Thou Italy of the Occident,Land of flowers and summer climes,Of holy priests and horrid crimes;Land of the cactus and sweet cocoa;Richer, than all the OrientIn gold and glory, in want and woe,In self-denial, in days misspent,In truth and treason, in good and guilt,In ivied ruins and altars low,In battered walls and blood misspilt;Glorious gory Mexico.
Thou Italy of the Occident,Land of flowers and summer climes,Of holy priests and horrid crimes;Land of the cactus and sweet cocoa;Richer, than all the OrientIn gold and glory, in want and woe,In self-denial, in days misspent,In truth and treason, in good and guilt,In ivied ruins and altars low,In battered walls and blood misspilt;Glorious gory Mexico.
Thou Italy of the Occident,Land of flowers and summer climes,Of holy priests and horrid crimes;Land of the cactus and sweet cocoa;Richer, than all the OrientIn gold and glory, in want and woe,In self-denial, in days misspent,In truth and treason, in good and guilt,In ivied ruins and altars low,In battered walls and blood misspilt;Glorious gory Mexico.
Thou Italy of the Occident,
Land of flowers and summer climes,
Of holy priests and horrid crimes;
Land of the cactus and sweet cocoa;
Richer, than all the Orient
In gold and glory, in want and woe,
In self-denial, in days misspent,
In truth and treason, in good and guilt,
In ivied ruins and altars low,
In battered walls and blood misspilt;
Glorious gory Mexico.
Evening.
Among our visits to-day was one on Madame Creel. They have a very large and handsome house in the Calle de Londres, not yet quite finished. Everything French. In the drawing-room where Madame C. received were two splendid Sèvres vases, and great French-plate mirrors and French brocades cover the walls. Mr. Creel, fresh-complexioned, white-haired, speaking English very well, and liking to recall ambassadorial days in Washington, took us over the uncompleted part of the house. The large ball-room is awaiting special bronze electric-lightappliques, door and window fastenings, now on their way from Paris, where all the woodwork of the house was executed.[27]
December 11th, evening.
This afternoon Madame Lefaivre and Mr. de Soto and I went out to Guadalupe to see the preparations for to-morrow's feast, the greatest in Mexico.
Indians were arriving from all directions, bivouacking close up against the church. They seemed to have brought not only all their children, but all their furniture in the shape ofpetatesand earthen bowls, and any incidental live-stock they possessed in the shape of goat or dog. It was quite cold, and in the dusk they seemed like their own ancestors coming over the hills for the worship of dreaded and dreadful gods.
Nothing except the Deity and the temple has changed since the old days; they themselves are unmodified, and seemingly unmodifiable. I dare say one would give a gasp if one could really see what they thought about the Virgin of Guadalupe, or the "Cause of Causes."
They come in from hidden mountain towns, where images of other gods are still graven, and where charms and incantations are used, which doesn't at all affect their devotion to "Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe." Often they are many days en route, and all night until dawn they will be arriving at the great shrine.
We crossed the plaza to a near-by house, where a painter-friend of Mr. de S.'s lived, going up some winding stone steps in a house built at the end of the sixteenth century, giving into irregular-shaped rooms with strange windows apparently not designed to give light. The paintings portrayed little or nothing of the charm of Mexico, but Madame Lefaivre found one of some place near Cordoba, which she thought for a moment that she wanted. I would much rather have closed my eyes and looked in on my inner Mexican gallery, or been out with the mysterious Indians in the mysterious twilight which was enveloping the crowded plaza.
When we finally came out lanterns were being hung on the little booths,tortilleraswere slapping up their cakes, and everywhere there was a smell of the pungent peppers and all sorts of nameless things they put into them. Children were rolled up asleep or playing about half-clad in the cold dusk, and zarape-enveloped men bent over dimly lighted squares of cloth laid out on the ground, engrossed in games of chance. I was suddenly sad, as one might be at seeing rolled out the inexorable scroll of a subject people.
December 12th.
Beautiful weather, soft, shining, clear—but that cold snap was a terror. Many little brown Indian babies returned to their Maker by way of bronchitis, pneumonia, and kindred ills. It is good to think of them warm, safe with the Lord, so many children with none or insufficient clothing in that cruel, lifeless cold!
It has been rather a day of contrasts, for in the morning I mingled again with the Indian world at Guadalupe,[28]and in the afternoon I went to the benefit held for a new charity hospital by a committee of American women. The affair crystallized about the art exhibit of Miss Helen Hyde, who has a collection of the most lovely Japanese things done on her recent visit to Nippon. She calls them chromozylographs, and they are charmingly framed in plain black strips. I bought several after harrowing indecisions.
Madame Madero came and had tea with us at a table over which Mrs. Wilson presided. Madame Madero was almost extinguished by a huge bronze-green and purple hat matching her velvet dress. Madame Calero and Madame Lie made up the party, with Mrs. Stronge, the newly married wife of the British minister,who has just arrived. She had on some interesting emeralds, picked up in Bogotá, their last post.
Mrs. Wilson goes to-morrow. I always miss her kindness and her consideration.
Christmas is in the air. We dine with the ambassador at the Kilverts' at Coyoacan on that day. My thoughts will be with my dear ones, and the seas, the mountains, and the valleys between will hurt.
Just now the following was handed in to me through Mr. Cummings: "Governor Juarez left for Oaxaca last night. General Hernandez and troops left for Juchitan this morning. Peace reigns on the Isthmus."
It looks as if it soon might be time for a lone exotic niece to betake her to those regions.
December 15th.
A very interesting letter from San Gerónimo of the 12th came this morning. The governor, with his party, had just left the house for Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz. He had come most unostentatiously, with only his secretaries and a few officials—no guard, no private car, no banquets—as he said he had come to restore peace, and not for feasting.
The celebrated Che Gómez, an hour or so before, had been sitting, uninvited and unafraid, on the front porch. When he learned that the governor was expected he betook himself off, with followers and guard, to another station. The governor subsequently wired the police at Rincon Antonio to arrest him on the arrival of the train before he got out of the state (Oaxaca). He was taken to jail, and that night was shot with his men.
