Dick, who was sleeping with me, had an attack of croup so that I was
awake most of the night. At dawn I was awakened by bugles of a regiment
riding into town, besides the clanging of church bells, and the crowing
of cocks! Shortly after that we got up.
Dick insisted on looking up some of his “ship friends” who live in the
town. We found them, and left him in their back garden playing in their
water tank. It was a great chance to see some of the churches, and
drive round the town, and do the things that bore Dick.
The town is overburdened with churches, but their exteriors are so
decorative that one is glad they exist. The domes are tiled, either
with blue and white or yellow. They glisten in the sun like enamel. I
went into one called “Of the Company” and happened upon a service with
a cardinal. At least, I suppose he was a cardinal. He was dressed in
the color of that name. This crimson melodramatic figure seemed to me
emblematical of the inquisitorial Church of Spain. Sitting all over the
floor were Indian women with their babies, and when the organ subsided,
there was a real baby chorus.
The church entrances are the congregating places (as in Italy) of
the most wretched beggars. I could not help wondering why a man with
no legs submits to living his remaining life on a plank with four
wheels; why old age with its skin wizened like a walnut can bear the
degradation of extreme filth, and of asking charity on bended knee; and
why a blind individual can roll sightless grey orbs and fix them on
me while so doing. Why don’t they end life? Why is it endurable? But
almost worse in my estimation, was the woman who passed me by, bent
double by an enormous load on her back, and dragged down by a baby tied
in a bundle to her breast. Must she bear both those burdens?
At midday, there was supposed to be a “battle of flowers.” I have
seen the real thing on the Riviera, where the national temperament is
joyous. But can people here have a real spontaneous out-burst, when the
big sad-eyed Indian stands at the street corner, gaping and incapable
of throwing off the melancholy of generations? A few dressed-up cars
appeared, but there was no profuse flower throwing. Perhaps, like me,
the Pueblans were economizing. Anyway, it was so dull and half-hearted
that we took a train to San Francisco.
This is a church and garden on the outskirts of the city. Soon we
rambled on, up and up, to a hill summit, from which one viewed the city
in the plain, and Popocatapetl with its snow peak, emerging through
a bank of cloud. It was beautiful on our hilltop, wild, deserted,
peaceful, and the persistent Church bells came to us distantly. We
had been told by Dick’s “ship friends,” that it was not possible to
go outside the town without a man, and so we had Dick. He found a dew
pond, and was perfectly happy.
Puebla is an old town built by the Spaniards. It is more Mexican than
Mexico City. There are more sombrero’d people and more flocks of laden
burros, and more houses with little “patios,” than in Mexico. The shops
are more attractive because they contain Mexican things, instead of, as
in Mexico City, inferior foreign goods, in a desire to be cosmopolitan.
There are more old tiled houses in Puebla. Fewer people speak English.
No one in the hotel understands anything. This evening Louise tried to
explain to a group of five that we wanted mineral water. They did not
understand until she made a noise of a bottle exploding.