My bed facing the open window on the river, where the sun was rising, waked me at five. I got up stiffly and dressed at once. Found my host on the verandah and had a little conversation with him. He was a Swiss, and we talked French. Round his neck was a great scar. I learned afterwards that he had been hung by order of Carranzaand was cut down just in time before he could die. We breakfasted at six and our host drove us to the railway station, three kilometres away, where we caught the 6:30 train full of workingmen; among whom in appearance we seemed quite in keeping. Dick was rather sleepy and said he felt sick, but otherwise showed no signs of the strain of the night before. He may have been carried at most two kilometers, for the rest of 18 he had walked it gallantly, and (after the sun had gone down) uncomplainingly. His powers of endurance before his sixth birthday made me extremely proud, and very hopeful of him.
Wednesday, August 17, 1921.
Got up at 5:30 A. M. Waked Louise and Dick, breakfasted at 6:15 and then proceeded in a car to catch the seven o’clock train. We started a little late and half way the car stopped in a perfectly deserted street. The panic and agitation in which I finally arrived at the station, to catch the only Mexico City express of the day is indescribable. My destination was not Mexico, but Micos, about ten hours away where I had contrived (as I planned) to camp by the falls. All the camp gear had gone on ahead, but waiting for me at the seven o’clock train were my four friends. Each of them director, superintendent, or some occupation of the sort in a Tampico firm. One an Irishman,one a Scotchman, one a Canadian and the other a Mexican. They were arranging for me, and organizing my camp, and joining it for a holiday. They greeted me at the station by the calming assurance that although it was seven o’clock, the train would not leave for an hour. As a matter of fact it did not start for two hours and a half. I had gotten up at five to catch a train that left at 9:30. Meanwhile we were turned out of our compartment while it was hermetically sealed and fumigated—the enforced legislation for every train from a bubonic plague district. Dick walked around in the pouring rain with a friend and bought a baby parrot without a cage. The flies were such as Tampico alone can boast. When we did start, the engine broke down six miles out. It was nightfall when we reached Micos, a primitive little country station, in the middle of a village street. Here we were met by one who had gone ahead to select our camp. He said he had not had time to get things fixed, and that meanwhile he was renting for us a house in the village. Leaving the others to go to the house I walked back along the railway line with the Irishman to view the falls, and select a site. It was not easy, as the bank goes sheer down from the railway to the falls and sheer up from the falls to the mountain top, both sides densely covered with virgin vegetation. In this place there are no roads, peasants load theirdonkeys and mules and drive them along the single file tracks. There are no churches. The Spaniards never penetrated into this wilderness, the blood of the people is pure undiluted Indian. The railway has brought to them whatever they know of civilization. At the top of a stony track leading down to the valley, two natives, man and wife, bade us “Buenos Noches.” We asked them where they lived. They pointed way down below to a thatched roof and in gallant native fashion “There isyourhouse” they said to us, assuring us that if we pitched our camp there, we could get eggs, fresh milk, a child for Dick to play with, and moreover a boat to ferry the river. We took some cigarettes from them and walked back, reaching our village house after nightfall. It stood on a bank above the railway. It was, of course, unfurnished. Three beds had been put in one room for Dick, Louise and myself. The walls were of dried mud, whitewashed. The floor was of wet mud into which the legs of the bed sank unevenly. Our mosquito nets hung from a transparent ceiling of bamboo through which one could see the thatch. The next room was full of beds for our friends and across a patio, that was like the yard of a pig pen, we walked on duck boards to the kitchen and dining room. I slept with my front door wide open, the moon streaming in, the largest cockroach I have ever seen on the wall, and an upturned cube boxnext to me with my clock and Margaret’s photograph. The conditions were so novel and interesting that one forgot the discomfort. Every man in the next room (there was an open doorway over which I hung a sheet for privacy) snored like two men each. The village dogs held concert in the night and woke up all the cocks. Two trains came in to the station whistling and the mountains re-echoed. The insects made an unceasing sound, as of machinery, and at five the next morning I got up.
Thursday, August 18, 1921.Micos.
The village consists of a main street, mud houses, thatched roofs and three ‘open’ stores, a ‘cake shop’ and a drinking house. At the store I bought leather sandals, straw hats, scarlet neckerchief, red fringed sash, loosely woven scarlet wool material by the yard and a six shooter. While thus absorbed an Indian fell through the doorway onto the floor, drunk. His face was pathetically imbecile. He pawed the air and emitted noises and grunts like a frightened animal. The Storekeeper picked him up and led him gently out just so far as the cake store, and he tumbled headlong into that doorway.
In the mire of the street stood two immovable oxen, a burro, dogs, chickens, pigs and tied up a door was a black shiney nosed big eyed gazelle, it had been lassoed and captured in the woods.
It was a great day. The villagers were at theirdoors watching the packing of our stuff onto 16 mules; beds, matresses, stove, suit cases, stores. One mule gave a tremendous heave with his back and started off at full gallop down the street, scattering his pack on his way. He was caught and a red handkerchief tied over his eyes, a noose tied round his upper lip, and pulled tight, and he was repacked.
Dick rode a thin burro with a Mexican saddle and stirrups that looked like tin cans, two Indian boys accompanied him: one to pull the burro and the other to push it. With the baby parrot under my arm I walked ahead of the cavalcade for two miles along the railway track. We expected a good deal of trouble, but only one mule fell over the embankment with a bed on his back, and had to be dragged up on the end of a rope by another. How they ever did the journey down the rocky footpath through the wood into the valley without mishap is a miracle. But they fetched up at the riverside in perfect order and were there unloaded, while a bridge was being built to enable the men to carry the stuff across the rapids. This took time, but two palm tree trunks eventually spanned the rapids to a small island, and from there a dugout ferried us across to the big island, which is our camp.
