hotel” and next best hotel of the place, conducted by Mexicans who have
gradually made concessions to progress until their establishments are
equipped with electric lights, electric bells (sometimes), sanitary
plumbing, wire-spring mattresses (or whatever they are called), some
comfortable chairs in either the patio or the sala, and cooks whose
dishes, although native in conception, are yet conservative in the
matter of chile and lard. Secondly, there is the occasional hotel kept
by an American family, whose advertisements emphasize the fact that here
you will enjoy the delights of “American home cooking.” And, finally,
there is what is known in Mexico as a mesón: a combination of lodging
house for man and stable for his horses and mules.
The ordinary best and second-best hotels in Mexican towns I have grown
to regard as exceedingly creditable and satisfactory places in which to
abide. They are not luxurious; tiled floors, with a strip of carpet or
matting at the bedside, calcimined walls without pictures, just
sufficient furniture, and high, austere ceilings, are not our idea of
luxury. But as long as they preserve their distinctly Mexican
characteristics they are, contrary to the conventional idea of the
country, above all, clean. I have rarely been in a Mexican hotel where
the chambermaids (who are usually men) did not all but drive me insane
with their endless mopping and dusting and scouring and polishing of my
ascetic bedroom. When, however, as sometimes happens, the proprietor of
the “best” hotel becomes desirous of upholstered chairs and carpets, it
is well, I think, to patronize the still Mexican second best. Few things
are more lovable than carpets and upholstery worn shabby by those we
care for, but nothing is more squalid and repulsive than the evidence of
unknown contacts paid for by the day or week. The hotels, as a rule, are
of two stories built around a tiled patio, full of flowers and plants,
and open to the sky. The more expensive rooms have windows looking upon
the street, and in cold or gloomy weather have the advantage of being
lighter and warmer than the others. In very hot weather, however, the
cheap rooms--dim, windowless, and opening only on the patio--are
sometimes preferable. Prices vary slightly in different places and at
different seasons, but at their highest they are never really
exorbitant, outside of the Capital. Board and lodging costs anywhere
from two and a half to five pesos a day, according to the situation of
your room, and, unlike European hotels, this includes everything. There
are none of the extra charges for light, attendance, “covers,” and so
on, that in Europe so annoy the American traveler. At one hotel at
Cuernavaca, during the tourist season, rooms and board are as high as
six pesos a day, but this lasts only a short time, and is, after all,
not so ruinous as it sounds when you think of it as three American
dollars rather than six Mexican pesos. For a peso or so less you can, if
you wish, take a room at a hotel without board; but unless you happen to
have friends in town who keep house, and with whom you constantly lunch
and dine, there is no advantage in doing so, as the best restaurant is
invariably that of the best hotel. When I said that there were no
restaurants in Mexico, I merely meant that while the various native
fondas and cafés where meals are served are sometimes clean and
adequate, they do not offer any of those attractions that in the cities
of Europe, and a very few cities of the United States, tempt one from
one’s ordinary existence. There is in Mexico no “restaurant life” (for
want of a better term), no lavishly appointed interiors where you may go
to watch well-dressed people spending a great deal of money, listening
to music, and eating things they are unaccustomed to at home.
The meals in Mexican hotels are: Breakfast, from about seven to half
past nine, consisting of coffee, chocolate, or tea, and pan dulce or
rolls. Eggs and meat are extra. To a few teaspoonfuls of excessively
strong coffee is added a cupful of boiling milk. Mexican coffee is
excellent in itself, but the native habit of overroasting it makes its
flavor harsh. As milk is almost always boiled in Mexico, cream is
unknown. Chocolate is good everywhere, although it is difficult at first
to reconcile yourself to the custom, in some places, of flavoring it
with cinnamon. Persons who like tea for breakfast, or at any time,
should travel with their own.