No word of regret anywhere for his fate, and I dare say he gave up his own life as easily as he had taken that of others. Governor Juarez was warmly welcomed by all the towns, even by poor, ruined Juchitan, Che Gómez'sowntown, with open arms and flowers.The law-abiding citizens are returning to their dismantled homes, after living in the bush, from hand to mouth, for weeks.
December 16th.
This morning at 11.30 a "good" earthquake. It suddenly got very dark, and I went to the window, my infant clutching at my dress, to see what was happening, when the roofs of the houses opposite began to undulate, and I had to catch hold of the window, or we would have been thrown to the floor.
The horses stopped short with perfectly stiff legs, and people began running out of the doors and kneeling in the street and shrieking, "Misericordia! Misericordia!" most uncomfortably. Nothing was broken in the house, but every picture was left hanging askew, and pale servants served a luncheon which showed the effects onthem!
Elena appeared collarless, with damp, thick hair floating down her back, and Cecilia had a blue rebozo twisted about her, no hint of white anywhere on her person. They passed the dishes at an angle of forty-five degrees.
Later.
At three o'clock a dimness again fell upon the city, and there was the faint, uncanny sound of sliding objects and slipping pictures and swaying doors and curtains. In a second of time it had passed, but the hint of cosmic forces leaves a decided trace on mere flesh and blood.
We went to the reception at Chapultepec on Thursday, "par charité, pas par snobisme," as somebody unkindly said. The Mexican families of repute boycott the Madero receptions. The few Mexicans who do go don't figure in the real national accounting. The diplomats feel that they at least ought to go, so last Thursday the inclosed clipping was produced.
Madame Madero, though small and worn-looking, is always dignified and courteous, and receives with simplicity and cordiality. Madero seems in a continual ecstasy; one would think he found Chapultepec the seventh heaven. He is full of confidence in himself and in the country. A happy man, one involuntarily says in looking at him. To-night is the ball the French colony gives for him.
December 17th.
The reception at the"Cercle Français,"in their fine quarters in the Calle de Motolinia, was a great success. The President with Madame Lefaivre, in a handsome black-and-white gown, and Mr. Lefaivre with Madame Madero in a dark, richeveningdress, headed the procession to an elaborate supper, all following according to the protocol, Mr. Madero and Mr. Lefaivre sitting facing each other. Allart took me in.
Everything was decorated with the tricolor, and red and blue and white lights, and masses of natural flowers, and very good music played continuously; the affair was got up by the wealthy Frenchcommerçantsin honor of the President and his wife.
Madame Lefaivre said the President talked to her the whole time in a most sanguine manner about the reforms he intends to introduce, especially in the matter of public instruction, and was wrapped about with illusions and dreams as to his rôle of apostle charged with the regeneration of Mexico.
Afterward, when he made his speech in answer to the toast, he recalled happy souvenirs of his youth in the Lycée de Versailles. When they subsequently made the tour of thesalon, Madame Lefaivre, in passing me, whispered that she wastoute confuseat feeling herself so big on the arm of the little President. He saluted right and left with a smile which, without being fixed,was always there. I think he was very pleased with the occasion and its international setting.
It is always interesting to see any colony turn out in distant posts, and here the French colony, representing very large interests—banking, industrial, mercantile—is numerous and important, comparable only to that in Moscow.
The large department shops,à la Bon Marché, like the "Palacio de Hierro" and the "Puerto de Vera Cruz," are in French hands. From the days of their intervention, the French have invested largely in Mexico, and now I hear there is much uneasiness in Gallic quarters, so many interests are to be protected, and the protection is an unknown quantity. Mr. Lefaivre is untiring in his efforts—but order can only come through the government itself.
Previous to the famous elections, or rather "selections," as I prefer to call them (the word elections could be dropped from use and not missed in Mexico), the Partido Católico, among other parties of conservative tendencies, was not efficiently formed. Iglesias Calderon represented the old anti-clerical party, and De la Barra, in spite of his determination to retire from public life, was made the candidate of the National Catholic party, and of the Liberal party as well, for the Vice-Presidency.
It was "generally understood" that he would be defeated. N. said last night, informally, to Madero: "It is a pity; Mr. de la Barra has such a good standing abroad." Madero replied: "I will see that he iselectedfrom somewhere else." And he was, later, from Querétaro, his native town, as senator, I think.
They haven't got the "hang" of democracy here, nor any suspicion of political parties having rights and dignities, and it is discouraging to see them trying to workout their questions without any such suspicions. It is war to the knife or theadjectivewhen one man differs from another.
Bulnes had one of his flashing, witty articles inEl Imparcialnot long ago,à proposof the candidature of Pino Suarez, in which he says that as in classic days the language of intellectuals was Latin, now in Latin-America that of the politicians is any kind of vile language, and to be in conformity with electoral urbanity, when meeting an acquaintance, one should salute him by saying, "I forestall any remark you may make, by telling you that if you hold opinions differing from mine you are a scoundrel!"
December 18th.
I am inviting for my Xmas festivity those with children,andthe childless, the colleagues, the Bedfords, the Bonillas, Kilverts, Judge W., the ambassador's great friend, and members of the embassy. Mr. Wilson has gone for a few days to the hot country to try to get rid of his cold, and N. is looking after things in his absence. I have sent off seventy post-cards, quite a document of this strange land.
Very pleasant dinner at the French Legation last night. Bridge afterward till an unduly late hour for Mexico. The Lefaivres have been here three years already, and would take a European post without urging. You would like them—cultivated, sincere, and kind, and Lefaivre shows his long training, his Latin-American experience in his full appreciation of the situation. They came here from Havana, and keep open house, constantly entertaining their colony, as well as doing more than their share of "nourishing" their colleagues.
Have just been with Madame Lefaivre to the tea given by — for his extraordinary-looking daughter, a huge, dark-eyed, fresh-complexioned creature,à la belle Fatima,innocent, ignorant, and wanting a husband; a not unusual type here, but not in our Anglo-Saxon category at all.
December 19th, Tuesday.
Hohler dropped in late for a few minutes. He is going off on one of his long trips into the heart of the country. When I asked him which one of his antique comrades would accompany him, he pulled out a fine little edition of Virgil, diamond-printed on matchless paper. He is endlessly strong and keen about things in general, and now that the minister has arrived, can leave for a few days' outing.
