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, pathless
_tepetate_, which, with the pink _tezontle_, has been from all time
the building material for Mexico City. We were in the foot-hills of the
Sierra de las Cruces, covered with a scant vegetation, various kinds of
cactus, or an occasional _árbol de Perú_.
The Indians seem to partake of this thinness of the soil, this strange,
vanishing quality of light, this dissolving of horizons, this pulsing
of colors. A generative, effective something is underneath all the
unrest and disorder of the miserable political systems they seem
to produce, and if a race is constantly being born into a world of
wondrous light and color, it can persist in spite of everything else
being impossible.
Indians were rapidly and silently approaching from all sides as we
neared the church, which I had only seen pressed against the purple
hills, wonderfully transfigured at sunset or catching the light in the
morning hours. Mexico can hold the fancy quite independent of the work
of man. But when one adds the activities of that creative, potent,
Spanish race, infinitely inspired by the background already perfect,
with the building materials, _tepetate_ and _tezontle_, white and
pink, giving them what they wanted to place against green and blue,
the beauty of the result, wrapped in the strange transparence of the
plateau, is not to be wondered at.
Everywhere we looked we found something that needed only to be framed
to make a perfect picture, a dome (_media naranja_, half orange, they
call the form), with its attendant belfry of reddish-gray lace against
a hill, a group of Indians resting, with notes of red zarape, white
trousers, peaked hat. Any spot can become a shop; there is just a
spreading out of their wares, and though the _jefe político_ of their
special pueblo sees that they don't vend without a license, at least
there is no rent.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL GROUP OF CORN-SELLERS
Photograph by Ravell]
The basket-venders, the sandal-venders, the pottery-venders, the
water-carriers, the carriers of glass jars of precious pulque, were
out in force, and the candle-trade was going strong, as we ascended the
crooked, crowded way to the _patio_. The buildings about were crumbling
and neglected, and the smell of the pungent messes the Indians put into
their tortillas was mingled with faint whiffs of incense.