At dinner--from noon to about half past two--you are given soup,
sometimes fish, eggs always (cooked in any way you please), meat
(beefsteak or roast beef), chicken (or another kind of meat), with salad
if you ask for it, frijoles (a paste of black beans), a dessert
(preserves of some sort, rarely pastry), fruit, and coffee. All of which
sounds rather better than it ever is. The dinner is served in courses,
and in some hotels you are expected to use the same knife and fork
throughout. You never have any desire to eat or, after the first day or
so, to try everything. The soups are well flavored and nourishing, the
eggs are always fresh, the frijoles preserve a certain standard
throughout the country, which you appreciate if you like frijoles,
either the chicken or one of the meats is as a rule possible--and after
all, soup, eggs, frijoles, another vegetable, a meat, lettuce, and fruit
ought to be enough. The hard rolls you get everywhere are of good
quality and well baked. Butter, fortunately, is almost nonexistent, as
it is very bad. The only edible butter in Mexico is made in Kansas, and
can be bought in convenient one-pound packages at the leading grocery
stores in the City of Mexico, and also in some of the smaller towns.
There is no objection whatever to your taking your own tea and butter,
or anything else that contributes to your comfort, into the dining room
of Mexican hotels. Except during the hours at which meals are served,
you cannot get anything to eat. Persons who are accustomed to some form
of refreshment before going to bed should keep it in their rooms.
Supper--from half past six until about nine o’clock--is, except for the
omission of eggs, very much like dinner, although somewhat less
elaborate in small places. (I employ the terms dinner and supper rather
than luncheon and dinner, as they are the literal translations of the
Spanish words comida and cena.)
“Don’t monkey with Mexican microbes! A stitch in time may save six weeks
in the hospital! Let the other fellow run the risk of typhoid, if he
wishes to!”--so runs, in part, the advertisement of a certain bottling
company in Mexico. The fact that the advice is primarily intended to
increase the sales of the firm in question does not render it the less
sound. Mexicans are peculiarly ignorant of the principles of sanitation,
and careless of them even when informed. Typhus, typhoid, and smallpox
are prevalent in the City of Mexico all the year round, although, either
through indifference or a reluctance to admit it, cases are not
reported in the newspapers until the frequency of funerals begins to
cast a universal gloom. Impure water may or may not have any bearing
upon typhus and smallpox; upon typhoid, however, it has. In many of the
smaller towns the water, brought as it is in pipes from a distance, is
pure and healthful, but you cannot be sure of just what happens to it
after it has arrived. It is far more prudent, unless you are keeping
house and can boil water, to drink a pure, bottled mineral water. The
most convenient--for the simple reason that it can be bought at almost
any bar from end to end of the country--is the Tehuacan water (Agua
Tehuacan) bottled at Tehuacan by several companies; the San Lorenzo, the
Cruz Roja, and El Riego, the chemical analysis of all the waters being
about the same. It is light, refreshing, absolutely pure, and bottled by
machinery with every precaution. The water from the Cruz Roja spring, in
fact, is not even exposed to the air from the time it enters a pipe
underground to when it is forced, a moment later, into a bottle and
sealed.
Few beds in Mexico have arrived at the sybaritic luxury of feather
pillows. The national pillow is a narrow, long, unsympathetic
contrivance tightly stuffed with hair, or something more unyielding.
You should travel with your own pillow, and also with a blanket or a
steamer rug. Also, few hotels have facilities for bathing. To take a
bath, one goes out to a bathing establishment (there are always
several), where hot and cold water, clean towels, and soap are plentiful
and cheap. As the Anglo-Saxon cold bath has little relation to
cleanliness, and is merely either an affectation on the part of persons
who don’t enjoy it or a pleasant shock to the system on the part of
those who do, it may be dispensed with or taken in a basin.
At night, hotels lock their massive front doors at ten or half past, but
a porter sleeping on the floor just inside admits you at any hour. All
over the world, servants like to be tipped, and the custom of tipping
obtains in Mexico as elsewhere, but as yet it has remained within decent
bounds. A mozo in a Mexican hotel is pleased, and sometimes surprised,
by what his European or American equivalent would probably scorn.