At eight o’clock I went to bed dead tired, my bed was next to the tent flap, tied back so that themoon could shine in upon me, and I could look out and see the fire-flies. I fell asleep to the sound of water falls that roar like a great mill wheel on either side of the island.
Sunday, August 21, 1921.At Camp.
What is the use of describing it?
I am never going to forget. It is mirror’d deep down into my soul, forever. And who else cares?
I am so happy and so completely at peace. It is less than a year since I went to Russia, and it has been the fullest year of my life. During that year I have hardly at all been alone, and I am very very tired.
Peace, (the most beautiful word in the English language) “the Peace that passeth all understanding” is mine at last.
When I die my Heaven will be like this. It will be warm and sunny, full of butterflies, flowers and water falling, water rushing and water pools that trickle. How I love water and the sound of it! I have found a little secluded place that I come to all alone. When I left the camp, crossing the river and the rapids, I walked half a mile and then I came to a wide shallow rivulet. Amidstream there is a tree and a big shady rock. I reach it by stepping stones. It is my castle. The stream tumbles from one pool into a lower one. The water is clear as crystal. I can see the shoal ofbig trout as they swim together against the current. There seems to be a myriad butterflies of every description. They hover quite near me, as though they had never seen a human, and so were unafraid. There is an irridescent one of sapphire blue as big as a bat. It is luminous in the sunlight, it dances around me tantalizingly like some great living jewel that I may not touch. I have heard of golden butterflies, but I thought it was an exaggeration of speech, but I have found one here. It settled on my foot and opened wide its wings, they seemed to have been cut out of gold tinsel and sewn together with an orange thread. On the branches of the tree over my head there are clumps of white orchids, and a pair of wild green parrots shriek noisily in their flight. I have loved spring days in England, with their mist of bluebells in the woods, and brimstone butterflies the color of the primroses, but this seasonless country, that has never known frost, this Heaven of eternal Sunshine and riot of beauty, is almost too wonderful to enjoy. It is as if one had picked all the best things from every corner of the Earth and put them here, and made a composition picture.
Last night I came back by moonlight across the island among the sugar cane. In the distance the lights glimmered from our thatched roof beneath which, at the foot of the mountain, our tents are pitched. On one side of me were bamboo, palmtrees and tall feathery reeds and the moon caught the flat of the leaves and turned them to silver. I threw my arms out wide as though to embrace it all. I seemed not to be a mere stranger, a passerby. I, who have no sense of “home” suddenly felt that I “belonged.” My father had a ranch in Wyoming before I was born, and perhaps something hitherto untouched had awakened in me. I have no sense of possession. I do not desire to own. I know that these mountains are as completely mine as some man’s garden for which he has paid. I may climb the mountain, shoot, live, cut fuel, build a house, just as I may fish in the stream, build bridges over it, dam it, treat it in fact as though I had a title deed, but I do not feel that I own them so much as they own me. I belong here ... I do not belong to London, New York, Paris or Mexico City. I do not belong to people or to any social community. I belong to this garden that God has planted. This is not Mexico, it is just Arcady. It is not anywhere in particular, it is just a place “somewhere on God’s Earth.” I may live here all my life if I please. I can afford to live here without ever doing another day’s work. I need make no further effort so long as I live. I need never worry about food, fuel, roof nor raiment. I need never again see the misery of civilization, the poverty, the crime, the sordidness, the ugliness. I need never hear of wars, andthe sufferings of humanity. I have strayed into a garden of Peace.
But Vasconselos said the truth: if humans are content, they are no better than the brutes, if they have imagination, they suffer always. And I know, that although I have found beauty and my dreams have been outdreamed, and although I have free choice, my decision will not keep me here. I know this may only be a rest by the wayside; that some day I must arise, strengthened, rested, and get back into the fray. I have an ambition, the task is set, I may not give up. This is self-indulgence. No one has a right to continue to live and leave no foot print. One may do some good, or one may do some harm, but onemustdo something in the world, or forfeit the right to live.
My children, what would they become, brought up “in Heaven?” It may not be. They have to pass through the maelstrom to become worthwhile.
But this is good, surpassing good, and my heart is full of a deep gratitude. Perhaps some day when the work is done, my soul may rest in “Peace.”
In Camp—Date unknown.
Our days pass, and our nights, and some nights are darker than others, otherwise they are all the same and no one of our days is less good than another.They vary only in the variety of our expeditions and every new place reveals a beauty equal to the first. This morning I allowed Dick to visit the secret place amidstream where I come to write. He took off his garment to bathe, and standing naked in the sun, on a rock above the waterfall, his body burnt brown, and, with his pet ant-eater round his neck, he looked the embodiment of Mowglie in Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” the boy who was suckled by the she-wolf, and grew up in the woods, and could speak the language of the animals.
Mowglie could look into the eyes of the Black Panther and make him blink and turn his head away. Mowglie defeated the Tiger, he led the wolves. Mowglie, the Man-cub, learned great wisdom and philosophy from the jungle. This new primæval life seems to have revealed something even to me.
