En Tacuba está CortésCon su escuadron esforzado.Triste estaba y muy penoso,Triste y con grande cuidado,Una mano en la mejillaY la otra en el costado, etc.In Tacuba was CortésWith his most valiant squadron.Very sad and much distressed,Very sad and greatly anxious,One hand against his cheekThe other at his side.
En Tacuba está CortésCon su escuadron esforzado.Triste estaba y muy penoso,Triste y con grande cuidado,Una mano en la mejillaY la otra en el costado, etc.In Tacuba was CortésWith his most valiant squadron.Very sad and much distressed,Very sad and greatly anxious,One hand against his cheekThe other at his side.
En Tacuba está CortésCon su escuadron esforzado.Triste estaba y muy penoso,Triste y con grande cuidado,Una mano en la mejillaY la otra en el costado, etc.
En Tacuba está Cortés
Con su escuadron esforzado.
Triste estaba y muy penoso,
Triste y con grande cuidado,
Una mano en la mejilla
Y la otra en el costado, etc.
In Tacuba was CortésWith his most valiant squadron.Very sad and much distressed,Very sad and greatly anxious,One hand against his cheekThe other at his side.
In Tacuba was Cortés
With his most valiant squadron.
Very sad and much distressed,
Very sad and greatly anxious,
One hand against his cheek
The other at his side.
As we got out of the city a white sun, the glory of these windless mornings of the rainy season, was shining on what seemed a world of crystal objects set in blue and green and lilac. I was so proud of my Mexico that the general said I acted as if I had "taken over" the country. The little grayish, yellowish adobe huts reminded him of Chinese vistas in color and outline; but to me it was Mexico only, unique, endlessly beautiful.
The road was once the great highway to the north; but the deep ruts, almost morasses, made us suspect that many ajefe políticohas sent his wife to Paris or gone there himself instead of repairing it. All along were milestones bearing half-obliterated inscriptions and arms of forgotten viceroys, who used to keep the road up for the crown or themselves—rather a contrast to the deep ruts of the now neglected highway. Since the railway was built even Cuautitlan, the once famousprimera postafrom Mexico City to the north, has been abandoned, and our motor was the only vehicle in the broad, deserted streets, which, however, filled with Indians, as if by magic, at the sound of our horn.
For nearly an hour we could see the delicate belfry of Tepozotlan flattened against a gray-green backgroundof hill, while the sun was touching everything near us with a sort of white incandescence, the maguey-fields seeming like rows of stacked silver spears. One thing about the Mexican vistas—they do not lose their charm as you approach; and as we got into the square of the little village we found a beautiful old church, inclosed with itspatioby a luscious pink, low-scalloped wall. Thesepatiosare a feature of every old Spanish church. The friars used them as school-rooms, as courts of judgment, as medical dispensaries. Indeed, all that had to do with the temporal and spiritual needs of the Indians was transacted in them.
The Tepozotlanpatiois grass-grown, shaded with pepper and palm trees, paved with sunken grave-slabs, bits of cactus growing about them, and there is a lovely cypress alley leading to the door of the smallparroquía. From this we passed into the great church, built with the adjoining seminary by the Jesuits toward the end of the sixteenth century, and restored nearly a hundred years ago, in Iturbide's time. As reminder of his brief imperial career we found the Mexican eagle painted in profile on the old wooden benches.
The church is a triumph of the Churrigueresque school (I have learned to spell this word, but never, never, will it casually trip from my tongue). The vault is simply a madness of gilt carving, and there is a beautiful high altar and many side altars of the richest and most varied designs, all the gold having a lovely reddish patine. We investigated the organ loft, but found only a broken organ with yellowing ivory stops and keys, and a few dusty missals with all the engravings and title-pages gone.
The general is not ecclesiastically inclined, and the visit to the old monastery, so bare, so stripped of all belongings, was most cursory. We soon betook ourselvesto the cypress alley and the warm sun outside, lunching in the auto in the village square, with children and old women clustering about and waiting for the crumbs from the banquet. The latter was somewhat marred for us by the discovery that the mineral-water opener had been forgotten. The motor was drawn up near a little pink-and-blue pulque-shop calledEl Recreo del Antiguo Gato,[7]but it contained no help for us; neither did a search at a still smaller one rejoicing in the name ofEl Templo de Venus,[8]on the other side of the Plaza, prove successful. However, the general pointed out hopefully that it would soon begin to rain.
