Diplomatic Days
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Title: Diplomatic Days
Author: Edith O'Shaughnessy
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BOOKS BY
EDITH O'SHAUGHNESSY
A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE IN MEXICO. Illustrated.
DIPLOMATIC DAYS. Illustrated.
HARPER & BROTHERS. NEW YORK
[ESTABLISHED 1817]
[Illustration: HILLSIDE HOUSES AND CHURCH TOWERS IN THE ZAPATISTA
COUNTRY
Photograph by Ravell]
DIPLOMATIC DAYS
BY
EDITH O'SHAUGHNESSY
[MRS. NELSON O'SHAUGHNESSY]
AUTHOR OF
_A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico_
ILLUSTRATED
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published November, 1917
CONTENTS
FOREWORD xi
I
First impressions of the tropics--Exotic neighbors on Page 1
shipboard--Havana--Picturesque Mayan stevedores--Vera
Cruz--The journey up to Mexico City
II
First visit to the Embassy--Adjusting oneself to a height of Page 16
eight thousand feet in the tropics--Calle Humboldt--Mexican
servants--Diplomatic dinners--Progress of Maderista forces
III
Mexico in full revolution--Diaz's resignation wrung from Page 32
him--Memories of the "King in Exile"--President de la Barra
sworn in--Social happenings--Plan de San Luis Potosí
IV
First reception at Chapultepec Castle--First bull-fight--A Page 47
typical Mexican earthquake--Madero's triumphal march through
Mexico City--Three days of adoration
V
Dinner at the Japanese Legation--The real history of the Page 61
Japanese in Mexico--Dinner at the Embassy--Coronation
services for England's king--The rainy season sets in
VI
Speculations as to the wealth of "the Greatest Page 69
Mexican"--Fourth of July--Madero as evangelist--The German
minister's first official dinner with the Maderos as the
_clou_
VII
The old monastery of Tepozotlan--Lively times on the Page 84
Isthmus--The Covadonga murders--The Chapultepec
reception--Sidelights on Mexican housekeeping--Monte de
Piedad
VIII
Elim's fourth birthday party--Haggling over the prices of Page 93
old Mexican frames--Zapata looms up--First glimpse of
General Huerta--Romantic mining history of Mexico
IX
The Vírgen de los Remedios--General Bernardo Reyes--A Page 107
description of the famous ceremony of the "Grito de Dolores"
at the palace
X
The uncertainty of Spanish adverbs--Planchette and the Page 120
destiny of the state--Madame Bonilla's watery
garden-party--De la Barra's "moderation committee"--Madero's
"reform platform"
XI
Election of Madero--The strange similarity between a Mexican Page 127
election and a Mexican revolution--The penetrating cold in
Mexican houses--Madame de la Barra's reception--The
_Volador_
XII
Dia de Muertos--Indian booths--President de la Barra Page 141
relinquishes his high office--Dinner at the Foreign
Office--Historic Mexican streets--Madero takes the oath
XIII
Uprising in Juchitan--Madero receives his first Page 153
delegation--The American arrest of Reyes--Chapultepec
Park--Sidelights on Juchitan troubles--Zapata's Plan de
Ayala
XIV
The feast of Guadalupe--Peace reigns on the Page 164
Isthmus--Earthquakes--Madero in a dream--The French colony
ball--Studies in Mexican democracy--Christmas preparations
XV
The first Christmas in Mexico City--Hearts sad and Page 179
gay--Piñatas--Statue to Christopher Columbus
XVI
Off for Tehuantepec--A journey through the jungles--The Page 184
blazing tropics--Through Chivela Pass in the lemon-colored
dawn--Ravages of the revolution--A race of queens
XVII
Gathering clouds--"Tajada" the common disease of Page 198
republics--Reception at Chapultepec--Madero in optimistic
mood--His views of Mexico's liabilities to America
XVIII
Washington warns Madero--Mobilization orders--A visit to the Page 206
Escuela Preparatoria--A race of old and young--The watchword
of the early fathers
XIX
A tragic dance in the moonlight--Unveiling George Page 217
Washington's statue--The _Corps Diplomatique_ visits the
Pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacan--Orozco in full revolt
XX
Madero shows indications of nervous tension--Why one guest Page 226
of Mexico's President did not sit down--A novena with Madame
Madero--Picture-writing on maguey--Picnic at El
Desierto--San Fernando
XXI
Mexico's three civilizing, constructive processes--A typical Page 245
Mexican family group--Holy Week--"La Catedral" on a "canvas"
of white flowers--Reply of the Mexican government
XXII
The home of President Madero's parents--Señor de la Barra Page 254
returns from Europe--Zapatistas move on Cuernavaca--Strange
disappearances in Mexico--Oil--The President and the
railways
XXIII
The "Apostle" begins to feel the need of armed forces--A Page 269
statesman "who is always revealing something to
somebody"--Nursing the wounded at Red Cross headquarters
XXIV
One Indian's view of voting--Celebrating the King's birthday Page 279
at the British Legation--A single occasion when Mexican
"pillars of society" appear--Reception at Don Pedro
Lascurain's
XXV
Orozco and his troops flee toward the American border--A Page 295
typical conversation with President Madero--Huerta's
brilliant campaign in the north--The French fêtes--San
Joaquin
XXVI
Balls at the German Legation and at Madame Page 310
Simon's--Necaxa--A strange, gorge-like world of heat and
light--Mexican time-tables--The French trail
XXVII
A luncheon for Gustavo Madero--Celebrating the _Grito_ at Page 316
the Palace--The President's brother explains his
philosophy--Hacienda of San Cristobal--A typical Mexican
Sunday dinner
XXVIII
Good-by to Mexico, and a special farewell to Madame Page 333
Madero--Vera Cruz--Mexico in perspective
ILLUSTRATIONS
HILLSIDE HOUSES AND CHURCH TOWERS IN THE Frontispiece
ZAPATISTA COUNTRY
THE REVOLUTIONARY CAMP, MAY 5, 1911 Facing p. 10
(In front, Francisco I. Madero, behind him, José
Marcia Suarez. Next him, Gustavo Madero. At
left front, Abram Gonsalez. All are dead)
FRANCISCO I. MADERO " 24
(From a photograph taken in 1911)
MADERO AND OROZCO IN 1911--MADERO AT THE " 34
LEFT
MEXICAN WOMEN SELLING TORTILLAS " 42
NELSON O'SHAUGHNESSY " 46
(Secretary of the American Embassy, 1911-1912)
PAUL LEFAIVRE " 46
(French Minister to Mexico, 1911)
FRANCISCO LEON DE LA BARRA " 46
(President _ad interim_ of the Mexican
Republic between Diaz and Madero)
A ROAD-SIDE SHRINE " 56
VON HINTZE, GERMAN MINISTER TO MEXICO (1911 " 74
to 1914)
MEXICAN WOMEN WATER-CARRIERS " 88
A TYPICAL GROUP OF CORN-SELLERS " 108
ELIM O'SHAUGHNESSY, MEXICO, JUNE, 1911 " 134
MADAME LEFAIVRE, WIFE OF THE FRENCH MINISTER " 134
TO MEXICO, 1911
XOCHIMILCO " 154
BOATS ON THE VIGA CANAL " 200
AT EL DESIERTO, APRIL 29, 1912
(Mrs. O'Shaughnessy and Elim in the foreground) " 234
LUNCHEON AT THE VILLA DES ROSES " 234
(In front row, left to right, Mr. de " 234
Vilaine, Mlle. de Tréville, Ambassador
Wilson, Madame Lefaivre, Mr. J. B. Potter,
Mr. Rieloff (German Consul-general), Mrs.
Nelson O'Shaughnessy, Von Hintze, Mr.
Kilvert, Mr. Seger)
A BEAUTIFUL OLD MEXICAN CHURCH " 262
MEXICAN NUNS GOING TO MASS " 304
FOREWORD
The letters which form this volume were written in a period of
delightful leisure, when I was receiving my first impressions of
Mexico. The might and beauty of the great Spanish civilization, set in
a frame of exceeding natural loveliness, kindled new enthusiasms, and
to it all was added the spectacle of that most passionately personal of
human games, Mexican politics.
Though I was standing on its threshold, I had little prescience of the
national tragedy which later I was to enter into completely, beyond
the feeling of mysterious possibilities of calamity in that rich,
beautiful, and coveted land.
I saw as in a glass darkly dim forms whose outlines I could not
distinguish, and I heard as from a distance the confused cries of a
people about to undergo a supreme national crisis, where the greatest
delicacy and reserve were necessary on the part of the neighboring
nations.
Since then all has happened to Mexico that can happen to a land and
permit of its still existing. Even as individuals bear, they know not
how, the unbearable, so has Mexico endured.
It is not easy for those who witnessed her great years of prosperity
and peace to be reconciled to the years of chaos which have followed,
unable as they are to distinguish any good that has resulted to
compensate for the misery undergone.
All theories have been crushed to atoms by the tragic avalanche of
facts, and above it the voice of the prophet has been heard, "Let that
which is to die, die; that which is to be lost, lose itself; and of
them that remain, let them devour one another"--until the time comes
for new things.
_EDITH COUES O'SHAUGHNESSY._
PARIS, September, 1917.
DIPLOMATIC DAYS
I
First impressions of the tropics--Exotic neighbors on
shipboard--Havana--Picturesque Mayan stevedores--Vera
Cruz--The journey up to Mexico City
Off the Florida Keys,
On board the _Monterey, May 1, 1911_.
Precious mother: From the moment of arrival at the docks I began to
have a suspicion of the tropics, which, however, with everything else,
was in abeyance as we rounded Cape Hatteras. During that period an
unhappy lot of passengers spent the hours more or less recumbent.
We left New York on a day beautiful and sunny overhead, but uncertain
and white-capped underneath, and I don't want to repeat Cape Hatteras
in any near future. However, sea evils are quickly forgotten, and I am
"taking notice" again.
When we got down to the docks strange equatorial-looking boxes were
being unloaded, and there were unfamiliar odors proceeding from crates
of fruits, with spiky green things poking out, and something aromatic
and suggestive about them. Unfamiliar people more highly colored and
less clear-cut than I am accustomed to were gesticulating and running
about and talking in Spanish, with quantities of strange-looking
luggage, countless children, and a great deal of very light-yellow
shoe.
It was twelve o'clock as we left. N. had our steamer chairs arranged,
and we went down to lunch to the sound of the loudest gong that
ever invited me to refresh. The _comedor_ (dining-room) had its menu
printed in English and Spanish, and, of course, I lapped up the Spanish
names with my lunch, which gave a charm and a relish to the otherwise
uninteresting food. Table decorations in the shape of paper palms
were rather disillusioning. The merest scrap of any growing exotic
thing would have satisfied me, though N. said I was probably expecting
to find the _comedor_ smothered in jasmine and mimosa, with orchids
clinging to the walls. Well, perhaps I was. You know I am romantic.
I am now ensconced on deck. Low, yellow stretches in the distances are
the "Keys," and I am beginning to feel a slow firing of the imagination
as we slip into these soft, bright waters--into the Caribbean. Our old
Lamartine quotation comes to mind, "_Ainsi toujours poussés vers de
nouveaux rivages_," etc.
A Mérida family occupies the state-room nearest mine--five children,
mother, father, and a beetling-browed Indian maid. I stumble over
details of their luggage every time I go out of my cabin--a pea-green
valise, a chair for one of the younger children, a large rocking-horse,
a great, round, black-and-white cardboard box from some hat-shop in
Fourteenth Street--they don't seem to mind what they carry.
Their parrot I had removed early in the game; none of them ever went
near it to give it food or water, though they had gone to the immense
bother of traveling with it. It was evidently pleased to be going back
to where it had come from, and its liveliest times were between 4 and
6 A.M. and 2 and 4 P.M.
They have an awful little boy they shriek at, called Jenofonte (in
toying with my dictionary I see it is Zenophon in English). He "hunts"
with a quiet, bright-eyed little sister called Jesusita, whom I have
several times found in my state-room investigating things. It seemed
at first like having them all in with me. The state-rooms have only
the thinnest partitions, with about a foot of nothing at the top for
ventilation.
The steward tells me they get off at Progreso. "Papacito" is a wealthy
henequen planter. "Mamacita" boarded the ship wearing huge diamond
ear-rings and molded into the tightest checked tailor-suit you ever
saw. This morning she is perfectly comfortable in a lace-trimmed, faded
lavender wrapper--doubtless inspired by the warm air. I can see her in
sack and petticoat on the plantation.
The boat is full of children, and how they squabble! The various
parents come up and talk in loud, harsh voices, and gesticulate and
scream what seem maledictions on one another, and one thinks there
is going to be a terrible row, when suddenly everybody walks off with
everybody else as pleasant as you please, and it is all over till the
next time.
More or less sophisticated literature was sent me for the voyage by
various well-wishers. To-day I have been reading _Les Dieux ont Soif_,
but with a feeling that this is not a setting for Anatole France, and
that I would do better to wait in spite of all the cleverness. He can't
compete with this sea-preface to the Mexican book I am to read.
I have an exotic neighbor in the chair next mine who attracted me
the first day out by her steamer rugs, which seemed to be white lace
bedspreads with wadded linings, now not as fresh as they were before
we all disappeared during the rounding of Cape Hatteras. I have only
been wont to travel in directions where steamer rugs _are_ steamer
rugs. I was further interested by the pillows embroidered with large
pink-and-blue swallows and the word in Italian, _Tornero_, reminding
me of the things one used to buy at Sorrento or Naples or in the Via
Sistina.
A large, fierce-mustached, chinless man sits by her--husband, manager,
protector, or devourer, I know not. She is an Argentine dancer going to
do a "turn" in Havana, a good soul with a naturally honest look out of
her sloe-black eyes and the most lovely lines from waist to feet; for
the rest getting top-heavy. I imagine she is "letting herself go," as
large boxes of chocolates and candied fruits are always by her side,
which she presses on Elim every time he appears. He is sitting by me
and says to tell you that he has you _zucker-lieb_.
He runs the deck from morning till night, and I think his little
alabaster legs are taking on a brownish tinge. It is getting very warm,
but there is always one side of the boat where a breeze is to be had.
He has been divested of most of his clothing, and is wearing a little
pale-blue linen suit, short above his sweet, white knees. He looks like
the fairest lily among all these dark blossoms.
_Later._
Between six and seven o'clock the sea was a marvelous mauve and blue;
myriads of little white-winged flying-fish were springing out of the
water; over us was a green-and-orange sky in which a pale crescent moon
was shining. Tell Elliott these wondrous seas seem to belong to him. My
thoughts enfolded him tenderly as a soft darkness fell.
Early to-morrow morning, about 6.30, we get into Havana. The Jacksons
cabled us before we left New York to lunch with them at the Legation.
The _Monterey_ has been taking strange, unrelated assortments of
passengers to Mexico for decades, and her only resemblance to the big
ocean liners is that she floats. The cabins have hard, narrow berths
with a still harder shelf of a sofa, and when I add that a bit of
cloth was tied round the stopper of my basin to prevent the water from
running out, you will quite understand. I used half of my bottle of
listerine on the stopper, and then removed the cloth, with the result
that I have to be quick about my ablutions. But when one is running
into a blue-and-mauve sea with a rainbow-colored sky above, it does
not matter; one is bathed in a gorgeous iridescence. The captain tells
me that on the last trip they ran into a hurricane, with the water
suddenly slopping and washing about in the famous _comedor_, everybody
wet and trying to stand on chairs and tables, screaming and saying
prayers.
_May 3d._
Between Havana and Progreso.
Yesterday we had a pleasant day with the Jacksons. You know they are
always handsomely established, and we found them in a very beautiful
old Spanish house opposite an old church with a pink belfry, and a tall
palm pressed against it--the sort of silhouette I had dreamed of and
hoped for. My eyes received it gratefully as we drove up to the door.
Once in the house, dim, cool, large spaces enveloped us, and Mrs.
Jackson, very dainty in the freshest and filmiest of white dresses,
received us. We had not met since the old Berlin days. Mr. Jackson,
also in immaculate white, was coming down the broad stone stairway from
the chancery as we got there.
They showed us the interesting house, a type fast disappearing, alas!
Mostly they are being turned into cigarette-factories or being torn
down to make room for entirely unsuitable buildings, such as are in
vogue in the temperate zone. Large suites of rooms are built between a
wide outer veranda and a large inner corridor giving on a courtyard.
During the season of rains, it appears, the water rushes down the
broad stairway, and the furniture in the huge, window-paneless rooms is
piled up in the middle. Nobody keeps books or engravings in Havana, on
account of the dampness. There is not a first edition on the island.
Even shoes and slippers left in the closets get a green mold in no
time. Mr. Jackson says they have a lot of work at the Legation, and
everything in Havana costs the eyes of the head.
An hour or so after lunch, with its "Auld Lang Syne" flavor spiced
with our hot, tropical inquiries, we took a drive along the deserted
Malecón, the entire population evidently at the business of the siesta.
But Havana should always be seen, indescribably beautiful, from a ship
entering the port in the pearly morn, as I saw it.
About four o'clock, when we were driving to the landing, the town
began to wake up. There was much coming and going of a many-colored
population, with the dark note dominating, and much whistling and
humming, and many knowing-looking, pretty, flashing-eyed, very young
girls were walking about. We had been refreshed with one of the
national beverages--shredded pineapple in powdered ice--most delicious,
before leaving the Legation. It helped us over the blaze of water to
the _Monterey_.
After getting back I walked about the deck, watching the beautiful
little harbor filled with all sorts and conditions of ships, hailing
from the four winds of the earth. The _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_, with
the new German minister to Mexico aboard, was just going out of the
harbor, and I was shown where they were busy dredging for the _Maine_.
A part of her historic form was to be seen and "gave to think."
About six o'clock fiery clouds began to pile themselves up in the
heavens with a lavishness I am unaccustomed to. One could not tell
where the sun was actually setting. The whole horizon was red and
pink and saffron and vermilion, and the rose-tinted Cabaña fortress
and Morro Castle cut sharply into it. The waters of the harbor slowly
became a magnificent purple, and as the ships began to hang their
masthead lights, and the throb of coming night was over everything,
we steamed out. For long after we could see the jeweled lights of the
lovely isle. So far, so good.
We have a day at Progreso, and we are planning to go ashore to
visit Mérida, the famous old capital of Yucatan, and evidently most
interesting. The accounts in Terry's Guide are quite alluring. It was
founded on the remains of the ancient Mayan city, and has a celebrated
cathedral built by one of the men who came over with Cortés, and still
filled with good old things. The description of Montejo's house, with
its door flanked on each side by the stone figure of a Spanish knight
with his feet on the head of a Mayan Indian, shows what that conqueror
thought of the situation.
Captain Smith, very rotund and quite blasé about the thrills of
passengers, who has not been ashore at Mérida for three decades, though
he passes by many times a year, recommended us to stay on the boat,
saying Mérida was always "hotter than Tophet," too hot to see anything.
"I know," he added. "I have seen 'them' go and seen 'them' return."
Some spectacled German travelers quite enlivened the deck to-day. When
they first hove in sight I thought they were professors or scientific
men of some sort, each having a large, flat valise under his arm. The
valises, according to the modest yet piercing glance I cast, proved,
however, to be filled with underpinnings for the female form divine,
that they are going to introduce into Yucatan--coarse embroidery
and lace-trimmed articles, with machine-stitching you could see the
length of the deck, and both men simply dripped with samples. Dots,
stripes, and checks, with the prices attached, seemed to be their whole
existence.
Awhile ago, however, the largest and most florid one leaned against
the railing under the warm starry sky, as we steamed through a
phosphorescent sea, and sang Walther's "Preislied" in a beautiful tenor
voice, with the purest, smoothest phrasing. The other, regretting
at intervals that he had not brought his _geige_ with him, hummed a
delightful second part to _Wie ist es möglich dann dass ich dich lassen
kann_. It was all as natural as breathing, and as close.
_May 4th._
Between Progreso and Vera Cruz.
The voyage is drawing to an end. A peace which doesn't pass
understanding has fallen on my part of the ship as the Mérida family
and their rainbow luggage were taken off to the sound of the shrieks of
the parrot, the screams of the family, and endless running back to get
things.
We did not go ashore, after all, as we had planned. From the direction
of Mérida came a strange heat enveloping like a garment, a heat unknown
to me, and a dazzling glaze of light, which seemed to bore holes
through the eyes. Later on at sunset, red as blood, there was a spongy
crimson ambiency about each figure on deck.
