  Good-by to Mexico, and a special farewell to Madame Madero—Vera Cruz—Mexico in perspective October 1st. We take the Mexico of the Ward Line on the 10th. So sorry not to be going with Madame Lefaivre straight to France, but we think it will be well to wrap the Stars and Stripes about us for a space. This is only a word. I sit among open boxes in what will never again be my home, "things I have known and loved awhile." Through it runs my Mexican Étape, my "rosary of the road." October 3d. Madame Lefaivre and I have each received diplomas and testimonials from the Red Cross, and a very polite note from Madame de Palomo. It was a curious and salutary experience in things human. The ambassador sent N. a really beautiful letter of appreciation. He has a quite perfect epistolary turn—finished off by a very chic signature, and has been all that a chief could be during the long, strange Mexican months, while Mrs. Wilson has been the kindest, most considerate of friends. October 5th. This morning I went up to Chapultepec to say good-by to Madame Madero. As I drove up the winding way in the white morning the flowers were shining softly along the embankments, the trees were feathery, unsubstantial, the birds singing "like to burst their little I went in through the great iron gate, the guard saluting, across the flat, stone terrace where some cadets were at drill, and got out at the glass doors leading up to the big stairway. The President was standing there as I drove up, his auto waiting to take him to the palace to a Cabinet meeting. I thought he looked slightly—very slightly—troubled, though I had a feeling that his head was still in the morning clouds of the dazzling day. He wished me a bon voyage and prompt retour and drove away. Our personal relations with them both have always been most friendly.[66] I imagine there has been little or no change in his psychology along the lines of practical statecraft. His true habitat is the world of fancy, where he feels himself protected and led on by benign powers as definitely as was Tobias by the angel. A state of mind like that can be very compelling, and he may witness what the unkind say is his pet ambition—his own apotheosis. The dim progression of Mexican events seems to have left his spirits untouched, though his fleshly being must be a mass of black-and-blue spots from the hard facts he bumps into. "One man with a dream at pleasure," but I felt like leaving him a pocket edition of Le Prince. I thought Madame Madero showed the strain of that climb from obscurity and prison up the via triumphalis to the presidential peaks. The flood of morning light, as we sat on the terrace, did not spare her worn and anxious face. I have an idea that she is very practical, but it is not her practicality, but her husband's dreams, She was, as always, courteous and friendly, but a puzzled look was on her face, and I felt that there were questions that she would have liked to put to me, that the circumstances forbade. We spoke of the work she is just now especially interested in, for the amelioration of the Mexican woman's lot—the organizing of the lace and embroidery industry, À la Queen Elena, in Italy, several years ago. There is a really lovely product here, the drawn linen work—deshilados, it is called—introduced by the Spaniards and practised through generations in cloisters and religious schools. She told me that in Puerto Rico one hundred thousand women had been organized, and she wanted to do the same here, asking me if I could not interest people in New York in the industry. I felt how frail her body, but how determined her will as we embraced in the dazzling morning. About us was the perfume of the rare and lovely shrubs of the patio, the splash of the fountain, the singing of birds, the lustrous hills, the shining volcanoes; that crystal air enfolded us, closer than human touch, but beneath us was the restless city and the shifting will of the Mexican people. On board the Mexico in Vera Cruz Harbor. We got down last night over the International; so many friendly faces at the station—une belle gare—reminding me of the unforgetable going away from Copenhagen. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Chef du Protocole, nearly all the colleagues, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Aunt Laura, and many American friends were there. The train departed at last without the slightest warning, but, the hour being at hand, we were standing near the steps, and as it quite slyly began to move out I was pushed into it by friendly hands with my load of flowers. Various other passengers had only time to scramble into the baggage and rear cars; and so, without any sound except those of friendly adieux, we slipped out of the station into the starlit valley, toward the hills that hold the splendors of this Indian world. I had a feeling as of some one who leaves treasure behind, and the thought that my eyes will probably never again rest on the beauty of Mexico gives me a clutching at the heart. "Heureux ceux qui n'ont pas vu la fumÉe de la fÊte de l'Étranger et qui ne se sont assis qu'aux festins de leurs pÈres." It is seventeen months since we landed, but changing governments have not changed Mexico. On arriving, at 7.30, we repaired to the Arcades of the Hotel Diligencias