Part 7
I send you a copy of _Life_, with an editorial on Mexico. It remarks that, asking the Mexicans (13,000,000 being Indians) to elect a President by constitutional methods is “like asking the infant class to select a teacher.” There is no doubt that our ways don’t yet fit them. It’s like dressing sonny up in father’s clothes!
Another military train blown up. We were all hoping that the rumored shortage in dynamite among the rebels would make railway travel more attractive. Also stories of mutilations that cause one to shiver.
The reason some of the newspapers give for the almost groveling attitude of the Powers, and their acquiescence in our exclusive tutelage in Mexico, is that, according to international law, we will be responsible for the millions they are losing, and that, at the appointed hour, they intend to press Uncle Sam with the bill--the French, the English, the Germans, and the Spaniards.
Lunch to-day at the French Legation. Very pleasant, as always. I sat next to Corona, governor of the Federal District, a handsome, highly colored, dark-eyed man in the prime of life. His wife and daughter are in Paris. There is such a sense of the transitoriness of the officials in Mexico, here to-day and gone to-morrow, that intercourse seems very bootless; the sword of Damocles is not only hanging, but falling all the time. May was also there, as pessimistic and politically wrought up as usual.
My big _salon_ begins to look very home-like. I have some lovely lamps made of single, big, brass-and-silver church candlesticks, many exquisite Ravell photographs of this marvelous land finally fitted into good old frames. I had the smart young Mexican set in for bridge to-day. They were asked for five, which is a little early for them, and they didn’t begin to arrive until six. Lovely young women with beautiful jewels and dresses to set off their dark beauty; Señora Bernal, Señora Amor, Señora Corcuera, Duquesa de Huette (her husband is a handsome, polo-playing Spaniard), Señora Cervantes, Señora Riba--two or three of them _enceinte_, as is usual. They made the rooms quite radiant. The Mexican men are often put in the shade by their handsome wives, who would be lovely anywhere. The difficulties of bringing up young boys here are, for obvious reasons, so great that both Mexicans and foreigners send their sons away at an early age. The men we know have most of them been at school in England (Beaumont, or Stonyhurst); and their English is as good as ours--sometimes better. There is a sort of resigned irritation, veiled by perfect courtesy and unfailing amiability, on the part of these people toward our policy, which seems to them cruel, stupid, and unwarranted. I can only hope it will soon bear testimony to itself, for this close watching of the means to an end--if it be an end--is very wearing.
_December 8th._
A very nice letter came from Mr. Lind this morning. He says that Villa boasts he will eat his dinner at the Jockey Club, and he thinks there may be something in it, adding that if it had not been for the progress of the rebels he would have gone home. Chihuahua is in their hands now, and their military man is installed in the house formerly occupied by the Federal governor of the state.
Last night I had a long talk with Burnside and Ryan after dinner. There is a general expectancy of a _cuartelazo_ (revolution in the barracks) on the 10th. The troops are paid every ten days, and this will be the second pay-day to be passed over, unless Huerta can raise the necessary millions before that time. Many influences besides the United States are at work to make things uncertain; sedition is rife, and the work of the press-gang is so constant that the _peons_ do not dare to leave their homes or their holes to go to work.
Revolutions are not convenient, either for those who watch or for those who participate. The hegira of natives and foreigners continues. The Mexicans who can get away are, without doubt, thankful “there _is_ no place like home.”
I can’t agree that the foreign representatives could be, at any time, in real peril. Huerta, Carranza, Zapata, Villa, _or_ the intervening United States troops would see to it that not a diplomatic hair was touched. I can imagine us all tightly housed in the _Palacio_, with our infants and our jewels, the rest of our belongings gone forever. Dr. R. is for having every woman and child leave Mexico City, things have come to such a pass. I know _one_ who won’t go!
N. is thinking of telegraphing to Washington to ask to have a few marines sent up from one of the war-ships, _en civil_, of course. We could lodge them easily down-stairs. The losing of material things does not disturb me. When the bad day comes we will be occupied with life and honor. “_Todo por la patria_” (“all for one’s country”), which reminds me of the story of Huerta’s parting with a one-time Minister of War, and one of the various men supposed to have witnessed Madero’s death. (Another distinction is, that in six weeks’ office he was able to amass a fortune of some millions, quite a record.) The President told him, at a dinner, casually, that it might be better for his health to leave next day for Paris. He cried, “Impossible!” The upshot, of course, was that Huerta saw him off at the station at the appointed hour, saying, as he embraced him: “_Todo por la patria, mi General!_” whereupon the victim, not to be outdone, repeated in his turn: “_Todo por la patria, mi General!_”
People have curious stories to tell of the “tragic ten days,” among them little ways of handling the machine-guns. Ryan came across a group of men who were hovering about one of the _mitrailleuses_, and the man in charge obligingly started it off, to show them how it worked--shooting down the street in the direction in which it _happened_ to be turned. Rather debonair! Mr. Seeger tells the tale of asking a man at a gun who his _jefe_ was--Huertista, Maderista, Felicista? He answered, “I don’t know.” He saw him, a moment afterward, turn the gun around and shoot toward the opposite barricade. Enemy or friend, it was all the same to _that_ “man behind the gun!”
