A Confession of St. Augustine. Howells William Dean
a flutter of Hags (the Spanish colors romantically pre-eminent) the gates of the great Ponce de Leon Hotel were thrown open and the season was officially proclaimed. By that time the Alcazar was pretty well filled in lounge and patio by such fashion as had not waited so long as at the Ponce de Leon to come up from Palm Beach, or perhaps not even been there, or wished to be; these things are mysteries which one had better leave to the pictures and the letter-press of the Sunday editions. I myself was happiest in the looks of those hoarders and roomers who abounded in the Plaza from the small hotels and lodging-houses and intimidated my meek spirit less than the guests of the two great hotels which are not quite so much the last word in architecture as in fashion. They are the syllabling of the architect who won the commission for them while yet a student in the École des Beaux Arts, and pronounced it in accents which, though still so distinctive, are now a little archaic. People now do not want that series of drawing and dining-rooms which open from the inner patio of the Ponce de Leon; and if they did, they would not have the form fitly to inhabit them; their short skirts and their lounge-coats are not for such gracious interiors, but rather for the golf-links.
One heard of teas in the afternoons and of balls at night which filled these rooms, but, as I have owned, I am afraid of the great world, and am so eager to despise the pride of life when I think I see it that I make myself unhappy in the vision, and I would rather invite the reader to fly with me to the more congenial society of the Plaza. I will not even attempt to speak of the balls at the Ponce de Leon from the exclusion, too voluntary to know that it might have been involuntary, which I suffered. Any one could share the pleasure of the tango-teas in the most fashionable restaurants by simply coming to them and either dancing them or drinking them. The dancing was actually the affair of young couples who seemed to stray in from the street, and circled round between the tables in those rhythmical embraces of the dance to the harsh clatter of the band and the applause of those who preferred the tea form of tango. It was very strange, and a little periculous-looking, but practically it came to no more harm than the waltz did in its day when it alarmed the delicacy of Byron’s muse a hundred years ago. Besides these tango-teas there were street dances at night promised by local associations, but mostly defeated by cold snaps from the North or West, which seized them as it were unawares, after the street had been roped off, and hung with lanterns, or flooded with moonlight. Where you expected a gay masquerade what you got was a couple or two in citizen’s dress performing to the music of what sounded like a German band, but may have been German-American. Cordova Street was the favorite scene of such hilarities, but there are many other St. Augustine streets named after Spanish cities or provinces which I liked to walk through or drive through merely because they were called Saragossa, or Granada, or Barcelona, or Malaga, or the like, and brought their namesakes endearingly to mind.
One year I recall, however, when the kinder night caressed the scene with the tenderness of summer, and glowed upon the same southward space of Cordova Street where with the first hour of dusk the feet of the dancers began to whisper on the sanded asphalt. The new moon, with upward-tilted horns, swam in the blue above the palms of the Alcazar gardens and sank into its depths while the dance thickened in the mystical pace of the one-step and the music throbbed with the monotony of the barbaric time. It was such a scene as we might have looked down upon from some balcony in medieval Florence, where the youth of the city danced from street to street, and the children were allowed up to look on till all hours, as they were now in St. Augustine.
In St. Augustine the shops and theaters are open on Sunday, as in any continental European town, but the same may be said of the churches, which are abundantly frequented. The favorite dissipation of the local youth was apparently the ice-cream served at small tables in the drug-stores, where with the bane the antidote could be promptly supplied; but I should say, or almost say, that the favorite dissipation of the aliens of every age was the sail to the nearer and farther North Beaches. This could be afforded at twenty-five cents, which paid the sail both ways, and the transit of the sandy stretch of the island to the ocean shore in a horse-car drawn by a mule hitched at the side of the car, but did not include the roast oysters at the restaurants. If you wish to lose yourself in the sandy jungles of Anastasia Island you may cross by trolley-car on a pro rata payment of that supremely extortionate toll which I have already lamented. But I hope you do not wish to cross as yet, but will be willing to keep with me along the bay-front, either way you like, past some minor hotels and pleasant dwellings southward and the ruins of old Spanish houses and dwellings northward, when suddenly the fort of San Marco, now misnamed Marion, blocks your way with its mass, darkly but not gloomily Spanish, and incomparably monumental.
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