The Project Gutenberg eBook ofDiplomatic Days

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofDiplomatic DaysThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Diplomatic DaysAuthor: Edith O'ShaughnessyRelease date: January 4, 2014 [eBook #44586]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Edwards, Melissa McDaniel, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIPLOMATIC DAYS ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Diplomatic DaysAuthor: Edith O'ShaughnessyRelease date: January 4, 2014 [eBook #44586]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Edwards, Melissa McDaniel, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

Title: Diplomatic Days

Author: Edith O'Shaughnessy

Release date: January 4, 2014 [eBook #44586]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Melissa McDaniel, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIPLOMATIC DAYS ***

Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

Books byEDITH O'SHAUGHNESSYA DIPLOMAT'S WIFE IN MEXICO. Illustrated.DIPLOMATIC DAYS. Illustrated.HARPER & BROTHERS. NEW YORK[Established 1817]

Books by

EDITH O'SHAUGHNESSY

A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE IN MEXICO. Illustrated.

DIPLOMATIC DAYS. Illustrated.

HARPER & BROTHERS. NEW YORK[Established 1817]

HILLSIDE HOUSES AND CHURCH TOWERS IN THE ZAPATISTA COUNTRYPhotograph by Ravell

HILLSIDE HOUSES AND CHURCH TOWERS IN THE ZAPATISTA COUNTRY

Photograph by Ravell

BYEDITH O'SHAUGHNESSY[MRS. NELSON O'SHAUGHNESSY]AUTHOR OFA Diplomat's Wife in Mexico

ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERSNEW YORK AND LONDON

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.

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 theMonterey, 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 inSpanish, 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. Thecomedor(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 thecomedorsmothered 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 6A.M.and 2 and 4P.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 readingLes 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. Ihave only been wont to travel in directions where steamer rugsaresteamer 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 youzucker-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.

TheMontereyhas 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 famouscomedor, 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 roomfor 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 theMonterey.

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. TheKronprinzessin Cecilie, with the new German minister to Mexico aboard, was just going out of theharbor, and I was shown where they were busy dredging for theMaine. 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, eachhaving 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 hisgeigewith him, hummed a delightful second part toWie 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. Itwas 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 wasLa Transfiguración)—instead of theKatiesandSusiesandDolphinsof 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 areen routeto 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 theaccustomed 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—Ithinkthe 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 incommodoorcommodo, 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.

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 destructionswe 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 6A.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 theKronprinzessin Cecilielying 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 butnotcoatless health officials have found us "clean," and we are now waiting for the next set—I think it is the port authorities—to finishtheirnaps.

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 Indiancolor, 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 theLiterary Digestgave, 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 ofbleu 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 wereplanted 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.

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 beenen postein London. Toward theend 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 onecouldn'tbe "properly met" at 7A.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 goesviathe 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 andproves 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 Belgianmaître d'hôtelhas 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 comfortablyliving, 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 thepatio, 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 LineMerida.

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 themaître 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 andcomme 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 thepatio, 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 agalopina. 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 Ishall 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 ParisHeraldmake 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 thepiano 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 completelydeserted, 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; butIwanted 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 tolook at, but it is all too high. Few foreigners can stand ità la longue. Thepatiowas 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, anintimeof 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 LineMeridasank. 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!

Back to Index Next