_December 7th._
I was at Tacubaya this morning, to see the operation and cure for tuberculosis of a strange Brazilian, a Dr. Botelho. Rows of emaciated Indians, stripped to the waist, were lying or sitting in the sun. The operation is a painless injection of hydrogen gas into the lung, compressing it so that microbes, as my lay mind understands it, don’t get the space they need to develop. As the patients lay about they seemed to me like exotic vegetation, ready to drop to earth, rot, and spring up again. Strange Indian seed!
After Mass I found Colonel and Mrs. Hayes (the former a son of ex-President Hayes), waiting to see us. They are here for a few days only. I have asked them to dine with us to-morrow evening.
The foreign Powers used to think that, though extremely annoying, our Monroe doctrine was respectable. Now they seem inclined to think it is an excuse for monopolizing the New World for our own benefit. We may come into Mexico with glory. Can we get out with credit and not too high a bill? A letter from General Wisser (you remember him, from Berlin) came just now, written “In Camp, Texas City.” It had taken a little matter of two months to get here. It is not impossible I may welcome him to Mexico City.
_December 9th._
The aftermath of that reception at Chapultepec has begun to come in. Among many letters, one from an ex-army officer says _he_ would have “thrown the wine into Huerta’s face.” All the newspapers mention the incident, but with the empire tottering we saw no reason to unduly precipitate matters by boycotting Mme. Huerta’s reception, nor for being morose and brutal when there. I wonder what would have happened if any of the various fools, writing to protest, had been running matters?
One of the New York newspapers prints a long editorial headed “O’Shaughnessy,” saying President Wilson is fortunate in having had the services of Mr. O’S. during the diplomatic negotiations with Mexico. It presents the matter as I would like, and winds up by saying that the history of Mexican-American diplomacy, to be complete, would need more than one chapter headed “O’Shaughnessy.”
The dinner for Colonel and Mrs. Hayes was rather amusing, though the food was horrid and everything was cold _except_ the champagne. After dinner the visit of two potential Presidents of Mexico (they are always being drawn to the Embassy like steel to the magnet of recognition) gave a decided touch of local color to the scene. A large, handsome, alert man, of the flashy type--Zerafino Dominguez--came first. His battle-cry and banner is “Land for the landless, and men for the men-less lands”--a good, sound, agricultural cry with everything in it, if it could only come true. “_El apostol del maiz_,” as he sometimes is called, is a wealthy landowner and scientific farmer, who contends that Mexico needs more _corn_ rather than more _politics_--and never was a truer word spoken. He has within the last few days, however, given up his presidential pretensions to a friend who came in later, with the same desire of the moth for the star.
The shape of the friend’s head, however--narrow across the forehead and terminating in a high peak--would prevent his getting any votes from _me_. The pale young son of the hearty Dominguez was also there. I offered them cigarettes and _copitas_; the latter they did not accept. Burnside said it was to prove they hadn’t the weaknesses of Huerta. I thought they might be afraid to drink, remembering afterward that none of us had offered to partake with them of the possibly poisoned draught. They sang the praises of the great and beautiful _Estados Unidos del Norte_ till we were quite embarrassed. Incidentally “ze American womans” came in for a share of admiration. I wonder shall we be giving Huerta asylum some day?
_December 11th._
Yesterday I was too busy to write; spent the morning at the Red Cross, and then had luncheon at Coyoacan, at Mrs. Beck’s charming old house. Coyoacan is the most interesting, as well as livable, of all the suburbs, with its beautiful gardens and massive live-oaks shading the streets. Cortés made Coyoacan his stamping-ground, and one lovely old Spanish edifice after the other recalls his romantic history.
From here he launched his final assault against Mexico City; here poor, noble Guauhtémoc (I have an old print representing him with his feet in boiling water and an expression of complete detachment on his face) was tortured, in vain, to make him reveal the hiding-place of Montezuma’s treasure. After leaving Mrs. B.’s, Mrs. Kilvert and I went for a stroll in the garden of the celebrated Casa de Alvarado, built by him, of the famous leap. An old _servidor_ of Mrs. Nuttall’s, to whom the house now belongs, opened the gate for us, with a welcoming smile. We passed through the _patio_, in one corner of which is the old well (with a dark history connected with the murder of the wife of one of the Conquerors), out into the garden with its melancholy and mysterious charm. The possession of the house is supposed to bring bad luck to the possessors, and sudden and violent death has happened to a dweller there even in my time. Roses and heliotrope and the brilliant _drapeaux Espagnoles_, with their streaks of red and yellow, were running riot, and a eucalyptus-tree drooped over all. In this magic land, even a few months of neglect will transform the best-kept garden into some enchanted close of story.
