Edith O'Shaughnessy

A luncheon for Gustavo Madero—Celebrating the Grito at the Palace—The President's brother explains his philosophy—Hacienda of San Cristobal—A typical Mexican Sunday dinner

September 3d.

The funcion I gave yesterday went off with a good deal of snap. Everybody in town was there, and the house filled to bursting. Elsie S. and I brewed the classic Grosvenor punch ourselves and arranged masses of flowers everywhere. Probably it will be the last gathering I shall have, sic transit, etc.

Madame Madero came with her two sisters-in-law. She seems more worn, thinner, and older; a year heavy with anxieties has passed over her since I first saw her in the flush of hope and triumph at the German Legation.

The Porfiristas—all the old rÉgime—hold the United States responsible for Madero's success, because of our permitting him to organize and finance himself on our border, and there are others who think, rather paradoxically, that it is due to us that he has not had more success.

As for the Maderistas, they don't understand anything, feel no obligation to us, and wonder why we don't do more. The active anti-Maderistas feel very bitter that in any revolt aimed against Madero they can't "use" the border. Nobody has any political love for us. We loom up as uncertain in our mode of action, but powerful as arbiters of destinies.

I have not been watching as carefully as I might the great, threefold presidential race at home. It's a consoling thought that any one of them will make a good President and under any one of them the United States will pursue its vast and brilliant destiny. Methinks, however, as regards two of the candidates, that, after the White House, no other place can ever really seem like home.

September 4th.

Luncheon here to-day for the Gustavo Maderos. He came in with rather more energy and magnetism than usual, and kept things lively. He produced from his pocket and presented to the various assembled guests some small, gilded statues of St. Anthony, in little glass, bottle-like reliquaries. He said San Antonio was his patron saint, and quite frankly stated that he was superstitious.

His wit is of the ready kind—readiness in all things is doubtless his greatest quality. He seems not only excited by his prosperity and prominence, but intoxicated by it all. There is no gainsaying the fact that he does give a magnetic hint of possibilities by that abounding energy and life, overflowing and communicative, if he only wouldn't give the effect of taking everything in sight for himself or his friends. He is continually enveloped in clouds of incense by the expectant who form his circle.

There are questions, from time to time, of the seven hundred thousand pesos he got from the treasury for the expenses of the revolution, but, to do him justice, it appears there are national, as well as family reasons which make it inexpedient for him to fully explain.

As he was smoking his cigar in the library after lunch he said to me, with an intellectual flash: "SeÑora, we Latin-Americans think of everything you think of, but we don't put our thoughts into action. I am different. When I decide on something I act immediately, which is why I ought to succeed."

I thought there was a whole world in that remark. One of the difficulties here is the turning of their very brilliant ideas into action at the psychological moment. Madame Gustavo M. is handsome in a rather more artificial style than the other dynastic consorts. She has done something to her hair. But all the Madero women have qualities of good looks, freshness, and amiability.

As they said good-by, standing on the veranda, the perfect square of blue heaven above us, I thought how typical Gustavo Madero was of Latin-America in many of its aspects, and that he was gifted with some qualities not often found here. He is above medium height, with reddish-brown hair, and inclines to the flashy in dress and gesture—the type of the clever rasta. He is known as ojo parado, but after lunching with him on my right in that sun-flooded dining-room I couldn't tell which was the glass eye and which the mortal orb. They were both of an astounding brilliancy.

September 11th.

The War Department orders two regiments of regulars to the Mexican border to reinforce the soldiers on duty, but they don't like it down here. The Intransigente, living up to its name, had an editorial which rather took our breath away, to the effect that nothing can be done while the American fist is threatening Mexico.

It speaks in the name of every Indo-Spanish nation, decrying the smiles of ambassadors and the hypocrisy of official notes, and saying that our affections, at the best, can only be diplomatic, that we can have treaties for the carrying on of commerce, etc.,—that anything where the spirit of the two peoples does not touch can be provided for. But "our soul is against their soul, their cupidity against our pride; our faith is the Latin faith, the faith of the Scipios and the Guzmans; theirs is the fides punica of the Maine and the Panama Canal!"

Now that what all really feel has been said, perhaps the air will clear for a day. I had some time since concluded, with Thomas Jefferson, that "the press is a fountain of lies," but this was for once the crystal truth. The collÈgues were quite excited about it, and I have no doubt the statement was sent in full to their various foreign offices as indicative of the underlying sentiments.

