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Writing Type: Book
This version is edited with an introduction by C. Harvey Gardiner.
Keywords: Argentina, Chile, nunneries, travel, pampas, gauchos,
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Archive: Centre of Latin American Studies (CLAS) Library, Cambridge.
Location Details: This extract is from pp.112-113.
Text: CONVENT
At one end the altar glittering with silver, mummery, and candles; at the other side of the grating the nuns assembled at vespers some were sitting at the sides and back of the chapel others kneeling in the middle, even close to the grating, and with their faces towards the altar. They appeared to be almost all very old, fat women, short and thick complexions stained with garlic and oil, and countenances soured by long confinement. They were praying as if they were sick and tired of it, and as if they neither cared nor knew what they were saying. Four or five were playing on fiddles, which they held up to their necks like men one was sawing an immense double bass, and another was blowing with a large hand bellows into the lungs of a little organ, on which a sister nun was playing. They all sang together, and I never heard sounds less melodious. Age had taken all softness from their voices, and had left nothing but a noise which was harsh, squeaking, and discordant. The women were old and ugly, and the scene altogether was saddening. Their dresses consisted of white caps and large black gowns their hair was concealed, and their features were so hard that it was difficult to say whether they were old men or old women the serge gown concealed their figures which were intended as the ornaments of creation. When one fancied the lives they might have led the assistance they might have afforded to society the friendships they might have enjoyed, and the pleasing natural duties they might have performed, it was melancholy to see them. lost to the world, and only occupied in screaming in Latin through iron bars to candles and pictures.
On my right there was a young monk, who remained on a bench close to the wall all the time I was there. He was confessing a nun through some holes in a plate of tin, which was let into the convent wall. which separated them; and since the days of Pyramus and Thisbe, there can never have been a more regular flirtation. The monk was much more anxious to talk than to hear, and I could not help smiling when 1 saw him with great eagerness of countenance putting sometimes his mouth, and. sometimes his ear, to the tin plate. However, when I turned towards the group of old nuns who were before me, I felt that it mattered but little to society whether they were confessing their old sins, or planning new ones; but it was distressing to think that the young and the innocent, who were rising in the world, were still the victims of such a mistaken custom for surely nothing can tend to blunt the good feelings of the young more than the reflection that even their thoughts of yesterday are already recorded by a man; and if an evil genius wished to prepare a man who should be peculiarly unfitted for so delicate a confidence, what could he do better than doom him to idleness and celibacy, deny him children of his own, and feed him upon oil and garlic?
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