All day we watched the spotlessly clean Mayan stevedores unloading the
cargo on to the lighters. It was an effect of brown skin and white or
pale-pink or green garments, which I suppose had been some coarser
color to begin with. They are Mayan Indians with a big civilization
behind them. I remembered dimly those beautiful illustrated reports--I
think from the Smithsonian--that I used to look at in the Washington
house curled up in an arm-chair. It affected me to see these remnants
of a past race arrive for the unloading of our steamer so clean, so
fresh-smelling. All day long they have been crying "_Abajo!_" and
"_Arriba!_" as the heavy load swung down or the iron claws swung
up. The little boats and lighters of all kinds have pious names--_La
Concepción Inmaculada_, _Asunción_ (the grimiest and smallest of all
was _La Transfiguración_)--instead of the _Katies_ and _Susies_ and
_Dolphins_ of another clime.
_Later._
We were thankful we had not ventured into the Mérida furnace. Some
stout Germans who left in the morning active, rosy, fat, and inquiring,
came back languid, lead-colored, flabby, and silent. What happened to
the two who debarked to introduce coarse undergarments and fine singing
into Yucatan I shall never know.
I thought of Elliott, when the darkish women in pink dresses, with a
blue veil or two and jewelry and many children, got on the boat to go
from Progreso to Vera Cruz. It must have been the sort he used to see
in Haiti. I have just written Aunt Laura, to post at Vera Cruz, that
she may know we are _en route_ to the land of the cactus. Events have
succeeded one another so quickly these past few months that I am dazed.
Only the thread of love and sorrow and high adventure that holds life
together keeps me steady.
Yesterday Elim said, in the same tone he would have used feeding the
swans and the deer in any one of the accustomed international parks,
"Now I am going to feed the sharks." He was hoping they would show some
interest in the bits of bread he threw at them. These wondrous blue
waters are simply infested with the ravening creatures, and any one who
fell overboard would not need to fear drowning. Since we left Havana it
has been all color, no contours, no masses, even, except the gorgeous
sunset clouds, and they have presented themselves with unimaginable
pomp and circumstance. I have never seen such a waste of color.
The German son-in-law of Senator Newlands, whom you saw in Berlin, is
on board, also a count and countess--I _think_ the same ones that mixed
the tomato catsup in the bath-tub of the Washington house that the
clergy provided for them when they came from Rome seeking fortune. An
unidentified youth, _terzo incommodo_ or _commodo_, for all I know, is
with them; the returning families and German commercial travelers make
up the rest.
To-day, though the sea is smooth to the eye, there is a long, slow
ground-swell, and this blanket of heat further relieves one of all
strenuosity. I begin to understand lots of things. Campeche Bay is a
far cry from the Ritz-Carlton--but what would life be without its far
cries?
_Friday 5th._
Nearing Vera Cruz.
Very hot, though early this morning there was a drenching rain, a
deluge. The heavens simply opened, and everything, for an hour, was
running with a great sound of water. Now the sun is out, a strange,
pricking, nerve-disturbing sun.
[Illustration: THE REVOLUTIONARY CAMP, MAY 5, 1911
(In front, Francisco I. Madero; behind him, José Marcia Suarez; next
him, Gustavo Madero. In khaki at left front, Abram Gonsalez. All are
dead)]
I have a deep thrill of excitement when I think of the Mexico in
revolution that we are nearing, steaming so quickly to the center
of it all. The victories, the defeats, the glories, the abasements,
vanishings, and destructions we may witness, all that troubled magnetic
unknown awaiting us! In looking over the newspaper in Mrs. Jackson's
cool, dim, vast boudoir we saw that the Madero revolution is taking on
great proportions. Old things and new wrestling for supremacy, "and the
heavens above them all."
The ---- are going on to Mexico City to "_chercher fortune_." He is the
brother of the tomato catsup bathtub episode, as I gathered, when he
spoke of a brother having been in Washington. He quite frankly tells
people that he himself has had bad luck, as on the way to Mexico he
had stopped at Monte Carlo, and of the hundred thousand francs raised
to begin life again in the tropics he had lost eighty thousand at the
tables. Very sad!
We land at Vera Cruz about noon, according to Captain Smith, and can
take a night train (thirteen hours) up to Mexico City. I had some
thought of persuading N. to wait over, that we might make the famous
journey by daylight. But the train leaves at 6 A.M., which would
mean a night in Vera Cruz, and what I hear about the hotels is not
confidence-inspiring. I have a feeling of being completely at the mercy
of the unknown and the only partially controllable--unknown microbes,
unknown humanities, unknown everything; and there is the blue-eyed boy,
so we will probably let the scenery enjoy itself.
_Later, 3 p.m._
Sitting on deck in Vera Cruz harbor.
To-day is a great national holiday, the 5th of May (when the French
were defeated at Puebla), and things are not moving quickly, at any
rate not in our direction. The health officials have not materialized.
Somebody said it was a bad time to arrive, anyway, as they would be
taking their afternoon naps.
The only other visitor from foreign parts in the harbor is the
_Kronprinzessin Cecilie_ lying against the white glaze of shore. An
old Spanish fortress, San Juan Ulua, is near us--now used as a prison
and most dreadful, I am told. But I keep thinking how, through the
centuries, the vast, shining wealth of Mexico poured into Europe from
this port.
_Later._
The polite, vestless but _not_ coatless health officials have found
us "clean," and we are now waiting for the next set--I think it is the
port authorities--to finish _their_ naps.
On the docks so near, but apparently so far, is lying or sitting
a dark-faced, peaked-hatted, white-trousered race with one tall,
white-skinned, white-clad figure standing out--our consul, evidently
come to meet us. Captain Smith told me that in the old days navigators
got into Vera Cruz by the picturesque means of steering so that
the tower of the Church of San Francisco covered the tower of the
cathedral.
I was standing by him (it was his ninety-ninth entrance into Vera Cruz
harbor) just as we passed the lone palms on the flat, sandy island, and
he heaved a sigh of relief. In addition to the sandy islands and the
lonely palms were blackened ribs of various ships that did not get into
port. These things and the blur of heat confusing the outlines of the
city into a mass of white, pink, and green, with a hint of a lustrous
mountain form on a far horizon, are what I see as we sit here ready to
step ashore into the unknown.
Mexico City, _May 6th, noon_.
Hôtel de Genève, a stone's-throw from the Embassy.
We got in early, at 7.30, and I did not feel, driving through the broad
streets with their wash of Indian color, as one often does entering
strange cities in the early morning: "Why, oh, why have I come? What am
I doing here?"
There seemed abundant justification, if one could only get at it;
some personal pointing of the finger of a generally impersonal fate.
It's all very strange to both the psychical and physical being. N.
went early to present himself to the ambassador. We had purposely not
telegraphed our arrival. Elim is out with Gabrielle, and I am rather
limp and listless after the sleepless night, which was an unforgetable
rising up, up, up, with a ringing in the ears, through an exotic,
potential sort of darkness.
My last word was from the boat, posted at the consulate. Mr. Canada,
our calm, sensible, silver-haired, blue-eyed consul, welcomed us at
Vera Cruz, piloted us quickly through the furnace of the customs,
across an equally hot interval of sand and cobblestone to the dim,
cool consulate, where a strong, unexpected breeze was blowing in at the
sea-windows.
Then ensued a great telegraphing to and fro to know if the line, the
only one rumored to be intact to Mexico City, were really open and
safe. Other encouraging rumors, such as the cutting of the water and
light supplies of Mexico City by the revolutionaries, were rife. But,
not fancying a marooning in Vera Cruz, we decided "If it were done,
'twere well 'twere done quickly."
Half an hour before the train started, with babe, baggage, and maid
safely on board, we took a little turn about the streets. A blessed
blue darkness was falling, all that glaze of heat was gone, and the
note of color proved to be little low, pink houses with a great deal
of green shutter and balcony. We went as far as the Plaza, drawn by
the sound of some really snappy music. Indians, mantilla-covered,
white-clad women, little children in various stages of undress, and
a foreigner or two smoking, were sitting or walking about in the
palm-planted square, and under some arcades people were eating and
drinking. The domed and belfried cathedral was only a dark mass against
the sky, but all the same I deeply knew that it was the tropics, the
Spanish tropics. Thus has many a one debarked in a tropical port,
and there is nothing at all extraordinary about it, except one's own
feeling.
As the train moved out of the station every man had his revolver or
his rifle ready at hand, and there was a great wiping and clicking
and loading going on. The colored porter and a young man reading the
_Literary Digest_ gave, however, home notes of security.
It wasn't one of those nights when you "lie down to pleasant dreams."
As I put my head out of the window at one of the dark stops the scent
of some sickeningly sweet unknown flower fell like a veil over my
face. There was a hollow sound of the testing of the wheels. Torches
and lanterns cut the darkness, so that I got suggestions of unfamiliar
silhouettes, as a peaked hat or a flap of a cape or a bayonet caught
the light. Soldiers were guarding the bridges and trestle-works, which
seemed endless.
As the first dim light began to come in at my window I drew up
the curtain and looked out on a scene so beautiful, so unexpected,
that I could have wept. The two great volcanoes, Popocatepetl and
Ixtaccihuatl, were high, rose-colored, serene, ineffably beautiful
against the sky, still a pale tint of _bleu de nuit_. I felt all the
alarms and uncertainties of the darkness slip away. Elim was rolled
up like a little ball at the foot of the berth, nothing of his head
showing but a shock of yellow hair. We were safely on the heights.
Dim, bluish fields of the unfamiliar maguey were planted in regular
rows. Even as I looked out they began to take on a rich, brownish-pink
tone, the little Indian huts along the way became rose-colored,
everything began to glow. The two peaks, which had had no place in my
consciousness since I wrestled with their names at school, were masses
of flame-color against a sky of palest, whitest blue. At the little
stations an occasional red-blanketed, peaked-hatted Indian appeared. It
was the Mexico of dreams.
II
First visit to the Embassy--Adjusting oneself to a height of
eight thousand feet in the tropics--Calle Humboldt--Mexican
servants--Diplomatic dinners--Progress of Maderista forces.
_May 7, 1911._
Yesterday proved very full, though I had thought to engage it, as far
as the outer world was concerned, by a single visit to the Embassy. N.
came home to lunch with the announcement that it was Mrs. Wilson's day,
so I went back with him, thinking to greet her for a moment only, but
she insisted on my returning for the afternoon reception, and was most
cordial and welcoming.
I came home, tried to rest, and didn't, and, finally pulling my outer
self together with the help of the big, black Alphonsine hat, sallied
forth at five o'clock to see the general lay of the Mexican land. I
found various autos drawn up before the Embassy door, and Mrs. Wilson,
very gracious and attractive-looking in a heliotrope dress, was
receiving many callers in her handsome, flower-filled drawing-room.
Various diplomatic people were presented, but mostly, as it happened,
from or about the equator.
I met, however, a charming young Mexican--Del Campo, I think his
name is--from the Foreign Office. His English was so choice and
delightful that I asked how it came about. He explained that he had
an Irish mother and had been _en poste_ in London. Toward the end the
ambassador came in, very cordial, and asking why in the world we hadn't
telegraphed that we were coming up on the night train, so that we might
be properly met; but I told him one _couldn't_ be "properly met" at 7
A.M.
An agreeable, clever man, Stephen Bonsal, who has been correspondent at
various crises for various newspapers in various parts of the world,
came in late. He is down here to watch the progress of the revolution
from the very good perspective afforded by Mexico City. After every one
but Mr. Bonsal had gone there was an interesting conversation about the
potentialities of the Mexican situation.
The ambassador is a great admirer of Diaz, and fears the unknown
awaiting us.
In the evening we dined with the first secretary, Mr. Dearing, a
delightful man of good judgment, with dark, clever eyes, who says he
has in view just the house for us. I am glad to find him here.
It's all rather a blur of fatigue, however, and this morning not much
better. I am conscious all the time of an effort to adjust the body
to an unaccustomed air-pressure, a different ambiency. After all, it
is nearly eight thousand feet in the tropics. This hotel "leaves to be
desired" from every point of view, and we must make other arrangements
at the earliest opportunity.
_Later._
Various reporters have been here wanting details of our "previous
condition of servitude," and bothering us for our photographs, which we
have not got.
Mr. Weitzel, special secretary, sent from Washington to "help out"
pending N.'s arrival, has been to lunch, and I am going out to drive
with Mrs. Wilson in a few minutes.
Was it not tragic--one of those tricky, inexplicable, unnatural
arrangements of fate--that Aunt Laura, up from Tehuantepec on business,
should have been leaving one station as we got in at the other? It
would have seemed to the human understanding the preordained moment
to span the decades between this day and that long-ago parting in my
childhood.
_Later._
Just home from a delightful drive about Chapultepec Park with Mrs.
Wilson. It is entered through a broad, eucalyptus-planted avenue with
fine monuments and vistas, leading into the beautiful, poetic grounds,
with the far-famed castle of Chapultepec standing on a hill in the
midst, about which grow countless varieties of exotic tree and flower.
As we drove about she told me of the wonderful fiesta there at the time
of the Centenary, when the park was hung with thousands of electric
lights, of the dignity and state of Don Porfirio, and of Doña Carmen's
wonderful white Paris gown and her strings of pearls and diamonds, and
flashing through it all her gracious smile as she received the great of
the earth, gathered from the four winds.
But there seemed something of a fairy tale about it all, with a
revolutionary army in the north headed straight for us, brought
together by an unknown dreamer of the dream of equality, a sort of
prophet and apostle.
_May 8th._
I have already sent off two letters, but this goes _via_ the pouch to
Washington. I am not formulating anything about Mexico. I feel myself
simply a receptacle for impressions not yet crystallized.
I am now going to look at the house Dearing spoke of. This hotel,
though quite new, is already rickety and proves itself more primitive
at each turn. The doors in every room are placed just where you don't
expect them; either you can't shut them or they won't open. The hot
water runs cold, and the cold hot. We are up a huge number of stairs,
the first step placed at right angles as you go out of the door; and
I seem to be living in a world of luggage. The pleasant rooms can only
be got at through the undesirable ones. The food to me is interesting
with its American veneer over unclassified substances, but would never
do for Elim.
This afternoon I made official calls with Mrs. Wilson--just a leaving
of cards, and in the evening we dine with Dearing and Weitzel, who,
now that N. has arrived, is returning immediately to Washington. The
weather is beautiful, but the dark and splendid clouds that yesterday
"gathered round the setting sun" are, they tell me, the forerunners of
the rainy season.
_May 9, 1911._
Instead of dining with Mr. Weitzel we all had a very pleasant dinner
at the Embassy last night. Everything exceedingly well done. A Belgian
_maître d'hôtel_ has brought his Brussels ways with him, and it might
have been a pleasant dinner anywhere. The Embassy is very handsomely
equipped throughout with the furnishings of Mr. Wilson's Brussels
Legation, and the rooms are all large and high-ceilinged and generally
ambassadorial-looking. Mr. Wilson has a very complex situation well in
hand, but says he has ample reason to fear that if Diaz goes it will
be an embarking on unknown seas in a rudderless ship. Personally I
have not got any of the points of the compass yet, but something seems
brewing in all directions.
_Later._
We took the charming dwelling I spoke of yesterday--not too large, and
thoroughly furnished by comfortably living, cultured people--42 Calle
Humboldt. The name of the street itself is in the proper Mexican note.
I want to keep the house, which is built in the dignified, solid way
of half a century ago, on the basis of the former masters, so I looked
over the accounts, which in themselves give a picture of Mexican life.
The servants get fifteen cents a day for their food, consisting largely
of frijoles, and their everlasting pulque, which my nose is no longer a
stranger to, and their wages range from seven to nine dollars a month.
There is a dear little flower-planted corridor--pink geraniums and
calla-lilies--running around the four sides of the _patio_, on which
all the rooms open, and there is a second brick veranda, with various
shrubs and flowers and oleander-trees, out beyond the dining-room,
where Elim can play in the flooding sun. Four of the servants have been
many years with the Americans to whom the house belongs, Mrs. Seeger
and her daughter departing only last week on the Ward Line _Merida_.
The house has never been rented before. Its only drawback is that it
is in the center of the town, though it is at the end of the street
near the broad Paseo. The Embassy is some distance out, in one of the
new "Colonias." We can move in immediately. Everything is in apple-pie
order. I have seen two smiling, black-dressed, white-collared,
white-aproned maids, who said they wouldn't stay if I got a butler.
It sounds so promising that I certainly won't introduce any possibly
disturbing element into this paradise.
42 Calle Humboldt.
I am sitting here quietly in the charming little library waiting
for the _maître de maison_, whom we have just missed; a few final
arrangements are to be made. There are many bookcases filled with
really good books, easy-chairs, writing-desks, and all sheltered from
this beautiful but cruel light by awnings at the windows of court and
street--everything comfortable and _comme il faut_. The rooms have the
high ceilings of this part of the world, and in the drawing-room, which
gives into the library, are more books, and furniture that will be
pleasant to live with.
Mrs. S., fearing possible destructions of a very probable revolution,
took with her all her really good portable things, I understand.
Collections of fans, paintings on bronze, some old pictures, valuable
bric-à-brac--in short, the gleanings of years. I am thankful, of
course, not to have the responsibility of anybody's special treasures.
The rooms are all enfilade, with the open corridor running around the
inside of the _patio_, and all, except two big corner rooms giving on
the street, open onto it. Just opposite is the Ministry of Finance,
and at the head of the street in the big Plaza is the Foreign Office.
There is an artesian well at the back, but the water must be boiled
and filtered. I understand one must keep one's eye on the filtering
and boiling, which seems superfluous to the Aztec. Nothing is spoken
except Spanish, which pleases me, as it will break me in immediately.
The servants are a cook, the two nice maids, two washer-women, and a
little half-priced maid called a _galopina_. As you will judge by the
name, she does all the running, and doubtless the kitchen work nobody
else will do.
I am most fortunate not to have to try my novice hand on getting a
household together in this land of unknown equations. Just to step into
a well-ordered household is a piece of good luck. I have already seen
a corner I shall make mine, a sofa near a bookcase and reading-lamp,
and an old, low, square table which I shall put beside it for books and
flowers, and where the tea will be brought.
_May 10th._
A word in haste by the pouch. Don't believe all you see in the
newspapers, and especially don't let the Paris _Herald_ make you
panicky. We are well, and to-morrow we move into the pleasant home.
In case there are riots we can sport not only one oak, but two, as
there is a double set of doors to the large vestibule leading into the
courtyard, and we are up one flight, in what the Italians would call
the _piano nobile_. Nothing above but a flat, convenient, accessible
roof. I am told the roof is a great feature of Latin-American life,
especially in revolutionary days.
I write at length about the disposition of the house because I know you
will like to hear; not because there is one chance in a thousand of the
siege so much talked about, though it seems in the note to order large
supplies from the American grocery-stores, and people are having their
doors and window-shutters strengthened. The fighting on the frontier
has nothing, as yet, to do with us.
_May 12th._
All peaceful here in Mexico City. Diaz and Madero are supposed to
come to some sort of terms. The well-seasoned inhabitants who know the
people and conditions feel there is no cause for personal anxieties,
though, of course, there are always alarmists. One minister, whose
posts during a long career have been Guatemala, Siam, and Mexico, talks
wildly, and has stocked his house for a siege. He lets the water run
into his tub at night for fear the water-supply will be cut off, and
has had iron bars put across his shutters.
Yesterday, when we got to the house, there was not a sign of any of the
servants. It appeared completely deserted, and might have been a Mayan
ruin so far as signs of life were concerned. After an hour of thinking
their delicacy, or whatever it was, had gone far enough, I investigated
the back quarters, and they all appeared smiling and ready. As I
understand it, there was some Spanish-Indian idea about not intruding
at first; but _I_ wanted to get settled!
I was out this morning, getting a few necessary additions to the house,
though everything is here, even to some linen and silver. The departing
Belgian secretary is having a sale, and I met there several of the
colleagues looking over his household gods.
Last night we were again at the Embassy for dinner, and the cook
returned me some of the morning house money--fifty cents or so--that
had not been used. I was so surprised that I took it. They seem a
pleasant, peaceful, gentle, ungrasping sort of people.
The house is open day and night--we live a practically outdoor life.
To get to the really charming dining-room with its yellow walls, rare
old engravings in old dark, inlaid frames, its cabinets with bits of
Napoleon, Maximilian, and other old china, we have to go out under
"the inverted bowl" of an unimagined shining blueness and around the
corridor. It certainly poetizes the hour of refreshment. The climate
is indescribably beautiful to _look at_, but it is all too high. Few
foreigners can stand it _à la longue_. The _patio_ was flooded with
moonlight when I went to bed, and flooded with sun when I woke up. I
praised Allah.
The dinner of twelve at the Embassy last night was very pleasant.
