At night, hotels lock their massive front doors at ten or half past, but a porter sleeping on the floor just inside admits you at any hour. All over the world, servants like to be tipped, and the custom of tipping obtains in Mexico as elsewhere, but as yet it has remained within decent bounds. A mozo in a Mexican hotel is pleased, and sometimes surprised, by what his European or American equivalent would probably scorn.
To make a point of such trivial matters as matches, candles, keys, and door knobs will probably seem as if I were going out of my way, but in Mexico I have been the amused witness of so much real anguish occasioned by the presence or absence of these prosaic implements that in regard to them I feel a certain responsibility. Almost everywhere there are incandescent lights in Mexican hotels, but in some places the power is turned off at midnight, or half an hour later, and, as happens in all countries, the lights, at inopportune moments now and then, go out. When they do go out, you grope helplessly in darkness, for it is not customary to foresee such emergencies and supply the bedrooms with matches and candles. A candle and a box of matches in your traveling bag may never be needed, but when they are needed they are needed instantly, and you will be glad you have them. Door knobs in Mexico, for absolutely no reason whatever, are placed so near the frame of the door that it is almost impossible to grasp them without pinching your fingers, and in order to lock or unlock a door the key, as a rule, must be inserted upside down, and then turned the wrong way.
The following notice (it hung, printed and framed, in the sala of a Mexican hotel) will, I feel sure, prove of interest to the student of language:
“It is not permitted for any whatsoever motive to use this saloon to eat, or for games of ball or others that could prejudice the tranquillity of the passengers, or furthermore to remove the furnitures from their respective sites. At eleven of the clock the Administrador will usurp the right to order the extinguishment of the lamp without permitting of observations.”
The second kind of hotel (the hotel kept by an American) possesses the various defects of a Mexican establishment, with several others all its own. It is rarely as clean as a Mexican hotel, and the “home cooking” so insisted upon in the advertisements merely means that the cooking is of the kind the proprietress was accustomed to before her emigration—which does not necessarily recommend it. “American cooking” or “home cooking” is no better than any other kind of cooking when it is bad. You don’t eat through sentiment or patriotism, but through necessity. Among this class of hotel I feel it is only honest to except one at Cuernavaca, which has charming rooms, a most exquisite patio, and an “American table” about as good as that of the average New England summer boarding house.
Few Americans who are traveling for pleasure in Mexico will be likely to patronize what is known as a mesón. It would not have occurred to me to do so had I not slept in them in small towns off the line of the railway, where there is no place else to stay. When traveling on a horse or a mule, a night’s lodging for the steed is, of course, even more essential than for the rider, and the mesón, as I have said, is a combination of inn and stable. Primitive and comfortless as they often are, they have for me a fascination—the fascination of something read and thought of in childhood that in later life suddenly and unexpectedly comes true. A Mexican mesón, with its bare little bedrooms on one side of the great courtyard and its stalls for the animals on the other; with its clatter of arriving and departing mule trains, its neighing and braying and shoeing and currying, its litter of equipment and freight—saddles, bridles, preposterous spurs, pack saddles, saddle bags, saddle blankets, conical sugar loaves and casks of aguardiente from some sugar hacienda, boxes, bales, sacks of coffee—its stiff and weary travelers, its swearing, swaggering arrieros—it is the Spain of the story-books, the Spain of Don Quixote. You fall asleep at an early hour to the rhythmic crunching of mules’ teeth on cane leaves and corn, and you are awakened in the cold dark by the voice of your mozo slowly and solemnly proclaiming: “Señor, es de dia.” (It is day.)
I perhaps should not have mentioned the mesón if its attraction for me had not led me to try it in cities where there was no necessity to. Even in the cities and large towns it is still a primitive institution, but it is always inexpensive, and the rooms in those of the better class are clean. I have had a well-lighted room of ample size, with a comfortable bed, a washstand, a table, two chairs, a row of hooks to hang clothes on, and an attentive mozo usually within call, for seventy-five centavos (thirty-seven and a half cents) a day. There are no restaurants attached to these places, and absolutely no one in them speaks English.
