degree of fervor in Villa Clara in the year 1790. Two Capuchin missionaries had been there a month, and the church was crowded from early morning until late at night with men and women spellbound by their words. After the orisons there was a sermon, and at times, immediately after the sermon, the women left, the building was closed and darkened and the men remained inside. Prayers alternated with flagellations, until some individuals were exhausted with pain and the loss of blood.

In the penitential procession, which took place on some evenings, the two missionaries and the priests of the town were followed by a mult.i.tude in which both s.e.xes were represented. The members of the Ayuntamiento took part, bare-legged and bare-foot; some marched with the head and face concealed by a white cowl, the body uncovered to the waist, and from the waist down wrapped in sack-cloth. Some staggered under the weight of a heavy cross; others walked straight and attempted to inflict wounds upon themselves with the point of a sword. It seems, however, that this religious exaltation was at times carried too far, for flagellation a.s.sumed such proportions at burials that it had to be forbidden.

In contrast to this religious revival was the wave of frivolity and immorality that seemed simultaneously to sweep over the island. The streets of the towns resounded with ribald speech and lascivious songs.

The Bishop was scandalized to see Cuban women discard their veils when they went on the street. When they wore decollete gowns, they did not even close the blinds, but openly showed themselves at the windows.

There is little doubt that increase of overseas traffic in the ports of the island contributed to the growing laxity of morals. M. Ma.s.se considered the navy yard a special source of the corruption which wealth had brought. "For the money needed by that enterprise circulated in the city at the same time as the vices and the pa.s.sions of its employees and sailors." With a remarkable psychological insight he gives a most plausible explanation how the change in the life of the island affected the women of Cuba, and especially of Havana.

For these women had so far been brought up in strict conformity to the conventions of their female ancestors in Spain. They had been sent to a girls' school, always escorted, and had never until they were married even talked alone with a man. In the narrow confines of their home, either before or after marriage, their beauty was taken for granted and pa.s.sed uncommented. For the Cuban women were always unusually handsome, having the same regular features and rich coloring as the Spanish, the same large black eyes and bluish black hair, perhaps even accentuated by their placid immobility of expression. A strange type, bound to attract attention anywhere, they struck the strangers landing in this tropical city like rare exotic flowers, and they suddenly found themselves the objects of an admiration which manifested itself in ways that were new and irresistible. The Cuban husband was known not to be as loyal as his wife was expected to be; why should they not accept the homage offered them? To this host of admirers, ever changing, ever ready to shower them with favors, M. Ma.s.se, the keen psychologist, attributes the change in the att.i.tude of the women and the gradual change in the tone of Cuban, especially Havanese, society. As more and more of these industrious foreigners, who might have been as good Spaniards as their own ancestors, settled on the island, the difference between them and the native Cubans manifested itself, not always to the latter's advantage.

Women began to prefer them as husbands, and there was one more cause for antagonism between these scions of a common stock, whom different environment and conditions of existence had caused to drift apart, and become irreconcilably estranged.

Of Havana that subtle student of life has this to say:

"The need of forgetting the many privations of a prolonged sea voyage, with gold always in abundance for those who do not know how to manage their affairs and to whom each voyage seems a new adventure, the influence of a climate which makes for voluptuousness, all this combines to make Havana a new Cythera placed at the port of long journeys even as the ancient cradle of pleasure was at that end of the long voyage of that time."

Thus Havana, like other capitals of the world, became gradually not only the cradle of Cuban culture, but also of that corruption of the simpler and purer instincts of human nature which seems to be inseparable from a certain degree of material comfort. The man of Havana had in centuries of repression and restriction lost the power of initiative; the end of the century which gave the colonists of North America their independence made them free to think and act, and work for themselves, and above everything else, to govern themselves, found him still under a rigorous paternal supervision by representatives of a king whom he perhaps never saw. Centuries of such guardians.h.i.+p had robbed him of all incentive and made him drift along the line of least resistance.

Physically and morally a product of the country which was politically and economically a victim of that type of government, the Cuban of that period had no interests save the quest of comfort and such pleasurable excitement as certain entertainments offered. The women divided their attention between their church and their home, indulged in deadly idleness and senseless extravagance, dressed luxuriantly, but with bad taste, and sought distraction in gossip or gambling. The men, who had caught faint echoes of Voltaire and ideas of the Revolution and were estranged from the church, divided their interests between their business and their friends of both s.e.xes, and also sought distraction in gambling. There was gambling in the home circle, in the houses of friends, in the clubs, even in the convents. It was estimated that ten thousand games of cards were annually imported into Havana.