President Taft's announcement that there would be no intervention made
every one feel easy again. Rumors had been rife in town as to possible
decisions in Washington. I sat between the ambassador and an American,
Mr. McLaren, an _intime_ of Madero, in whose house he lay concealed
last autumn when he was in danger of arrest.
I was most interested in hearing, at first hand, about Madero. Mr.
McLaren, a clever lawyer with a long experience of Mexico, says he is
inspired, illuminated, selfless, with but one idea, the regeneration
of Mexico. He seems to have no doubt of Madero's being able to work
out the Mexican situation along high, broad lines, and thinks he will
surely be here, in the city, through force or the abdication of Diaz,
within a month or two.
Mr. Wilson, on the contrary, told me again he saw with dread the
overthrow of the Diaz régime. Though the President is eighty-three,
with many of the infirmities and obstinacies of old age, he also
preserves many of the qualities that made him great, and Mr. Wilson
said that he personally, in all his dealings with him, never found him
lacking in understanding or energy.
I reminded myself of La Fontaine's fable, _Entre deux Âges_, with
the difference, however, that instead of having no hair left, I had
no opinions left, when we rose from dinner. We drove home in an open
motor under a thickly starred and gorgeous heaven; but the unfamiliar
constellations gave me sudden nostalgia.
_Later._
Last night the Ward Line _Merida_ sank. The wife and daughter of Mr.
Seeger were on her. After five hours of anguish and uncertainty, in
complete darkness, bereft of every personal belonging, the passengers
were transferred to the United Fruit Company steamer that ran into
them. The news has just come in. It makes 42 Calle Humboldt seem very
safe. To think that as we were returning to its security from the
pleasant dinner at the Embassy the disaster was taking place!
[Illustration: FRANCISCO I. MADERO
(From a photograph taken in 1911)]
I look about this comfortable home and think how sheltered a spot had
been forsaken but a short week ago, of the treasures chosen from walls
and cabinets to be out of possible revolutionary harm, and now all is
lying at the bottom of the sea, off Cape Hatteras, and we, strangers,
are safe in the shelter of this home. "Who shall escape his fate?" I
keep saying to myself.
_May 13th._
On the 10th Juarez was captured with its commanding officer, General
Navarro, by Orozco and Giuseppe Garibaldi, who is down here following
out the family traditions. I am writing in the comfortable little
library, doors opening everywhere on to the flower-planted corridor.
I have been reading Creelman's _Life of Diaz_, and three volumes of
Prescott are waiting on my little table. Suddenly I find I am hungry
with a great hunger for the printed page and the old objective and
impersonal habits of thought. In Vienna the personal, with its "grand
seigneur" contour, seemed to replace quite sufficiently for the time
any objective views of life. A woman who reads there is likely to
be _mal vue_, which for some reason does not at all do away with the
insistent seductions of Viennese life.
Yours from the Dolder received, and the sight of the envelope showing
the familiar Zürich lake and hills made me realize the mountains and
seas that separate us. Elim went to sleep with the envelope under
his pillow. The beautiful park nearest us, the "Alameda," of which I
inclose a post-card, is unfortunately haunted by Indians, picturesque,
hungry, dirty. If it is true, as transcendental souls say, that beauty
is food, I need not worry about _them_, but it does not make the place
very tempting for Elim's airings. He will have to be driven up to
Chapultepec Park.
We are to be presented to the President and his wife this week, and are
looking forward to meeting the maker of modern Mexico and his charming
consort. They are in their large house near the Palacio, but generally
at this season have moved to Chapultepec.
_May 16th._
Yesterday Madero and Carbajal, who is the peace envoy of Diaz, whatever
that may mean, went into conference at Juarez to consider the proposals
of the Diaz government. Everything here is in a melting condition, and
how it will crystallize the fates alone know.
Various "innocent" bystanders were killed or injured at Douglas in the
early days of the revolution. Some still more innocent, looking neither
to the right nor to the left, also got hurt, as, for instance, the lady
leaning over the wash-tub with her back to the land of the cactus. They
have put in a nice little bundle of claims, and one flippant newspaper
at home suggests putting the town of Douglas on wheels and moving it to
a place of safety, rather than going to the expense of invading Mexico
for the recovery of claims past and future.
Last night we dined at the handsome French Legation in the Calle
Roma. The minister and his wife are away, and in their absence the
_chargé d'affaires_, De Vaux, is living there with two friends, a Mr.
de Vilaine, very _au courant_ with Mexican matters, and who has large
mining interests in Taxco and Colima. He showed us some interesting
silver ingots from a little mill at Miramar on the Pacific coast, made
up after the manner of the early Spaniards.
A young man, D'Aubigny,[1] in business here, completes a pleasant trio,
and we had a very agreeable dinner. The retiring Spanish secretary,
Romero, just appointed to Teheran, and his Viennese wife were also
there. Romero bears testimony to race, and his long and elegant
silhouette fitted into the charming rooms most harmoniously; but a
tall, distinguished-looking man, whose name I did not get, ought to
have been hanging, clad in a ruff and velvet doublet, in a gilt frame
among the Velasquez in the Madrid museum.
The Belgian minister, Allart, who has been here during the last several
years of Don Porfirio's glory, took me out. The conversation everywhere
turns on the political situation, suppositions as to the abdication
of Diaz, prophecies as to how and when Madero will arrive, if the city
will offer resistance, and each one's little plan of campaign in case
of siege.
There is a temporary narrow-gauge railroad running from the arsenal to
the Buena Vista station, across the beautiful Paseo, for the expedition
of men and munitions if necessary, which Allart told me appeared last
March in the night soon after Limantour's return. Nobody seems to know
exactly what forces are at the disposition of the Federal government.
The newspapers get rich on the situation, however, and certainly it
enlivens the dinners.
_May 20, 1911._
The Madero forces are in possession of the ports of entry at Juarez and
Agua Prieta, and can collect the customs which, as one minister said,
would be spent in fancy by all, but in reality by the usual nearest
few.
I saw some Mexican suffragettes the other day whom I wish their
American sisters could have gazed upon. They were armed with bandoliers
full of ammunition crossed over their breasts, and it did look like
bullets rather than ballots among the sisterhood here.
N. has photographed the _patio_ and corridor, and I will send you some
copies as soon as possible.
Yesterday I called with Mrs. Wilson at the house of Mrs. Nuttall, of
philological and archæological fame, who is away. It is the celebrated
but ill-omened house[2] that Pedro de Alvarado, Cortés's beloved,
hot-blooded, dashing lieutenant, built just after the Conquest,
when Coyoacan was the favorite spot of the high-born and high-handed
survivors. It has a most artistic façade, pink, with the pink of ages,
and decorated with a lovely lozenge-shaped design.
One enters through a great carved wooden door, with an old shrine above
it, into a beautiful courtyard with patches of sun and dark corners,
and going up a broad flight of outside stairs one finds oneself on a
wide Bougainvillea-hung veranda.
Mrs. Laughton, Mrs. Nuttall's daughter, gave us tea in a
high-ceilinged, thick-walled room, filled with flowers and bric-à-brac,
with a beautiful, very large, couple-of-centuries-old portrait of a
nun Mrs. Nuttall had found in some convent looking down on us. As the
poetry and beauty of that old civilization invaded me I thought, "This
is what all of Mexico might be, and is not." Beautiful shell designs
are over each door leading into rooms of romantic and unexpected
proportions. Afterward we went down-stairs and passed through the
courtyard, in one corner of which is an old well, overgrown with
flowers, which has a history as dark as its depths. The body of
Doña Catalina, the first wife of Cortés, is said by evilly disposed
historians to have been thrown into it after a quarrel between herself
and Cortés in the old near-by Palacio.
As we walked in the garden I felt some strange magic exhaling from it
all, something possessing and almost imploring. There were such lights
and shadows, such contours of cypress and eucalyptus, mingling with
quince and pear trees. The old arbor in the _carrefour_ is overgrown
with white roses, and the rest of the garden is a mass of lilies
of various kinds, heliotrope, and great tangles of trailing pink
geranium and honeysuckle. Blue-flowered papyri were clustered about
a microscopic, water-lilied lake, quite black in the late afternoon
light. Around all was an old pink, vine-grown wall. It was the _hortus
inclusus_ of poets, and I perceived then in its fullness the dark,
lovely imprint of Spain upon the lands she conquered. The English,
German, French stamp on their colonies that I have seen is pale,
effaceable, and doubtless would be lost immediately once the power is
withdrawn. But this Spanish stamp has a deathless beauty, and in all
the washings of all the generations it does not seem to come out or
off.
I stay at home a good deal. It is so pleasant--and after so many years
of the concurrences, of the displacements, the hastes and excitements
of the great world, how I love this full leisure! After all, what is
needed to make life interesting, I am discovering, is not action, but
atmosphere, and that I have here.
The President is very ill. I am deeply disappointed that our audience
has to be put off. I want to see the old régime, now decidedly
tottering, in its accustomed setting. It appears he has an ulcerated
tooth, and there can be no receptions, formal or informal, in the
present state of affairs. Indeed, I have not seen "hide or hair" of any
of the actual government. Doña Carmen, of whom I hear so many tales of
goodness and tact, combined with the charming elegance of a woman of
the world, seems adored by high and low, and is very Catholic. The not
too drastic enforcement of the famous "Laws of Reform" is said to be
due to her influence.
I have been looking into the history of Mexico since the
"Independence"--to try to get some sort of a "line" on governmental
psychology. So much bloodshed has always attended a change of
government here.
First came men like the priest Hidalgo and Morelos, his disciple, men
of burning hearts and flaming souls. Then appeared a set of what to-day
we would call intellectuals: Comonfort, Lerdo, Juarez are types. The
long reign of Diaz was preceded by all sorts of upheavals, in which any
one who had anything to do with government lost his life.
However, all this concerned the Mexicans alone. But now, with
disorders menacing huge foreign interests, a new element of discord
and complication comes in. As the generations renew themselves with
certainty and promptness, in the end the blow to things industrial is
the most serious; and don't think me heartless for stating this simple,
cruel truth. Diaz seems at last pushed to the wall, and, of course,
with him many foreign interests, which I understand are vital to the
life of the country. He has had much wisdom, but the gods seem to have
withheld knowledge of the very practical recommendation of one of the
old philosophers about succumbing in time. He is supposed, however,
to have promised his resignation, if his conscience lets him. He fears
anarchy, and, of course, he knows his people very, very well.
Even I, stranger and alien, have a sort of feeling that if this
revolution proves successful the "liberties" of the Mexican people
will, as usual, get lost in the mêlée. Giuseppe Garibaldi is said to
have received the sword from old General Navarro, when he gave it up
at Juarez. Can courtesy to foreigners be carried further? The Boston
_Evening Transcript_ had an amusing bit, particularly so to me, saying
the difficulty of finding out what is happening in Mexico is that of
telling which are the names of the generals and which those of the
towns.
_May 22d._
I am at home to-morrow, Tuesday, for the first time, to whomever it
may concern, taking the day every other week, as seems the custom
here. Besides getting settled I have begun laying siege to the Spanish
language with my dictionary and my special system; I must learn to
read it immediately. An old copy of De Solis is what I am "at" now,
_Historia de la Conquista de Mexico_, printed in Amsterdam, beautifully
bound in red leather with gold tooling, dedicated _al Serenísimo Señor
Maximiliano Emanuel Duque de las Dos Bavieras_. I gloated over its
title-page, and its "chaste and elegant style" makes easy reading.
The natural changes are so beautiful here. The day gives way to night
without any twilight, but instead there is a sort of richly colored
lining to the first darkness that has a suggestive, indescribable
charm and mystery. When Mrs. Wilson and I drove home from the Casa de
Alvarado yesterday a mass of amethystine shadows closed about us and
all the world, and then in a moment it seemed to be night; but as I
got out of the motor I found the darkness was rich in the same way some
very old, glinting brocade would be rich.
[1] Killed during the battle of the Somme, 1916.
[2] The Casa de Alvarado was once the home of the American
consul-general, Mr. Parsons, of regretted and appreciated
memory, who was killed stepping out of a street-car in Mexico
City. Mr. Laughton subsequently was murdered while at his
mining-camp. Of course this has nothing to do with the house,
but its history, nevertheless, is bound up with such decrees
of fate.
III
Mexico in full revolution--Diaz's resignation wrung from
him--Memories of the "King in Exile"--President de la Barra
sworn in--Social happenings--Plan de San Luis Potosí.
_May 23d._
My first "Tuesday" was accompanied by a drenching rain, but the
colleagues mostly showed up, _noblesse oblige_, each giving some rather
disquieting items about the political situation, according to his
special angle.
Mrs. Wilson, who always does what it is "up" to her to do, of course
came. We are the only nation here having an embassy. All the others
have legations or agencies of some sort, or have turned their affairs
over to the most related friendly nation on the spot. It puts the
Embassy in a position of continual supremacy as far as rank and
importance go.
Mr. de Soto, the "Velasquez" of the French Legation dinner, came
in late. He had spent last winter in Rome with the Duke and Duchess
d'Arcos. The duke was Spanish minister here years ago. We talked of
distant Roman friends. He has often been to Marie K.'s beautiful house.
I shall enjoy seeing something of him. He knows Mexico in all its
phases, and I find myself eager to turn the pages of this wonderful new
chapter, which I feel should be written on maguey, not on mere paper.
_May 24th, midnight._
Mexico is in full revolution, or, rather, in what seems the normal act
of getting rid of the executive. At five-thirty I walked back to the
Embassy with Mrs. Wilson, from the Japanese Legation near by, where
we had been dallying with the German and Belgian ministers on Madame
Horigutchi's day.
The butler, watching at the door, rushed out to the gate when he saw
us, in the greatest excitement, passing old Francisco, the Embassy
gendarme, to say that five thousand people were making a demonstration
in front of the Diaz house in the Calle de Cadena just back of the
palace, and that there was going to be trouble.
My one and instant thought was to get back to Calle Humboldt, to
Elim, the falling of an empire being quite a side issue. Just then the
ambassador drove up in his motor, having come by a roundabout way from
Diaz's house, where he had been making inquiries as to the President's
health. He had just escaped being caught up in the mob.
I jumped into the motor, and he told Alonzo to take me home as quickly
as possible. The growling, rumbling sound of a far-off mob is a
disquieting thing, and I was trembling for my boy as I drove along.
We had the thick doors of the courtyard entrance (the vestibule, or
_zaguán_, as they call it) closed and barred, all the front shutters
fastened, and soon were as snug as possible. Too snug to suit me, for,
once my infant was safely barricaded, I felt the spirit of adventure
rising.
N., who had been on an errand at the Foreign Office, where he heard
the news, came running across the Paseo, thankful to find us all safely
housed, with the further information that mitrailleuses had been placed
on the palace roof, and that the police had fired on the crowd in the
great square, who were shouting, "Death to Diaz!" many being killed and
wounded.
Later on, about nine o'clock, with Dearing and Arnold, who were dining
with us, we sallied forth to go to the theater as we had planned. A
drenching, torrential rain had come on. The streets along our route
were completely deserted, the rain having dispersed the mob more
efficaciously than the cannon. There were not more than a dozen people
in the whole theater, "El Principal." The only inconvenience I had
on that eventful night was being seated in front of three of our own
compatriots, whose peculiar form of blasphemy got so on my nerves that
I had us all change our seats before we could even try to listen to a
farce on the order of "Pagliacci," without the killing.
As we came out there were no cabs to be had, not even a disreputable
_coche rojo_, and we walked home down the Avenida San Francisco and the
broad Avenida Juarez under umbrellas. The town had a general look and
feeling of having been through something. All was barred and silent
except a few broken shop-windows, whose owners had not been quick
enough about their shutters. In the windows of one of the tea-rooms
were piles of untouched cakes and candies. One had only to put one's
hand out to get them.
Farther along, huddled up on the steps of the gaudy Spanish exhibition
building, were two tiny Indian boys not more than five or six years
old, so sound asleep that their little hands refused to close over the
pennies we tried to give them. We finally put the money, not in their
pockets (they did not have enough clothes on to have pockets), but
behind their little backs. They have probably been cold every night of
their lives, so damp stone steps and a rainy street could not prevent
their slumbers.
[Illustration: MADERO AND OROZCO IN 1911--MADERO AT THE LEFT]
Well, Madero is coming to change it all, to heal the antique sores of
Mexico. "_Ojalá_" (God grant), as I have discovered they are always
saying when they aren't saying, "_Quién sabe?_" I must put out my
light. It has been an exciting day. Even if you have not been fired on
yourself, it's nervously disturbing to know that near-by people have
been.
_Ascension Day._
This morning the mob was shot down at the top of our street in the
broad Plaza de la Reforma, between the Foreign Office and the statue of
the Iron Horse. I felt myself not an innocent bystander, but a foolish
one, as to the sound of quick-firing guns and screams I stepped out on
the balcony and saw the mob running in all directions, some dropping as
the guns placed by the statue turned with a horrible, regular slowness
across the street.
N. had rushed home from the Embassy by a side way, hearing that our
street was the scene of action. I felt we ought to do something besides
remaining behind closed doors when that agony was being enacted; but
I was told by N. and Mr. Seeger, who came up from his office below to
see how things were going, that Americans in general and the Embassy
in particular should keep out of the trouble. In fact, it wasn't our
funeral. Police-attended stretcher-bearers appeared on the scene a
little later, and the streets were cleared of dead and wounded.
N. sent a note to Limantour, to the Ministry of Finance, when things
were at their hottest, thinking it might possibly suit his needs to be
within our extra-territorial walls for a few hours. He sent back the
most appreciative of notes, saying, however, that he had no alarm.
A day or two ago, standing at the window, I saw him come out of the
ministry. There is a clean-cutness about him and his Gallic origin is
written all over him in an unmistakable elegance. He is considered by
friend and foe alike to be absolutely incorruptible, and the only thing
I have ever heard even whispered against him is that he is _rich_.
However, the Romans that made the roads doubtless got rich, but they
made the roads, which is what mattered to the Romans. On all sides are
evidences of his taste as well as of his ability, for, besides creating
modern financial Mexico and placing her on her golden feet, he laid
out the park, he designed the uniforms of the mounted guards there,
beautified many of the streets, and in a hundred ways helped to make
Mexico City what it now is. The Paseo, the beautiful avenue leading
for several kilometers from the "Iron Horse" to the park, was laid out
during Maximilian's time, and was known as the Calzada del Emperador;
and the beautiful eucalyptus-trees that adorn it were planted by order
of Carlota--_tempi passati_.
_May 25th, later._
All quiet again in the shade of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. To-day
at 4.30 Diaz's resignation was finally wrung from him.
There are picturesque tales of Doña Carmen standing, black-robed, by
his side as he signed away his glory and power, and perhaps that of
Mexico as well. A vast throng waited all day for the news before the
closed doors of the Chamber of Deputies; but the mob is again simply
a peaceful-appearing crowd, singing the national anthem and crying,
"_Viva Madero!_" interspersed with an occasional "_Viva De la Barra!_"
I must dress for dinner at Hye de Glunek's, the Austrian chargé--the
only invitation any one has accepted or given since some days. Mrs.
W., who is always very kind, lends us the Embassy auto. One of the
incidents yesterday was the looting of the pawnshops. I am afraid the
Paris _Herald_ will have blood-curdling accounts of the goings-on, and
I will send a cable to you, hoping it will get through. In the midst
of life we are no more in death here than elsewhere, and it is all
extraordinarily interesting.
_May 26th._
The streets were completely deserted last night as we drove home from
the very excellent dinner at Hye's, at which the German and Belgian
ministers, the French chargé, the Spanish minister and his pretty
daughter, the Romeros, _et al._, assisted. One sees no Mexicans of
any political shade abroad these days, and the change of government
has been effected mildly rather than otherwise, if one looks back
over Mexican history. A few hundreds killed and wounded, a very few
thousands of dollars damage done to property in town, and the great
and long and glorious Diaz régime is a thing of the past. Mexico is to
tread untrodden paths.
Robles Dominguez, who is Madero's representative here, has been dashing
about the streets on a big black horse accompanied by his followers,
all wearing the national colors on their hats, promising in the name of
Madero everything on earth to the people gathered at the various points
where he speaks. In many places the tramcars leading to the different
suburbs were taken possession of by the mob, who rode free, to carry
the good news "from Ghent to Aix." The cars everywhere were simply
plastered with them.
Señor de la Barra was sworn in as President of the republic in the
afternoon. No anti-American riots, which were at one time feared,
though the ambassador and his staff had the pleasant experience of
being hissed as they went to the Cámara for the ceremony. From the
little balcony of the drawing-room I could see De la Barra quite
plainly as he came down the Paseo, bowing on all sides, grave, but
amiable and dignified, in the presidential coach, and across his breast
the green-and-white-and-red sash of his high office.