In fact, although Mexicans are becoming more and more interested in English, and are everywhere studying the language, it is as yet not very coherently spoken by the natives with whom a traveler is likely to come in contact. A few sentences by a clerk in a shop, half a dozen disconnected words by a waiter in a hotel, are about the extent of what you hear among the working classes. And yet, with no knowledge of Spanish, you can, without mishap or difficulty, travel by rail almost anywhere in Mexico. The country is accustomed to travelers who do not speak its language, and more often than not knows instinctively and from habit what they want next. Of course, to be able to ask questions and understand the answers is both a convenience and a pleasure; but it is surprising how far a very few words of Spanish on the one hand and English on the other will carry you in comparative peace of mind. When the worst comes to the worst, as by an unforeseen combination of circumstances it sometimes does, and you are on the point of losing your reason or, what is much worse, your temper, the inevitable kind lady or kind gentleman, who is to be found in every country and who knows everything, always appears at the proper moment, asks if he can be of any assistance, and sends you on your way rejoicing. In any event, in provincial Mexico nothing unpleasant is likely to happen to you.
Just what is the attitude toward foreigners of the people in general it is difficult—impossible, even—to find out. A year or so ago, several weeks before the 16th of September (the anniversary of Hidalgo’s Declaration of Independence), it was widely announced in the newspapers of the United States that far-reaching plans had been laid by the lower classes in Mexico to observe the national festival by killing all foreigners. “Mexico for Mexicans” was to be the motto of the future. This quaint conceit—evolved, without doubt, by the pestiferous revolutionary junta in Saint Louis—was not much heard of by foreigners in Mexico; but then, in Mexico very little is heard of. A few timid persons remained at home during the day, but the day passed off without bloodshed, and the rumor was decided to have been only a rumor. That there was, however, more to it than was generally supposed (although how much more it would be impossible to find out) was evident from the fact that the Government quietly and inconspicuously took notice of it. In one place, where I have some American friends living on the edge of town—almost in the country—two rurales, heavily armed as usual, sauntered out to their houses at an early hour of the morning, and remained there all day and until late that night. As they spent the time in chatting and smoking with acquaintances who happened to pass by, it was not obvious that they were there for any especial purpose. But they were there, although they had never been there before and have never been there since. In another town a group of noisy hoodlums went at night to the house of one of the consuls (not the Spanish consul, by the way, which would have been more or less natural) with the intention of “doing something,” just what, they themselves apparently did not know. Here, also, were two rurales, and at sight of them the intentions of the little mob prudently underwent a collapse. The spokesman soon summoned sufficient courage to request that they please be allowed to break a few windows if they promised to go no farther, but the rurales replied that the first man who even stooped to pick up a stone would be shot. Whereupon the crowd retired. (It is irrelevant, but also amusing, to record that on the retreat the members of the gang got into a quarrel among themselves, during which two of them were stabbed and killed.) Beyond an admirable preparedness on the part of the Government, this proves little, as the consul in question was personally most unpopular with the people of the town. But it of course proves something—or the Government wouldn’t have been so prepared—although I find it difficult to see in it a proof of hostility toward foreigners on the part of the great mass of the Mexican people. If they do feel unkindly toward us, they are adepts in prolonged and continuous deception, for they are universally responsive to friendly overtures.
On the whole, I should not advise an invalid to go to Mexico, for I have met invalids there who, although they perhaps might not have been happy anywhere, struck me as being for many unavoidable reasons more unhappy in Mexico than they would have been had they sought a warm climate nearer home. There are a few enchanting places in Mexico where the weather is warm and reasonably equable all winter, but very few. And when Mexico is cold, it is dreary even for the robust. Its changes of temperature are sudden and penetrating, and, except in one or two hotels in the capital (an impossible place for invalids of any kind), artificial heat is practically unknown. The problem of simple, nourishing food is an insoluble problem unless you keep house; only by exercising self-restraint as regards Mexican cooking can well persons remain well. There are no hotels that in the slightest degree take into consideration the needs, the whims, the capricious hours, the endless exigencies of the sick, and anyone whose well-being is dependent upon warm rooms, good milk, quiet (the country is incessantly noisy with the noise of animals and bells and human beings), or upon all or any of the little, expensive niceties of modern civilization, had better indefinitely postpone his visit.