As I was getting out of the auto in front of the Embassy, I found sitting on the curb a pitiful family of five--four children of from seven years to eighteen months, and the mother, who was about to have another child. The father had been taken by the press-gang in the morning, and they were in the streets. I gave the woman some money, and one of the maids brought out bread and cake, and a bundle of garments for the children. Such bright-eyed little girls, real misery not having pinched them yet. I speak of them because they typify thousands of cases. A hand on his shoulder, and the father is gone forever! Such acts, occurring daily, estrange possible sympathy for the government. The woman will return to me when the money is spent.
There are Federal rumors of a split between Villa and Carranza, but, though they will inevitably fight, I don’t think the time is ripe for it, and they are some five hundred kilometers apart, which makes for patience and charity. Villa, whose latest name is the “Tiger of the North,” has made such daring and successful military moves that Carranza must put up with him. He has just married again, during the sacking of Torreon (a detail, of course, as was also his appearance at a ball in _puris naturalibus_--a shock to the guests, even in revolutionary Mexico!)
I only heard at luncheon at the Russian Legation that Count Peretti, _conseiller_ of the French embassy in Washington, is leaving for Paris to-night, by the _Navarre_. He married when _en poste_ here a handsome Mexican wife. This letter goes with him. On Saturday we dine at Lady Carden’s. The dinner is given for Colonel Gage, the handsome and agreeable British military _attaché à cheval_ between Washington and Mexico City.
The fight around Tampico continues, the town being indeed “between the _devils_ and the deep sea.” No one yet knows the outcome, except that the unoffending blood of the Mexican _peon_ is reddening the soil. The _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_ is down there to take off refugees; also the _Logican_, and we are sending the _Tacoma_ and the _Wheeling_. I understand that, though some hundreds have been taken on board, about five hundred unfortunates are still waiting on the pier in the neutral zone.
I must begin to arrange my Christmas tree for the few friends remaining in this restless, distant land, with some little gift for each.
_December 12th._
To-day is the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patroness of Mexico and of all the _Lupes_. For the last few days the mysterious Indian world has been hurrying to the shrine from far and near. I went out there this morning with dear Madame Lefaivre and Mr. de Soto. The crowd was immense, the same types, costumes, habits, language, gestures, even, that Cortés found on his arrival, unmodified (and unmodifiable, which Washington cannot understand) by four hundred years of surrounding civilization. Our motor gliding along the straight road was quite out of the note and picture. Many of the Indians were doing the distance between the city and Guadalupe, several kilometers, _on their knees_, with bowed heads and folded hands. Madame Lefaivre found it _très-beau_, but was glad that no voice told her that to save her soul, or, what is more important, her Paul’s soul, she would have to do likewise.
The plaza before the church was thronged with a brightly clad, motley crowd, venders of all sorts predominating, mostly selling candles and votive offerings of strange kinds. Hundreds of _tortilleras_ were sitting on their haunches before their primitive braziers, piles of dough (_masa_, they call it) in their laps, molding the _tortillas_ with a slapping noise of the palms--an old, inherited gesture, and pinching them into shape with their slender, graceful fingers. The church itself, as we pressed in, was crowded to suffocation, almost every one holding a candle of some length and thickness. The high altar was a blaze of light, the celebrated image above visible to all. It is the famous _Imagen de la Virgen_, stamped miraculously on the _tilma_ (coarse cloth mantle) of a lowly Indian, Juan Diego, as the Virgin appeared to him passing the rock of Tepeyac on his way to Tlaltelolco, to receive instructions in the mysteries of the Faith. The sacred image is placed above the high altar in a gold frame, and there is a gleaming, solid silver stair-railing leading up both sides.
In the middle aisle were double files of young Indian girls, with bright-colored scarfs about their shoulders, and strange, high, picturesque-looking head-dresses, of gaudy tissue-paper, with trimmings of gold. They were chanting monotonous minor songs, accompanied by a swaying, dance-like movement of the hips--all most reverent. They had been there for hours and showed no sign of leaving. I hope I said a reverent prayer, but I felt a bit cheap in contrast to the rapt devotion on all sides. I was glad to get a breath of fresh air in the plaza, or rather, “fresher,” as it was almost as crowded as the church, and every dog in Mexico seemed to be there, scratching and shaking itself.