At this moment lying full length in the sun on my rock, I am out of sight, and well out of sound of any human (Oh! No I am not! Here comes an Indian—he is going to cross the stream—he has not seen me—he stops to sharpen his knife on a stone—he has cut a hazel switch—he has crossed the stream—he is gone—)....
I lie here contemplatively, and find myself saying: “If I were a man!....” It is revealed to me that to be a man must be a wonderful accident ofbirth. To be the right kind of man is to be a king. Now to be a queen, one need not necessarily be the best kind of woman, and being a queen is not worth while anyway. Whereas to be a king means Power. “King by Divine Right.” That defines the finest type of man.
DICK SAILING HIS BATTLESHIP IN THE TURBULENT MEXICAN RIVER(Photograph by Clare Sheridan)
DICK SAILING HIS BATTLESHIP IN THE TURBULENT MEXICAN RIVER
(Photograph by Clare Sheridan)
If I were a man: I mean young, sound of mind and limb, body well conditioned and muscled—indefatigable. Equipped mentally with a moral code and a sense of honor, and fearless. I would feel that I could hold my own with anyone in the world. That I would not be unfairly matched with any other physical force. That in the fight, in play, in competition, I had but to exert my capacity to the utmost to be sure of the issue. Though I were unendowed I would own the world.
If I were a man, I would awake in the morning, stretch my limbs and say: “Thank God!” When I was a girl, I wished I were a boy, and a man (I have never forgotten, though I was very young) said to me: “As wishing won’t change you, you had better try to become the best kind of woman,” but at best, what is to be a woman?
My short hair and man’s garb have temporarily added an aggressive personality to my six foot stature and my strength. But, at a turn in the road I am likely to meet a physical strength greater than my own, which in conflict wouldutterly defeat me. The world is not mine, it is another’s to whom I am obliged to entrust myself. I am a childbearer, and of what worth are my physical powers of endurance?
I am a woman; I am vain, jealous, changeable, dependant, and ever must remain so.
Oh God! I pray, in my next incarnation, make me the best kind of man, and meanwhile as a compensation give me the consolation of having made one.
Mexico.In Camp.
I have lost all track of days and dates. I get no papers, I receive no letters, no one knows where I am, I hardly can locate myself.
It is a rough primitive life, and the situation necessitating a long walk on a hilly stony track with rivers to cross has tested the material of my four friends.
The Scotchman never came at all, we left him in the village when we came to camp. He was invaluable in organizing our needs and dispatching the mule train, but there was no cold beer in these regions and he went back to Tampico.
The Mexican started with us, but turned back half way.
The Irishman is a man of affairs, he comes and goes—comes whenever he can snatch a spare few days.
The Canadian has been able to remain.
Dick calls it “home”—and I suppose for him it is the nearest thing approaching a “home” that he has had since we left England, or anyway New York. For me also it has somewhat of a home feeling. It is so primitive, so simple, so poetic. One comes to it with an appreciation that is very nearly love.
How little one needs, if the climate is kind, a house with walls is no longer a necessity, nor is fuel. All one needs is a roof to shade one from sun and rain, and for furniture just books, heaps and heaps of books. One wants all the books one has longed for time to read, and all the books one loves that one dreams of re-reading.
Our kind hosts, the man and wife Mexican peons, are allowing us to share their roof. It is a high thatch of palm leaves, it might be an open barn or hayrick. And under this roof, we have pitched our tent. At one end there is a room walled off transparently with battens like a birdcage, this is lent to us for a storeroom and the Japanese cook and his wife sleep in it.
Behind a screen of wattles, on a plank, sleep the owners of the roof. I wonder if they will live all their lives in this place to die some day on the plank bed behind the wattle screen. They are a charming couple, so happy and devoted. He makes money by growing some sugar cane on the island, and afew feet away from our thatched barn is another, under it a primitive press in which they squeeze the juice out of the cane. Under that roof another tent is pitched, and there the men sleep. I don’t know who they all are, but they come and go, and some remain—they are all workers in the Tampico firm.
Our island camp is like a miniature United States, composed of a variety of nationalities, but all submerged into a family unionism.
The Irishman is the real Commandant, but he is obliged to be away most of the time. He sends in his absence members of his firm, those who need a rest or a holiday, and are a protective force.
These men are of varying types, most of them simple hardworking people whose literary tastes run no further than detective stories and who do not deeply think nor discuss the world’s problems! They have a certain kind of humor which usually consists of teasing the cook, or telling stories about getting drunk. The only cultured one among them is the Irishman, who reads Schopenhauer and Ibsen.
He has just arrived for two days. This morning we walked down to the foot of the island, crossed two rivers, by means of felled trees, and walked back along the mainland, expecting to be able to recross the river opposite the camp without going back the way we came. We had a pleasantand varied walk, half in the water to our knees—so that my top boots became like water bottles—and then to our waists, all to no purpose, the river was unfordable. Eventually being hot and weary we plunged in up to our necks.
It is a lovely climate that enables one to do these things, which in England would produce pneumonia. Finally in desperation at not accomplishing our purpose, we resolutely stepped out, into the shallowest of the rapids to effect our crossing. I watched the man walking rather insecurely, trying the riverbed ahead of me; at each footmove one’s leg with great difficulty withstood the current. We seemed to be nearly over the worst, when I had a sensation of wavering, I put out my hand, he grabbed it, and together we were carried off our feet and rushed like tumbling logs down-stream. Everything seemed dark and chaotic. I was not conscious of my head being under water. The only thing that impressed me was our utter helplessness and the futility of his strong grasp. Very clearly I said to myself “This is the end.” It must come some day, somehow, and this was the day and this was the way. I wondered how long it would take and if it would hurt.