Glittering, blue-uniformed outriders with polished silver helmets
preceded him, and the crowd was rending the air with "_Viva De la
Barra!_" I saw De la Barra with my physical eye, but I was thinking of
the great old Indian, the maker and molder of Mexico, who was wont to
go down the broad avenue in that same coach to the sound of vivas, and
wondering would they see his like again. I am sending you a post-card
photograph of Maximilian in uniform, and Carlota in a blue dress with
many pearls, which is not really so beside the point. Diaz helped to
close that epoch. We now witness the closing of the Diaz epoch.[3]
_May 27th._
Though the mob turned into the tamest thing possible in mobs, and
the revolution into the tamest thing possible in revolutions, I keep
thinking how both did their work and how never again will Diaz drive
up the beautiful Paseo, receiving the plaudits of the people. The town
is busy preparing for the reception of Madero and for the elections.
General Reyes is still feared by the new party. Madero said to one of
our newspaper correspondents the other day that the only unfavorable
thing in the Cabinet was the admission of General Reyes as Minister of
War, and that the members of the Cabinet and governors of states would
be selected later by himself and De la Barra. It looks as if in the
apportioning out of the plums the first seeds of discord will be sown
in the new political garden.
Yesterday we went motoring with Mr. S. and Dearing over the great,
beautiful hills to the west. Something like Italy and yet not at all
like it in the feeling of light and color. For the first time I looked
down on the city from a great height, seemingly on a level with the
hills that hold the cup-like valley, and I saw again in all their
beauty the two shining volcanoes flanked by the matchless hills. There
was an immense exhilaration in the fitting of the mind to such a remote
and gorgeous horizon, and suddenly I found it did not matter if it were
peopled or not; it seemed quite complete, even humanly. There was a
wonderful lightness about the air. Little puffs that one could not call
wind came and brushed our faces with a brilliant yet feathery feeling.
The Ajusco hills with their suggestions of brigands (I have not been
thinking much of brigands since the tales of Raisuli and Perducaris and
Miss Annie Stone) gave a "human" touch to the whole.
In going out of the city we passed through Tacubaya, a very attractive
suburb with handsome houses hidden in great gardens, and an old palace
of some archbishop; but the most interesting thing about it was the
Indian market, spread out on the steep, cobblestoned highway. There was
just enough room for the motor to pass between the mats on which were
spread their wares. Great piles of pottery, bright rolls of cotton,
were laid on squares of cloth, or little mats made of rushes, and
there were infinitesimal groupings of eatables of various kinds, little
piles of five nuts, or three oranges, or little heaps of melon-seed, or
beans.
Indians, picturesque beyond description, were bending, selling, buying,
just as they have done since prehistoric days. It was the brightest
bit of color I have ever seen, with the thread of Indian life that it
was strung on. The Indians compose themselves into beautiful pictures
everywhere, and further on the road was full of pottery-makers, bent
beneath their huge loads, basket-makers, sandal-makers, women and
children equally laden, going with their quick Aztec trot to their
journey's end.
All was quiet in the little villages through which we passed. I wonder
if they know something has happened to their Mexico?
_May 29th._
In the revolutionary lull we have all been vaccinated, and I have been
looking into the drinking-water question quite exhaustively.
I felt rather discouraged when the doctor suggested boiling even
the mineral water, _Tehuacan_, from a place near Orizaba. In general
the microbe question keeps foreigners busy, and more alarmed if they
have children than the sound of artillery. One has to learn to live
here. The food leaves much to be desired, and if we were delicate or
gourmets, there would be a great deal of difficulty ahead.
Friday Mr. and Mrs. Wilson and the Embassy staff come for dinner, the
first time I will have had any one except those dropping in informally.
I don't know how it will turn out. There is a nice American range in
the kitchen, but the cook, it seems, prefers the classic _brasero_, and
a turkey wing to fan the coals. It is not as primitive as it sounds,
however, for the _brasero_ is a tiled affair and has holes on the top
for saucepans. They say the American stove would make even the saints
too hot. How they produce the nice roasts or bake with the thing is a
mystery to me.
However, the whole cooking business is beyond me, though I have put an
embargo on _riñones_ (kidneys). Every time there is a halt in remarks
about the menu, Teresa suggests _riñones_, which I despise with my
whole soul. I am not enthused by organs, anyway, as food. I would
put an embargo on _cabrito_ (kid), but stewed it's objectively one of
the best dishes she prepares, and I would eat it under another name.
A certain _sopa de frijoles_ would be nice anywhere, and with slices
of lemon and hard-boiled egg in it is really delicious, and recalls
vaguely the thick mock-turtle soup of my native land. There is a "near"
apricot, called _chabacano_, ripe at this season, but it's only "near,"
and there are quantities of small, fragrant strawberries.
At Hye de Glunek's I ate, for the first time, the very fine mango, in
its perfection. The eating recalls stories of the original fountain-pen
and the bath-tub, but the fruit is delicious, even the first time you
eat it, with a slightly turpentiny, very clean taste, and cascades of
juice. There is a way of sticking a single-pronged fork into one end,
while you peel it with a knife, and then proceeding, which makes its
consumption possible in public.
[Illustration: MEXICAN WOMEN SELLING TORTILLAS
Photograph by Ravell]
To-day we lunched with the British chargé in his temporary quarters,
as the new Legation, which is going to be a delightful dwelling, built
with some regard for latitude and longitude and altitude, is not yet
ready for occupation. Hohler came to Mexico from Constantinople, and
wherever he goes collects works of art. In his apartment were all
sorts of quite beautiful, Oriental bric-à-brac and hangings, which,
somehow, did not seem as Oriental here as they would in other places.
Simon, the newly arrived French _Inspecteur des Finances_ of the Banco
National, with a brilliant Balkan record behind him, was also there
with his wife. They are "enjoying" the Hôtel de Genève, while awaiting
the arrival of their Lares and Penates, stalled somewhere between Vera
Cruz and Mexico City, and Madam S.'s maid is already down with typhoid
fever.
Yesterday, when N. boarded the tram, a smartly dressed, handsome
Frenchwoman had just got on with neither Mexican money nor vocabulary.
He came to her assistance, and they felt quite like long-separated
friends on discovering "who was who" at the luncheon. In the center
of the table was a lovely silver bowl of old Mexican artisanship,
filled with unfamiliar, theatrical-looking fruits. I compromised on a
_granadita_, which is like a pomegranate in color and taste, but small
and oblong in shape. Of course the "old hands" were trying to enlighten
the new-comers, but it was rather the blind leading the blind. Nobody
can tell what the gigantic political changes will lead to, or what
this new wine of fraternity and equality, fermenting in the oldest of
bottles, will do to their heads. A gentle joke as we got up from the
table, about the pictures in last week's _Semana Ilustrada_ (showing
insurrectos burning bridges), to the effect that the national sport
might soon prove to be _la promenade_, if artless, was more to the
point.
There is a good deal of talk here about something called the "Plan
de San Luis Potosí," apparently the building stones of a new Mexico.
It's the manifesto Madero made at that town in the early stages of
his revolution, a rather personal and arbitrary political document,
in which he declares himself the mouthpiece of the nation's will, and
pronounces the last election of Don Porfirio illegal. It was, as far
as I can see--which is not, of course, very far--like all his other
"elections." Madero finished by saying that the republic being without
a legitimate government, he assumes the provisional presidency. It's so
simple it may succeed, and the Diaz government left a comfortable sum
in the treasury to begin operations with, some sixty-five millions.
_May 31st._
The "official" family dinner went off all right, so I am having the
ambassador and Mrs. Wilson, Von Hintze, Hye, the Austrian chargé, and
De Vaux to dinner on Sunday--eight in all. This is the limit, not
of the table and the dining-room, but possibly of the handmaidens.
Leclerq, who is departing for Brussels and the Foreign Office,
has given me the use, till I have made other arrangements, of his
table-silver. I do, indeed, sigh for the silver and linen in Vienna.
Madame de la Barra receives the _Corps Diplomatique_ on Saturday
afternoon. It will be her inaugural reception as first lady in
the land, and, indeed, the first complete tableau of the _chers
collègues_ that I will have seen since our arrival. I suppose I will
get a glimpse, at least, of some of the up-to-now invisible Mexican
statesmen.
Life goes on here quietly, as far as I am personally concerned, but
underneath it all there is the unmistakable beat and throb of changing
governments, the passing of the old order, the beginning of the new,
with all its potentialities. It is a many-colored background. I am
sending an illustrated paper of the shooting done by the mob in my
street, _La Semana Ilustrada_, which is printed at the other end
of Calle Humboldt, as is also _La Prensa_, a newspaper belonging to
Francisco Bulnes, the cleverest of the publicists here, and a star
among the intellectuals. I am between the making of history and its
annals.
The _Courrier du Mexique_ and the _Mexican Herald_ I read daily.
The _Courrier du Mexique et de l'Europe_ (_Ancien Trait d'Union_)
was founded in 1849, and has survived many vicissitudes and many
governments. Its files would make strange reading, with their
succession of political hails and farewells--or rather farewells and
hails.
Gabrielle is doing very well, though she is suffering from _Heimweh_
for Vienna. The Austrian chargé sends me accumulations of the _Neue
Freie Presse_ to sweeten what she calls "diese Mexico." The Indian
maids are almost too good to be true. There's a dusting and a sweeping
going on that would satisfy a better housewife than myself.
I am quite in love with my street--it has so much for the eye, so
much to intrigue the imagination. As I told you, just opposite is the
Finance Ministry. Endless motors belonging to the old and new régime
and the intermediate, the _Trait d'Union_ régime, fraternize in front
of it. Diagonally across is the home of Diaz's son, Porfirio, who seems
to have neither the talents nor the ambitions of his father. The house
is a very Mexican-looking affair, though not after the good old models.
It is a reddish pink, with superfluous cupolas and bay windows, all
lined with pale blue. Great vines of the magenta-colored Bougainvillea,
"the glory of Mexico," hanging everywhere, further enliven it. The tiny
triangular garden also has various obstreperous and violent-colored
botanical specimens.
A little farther down the street, however, is the real gem, for there
I perceived, in passing, storied Spanish-American life being enacted.
It's a low one-storied house with heavily grated windows, only a
couple of feet up from the street. Behind that grating I actually saw
a pink-robed señorita sitting, with a flower in her hair and a letter,
which I knew must have been a love letter, in her hand, all just as it
ought to be, as far as local color is concerned.
The other night, hearing the sound of music, I stepped out on the
balcony. Behold! there were the outlines of some kind of Romeo
playing the mandolin, in front of that window. It's so complete, so
ridiculously like what it ought to be, you will think I have added
something, but you don't have to add anything here; it's always all
there. That end of the street is where the offices of _La Prensa_ and
of _La Semana Ilustrada_ are, and the little newsboys (_papeleros_)
bring things quite up to date when they dash past crying out new
editions.
The other end of the street, which is short, gives on the Plaza de la
Reforma, where the new, handsome Foreign Office is, and the beautiful
equestrian statue of Charles the Fourth of Spain, which Humboldt said
could only be compared to that of Marcus Aurelius on the Campidoglio.
There are two or three handsome houses belonging to Mexicans between
me and the Plaza. The Suinagás', whose daughter is married to a French
diplomat, and the Saldivars', next the Finance Ministry, are other
houses in the good old style of several generations ago. In former
days the streets were familiarly spoken of as _calles de Dios_ (streets
of God); pious, picturesque, but probably not resembling those of our
eternal abiding-place!
[Illustration: NELSON O'SHAUGHNESSY
(Secretary of the American Embassy, Mexico, 1911-1912)]
[Illustration: PAUL LEFAIVRE
(French Minister to Mexico, 1911)]
[Illustration: FRANCISCO LEON DE LA BARRA
(President _ad interim_ of the Mexican Republic between Diaz and
Madero)]
[3] I had three glimpses of the "King in Exile." First in
Rome, the Easter Sunday of 1913, after the Madero tragedy.
As I went across the Piazza Barberini I saw flying from the
middle window of the _piano nobile_ of the Hotel Bristol, the
Mexican colors, floating there by what strange chance, the
eagle holding in its claws the antique serpent against the
green, white, and red. As I went up the stairway there were
numberless and unmistakable Mexicans on the landings, and
several priests were waiting in the antechamber.
Doña Carmen came in almost immediately with the "grand air" I
had heard about, handsome and composed, a veritable queen in
exile. She was dressed with extreme elegance and simplicity,
in a perfectly plain, dark-blue gown; around her throat was
a pearl necklace. After the greetings she seated me on the
gaudy, gold-and-blue sofa, and took her place beside me. Once
or twice her eyes filled as we spoke of Mexico, but mostly
there was a remote look in them.
When Don Porfirio entered the room I knew him for a leader of
men. _Anno Domini_ had weakened his will, perhaps, but had
not bowed his proud figure nor dulled the piercing look in
his eye, which I remember as hazel with a very large, light
iris, the pupil dark and fiery. We could not but speak of the
Madero tragedy, Don Porfirio talking in Spanish, I in French.
I found myself slightly trembling. He repeated several times,
"I foresaw it all--my method was the only one," and once he
added, "How shall one judge men other than by results?" I saw
in his eye that same remoteness which I think an observer
would have found in mine also; for instead of the gaudy
hotel room I saw Chapultepec high up, swung in a strange
transparency and Don Porfirio's destiny blocked out against
it.
In Paris, that same summer of 1913, at the Hotel Astoria, I
witnessed another _étape_ of the painful, unfit Odyssey from
hotel to hotel. The antechamber was filled with their luggage,
plastered with endless hotel tabs. Don Porfirio's mien was not
quite so majestic, his heart was more broken, his hope less,
his years seemed heavier, and they were uncertain where next
to turn their steps, to San Sebastian or to some "cure" in
Switzerland.
On my way back to Mexico on the _Espagne_, September, 1913, I
was sitting idly watching the Spanish shores off Santander.
There were some Syrians on board suspected of _quién sabe_
what disease, and we were not allowed to go ashore to visit
the old town. About four o'clock a small launch was seen
approaching. In it were Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen and
Don Porfirio's daughter, Doña Amada (Madame de la Torre),
whom they were bringing to the ship, which was crowded with
returning Mexicans, anticipating the pacification of the
country by Huerta. At the news that the "grand old man" was
in the launch there was a rush for the railing. Don Porfirio
could not come on board on account of the quarantine. It was a
tragic moment when he took his daughter in his arms, and many
eyes filled with tears as she tore herself from him and came
hurriedly up the gangway. Farewells were waved as the launch
turned toward the land. Don Porfirio, upright, majestic,
motionless, had his eyes fixed on the ship with its prow
toward Mexico. Who would, if he could, have searched his heart
or said of what he was thinking, the old, the illustrious, the
once powerful, in "the fell clutch of circumstance"?
As long as I live his figure will be to me the sign and symbol
of nostalgia, as he stood in the small launch, his head bared
under the brilliant sky, the bright spot of his red necktie
accenting the whiteness of his hair, watching with longing
eyes the ship turned toward the land which had given him
birth, and which he in return had made great and honorable
among nations.
IV
First reception at Chapultepec Castle--First bull-fight--A
typical Mexican earthquake--Madero's triumphal march through
Mexico City--Three days of adoration
_June 4th._
Yesterday we went to the De la Barras' first reception, a tea neither
formal nor informal, at beautiful Chapultepec, lifted high up on the
historic hill overlooking the city and the beauteous valley, in its
gorgeous setting of mountains and volcanoes.
There is a pretty grotto-like modern entrance at the foot of the hill
which takes visitors to the elevator, a shaft pierced in the rock,
and from the darkness one steps suddenly on to the enchantment of the
terraces with their matchless view. There is a winding road which takes
longer, ending at the great iron gateway of the military school, and
one must cross the broad terrace, where the cadets are walking about or
drilling.
Madame de la Barra, herself a widow, the sister of the President's
first wife, has only been married a few months, and is smiling, fair,
and un-Mexican-looking, of Swiss descent. She was daintily dressed in
some sort of beige chiffon with pearls about her neck, and had easy,
pleasant manners.
There was no chance for conversation. The whole Diaz set, with very
few exceptions, has vanished, not into thin air, but into retirement
or Europe, and society will have to be reorganized from new elements.
These new elements did not seem at first view to be very malleable.
A circle of iron, in the shape of ladies--old, middle-aged, and
young--kept formed about Madame de la B., and I was wedged in, for
quite a while, between a granddaughter of Juarez wearing, among other
things, a huge and, it appears, historic emerald pendant, and a young,
inquiring-looking woman. I mean inquiring for these climes, where
external phenomena only remotely give rise to speculation. She was in a
décolleté mauve passementerie-trimmed gown, with a train--what we would
call an evening dress. The experienced foreign diplomats mostly kept
outside the circle.
Mr. de la B. was moving about the beautiful flower-planted terraces,
smiling, suave, _homme du monde_, as well as President of Mexico, but
the skein from which he is to knit the national destinies is somewhat
tangled. He and Mr. Wilson were colleagues in Brussels. Now the turn of
the wheel has made him President, and Mr. Wilson ambassador.
Some of the well-seasoned foreigners were predicting immediate
difficulties in the disbanding of the revolutionary forces, which seem
to be composed of those who don't want to be disbanded, those who want
to be disbanded immediately, and those who want to be ban_dits_.
I must say I found it all very interesting--a little gem of a picture
of life in Mexico. As a sudden darkness rose up from the valley, rather
than fell from the sky, one of the volcanoes gone suddenly blue, the
other still aflame, the gathering melted away.
_June 6th._
Yesterday, Pentecost Sunday, I went to Mass in the cathedral where
Maximilian and Carlota were crowned, and Iturbide and his consort.
It is a large, ornate structure, though the lowish roof, earthquake
height, I suppose, takes away from the effect of the interior. Three
huge altars and a choir also combine to spoil the perspective, but it
is imposing and the outside is a lovely grayish pink. It is built on
the site of the great Aztec temple, over countless images and remains
of the _teocali_ (temple), which the conquerors demolished as soon as
they got their breath, after the taking of the city.
I found it full of a multicolored crowd. The Indians were most in
evidence, but there were all sorts and conditions of people. Despite
what is said to the contrary, the Church has an enormous influence
on life here--on institutions, habits, and customs. The convents,
monasteries, and seminaries were suppressed in 1859, and no one since
has been allowed to leave money or property to the Church by will, but
here as elsewhere there is no way to prevent the Church from getting
rich. With a constantly renewing collection of individuals having no
personal wants, concerned largely with the promises of another life,
the aggregate of their activities through the ages will always be
enormous in the way of mathematical progression; and I don't see in
a free world why they haven't as much right to spend their money and
energies that way as in the usual spending for personal and mundane
aims.
In the afternoon we went to the bull-fight; it was De la Barra's first
appearance at one as President of the republic, and a great occasion.
The vast crowd was very enthusiastic. We saw every color of garment,
every shade of face, every shape of hat, under the blue, blue sky. We
_de la haute_, or, for that matter, anybody who can pay the price, sit
in the shady side of the ring. The sunny half is occupied by dazzled,
smiling Indians.
The President was greeted by the magnificently played national air, and
the stirring of the great concourse as it rose, and the _vivas_, had a
something impressive. A moment or two after, the _entrada_ took place.
Some beloved matador, whose name I don't know, was greeted with cheers
that rivaled those offered to the President. He had on a gorgeous
blue-and-gold cloak, resting on one shoulder, the body of the cloak
caught up and held with the left hand on the left hip, leaving the
right arm free. He was followed by other less-resplendent individuals
(the men of his _cuadrilla_), and soon the ball really opened by the
dashing out of the door of a splendid dark bull.
I hid my eyes at the goring of the horses, poor old Rosinantes
that they were, ready for the grave, and other high-lights of the
occasion. The President gave many purses. It was a very expensive
afternoon, doubtless, but it will increase his political popularity.
The gaily-dressed _toreros_ would go up to the box after their special
"coups," and, with uncovered heads, hold out their hats, and he would
lean forward and present the purses. At one time the arena was covered
by hats of all sizes and descriptions thrown by enthusiasts, and
returned to them by the various bull-fighters. As you will suspect,
however, "bull-fight _me_ no bull-fights." It isn't one of those things
that it will please me some day to have done, according to the Latin
poet. I would like to sponge it out of memory.
The dinner here this evening was not a success. Perhaps the scent of
the bull-fight hung around me still or perhaps the personal elements
did not combine chemically. The dinner itself was all right. There is
a delicious, fat-breasted quail (_codorniz_) to be had at this season.