Mr. Stronge, who is most conciliatory, and a natural uniter of factions, somewhat belying his Irish blood (when I asked him, "Irish diplomacy, what is it?" he didn't know the simple answer, "See a head, punch it"), considers this only a passing flare-up. But quiÉn sabe, quiÉn sabe?

September 16th.

We went, last night, to the palace to celebrate the Grito, and again I saw those tens of thousands of upturned faces, as we stood upon the balcony overlooking the ZÓcalo.

I was taken in to supper—the usual ceremonious, standing affair—by the Minister of War. He showed me a telegram confirming the capture of Orozco, who was not captured at all. They are very previous about accepting congratulations concerning good news, whether true or false. The President was receiving felicitations all the evening, and the Minister of War said, "We will of course shoot him immediately if Los Estados Unidos will extradite him." He was supposedly to be taken on American soil. This morning we saw there had been a big defeat of the Federal troops; El Tigre mine taken, etc.

Prince Auersperg was at the palace, too. He was trying to interest the Mexicans in a patent cartridge-belt, just the sort of toy they all naturally love. I referred him to the Minister of War, and turned to the "green isle of Cuba" on my other hand.

Afterward, as I watched the vast concourse, I felt a serrement de coeur. A something came out of the crowd—a quality of uncertainty, destructiveness, force, suffering, heroism, irresponsibility, persistence. The words of Holy Saturday recurred to me, "Popule meus, quod fecisti tu?" What have you done,—what will you always do?

There is a something so irresistible and strong in life here. They are simply ground out, these generations, renewing themselves with terrible ease. The begetting, the mother-pain, the life pilgrimage, the death-pains—there is such an abundance of it all, but though just as tragic and mysterious, not as unlovely as in the slums of great cities.

I am to press on to other things. What can one do, save leave it to God? But I felt unspeakably sad as I turned back into the great sala, where I saw the pale, illumined face of the priest Hidalgo looking down upon it all from its heavy gold frame. I stood by Mr. Lefaivre, as we were waiting for the motor, and he said, "Il [Madero] veut gouverner avec des vivas." It is the situation rather in a nutshell.

I am sitting out here in the park, with only this scrap of paper, which is so crisscrossed that you won't be able to read it. But, oh! this heavenly, washed morning—this freshness of light filtering through the trees! Elsie and Elim are coming in sight, making such a charming picture across the green spaces with the glinting sunlight—a magic world.

My "day" this afternoon, and then dinner at the Embassy. The Schuylers return shortly. I have told Gabrielle to put out the white satin dress. Its days are numbered, like mine.

September 17th.

Last night a great crowd at the station to say good-by to SeÑor Rivero, former governor of the Federal District. He has now been sent as minister to Buenos Aires, and goes via Spain—a rather zigzag route; neither he nor his wife nor any of the six children nor accompanying servants were ever out of Mexico before.

Again in the park; shining, fresh, the band playing, the children running over the grass with their butterfly-nets; but I must go home, as I am having people for lunch.

September 18th.

Some one is playing the "Liebestod"; it floats in through the open windows. It is now nine o'clock; my thoughts are turning from this strange and gorgeous Indian plateau to other climes—to things my spirit is familiar with. Madame Lefaivre is pressing me to go with her on the Espagne. We would like to make the voyage together.

Played bridge this afternoon at her Legation with Auersperg and De Soto. Mr. Lefaivre and Elsie S. immersed in chess. It was raining the proverbial "cats and dogs."

It is very pleasant seeing Auersperg—some one with all those traditions, and yet who has been through the American mill. A German-speaking lunch yesterday—Von H., Auersperg, Riedl, Rieloff. Auersperg regaled us with a description of his first and only eating of an iguana, a sort of cross between a lizard in looks and a pig in taste, at some hacienda near Cordoba. He was screechingly funny and sang:

"Nur die Jugend giebt uns Schwung,

Nur die Liebe macht uns jung."

A far-off look replaced the twinkle at any reference to Vienna. He is short and stout, but the God of wit lives within, looking out of his brown eye, smiling about his wide mouth, and he carries with him an atmosphere of deep kindliness at all times. He departed from Vienna in his earliest youth, came to New York, studied medicine, got his diploma "all by himself" which shows the pluck and ability which may be concealed under the cover of the "first society" and "protection." Baroness R. left last week.

