Legendary Innkeeper

Her name is plainly Mrs. Bates, A strange capricious whim of fate's To crown with such banality So strong a personality.

--Noel Coward

Arequipa, Peru's second city, is dominated by El Misti, a 19,100-ft., snowcapped volcano, but for almost 50 years its principal attraction was "Tia" Bates.

Mrs. Ana Bates was an old South America hand. A U.S. citizen by birth, she went to Chile and Bolivia as the bride of a British mining engineer. After he drifted out of the picture, she moved to Arequipa and started a guesthouse with a small garden. In time it grew into a long, rambling structure surrounded by a pleasant jungle of trellised roses, honeysuckle and bougainvillaea. She called it Quinta Bates, and ran it with an imperious hand; travelers came to esteem it as the finest boarding house in the Western Hemisphere.

Actors, generals, presidents and princes (including the British brothers who became Edward VIII and George VI) enjoyed the hospitality of plain Mrs. Bates, who was known as tia (aunt) up and down the west coast. Film Star Clark Gable once journeyed 1,000 miles out of his way just to stay at Quinta Bates. Guests liked to sit in Tia Bates's museum-like house and, over Scotch-and-sodas or pisco sours, listen to her talk. Her memory was long and her stories often spicy. Guests also found the quinta hard to leave (two of them stayed 16 years). Noel Coward once arrived for a few days, remained a month and left a 70-line verse eulogy to be framed on the wall. For celebrities and tourists alike, Tia Bates had an unbeatable formula: good American cooking, soft beds, plenty of hot water and a serene atmosphere. And when things went wrong or servants fouled up the serenity, the boss lady could raise the roof and cuss like a bucko mate.

Arequipa came to think that Tia Bates was as monumental and enduring as El Misti, but last week she was dead of uremia and old age (almost 85). Indians and whites crowded Quinta Bates to mourn. Said a weeping Quechua: "She was like charapa the land turtle--hard outside, tender inside."

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