The conversation was of prophecies concerning the 7th, when Madero, the
"Messiah," the "Bridegroom of Mexico," whom he is to lead into paths of
peace and plenty, is to enter the city. I kept quoting:
"One man, with a dream at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown."
_June 7th._
This morning, at 4.30, the town was shaken by a tremendous earthquake.
I was awakened by the violent swaying of the house, so violent that
as I jumped up I could not keep on my feet. There was a sound as of
a great wind at sea, and on all sides the breaking of china and the
falling of pictures. Elim, who was fortunately sleeping in my room,
awakened and clung to me, asking, "What is the matter with the ship?"
N. was calling from his room and trying to open the door.
My first thought was that we were in some dreadful, mysterious storm,
_not_ of earthquake. When things had quieted down a little, and I
could get to the window, I looked out. The streets were full of people
in their night garments, in the most complete demoralization, some
on their knees, others under the lintels of the doors. There was a
groaning and a calling on God, accompanied by a still very sensible
movement of the roof-line. Servants finally appeared, white and
terror-stricken, with long, black hair floating down their backs and
their shoulders, hunched up under their _rebozos_.
I was sorry for the damage done to the S.s' nice things--by shipwreck
_and_ earthquake. Our house is a good old house, strongly built in a
firm quadrangle; yet the shape of my room at one moment was not square,
but diamond-shaped!
_Later._
I have just come back from a look about town. I saw the wrecked
barracks in the Puente de Alvarado. Sixty soldiers were buried under
the debris, and the _ambulanciers_ were bringing out the silent,
plaster-covered forms as we passed. A big warehouse at one of the
railways was completely wrecked, but there was no loss of life as the
employees, of course, were not there at that hour. Everywhere were
great ruts and splits in the streets, which looked, in places, as if
they had been plowed up.
We took a turn through the Avenida San Francisco, gaily flagged like
all the streets through which Madero is to pass. All Mexico seemed
afield, despite the fact that we may have another "quake" at any
moment. At the corner of the historic Church of La Profesa great crowds
were gathered, looking up at the ancient dome and nave, rent in several
places. Police were standing in front of the carved doors, in the
Calle de Motolinia, to prevent the foolish, as well as the pious, from
entering. It is very much out of plumb, anyway, having suffered from
other earthquakes in other centuries, when, I suppose, the same sort of
crowd gathered about it.
Everybody had a sickly, surprised, pale look, and many, it appears,
suffer acute nervous attacks after such an experience. It is the
biggest earthquake they have had here in several generations. Mexico
City being built on boggy, spongy land is what alone has preserved it
from complete destruction on various occasions.
Some speak of Madero's being heralded in by this convulsion of nature
as a bad augury: others see in it a sign from heaven. I say, _qui
vivra, verra_.
Madero was supposed to reach Mexico City at ten o'clock, and begin
his triumphal march from the station through the great thoroughfares,
down the Paseo, the Avenida Juarez, the Avenida San Francisco, to the
palace; but it is now 2 P.M. and he has not yet come. As the day wears
on the earthquake begins to be interpreted solely as a manifestation
of Divine Providence in his favor. No soldiery out. This, I am told, is
to show the mob that they are trusted by their champion and savior. It
strikes me as a bit too trusting; if any excitement does arise among
the mob, already unsteadied by the earthquake shock, how will these
people be controlled?
_Evening._
At three o'clock Madero passed down the Paseo. Our enthusiasm had
somewhat abated after the long wait, but we stood up in a motor in
front of our door, and could see the immense concourse acclaiming him.
There was a great noise of _vivas_, mingling with shouts of all kinds,
tramping of feet, and blowing of motor horns.
I could just get a glimpse of a pale, dark-bearded man bowing to the
right and left. I kept repeating to myself: "_Qui l'a fait roi? qui l'a
couronné?--la victoire._"
It appears that his departure from his ancestral home in Parras,
and the journey down, have been one of the most remarkable personal
experiences in all history. There were three days of continual plaudits
and adoration, such as only the Roman emperors knew (or perhaps
Roosevelt when he went through Europe).
People came from far and near, in all sorts of conveyances or on foot,
just to see him, to hear his voice, even to touch his garments for help
and healing. It appears he had a wonderful old grandfather, Evaristo,
founder of what promises to be a dynasty, who died just before we came
to Mexico, and who, it is said, had misgivings about the strange turn
of the family fortunes.
Well, it is a curious experience to see a people at the moment of
what they are convinced is their salvation, to see the man they hail
as "Messiah" enter their Jerusalem. I can think of no lesser simile.
The only thing they didn't shout was "Hosanna." The roofs were black
with people along his route. Many threw flowers and green branches as
he passed. As for the equestrian statue of Charles IV., in the Plaza,
it was alive with people, who clung all over it, climbing to the top,
sitting on Charles's head, hanging to his horse's tail.
Madero could make no speech on his arrival here--loss of voice and sick
headache, I see by the evening newspaper. The journey and this climax
of his entry into the capital doubtlessly overwhelmed his mortality.
The crowd, however, was too intent upon its own experiences to feel any
lack. The "redeemer" was with them and his mere presence seems to have
been sufficient.
_June 8th._
It is after dinner; N. has gone back to the chancery. All doors and
windows are open, and a cool, thin, dry night breeze, most lovely, is
blowing in.
I sent a _Mexican Herald_ about the _temblor_ and the entry of Madero.
The streets are not yet quiet, though the _vivas_ for Madero have
somewhat died down.
Even that crowd had its physical limits. I can't understand why, when
the streets are burst open, great rifts everywhere, especially in the
neighborhood of the Embassy, that there not a vase or a photograph was
upset, though some heavy bookcases filled with books, in the basement,
were thrown to the ground.
I am reading _The Relations of Bernal Diaz_, companion and chronicler
of the Cortés expedition. It is quite the most romantic, realistic
bit of literature I ever got hold of, and has, here on the spot, a
double-distilled charm. I was interrupted for a day by the arrival of
that other conqueror.
_June 9th._
Knowing how anxious you would be, I cabled on the 7th; now comes your
cable asking for news and an announcement from the cable office here
that my cable has been returned. It appears the employee just omitted
Zürich; the address, Waldhaus, he explained in the note, he thought
would be enough--the effect of the earthquake on _his_ brain, I
suppose.
It appears the New York newspapers said Mexico City was nearly
destroyed. You must have been on the _qui vive_ for two days. If the
earthquake had been up to the newspaper account, you would doubtless
not have heard.
People holding property here are not worrying about natural phenomena.
The ever-increasing banditry all over the country, murders of people on
isolated haciendas, and general dislocation of business and lawlessness
are what worry them. A swift sliding down into the old pre-Diaz
brigandage is feared. The slopes are so attractive to the dissatisfied
and uncontrolled. _Facilis est descensus._
Madero has publicly announced that he will encourage American
investments, but that he will oppose all trusts and unjust concessions.
It sounds almost too reasonable to be true. He made these statements
from some place in the north when he promised to liberate all political
prisoners and all prisoners of war. This revolution in Mexico has
been full of contrasts, to say the least. Has any one ever seen such
an anomaly as we witnessed here? The heads of a solid, recognized
government turning over their offices to a relatively few armed
opponents. I put it all on _Anno Domini_, not because so-called
democratic principles have suddenly won a miraculous victory. The old
dictator's hand was weakened by the stronger hand of time--and a "man
with a dream at pleasure," etc.
Found your letter of May 26th on returning from a motor drive
with Dearing and Mr. S. to a beautiful old town, Texcoco, where
Nezahualcoyotl, the Marcus Aurelius of Mexico, lived.
Except the ancient sun-dial in the palm-planted Plaza, however, there
is little to recall that civilization. A big church, built by the
friars on the spot of the old temple, was filled with the usual Indian
population, sitting and kneeling with their children and their burdens,
and as mysterious as that Cortés found worshiping Huitzilopochtli,
or any of their other gods. The Indians are religious, rather in the
Oriental sense, it seems to me, than in any way resembling ours. It
is certainly not given to the lower-class Anglo-Saxon to kneel with
intent, uplifted eyes, outstretched arms, motionless, before some
reminder of an invisible God. It does not take us that way. It seems
to be as much a part of the Indian's life, that going in and out
of churches, as eating or drinking, and just as essential, and why
that habit, which seems to compensate for so many things obviously
lacking, should be a reproach to those who instilled it I can't see.
It's all most interesting to me, fresh from Prescott and Bernal Diaz.
A crumbling, picturesque monastery and inconceivably desolate, dusty
seminary join the church where the friars used to teach. Oh, the poor
friars! There is so little account taken of their ceaseless activities,
of how they found a wilderness, dotted it with churches, schools, and
hospitals, stamped it with a seal of matchless beauty, brought it out
of the worship of greedy gods, human sacrifices, and abominations,
counting no cost, and showed as best they might dim shapes of more
benign powers. I can't see what all the hue and cry is about, all the
revilings. We couldn't match the record. We have disfigured Mexico
wherever we have set _our_ seal. Frankly, I'm for the friars.
[Illustration: A ROAD-SIDE SHRINE
Photograph by Ravell]
One enters Texcoco by a broad, broken street leading into the Plaza.
Interspersed too liberally between the once handsome low dwellings
are the pink-and-blue pulque-shops, with their fringes of colored
tissue-paper. The names of these depositories of the _licor divino_
are often curiously bound up with the history of Mexico, and make you
feel you have got hold of the "real thing." _La Hija del Emperador_[4]
and _La Reina Xochitl_, a beauteous patrician, married to a Toltec
king, go back to prehistoric days. _El Gran Napoleon_, with cocked hat
and hand in his breast, painted almost life-size on a corner shop,
was more picturesque than the one that had a hand in the making of
their history. _La Mujer del Moro_ gives the Moorish touch, and _La
Estrella del Mar_ recalls the buccaneers as well as the ages of faith.
There was a very good one near the little viceregal bridge, with
its battered coat of arms, just before we got into Texcoco, called
_Las Bergantinas_, in memory of the spot where Cortés launched his
brigantines in his attempt to take Mexico City, which then was only
reached from Texcoco by water. I feel on quite intimate terms with the
conqueror. It is Cortés here, and Cortés there, and Cortés everywhere.
He put his seal on the whole country, and one walks quite intimately
and enthusiastically with him. He was such a human sort of person,
and with all his adventurous spirit very _grand seigneur_. Bernal Diaz
tells how well and smartly he dressed, being very particular about his
linen, under dark, rich garments, and inclining to a fine gem somewhere
on his person, and how pleasantly he played cards, with little jokes
running through it all. It reminds me of bridge evenings with the
_chers collègues_. But all is historic on this lovely plateau. They can
pull down everything and wash it in the most modern of blood, and the
scent of ancient and adventurous deeds will hang round it still.
The valley was swimming in a sort of gauzy luminosity, not just light;
the volcanoes, well washed yesterday afternoon, were at their most
beautiful. We could not bear to turn homeward and went out through the
old town, which had also enjoyed a viceregal popularity, as fine old
doors and glimpses of vistas into large courtyards showed.
These _patios_ of Mexico are most attractive. One is forever peeking in
through doorways of strange houses, where flowers, children, washing,
mattresses, water-jars, dogs, sometimes a palm or a cypress, contrive
to make something always alluring and mostly lovely. We lunched late in
the auto, under the shade of some eucalyptus-trees, and then pressed
on through the lovely hills and over meadow-bounded roads till we got
to the little village of Magdalena, where an indescribable melancholy
mingled with the slanting bronze afternoon light filtering through
the shade of the old trees. A grassy Plaza, planted with cypresses and
patterned with sunken escutcheoned grave-slabs, led to the pinkish-gray
church with its lovely old Spanish doors. A crumbling, broadly
scalloped pink wall, with flowers, vines, and spiky green things
clinging to it everywhere, surrounded the whole. The warm, lustrous air
fell about us like a lovely garment. It was a place of enchantment,
where we seemed to clasp hands, for a moment, with a past age of
exceeding beauty.
_June 11th._
Now that the political excitements have calmed down, the dinners have
begun again. The Italian Legation on Tuesday, the Japanese on Thursday
(Madame Horigutchi is a Belgian), the Belgian minister the next day,
and there is a dinner at the Embassy on Saturday. On the 22d the
British chargé gives a coronation house-warming in the new Legation,
which is not yet finished enough for him to really move into.
Yesterday was again Mr. Wilson's day, and very pleasant. The handsome
rooms were filled with roses in their last blooming. The rains wash
them out at this season, and indeed at any season they must be plucked
at sunrise or they quickly fade at this altitude. The buffet was
lavishly spread, Mrs. Wilson dedicated a becoming blue dress, just
arrived from Brussels, and I had on what the _Mexican Herald_ kindly
called this morning an "exquisite creation of painted chiffon."
The first visitor was Madame de la Barra, with her sweet manner and
amiable, unstudied expression, also freshly and Frenchily garbed. I
think she would like to branch out and do some entertaining during
their short and uncertain tenure. The great castle, with its ravishing
terraces, its large spaces, calls for functions. Mrs. Bedford made
affectionate inquiries for you. Many of the colleagues came, and many
Americans. There was a pleasant coming and going all the afternoon. Mr.
James Brown Potter and Mr. Butler, who lives with him, came in late,
further enlivening things, as seems to be their wont, and last the
ambassador and N., just in from Saturday golf, which, at this season,
politically and from the point of view of weather, is a more than
usually uncertain game.
The murder of three hundred and three Chinamen at Torreon has made a
great row. We were surprised and faintly amused to learn that China
demands an indemnity of one million from Mexico. Has Chinese life
ever been so high? The whole thing was a horror, however. Terrible
atrocities were committed by the troops under Emilio Madero. The
Chinamen were mostly market-gardeners peacefully cultivating vegetables
in gardens back of their little houses, through which they were hunted
and shot down like so many rabbits. There are other horrors related
of tying them to horses headed in different directions, of babies on
bayonets, etc. It is a most regrettable little fling on the part of the
"Liberating" Army. Madero, very averse to shedding blood, is said to be
horrified at the occurrence.
It makes me sad to think that, after a century of blood, all is still
before the Mexican people, who have left the seemingly solid land
of the dictatorship and are headed straight for the mirage of an
impossible equality.
_June 14th._
Last night was the big dinner at the Italian Legation. Countess
Massiglia is an American. I sat between Von Hintze, whom I like
very much, and Mr. Brown, president of the National Railway. Dear
Mrs. Harriman sent us a letter to him, saying we might need "sudden
transportation."
Mr. B. is a power here, one of the twentieth-century conquerors and
civilizers. Brains, energy, courage, have taken him far along his
successful career, and, incidentally, helped to cover Mexico with
railways. It was most interesting hearing at first hand how the curtain
had been rung down on the Diaz epoch, for it was he who had arranged
for, and been witness to, the tragic departure of Don Porfirio, in
those dim, early hours of the 26th. A military train, in charge of some
trusted general (Huerta), followed, escorting the illustrious chief
from the earthly heights of destiny, in every sense of the word, down
the declines of sorrow and old age, out to the great sea.
[4] "The Daughter of the Emperor," "Queen Xochitl," "The Great
Napoleon," "The Wife of the Moor," "The Star of the Sea," "The
Brigantines."
V
Dinner at the Japanese Legation--The real history of the
Japanese in Mexico--Dinner at the Embassy--Coronation
services for England's king--The rainy season sets in.
_June 16th._
Last night dinner at the Japanese Legation. A very elaborate and
beautiful centerpiece arrangement of tiny lake and grove decorated the
table, and the food was very good. That was the Belgian touch. They are
used to _la bonne chère_. All the dinners now are a sort of hail and
farewell for Von Hintze and ourselves newly arrived, and the departing
Romeros, who have been here some time and are very popular.
There is always a lot of talk about the Japanese in Mexico, but their
real history here, as I have discovered, is not disquieting. Some
Japanese statesman (of course I forget his name) first conceived
the idea in 1897 of starting coffee-plantations on a large scale in
Chiapas. The pioneers were called "colonists," and were followed by
"immigrants." All had bad luck with the enterprise at first, but by
economy and industry finally got prosperous.
As for Horigutchi himself, amiable and intelligent and, of course,
unusually intimate with the French language, it is said he knows
how the Emperor of Korea died, _pués quién sabe_? At any rate, he is
peaceful and smiling now, his Belgian wife is dressy and hospitable,
and he has an interesting little daughter. The house is the usual
compromise between good Japanese things and expensive European ones,
always painful to our esthetic sense, and doubtless to theirs as well.
Again I have waked up to this wondrous sun and these open windows,
and the shining, flower-planted _patio_. Am having a little luncheon
here. Von H. Stalewski, the Russian minister, Martinez del Campo, third
introducer of ambassadors (he of the charming English), and the Simons
and the French chargé. A magnificent blue Puebla bowl, such as were
used in olden days for baptismal feasts, now very difficult to find,
decorates the center of the round table, filled with red and purple
sweet-peas--_guisantes de olor_ they call them; fifty cents for the
whole glory. All our cakes, ices, etc., are ordered from the Café de
l'Opéra, kept by French people in the Avenida Cinco de Mayo, where the
Mexicans drop in between five and eight for tea or chocolate or some
sort of consummation.
Von H. is finding himself out of his natural orbit here. His eyes
filled with tears when he said to me at dinner at the Italian Legation
the other night: "I miss my friends." We were having a little exchange
of sentiments and illusions. I imagine he is _un sensitif_, and it
_is_ a far cry from what we have had and known before. He has the
world manner, varied official experience, and an unexplained personal
equation.
There had been no diplomatic dinners for six months here on account of
the troubles, and when everybody has had one things will settle down
again.
_June 18th._
Your letter saying you were thinking of the Pentecostal fires on the
Umbrian hills, has come. I forget all pains, if pains there were, and
am glad of that and all other experiences life has given us together.
Mrs. Wilson goes to the United States next week for several months
until her boys are settled in school and college. I shall miss her very
much. Besides being one of the most admirable women I have known in
public life, she is a pearl of a _chefesse_.
I have dwelt much on my easy, pleasant days here, surrounded by new
beauty and new interests, books, companions--on this experience of
an unknown land with nothing of the "pace that kills," nothing of the
wearing "concurrence" of the great cities. In fact, I am experiencing
to the full, in Elliott's phrase, "the comforts of the tropics."
Elim has been enticed into the tiniest and darlingest of pajamas on the
ground of being ready for the next earthquake. For some reason or other
he had clung passionately to his little nighties.
_June 21st._
A delightful dinner at Mrs. Wilson's last night, everything bearing
the special dainty touch of the _embajadora_. The table was a mass of
La France roses and violets, and the pink-shaded silver candelabra
emerged from light clouds of pale-pink gauze. Large and deliciously
prepared _langoustes_, very difficult to get here, formed the _pièce de
résistance_ of the dinner, which was most lavish throughout.
On Mrs. Wilson's right was Rafael Hernandez, first cousin of Madero,
a very handsome man of about thirty-five, with dark eyes and flashing
white teeth and brilliant coloring. Every now and then you come across
some one here with what we could call a "complexion," and you never
forget it.
I am interested in seeing the members of the coming dynasty appear on
the political stage. Hernandez, a lawyer of repute, is now Minister of
Justice. I sat between Mr. Lie, the Norwegian minister, who is a son of
the author, Jonas Lie, and we talked a bit of Scandinavian literature.
I read only last winter his father's great, sad book, _Les Filles du
Commandant_. I had known him slightly in Berlin, when he was military
attaché, before what we used to call the "divorce" of Sweden and
Norway. Hohler was on my other side, and between courses we did quite a
tidy bit of confidential journeying on the political chart. He is ready
to crown King George and Queen Mary to-morrow at the new Legation.
_June 22d._
This morning we went to the coronation service for the King of England
and Emperor of India in the English Church. The thought of the same
prayers going up everywhere for him on whose dominions the sun never
sets was solemn and imposing. The _Te Deum_, preceded by the Litany
beseeching the Lord to have mercy on miserable sinners, alone kept it
in the note of mortality. The town is flagged, and, though we had no
king in person, we had the most royal weather.
Several hundred people were at the reception, all the _chers
collègues_, various members of the government, and the British colony,
of course, with a certain number of curios, such as all colonies
produce on national occasions. The Legation is not yet furnished,
though the chancery is in full blast, and Hohler has his study most
comfortably arranged with a lot of his own good things. He has just
found an old Spanish cabinet--a mass of ivory, mother-of-pearl, and
silver inlay--that makes you wish you were a burglar.