Some of the long-expected furniture from London has come, and the Stronges are busy installing themselves. The "lion and the unicorn" are always most generous to those who represent them abroad.
Two interesting young women with letters from New York, from Mr. Choate, also called—Miss Hague and Miss Brownell. They are painting and collecting folk-songs. I am thankful for any one coming here to record the fading glories of Mexico with intelligence and love. They will come for the Christmas tree, also.
December 21st.
Monsignore Vay de Vaya appeared yesterday en route for Panama. You know space scarcely exists for him. He found a warm welcome, and I have a luncheon for him on Saturday. He sends many regards, and hopes to meet you at Nauheim again next summer. I am asking the Lefaivres, Riedls, Carmona,chef du protocole, De Soto, the Belgian minister,et al.
I enclose letter of the 17th from Aunt L., who has just been to Juchitan, saying that the town looked very battered. Thejefenot yet back. Among domestic items she says a large packet of cranberries has arrived;after thirty years of Mexico, it is not quite so commonplace as it sounds, but rather as if a denizen of a Vermont village had received a crate of mangoes.
December 22d, Friday.
N. and I went to call on Monsignore this morning. He is stopping at the Hotel Iturbide. He was out, but I took a look about the imposingpatio, three-storied, colonnaded, and pierced with large, beautifully carved doorways and windows. It was started on a magnificent scale for the Emperor Iturbide, who paid the usual Mexican penalty for power at the hands of the usual Mexican patriots before it was finished. 'Tis known that as a hotel it leaves to be desired; the dust of revolutions and ages covers the spacious corridors. There are strange silences when you call for hot water, or any kind of water, for that matter. And you eat somewhere else.
Yesterday another reception at Chapultepec. Madame Madero is much changed from the simple-appearing woman of the Von Hintze dinner. I see she naturally inclines to a somber richness of dress—dark velvets, dull brocades—which I think fit her passionate, ambitious, resolute temperament, though sometimes overpowering to her small physique.
Yesterday she had on a deep-blue brocaded velvet, with some sort of heavy, lusterless fringe, and there was a decided though still discreet gleam of jewels. That air of coming from the provinces, but nice provinces, is somewhat gone.
The President slipped in quietly, later, without the playing of the national hymn. There was quite a musical program. Madame Esmeralda de Grossmann played beautifully on the harp. It appears she has an international reputation. The daughter of —, attired ina very tight-skirted, lemon-colored satin dress, trimmed with swan's-down, one of her pupils, started to play, broke down, was further discomfited and finally routed by irate paternal glances. Angela Madero sings charmingly with natural style, and gave Massenet's "Elégie" delightfully. One is continually interested in the composition of the presidential receptions, which means so much more than appears. Madero's father and mother were there, with various daughters and sons and sons' wives.
The Vice-President, young, tall, dark-skinned, black-eyed, black-mustached, regular of features, without, however, any perceptible color of personality, was accompanied by his wife and a contingent of satellites, moving wherever he moved with the regularity of the heavenly bodies—no intention of revolving alone in the unknown social orbit. TheCorps Diplomatiquewas out in force, and the Protocole, Carmona, Nervo, Pulido, etc., also Don Felix Romero, chief of the Supreme Court, and his wife, Judge and Mrs. Sepulveda of California, naturalized Americans, with a handsome daughter. But beyond these I did not see any of what might be called "pillars of society," or, indeed, anything remotely resembling props to uphold the new order. We presented Monsignor Vay de Vaya, who struck the international note in the pink-and-white-and-goldsalon des ambassadeurs, whose spaces were known to those princes of his monarchy, Maximilian and Carlota.
December 23d, evening.
The Christmas tide is flowing full about the Alameda, where the Indians have again stocked theirpuestoswith reminders of the season. We have just come from a littletournéebetween the rows of booths hung with lanterns of every size and color, the odor ofla race cuivréemingling with the more familiar scent of freshly cut pine-trees. Tiny plaster and terra-cotta groups of the "Three Kings" abound—a white man, a negro, a Mongolian in various fanciful garbings—shone on by the largest of stars, and all sorts of "Holy Families," especially the "Flight into Egypt," where the burro seems to have come into his own.
On all sides were great piles of peanuts, fruits known and unknown, highly colored sweets, heaps upon heaps of fragile potteries, and charming, pliable baskets, brought to the city from mountain fastnesses or distant plains by Indian families afoot.
Soft, shining-bodied children were sleeping in the most fortuitous of positions, uncovered, in the chill night air. I could but think of blue-eyed, white-skinned children in warm nurseries. They lay beside grotesquenaguales—figures with hideous human faces on woolly four-footed bodies, whoseraison d'êtreis to frighten. The population inclines to the grotesque, anyway, on the slightest provocation, and side by side with thenagualesare other hideous clown-like figures—piñatas—which are the high-lights of certain time-hallowed post-Christmas festivities. They are of all sizes and prices—from little paper dolls hanging from bamboo rods that will decorate adobe huts to the more expensive figures, bulky about the waist, whose tinsel and tissue-paper garments conceal a great earthenware jar filled with toys and candies.
Thecohetesare sounding as I write—a sort of fire-cracker—announcing the advent of the Child to this Indian world.
As for the Posadas, we are evidently not to be initiated into their mysteries. The Mexican families of note continue to sport their oaks since the coming in of the Madero administration, and the Diplomatic Corps thisyear is left out in the cold on these intimate occasions, which are family parties held during nine days before Christmas, symbolic of the efforts of Mary and Joseph to find a resting-place in crowded Bethlehem.
December 24th.
We see the list of diplomatic shifts; among them are a few real Christmas presents. Dearing, who returned a short time ago, is made assistant chief of the Latin-American division of the State Department. He has made and will continue to makeune bonne carrière. Schuyler, whom I have not seen since he passed through Copenhagenen routefor Petersburg, takes his place here. Cresson goes to London, which will please him; the Blisses get Paris, quite the handsomest of all the presents. Weitzel, who was here when we arrived, goes to Nicaragua, and so on through a long list. I felt, when I saw the changes, a sort of hankering for the Aryan flesh-pots, a sudden feeling of my unrelatedness to Latin America. I was, so to speak, for the moment "fed up" on the tropics with a thick sauce of world pain. Any light-colored diplomat will know just what I mean, and I dare say the dark ones feel it in higher latitudes.
