At That Time The Portrait, In Colours, Of The Great Man Occupied The
Post Of Honour Above The Mantelpiece In
Our _sala_, or drawing-room -
the picture of a man with fine clear-cut regular features, light
reddish-brown hair
And side-whiskers, and blue eyes; he was sometimes
called "Englishman" on account of his regular features and blonde
complexion. That picture of a stern handsome face, with flags and
cannon and olive-branch - the arms of the republic - in its heavy gold
frame, was one of the principal ornaments of the room, and my father
was proud of it, since he was, for reasons to be stated by and by, a
great admirer of Rosas, an out-and-out Rosista, as the loyal ones were
called. This portrait was flanked by two others; one of Dona
Encarnacion, the wife, long dead, of Rosas; a handsome, proud-looking
young woman with a vast amount of black hair piled up on her head in a
fantastic fashion, surmounted by a large tortoiseshell comb. I
remember that as small children we used to look with a queer, almost
uncanny sort of feeling at this face under its pile of black hair,
because it was handsome but not sweet nor gentle, and because she was
dead and had died long ago; yet it was like the picture of one alive
when we looked at it, and those black unloving eyes gazed straight
back into ours. Why did those eyes, unless they moved, which they
didn't, always look back into ours no matter in what part of the room
we stood? - a perpetual puzzle to our childish uninformed brains.
On the other side was the repellent, truculent countenance of the
Captain-General Urquiza, who was the Dictator's right-hand man, a
ferocious cut-throat if ever there was one, who had upheld his
authority for many years in the rebellious upper provinces, but who
had just now raised the standard of revolt against him and in a little
while, with the aid of a Brazilian army, would succeed in overthrowing
him.
The central portrait inspired us with a kind of awe and reverential
feeling, since even as small children we were made to know that he was
the greatest man in the republic, that he had unlimited power over all
men's lives and fortunes and was terrible in his anger against evil-
doers, especially those who rebelled against his authority.
Two more portraits of the famous men of the republic of that date
adorned the same wall. Next to Urquiza was General Oribe, commander of
the army sent by Rosas against Montevideo, which maintained the siege
of that city for the space of ten years. On the other side, next to
Dona Encarnacion, was the portrait of the Minister of War, a face
which had no attraction for us children, as it was not coloured like
that of the Dictator, nor had any romance or mystery in it like that
of his dead wife; yet it served to bring all these pictured people
into our actual world - to make us realize that they were the
counterfeit presentments of real men and women.
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