At five o'clock President de la Barra, very smiling and spick and span,
arrived, accompanied by his staff. He was welcomed by the national
hymn played with much spirit by an excellent orchestra. Others of the
government were Emilio Vasquez Gomez, Ministerio de la Gobernación
(Interior), and Mr. and Mrs. Pimentel y Fagoaga (Mr. P. is a banker
and president of the city council). Mr. Creel, former ambassador to
Washington, white-haired, pink-complexioned, un-Mexican-looking, I also
met.
Later General Reyes appeared, once, possibly still, the idol of the
army. You can never know here, for between sunrise and sunset the
victorious hero can become a hunted fugitive. There is something about
General Reyes, with his upstanding mien, long, white beard, shrewd
eye and air of experience, which would not have fitted badly into the
presidential frame. I am told there was a psychological moment when
fate was ready for him, but now it is too late; other forces have
crystallized.
Everybody was making the rounds of the Legation, which is going to be
most attractive and convenient, the only fly in the ointment being the
garden. During the building large quantities of lime and all sorts of
unproductive refuse were left about, and Hohler thinks he will have
to change the whole soil. Up to now nothing save the irrepressible but
beautiful pink geranium has been willing to grow.
I was borne, with the French chargé, on a steady tide, setting
through the long, unfurnished dining-room, to a temporary grotto-like
inclosure, the walls of which were lined with palm-trees and hung with
the Union Jack, where the refreshments were served. I heard a little
joke going around with the punch among the somewhat homesick colony,
"Can you hear the crowns settling on the brows of King George and Queen
Mary?" It mingled harmlessly with the congratulations and hand-shaking
and health-drinking of a very pleasant and, one hopes, auspicious
occasion. In London the sun had long since set on the actors in a new
page of England's history.
_June 25th._
There is no doubt about the rainy season having set in. Rain fell
yesterday during three hours in drenching sheets that darkened the
city. I could scarcely see across the street; but I had the lights
turned on and proceeded with Prescott's _Conquest_, not read since
years. I am entranced by his vivid, flowing style and the wealth of
reference and learning. The very initiated have said that it is not
all true, but if it isn't it ought to be, it's so good. The copy I
am reading was published by Galignani in Paris in 1844, and must be
a first edition, as his preface bears the date, "Boston, October 1st,
1843."
In a small section of the bookcase near my divan, where I sit or rest
or where the tea is brought--where I always am, in fact--are the poets.
I can reach out and refresh myself with almost any of them. There is a
set in that old-fashioned blue-and-gold binding, such as you used to
have (1878 is its date), containing Shelley, Keats, Byron, Tennyson,
Longfellow, Whittier, Mrs. Hemans, _et al._ But they are only a few of
the denizens of the "poets' corner." Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_ is
the first book on the first shelf.
Peter and Paul's Day, _June 29th_.
The saints' days follow quickly here. Also I find that instead of
indifferentism the churches are packed with men, women, and children
on all occasions. Am now waiting for Madame Chermont, the agreeable
American wife of the Brazilian secretary, and we drive to Chapultepec
Park with our children and listen to the music. A fine military band
plays by the largest of the natural lakes, and it is the great morning
rendezvous of Mexico City. The two boys will disport on the grass and
incidentally have a few "good" fights plastered in between the gentler
occupations of catching butterflies and picking flowers.
_Evening._
I made calls all the afternoon, two violent thunder-storms enlivening
the getting in and out. At Madame Lie's an almost terrifying darkness
fell, lasting for an hour or so. The lights were turned on, but we
all continued to look like specters, with an unnatural, lusterless
saffron light filtering in at the windows, showing the Indian butler
coming and going quietly with the tea things, and lighting up delicate
sprays of yellow-brown orchids from the Hot Country on the table in
some Scandinavian silver vases. At six o'clock, as I came home, the
volcanoes appeared like heaps of purest gold piled against the blackest
of clouds.
San Pedro y Pablo seems to be celebrated here by the giving of toy
pistols, and other noisy weapons, to children. There was more or less
"popping" going on all the morning. For some reason there is a legend
to the effect that the devil roams abroad on this day seeking whom he
may devour.
I thought of San Paolo Fuori le Muri and the celebrations in the great
Basilica, and the Roman world on its way out of the Porta San Paolo
past the pyramid of Caius Cestus and the grave of Keats.
_June 30th._
Your earthquake letter received. Remember, the Paris _Herald_ has to
live.
We see a good deal of the ambassador, and also of Dearing, clever and
courageous. When the ambassador will leave I don't know; but we do know
the greatest benefit a chief can confer on his first secretary.
Dearing is trying his hand at translating Mallarmé, and last night we
were turning the "_Frisson d'hiver_" round about, but we didn't do to
it what he did to "The Raven."
It begins: "_Cette pendule de Saxe qui retarde et sonne treize heures
parmi ses fleurs et ses dieux, à qui a-t-elle été?_"
We dine at the Austrian chargé's to-morrow. Everything always very
_soigné_. He has an Austrian cook, I believe, and a pleasant mania for
cleanliness. He will soon be leaving, as Baron Riedl from Rio Janeiro,
his cousin, is appointed minister here. You remember him and his
American wife from Rome.
I am sending a huge bundle of zarapes, dull blue and white, sewed up in
canvas--so nice for the garden, and for Elliott on his terrace.
VI
Speculations as to the wealth of "the Greatest
Mexican"--Fourth of July--Madero as evangelist--The German
minister's first official dinner with the Maderos as the
_clou_.
_July 1st._
There are great speculations as to Diaz's wealth, and millions are put
to his account with a light hand.[5] Some say he has twenty millions in
Spain, in Paris, in Wall Street. I am sure I hope he _has_ feathered
his nest--both he and Limantour. As I remarked before, the Romans
that made the roads probably did, but they made the roads. There is a
not-negligible quantity in Mexico, in abeyance for the moment, which
is very suspicious and uncertain, not of the honesty of Madero (all
parties allow that), but of his ability to handle the situation, which
demands civic talents of a high order.
President de la Barra has a pension plan which will doubtless give him
much trouble, as it will have to include all of Mexico, or those left
out will know why. As was observed by some one the other day, the more
the Mexicans try to change Mexico the more it remains the same thing.
Practically new electoral methods are to be tried out, and how Madero,
unless he has a secret _flair_ for civic matters, is to solve them is
what we are all waiting to see. The people's ears are full of promises.
The government would promise the snow of Popo--anything; but there is
a ditty being sung about town now that gives one food for thought:
_Poco trabajo_, Little work,
_Mucho dinero_, Much money,
_Pulque barato_, Cheap pulque,
_Viva Madero!_ Long live Madero!
It's a bit wabbly for founding a government on, but doubtless
represents very accurately the dreams of the _pelados_ (skinned ones),
as the peons are called.
You speak of the subscriptions for the earthquake relief here. It was
not a national disaster. National disasters take other forms in this
latitude. Scarcely a ripple is left, and as for the money to repair the
city and close the splits in the streets, the municipality gives that
and the contractors jump for joy.
I do not minimize the dangers here, but, of course, I don't draw
highly colored pictures, being sure of your interest in any statement
of facts, however plain they may be. I have rarely felt safer
anywhere than in Mexico City; certainly never more comfortable and
continually interested. We often walk home after dinners or bridge. The
clean-washed air is so refreshing after being in rooms, however large,
at this altitude. The gendarmes stand at every few crossings with
their lanterns. The streets are deserted, dry, and clean. There is no
_Nachtleben_. The program is here early to bed, early to rise, and the
thrice-blessed siesta to renew the day.
I am sending off a delightful book by Flandrau, _Viva Mexico_. It has
the real sparkle and "feel" of this magnetic land. How true a word he
spoke when he said, "One does not go to Latin-America just to see what
it is like, or because one has seen it before and chosen to return, but
because circumstances in their wonderfully lucid way have combined to
send one."
I have just had a letter from the King of Denmark. You know how
promptly he always answers, _la politesse des rois_. But the old
Copenhagen days with their blues and grays and Aryan ways of thought
and habits of life are immeasurably remote from these, not only
geographically and in time, but psychologically.
The other evening at the Arbeu Theater, where Virginia Fabregas, an
old favorite here, was playing, my eye was suddenly arrested by the
profiles as I looked from the box down a row of seats. They were so
diverse, so strange, like those one comes across on the ground floor
in the corner rooms of museums--Mongol, Indian, Aryan. There did not
seem to be any one type. It was just a patchwork loosely sewn together,
the bits coming out of unknown generations from the desires of the four
corners of the earth.
_July 3d._
The rainy season _bat son plein_. Immense quantities of water are
thrown down from the heavens between three and six every day, after
which it has always cleared, with the exception of that historic
evening when the mob was "out" to destroy the creator of its present
Mexico. How quickly republics, not alone this strange Indian republic,
put away their great! It is most discouraging to one desirous of
finding all good things in that form of government.
I have finished De Solis. Also I have "read" a grammar, and, of course,
there are the servants, instillers of that rather patchworky thing
called kitchen-Spanish, and there are the newspapers. A teacher is
coming next week. I haven't yet felt like mapping out any special plan
of study, being in readiness at certain hours, but am enjoying the
"simple life" thrown against this colorful background of a colorful
race in revolution.
Only two dinners this week, at the Brazilian chargé's, and on Sunday
the German minister gives his first dinner. He has taken a large
furnished house in the Calle Liverpool, very expensive and suitable,
as far as space goes, for a Legation. It belongs to a wealthy Mexican
who was seduced, however, by _art nouveau_. Large hat-racks and high
jardinières in the form of giant pansies in natural colors furnish the
great hall and testify to his ruin.
Von H. endeavored to strike some sort of average by hanging some
beautiful rugs from the square railing of the second story. His good
furniture from Europe arrived in such a state that he said nothing was
needed, as case after case was unpacked, but brooms to sweep out the
debris.
_July 4th, evening._
Our Fourth-of-July celebration took place at the Tivoli Eliseo in the
Puente de Alvarado, which is like any picnic ground anywhere (unless
you look up at the matchless sky). There was the usual accompaniment
of pink lemonade, peanuts (called _cacahuetes_ here), and brass bands.
There was a luncheon with speeches which would have stirred my national
soul more if I weren't still in a half-dream at finding myself in this
strange and gorgeous land. As I was leaving the festive scene word was
passed round that Madero was coming and would speak.
I stood on the outer fringe of the crowd, which I did not try to
penetrate, and found it most interesting to see, even at a distance,
the evangelist "evangelizing." Madero's face, so familiar in
photographs, and which seems featureless but for the broad forehead
and black, pointed beard, becomes illuminated as he speaks, and his
gestures are continuous, the voice soft, with a smooth flow of words. I
could not catch what he said, but I knew it was his work of hypnotizing
Mexico.
A more material diversion, N. told me, was created later by a
cock-fight, forbidden by the police, but secretly adored, which took
place in a little inclosure. There is no doubt about that animal
being in every sense the cock of the Mexican walk. He is the only
beast really cherished by them. He even shares the precious hat, and
his idiosyncrasies and caprices are tenderly studied. When he fights
little knives are tied onto his legs, which is why the sport, though
brilliant, is short as far as the cock is concerned.
I keep wondering how Madero can "divide up the great estates" and
deliver them to that unknown, and here even unlabeled, quantity, "the
people." According to the Plan de San Luis Potosí, it would seem as if
Mexico were a cake one had simply to cut into and then pass around the
slices.
There is an underlying excitement in the European contingent of the
Diplomatic Corps. The sending of the _Panther_ to Morocco looks like
one of those Franco-German incidents that we were familiar with when in
Berlin, and may lead to real difficulties.
_July 8th._
To-day what started out to be a little golfing lunch, gathered together
by N. in the sunny morning hours when it seems it will never rain
again, turned into a sort of _disputa_ about many things, within four
walls. A tremendous hailstorm came up and darkened and nipped the town,
so the "foursome" sat long talking, the water pouring from the roof.
Leclerq, Koch, and Nacho Amor are all cultivated, agreeable young men.
Amor was educated at Stonyhurst, and has the soft, pleasant voice and
delightful English of Mexicans who have passed young years in England.
As I write, near and very brilliant stars, under which I was not born,
are shining into the _patio_, and in a moment I must go and walk about
the inner veranda and look up into that dazzling bit of heaven in the
square frame of the house. If it were only not so far and unsharable
with my beloved ones!
_July 10th._
Last night the German minister gave his first big dinner, at which the
Maderos, making their début in official international life, were the
_clou_. We arrived as it was striking eight, but the Belgian minister,
whom we met going in, said they had already arrived.
I found the large room rather full, with a hitherto unsampled Mexican
contingent. Von H. was standing by the door, near the Maderos, and
we were presented almost immediately. Madero, seen at close range, is
small, dark, with nose somewhat flattened, expressive, rather prominent
eyes in shallow sockets, and forehead of the impractical shape. But
all is redeemed by expression playing like lightning over the sallow,
featureless face and his pleasant, ready smile.
[Illustration: VON HINTZE, GERMAN MINISTER TO MEXICO
(1911 to 1914)]
He speaks French and some English, preferring the former, but lapses
continually into Spanish, his ideas coming too fast for a foreign
medium, and he uses many gestures. There is something about him of
youth, of hopefulness and personal goodness; but I couldn't help
wondering, as I looked at him during the dinner, if he were going to
begin the national feast by slicing up the family cake.
Madame Madero might be a dark type of New England woman with a hint
of banked fires in her eyes. There is a sort of determination in the
cut of her face, which is rather worn, with an expression of dignity.
She, too, is small and thin, and was dressed in an ordinary high-necked
black-and-white gown, a narrow "pin stripe," with the most modest of
gold brooches holding the plain, high collar. She gives an impression
of valiance without any hint of worldliness, or desire for any kind of
flesh-pot. I pictured her at Chapultepec, and somehow could not fit her
in as châtelaine of that high-standing palace.
Of course all the other guests were in their best "bib and tucker." I
wore that "Spitzer" white satin with the floating scarlet and black
tulle draperies. It seems very magnificent here; but in Paris, at
Madame Porgès's great dinner, and at the Russian Embassy, the train did
not seem quite so long and slinky, nor the drapery so tight around the
ankles, as the dresses of the wonderful Frenchwomen.
As we went into the dining-room I saw, a mile off, the unmistakable
name O'S. by Madero's, and naturally thought it was for me. I sat down,
then had to take my appointed place quite a good deal higher up by the
Minister of Foreign Affairs. So disappointed. It was N., however, who
was to help him fill the "suburbs" of the table. Countess Massiglia
presided; on her right was the Minister of Foreign Affairs; then I
came; then an elaborately uniformed but, as far as I was concerned,
anonymous military gentleman whose card was under his napkin--which he
did not use.
The Maderos are reputed enormously wealthy; their wealth is mostly
invested in lands, however. I understand Madero spent all the available
family cash on the revolution, though he told N. last night that no
revolution had ever been carried through so cheaply from the standpoint
both of men and of money.
Von H. does things very well. The courses were accompanied by
wines of special, rare vintages, and his dinner was lavishly and
handsomely presented. He has the same majordomo that the Towers had in
Berlin--that huge, blond man (I forget his name). I asked him how he
liked Mexico; he permitted himself the hint of a sigh, and said it was
not Berlin, adding, "_Aber es giebt nichts zu machen_."
Madame Madero was placed between the Italian minister and the Austrian
chargé, our host having the wife of the Norwegian minister on his right
and Madame Romero on his left. N. said Madero was very militaristic,
considering he was come to bring peace, and somewhat suspicious of the
United States.
On the other side of Madero was that anomaly, a Mexican _vieille
fille_, whose name I did not get. I supposed she belonged to one of
the two or three elderly military men present. N. suggested to Madero
his falling in with the views of the United States in the regulating of
claims, and he said the following in French, "You Americans always act
on the presumption that we Mexicans are always in the wrong." N. said
this was _à propos_ of his remark, "Now, Mr. Madero, you are going to
be President, and I know when your government gets in you will clear up
all matters pending between the two countries, and let us begin with a
clean slate."
There had been some discussion among us all as to how Madero should
be seated at table. He was the undoubted next President, the leader
of the _Ejército Liberatado_, but actually at the moment he was
without official status of any kind, and could not be placed above
plenipotentiaries with their definite ranking.
Von H. cut the Gordian knot, rather informally, by putting him next N.
"so that they could have a talk," which they did!
Handsome young De Weede turned up yesterday, having made the ascent of
Orizaba, a great feat. He came down in a dreadfully burned condition,
however, and spent some days in bed attended by a physician. He is the
son of our friend, the Dutch minister in Vienna.
He returns there as first secretary with his father, regretting
Washington very much.
He had seen the Hitts in Guatemala, and showed me photographs he
had taken of their house with its lovely _patio_, fountained and
flower-planted. The roughly paved street gave the outside a desolate
look which it doubtless has not really got under that sky, as blue as
this. It was so nice to see De W. again, and the "welkin rang" with
reminiscences of the _Kaiserstadt_ and the happenings of our mutual
friends.
_July 12th._
Von H. has been criticized for having had Madero at a formal
dinner, where he could not have the first place at table, being the
_Liberatador_ and more than all the others put together. However, I
imagine it is those who were not at it who felt critical. I inclose the
menu. Apart from the _huachinango_, the wonderful Mexican redsnapper,
the fish that Indian runners used to bring up on their backs from
Vera Cruz for Montezuma's delectation, it might have been a handsomely
presented dinner anywhere in the world.
This morning I took De W. to the museum to look over the treasures,
pre- and post-Cortesiana. The building forms part of the Palacio
Nacional, some of which dates back to the great captain, and it was
the celebrated Casa del Estado during the viceregal period. The old
colonnaded _patio_ is a beautiful receptacle for a flooding sun, as
well as the altars and carvings of a bygone civilization. In the middle
are the Sacrificial Stone, and the great Calendar Stone, which has
contributed more than anything else to give the Aztecs their reputation
for scientific achievements. They adjusted their festivals by the
movements of the heavenly bodies, fixed the true length of the tropical
year, etc.
For some generations after the discovery of the Calendar Stone in
the subsoil of the Plaza it was cemented onto one of the towers of
the cathedral, and only in the eighties was removed to the museum.
The Piedra de Sacrificios is appalling when one thinks of its origin
and use; but with an extremely handsome young man leaning against it,
under that warm sun, in that mellow old courtyard, it was not, for the
moment, so dreadful to contemplate. Its true home was the top of the
great temple, and there Cortés found it.
During the siege of the city the conquerors, watching from afar,
are said to have sometimes seen their own captured comrades led up
the great stairway to the stone on which they were placed, their
chests opened with a special razor-like knife made of obsidian, the
palpitating heart torn out, held for an instant toward the sun, _this_
sun, and then flung at the feet of the god of war. Huitzilopochtli, the
aforesaid god, is a huge block of basalt, half man, half woman, who
was "born" just as one sees him now, with the addition of a spear in
the right hand, a shield in the left, and on his head a crest of green
plumes, going Minerva one better. Thousands were sacrificed to him
yearly under this wondrous sky, enfolded by this softly penetrating,
vivifying sun.
Afterward we went up and saw the "Maximiliana" for "Auld Lang Syne,"
not much nor very interesting--a huge amount of cristofle silverware
and the saddle used by the unfortunate emperor when he was captured
at Querétaro (May 15, 1867). The pictures of Maximilian, one on a
dashing white charger, show him a full-lipped, blond-bearded, blue-eyed
Austrian obviously unable to cope with the Mexican political situation.
Carlota, in pale blue and pearls, hangs by him. These portraits are by
Graefle, the Viennese court painter of the period. Napoleon the Third,
the cause of all their troubles, hangs near with Eugénie--a copy of the
Winterhalter portrait of her, I think.
We took a look at the relics of Juarez, the "man in the black coat," as
the only Mexican ruler that didn't wear uniform is called. The plainest
of civilian garb of the late sixties was in the _vitrine_, and near by
was the bed in which he actually managed to die. This last, as far as I
can see, is unique among Mexican relics, Mexican public men not having
the habit of dying in bed.
Dearing has gone away, on three months' leave, and N. is at his desk.
I must stop and take my baby on my lap. He has been standing by my
side, saying, "Dy will be done." He is being taught various prayers,
and repeats them on all occasions. He is waiting with a bit of
blotting-paper to blot my letter, which I am sure he will do, and wants
to know if you got the last thousand kisses.
_Evening._
These past two days I have lunched at Coyoacan. Yesterday at the
house of some American friends of the ambassador's--the Becks--who
are charmingly situated in a huge old house surrounded by a great,
tall-treed garden, and filled with lovely old things. Mr. Potter,
who is down here to watch over large interests of his own and other
people's, is most witty and entertaining, and with his friend, Mr.
Butler, went with us. The day before Mrs. Laughton, who had met De
Weede, asked us all for lunch at the Casa de Alvarado. I was glad
to show him some more "local color," and that beautiful old house is
simply oozing with it.