of somewhat branded reputation, in one of the little rickety cabs. If its back flap is loose, you have a lovely breeze. If not, you feel as if you were in a "hot country" not of earth. I asked for tea, but when it was poured out I decided 'twere better to do in Vera Cruz as the Veracruzanos do, and ordered, as a farewell tribute, "chocolate Mexicano," which, though it brought my own temperature up to the boiling-point, was very good. The dissolving sensation is not unpleasant after having one's nerves screwed up to the last turn by all those "high" months. Something thick and stiff, in very small cups, being served on an adjacent table to a couple of indigÈnes, was "chocolate espaÑol." Afterward I went across the palm-planted Plaza, that I had only seen in the dim light of my arrival, Inside, the modern Veracruzanos have let themselves "go" as regards art. Cheap stained-glass windows, "made in Germany," and realistic portrayals of saints in agony, one more appalling than the other, encumber the chapels, and, I hate to record it, only paper and tinsel flowers were on the altars. But I turned my thoughts to One who walked upon the waters, and prayed for a safe voyage. They tell me there are fish as beautiful as flowers to be seen in the market, but instead of continuing the investigation of Vera Cruz in the garish light of its October day we went back to the ship. On our way we met an Oxford friend of N.'s, a young Englishman, perfectly turned out in spotless white, who might have been called suddenly before the viceroy (I find myself getting a little wild) without the slightest change in his raiment. He hadn't spoken with one of "his kind" for weeks, and was not expecting any one. England's true conquest of the world, it seems to me, identity, habits, customs, unchanged by that most potent of all alchemies—the tropics. The German and Russian ministers take the Mexico as far as Progreso, whence they depart on some sort of hunting expedition, and promise aigrettes and similar vanities. We have all been sitting on the breezy side of the boat, sipping lemonade, talking of Mexico in perspective and "letting him who will be wise." Vera Cruz is a memory of color, green and pink and white, merciless sun, refreshing breeze, and the Veracruzanos, of all shades and origins, coming and going, carrying on October 12th. Last night, in the dim prow, some Indians were chanting in mournful, wailing voices, a half-sensuous, half-imploring air of sad peoples. As it floated toward me in the soft, thick darkness it possessed me with its melancholy—but I must trim my lamp for other nights. THE END FOOTNOTES[1] Killed during the battle of the Somme, 1916. [2] The Casa de Alvarado was once the home of the American consul-general, Mr. Parsons, of regretted and appreciated memory, who was killed stepping out of a street-car in Mexico City. Mr. Laughton subsequently was murdered while at his mining-camp. Of course this has nothing to do with the house, but its history, nevertheless, is bound up with such decrees of fate. [3] I had three glimpses of the "King in Exile." First in Rome, the Easter Sunday of 1913, after the Madero tragedy. As I went across the Piazza Barberini I saw flying from the middle window of the piano nobile of the Hotel Bristol, the Mexican colors, floating there by what strange chance, the eagle holding in its claws the antique serpent against the green, white, and red. As I went up the stairway there were numberless and unmistakable Mexicans on the landings, and several priests were waiting in the antechamber. DoÑa Carmen came in almost immediately with the "grand air" I had heard about, handsome and composed, a veritable queen in exile. She was dressed with extreme elegance and simplicity, in a perfectly plain, dark-blue gown; around her throat was a pearl necklace. After the greetings she seated me on the gaudy, gold-and-blue sofa, and took her place beside me. Once or twice her eyes filled as we spoke of Mexico, but mostly there was a remote look in them. When Don Porfirio entered the room I knew him for a leader of men. Anno Domini had weakened his will, perhaps, but had not bowed his proud figure nor dulled the piercing look in his eye, which I remember as hazel with a very large, light iris, the pupil dark and fiery. We could not but speak of the Madero tragedy, Don Porfirio talking in Spanish, I in French. I found myself slightly trembling. He repeated several times, "I foresaw it all—my method was the only one," and once he added, "How shall one judge men other than by results?" I saw in his eye that same remoteness which I think an observer would have found in mine also; for instead of the gaudy hotel room I saw Chapultepec high up, swung in a strange transparency and Don Porfirio's destiny blocked out against it. In Paris, that same summer of 1913, at the Hotel Astoria, I witnessed another Étape of the painful, unfit Odyssey from hotel to hotel. The antechamber was filled with their luggage, plastered with endless hotel tabs. Don Porfirio's mien was not quite so majestic, his heart was more broken, his hope less, his years seemed heavier, and they were uncertain where next to turn their steps, to San Sebastian or to some "cure" in Switzerland. On my way back to Mexico on the Espagne, September, 1913, I was sitting