I see that Demidoff has been appointed minister to Greece, where he will find a Russian queen. Athens is fortunate to have him.

Last night we had supper at the Gambrinus restaurant with the Gustavo Maderos, the Darrs, and Colonel Eduardo Hay, this last a figure of the Madero revolution.

The place started out by being a German affair, but no matter what nationality opens a hotel or restaurant here, it ends by being Mexican. Gustavo Madero repeated his famous remark that of a family of clever men the only fool among them was chosen for President. He has a sense of humor that does not care much who or what it demolishes, and a sort of prevision about a joke.

He incidentally spoke of El Cocodrilo; when I asked who the individual might be, they told me it was Diaz! How terrible is the stuff of dreams when it is spilt over a whole nation! It sometimes seems as if the entire government had eaten marihuana.[60] Gustavo Madero was elected Deputy in the last July elections, and has the majority in the House where he "wants" them—under his thumb.

He was amusing, but cynical (as he well may be), about the cry of "free land," saying that it would engulf, in the fulfilment of its high purpose, any man in any party starting out under its banner. "And the people won't get the land," he added; "they never do, anywhere. It isn't only in Mexico, as foreigners seem to believe."

We caused a cloud to come over his face when we asked if he were soon starting for Japan. He has been delegated to thank the Mikado for participation in the Diaz centenary celebration of 1910. You see how fast Mexican events move, and how infinitely unrelated to one another they sometimes are! He said, with a rather sharp look in his eye, that Japan was muy lÓjos (very far), and it certainly is far from these Mexican political fields, apparently white for the harvest.[61]

September 21st.

Recently a band of Mexican regulars made the journey from El Paso, via the United States, to some point in Sonora. Several of the more up-to-date papers at home are worrying for fear, unless our Monroe Doctrine be more extensive and comfortable, the "house guests" won't stay. There is one consoling aspect to the Zapatista outrages, as far as Madero is concerned. They always relate to his own people, and so can be dismissed. But the outrages in the north are not so easily disposed of where American and Mexican meum and tuum is involved.

A letter from —, dreading life, fearing death. His is a ravaged existence and "pain's furnace heat within him quivers." I sent him the inclosed verses, which came to me in the night. It is the simplicity of death, after all, that is its wonder.

Sunday evening.

A long day. N. is at the Embassy; the house is quiet, except for water still dripping heavily from the roof. My Mexican sands are slipping, and this morning my eyes looked their last on the so-familiar beauty of the plateau. Early Mr. de S. and Mr. S. and myself started out from the city, down the shining Avenida San Francisco, through the ZÓcalo, past the palace, through the Calle de la Moneda, where the French troops entered in 1863, out past the San LÁzaro station, on to what was once the ancient Aztec causeway.

There we met three fishermen, clad only in small breech-clouts, with long poles over their shoulders, on each end of which were small nets full of little fish. They were moving along silently, swiftly, the sun glistening on their wet bodies, just as from the night of time dark men have moved over that causeway.

We passed the sun-baked PeÑon Viejo, with its clump of trees, its bits of cactus growing on its grassy sides, and the old Church of Santa Marta on a farther hill. On one side the road is bounded by the white tequesquite shores of Texcoco, with little piles of soda gathered up at intervals. On the other are the green, sweet-water shores of Lake Chalco, and the little lake of San Martu, so near the Texcoco lake that there is just room between for the railway and the motor road. At Los Reyes, about eighteen kilometers out of town, we branched off to Texcoco over a highway running through maize-planted fields, under the great cypresses and eucalyptus-trees of the Hacienda de Chapingo, along more corn-fields, till we bumped into Texcoco.

The usual Sunday market was in full blast around the portales of the Plaza, and there was a coming and going in the old church as I stepped in for a moment. Here CortÉs lay by his mother and his daughter for over one hundred and fifty years. The little near-by chapel, with its antique baptismal font, was built by the Conqueror himself, and shows how limited were the means he had at his command when bivouacking in the "Athens of Mexico." As I bid farewell to these scenes of his romantic deeds and the long-time resting-place of his venturesome heart, I bethought me of his watchword:

We went on toward the beautiful little village of Magdalena, entered through some wonderful plantings of organos cactus, and at the entrance was the little pink-and-blue pulque-shop, with its motto, so true of all things earthly, "Paso Á paso se va llegando."[62]

The sun shone through the cypress and eucalyptus in the atrium of the lovely old church, and Indians, in clean, white clothes were going to Mass. There was an assortment of wide, flounced petticoats, quite striking in these days of tight skirts. All was as I had first seen it, except that some feet would never tread these paths again, while others were beginning to toddle about, and nature had blossomed and reblossomed, and I myself was to pass. That was all.

