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.