Of places of amus.e.m.e.nt there was no lack at that time. M. Villiet d'Arignon, who visited Havana fifty years before and was bored by the provincial monotony of Cuban life, could not have complained of lack of entertainment, had he seen Havana at the threshold of the nineteenth century, though his fastidious Gallic taste would perhaps not have been satisfied with the quality of the attractions the Cuban metropolis offered her guests. The native Cuban, and the Spaniard who had settled there, did not wish for anything more fascinating and more exciting than the national fiesta of the bull-fight, the corrida de toros. No true Cuban could resist the trumpet call summoning the population to that most sumptuous spectacle.

"These costumes of the age of chivalry, those richly harnessed palfreys, those banderillos (small darts with a bandorol) or stilets trimmed with the colors, with which the neck of the poor beast is seen magnificently larded; this martial music, these cheers of the mousquetaires rendering homage unto the victors, this most eminent magistrate presiding at the feast, this vast arena, this wealth of beautiful women, who have the opportunity of hearing the most drastic, disgusting and obscene exclamations, into which the vulgarity of spectators and toreadors lapses in the heat of the combat. And yet I would not advise the Spanish government to attempt to abolish at least in Havana this sort of spectacle. A revolt might cause the authorities to repent of their temerity."

Thus does the French author quoted before paint the picture of the greatest entertainment the Cuban of that time knew. But there were others, for instance the caroussel, the circus, the magicians, and there was always the c.o.c.k-pit, offering almost as much excitement as the bull-ring. Here, too, the gambling craze of the people a.s.serted itself.

For not only the prosperous man about town spent his money in betting at the c.o.c.k-fight, as he did at the bull-fight. Every little town had its c.o.c.k-pit and every montero or guajiro sacrificed his wages to taste the excitement of that spectacle. Surely Cuba at that century's end had already learned what the hosts of strangers needed, when after a long and tedious voyage they landed on the island.

One cannot help being reminded of the impressions M. Villiet d'Arignon carried with him from his visit to Cuba as recorded in Jean Baptiste Nougaret's "Voyages interessans," when after a month's sojourn he sailed for Vera Cruz on the same vessel that took D. Juan Guemez y Horcasitas from the governors.h.i.+p of Cuba to the vice-regency of Mexico. Then already was gambling the favorite, and, as the island lacked such places of amus.e.m.e.nt as were established later, probably the only pastime. The Frenchman noticed also the total absence of any interest in literature, art and music, and the impossibility of finding a circle of people where he could enjoy an animated conversation on subjects outside of the commonplace and of current local gossip, made him reflect rather unfavorably upon West Indian society of that time.

Such reflections must, however, be accepted with some reservation. For if the West Indian and especially the Cuban of the eighteenth century lacked interest in those things that make for culture, it must be remembered that the country in which he was living was still young, and that the people's paramount interest had of necessity to be for the things material. There has perhaps never been a colony of settlers in a foreign and primitive land that has not been so thoroughly absorbed in the task of founding a home and making a living, that all other things, for the time being, did not seem to matter. All pioneer settlers are bound for at least one or two generations to be so engrossed in rude manual labor or in plans to establish a trade, that they lose touch with the current intellectual life of their mother country and fall behind.

When those most urgent duties are performed and allow them brief spells of leisure, in which they look about and try to pick up the threads they had dropped, they find that the mother country has in the meantime advanced so far beyond them that they are unable to catch up with it.

Spanish America was no exception to this rule. While the sons of Spain that had settled in the New World were engaged in cultivating the soil, making roads in the rough country and laying the foundations of commerce and trade in the cities founded by their fathers or grandfathers, Spain had entered upon the heritage of many centuries of European culture, which on her soil had a rich admixture of Arabian elements. The literature of Spain had given to the world an immortal epic, the story of Cervantes, "Don Quixote," the deep significance of which was not perhaps grasped at that time, but the human essence and the humor of which were not lost upon his generation. It had given to the world a drama, which was far in advance of anything the continent had so far produced, and was comparable only to the works of that unparalleled British genius, Shakespeare. The plays of Lope de Vega were performed all over Europe and found their way even into the seraglio of Constantinople; and those of Calderon de la Barca have survived the changes of time and taste and are even today occasionally performed.

