Readers who know nothing about Paraguay will find interesting material in this error-studded mixture of fact, fiction, and fancy. From the first paragraph of Chapter One to the last sentence 196 pages later this incredible effort offers an amazing number of mistakes and inventions. We learn on the first page that Cabeza de Vaca “was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida, Argentina, and found wandering naked by the unhirsute Indians who took him to be a God because of his two beards one on his face and the other above his loins.” And on page 196, Young has Eliza Lynch being received with all possible honor to her mortal remains: “Guards of honour, salvos, massed bands and speeches preceded her to the tomb, the Panteón [sic] de los Heroes, a memorial to Eliza Lynch who, for good or evil, had been all but Queen of Paraguay.” The truth is that Eliza’s remains have never made it to the Panteón and probably never will.
Among the choice bits scattered through the book are these revelations: Francisco Solano López had “Indian shrewdness,” and Urquiza was “a man of mystery.” The French colonists at Nuevo Burdeos (now Villa Hayes) were sent “to a corner of the Chaco.” Morgenstern was a homosexual. López “proclaimed himself a Field Marshal”; and Madame Lynch “was named Regent of Paraguay.” Hopkins “had received without Lopez’s knowledge or consent, the monopoly of the yerba trade.” López “was on excellent terms with the Rothschilds as well as the famous financiers John and Alfred Blyth.” Also “there was untold wealth in the country . . . where gold was merely a bright object and jewels had the value of beans.” Young accepts without question the old tales about conspiracy, hidden treasure, and spoliation of the Virgin of Caacupe. He presents Madame Lynch as a prostitute, albeit a discerning and expensive one, who had no difficulty in capturing the vain Paraguayan.
The author’s method leaves him open to charges of very close paraphrasing: In R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Portrait of A Dictator, one reads: “Lopez was furious. So furious that for three days no one dare go near him, not even his eldest son by Madame Lynch, Pancho, whom he adored” (p. 162). And in Young: “For three days Lopez remained in his room. His moods alternated between abject despair and uncontrollable wrath. Nobody dared go near him Not even Panchito his eldest son, whom he adored” (p. 98).
The reader might forgive scores of typographical errors, misspellings, and even extraordinary carelessness with names, but not the author’s failure to inform himself about basic facts in Paraguay’s history. The “true” story of Eliza Alicia Lynch may never be written, but materials are readily available for an acceptable biography. The twenty-one items slapped together haphazardly in what pretends to be a bibliography apparently provided Young with his information. A typical entry is : The Man in Paraguay—Colonel Thompson. The real title, of course, is The War in Paraguay.
Paraguayan history has a magnificent store of themes for all forms of literary expression. Among them is the tragic life of the amazing, beautiful Eliza Alicia Lynch, whose story is best told in William E. Barrett, Woman on Horseback. Unfortunately, the volume here reviewed makes no significant contribution to understanding any part of the Paraguayan tragedy.