After lunch we went into the garden for our coffee, while Elim played
with Mrs. Laughton's two little children; but, even with young voices
sounding, a soft sun shining upon lovely flowers, and sipping coffee
under the pleasant shade of the rose-grown arbor, the garden is eery
and melancholy-inducing.
On our way back we stopped at the Zócalo, and went to the Academia San
Carlos, the national picture-gallery, _Academia de las Nobles Artes de
Mexico_, as it was called under the viceroys. It has a huge collection
of plaster casts which cost the king several hundred thousand _pesos_.
Do you see the "Laocoön," the "Apollo Belvedere," the "Young Hercules,"
etc., being brought up on Indian backs from Vera Cruz? The _patio_ and
corridors were full of scaffolding and plaster scrapings as we passed
in.
Humboldt speaks of seeing great halls lighted with Argand lamps,
evidently then the _dernier cri_ of illumination, and the Indian, the
Mestizo, and the son of the "grand seigneur" side by side, drawing and
modeling from the antique molds. Tolsa, the celebrated artist of the
"Iron Horse," taught here.
We took a glance only at some of the boresome, well-painted academic
modern canvases, which made us feel like dashing into the street to
get some _real_ pictures. The rooms where the early Mexican painters,
the Echave brothers, Cabrera, etc., hang were closed for repairs
or cleaning. Indeed, the whole place was at sixes and sevens, each
object plastered with from two to five numbers. As we had "met" most
of the casts in European museums, it didn't matter. We walked up the
gay Avenida San Francisco and stopped in at "El Globo," a café much
frequented from this hour on. On coming out De W. took photographs
of the Jockey Club, its blue and yellow tiles particularly brilliant
against some threatening rain-clouds, and some others of the charming
entrance to the old Church of San Francisco opposite; he said they
could be hung as "Sacred and Profane Love." We got back to Calle
Humboldt as the heavens opened and deluged the town.
General Crozier, just arrived from Washington, came in the darkest
and wettest hour. Such an unexpected pleasure! There are not many
Americans to visit Mexico this summer. All the people who used to
come in their private cars and bring a note of home and gaiety are
conspicuous by their absence. There is no way of heating the houses,
and sometimes during the rainy hours there is a cold dampness which
is very penetrating. Stirring the embers of old acquaintance and
talking of "home" happenings was a very pleasant way of alleviating the
temperature this afternoon.
_July 17th._
Don't fear that I shall do anything rash about going to Tehuantepec in
the present state of things. I have even given up the trip to Puebla.
They are fighting and killing there again, and in Calle Humboldt they
are not.
Notwithstanding the press, which has its liberties and the smiles
of the government, things are not really very stable. Aunt L. writes
that San Gerónimo has been filled to overflowing with refugees from
Juchitan, the county-seat, twelve miles away. The feeling there between
the Maderistas and Porfiristas is very bitter, and has just culminated
in an uprising of the Indians against the new Federal authorities,
who had to fly for their lives from a howling mob of two thousand
Indians armed with rifles, clubs, and machetes. The Federal General
Merodia made no resistance, but came with the civil authorities of the
government to San Gerónimo, giving the mob no excuse for sacking and
robbing Juchitan. Every house in San G. is full, and furniture piled
in the street. It seems to me no one but the Mexicans will be surprised
that the overthrow of Diaz has not brought about the millennium.
De Weede,[6] who departs this evening for Vienna _via_ the Grand Cañon
and the Yellowstone Park, has just been squeezed into N.'s frock-coat
and top-hat (not carrying such _impedimenta_ himself) to call on the
President. The Dutch minister lives in Washington.
General Crozier comes for dinner on Wednesday. We have just lunched
at Stalewski's (the Russian minister's), and he served the delicious
_blinis_ with caviar that all expect when lunching there. He often
takes remote journeys into the interior, coming back with a silver
ingot and curious bits of carving. The diplomatic species always
dream dreams, and his is to tread again the streets of Berne. In the
evening Captain Sturtevant, our military attaché, gives a dinner at the
American Club for General Crozier.
_Later._
I have spent a last delightful evening with Prescott, and Humboldt is
waiting in five attractive, clearly printed old volumes, Paris, 1811,
that Mr. de S. brought me yesterday. Now, just a century after, I am to
turn the pages. I have also some volumes of Alaman, who brings things
down to 1846.
I forgot to speak about my Spanish teacher, with whom I have been
studying as well as "Castellano." Her mind is about as mobile and
receptive as a tin saucepan upside down, and she is always late.
Sometimes her watch stops, sometimes the tramcar won't stop, sometimes
she forgets her purse or her keys, and has to go back, etc.
She is still young, heavily powdered, insistently perfumed, big-busted,
tightly laced, tightly skirted, and keeps a very short foot in a tight,
high-heeled slipper in front of her. She hates the sun, as I discovered
when I tried to have the first lessons in the sunny corridor.
This morning she told me in a lackadaisical, dreamy way that the noise
of the typewriter (she has some sort of afternoon office work, for
which she is doubtless totally unfitted) was not good for her; that
she had been thinking over things, and had concluded that, if I would
arrange it, introducer of foreign ladies to the President's wife was
what she was fitted for. She said I probably did not realize what
temptations the _despacho_ office offered.
I dare say she has met a few devils in her day. She wound up by saying
that the society of ladies would be less of a strain. It was all done
quietly; she has evidently dreamed dreams. She did not streak her face
when she wept, dabbing her large black eyes carefully with a coarse
lace handkerchief drenched with cheap scent. I explained as gently as I
could that the position she was thinking of was filled by the _chef du
protocole_. Though, without doubt, her life is completely commonplace,
she gave me the feeling of really not understanding anything at all
about her, and that is one of the charms of Mexico. An illusion of
elusiveness is continually presented that keeps one on the chase for
the pleasure of the chase. You never get anything or anywhere, but your
interest is kept up--which, after all, is the great thing.
[5] This was a time-honored calumny told to all new-comers
in Mexico, and believed by many chiefly because it would have
been so easy for Don Porfirio to enrich himself to any extent
he pleased. The facts are that his ambitions lay rather in the
direction of power for himself and peace and progress for his
country than in that of the amassing of riches. He was a man
of the simplest personal habits, though he always maintained
a state dignified and befitting his high office.
During his years of exile he and his beautiful wife lived
in the quietest manner on an income sufficient only for the
ordinary comforts of life. The last will and testament of "the
Greatest Mexican" further proved that he could be called to no
such accounting by the Final Judge.
As for Señor Limantour, he inherited a large fortune from his
father, principally in real estate, that increased in value
during those years of prosperity which his long and able
administration of the finances of Mexico did so much to bring
about.
[6] In the autumn of 1911 Maurice de Weede was accidentally
killed at a shooting-party in Austria.
VII
The old monastery of Tepozotlan--Lively times on the
Isthmus--The Covadonga murders--The Chapultepec
reception--Sidelights on Mexican housekeeping--Monte de
Piedad
_July 21st._
Yesterday General Crozier, Mr. de Soto, and myself motored out to the
old church and monastery of Tepozotlan. The morning was indescribably
white, with a dash of diamond-powder on its lovely face, and from the
very door every turn of the wheel took us over historic ground.
We turned down the celebrated Puente de Alvarado, where the dashing
captain for whom it is named is supposed to have made his great leap
on July 1st, the date of the retreat of the _Noche Triste_, when the
Spaniards were fighting their way out of this same road, the Tacuba
causeway, to the hill where the Church of the Virgin of the Remedies
stands. We passed the famous _Noche Triste_ tree, which those who live
here view with composure and indifference, but which still excites the
new-comer. And what's the use of an imagination if one can't be stirred
by the picture of Cortés sitting under the great cypress and weeping
as he took note of gap after gap in the ranks of the companions of his
great adventure?
There is an old romantic verse that I picked out the other day, instead
of preparing verbs, picturing Cortés sitting under the great tree, one
hand against his cheek, the other at his side:
_En Tacuba está Cortés
Con su escuadron esforzado.
Triste estaba y muy penoso,
Triste y con grande cuidado,
Una mano en la mejilla
Y la otra en el costado_, etc.
In Tacuba was Cortés
With his most valiant squadron.
Very sad and much distressed,
Very sad and greatly anxious,
One hand against his cheek
The other at his side.
As we got out of the city a white sun, the glory of these windless
mornings of the rainy season, was shining on what seemed a world of
crystal objects set in blue and green and lilac. I was so proud of
my Mexico that the general said I acted as if I had "taken over" the
country. The little grayish, yellowish adobe huts reminded him of
Chinese vistas in color and outline; but to me it was Mexico only,
unique, endlessly beautiful.
The road was once the great highway to the north; but the deep ruts,
almost morasses, made us suspect that many a _jefe político_ has sent
his wife to Paris or gone there himself instead of repairing it. All
along were milestones bearing half-obliterated inscriptions and arms
of forgotten viceroys, who used to keep the road up for the crown or
themselves--rather a contrast to the deep ruts of the now neglected
highway. Since the railway was built even Cuautitlan, the once famous
_primera posta_ from Mexico City to the north, has been abandoned, and
our motor was the only vehicle in the broad, deserted streets, which,
however, filled with Indians, as if by magic, at the sound of our horn.
For nearly an hour we could see the delicate belfry of Tepozotlan
flattened against a gray-green background of hill, while the sun
was touching everything near us with a sort of white incandescence,
the maguey-fields seeming like rows of stacked silver spears. One
thing about the Mexican vistas--they do not lose their charm as you
approach; and as we got into the square of the little village we found
a beautiful old church, inclosed with its _patio_ by a luscious pink,
low-scalloped wall. These _patios_ are a feature of every old Spanish
church. The friars used them as school-rooms, as courts of judgment, as
medical dispensaries. Indeed, all that had to do with the temporal and
spiritual needs of the Indians was transacted in them.
The Tepozotlan _patio_ is grass-grown, shaded with pepper and palm
trees, paved with sunken grave-slabs, bits of cactus growing about
them, and there is a lovely cypress alley leading to the door of
the small _parroquía_. From this we passed into the great church,
built with the adjoining seminary by the Jesuits toward the end of
the sixteenth century, and restored nearly a hundred years ago, in
Iturbide's time. As reminder of his brief imperial career we found the
Mexican eagle painted in profile on the old wooden benches.
The church is a triumph of the Churrigueresque school (I have learned
to spell this word, but never, never, will it casually trip from my
tongue). The vault is simply a madness of gilt carving, and there
is a beautiful high altar and many side altars of the richest and
most varied designs, all the gold having a lovely reddish patine.
We investigated the organ loft, but found only a broken organ with
yellowing ivory stops and keys, and a few dusty missals with all the
engravings and title-pages gone.
The general is not ecclesiastically inclined, and the visit to the
old monastery, so bare, so stripped of all belongings, was most
cursory. We soon betook ourselves to the cypress alley and the warm
sun outside, lunching in the auto in the village square, with children
and old women clustering about and waiting for the crumbs from the
banquet. The latter was somewhat marred for us by the discovery that
the mineral-water opener had been forgotten. The motor was drawn up
near a little pink-and-blue pulque-shop called _El Recreo del Antiguo
Gato_,[7] but it contained no help for us; neither did a search at a
still smaller one rejoicing in the name of _El Templo de Venus_,[8]
on the other side of the Plaza, prove successful. However, the general
pointed out hopefully that it would soon begin to rain.
On the way back we did get caught in one of the usual infant
cloudbursts, which left the difficult roads of the morning almost
impassable, and several times we had to get squads of Indians, who rose
up apparently from the solid earth, to help pull the car out of various
huge morasses. I thought at one time we could not get back for the
dinner I was giving for General C.; but having the guest of honor with
me, I felt fairly philosophic.
The ditches in some places were thickly carpeted with a long-stemmed,
yellow, lily-like flower, and though warned that nobody would pick me
out if I slipped into the black water underneath, I gathered great,
heavy scented bunches, while the gentlemen and the Indians wrestled
with the conveyance. Mr. de S. said the unfailing remark on the part
of the Indians was, "_No quiere andar_" ("It does not wish to go")--a
favorite and sometimes final phrase here about machinery that is out of
order.
_Later._
There have been lively times on the Isthmus. The former Federals
against Maderistas. Aunt L.'s big house has been taken by the
government for a hospital. A cruel uncertainty about affairs Mexican
presses heavily everywhere.
The dinner for General C., after the long day at Tepozotlan, went off
very pleasantly. He says he is here only _en touriste_, but he has
the recording eye. The German minister returned from investigating the
horrid Covadonga murders just in time to get into his evening things.
Dearing, De Soto, Sturtevant, Mr. and Mrs. McLaren, _et al._, made
up the dinner guests. The McL.'s are strong supporters of the Madero
movement, and hope more than it seems reasonable to hope from such a
movement in such a country.
Von H. is up to his eyes in the complications of the Covadonga murders
where four Germans, one of them the wife of a manufacturer, were
literally hacked to death in their factory. They were caught in a large
room with one frightened Spaniard, the others having fought and shot
their way out. Sixty-eight in all were killed and some two hundred
wounded, nearly all Spaniards. Whether this is to be laid at the doors
of the "Liberating Army" or is simply a little independent fling of a
bandit chief called Zapata is not yet known.
Von H. has sent out a circular to his nationals, urging caution. He
intends to bring the guilty ones to justice himself if the government
does not; there was a light in his eye as he announced it, and a click
of the teeth.
[Illustration: MEXICAN WOMEN WATER-CARRIERS
Photograph by Ravell]
Emilio Madero, brother of Madero, is chief of the also troubled zone
of Torreon. Circulars are being distributed by his orders begging
the people to respect foreign lives and property, and explaining the
necessity of the continuance of foreign capital, intelligence, and
method in the country. They also state that any one voicing sentiments
hostile to Spaniards, or other foreigners, Americans included, will
find no place in the _Ejército Libertador_ (Liberating Army).
The servants seem such nice human beings. All their defects are small,
and they are so honest. I feel myself more and more fortunate to have
got this nice, practical arrangement with the _je ne sais quoi_ of
culture and breeding added.
The whole machinery runs comfortably, economically, and agreeably. I
never scorn the _pesos_, or even the _centavitos_ they return to me
from the kitchen when we have been out, or things were _less_ expensive
than they expected in the market. Is it not all of a touching honesty?
Some grim fatality attended my first waving back of the _centavitos_
with a grand air. Either the bells were not answered, the food was
not carefully prepared, the dinner was late, or some such thing. Now
I accept the _centavitos_ and life takes its normally smooth course.
I had been warned not to refuse these offerings of simple hearts; and
these same fatalities were foretold me by others more experienced in
Mexican domestic psychology than I.
_July 27th._
Home from another reception at Chapultepec. I always enjoy them, the
setting is so perfect and the elements so diverse. The iron circle
is not as tight as formerly, and this afternoon a sunset so gorgeous
was going on that it made us all ashamed to sit between four mere
brocade-covered walls, so there was much walking about the terraces.
There is a single great pine growing near the castle, where you look
over the terrace toward the volcanoes, like the umbrella pines of
the Borghese Gardens. It was black to-day with scallopings of bronze
against the sky, and as I stood there, looking at the beauty of it all,
talking with one of the President's handsome brothers (the one that is
shortly going on a financial mission to London), I realized, suddenly,
the obvious and persistent compensations of life.
Afterward we went down the little winding stairway leading from _la
vitrina_, the glass-inclosed balcony looking over the side toward the
city, to the large east terrace, where an elaborate and abundant tea
was served at small tables. Hohler took me down. I felt quite mellowed
by all the beauty, and he, in spite of a certain matter-of-factness, is
always appreciative. There is generally among the _Corps Diplomatique_
a note of _nil admirari_. Mostly they _have_ seen a lot, and it's in
the note not to show surprise; but no one could look without a stirring
of the soul on the marvelous vistas from the terraces.
Hohler was about to set out on one of his periodical journeys when
he uses "wheeled things," as Belloc expresses it,[9] as little as
possible, and he showed me a tiny edition of Ovid, _ars amatoria_, that
he was taking with him.
A long letter came from General Crozier this morning, from Puebla. He
had found Madero at Tehuacan, and had had an interesting hour with him.
The day before he had had an interview with the Minister of War, who
sent an officer with him to visit various military establishments, the
college at Chapultepec, the cartridge-factory at Molino del Rey, the
powder-factory at Santa Fé, etc.
What he thought of it all I know not; he is one of the discreetest of
mortals. He says he is taking a regretful departure from Mexico, where
he found so much of interest and friendly courtesy. Certainly good
wishes and regrets follow him.
_July 28th, afternoon._
The Agadir incident bids fair to become more than an incident. Asquith
has just said that England, to the last man, the last ship, the last
shilling, will stand by France. We won't talk of the little panthers
to-night at dinner.
As I was walking home from the Embassy this morning I found myself
wedged in by some motors, near the trolley line, and had to wait, while
a black funeral car, familiar but unhygienic, passed under my nose.
The plain coffins, with or without palls (this had none), are placed in
an open, sideless tramcar, sometimes with flowers, sometimes without.
They have to pass the broad Avenida de los Insurgentes to get out to
the Panteon de Dolores, the big, modern cemetery behind Chapultepec
hill. There are agitations, from time to time, to prevent the carrying
of these obviously not hermetically sealed coffins through the city,
scattering germs and odors of mortality. Foreigners generally turn
their heads and try not to breathe; but the Mexicans take off their
hats and make the sign of the cross.
_July 29th._
I have spent several afternoons with Humboldt, quite intimately and
cozily, to the sound of heavy water falling from the roof, and the room
so darkened by the deluge that I have had my lights turned on. He says
that Peñon I wrote of will, one day, destroy Mexico City. Will it be
_Anno Domini_ 1911? I envy him his beautiful gift of accurate seeing.
None of the marvels of Nature, none of her vagaries, showed themselves
to him in vain; and he is astonishingly up to date.
I have begun to prowl about for "antiques." No one escapes the fever,
and in its delirium I wandered this morning to the Monte de Piedad,[10]
which is housed in an ancient building facing the cathedral. An old
tablet over the door records that it was founded in 1775 by Terreros,
Conde de Regla, one of the most romantic figures of the eighteenth
century, as, by a lucky chance, he became the owner of the Real del
Monte mines at Pachuca.
Among the people he was the subject of as many fables as Crœsus.
When his children were baptized the procession walked upon bars of
silver, and when he was made Conde de Regla he invited the King of
Spain to visit his mine, assuring him that if he did so his feet should
never touch the earth.
The Monte de Piedad was founded for the purpose of keeping the poor
out of the clutches of the usurers. Going in on the ground floor,
directly from the street, I found myself in a crowd of elbowing people
of all classes, leaning over glass-inclosed show-cases, where jewels
and silver and small objects of value are exposed. In the large space
immediately back are samples of everything used by man except things
that need to be fed.
After having fingered the greatest number of objects that, in my right
mind, I would have no possible use for, I concentrated my energies on
a pearl pin, the pearl really visible to the naked eye, and bought it
for thirty dollars; but I expended more than thirty dollars' worth of
time and energy, even as those things go here. It's a scarf-pin and,
somehow, in its old, brilliant setting, it seemed to try to tell a
tale. Perhaps it had held some viceroy's lace? I will send it to you
for St. Augustine's Day.
[7] Recreation-ground of the Ancient Cat.
[8] The temple of Venus.
[9] _The Road to Rome_, Hilaire Belloc.
[10] National Pawn-shop.
VIII
Elim's fourth birthday party--Haggling over the prices of old
Mexican frames--Zapata looms up--First glimpse of General
Huerta--Romantic mining history of Mexico.
_August 3d._
Again it is the blessed anniversary. It seems but a moment of time
since my arms received my son. He asked me, the first thing this
morning, at what time he would be four years old. When I told him
it had already happened he set up a dreadful howl. It appears he had
expected to feel himself becoming four, as he informed me when he got
his breath. I only send this line to you on this, his fourth mark on
the shores of life. Now I must be up and doing. The sun is flooding the
_patio_.
_Later._
His birthday party was sweet, but I was deathly homesick for you, when
kind and friendly strangers came, bringing their gifts and good wishes.
He had his cake, and the four candles for the years he had blessed
my life. The two little Japanese, Madame Chermont's little boy, the
two handsome children of the Casa Alvarado, the little Simon boy (too
sweet, with his dark curls and big eyes), Dearing, Arnold, and Palmer,
from the Embassy, came.