Diplomacy, as offered by the United States Government, is a most unsettling thing, anyway. The basic uncertainties of thecarrière, to begin with, and then, if you are in a place you like, the feeling that at any time the trump may sound, and if you don't like it, hoping to be changed. However, it all goes up like smoke along with other human things.
The first Christmas in Mexico City—Hearts sad and gay—Piñatas—Statue to Christopher Columbus.
Christmas Day, 1911.
My first thought was of my precious mother,l'absence est le plus grand des maux. I went to midnight mass at the French church with Madame Lefaivre. TheAdeste Fideleswas beautifully sung, and I thought of the millions of throats, all over the glad, sad earth, singing the peace-bringing air.
I was so happy that of the people assembled around the tree three knew you and spoke of you—Monsignore Vay de Vaya, and Mrs. Bedford and her daughter. It was sad to have Aunt L. so near and yet so far.
The little party went off very well—tiny souvenirs for each. Elim was overwhelmed with toys of the most elaborate kind, and I was almost embarrassed at one time, as they came piling in. The only children present, alas, were Jim Chermont, Mrs. C. R. Hudson's pretty blond-haired little girl, the Japanese children, and little Harold Hotchkiss. They played near the tree, mostly lying on their little tummies, with their heels in the air, as near the lights as possible.
Allart sent the dearest miniaturecharrocostume as a present to Elim, with a line that he was too sad to come; his beloved little daughter is in Belgium.
In the morning I drove down to the San Juan Letran market and brought back a great bundle of the gorgeousflor de Noche Buena(Poinsettia), most difficult to arrange on account of the thick, angular stems, and not too trustworthy about keeping fresh, even here on its native heath. But the red made lovely splashes of color in the rooms, which were packed. It ended by my inviting every Anglo-Saxon in town, as well as the diplomats, but I have noted that on festive occasions people like being packed.
The punch, after an excellent receipt given me by Madame Bonilla, was good and heady, as a punch should be, and the ambassador sent his Belgianmaître d'hôtelto superintend the serving of therefrescos. I know, however, that many a thought was far, and many a heart sad, because of separations and vanishings.
At four o'clock to-day I light up the tree for the servants, and give them their presents. They havecarte blancheto bring any of their related young, so I imagine we will be fairly numerous. I then take Elim to the Chermonts' tree, and we dine at the Kilverts' at Coyoacan, driving out with the ambassador and Mr. Potter and Mr. Butler.
To-morrow Elim goes to apiñatagiven by Madame Bonilla, childless herself, but always so eager to make children happy. Wednesday to another at Madame Clara Scherer's. I don't know how he will stand so much "going out." He and Jim Chermont had quite a little "shindy" toward the end of the afternoon yesterday, at which the tiny Jap assisted with joy.
Thepiñatais hung from the ceiling of the zaguan (vestibule entrance into thepatio). Each child in turn is blindfolded, presented with a long stick, turned around, and then told to proceed. When a lucky hit breaks thepiñata, there is a stampede for the scattered treasure.
On Wednesday Madame Lefaivre has Monsignore todinner; they had met before in Paris at the Princesse de Polignac's.
Elim went to bed with a goat with sharp horns, from Madame Lie, a whip, and nearly a brigade of soldiers, which I removed from him in the "first sweet dreams of night."
December 28th.
Thepiñatascontinue, one this afternoon at Mrs. C. R. Hudson's. They appear to be quite exciting, for little darlings dream and moan about them in their sleep.
Yesterday Elim was taking the papers out of the waste-paper basket in the library and loading them onto one of the Christmas wagons. He was clad in pale blue, looking inexpressibly fair and remote from earthiness, when he raised those blue, blue eyes to me and said: "Mama,ich bin der Mistmann" (I am the garbage-man). Talking of contrasts!
Now I must dress for the dinner at the French Legation for Monsignore. He is looking very worn. These long world-journeys that he makes for his emigration work take it out of him. From the founding of an orphanage in Corea to the visiting of Hungarian dock laborers on the Isthmus of Panamaisrather a stretch of nerves as well as space.
We have the news that General Reyes' Christmas gift was his surrender to the Federal troops—quite a pleasant surprise for Mr. Madero's "stocking." He is eliminated; but all seem ready to fight over the bones of peace that Diaz left—though not one of them is worthy to tie his shoe-strings from the point of civic government and keeping of order, which last I now see is the first requisite for any state.
There is a cartoon in theChicago Inter-Oceanof Madero trying to hold his hat on, with Diaz watching from Europe. That Parthian shot of his, that in the end theGovernment would have to use his methods, is going home.
December 29th.
The "angel boy" has lost a front tooth—one of those thatyouwatched come. It fell out at Madame —'spiñata, in her big, too-handsome house, where the entertainment was most elaborate, and the toys that were scrambled for when theollawas broken were of the most expensive kind. Afterward all imaginable rich things were served in the big dining-room. The hottest, pepperiest tamales were passed around to about forty little Mexican darlings, who ate them, not only with relish, but composure; my taste brought tears to my eyes and a call for water.
Elim left his seat to bring his tooth triumphantly to me and tell me I must have it set in gold. He is so little that he will be around for years with a hole in his mouth. I felt much the way I would have felt had I discovered him growing a mustache. Madame —'s house, in good taste outside, architecturally, is like her pictures inside, the frames too rich for what they inclose. There are agate-topped tables and malachite bric-à-brac in heavy gilt vitrines, and "hand-painted" screens. It is beautifully situated in the Glorieta Colon, therond-pointwhere the statue of Christopher Columbus, by a French artist, was raised in 1877. It shows him surrounded by the two monks who helped him in the great adventure, and Fray Pedro de la Gante and Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, lovers and protectors of the Indians.
The monks are Padre Juan Perez de Marchena, prior of the convent of Santa Maria Rabada, who had the wit to understand and the power to further Columbus's project. The other, Fray Diego Dehasa, was the confessor and adviser of King Ferdinand. It's too badHumboldt could not have seen it, for he says: "On peut traverser l'Amérique Espagnole depuis Buenos Aires jusqu'à Monterrey, depuis la Trinité et Porto Rico jusqu'à Panama et Veragua, et nulle part on ne rencontrera un monument national que la reconnaissance publique ait élevé à la gloire de Christophe Colomb et de Hernan Cortés."