To make a point of such trivial matters as matches, candles, keys, and
door knobs will probably seem as if I were going out of my way, but in
Mexico I have been the amused witness of so much real anguish occasioned
by the presence or absence of these prosaic implements that in regard
to them I feel a certain responsibility. Almost everywhere there are
incandescent lights in Mexican hotels, but in some places the power is
turned off at midnight, or half an hour later, and, as happens in all
countries, the lights, at inopportune moments now and then, go out. When
they do go out, you grope helplessly in darkness, for it is not
customary to foresee such emergencies and supply the bedrooms with
matches and candles. A candle and a box of matches in your traveling bag
may never be needed, but when they are needed they are needed instantly,
and you will be glad you have them. Door knobs in Mexico, for absolutely
no reason whatever, are placed so near the frame of the door that it is
almost impossible to grasp them without pinching your fingers, and in
order to lock or unlock a door the key, as a rule, must be inserted
upside down, and then turned the wrong way.
The following notice (it hung, printed and framed, in the sala of a
Mexican hotel) will, I feel sure, prove of interest to the student of
language:
“It is not permitted for any whatsoever motive to use this saloon to
eat, or for games of ball or others that could prejudice the
tranquillity of the passengers, or furthermore to remove the furnitures
from their respective sites. At eleven of the clock the Administrador
will usurp the right to order the extinguishment of the lamp without
permitting of observations.”
The second kind of hotel (the hotel kept by an American) possesses the
various defects of a Mexican establishment, with several others all its
own. It is rarely as clean as a Mexican hotel, and the “home cooking” so
insisted upon in the advertisements merely means that the cooking is of
the kind the proprietress was accustomed to before her emigration--which
does not necessarily recommend it. “American cooking” or “home cooking”
is no better than any other kind of cooking when it is bad. You don’t
eat through sentiment or patriotism, but through necessity. Among this
class of hotel I feel it is only honest to except one at Cuernavaca,
which has charming rooms, a most exquisite patio, and an “American
table” about as good as that of the average New England summer boarding
house.
Few Americans who are traveling for pleasure in Mexico will be likely to
patronize what is known as a mesón. It would not have occurred to me to
do so had I not slept in them in small towns off the line of the
railway, where there is no place else to stay. When traveling on a horse
or a mule, a night’s lodging for the steed is, of course, even more
essential than for the rider, and the mesón, as I have said, is a
combination of inn and stable. Primitive and comfortless as they often
are, they have for me a fascination--the fascination of something read
and thought of in childhood that in later life suddenly and unexpectedly
comes true. A Mexican mesón, with its bare little bedrooms on one side
of the great courtyard and its stalls for the animals on the other; with
its clatter of arriving and departing mule trains, its neighing and
braying and shoeing and currying, its litter of equipment and
freight--saddles, bridles, preposterous spurs, pack saddles, saddle
bags, saddle blankets, conical sugar loaves and casks of aguardiente
from some sugar hacienda, boxes, bales, sacks of coffee--its stiff and
weary travelers, its swearing, swaggering arrieros--it is the Spain of
the story-books, the Spain of Don Quixote. You fall asleep at an early
hour to the rhythmic crunching of mules’ teeth on cane leaves and corn,
and you are awakened in the cold dark by the voice of your mozo slowly
and solemnly proclaiming: “Señor, es de dia.” (It is day.)
I perhaps should not have mentioned the mesón if its attraction for me
had not led me to try it in cities where there was no necessity to. Even
in the cities and large towns it is still a primitive institution, but
it is always inexpensive, and the rooms in those of the better class are
clean. I have had a well-lighted room of ample size, with a comfortable
bed, a washstand, a table, two chairs, a row of hooks to hang clothes
on, and an attentive mozo usually within call, for seventy-five centavos
(thirty-seven and a half cents) a day. There are no restaurants attached
to these places, and absolutely no one in them speaks English.