Von Hintze, who loves little children, dropped in late with a book of
fairy tales. Mrs. Laughton brought Æsop's Fables, not many pictures
in it, and as Elim opened it at a printed page he said, with shining
eyes, "_Endlich habe ich ein Lesebuch_." He has spent a good deal of
time, since, holding it upside down and asking not to be disturbed
while reading. He and Jom Chermont had a clash of arms, and Bobo, the
two-year-old little Jap, ran the whole show with singular competence.
An invading nostalgia possessed me all the afternoon, and I kept
thinking of the beautiful word the Portuguese chargé, De Lima, taught
me a few days ago at dinner--"_saudades_," meaning memory of dear
and early scenes, or of loved ones, or of all these things together.
I presented my son with two tortoises and a little green bird, a
_clarine_, which can be kept on the oleander terrace, though he had
asked for a monkey and a crocodile.
I see that Abbey is dead. The wonder of those reds of the "Parsifal"
frieze in the Boston Library has followed me for years. _Tout a une
fin_, but when an artist dies there is a double end. I have just come
across most beautiful photographs of Mexico--gum-prints and callotypes,
after some special process by an artist named Ravell, who has a
remarkable eye for this beauty and evidently a soul to receive it.
_August 8th._
To-day was my usual Tuesday at home. Elim, in spotless white, played
quietly under the tea-table most of the time with his little legs
sticking out. Torrents of rain, and only a few callers, among them the
German Consul-General, Rieloff, very musical, asking us for dinner,
and Mrs. Cummings, handsome, competent, and warm-hearted, the wife of
the head of the cable company, and a friend of Aunt Laura's since many
years.
Lately I have bought several beautiful old Mexican or Spanish frames.
Sometimes they are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, sometimes with ivory
or bone. Sometimes they are old, sometimes only so cunningly arranged
to deceive the eye and fancy that they give the same pleasure. To-day
a short, stubby, insistent Mestizo, from the Calle Amargura, brought
me a beautiful one, and I spent a most exciting hour haggling over the
price. The four evangelists are carved in mother-of-pearl at the four
corners, with a charming, simple device of diamond-shaped pieces in
between. A beautiful Ravell photograph of the stone sails of Guadalupe
just fitted into it, and it will hang above the bookcase by my sofa.
The room has many friends whom I have put in Mexican frames; Elim and
Sofka, Iswolsky, the Towers, Mr. Taft, Mr. Roosevelt. A sweet one of
Gladys S., with her first-born in her arms, has a soft, yellow wood
frame, with an old, irregular tracing in black and ivory.
I can't call Mexico a melting-pot exactly, as things don't melt here.
But it is a strange place, with strange people and peculiar situations.
Society here, blown together by the four winds of the earth, is a mixed
affair, and various people have disappeared from the rolls since our
arrival. Some come to seek, some, it would appear, because they are
being sought, others still whose life demands a change of setting.
It now appears that a certain agreeable foreign couple, received by
everybody, had never been joined in holy matrimony. It came out between
the invitation and the dinner at the ---- Legation. It was not official
enough for the minister to intimate to them that the dinner was off,
but definite enough to make him most uncomfortable. Everybody behaved
very well, however, and as he sat at the table, his eye glancing rather
anxiously about the possible field of battle, I felt quite sorry for
him; but I realized that though anybody has a right to the highways, in
the narrow compass of the drawing-room all must, alack! be alike.
Peretti de la Rocca, the clever _conseiller_ of the French Embassy
in Washington, took me out to dinner. It is he who married, when _en
poste_ here, the handsome only daughter of the Suinagás', living in
our street. It was very pleasant talking Washingtoniana, Mexicana, and
politics.
Yesterday, Sunday, I spent the day at the Del Rios' at Tlalpan, on the
first slopes of the Ajusco Mountains. Von. H., who confesses openly to
homesickness, took me out with Elim, and we dropped N. for the usual
Sunday golf at the Country Club as we passed by.
The Del Rios have a big, comfortable, modernized house, with a huge,
unmodernized garden; and it is a favorite Sunday haunt of certain of
the diplomats. In the tiny inner court there is still a gem of an old
"rosace"-shaped fountain, with calla-lilies growing about it. Small
bitter-orange trees, thickly hung with green and yellow fruit, adorn
the corners, and masses of geranium-like vines mingle with the ivy
which covers the house walls, pierced here and there with old grilled,
arched windows.
On the plateau, familiar vines and fruit-trees grow willingly among
so many things that don't flourish together in Europe. Tlalpan was
once beloved of the viceroys; I think Revillagigedo first made it
fashionable, though it was settled immediately after the Conquest, when
the picturesque old church was erected.
Madame Calderon de la Barca, in whose time Tlalpan was known after the
name of the church, San Agustin de las Cuevas,[11] gives a most amusing
account of the great annual Whitsuntide gaming festival, and Del Rio
tells me that _la Feria de Tlalpan_ still continues to be fittingly
celebrated by the exchange of temporary possessions in various forms of
gambling, and that it's not quite innocent of cock-fights.
However, we moderns repaired to the tennis-court on arriving, where we
found a dozen or so people using it to play hockey, and others sitting
about in comfortable chairs watching the proceedings. We went for
lunch and tea, but stayed for supper, all scampering to the house at
tea-time, when a single, well-timed shower deluged the scene.
Some played bridge, and some read. Del Rio is an agreeable,
intellectual, bookish man, with degrees at several continental
universities, and has a good library of new and old books. He also
possesses some rather radical ideas, though his personal life, as is so
often the case, plays itself out with conventionality on the highest of
ethical planes. His wife, partly of German origin, is very pretty in a
dark-eyed, unaffected, happy way.
When the rain passed we went out and sat in the _mirador_, a sort of
summer-house built into a corner of the high stone wall, a feature of
every Mexican garden, and watched the sun-glow slipping from the hills,
which took on a vivid blue, though the volcanoes kept their light in
their own exclusive, dazzling way for long after. A pale moon, arisen
among the sunset clouds, was waiting for its chance. By the time we
started home through a magical night in an open motor, packed with
flowers, a lot of us together, the moon was flooding the world and had
cut the whole plateau into great squares of black and white.
_August 10th._
I have just seen a list of the diplomatic shifts. Dear Mr. O'Brien goes
to Rome, the Ridgely-Carters, after their pleasant, successful years of
Europe, to the Argentine. The Jacksons have been appointed to Rumania.
It was very nice having them "near," in Havana. Each must take his turn
in the tropics, but we aren't any of us physically fitted for prolonged
sojourns, and I suppose they are delighted to return to Europe, after
their "cycle of Cathay."
Mr. Lloyd Bryce, so cultured and agreeable, has been appointed minister
to Holland. With his beautiful wife and their gifts of fortune they
will make a representation in a thousand.
Mexico seems to me the best of the Latin-American posts, the most
important to the United States, the most interesting, the most
accessible. We are lucky to have got it, though I didn't feel so on
the night of the 10th of January, when the friendly porter of the Hotel
Bristol (in Vienna), as I was coming down-stairs for one of the usual
_petits soupers_, said to me: "So Madame is going to leave us?" When
I asked, "Where?" he told me it was _Mexico_, having seen the Paris
_Herald_ before we had! It was like hearing we had been transferred to
the moon.
Penn Cresson, secretary at Lima, is passing through, _en route_ for
Washington. He says Peru is far; but he brings some very attractive
photographs of his abode there, and it all depends, anyway, on what you
take to a place yourself--the heart and brain luggage--whether you like
it or not.
Yesterday we started to call on Madame Bonilla, whom I had met at
the Del Rios', and for whom Mr. Cresson had messages from the British
consul-general and his wife in Lima, formerly in Mexico. Madame B. is
an Englishwoman, and I had heard much of her great taste and the really
good things she has picked up.
When, on going to the address I thought was hers, we got into a hall
with a life-size negro in plaster-of-Paris, draped with a pale blue
scarf, and holding out a gilt card-receiver, placed near the door, and
to whom we almost spoke, I was a bit taken aback. An Indian servant
somewhat stealthily showed us into a dull-red dadoed room with a
waving, light-blue ceiling, and many enlarged family photographs in
black frames hanging against the walls. I saw C.'s interest wane as
to the giving of the message, and when, after ten minutes, a large
magenta-robed, hastily dressed, startled-looking dark lady appeared,
we could only make our excuses. After much courtesy on her part,
murmurings of _à la disposición de usted_, and more excuses from us,
we got the address next door, where we found the kind of interior we
were expecting, drank the freshest of tea brought in immediately by an
accustomed servant, and poured by a charming lady never surprised at
five o'clock.
We fingered bits of silver, hearing just how they had been acquired,
looked at the marks on the porcelain, admired some gorgeous
seventeenth-century strips of brocade, all to the accompaniment
of questions about mutual friends and the inexhaustible "Mexican
situation." _Suum cuique._
_August 12th._
Last night, dinner at the Danish Legation, where things are well and
carefully done. I again sat next the Acting Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, Carbajal y Rosas, a huge man with a black beard, and
intellectual in our sense of the word. He talked very interestingly
about Mexico and affairs here in general. In regretting certain things,
he gave me a quotation from Taine to the effect that it is _un pauvre
patriotisme que celui qui s'imagine que l'on doit excuser les crimes de
son pays, simplement parcequ'on en est un citoyen_.
He and President de la Barra are great friends; and he thinks that
after this coming electoral term (six years) he should be President
again--himself, I suppose, as Minister for Foreign Affairs. Now De la
Barra, who is the candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the Catholic
party, which is to be reorganized with a modern and republican
program, could not be elected, even if he wished. The Madero wave
sweeps everything else before it, though De la Barra is filling a very
difficult situation with dignity and tact. He is called _el Presidente
Blanco_ (the White President), for evident and creditable reasons.
As we sat about the handsome, methodically arranged rooms after dinner
they seemed filled not alone with Scandinavian household gods, but with
the atmosphere of the north, and as entirely detached from Mexico as a
polar bear carried to southern seas on a block of ice. The portrait of
Mr. L.'s father, the author, and other portraits of distinguished men
of an unrelated race, watched us from the walls. Even the old pieces
of silver and the bric-à-brac were but remotely connected with this
present existence, and Mr. L.'s glass-doored bookcases were filled
with Scandinavian literature. He is _à cheval_ between Mexico City and
Havana, but in Havana they live in a hotel, keeping the "Saga" here.
F. Vasquez Gómez has announced himself as candidate for the coming
presidential elections, but I expect it will end with the announcement.
In toying with the Encyclopedia Britannica on a watery afternoon I
accidentally came across the name of "Elim." I expected to see some
hero of Russian history, but lo! it said, "Elim, third king of Ireland,
killed in battle." I builded better than I knew!
Assumption Day, _August 15th_.
Went to the cathedral this morning, walking down the broad streets
through a glistening, dry air; this afternoon, however, hail, wind, and
sheets of water are spoiling the holiday for the people.
A dinner here last night. Beautiful, ragged, yellow chrysanthemums,
much smaller than ours, decorated the table and drawing-room. The
German and Russian ministers, Penn Cresson, the McLarens, and others
were the guests.
A letter comes from Demidoff. He is leaving Paris to join Sofka, who is
now in Russia with her people. They go together to Taguil in the Ural
Mountains, to inspect their platinum mines. He is just back from a trip
to the Spanish Pyrenees with Célestin after chamois, which latter he
says don't compare with their Transylvanian cousins. He rather loftily
asks if N. enjoys most parrot-shooting or monkey-stalking. His letter
is interlarded with little questions as to when we are going to annex
the country.
He had been in charge for a month and had the excitement of a change of
government and the Agadir incident during that time. At the Embassy, it
would seem, they are one big, jolly family. It made me quite homesick.
He winds up with a postscript, saying he had just finished _The New
Machiavelli_. He considers it a _chef d'œuvre_, but I read it only
a few months ago, and no book whose atmosphere and intrigue you forget
in as short a time is great.
I think of you and Sofka, standing in the station, as the train rolled
out from Paris, that rainy Sunday, to Cherbourg, our first _étape_ to
the tropics.
_August 17th._
All quiet in Mexico City, but we understand that to-day a battle is
taking place at Cuernavaca between Zapata, our "foremost" brigand, with
three thousand troops, and the Federals.
Those who know tell me that Zapata is atavistic in type, desirous of
Mexico for the Indians, _à la_ a celebrated Indian chief of the Sierras
de Alica. "Mexico for the Indians" really means a sponging out of
everything between us and Montezuma, and decidedly "gives to think."
A few days ago, dining at Silvain's, the French restaurant in
vogue here, we saw a General Huerta who seemed _muy hombre_, a
broad-shouldered, flat-faced, restless-eyed Indian with big glasses,
rather impressive, who was returning to Morelos to fight Zapata. I
don't know if this was his battle or not.
The Russian minister is going on leave. I gave him a little green jade
god, to take to Demidoff, sworn to me, in the name of various deities,
to be what it appears to be, authentic. He is not handsome, but he has
a delightful, smooth "feel" and something chic about him, in his own
little Aztec way.
_August 18th._
The Finance Ministry, which was just opposite when we first came, where
Limantour created and guided the infant steps of Mexican finance (_le
premier pas qui coûte_), is now converted into the Police Bureau. There
are always a lot of people--women, children, young men and old--all
in some kind of trouble, standing or sitting on the curve in the most
picturesque combinations. It makes the street very human, almost too
human, when lawbreakers are brought to justice in the night hours.
_August 20th._
Two days ago N. met a man who knows all about your Avino mines, but
nothing consoling. It is a splendid property, but had the misfortune to
be exploited by one of the canniest of men. One, however, who didn't
lie awake nights worrying about the investors, and who ruined it, as
far as the investors are concerned, by always getting in new machinery,
he taking the commissions on the machinery, which was easier and
quicker than getting the ore out.
The mining history of Mexico is romantic in the way Eastern tales
of gleaming treasure are--a simple rubbing of Aladdin's lamp in many
cases--and certainly her national destinies have been molded by the
precious stores that her mountains hold. Some of the historic mines
were so rich that the veins could be worked by bars with a point at
one end and a chisel at the other, simply prying out the silver, _sans
autre forme de procès_! The famous Bueno Suceso Mine in Sonora was
discovered by an Indian who swam across the river after a great flood
and found the crest of an immense lode laid bare by the action of the
water--a pure, massive hump sparkling in the rays of the sun.
I told you of the Conde de Regla's mine, the celebrated Real del Monte
at Pachuca and the wealth beyond the dreams of avarice that it brought
in. He began life as a _muletier_ by the name of Terreros, and ended by
being able to lend the King of Spain a million _pesos_.
The mines of Catorce were discovered by a negro fiddler, who, caught
out by the darkness on his way home over the mountain, built a fire
on what happened to be a bare vein. The morning sun showed molten bits
of pure silver glistening among the embers. It's all rather upsetting,
collectively and individually.
Padre Flores, a poor priest in a little town in this same San Luis
Potosí, bought, for a small sum, from some one still poorer, a
mining claim. When exploring it he came upon a small cavern which he
straightway named "the purse of God," for in it he found great heaps of
ore in a state of decomposition!
The Morelos Mine was discovered by two Indians, brothers, so poor that
the night before they could not even buy a little corn for tortillas.
Any Indian could dream this dream going over any mountain.
There is the story of Almada, the owner of the celebrated Quintera
Mine, who, on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter, lined the
bridal chamber with silver and paved with silver the way which led
from the house to the church. In fact, there is a vast bibliography
of mining romance. Many of the lovely old churches in out-of-the-way
places were built by the friars of the seventeenth century, who worked
the mines solely to build churches and missions. Humboldt estimates
that from its discovery up to his time (1803) Spanish America had sent
nearly thirty milliards of piastres to Europe, an almost uncountable
sum.
It's difficult to expect normal government from a people who, in some
parts of their country, are nourished by the labor-saving banana and in
other parts by tales of about one in every fifteen millions becoming,
overnight, rich beyond imaginings. In the end it all must have some
influence on the psychology of the inhabitants. Needless to add that
_your_ mine doesn't seem to be one in fifteen millions! 'Twill be well
to dream some other dream!
_August 27th._
Last night a large crowd, or rather mob, assembled at the station to
meet Madero on his return to town. He did not come on the announced
train and the multitude then marched through the town, a squad of
mounted soldiers behind, to keep them in mind that the whole earth does
not yet belong to them. We were sitting in the library, about 10.30,
as they passed through Calle Humboldt, making all kinds of unearthly
noises. Suddenly a little night-robed figure rushed in, saying, "_Ich
will nicht getötet sein_." Elim had awakened and jumped out of bed at
the noise, thinking the revolutionary fate he hears so much about was
upon him.
The German minister gave a large dinner last night, and afterward I
played bridge with Otto Scherer, the big _científico_ Jewish banker,
a friend of the Speyers, the Schwalbachs, _et al._ He didn't draw his
trumps out, and so lost the rubber. I didn't mind. It was so amusing to
see a large financial light on his way to join the ten thousand English
who are at Boulogne for the same reason.
I am going to take Elim out to lunch at Mrs. Kilvert's at Coyoacan, and
must now get ready. They have an old house, trimmed with Bougainvillea
outside and lined with books inside. To-night we dine at the
McLarens'--a dinner for James Garfield, who is their guest.
St. Augustine's Day, _August 28th_.
Have been thinking of you to-day, as you will know. The once famous
Church of San Agustin is now the National Library, so I went to San
Hipólito near by, equally interesting, and one of the oldest in Mexico,
dating from 1525. It was built on the spot where hundreds of Spaniards
lost their lives during the retreat of the "Melancholy Night." But I
was thinking of the Nauheim days, and all the preparations for your
feast, and so much that has slipped "into the vast river flowing." I
hope you got the pearl pin.
Spent yesterday at the Bonillas'. They have a tumble-down, picturesque
old country house, unoccupied for a generation, that they are beginning
to put in order, with a jewel of an unkempt old garden, where all the
growing things have just done as they beautifully pleased. It is a
favorite spot for picnics for our little circle--not too far out of
town, just beyond Tacubaya. After luncheon, partaken of under an arbor
of _mosquete_ and honeysuckle at the end of a lovely white-pillared
walk, we wandered over the maguey-planted hills stretching back of the
garden.
Von H. does not care about it all. As we sat on the hillside, talking
of Iswolsky, Demidoff, and Petersburg, where he was for seven and a
half years naval aide, _ad latere_, to the Czar from the Kaiser, I
thought how little, after all, he was fitted for a background of _agave
Americana_.
Such a sweet letter from Miton S., from Copenhagen, with a photograph
of their charming Legation drawing-room--with Miton's portrait and
that of Janos by Tini Rupprecht hanging on the wall. She tells me
she returns to Horpács, where Laszlo is to do her portrait and her
sister's. They are occupied with the familiar Copenhagen round,
golfing every day at beautiful Klampenborg, and are going to the
Fryjs' magnificent place for a visit, and later to Norway _chez les_
Löwenskiold.
_August 31st._
Mr. Garfield came to lunch to-day with the McLarens. He is most
agreeable, and is trying to pursue the political game along altruistic
lines. I certainly wish him success. He, too, hopes all things from
Madero. So few Americans have come this way that to have any of the
really nice ones here is a great treat. It made me think of all those
far-away tales of my childhood, when you knew his father as President.
The luncheon was the vehicle for one of those informal, intimate
exchanges from like standpoints, always so particularly agreeable
against an exotic background.
Yesterday, the 30th, Madero was nominated for President by the Mexican
Progressive party in convention in the city. As it was a case of "birds
of a feather," all went off smoothly as far as that special assemblage
was concerned, though any kind of peace is apt to be rather noisy, I
have discovered, this side of the Rio Grande. The elections, primary
and secondary, are set for October 1st and 15th.
[11] St. Augustine of the Caves.
IX
The Vírgen de los Remedios--General Bernardo Reyes--A
description of the famous ceremony of the "Grito de Dolores"
at the palace
_September 1st, evening._
To-day was the feast of the Vírgen de los Remedios, once so important
in "New Spain," and, as I had planned, Mr. de Soto and I made the
pilgrimage there.
It was the first church Cortés built in Mexico, on the site of the
Aztec temple, where he and his battered remnant halted to bind up their
wounds after the retreat from Mexico City in the "Melancholy Night."
We started out at eight o'clock, on a dazzling morning, rather weakly
and apologetically within ourselves and to each other, in a carriage,
which took us through the Paseo to Popotla and Tacuba and Azcapotzalco,
where we descended and crossed some maguey-fields fringed by squat,
half-ruined adobe huts.
We jumped endless ditches, made after the antique pattern, until
we finally reached an uncovered horse-tramway, crowded with such
specimens of the _plebs_ as had the superfluous _centavos_ for wheeled
conveyances. We were finally deposited at San Bartolo Naucalpam,
and then did the rest of the way, several kilometers, decently
and fittingly on foot, climbing over the white, shining, pat
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