December 29th.
Two sportsmen of note, Count Sala and Mr. Williams, came for lunch to-day, also Riedl. They are here en route to Tampico for tarpon-fishing, the only really fine sport Mexico offers to foreigners. They were at the delightful dinner at the French Legation the other night for Monsignore.
December 30, 1911.
One of Aunt Louise's exquisite letters came this morning—I will forward it another time. She begins by saying, "Where are you, wandering star?" and wishes me, wherever the end of the earthly year finds me, "joys that reside in little things, as well as fortune's greater gifts."
Outside night and snow were falling. Within lamps were lighted and fire glowing. Genevieve was playing "Robin Adair," and her "heart was suddenly sad to plumbless depths," because of separations. She closes with a verse (I don't remember from whom):
When windflowers blossom on the sea,And fishes skim along the plain,Then we who part this weary day,Then you and I will meet again.
When windflowers blossom on the sea,And fishes skim along the plain,Then we who part this weary day,Then you and I will meet again.
When windflowers blossom on the sea,And fishes skim along the plain,Then we who part this weary day,Then you and I will meet again.
When windflowers blossom on the sea,
And fishes skim along the plain,
Then we who part this weary day,
Then you and I will meet again.
Off for Tehuantepec—A journey through the jungles—The blazing tropics—Through Chivela Pass in the lemon-colored dawn—Ravages of the revolution—A race of queens
January 1, 1912.
My first thought flies to you this morning. I have sorrowed, smiled, in other years, perhaps learned to pray, so mayhap my heart is ready for 1912.
N. has gone to the Palace, where the President receives the gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps; this afternoon Madame Madero receives bothmessieurs et dames. Last night a pleasant dinner at the Embassy, at which I presided. Americans only, the ambassador's special friends, and home in reasonable time. I was "hung solitary in the universe" when twelve o'clock struck and kindly healths were drunk. I thought of the light already beginning to break over the wintry Zürich hills, and of you, and Elliott and his Calvary, and that other dear one of our blood, lost to men but not to God. Was he sleeping quietly?
January 2d.
N. came in a while ago with arrangements complete for the trip to Tehuantepec. A telegram from Aunt Laura last night says: "All quiet here again; so glad you are at last coming."
It seems like a fairy-tale that I am off to San Gerónimo, that exotic memory of my childhood. I remember we called it San Geronímoinstead of pronouncing it San Herónimo. How the letters used to come dropping in—andthe presents! The red-leather-covered sandalwood box, with its brass nails; the strange, square, old Spanish silver coins, just chopped off, as one would a bit of dough, and stamped hot; the painted gourds, the idols and the bright bits of embroidery.
N. has just been delegated to go to get an American out of jail, the third one this week. They are taken up for nothing; we are not popular here just now.
Madame Madero's New-Year's reception for theCorps Diplomatiquewas poorly attended and there was no enlivening touch in the way of refreshments and nothing in which to drink healths. The wife of the — minister asked the President for averre d'eautoward the end. He was very apologetic, pleasant, and modest, and said: "Oh, we don't know how to do these things." He seemed full of good intentions and hope for 1912—but alack! alack! never has it been seen that nobility alone is able to maintain its possessor!
Elim is begging me to bring him a monkey when I come back. I hate to disappoint him—but do you see me traveling with anything belonging to that species? The trip is said to be magnificent—two nights and one day. I wish it were two days and one night.
Aunt L. is thinking of me and preparing for me; I know what it means for some one of her own to penetrate to her fastness, or rather her jungle. Mr. Cummings has put the telegraph at N.'s and my disposal while I am away. I have not been outside the Federal district since I arrived, so content with the treasures of this matchless valley; but of course one easily gets theReisefieber.
I will writeen routeto the "blazing tropics." Now, farewell.
January 4th,Córdoba,10 a.m.
We have just descended into a dew-drenched world. It is supposed to be the "dry season,"estación de secas.A warm, wet, glistening air comes in at the window, and my furs are in the rack.
I have been watching endless coffee-plantations with red berries shining among the foliage, and great tobacco-fields of broad, shiny leaves. Banana-trees grow close to the tracks, and everywhere are the most perishable of homes, built of what looks like nothing more solid than corn-stalks and dried leaves.
Cordoba was founded early in the seventeenth century by a viceroy, who modestly called it after himself.
Later.
A series of the most gorgeous mountain vistas, tunnel after tunnel, and in between each darkness a world of beauty. Lovely palms abound, delicate yet definite in their flowery symmetry. The Pico de Orizaba has made various farewell appearances, one more enchanting and regretful than the other. Now a great plain is rolling away, of seemingly incredible fertility, with shadows of clouds on its shining stretches.
The faithful banana, which was first brought to this continent by a Dominican monk,viaHaiti, about the time of the Conquest certainly came into its own in this hot, moist land. One of the early ecclesiastical writers in Mexico was so impressed that he hazards the statement that it was the forbidden fruit that tempted Eve. It certainly continues to tempt both sexes and all ages to idleness.
Later.Presidio, in the cañon of the Rio Blanco.
I have been absorbed in watching the tropical jungles, where form is eliminated. Every tree is choked or cloaked by some sort of envelopingconvolvuli; every wall has its formless abundant covering. No silhouettes anywhere,no "cut" to anything—which is why all this richness could, I imagine, get monotonous.
Tierra Blanca,3.30.
In the "blazing tropics"! A heavy, hot atmosphere comes in at the window. All along there has been much sitting of a dark race under banana-trees, where not even a change of position seems necessary in order to be fed.
We have had a long wait here at Tierra Blanca, which is the junction of a branch line to Vera Cruz, and I have been watching station life. It's very highly colored. Here and there appears an unmistakably American face—the "exploiters" some would call them; but it seems to me they gather up all this vague splendor, this endless abundance, into something definite, with benefits to the greater number, though some get "left," of course.
There is a decided note ofcarpe diemtransposed into orange, scarlet, and black, which all the coming and going of men, women, and children with baskets of coffee-beans doesn't do away with. In the tropics the white man is king, be he Yankee, Spaniard, or Northman, and it is part of the lure. The abundances of Mother Earth are for his harvesting; a strange, native race seems there to do him honor, render him service, asking only in return enough of the abundance to keep soul in body for the allotted span.