Of all this the Spaniard of Cuba was hardly aware. Even if he had not been so engrossed in his rude task, he could barely have known anything about it, because the limited communication with the mother country and the restrictions upon travel kept Spanish America in a state of isolation, that made for stagnation rather than progress. When the period of material prosperity came to Cuba with the relaxation of Spain's commercial restrictions, the Cuban awoke to the realization that he had lost contact with Spain's intellectual life, and had been left at least two centuries behind. Out of this knowledge, depressing and discouraging as it must have been, grew the attempt to centralize and organize a gradual revival of literary and scientific activity on the island.

Whether the Sociedad Economica Patriotica which was later called Junta di Fomento is identical with the Sociedad de Amigos del Real Pais, is not made clear by the historians. The Spaniards' fondness for long and sonorous names and t.i.tles may have added the second name. However, both this organization and a society founded about the same time in Santiago for the purpose of organizing the literary activities of that place, and similar societies in Sancti Spiritus and Puerto Principe were an expression of the earnest desire of at least a part of the people to turn their attention towards other things than those material. To Governor La Torre, Havana owed the foundation of its first theatre. That this establishment was encouraged and effectively patronized by Governor Las Casas and other men closely identified with the cultural work of the Sociedad, goes without saying.

But it is perfectly natural in view of the long period of indifference towards anything like the drama that the cla.s.sical Spanish dramas, the masterpieces of Lope de Vega and of the inimitable Calderon, did not immediately find their way upon the stage of Havana. The audiences had gradually to grow up to their standard and the directors of the enterprise wisely refrained from forcing them upon a people that had so long been ignorant of the strides Spain had made in the interval since their ancestors settled in the New World. Hence the repertoire of the theatre of Havana towards the end of the century catered to the Spaniard's love of music and favored the best comic operas then produced in the theatres of Europe. The ballet was very popular, as it was everywhere at that period. But that subtle observer, M. Ma.s.se, was not favorably impressed with it.

"The ballet is of that kind which carries far the art of varying the most voluptuous att.i.tudes and the expression of the least equivocal sentiment."

He suspected the fandango, supposed to be typically Havanese, of being originally a negro dance, saying "The difference is in the embroidery, which civilization, or if one wishes, corruption, has introduced."

Very popular were at the time little comedies of domestic life, called Saynetes, and offering pretty truthful pictures of social customs and habits on the island, and especially glimpses of the society of Havana.

A Cuban writer of the period, D. Jose Rodriguez, is credited with the authors.h.i.+p of a comedy, "El Principe Jardinero," The Prince Gardener, which by its complicated plot held the attention of the audience and was performed with great success in 1791. A comedian of considerable ability and fame, then very popular with the Havanese, D. Francisco Covarrubas, was the author of farces, which were very warmly received and drew large audiences. The theatre of New Orleans, much older and better equipped than that of Havana, sometimes sent its company of actors for a short season of more serious drama. Among other plays which this company produced was the tragedy "Les Templiers." Although undoubtedly still in its beginnings, the theatre of Havana was upon the whole doing good work. Anglo-Americans who visited Havana about the century's end are said to have admitted that it was superior in building, stage setting, acting and music to the American theatres of that period.

The regular company which played in Havana at the time of Governor Las Casas was under the direction of Sr. Luis Saez. The performances were given twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, and mostly offered a program in which drama and music alternated. If a play of several acts was given, these musical numbers came between the acts. The program would usually begin with a dramatic composition; in the first intermission a short play was acted, in the second a tonadilla (musical composition) was played or a few Seguidillas (merry Spanish song or dance tunes). At times the pieces between the acts were suppressed and the performance ended with a tonadilla or a farce. In the bill of January twenty-ninth, 1792, it is announced that "this performance will conclude with a new duly censored piece ent.i.tled 'Elijir con discrecion i amante privilegiado' (The privileged lover chosen with discretion), by an inhabitant of this city, D. Miguel Gonzales."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VOLANTE: AN OLD TIME PLEASURE CARRIAGE]

They did not know then, in Havana, the lyric theatre, although the Havanese were fond of music and the members of Havana society in their gatherings usually provided some musical entertainment by having an instrumentalist perform on the piano, guitar or harp. However, there seems to have existed an Academy of Music, where concerts were given.

There is an article in an issue of the Havana paper of that time, the _Papel Periodico_, which refers to a concert given by Senora Maria Josefa Castellanos, whose performance on the harpsichord called forth not only a tribute in verse, but a glowing description of her "rare skill and mastery of which she has given proof in the Academy, with the sweetest harmonies of the best composers." This eulogy is contained in the Sunday issue of January twenty-second, 1792. Besides Senora Castellanos and other skilled amateurs, there was a Senora Dona Maria O'Farrell, who distinguished herself by her musical accomplishments, for another issue of the _Papel Periodico_ contains a sapphic ode dedicated to her by an admirer, who signed the pseudonym Filesimolpos.