On the way back we did get caught in one of the usual infant cloudbursts, which left the difficult roads of the morning almost impassable, and several times we had to get squads of Indians, who rose up apparently from the solid earth, to help pull the car out of various huge morasses. I thought at one time we could not get back for the dinner I was giving for General C.; but having the guest of honor with me, I felt fairly philosophic.
The ditches in some places were thickly carpeted with a long-stemmed, yellow, lily-like flower, and though warned that nobody would pick me out if I slipped into the black water underneath, I gathered great, heavy scented bunches, while the gentlemen and the Indians wrestled with the conveyance. Mr. de S. said the unfailing remark on the part of the Indians was, "No quiere andar" ("It does not wish to go")—a favorite and sometimes final phrase here about machinery that is out of order.
Later.
There have been lively times on the Isthmus. The former Federals against Maderistas. Aunt L.'s big house has been taken by the government for a hospital.A cruel uncertainty about affairs Mexican presses heavily everywhere.
The dinner for General C., after the long day at Tepozotlan, went off very pleasantly. He says he is here onlyen touriste, but he has the recording eye. The German minister returned from investigating the horrid Covadonga murders just in time to get into his evening things. Dearing, De Soto, Sturtevant, Mr. and Mrs. McLaren,et al., made up the dinner guests. The McL.'s are strong supporters of the Madero movement, and hope more than it seems reasonable to hope from such a movement in such a country.
Von H. is up to his eyes in the complications of the Covadonga murders where four Germans, one of them the wife of a manufacturer, were literally hacked to death in their factory. They were caught in a large room with one frightened Spaniard, the others having fought and shot their way out. Sixty-eight in all were killed and some two hundred wounded, nearly all Spaniards. Whether this is to be laid at the doors of the "Liberating Army" or is simply a little independent fling of a bandit chief called Zapata is not yet known.
Von H. has sent out a circular to his nationals, urging caution. He intends to bring the guilty ones to justice himself if the government does not; there was a light in his eye as he announced it, and a click of the teeth.
MEXICAN WOMEN WATER-CARRIERSPhotograph by Ravell
MEXICAN WOMEN WATER-CARRIERSPhotograph by Ravell
Emilio Madero, brother of Madero, is chief of the also troubled zone of Torreon. Circulars are being distributed by his orders begging the people to respect foreign lives and property, and explaining the necessity of the continuance of foreign capital, intelligence, and method in the country. They also state that any one voicing sentiments hostile to Spaniards, or other foreigners, Americans included, will find no place in theEjército Libertador(Liberating Army).
The servants seem such nice human beings. All their defects are small, and they are so honest. I feel myself more and more fortunate to have got this nice, practical arrangement with theje ne sais quoiof culture and breeding added.
The whole machinery runs comfortably, economically, and agreeably. I never scorn thepesos, or even thecentavitosthey return to me from the kitchen when we have been out, or things werelessexpensive than they expected in the market. Is it not all of a touching honesty?
Some grim fatality attended my first waving back of thecentavitoswith a grand air. Either the bells were not answered, the food was not carefully prepared, the dinner was late, or some such thing. Now I accept thecentavitosand life takes its normally smooth course. I had been warned not to refuse these offerings of simple hearts; and these same fatalities were foretold me by others more experienced in Mexican domestic psychology than I.
July 27th.
Home from another reception at Chapultepec. I always enjoy them, the setting is so perfect and the elements so diverse. The iron circle is not as tight as formerly, and this afternoon a sunset so gorgeous was going on that it made us all ashamed to sit between four mere brocade-covered walls, so there was much walking about the terraces.
There is a single great pine growing near the castle, where you look over the terrace toward the volcanoes, like the umbrella pines of the Borghese Gardens. It was black to-day with scallopings of bronze against the sky, and as I stood there, looking at the beauty of it all, talking with one of the President's handsome brothers (the one that is shortly going on a financial mission toLondon), I realized, suddenly, the obvious and persistent compensations of life.