As we went on we seemed, for a while, to lose the volcanoes, but higher up on the great ridge they showed themselves again in all their splendor and the air got quite cold, communicating a sensation of excessive lightness and purity. The hills around are bare of vegetation.

Mr. de S. said that the first conquerors wanted to make the beautiful plateau resemble in all things the Castilian soil, which in so many places is arid and treeless. However that may be, every authority the country has ever had has taken literally "a whack" at the trees, till these hills are bare and dry. Great stony, waterless gorges separate the immense stretches of maguey—endless, symmetrically planted fields, stretching to barren hills, from which the French, during their occupation, cut the last timber.

There is a feudal aspect to the old, high, wall-inclosed haciendas, with their battlements and turret-holes, always the belfry of a chapel showing above. Everything that is needed for the life of the Indian—which isn't much—is contained within their walls, together with the much more costly and complicated machinery of the pulque industry. "Pulque fino de Apam" is inscribed on each little blue-and-pink cantina. The view, as we turned back, was enchanting, showing us Mexico as it appeared to the conquerors when CortÉs first looked upon it and called it "La mÁs hermosa cosa del mundo" ("The most beautiful thing in the world"). Beyond—far beyond the enchanting hills to the east, is the drop into the land of coffee and pineapple and banana and a thousand heavy scents unknown to this thin air.

Gorgeous but ominous masses of clouds began to roll up on the wide horizon, and shortly afterward over the shining green plain moved a misty wall of fast-approaching rain, and there were deafening peals of thunder, with great white flashes of lightning. In a moment, it seemed, even before the chauffeur could button down the curtains, we were deluged, and the road was a rush of gray water, with a pelting of hail on the motor-top. Some Indians, in the long, thatch-like capes of grass that they wear as raincoats, passed us—the water dripping from the bamboos on to their bare feet.

Then began a slipping and skidding down the hill and a search for the nearest shelter. The view toward the great Apam plain was dark and splendid, with here and there a heavy bar of light falling on the fields of maguey. At last we found ourselves within sight of the rather sizable village of Calpulalpam, and decided to ask shelter at the San Cristobal hacienda known to Mr. de S., slipping down the hill in a second cloudburst that made the auto feel like a fly in a millrace.

In inconceivable mud, not even an Indian in sight, we went in through the great gate in the feudal-like wall, with a church of baroque design built into it, where we found ourselves in a roughly paved court with an old fountain. The gate was fortunately near the entrance to the dwelling of the administrador, a Spaniard, as the administradores nearly always are.

He welcomed us warmly into la casa de ustedes, appearing with El Pais in his hand. He pressed us to stay for the comida. We delicately answered that we had sandwiches, and only wanted shelter, but we allowed ourselves to be persuaded. His once-handsome wife shortly appeared, dressed in a white sack and a blue rebozo, accompanied by several boys and a really beautiful girl of about eighteen, and we all went into the long, low-ceilinged dining-room. The administrador and his spouse sat cozily side by side, the children near them, and we three at the other end, together with a friend of theirs—some local functionary. The room was dusky, the windows curtained outside by sheets of water, but the table was bountifully spread with such a typical repast of well-to-do Mexicans of that class that you will be interested in the menu.

We began with a sopa de frijoles,[63] followed by plates of hot tortillas, and a big dish of rice decorated with fried eggs, slices of fried bananas, and bacon. Mole de guajolote[64] was the piÈce de rÉsistance. I inclose the receipt for it, which Madame Lefaivre sent me the other day. Taking it from the philosophic point of view, it is the image of their politics; melÉ, melo, mole, and the result very indigestible.

Pulque was served in lovely old engraved glass-jars, and was very liberally poured out to us in only slightly smaller glasses. It was the far-famed Pulque fino de Apam, but seeing that we did no more than politely sip in spite of all the urging (if one could lose one's sense of smell, one could go ahead), the administrador disappeared, and came back with a dusty bottle of Xeres of some old mark.

