XIV
The feast of Guadalupe—Peace reigns on the Isthmus—Earthquakes—Madero in a dream—The French colony ball—Studies in Mexican democracy—Christmas preparations
December 1st.
A pinching, cold snap, the result of a norte of long duration blowing from Vera Cruz. The heat quickly goes out of the body, and at this altitude is not easily made up again. I have been penetrated to my soul as if by a thin knife. The air is so attenuated that there is nothing to it except cold, no exhilaration. The oil-stoves, I have discovered, are not lighted with impunity. They have a way of suddenly emitting a long, high column of black smoke, after which something detonates, and the room and the people in it are covered by a fine, black soot. One rings, the source of trouble is removed, and one stays cold.
Very pleasant lunch here yesterday; the only way to get warm is to eat, drink, and be merry, especially this last. The luncheon was for the Belgian minister, who had been appointed to Copenhagen. Can't you hear us telling him about the Rabens and the Frijs, Klampenborg, and the Hôtel d'Angleterre? The Lefaivres brought a friend who is staying with them—Vicomte de Kargaroué, a Breton of the vieille noblesse, who is that anomaly, a French globe-trotter.
I am sending you in the form of Christmas cards some samples of present-day feather-work; a pale relic of the plumaje the Aztecs used to be so famous for, persisting through the ages. It doesn't at all resemble the beautiful feather-work mantle, said to have belonged to Montezuma, that I saw among the treasures in the Hofburg at Vienna.
December 4th.
Society is agog here; it is the first appearance on any scene, since my arrival, of the erste Gesellschaft. A young man shot and killed another at a famous club, and then died as the result of an accidental wound to himself. He was married on his death-bed to the mother of his children; the whole is a story for the pen of Ibañez or Echegaray. For hours the streets were filled with carriages and autos taking floral tributes to the stricken mother. Oh, the hearts of mothers! So many crimes, social, civil, and national are being committed all over the world, but everywhere some souls are yearning for perfection—to keep it all going!
December 6th.
My little luncheon for American women went off very well. The dishes Teresa knows—the classic huachinango, cold and "well presented," with a good mayonnaise sauce, the small, fat-breasted ducks with peas, that every one is serving at this season here, were the "chief of our diet."
Mrs. Kilvert, Mrs. C. R. Hudson, Mrs. Paul Hudson, the wife of the editor of the Mexican Herald, Mrs. McLaren, Mrs. Beck, Mrs. Bassett and the ambassadress and her sister came.
This is just a word while waiting for Mrs. Wilson to come back for me to go on a calling bout with her. She goes home to spend the holidays with her boys, so I shall have to do what Christmas honors are done—a tree and incidental tea.
I inclose a little verse by Joaquin Miller that I cut out of the Herald this morning. Though outrageously bad, the line "glorious gory Mexico," is unforgetable.