[Illustration: VILLA DE GUADALUPE]
We made our way, Mr. de Soto clearing a path for us, to the Capilla del Pocito. These waters are said to have gushed from under the feet of the Virgin as she appeared to Juan Diego. _A la_ the fountain of Trevi, whoever drinks of it returns to Mexico. We didn’t drink, for various reasons unconnected with return. The Indians use it for healing purposes and a lively trade in brightly painted, earthen-ware bottles, in which to carry the water away, was going on about the chapel. The Indians come, sometimes a many days’ journey, on foot, of course, and when they arrive they bivouac all about the church as if they had reached “home.” What with babies crying, beggars begging--“_por la Virgen_,” “_por la Santa Madre de Dios_”--dogs yapping and venders hawking, the whole dominated by the acrid smell of the various pungent messes they roll up in their _tortillas_, it was, indeed, Indian life at its flood. They must have presented much the same scene when they gathered to receive instruction and baptism from the old friars.
The “Aztec wheels” (merry-go-rounds) and all kinds of games of chance, to which they are addicted, help to get the centavos out of the Indian pocket; but it is their greatest holiday, this journey to their “Virgen India de Tepeyac,” and they count no cost of fatigue and savings. I only hope the press-gang will abstain to-day from doing any of its deadly work of separating families. You remember I once did a novena out there with Señora Madero, praying for graces that Heaven did not grant.
In the afternoon we went to the Reforma Club, the British country club, where Sir Lionel and Lady Carden were to present the prizes for the contests. Señora Huerta, always dignified and quiet, sat between Lady C. and myself. She had a married daughter with her, high-chested and thick-lipped, clad in a changeable green-and-red surah silk and a hat with bedraggled pink feathers. Señora Huerta herself wore black velvet, with touches of white in the wrong places. She has, I imagine, natural taste in dress, but must first learn. She has seen much of life. So many children and a soldier husband always starting for some seat of war, and now at last President of “glorious, gory Mexico,” means that few of the human experiences are foreign to her. I must say I have a great esteem for her. The President was not well--_el estómago_. Of course every one jumps to the conclusion that he had been consorting too freely with his friends Martell and Hennessy. It isn’t given to _him_ to have a simple indigestion! Afterward we left cards at the houses of various _Lupes_.
_December 13th._
I feel ill at the news this morning. The Federals seem to have taken many positions from the horrible rebels; and the fratricidal war will take on a new strength without hope of issue on either side. I feel the cruelty and the uselessness of our policy more and more every day. The “fine idealism” does not prevent the inhabitants from being exterminated. Why don’t we come in? Or--hands off, and give Huerta a chance!
The Mexicans have never governed themselves, and there is no reason to suppose they can till a part of the eighty-six per cent. that can’t read have at least learned to spell out a few words. The much vaunted and pledged rights of man, voting and abiding by the results, are unknown and, as long as Mexico is Mexico, unknowable. So why lose time in that search for the impossible? The rebels seem to be able to take the towns, but not to _hold_ them. Once in the various strategical positions they are in the same plight as the Federals; and so the see-saw continues, with no results except horrors beyond words. I am tempted to hope for intervention (unnecessary though it once was), no matter what the cost.
There are so many plays and puns and doggerels on the inviting name of O’Shaughnessy. One Shamus O’S. says he won’t admit the man in Mexico who bears the Frenchy name of _chargé d’affaires_ to the family! However, why worry? The last viceroy bore the noble name of Juan O’Donoju! Another calls N. the man that put the “O” in Mexico. And they do love a head-line: “Hugged by Huerta”; or “Is it not better to be kissed than kicked when you deliver the periodical ultimatum?” Of such slender things fame is made.
_December 14th._
My poor woman with the four children returned yesterday, having got to the end of the money I gave her a few days ago. They didn’t look quite as prosperous (?) as they did the first time I saw them. The mother asked for five dollars for a fruit license and two dollars to get the fruit. I gave it to her, whereupon she knelt down in the street, baby in arms, the three other little girls following suit, and asked for my blessing. When I put my hand on her head I felt the tears come to my eyes. I suddenly saw in _one_ woman all the misfortunes of the women of this land, separation, destitution, ravishments,--all the horrors flesh is heir to.
In the evening we dined at the British Legation. Colonel Gage is most agreeable and brought a lot of outside news. Like all military visitors, I suppose he is hoping to happen on a “scrap.”
Am waiting for the auto. Elim and I go out to the del Rios’ garden at Tlalpam for a picnic; the del Rios are in Europe. The day is heavenly beyond compare and the Ajusco hills (in which the Zapatistas operate) are soft and blue in the near distance. We all miss Mr. James Brown Potter very much. He was the witty, unfailing life of all those picnics of my first Mexican visit.