Then in the muddle when one seemed to be turning over and round, any sort of way, a mere bundle of rubbish, I came on top, and saw the river bank quite close—I snatched at grass, at roots, all failed,and then something held—“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” I shouted in triumph, and when we regained our feet, and stood waist deep, spluttering we looked at one another, without a word, in great surprise, and laughed, but my laughter was very nearly tears.
We triumphed in the end, I would not return the way we came, so from the mainland opposite our camp, the Irishman got across hand over hand, on a wire hawser that spanned the river. It used to serve the ferry which now lies wrecked and derelict half a mile down-stream; once across he improvised a boat, out of a big wooden box and came across to fetch me.
We were rather silent at supper; there seemed some food for thought.
It is a beautiful but awesome thing, this river. Higher up just around the bend of the mountain it cascades for half a mile: thunderous and forceful. It approaches our island, almost like a flood, diverting into varying streams, creating islands, engulfing trees, there is not a sight of it that does not contain a waterfall and a fast current that pours over rapids. Everywhere there are waterfalls, usually six at a time from every direction. Dick says all the rivers in the world have joined us here. It is an hypnotic, wondrous, fearful thing. Sometimes I hate it, always I fear it, several times it has tried to snatch Dick from me.Always I think it wants to take Dick, and he loves it so, is always in it, fearlessly going out of his depth, by hanging on the swiftly floating logs.
The river has the spirit of a passionate irresponsible creature that knows no laws.
It thunders and foams, roars and rages, laughs, is uncontrollable and wild one minute, the next, gentle as a little child, a thing of moods, untameable. There are people with the spirit of the river. They are genius’s or revolutionaries. Some of them are mad.... I hate, I love, I admire, I fear the river.
September, 1921.In Camp.
He left today (the Irishman I mean); I walked with him to Micos station. The train was due at 7 a.m. by starting at 9:30 a.m. he only had 3 hours to wait. (Such are the Mexican trains). It was a hot long climb, I had not been back to the village since I left it. When we got there we found that it was Sunday.
Instead of the little peaceful half asleep village I had known, it was thronged with people, the stores were doing a roaring trade. The meat-sellers had it hanging in streamers from a pole, the fruit-sellers had them on a handkerchief in the mud. Everyone from the neighboring country had come to town. The women looked at me pityingly, their men gave them dresses and shoesand shawls but I, poor thing, my man gave me only his old clothes and boots to wear.
The most successful seller was the fellow who had a lump of ice and sold colored drinks. I drank and drank, my man gave me that unstintingly! he gave me colored drinks, a penknife, twelve handkerchiefs, and a straw hat—it was not ungenerous!
While thus engaged a cadaverous unshaved grey-haired man in a blue shirt, split shoes, and one large iron spur, introduced himself. “It isn’t often one finds Americans here, let me shake your hand.” He said he was American, had lived here many years, on a ranch, and that he was a Doctor. Three finger nails were missing from the right hand. He wore spectacles but had a distant look as if he saw not what he saw. A living Rip van Winkle. “Going to Tampico? a three days trip”—he said. “Three days? you mean ten hours.” “Three days” he repeated—“on a good horse”—so!—the train was not for him.
“The train breaks down” he said contemptuously, as though anyone would entrust themselves to a train who had a good horse. He limped away without another word. We crossed the street to another store and a young man with an American accent waylaid us “Pardon me is your party complete? a white man’s body lies drowned a short way up the river”—he said it in a tone ofperfect detachment and indifference. The body was there and must be identified. We hesitated a moment, looked round at our party, there were three or four odd members of our camp—we were complete.
Further down the village street a horse was lying with its four feet tied together and two men operating on its mouth with a big carving knife. The horse groaned and sniffed and sighed and blood flowed.
Approaching us on all fours was a child of five or six. Like a quadruped it walked, a cursed thing, doomed from birth. It looked at us cross-eyed, and its face was the face of a little wild animal.
We did not go to see the corpse, the others went laughing and whistling, cracking grim jokes,—the law in Mexico is that no body may be removed from the water until identified.
They told us on their return, that it had been in the water two weeks, it was floating on its stomach, fishes had eaten the face, vultures were hovering about the back. “Someone drowned”—and that’s all that mattered, but on a Sunday morning how diverting for the village!
September, 1921.In Camp—Mexico.
Last week we were joined by an Anglo-French-Dutch-American born in Chicago—a man with aclose cropped head looking like a convict; he was reputed an anarchist and a dynamiter. He did not fit in with the spirit of our camp. He said of me that I was a poor Socialist, too imperious in tone. I said of him that he was a poor Anarchist, too autocratic. He talked to the servants like dogs, and to his equals as subordinates. Within 15 minutes of his arrival, the camp was simmering with indignation.
Pedro, the lad of the village, who offered his services and was taken as waiter, and who always smiles when asked for anything, opened wide his black eyes, and looked wonderingly at this strange new personality.
The Jap cook—who shoots wild parrots with a revolver, and whose Mexican girl wife spends her time feeding the small wild birds that her husband has caged—were both on the verge of a general strike. As a result of which the A. F. D. American said he would “chuck the Jap into the river” and looked as if he meant it.