There were various sweets on the table: cajetas de Celaya,[65] celebrated all over Mexico, guava jelly, and a sweet looking somewhat like it, called membrillate, made of quince-juice. The little local functionary seemed somewhat annoyed to find us there. I suppose he looked on that Sunday dinner as his special appearance, and strange people had come in and monopolized the stage. His contribution to the conversation was the complaint that when Americans come to Mexico they continue to speak English. I pointed out that most of us would give half our kingdom to possess in return la lengua castellana, and that we did not all use it all the time because we couldn't. At this point Mr. S. humbly said he was speaking what he thought was Spanish, and he answered, "You are an exception," but he continued a somewhat muffled conversation with Mr. de Soto.

The more I looked at the daughter the more I saw she was of an extraordinary loveliness; not Spanish, not Indian, but some third thing—was it Arab?—showing distinctly through these two. She looked at us as if we kept the keys of the gate of heaven, i.e., escape from the hacienda. The only door open to her, however, is marriage, and that will lead to a stone wall, as far as horizon is concerned.

She said she longed to see Mexico City, if only once, and asked me about the tight skirts—hers were long and flowing. Enfin, she is ready for life, but the functionary seemed to have a proprietary eye on her.

They were all as nice and pleasant as possible, and so hospitable. After lunch we made the rounds of the hacienda buildings. The family to whom the vast estate belongs must have been absent not only one, but two generations—from the look of the rooms. It was the quintessence of "absentee landlordship."

We went through what seemed acres of corridors and half-dismantled rooms, with an occasional piece of good furniture or an old, faded brocade curtain. The library had rows upon rows of yellowing books and countless volumes of accounts of bygone administradores of the estate, the same thing that one finds piled up in every bookshop in Mexico City. In the days before it was easy to get away, some one, however, had loved the classics, for one case was full of richly bound Latin books.

There were numberless fascinating little courtyards. One had a cypress-tree pressed against an oval, barred window; another, only half-inclosed, had a fig-tree growing higher than the top, and out beyond was the great Apam plain, light and cloud rapidly passing over the green, maguey-planted stretches. There was something sad and lovely about it all, and Guadalupe seemed a sort of "Mariana in the moated grange." There were vast granaries, too; wheat growing easily at this altitude, in addition to the pulque.

We went at last into the little chapel where there were some old, carved prie-Dieu, covered with faded brocade, and the altar was a charming example of Churrigueresque, with small, gilded saints in elaborately carved and gilded niches, surrounding a large, central figure of Saint Christopher. It was all, somehow, melancholy-inducing, and made us remember that the "whole round world is but a sepulchre," as Nezahualcoyotl put it.

We took a photograph of Guadalupe, standing on a little outer stairway leading to the entresol, where the family sleep and the girl dreams her dreams. I was only sorry some Prince Charming had not been with us. She had a distinctly yearning expression as we drove away into the great world; there was, probably, far back, some venturesome blood, but she will doubtless get the functionary.

September 29th.

Last night, one of Von Hintze's big dinners. He has been such a good friend from the first, and we have been a part of all his dinners, which have been many. Paso Á paso se va llegando, and this is likely to be the last. I felt as if I were back in Vienna, as Auersperg sat on one side of me and Riedl took me out. A handsome Captain Bazaine was also there. That name found in Mexico awakens historical thoughts, and now that I am to leave it all, perhaps forever, the least tap on memory and a thousand things spring into consciousness.

Mrs. Stronge presided; Hohler was there, the Hugo Scherers, Mr. Carlos de Landa, Mr. Hewitt, the Von Hillers, and we played bridge till late. Conditions are going from bad to worse here, and I feel an increasing sadness at leaving all this touching, appealing beauty of Mexico to the powers of darkness, or if not of darkness, of such uncertainty that evil only can come.

The "Apostle" has become the mono de Coahuila. The favor of republics is more short-lived than that of princes. How true a word La Rochefoucauld spoke when he said, "On loue et on blÂme la plupart des gens parce que c'est la mode de les louer ou de les blÂmer."

Gustavo, ojo parado, would perhaps like to be President, and feels himself superior in intelligence and will to his brother, who is, as a fact, decidedly under his dominion.

If "Panchito" did not feel that he is upheld by the world of spirits, and I should add by a passionate, resolute consort, he might abdicate; everything here is possible except peace, and it is still "up" to the heavens to perform miracles and so relieve the Mexicans themselves of the tedium of installing a stable government.