It appears that b.a.l.l.s as an amus.e.m.e.nt were not approved of, which seems a contradiction in a society which was by no means puritanical. Although social evenings in private houses frequently ended in a dance, there were few indications that large affairs consisting mainly of dancing took place in the public a.s.sembly halls. The _Papel Periodico_ of December sixteenth, 1792, contains an announcement which for its brevity gives room to manifold interpretation. "The gentlemen are informed that there will be a dance today" is so laconic, that one is almost induced to believe that these dances were given at places known only to the initiated. In this particular instance it was subsequently learned that this dance of the sixteenth of December, 1792, took place at the house of a man who was considered "a dangerous reformer of the customs of Havana." Did this dangerous reformer perhaps admit to his dance the ravis.h.i.+ngly beautiful and cultured women that had come from Santo Domingo, where they freely moved in society, but were barred in Havana, because they had a white father or grandfather and a colored mother or grandmother? Foreign visitors to Havana at that period were so warm in their praise of these refined unfortunate victims of miscegenation, that they may have converted some of the gilded youth of the smart set or the Bohemia of Havana to their point of view.

The fine arts were not at first considered in the planning and building of the city of Havana. Though much money was spent upon public buildings, no artistic effect whatever was aimed at and the impression of a crude utilitarianism prevailed. The churches, too, did not possess the n.o.ble dignity of the great cathedrals of France, Italy and Spain.

The most ambitious ecclesiastical edifice in Havana, the church of San Francisco, was architecturally mediocre in style and barbarously overornamented.

In all the churches the sculpture and the wood-carving on the altars were over-elaborate and bewildered by their decorative details. Besides all these buildings were too low and narrow, and by their endless decoration diminished the sense of s.p.a.ce and produced one of oppression.

On special saints' days the decorations were pathetically crude and primitive. Angels of paper tissue, artificial flowers, birds, lambs, etc., were displayed with a profusion which was distracting, instead of adding to the fervor of religious sentiment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONTSERRAT GATE IN CITY WALL OF HAVANA, BUILT 1780]

The Church de la Concepcion, built about 1795, was the only church edifice which by a certain cla.s.sic simplicity approached the solemn beauty of a Greek temple. The Carmelite Church was interesting for the tomb of Bishop Compostele with the epitaph, which expressed his wish to be laid to rest "between the lilies of Carmel and the choirs of the virgins." None of these churches had pews or chairs, the seating capacity being limited to two rows of stalls or benches along the nave.

This made for an admirable democracy in a society which otherwise rigorously segregated the castes for it happened not infrequently that men of rank and ladies of position found themselves beside a poor negro.

Occasionally, however, one could see a lady going to ma.s.s with her family of children, accompanied by a negro, carrying a rug and a small chair; and when such a handsome senora seated herself in the center of the rug with her offspring grouped about her, the effect was so picturesque as to call for the brush of a Velasquez. But this privilege was limited to white ladies of rank only. The music in the churches, on the other hand, was exclusively furnished by the musically gifted negroes. Though it sometimes occurred in Cuba, as in other colonies of America, that owing to the lack of printed church music sacred words were adopted to secular tunes, and frequently to those of popular comic opera, the master works of the old church composers were sometimes heard at special occasions.

Among the streets of Havana the most metropolitan was the Calle de la Muralla, so called from the muralla or rampart built by Governor Ricla.

This was the Rue de la Paix for the women of Havana. It was lined with "tiendas de ropas," shops displaying all the latest importations of dress goods and wearing apparel. At that time, as at the present, the fas.h.i.+onable ladies of the Cuban capital insisted upon keeping pace with the styles of dress and adornment which prevailed in the great cities of Europe, as their pecuniary means, their taste and their natural gifts abundantly enabled them to do. Every morning the street was crowded with the carriages of ladies engaged in shopping. For no white woman, unless she belonged to what in the southern states of North America would have been called "poor white trash" was allowed to go on foot during the day, unless she was going to ma.s.s. Up to the twenties of the new century and beyond, this convention was rigidly observed. Those who had to go on foot were not seen on the Calle de la Muralla until the evening hours.

Then it was crowded with as gay and handsome a mult.i.tude of women, white, black and of all the intervening shades, as ever trod the pavement of a southern capital.