We have permanently attached to us two half-Mexican Texas boys—they wear sloppy clothes, red knotted handkerchiefs round their necks, and loud blue check shirts. One of them with black hair standing up on end and a three days’ growth on his chin, looks like the most dangerous type of Apache. I overheard these two by the light of a lanthorne discussing the newly arisen situation.They were not going to accept any orders from one their equal. “He may have been in the firm 20 years, and he trades on it but that does not make us his subordinates”—they argued what should be done: not fight him with fists they agreed, as he had done some quite shining light boxing in his day—“we will get him into the river!”—Here I interfered, I assured them they were here to take care of me, and there must be no tragedies and no rows. I left them when they had sworn to keep the peace.
The worst thing the A. F. D. American had against me was that I offered him the eggs after General Barragan had tasted them. General Barragan is my parrot. So beautiful, so spoiled. He has a passion for poached eggs, and always comes onto the table at breakfast. Who could mind eating out of the dish after General Barragan? But whatever I did was wrong, in the unrelenting eyes of the A. F. D. American. So I got the Canadian, who is senior to him, to send him back as soon as possible to Tampico on some pretext of an errand. We breathed more freely when he was gone.
The Swede who took his place was sent, I think, as a practical joke, for the poor man could be of no value to us and he was miserable in a life that was perfectly alien to him. A rather thin, chetif man; he hated the effort of the long rough walkto get here. Hated the tent, the bugs, the heat, washing in the river, the absence of movies and restaurants.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked him—Oh yes, he agreed it was beautiful. “Peaceful?” Oh yes, it was peaceful. “Restful?” Yes, it was restful, but he was not in search of beauty, peace or rest, and he left us at his earliest opportunity.
One night, however, we broke the spell. There was neither rest nor peace. We gave a dance!
In a way it was unpremeditated, and grew by itself, as those things sometimes do. It began by engaging two musicians, a violinist and a mandolin player and by inviting the milkman’s daughter and two nieces.
The news spread like wildfire, and we who imagined we were far from human habitations, suddenly found ourselves with about 50 men on our hands! They appeared at dusk from every direction. They hailed the ferry on both sides of the mainland, they arrived all smartened up, and by the light of our lanterns and our few colored paper lights, we saw rows of white bloused Indians in their best hats. Our dance floor had been especially arranged for the occasion—all the weeds and creeping water melon and small palms had been grubbed; the earth levelled and quite a big space in between the two barns was rolled and ready. Four felled tree trunks were the seats thatoutlined it—and on these, the Indians sat in rows, like birds contemplatively.
The arrival on the dance ground of the four specially invited women was full of formal ceremony. They were preceded by the wife of our landlord and by the cook’s wife—one behind the other, in silence they walked. At sight of them the row of men on the nearest tree rose and fled as one man, and distributed themselves elsewhere like magic, leaving the seat to the women, who sat on it all in a solemn row.
When the music tuned up, the bravest men walked across the ground, selected their partners with a bow and a fine sweep of Mexican sombrero, and before dancing they paraded round and round the ground two by two. They never smiled. The women kept their heads bowed and their eyes glued to the ground. When spoken to they did not answer,—their whole attitude was maddeningly submissive and full of humility.
When they danced it was a very fast two step, and the man held his girl at a very respectful distance. She did not appear to lean on him or touch him. They also danced a little country dance, monotonous and dull, of little shifting steps in lines opposite one another. I danced once with my landlord, and the rest of the time with the Texas “Apache” boy. I am told the evening was a success. It looked to me dull and sad in the extreme.One hoped up to the last moment that the party would cheer up and get merry, but even rum served all round did not stimulate them. I am told the Indians are like that. Stoically melancholy. Such an evening compares curiously with the same as it would be in Italy, Spain or Russia—there is hardly a country one can think where the native is not stirred by national dances and music. The men as well as the women looked rather apathetic and passive and stupid—out of the lot I noticed only one man who had individuality, stature and fine features. He had the appearance of a stage bandit and assurance of manner that set him conspicuously apart from the others. He wore high boots and immaculate white linen coat and a large revolver in a holster on his belt. I asked about him—he kept a store some way down the river.
The great mystery was: where did these people all come from? Not from Micos, the village afar off—but just from plain thatched huts “not half as fine as ours!” among the woods and hillside.
The supper we provided in haste from our tinned store was greatly appreciated. Hands dived into the apricot or sardine tin as their choice selected—and when they left hours later, volleys were fired from the mainland, which, as I had gone to bed and was fast asleep, woke me up with a bewildering start.
September, 1921.In Camp. Mexico.
The strange Anglo-French-Dutch-American anarchist whom we sent, sullen and protesting from our camp, must have cursed us, as he went. He is the seventh child of a seventh child, and what he knows—he knows.
I think he cursed the Canadian, who sent him back. Cursed me for getting him sent. Cursed Dick for being mine. The very next day after his departure the Canadian had fever, and a temperature of 104. Dick had a suppurating bloodshot eye and could not see, and I went to bed with some mysterious poisoning which may be of an insect or of a weed, but cannot be identified.
That was seven days ago. I am still in bed, suffering as if I had been scalded. A cradle over me, of reeds, protects me from the unbearable touch even of the sheet.
The Canadian for whose life we feared at one moment, wanders about, still with a high temperature, lies restlessly on the river bank, gasping for air and praying for ice.
Dick is able to go out today, but with a bandage. It is a dreadful anti-climax, this last week of our camping days. For a month everything has been so perfect. One had not reckoned on the snake in Paradise.
A doctor came 20 kilometers on mule-back. Hestayed the night and doctored us all, but without any apparent result.