We have just passed the broad Rio Mariposa (Butterfly River), and are at a place called "Obispo." Indian women are holding up baskets of the most gorgeous fruits, babes on their backs, cigarettes in their mouths. We are near the celebrated Valle Nacional. I remember some terrible articles in one of the magazines about the human miseries in the working of the tobacco-factories, herds of men, women, and children locked together into great sheds at night during tropical storms,enslavements, separations. It's easy to hope it is not so, but I dare say it is.
We are zigzagging through dense jungle with the gaudiest splashes of color. Flashy birds are flying about. Sometimes one wonders if it is bird or flower. All the green is studded with bright spots. There are great, flat, meadow-like spaces, the soil looking rich enough to bear food for all the hungry millions of the earth, and numberless cattle are grazing over it. But oh! the inexpressible slipshodness of the human abodes! Anything perishable, nearest at hand, sugar-cane stalks, palm leaves, continue to compose the dwellings; and oh! the crowds of children, of human beings, just as slipshod, just as perishable!
The sun is setting. Great pink brushes of cirrus are covering the sky, against a blue that hates to give way, but in a moment I know it will be dark.
Later.
A wonderful day, but somehow I am glad I was born in the temperate zone. I suppose it's the New England blood protesting against all this, as something wasteful and unrelated. Since we passed the heavy-flowing Rio Mariposa I have been having more than a touch of "world-pain." The light is so poor in my state-room that I can't read, but I arrive at San Gerónimo at 5.30, which means a 4.30 rising, so good night.
January 5th, 5.30 a.m.
Chivela Pass in the lemon-colored dawn! I don't know what I went through in the night, but now I am descending to the Pacific. Sharp outlines of treeless, pinkish hills are everywhere showing themselves, with here and there patches of the classic and beautiful organos cactus. It is almost chilly. My heart andI are ready for the meeting. The porter tells me there are only two more stations.
San Gerónimo,January 6th, evening.
As the train got in to San G. I saw a very pale, very blue-eyed, slim, white-clad figure. New England, though a thousand cycles had been passed in the tropics. We met in silence, two full hearts, and in silence we went over to the house....
January 8th, evening.
We have been walking up and down the garden under the big fig-tree, where a huge and very beautifulhuacamaia, a sort of parrot, with a yellow-and-red head and a long blue tail makes his home. We have been thinking and talking in a way so foreign to the thick tropical darkness enveloping us.
The sun went down on a world of ashes of roses and then this soft, very black night fell. At sunset we took a turn about the sandy, desolate-looking town.
Women, scriptural women, were washing and bathing in the broad, high-banked stream. It reminded me of Tissot's pictures of the Holy Land—the barren banks of the pebbly river, the fig-trees, the little groups. The women wear most lovely garments as to outline. A wide skirt with a deep flounce is tucked up in front, for more ease in moving, and the falling flounce gives quite a Tanagra line.
Little girls are always dressed, from their tenderest age, in skirts too long; but little boys go naked till they are eleven or twelve, and the clad and the unclad play about together.
When Don Porfirio took things in hand the boys were made to dress to go to school, and as a last touch of fashion made to tuck their shirts inside their trousers. It appears, however, they only tuck them in as theyenter the school door, pulling them out when they are released.
... But Aunt L. says she is tired of it all—the naked children, the barren stretches, thecarpe diem, the ultimate unrelatedness of her life to its frame, though I kept thinking of Henley's line, "and in her heart some late lark singing." ...
... Each life, it seems to me, short or long, is wonderful when it becomes a perfected story, if we could only get it in perspective, against its own destined background; not blurred and mixed with other unrelated lives, but by itself, in relief, as the great artists show their masterpieces. I can't feel the ordinariness of any human life. Some are dreadful, some beautiful, some undeveloped; but each in its way could be an infinitely perfect story were the artist there to record it.
January 10th, evening.
To-day we drove over to Juchitan, the "county-seat"—Aunt L. to get some papers witnessed and signed at thejefatura, and to show me the ravages of the revolution of November.
The country, as we drove along, was scorching, dry, light-colored, with only an occasional tree and the irrepressible mesquite growing everywhere out of the sandy soil. We passed dreadful, screaming, wooden carts, with their solid wooden wheels, drawn by thin oxen, trying to nibble the withered grass; and there were herds of skeleton-like cattle dotted over the thorny cactus-covered fields.
There is a great hill, Istlaltepec, which separates San Gerónimo (fortunately, I should say) from lively Juchitan; and on the side of it away from San Gerónimo are prehistoric tracings and remains, studied, at various times, by various savants. It's a country with sandy, flat stretches and blue hills bounding them, and theriver of Juchitan flowing to the near Pacific. The village of Istlaltepec was a blaze of color, white-washed or pink- or blue-washed dwellings, fig- and palm-trees, and over all the brilliant, blinding light.
At Juchitan we stopped a moment at a hotel, but it was so dilapidated and shot with bullet marks, and so desolate and mournful-looking inside, that we went to a small, native place of refreshment, kept by a one-time servant of Aunt L.'s. She was old, but welcoming. Her daughter, a fine, tall woman of thirty or thereabouts, was coming down the street, with one of the great, painted gourds on her head filled with a variety of highly colored things, and with the walk of a queen, a majestic, gentle, swaying movement.
They spread a spotless cloth, in a dim, sandy, red-tiled room with a glimpse of a palm in the oldpatiobehind, that would have been a back yard, and a hideous one, if it had been "at home." The old woman told her ailments, and the daughter, aided by the granddaughter, served us asopa de frijoles(bean soup), a perfect omelet, with a hard-crusted, pleasant-tasting bread, but no butter, and black coffee.
Goat's milk was offered; the goat was in thepatio—but "goatmeno goats."
The inhabitants of the street gathered around as we got into the carriage, among them an Indian woman with a coal-black baby—asalto atras, a "jump back," as they are cheerfully called, when the baby is blacker than the mother. We proceeded to hunt thejefeagain, but when we got to thejefaturawe were informed that he was still taking his siesta, so in spite of the sun we decided to look about the apparently deserted town.