In fact, although Mexicans are becoming more and more interested in
English, and are everywhere studying the language, it is as yet not very
coherently spoken by the natives with whom a traveler is likely to come
in contact. A few sentences by a clerk in a shop, half a dozen
disconnected words by a waiter in a hotel, are about the extent of what
you hear among the working classes. And yet, with no knowledge of
Spanish, you can, without mishap or difficulty, travel by rail almost
anywhere in Mexico. The country is accustomed to travelers who do not
speak its language, and more often than not knows instinctively and from
habit what they want next. Of course, to be able to ask questions and
understand the answers is both a convenience and a pleasure; but it is
surprising how far a very few words of Spanish on the one hand and
English on the other will carry you in comparative peace of mind. When
the worst comes to the worst, as by an unforeseen combination of
circumstances it sometimes does, and you are on the point of losing your
reason or, what is much worse, your temper, the inevitable kind lady or
kind gentleman, who is to be found in every country and who knows
everything, always appears at the proper moment, asks if he can be of
any assistance, and sends you on your way rejoicing. In any event, in
provincial Mexico nothing unpleasant is likely to happen to you.
Just what is the attitude toward foreigners of the people in general it
is difficult--impossible, even--to find out. A year or so ago, several
weeks before the 16th of September (the anniversary of Hidalgo’s
Declaration of Independence), it was widely announced in the newspapers
of the United States that far-reaching plans had been laid by the lower
classes in Mexico to observe the national festival by killing all
foreigners. “Mexico for Mexicans” was to be the motto of the future.
This quaint conceit--evolved, without doubt, by the pestiferous
revolutionary junta in Saint Louis--was not much heard of by foreigners
in Mexico; but then, in Mexico very little is heard of. A few timid
persons remained at home during the day, but the day passed off without
bloodshed, and the rumor was decided to have been only a rumor. That
there was, however, more to it than was generally supposed (although how
much more it would be impossible to find out) was evident from the fact
that the Government quietly and inconspicuously took notice of it. In
one place, where I have some American friends living on the edge of
town--almost in the country--two rurales, heavily armed as usual,
sauntered out to their houses at an early hour of the morning, and
remained there all day and until late that night. As they spent the time
in chatting and smoking with acquaintances who happened to pass by, it
was not obvious that they were there for any especial purpose. But they
were there, although they had never been there before and have never
been there since. In another town a group of noisy hoodlums went at
night to the house of one of the consuls (not the Spanish consul, by the
way, which would have been more or less natural) with the intention of
“doing something,” just what, they themselves apparently did not know.
Here, also, were two rurales, and at sight of them the intentions of the
little mob prudently underwent a collapse. The spokesman soon summoned
sufficient courage to request that they please be allowed to break a few
windows if they promised to go no farther, but the rurales replied that
the first man who even stooped to pick up a stone would be shot.
Whereupon the crowd retired. (It is irrelevant, but also amusing, to
record that on the retreat the members of the gang got into a quarrel
among themselves, during which two of them were stabbed and killed.)
Beyond an admirable preparedness on the part of the Government, this
proves little, as the consul in question was personally most unpopular
with the people of the town. But it of course proves something--or the
Government wouldn’t have been so prepared--although I find it difficult
to see in it a proof of hostility toward foreigners on the part of the
great mass of the Mexican people. If they do feel unkindly toward us,
they are adepts in prolonged and continuous deception, for they are
universally responsive to friendly overtures.