I feel as though I were on fire, and I am nearly mad. At first I could drag myself to the river and plunge in and get temporary relief, but for two days now the river has been in flood; muddy, opaque, and raging; two nights of thunder-storms achieved this result. Storms, which relieved for me the endless monotony of a sleepless night.
I have my bed close up to the open tent flap, and I could see the land lit up by lightning flashes that lasted sometimes a minute at a time. The thunder was stupendous; if it could have been linked to music it would have been super-Wagnerian; it rethundered from mountain-side to mountain-side, followed by a death-like lull.
One imagined all was over. Then with dramatic suddenness—an earth-shaking crash, as if God in a temper had slammed His door. This drama took about three hours from the night, and the river has risen yet another foot.
September 9, 1921.In Camp. Mexico.
The cycle has come round. Again it is my birthday, just a year ago I bought my ticket for Russia.
Dick managed somehow to get a bunch of gigantic mauve convolvulous flowers that were growing up a palmtree. He brought them to mewith great sentiment, so my birthday was, after all, a birthday!
Tonight is the third night of thunder storms (I am writing by torch light in the midst of it).
After nights of pain and sleeplessness one begins to think stupid things: I feel as if this beautiful valley were a valley of death; I have thought for sometime that the valley meant to keep me. Even the way I came to it was strange and uncanny—almost called to it from the train window. It cast a spell on me then, a spell strong enough to enforce my return.
Ever since I came it has been suggested to me that I stay forever, why go away?
The suggestion first came from man. Then the beauty of the place set itself to lure me. Then the river tried to catch me. It has tried to catch Dick too. Having slipped through that, I am now poisoned unmercifully. I shall get over that but then there’s still the river, and every storm makes the water rise, and the strong current grows swifter. In the end I can only leave the island by ferry, and the river is getting more and more impassable. After a month of Paradise weather suddenly these storms, on purpose to stop me going. I must go in four days. I will be well enough to go in four days. I will go in four days whether I am well enough or not ... but, in the end there’s the river to cross.
I might have known it was uncanny, this beauty. This enticing stillness, this holiness of peace—it is a trap. It is a valley of death. It is full of spirits and mysteries. I must get out—I am mad. No, I am not mad, I am sick.
September 11.In Camp. Mexico.
The Irishman returned this evening for the week-end, his errand being to help us start on our way on Tuesday next. His train was late—he arrived just before daylight faded. I heard them say, “He has some one with him, who can it be...?” It was the Swede again, poor man having been prevailed upon to return.
Our Mexican “Apache” went across to fetch them. Suddenly I heard screams and shouts, “They’re in—they’re in!” I leaped out of my sick bed, flung on a dressing gown and went outside the tent and saw two men in the water making for the bank. It was the Irishman saving the terrified Swede.
The current had been too strong and the Texas boy was frantically trying to hold the swamping boat to the wire hawser that spanned the river, to save it from being lost. But he could not hold, and in another moment he and it were floating rapidly amid-stream, heading for the rapids.
It was not until afterwards that I learned he could not swim. No one has yet understood whyhe was not drowned. He went over the falls and was engulfed underneath the capsized boat. The river divides here into two currents. By mercy of Providence the boat was swept along by the current that runs into shore instead of by the other, which would have carried him straight on down.
He came ashore having displayed great calm and courage. When his safety was realized the next problem was how to get the other two across the river, the terrified Swede could not swim, the Irishman had gone back to the mainland for him. They could come across without much difficulty and risk, half in, half out of the water hand over hand on the wire hawser. The Swede stood shivering on the bank, he would not contemplate it. The Irishman accomplished it, went back and forth three times to fetch him—two men from our side went across with ropes to help him. He was immovable. Rather would he return all the long hard weary way to Micos in the dark and take his chance of village hospitality, and catch a train for Tampico in the morning.
I think if I were a man I would rather drown, than admit before so many people that I was afraid to attempt what the others proved could be done with safety. After such a journey, to be so near home, to see the goal just across the way—to be so tired—so hungry and so wet, and not to makethe final effort to get there. Well—he went back.
The evening seemed to me a strange corroboration of my last night’s musings. The river rises, and it rises—and in four days time, I have to cross it by the ferry.
September 12.Mexico.
My fears were unwarranted: In the end, the river was kind and calm and let me pass—I said goodbye regretfully, lingeringly, even I have to admit tearfully.
I am quite sure I shall never return to the island that has been my world for a month.
It is a closed chapter, but a very definite chapter, and I have learnt many things. I have learnt that nature, with her camouflage garb of beauty, is merciless, cruel, pitiless and hostile. The unpolluted virgin forest contains poison and disease. Civilization which I have always scorned is fighting Nature all the time. The wonder is that anyone survives Nature. Cruelty is primitive, not decadent, as I used to believe.
Nevertheless, long after I have forgotten the hurt of Nature, I will remember a thousand beautiful things that are indelible.
I have been happy—on the whole tremendously happy. A happiness that is pure and abstract and did not depend on a human being.
But if I lived in this country I should weary ofthe seasonless sameness. There are things that the blood of my race would cry aloud for.
I should miss:—
—The turn of the leaf in Autumn.The frosty crispness of an early dawn.Twilight.My footprints in the dew.Pheasants fluttering to roost.Green beechbuds in the Spring.Mist of bluebells in a leafless wood.The robin’s song.A wood fire crackling.