idly watching the Spanish shores off Santander. There were some Syrians on board suspected of quiÉn sabe what disease, and we were not allowed to go ashore to visit the old town. About four o'clock a small launch was seen approaching. In it were Don Porfirio and DoÑa Carmen and Don Porfirio's daughter, DoÑa Amada (Madame de la Torre), whom they were bringing to the ship, which was crowded with returning Mexicans, anticipating the pacification of the country by Huerta. At the news that the "grand old man" was in the launch there was a rush for the railing. Don Porfirio could not come on board on account of the quarantine. It was a tragic moment when he took his daughter in his arms, and many eyes filled with tears as she tore herself from him and came hurriedly up the gangway. Farewells were waved as the launch turned toward the land. Don Porfirio, upright, majestic, motionless, had his eyes fixed on the ship with its prow toward Mexico. Who would, if he could, have searched his heart or said of what he was thinking, the old, the illustrious, the once powerful, in "the fell clutch of circumstance"? As long as I live his figure will be to me the sign and symbol of nostalgia, as he stood in the small launch, his head bared under the brilliant sky, the bright spot of his red necktie accenting the whiteness of his hair, watching with longing eyes the ship turned toward the land which had given him birth, and which he in return had made great and honorable among nations. [4] "The Daughter of the Emperor," "Queen Xochitl," "The Great Napoleon," "The Wife of the Moor," "The Star of the Sea," "The Brigantines." [5] This was a time-honored calumny told to all new-comers in Mexico, and believed by many chiefly because it would have been so easy for Don Porfirio to enrich himself to any extent he pleased. The facts are that his ambitions lay rather in the direction of power for himself and peace and progress for his country than in that of the amassing of riches. He was a man of the simplest personal habits, though he always maintained a state dignified and befitting his high office. During his years of exile he and his beautiful wife lived in the quietest manner on an income sufficient only for the ordinary comforts of life. The last will and testament of "the Greatest Mexican" further proved that he could be called to no such accounting by the Final Judge. As for SeÑor Limantour, he inherited a large fortune from his father, principally in real estate, that increased in value during those years of prosperity which his long and able administration of the finances of Mexico did so much to bring about. [6] In the autumn of 1911 Maurice de Weede was accidentally killed at a shooting-party in Austria. [7] Recreation-ground of the Ancient Cat. [8] The temple of Venus. [9] The Road to Rome, Hilaire Belloc. [10] National Pawn-shop. [11] St. Augustine of the Caves. [12] We must get even the water from the Spanish woman. [13] Not to-morrow, immediately. [14] Vide A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico. [15] Interinato, ad interim presidency. [16] Gulf of California. [17] The final fate of Don Alberto GarcÍa Granados, also Minister of GobernaciÓn in Madero's Cabinet, was to be taken by Carranzistas to the Escuela de Tir and there shot. He was ill in bed when the summons came, and it is recorded that he was given salt injections and tied to a post to make it possible for him to stand before the firing-squad, which achieved the death of the aged statesman only after several volleys. [18] British ambassador to Vienna at the time of writing. [19] The Enchantress. The Emotions. The Lost Man. [20] The Casa de Manrique in the Calle Donceles is another example of old seigniorial houses. It belonged to the Conde de Heras, and was built late in the seventeenth century. Now, alas, it is the office of the Wells Fargo Express Co., but there is a note of protesting splendor about it. [21] Down with the gringos. [22] Every government, since the days of the viceroys, appointed inexorably but quietly from Spain, has come into power like the government of Huerta or Madero or Diaz, through a revolution by a military coup. No foreign ruler till our day thought it a reason for bringing the whole nation to ruin. [23] Armand Delille distinguished himself; at the battle of the Yser and on the bridge of Steenstraete was decorated with the LÉgion d'Honneur. He was sent to hold it with three hundred men, and it was held; but when he was relieved, of the three hundred men only thirty remained. [24] Maurice Parmentier fell at Dieuze, November 28, 1914. [25] Marina, the daughter of a cacique of Painalla, had been sold into slavery, and after the famous battle of Ceutla, when Santiago appeared in the heavens above the Spanish hosts (the chronicler of the event says that he, miserable sinner, was not worthy to see the apparition), she fell into the hands of the Spaniards. She was first allotted to Puertocarrero, but her abilities speedily raised her to the tent of CortÉs. She became his interpreter, his Egeria, his love, the instrument of fate, holding Indian and Spanish destinies alike in her hands. All historians of the epoch extol her virtues, and Bernal Diaz says they held her to be like no other woman on earth, because of her intelligence and