On the whole, I should not advise an invalid to go to Mexico, for I have
met invalids there who, although they perhaps might not have been happy
anywhere, struck me as being for many unavoidable reasons more unhappy
in Mexico than they would have been had they sought a warm climate
nearer home. There are a few enchanting places in Mexico where the
weather is warm and reasonably equable all winter, but very few. And
when Mexico is cold, it is dreary even for the robust. Its changes of
temperature are sudden and penetrating, and, except in one or two hotels
in the capital (an impossible place for invalids of any kind),
artificial heat is practically unknown. The problem of simple,
nourishing food is an insoluble problem unless you keep house; only by
exercising self-restraint as regards Mexican cooking can well persons
remain well. There are no hotels that in the slightest degree take into
consideration the needs, the whims, the capricious hours, the endless
exigencies of the sick, and anyone whose well-being is dependent upon
warm rooms, good milk, quiet (the country is incessantly noisy with the
noise of animals and bells and human beings), or upon all or any of the
little, expensive niceties of modern civilization, had better
indefinitely postpone his visit.
XII
A few days ago a friend of mine in writing to me from home said in his
letter: “I notice that now and then you refer casually to ‘an American
man’ or ‘an English woman who lives here,’ and although I know there
must be Americans and English living in Mexico as well as everywhere
else, it always gives me a feeling of incredulity to hear that there
are. I suppose I ought merely to consider the fact that you are there
and then multiply you by a hundred or a thousand--or ten thousand
perhaps; I have no idea, of course, how many. But to tell the truth I
never altogether believe that _you_ go to Mexico when you say you do.
You go somewhere, but is it really Mexico? Why _should_ anyone go to
Mexico? It seems such a perverse--such a positively morbid thing to do.
And then, the address--that impossible address you leave behind you!
Honestly, are there any Americans and English down there (or is it ‘up’
or ‘across’ or ‘over’--I literally have forgotten just where it is), and
if so, why are they there? What are they like? How do they amuse
themselves?”
When I read his letter I recalled an evening several years ago at my
brother’s coffee place--sixty miles from anywhere in particular. As it
was in winter, or the “dry season,” it had been raining (I don’t
exaggerate), with but one or two brief intermissions, for twenty-four
days. In that part of the republic the chief difference between the dry
season and the rainy lies in the fact that during the rainy season it
rains with much regularity for a few hours every afternoon and during
the dry season it rains with even greater regularity all the time. As
the river was swollen and unfordable we had not been able for days to
send to the village--an hour’s ride away--for provisions. Meat, of
course, we did not have. In a tropical and iceless country, unless one
can have fresh meat every day, one does not have it at all. We had run
out of potatoes, we had run out of bread (baker’s bread in Mexico is
good everywhere)--we had run out of flour. There were twenty-five or
thirty chickens roosting on a convenient tree, but in our foolish,
improvident way we had allowed ourselves to become fond of the chickens
and I have an incorrigible prejudice against eating anything that has
engaged my affections when in life. So we dined on a tin of sardines,
some chile verde and a pile of tortillas, which are not bad when patted
thin and toasted to a crisp. Probably because there were forty thousand
pounds of excellent coffee piled up in sacks on the piazza, we washed
down this banquet with draughts of Sir Thomas Lipton’s mediocre tea. The
evening was cold--as bitterly cold as it can be only in a thoroughly
tropical country when the temperature drops to forty-three and a
screaming wind is forcing the rain through spaces between the tiles
overhead. We had also run out of petroleum, and the flames of the
candles on the dinner table were more often than not blue and
horizontal. But somehow we dined with great gayety and talked all the
time. I remember how my brother summoned Concha the cook, and
courteously attracted her attention to the fact that she had evidently
dropped the teapot on the untiled kitchen floor--that the spout was
clogged with mud and that it did not “wish to pour,” and how he again
summoned her for the purpose of declaring that the three dead wasps he
had just fished out of the chile no doubt accounted perfectly for its
unusually delicious flavor. We had scarcely anything to eat, but
socially the dinner was a great success. Immediately afterwards we both
went to bed--each with a reading candle, a book and a hot-water bag.
After half an hour’s silence my brother irrelevantly exclaimed:
“What very agreeable people one runs across in queer, out-of-the-way
places!”
“Who on earth are you thinking of now?” I inquired.
“Why, I was thinking of _us_!” he placidly replied, and went on with his
reading.