—The turn of the leaf in Autumn.The frosty crispness of an early dawn.Twilight.My footprints in the dew.Pheasants fluttering to roost.Green beechbuds in the Spring.Mist of bluebells in a leafless wood.The robin’s song.A wood fire crackling.
And the pleasant sight of children in clean white pinafores on their way to school.
September 15, 1921.Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
Such an anti-climax—the Immigration people have refused us entrance to the U. S., because Dick had fever and sore eyes, which they say is “trachoma” described officially as “a dangerous, contagious disease.”
It nearly broke my heart to see my San Antonio train steam away, and us left in Mexico. We so counted on getting to a good hotel and a good doctor at San Antonio. Goodness knows when we will get out of this country. The Doctor says it will take time.
The Mexican Laredo Hotels are indescribable:no water, no food, no drains, floor covered with ants. We leave tonight for Monterey to await Dick’s recuperation.
We are so dirty, so worn out, so poisoned, so sore and wretched, such a Job’s company. That is what camping in Mexico means.
From this window, I see across the river the U. S. flag floating from dignified buildings. So near, so longed for. Heaven’s door closed.
It is a blow.
I feel lost, very homeless, very unloved, very unwanted.
September 17, 1921.Monterey, Mexico.
Of course Dick has not got trachoma—the doctor who has lived in Mexico 20 years recognized it at once as the most ordinary Mexican eye disease prevalent among children. I shall probably get it too. Meanwhile here we are, recuperating. The Hotel has at least got baths and hot and cold water. One is so reduced in spirits, so humbled, so unspoiled, one hardly dreams of higher bliss than this!
I had not even the energy to get into the Plaza and see the Centenary procession. Dick and I got up on to the deserted and neglected roof garden.
There one views the jagged mountain ranges by which the town is surrounded. It is really rather beautiful, but my spirit is across the border,I am existing here under protest; sullen, bored, inactive. I have an affection for the United States. I want to get back there.
Though they treat me like a steerage emigrant it makes no difference, and after all, what am I but an emigrant? A first class, specially reserved saloon, emigrant—but none the less a simple homeless emigrant, asking humbly for admittance.
The American industrial magnates here have been ever so kind and helpful. The American Smelting and Refining Works especially have done more for me than I can ever repay. Their practical and volunteered help and great thoughtfulness cannot be described nor appreciated in mere words. I rather suspect the channel through which this help was contrived, although his name has not been mentioned to me.
To while away our waiting moments, Dick and I, in company with a representative of the Baldwin Locomotive works, went to an amateur bull-fight in celebration of the Centenario. A feeble amateur affair it was. Nothing illustrative of Mexico bull-fighting. A bedraggled show, neither decorative, spectacular nor well fought. Mercifully the bull’s horns were sawn off at the tips so we were spared the sight of horses ripped up and trailing entrails. But I saw enough of blood and brutality. The audience cheered, laughed, sang, shouted. Almost it sounded like a baseball game. The more bloodflowed, the more they shouted with joy. The bulls were young ones, too young to be very fierce. They would not face the horses at all, and to enliven them, the bandolaria were charged with a time fuse and exploded like a firework with loud detonations, and burnt interiorly. For some time after the explosion, smoke emanated from the burnt, black, bleeding wound in the bull’s back. One animal in terror jumped the paling. The killing with the sword at the end was bungled every time. The sword missed the vital spot and was plunged up to the hilt in the brute’s shoulder, to be withdrawn, on the first opportunity, dripping with blood, and restruck again, and again. The mob cheering the while. When the last bull was killed the crowd flooded the ring, and the dead bull was mutilated by people who carried away bits of it as souvenirs. When the carcass had been finally dragged away on a rope by two mules and a pool of blood marked the spot, boys besieged it, dipped naked feet in it, seemed hypnotized and enthralled by the sight and touch of blood.
The horrible thing is that after the sixth bull had been tormented to death, one’s own feelings as regards the sight of blood were almost blunted. Frankly I longed to see a man killed for a change, instead of the bull. There was something ridiculous about these swaggering men with their long lances, astride horses that could hardly stand up, andthat had to be urged towards the bull by men who lashed them from behind. Chiefly the bull seemed to be pursued more than pursuing.
September 27, 1921.San Antonio, Texas.
My appeal to Washington met with a response that has been a revelation to me of American chivalry. We passed the border yesterday at dawn. I faced it with some trepidation, but we received the greatest courtesy and consideration. After reexamination of Dick (who is much better) they retracted the verdict of trachoma.
Six weeks accumulation of mail has met me here. My head is buzzing with taking it all in. The reading did not cheer me. From England, on all sides gloomy accounts politically and privately. They ask me to return to their gloom. Of course one has occasional moments of homesickness when the desire to see one’s own world is overwhelming. But one is happier away here. There is daylight instead of darkness. There is air to breath. There’s life. Everything and everyone is young, vital, active, hopeful.
We are resting for three or four days. The town has been badly dilapidated by the recent floods. One goes in to a shop to ask for something—and ever the same reply: “Our stock was washed away by the flood—we cannot supply you.” We drove out to the Breckenridge Park and beheld withamazement the impudent little stream that caused the havoc.
There is nothing to do in this semi-American, semi-Mexican town. But the hotel is pure American, full of standardized American luxury. It seems wonderful. I ring the bell of my bedroom and ask the room service to send me a jug—(no a pitcher I have to call it, else they don’t understand)—a pitcher of lemonade. I don’t always want the lemonade but I love to see it when it comes. The glass jug is a real object of beauty—a work of art. It is full of sliced oranges, carmine cherries, ice and green leaved herb. It is a riot of color, a delight to the eye. I might be drinking in a dream the sap of irridescent precious stones!