At such times the relation between the white and the colored women of the city could be observed in little incidents that were an unending source of amus.e.m.e.nt to the student of life. The lithe and willowy form of the young girl of Spain, which Montaigne has called "un corps bien espagnole," was frequently to be found among the Cuban women. The almost regal dignity and grace of carriage, for which the Spanish women were noted, had also been transmitted to their descendants in the colonies.

Now it was nothing unusual for any one to follow with his eyes the perfect form and the graceful movements of some woman in the crowd of such nights, and on coming up and catching a glimpse of the face to find a negress. For the imitative faculty of the colored race is extraordinary, and the negro maids of the white ladies of Havana copied faithfully every detail of the gait and gestures of their mistresses.

The dress worn by the Havanese on the streets was the national basquina, a black skirt, with a waist according to the prevailing fas.h.i.+on, and under that basquina was often worn a white petticoat trimmed with lace, which most unconcernedly was being dragged through the dust. But the most important article of a Cuban woman's dress was the mantilla, also often trimmed with the rarest lace, that indispensable covering for head and shoulders, which made an effective frame for a face in which shone a pair of luminous black eyes. That mantilla, like the fan, was a medium of expression and spoke an eloquent language to those that understood.

The cafes, which were sadly missed by M. Villiet d'Arignon in the middle of the century, had begun to appear in the streets of Havana, but never became as popular as in European capitals. The Cuban did not particularly care for coffee as a beverage; he preferred chocolate, which he took at home. He did not care to go out, unless it was for a game of cards, a feria di gallo, or c.o.c.k-fight, or the bull-ring. He was essentially a domestic creature, though Havana had a smart set the masculine members of which furnished ample material for gossip of a more or less scandalous nature. He spent his time at home smoking; in fact, everybody in Cuba smoked, men, women, children, priests, masters and slaves. It was not an infrequent sight to see a negro maid about her work with a cigar in her mouth or behind her ear. Small favors and services were paid in cigars.

Outside of the cultural endeavors of the Sociedad little was done in Cuba for the cause of education. As the Countess de Merlin reported in her book on Havana, there was only one school in that city in the year 1791, that taught grammar and orthography, the instructor being the mulatto Melendez. The children of the monteros and guajiros in the country grew up in almost complete illiteracy. As was mentioned in a previous chapter Governor Las Casas devoted from eleven to twelve thousand pesos of his private fortune for primary instruction, but it is not clear whether this was to be extended throughout the island or limited to Havana. At any rate there were at the beginning of his administration thirty-nine schools in the city, seven of which were for males only, the others for children of both s.e.xes. In many of these schools, which were in charge of mulattos or free negroes, only reading was taught; in the better schools arithmetic as far as fractions; thus prepared young men were expected to enter upon a university course. The smallest fee for primary instruction was four reales a month; for higher instruction two pesos. To two hundred white and colored children the P.

P. de Belen (Fathers of Bethlehem) gave lessons free of cost; it is reported that their cla.s.s surpa.s.sed in writing. Towards the end of the administration of Las Casas there were seventy schools, with about two thousand pupils. But they seemed to have a hard fight for their existence and the number is reported to have been later reduced to seven hundred and thirty-one pupils.

The low intellectual standard of the average Havanese woman of that period is easily understood by a glance at these data. The education of girls even in the cities was considered of such minor importance, that as late as 1793 it was not deemed necessary for them to learn to read.

The daughters of the Havanese patricians were taught accomplishments regarded as inseparable from an ideal of refined womanhood, such as embroidery and a little music. But as work of any kind was not on the program of their lives, serious occupation, even with household duties, was unheard of. The matronly senoras, who were frequently held up as models of womanhood and especially of motherhood, were woefully ignorant of the simplest cooking and other branches of what is today called home economics. The orphans and poor children admitted to the Casa de Beneficiencia were better prepared for life. They were all taught the alphabet, the girls sewing, embroidery and the making of artificial flowers, and the boys learned the cigar-makers' trade.

From these premises it can be easily inferred that the standard of literary activity in Cuba could not have been very high. That great democratic medium for the diffusion of information, the printing press, was an inst.i.tution which in Cuba was also limited by royal decrees.

According to Sr. La Torre the first printing press was established in Havana in 1747; there were printed the decrees and reports and other official doc.u.ments of the government, and sometimes matters of general interest were published on loose sheets. Some authorities claim for Santiago de Cuba the honor of priority, stating that it had a printing press before the year 1700. But Sr. Hernandez in his Ensayos literarios declares that he could find no foundation for this statement. Nor do Valdes, Arrate or Pezuela contain any definite data on that subject.