Afterward we went down the little winding stairway leading fromla vitrina, the glass-inclosed balcony looking over the side toward the city, to the large east terrace, where an elaborate and abundant tea was served at small tables. Hohler took me down. I felt quite mellowed by all the beauty, and he, in spite of a certain matter-of-factness, is always appreciative. There is generally among theCorps Diplomatiquea note ofnil admirari. Mostly theyhaveseen a lot, and it's in the note not to show surprise; but no one could look without a stirring of the soul on the marvelous vistas from the terraces.
Hohler was about to set out on one of his periodical journeys when he uses "wheeled things," as Belloc expresses it,[9]as little as possible, and he showed me a tiny edition of Ovid,ars amatoria, that he was taking with him.
A long letter came from General Crozier this morning, from Puebla. He had found Madero at Tehuacan, and had had an interesting hour with him. The day before he had had an interview with the Minister of War, who sent an officer with him to visit various military establishments, the college at Chapultepec, the cartridge-factory at Molino del Rey, the powder-factory at Santa Fé, etc.
What he thought of it all I know not; he is one of the discreetest of mortals. He says he is taking a regretful departure from Mexico, where he found so much of interest and friendly courtesy. Certainly good wishes and regrets follow him.
July 28th, afternoon.
The Agadir incident bids fair to become more than an incident. Asquith has just said that England, to thelast man, the last ship, the last shilling, will stand by France. We won't talk of the little panthers to-night at dinner.
As I was walking home from the Embassy this morning I found myself wedged in by some motors, near the trolley line, and had to wait, while a black funeral car, familiar but unhygienic, passed under my nose.
The plain coffins, with or without palls (this had none), are placed in an open, sideless tramcar, sometimes with flowers, sometimes without. They have to pass the broad Avenida de los Insurgentes to get out to the Panteon de Dolores, the big, modern cemetery behind Chapultepec hill. There are agitations, from time to time, to prevent the carrying of these obviously not hermetically sealed coffins through the city, scattering germs and odors of mortality. Foreigners generally turn their heads and try not to breathe; but the Mexicans take off their hats and make the sign of the cross.
July 29th.
I have spent several afternoons with Humboldt, quite intimately and cozily, to the sound of heavy water falling from the roof, and the room so darkened by the deluge that I have had my lights turned on. He says that Peñon I wrote of will, one day, destroy Mexico City. Will it beAnno Domini1911? I envy him his beautiful gift of accurate seeing. None of the marvels of Nature, none of her vagaries, showed themselves to him in vain; and he is astonishingly up to date.
I have begun to prowl about for "antiques." No one escapes the fever, and in its delirium I wandered this morning to the Monte de Piedad,[10]which is housed in an ancient building facing the cathedral. An old tablet over the door records that it was founded in 1775 byTerreros, Conde de Regla, one of the most romantic figures of the eighteenth century, as, by a lucky chance, he became the owner of the Real del Monte mines at Pachuca.
Among the people he was the subject of as many fables as Crœsus. When his children were baptized the procession walked upon bars of silver, and when he was made Conde de Regla he invited the King of Spain to visit his mine, assuring him that if he did so his feet should never touch the earth.
The Monte de Piedad was founded for the purpose of keeping the poor out of the clutches of the usurers. Going in on the ground floor, directly from the street, I found myself in a crowd of elbowing people of all classes, leaning over glass-inclosed show-cases, where jewels and silver and small objects of value are exposed. In the large space immediately back are samples of everything used by man except things that need to be fed.
After having fingered the greatest number of objects that, in my right mind, I would have no possible use for, I concentrated my energies on a pearl pin, the pearl really visible to the naked eye, and bought it for thirty dollars; but I expended more than thirty dollars' worth of time and energy, even as those things go here. It's a scarf-pin and, somehow, in its old, brilliant setting, it seemed to try to tell a tale. Perhaps it had held some viceroy's lace? I will send it to you for St. Augustine's Day.