We stopped at another inn, where there were more signs of recent "regeneration"—blood-stained walls, mirrors broken, a billiard-table partly chopped up, anda piano of the "cottage" variety with its strings pulled out. Thepropietarioshowed us around sadly, but with a note of pride. His house was, for the moment, the "show-place" of the town. He pointed out a large, carefully preserved blood-spot on the floor, and kept repeatingmuy triste—but all the same there was a light in his eye.
The barracks, with a large detachment of Federal troops, and the near-by church have great pieces chipped off by guns, and are embroidered by pepperings of rifle-fire.
Don Porfirio nearly lost his life on his way to Don Alejandro de Gyvès' (Aunt L.'s French friend, when she first came down here; he was consul, you remember, and they were thecivilisésof the place). The Juchitecos tried to kill Diaz and his priest-friend, Fray Mauricio, near his house, and it was the village leader of that epoch who put his brother Felix to death. They seem to be consistent and persistent fighters, these Juchitecos, given over to libations, always fighting with somebody, but best enjoying it in their own bailiwick.
The damages caused by the ambitions of the late Che Gómez were amply testified to. A French merchant, Señor Rome, whom Aunt L. saw about some business, had had his home in the environs sacked, and his bride had escaped with difficulty into the hills, her beloved trousseau and household linen, brought from Paris, of course, being destroyed or stolen.
January 12th, 9 a.m.
We were up with the dawn, expecting to start for Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz at six o'clock, taking the train that I had arrived on at 5.30. But this is one of the mornings when it won't get here till after nine o'clock.
A hot, fierce, sandy gale is blowing, and every doorand window in the house is rattling. We are just going to have a second breakfast, before starting out. The Chinese cook does very well, but when he was talking with his assistant this morning under my window, it sounded like the chopping of hash, literally, a conversation of short sounds and shorter stops.
Some fresh cocoanuts were brought in, and we have each had a glassful of the milky beverage. I can imagine how delicious it would be, come upon suddenly in the desert; but sitting at a table with a servant to pour it out, I was a little disappointed. I innocently came down in a hat for the journey, but it was impossible to keep it on, even sitting on the veranda. These winds, it appears, blow whenever they feel like it, from October till May.
Now we are waiting, Aunt L. in white, with a long blue chiffon veil, and I in blue, with a white veil. I fancy we would present a picturesque sight to the proper eyes.
January 13th, 7.30 a.m.
At last, yesterday, the train came, and, clutching at our veils, we were blown into it, and after another unexplained delay started off in an American-built car like our ordinary ones. Its name was "Quincy"! In the old days, Aunt L. went everywhere on horseback. We passed various little wind-swept villages. Jordan was the name of one of them, seeming, in the sandy, New-Testament-looking spot, just the right name. Two beautiful Tehuantepec women got into the train there, kindly sitting near us. I was fascinated by their clothes, and much more interested in them than they were in us.
The unfamiliar cadence of the Zapoteca gave them a complete touch of foreignness. One of them wore a beautiful, strange, complicated head-dress of stiff pleated and ruffled lace, which, I later discovered, does not at allinterfere with the carrying on their heads of the large, shallow, brightly painted gourds. Her skirts were long and deeply flounced, but looped up at the waist, just a tucking in of the lower hem of the flounce, with the rest of the stuff flowing away in a most lovely line. The other woman had on a beautiful necklace of irregular-shaped gold coins, and with her flashing teeth and dark eyes, and a brilliant, low-cut, full jacket, with a yellow handkerchief twisted turbanwise around her head, made a picture I could not take my eyes from. I felt as colorless as a shadow, and I told Aunt L. she looked like a blue-and-gray Copenhagen vase strayed into a Moorish room.
Just before getting into Tehuantepec we came upon a beautiful grove of cocoanut-palms, high and graceful, above the rest of the vegetation, and the little nestling huts and houses. All about are jungles containing strange creeping things, and strange fevers and kindred creeping ills.
As the train passed slowly down the principal street, it seemed to me I looked out on a race of queens, tall, stately, with their lovely costumes. The men seemed undersized and sort of "incidental" in the landscape, but those beautiful women walking up and down their sandy streets were a revelation. Aunt L. says they possess not only the beauty, but the brains of the race. Former generations of Tehuantepec men, fitter mates for these queens than the specimens I saw, were mostly killed off in the various wars of "independence," and I understand the population is kept up by fortuitous but willing males from other places.
Everything was color; gorgeous splashes of yellow and black, and red and orange and blue against the shifting, sandy streets. A picturesque, creamyPalacio Municipalfaces the plaza, and there were manychurches—mostly showing earthquake vicissitudes. An old fortress, once the headquarters of Diaz, gives a last suggestive note to the whole.
Glorious memories of Don Porfirio hang all over this part of the world, where he is adored and mourned. I must say Madero's face looked positively childish in thejefaturaat Juchitan, as it confronted the stern, clever visage of the great Indian. Even the cheap, highly colored lithograph could not do away with his look of distinction and power. He was, in his young days, military governor of Tehuantepec, and at one timejefe político. A French savant and traveler, l'Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, remembering him then, said he was the most perfect type he had ever seen, and what he imagined the kingly hero Cuauhtemoc to have been.
When we got out of the train at Salina Cruz, a whirl-wind caught us and blew us down the platform. I saw very little of the town on the way to the British Consulate, where we were to lunch, as I was bent double by the wind and blinded by the sand.
Mr. Buchanan and his wife were waiting to receive us. Mr. B.'s kind but shrewd blue eyes, altruistic brow, and welcoming hand-clasp show him at first sight to be what Aunt L. says he is, "pure gold." She has found him through years the best of friends and wisest of advisers. The consulate is on one of the sandy ridges that the town seems largely composed of, and Mrs. Buchanan has arranged it with taste and comfort after our ideas, with books and flowers and easy-chairs. But one look from the high bow window and you know at once where you are, with irrepressible cacti and palm-trees peeking in at you.
I tried sitting on the sheltered side of the veranda for a few minutes while waiting for lunch, that my eyes might "receive" the Pacific, but I was gladto go in-doors again. Mr. B. says the wind blows that way six or seven months in the year. Yesterday was one of its "best."