I am making use of those quiet days to try and tame Dick. At present he is a savage. He keeps on hitching his trousers up as one unaccustomed to wearing clothes. He exclaims: “Jesus!” when unduly stirred. He learnt it from the Texas boys in camp. He is not sure what he may or may not eat in his fingers and is very clumsy with his fork.
To counter-balance this he has acquired a useful knowledge of things. For instance one of his games it to lay pipe lines—oil of course. He knows something about locomotives, and what the very newest type is like inside as compared with the old (the Baldwin locomotive representative took a fancy to him). He has a smattering ofknowledge about gods and things you find in the earth. But he isn’t (at present) fit to tea out at five o’clock in a drawing room with any of my friends’ children.
October 3, 1921.Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles.
I asked how long it would take me to get to Los Angeles. They said three days. I had expected it to take ten hours. I cannot get used to distances in this country.
So this is Los Angeles!
For two months, at breakfast, lunch and dinner, Mr. Washington B. Vanderlip used to tell me, at Moscow, about Los Angeles. He would not listen to anything about Russia. The Russians would have been interested to hear about America, but he did not tell us about America, he always talked about Los Angeles. No matter how remotely conversation drifted onto other subjects, he always brought it back to Los Angeles. Finally, one day at breakfast, about the end of the 5th week, I suddenly realized I hated Los Angeles, and when he began again I put my hand on his: “stop—” I said, “and let me say something about London.” He could not bear it, and left the room. And now here I am, as I never expected to be, actually in Los Angeles.
Mr. Goldwyn, whom I met in New York, has telegraphed to his studio president, Mr. Lehr, andasked him to take care of me. Mr. Lehr has placed a car at my disposal all day and every day. He has introduced me to Gouverneur Morris and Rupert Hughes, but above all he has shown me a new world of which I was totally ignorant.
My initiation into the realm of film production has been a revelation to me. Possibly the great big world that pays its 25 cents to see a “movie” show, understands all about it, knows what it costs to produce, appreciates the toil and the thought and the plan involved. But I did not know. Truth to tell I have seen very few films besides “The Birth of a Nation” which taught me all I know of American History. I have seen bits of plays being photographed out in the open “on location” in film language, and I had gathered an idea that to be a film actress meant that one had rather a lovely time, doing spectacular things in beautiful and interesting surroundings. I saw their lovely photographs in magazines. I knew that some of them became millionaires, and that internationally known ones were mobbed through admiration if they walked abroad. An easy path to fame, I thought, if one had the right kind of face.
I really came to Los Angeles for no other reason than to have a glimpse of its amusing play-land, and it has been a revelation to me.
My surprise grew as I followed Mr. Lehr from building to building. There were departments ofdress-making and store-rooms full of lovely frocks and materials, some of the finest cloth of gold and brocades of Italian weaving. There were cassones containing real sables and other furs, tailors, hair-dressers, manicurists, carpenters and barbers were all part of the organization, and a canteen that recalled to my mind the Communist restaurants of Moscow, but where, unlike Moscow, I was able to get an ice cream soda at almost any time of the day! There were a bewilderment of storehouses, a sort of dreamland full of everything and anything that anyone could want in a hurry. Tin tacks and paste, Florentine shrines and Henry II chairs (so efficiently home-made as to perplex an antiquary!), canary birds in cages, Buddhas, invalid crutches and Persian carpets. Stores and stores full of what they called “props” which I would gladly have looted. As for the “Studios” there were three or more and they looked like the familiar “orangerie” of some old country estate, amid trim lawns, such as I thought only England could boast.
I was surprised that in the midst of this great industry there should have been found time and thought to spend on abstract decoration and beauty. The garden was full of flowers, and stone urns cast long shadows on the grass. Strange figures passed me by; a pirate, and then some Russian refugees and Russian children turned joyful somersaultsupon the grass. And then—the village! So quaint and old world, so exactly like our village at home. It enchanted me, I thought it would be a lovely place to live. I asked questions and they told me it was a sham. I could not believe this until I had walked all round it. Such a splendid solid sham it was, with such an unflinching front.
Then I began to wonder what was real and what was mere illusion. I seemed to go to Russia and then to China. I looked for my Romeo in Venice, and then felt sadly transplanted to an East Side slum. I looked at the ground to be sure I was walking on real grass, and up at the sky to see if I was still in the world, and then I pinched myself and it was still me.
But in this bewildering land of make-believe I found realities. I lingered and looked at some plays being staged in opposite parts of the studios. I marvelled at the patience and the effort that each small scene demanded. Patience and good temper on the part of the director, the camera men, the electricians, the carpenters—endless, endless patience, amazing good humor. I watched one small and—as it seemed to me—insignificant scene being repeated three or four times, and each time seemed to me exactly like the last, and each time, when it was over, the director said to the actress: “That’s good, dear, that’s very good!” But he explained to me that whereas the first “shot” was45 feet long, the last one was reduced to 25 feet and the important thing was condensation. I realized the necessity of co-operation between the workers, beginning with the author’s effort, and the “continuity writers,” right through the details to the end. What immense individual effort, and thought and work each film scene necessitates! Here too, as everywhere, are the heartbreaks, the dreams and ambitions, the triumphs, the disappointments, the never ending dramas and tragedies of human endeavor.