Elim's fourth birthday party—Haggling over the prices of old Mexican frames—Zapata looms up—First glimpse of General Huerta—Romantic mining history of Mexico.
August 3d.
Again it is the blessed anniversary. It seems but a moment of time since my arms received my son. He asked me, the first thing this morning, at what time he would be four years old. When I told him it had already happened he set up a dreadful howl. It appears he had expected to feel himself becoming four, as he informed me when he got his breath. I only send this line to you on this, his fourth mark on the shores of life. Now I must be up and doing. The sun is flooding thepatio.
Later.
His birthday party was sweet, but I was deathly homesick for you, when kind and friendly strangers came, bringing their gifts and good wishes. He had his cake, and the four candles for the years he had blessed my life. The two little Japanese, Madame Chermont's little boy, the two handsome children of the Casa Alvarado, the little Simon boy (too sweet, with his dark curls and big eyes), Dearing, Arnold, and Palmer, from the Embassy, came.
Von Hintze, who loves little children, dropped in late with a book of fairy tales. Mrs. Laughton brought Æsop's Fables, not many pictures in it, and as Elim opened it at a printed page he said, with shiningeyes, "Endlich habe ich ein Lesebuch." He has spent a good deal of time, since, holding it upside down and asking not to be disturbed while reading. He and Jom Chermont had a clash of arms, and Bobo, the two-year-old little Jap, ran the whole show with singular competence.
An invading nostalgia possessed me all the afternoon, and I kept thinking of the beautiful word the Portuguese chargé, De Lima, taught me a few days ago at dinner—"saudades," meaning memory of dear and early scenes, or of loved ones, or of all these things together. I presented my son with two tortoises and a little green bird, aclarine, which can be kept on the oleander terrace, though he had asked for a monkey and a crocodile.
I see that Abbey is dead. The wonder of those reds of the "Parsifal" frieze in the Boston Library has followed me for years.Tout a une fin, but when an artist dies there is a double end. I have just come across most beautiful photographs of Mexico—gum-prints and callotypes, after some special process by an artist named Ravell, who has a remarkable eye for this beauty and evidently a soul to receive it.
August 8th.
To-day was my usual Tuesday at home. Elim, in spotless white, played quietly under the tea-table most of the time with his little legs sticking out. Torrents of rain, and only a few callers, among them the German Consul-General, Rieloff, very musical, asking us for dinner, and Mrs. Cummings, handsome, competent, and warm-hearted, the wife of the head of the cable company, and a friend of Aunt Laura's since many years.
Lately I have bought several beautiful old Mexican or Spanish frames. 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 samepleasure. 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 cleverconseillerof the French Embassy in Washington, took me out to dinner.It is he who married, whenen postehere, 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 thatla Feria de Tlalpanstill 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 itto 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 themirador, 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 usualpetits soupers, said to me: "So Madame is going to leave us?" When I asked, "Where?" he told me it wasMexico, having seen the ParisHeraldbefore we had! It was like hearing we had been transferred to the moon.
Penn Cresson, secretary at Lima, is passing through,en routefor 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 hangingagainst 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 ofà 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 isun 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, evenif 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 calledel 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 isà chevalbetween 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 Russianministers, 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 finishedThe New Machiavelli. He considers it achef 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 firstétapeto 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 laa celebrated Indian chief of the Sierras de Alica. "Mexico for the Indians" really means a sponging out of everythingbetween 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 seemedmuy 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 amuletierby the name of Terreros, and ended by being able to lend the King of Spain a millionpesos.
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 thatyourmine 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 bigcientíficoJewish 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 ofmosqueteand 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 thehillside, 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 ofagave 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 Norwaychez lesLöwenskiold.
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 and15th.
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 theplebsas had the superfluouscentavosfor 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, pathlesstepetate, which, with the pinktezontle, has been from all time the building material for Mexico City. We were in the foot-hills of the Sierra de lasCruces, covered with a scant vegetation, various kinds of cactus, or an occasionalárbol 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,tepetateandtezontle, 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 thejefe políticoof their special pueblo sees that they don't vend without a license, at least there is no rent.