Our consul, Mr. Haskell, and his wife came in later to tea. Their house is on another sand-ridge. After a last pleasant chat about our affairs, their affairs, and Mexican affairs we departed for our train in a great darkness that the stars made no impression on, the wind still tearing down the sandy streets. I was sorry not to visit the breakwaters—rompeolas, they call them—but would probably have been blown overboard.
From the veranda I could see ships that had come from Morning Lands, riding at anchor, and later the sun went down in quiet majesty over the great, flat waters of the Pacific. I was so near the Atlantic that I thought of Humboldt's expression of "tearing the Isthmus apart, as the pillars of Hercules had been torn in some great act of nature," and Revillagigedo's[29]dream of a canal joining the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Mr. Buchanan said the first authentic mention of the Isthmus was in a conversation between Montezuma and Cortés, as to the source of the quantities of gold the Spaniards saw. Cortés, who was of an inquiring turn of mind at any mention of the shining stuff, sent Pizarro, and then Diego de Ordaz (he who tried to ascend Popocatepetl, and got a volcano added to his crest), to investigate, coming here himself after the rebuilding of Mexico City,en routeto Honduras. He received a grant of the whole territory round about—"Las Marquesadas," as they are still called, after his title,Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca(Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca).
This morning there is still a great rattling of the windows and the doors, but not a sign of gnat or mosquito. I must arise and further investigate isthmian life. Thehuacamaiain the fig-tree has been making himself heard since dawn. I knew that if I did not tell you of Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz now, you would never hear, and I think what those names have meant to you during the years. It's all a memory of drifting sands, women as straight as their own palm-trees, slim, naked boys, fierce wind, and, in the harbor, the great port works, built by foreign energy and capital.
January 14th.
Going up, up, with a ringing in my ears out of the "blazing tropics" into the Tierra Templada. I am traveling with a parrot in a cage, and a nondescript little animal called, I think, atajon, in a box with slats! After a very cursory survey last night, it seemed to belong to the 'coon family. I (who wish all animals well, but not too near) dimly apprehend the Mérida family on the "Ward Line" traveling with their parrot, when I consider that I was put onto the Pullman last night in a thick, inky, tropical darkness, with a parrot in a cage, and atajonin a box with slats. The amiable colored porter is looking after them in the baggage-car, and the back veranda with the oleanders, beyond the dining-room, is their ultimate destination. I say nothing of the parting; Aunt L. has promised to come soon.
The glorious Pico de Orizaba has just shown its lovely white head between two dissolving blue ridges. Last night I rereadLe Journal d'Amiel, which, withMonsieur Le Coq, I picked up as I was leaving the house. As up-to-date in the jungle as anything would be.
Gathering clouds—"Tajada" the common disease of republics—Reception at Chapultepec—Madero in optimistic mood—His views of Mexico's liabilities to America
January 17th.
I have not written since my word in the train. Too busy taking up daily threads, and there have been various dinings and lunchings out. On my return I found yours saying that another yellow-stamped instalment of theArabian Nights Entertainmenthad come in on your breakfast-tray. Just put Mexicans instead of Persians, or whatever they were, intrigues for power in a Latin-American republic, instead of the intricacies of Haroun-al-Raschid and hiscalifat, change your longitude, and you are "Orientée" as exactly as the pyramids!
January 19th.(My brother's birthday).
To-night I am thinking of Elliott,[30]and, as so often,beforehis days of physical and spiritual anguish, of the beautiful brow with its lines of thought, and the straight limbs as he moved freely among the other sons of men. But however dear in his activities, where pride was a factor, he is infinitely dearer to me now, stretched, broken, while others divide his garments. I ask myself to-night at this seventh turning of the years of pain, what I have not asked him. Has he drunk the chalice, or is he still putting it away?
His mind is naturally occupied with intellectual equations. He as naturally rejects the mystical; there is nothing "vicarious" to him. Life is only what rationally and definitely is to be discovered by each one, no possible doing of another's work. I remember quoting to him once,à proposof destinies and the end of the ends: "Ego sum alpha et omega, principium et finis," and he answered, "Each one is his own alpha and omega."
I know little, after all, of his spiritual life. His intellectual life I can read like any fine book, the technicalities of a trained mind superior to mine, inspiringly surmised, but not understood. He is notanima naturaliter christiana, but all the same, he must hang in his body on the cross of Christ crucified, and his only hope is in acceptance of it, along the lines of redemption, cut off as he is from the exercise of his splendid natural gifts. Results for him mean the hunting out of definite, secret combinations, in definite, scientific areas, and his mind is speculative only in an intellectual sense.
I shall, perhaps, never know how far the "Crucified" has convinced him, but to-night, in thinking of him,sitiocomes again and again to me. He has been so thirsty for the employment of his gifts, whose value he knows, in a clear, common-sense way, as he also knows what has not been given him, and the suppression of that gift of industry seems sometimes to me the most painful nail that holds him. Don't let what I have written make you unhappy. Mother-wounds bleed and burn so easily.
In this quiet, beauteous night, with thepatioholding a thick, silver moonlight spilling over the square, dark roof, this gorgeous Indian world in strange unrest about me, and I myself far enough away to see, I can speak. Show him this some time when he is healed. What an adoring sister thought cannot hurt. I unite myselfwith the millions who have had their loved ones hanging on the cross, who have heard theirsitio. But as the emotions of each are measured by their personal experience, this, my brother's thirst, moves me more deeply than even that of sacramental martyrs, who gave willingly, where he gives resistingly. "And everywhere I see a cross where sons of men give up their lives." ...
January 20th.
Things are bubbling up, boiling, geyser-like, and the public in a fair way to get scalded. Yesterday a bill was passed through Congress suspending the constitutional guarantees in various of the near-by states, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Vera Cruz, and others.
It would seem that all of Mr. Madero's chickens are coming home to roost, and demands for the cutting up of the Mexican cake sound from all sides. But what was easy for Madero to promise in the first passion for the regeneration of "his" people is proving not only impractical, but impossible. What's the use, anyway, of giving waterless lands to Indians without farming implements, whose only way of irrigating would be prayers for moisture to pre- or post-Cortésian gods? Let those who have been divested of their illusions by hard facts govern the state,Isay.