her devotion to the Spanish cause. By the Indians she is held eternally restless—malign—for having leagued herself with the Spaniards. [26] Carranza's Plan de Guadalupe, March 19, 1913, contains, among other oddities, the statement of this "Everlasting Idol of Free Peoples," that "as our Constitution forbids us to confiscate, we have decided to do without our Constitution for a while." [27] During the first Carrancista occupation of Mexico City this house was sacked and stripped of all belongings. Not an electric-light fixture, not a door-knob was left; even the costly floorings were torn up. Street-cars run through the Calles de Londres and — told me that for days the traffic was interrupted by cars filled with the Creels' furniture and works of art, which were left standing in front of the house. One rather sighs for the fate of the SÈvres vases, and one thinks involuntarily of the new verb in the Spanish language, "carranciar," to steal like a Carrancista. [28] Diplomat's Wife in Mexico, Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. [29] Fifty-second viceroy. [30] Elliott Baird Coues, + ZÜrich, January 2, 1913. [31] (1917) Le Colonel de Chambrun, croix de guerre, grande croix de la LÉgion d'Honneur, citÉ many times À l'ordre de l'armÉe for deeds of bravery, and once, in the autumn of 1915, "pour sa gaitÉ communicative dans les tranchÉes"—so indicative of his special talents and great heart. [32] Henri de G. (Lieutenant 4th Zouaves), wounded at Verdun, June 9, 1916. Croix de guerre in Belgium, 1915, LÉgion d'Honneur, Verdun, 1916. [33] "If thou goest to dwell in the Indies let it be where thou seest the volcanoes." [34] Maurice Raoul Duval, + fallen on the field of honor, Verdun, May 5, 1916. [35] Count du Boisrouvray, 14th Hussards, promu chef de bataillon pour faits de guerre. Chevalier de la LÉgion d'Honneur, croix de guerre, many citations; the first to enter Thiaumont when it was retaken. [36] "For the king infinite lands, and for God infinite souls." [37] This statue was thrown down and dragged through the city the night of the breaking off of relations between the United States and Mexico (April 23, 1914). [38] Pathway of the dead. [39] This is the prince who was taken by CortÉs on his Honduras expedition with the kings of Texcoco and Tacuba. As punishment for plotting to escape they were hanged head downward from a tree in the wilderness. Humboldt saw this represented in a hieroglyphic painting in the convent of San Felipe Neri, and even Bernal Diaz relates that the companions in arms of CortÉs were "much shocked" at the occurrence. Now Cuauhtemoc stands in gold and bronze in one of the glorietas of the beautiful Paseo, high on a marble column, with Aztec devices on base and plinth, where he can keep watch on his hills and volcanoes and lakes. He sustained the siege of Mexico for seventy-nine days, and the inscription says, "to the memory of Cuauhtemoc and those warriors who fought heroically in defense of their country MDXXI." Diaz and his then Minister of Public Works, Riva Palacio, MDCCCLXXVII, ordered it to be erected, and later it was finished under Manuel Gonzalez and his Minister of Public Works, MDCCCLXXXII. [40] The body of Maximilian lies with his kin in the imperial vault of the Capuchin church in Vienna. [41] Without civil rights. [42] Accursed one. [43] This ship has played a rÔle in the destinies of two of Mexico's rulers, for it not only bore Diaz into exile, but it was the ship containing the ammunition for Huerta, to prevent the delivery of which we thought we were obliged to seize Vera Cruz, April 21, 1914. [44] Died in New York, August 23, 1916, of a maladie de langueur. How could she resist a winter exiled in Harlem, after the flight from Mexico in 1915—the world, her world, in ruins? As well put an orchid in a cellar in the autumn and expect to find it blooming in the spring. [45] This house was burned and sacked during the Decena TrÁgica, February, 1913, by what the newspapers called la furia popular, and remains to this day a mass of crumbling and charred walls, roofless and windowless, sic transit. [46] The American interests are chiefly situated in the district of El Ebano, on the frontier of the states of Vera Cruz and San Luis PotosÍ. The English are in the district of Tuxpam in the state of Vera Cruz, and the total of the interests represented is about a hundred million dollars for the American, seventy-five millions for the English, and between two and three millions for the Mexican. The figures do rather sustain the adage that "Mexico is the mother of foreigners, but the stepmother of Mexicans." [47] In the palace in the SalÓn Rojo is a large picture of the battle of Puebla, with Diaz prominently figured. The picturesque dress of the Puebla mountain Indians gives it a familiar note. There is nothing wanting to show the prowess of Mexicans, and it portrays the French retreating down-hill in terrible disorder—chasseurs d'Afrique and chasseurs de Vincennes giving it a European touch not in keeping with the bits of maguey in the landscape. [48] The heir to the Hanoverian throne killed in a motor accident. [49] Io mi volsi a man destra e posi mente All' altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle, Non viste mai fuor ch'alla prima gente. Goder pareva il ciel di lor fiammelle; O settentrional vedovo sito Poi che privato se' di mirar quelle! "Purgatorio" I This is the passage that commentators take to mean the Southern Cross, the knowledge of which Dante got from Marco Polo. [50] Assassinated at Salonica, 1913. [51] PeÑa Pobre has been occupied and evacuated countless times by Zapatistas, and is now completely laid waste—the great paper-mills, the gardens, the hacienda buildings. Since writing these words a vast and blood-stained scroll has been unfolded, and I think many a one has modified his political creed.—E. O'S., 1917. [52] Of the Casasus house nothing but the walls remain. Everything has been pillaged and scattered. People have happened on an occasional old volume of the great library, and an occasional piece of the gilt-and-brocade furniture has been seen in the second-hand shops. — told me that a matter of importance took him to the house when used as a barracks by Carrancistas. In the great patio were only a filthy cot and an old brasero near which a poor soldadera was sitting. The fountain was dry and full of refuse, and some soldiers were standing about waiting for their officer, who came in violently disputing with a woman of the town. From under the cot, after a few moments, the woman drew out a small, beautiful old chest clamped with silver and inset with coral, with which she departed, "the living symbol of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses," as one of his followers calls Don Venustiano.—E. O'S., 1917. [53] These treasures were scattered and destroyed during the first Carrancista occupation. [54] Orozco was arrested with General Huerta by the United States authorities on June 27, 1915. A few days later he escaped his guard at El Paso, and shortly afterward was killed during a raid on the border. [55] A young mining engineer lately come out of Mexico on one of the intermittent trains, over the once favorite northern route, tells me that everywhere the stations are destroyed. Overturned rolling-stock lies rotting in the ditches; at one point where the fuel gave out the trainmen got down and chopped up the seats remaining on what once had been a station platform, and at another a Pullman car was smashed and fed to the engine. What intending travelers and the stockholders in the company think of Carranza's passion for reconstruction is said to be too fierce for expression!—E. O'S., January, 1917. [56] Marquis de la G., then military attachÉ at the French Embassy in Berlin. [57] Et comment fera celui qui a reÇu du sort le don superbe et fatal de voir la vÉritÉ, et de ne pouvoir pas ne pas la voir?—Romain Rolland, Vie de Tolstoi. (January, 1917.) [58] Killed in battle at Belloy-en-Santerre, July, 1916. A friend and companion of Alan Seeger's Harvard days, Pierre Abreu, himself extraordinarily fitted for the understanding of the "humanities" in every sense, told me of him one windy twilight crossing to France on the Espagne that autumn after his death. I had just seen, in my North American Review, that most charming of all his poems, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." He was evidently a free, romantic being, Latinized in temperament and mentality, receptive and creative. Abreu met him first at a Sophocles course—he was a brilliant, original classical scholar, with an elasticity of culture that made him also able to translate a gem of ClÉment Marot, or Ronsard, into perfect form at sight. For the impressionable years of gifted adolescence, what more suggestive setting than that magnetic valley of Mexico? Now he lies in France. His high, adventurous spirit was meant for wars and chances, doubtless in the old, romantic sense of battle. "Heroes battling with heroes and above them the wrathful gods." For this type there could be but one consummation. But it seems to me all can be fulfilled as well at twenty-eight as at threescore and ten, and the completion of no man's destiny is dependent on his years.—E. O'S., January, 1917. [59] Dr. F. S. Pearson, to whose genius this astounding engineering feat is largely due, lost his life on the Lusitania. [60] A Mexican herb inducing insanity. [61] Gustavo Madero was apprehended, as he was lunching in this restaurant in the Avenida San Francisco in company with General Huerta, February 18, 1913, and was shot while attempting to escape early the next morning. Vide A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico. [62] "Step by step one reaches the end." [63] Bean soup. [64] Turkey stew with Chile gravy. Receipt for the famous "mole de guajolote"
All ground separately on the metate, then ground together and put into the saucepan, where the turkey already boiled is waiting, cut up in bouillon. I don't know if mole must be made from the second joint of the turkey leg, but my pieces always prove to be that when scraped. The sauce is so thick that the anatomy is completely masked when one helps oneself. [65] Boxes of sweets from Celaya. [66] Francisco I. Madero and JosÉ MarÍa Pino Suarez were killed when being transferred from the palace to the PenitenciarÍa on the night of Saturday, February 22, 1913. Vide page 215, A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico.—E. O'S. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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