The American industrial magnates here have been ever so kind and helpful. The American Smelting and Refining Works especially have done more for me than I can ever repay. Their practical and volunteered help and great thoughtfulness cannot be described nor appreciated in mere words. I rather suspect the channel through which this help was contrived, although his name has not been mentioned to me.
To while away our waiting moments, Dick and I, in company with a representative of the Baldwin Locomotive works, went to an amateur bull-fight in celebration of the Centenario. A feeble amateur affair it was. Nothing illustrative of Mexico bull-fighting. A bedraggled show, neither decorative, spectacular nor well fought. Mercifully the bull’s horns were sawn off at the tips so we were spared the sight of horses ripped up and trailing entrails. But I saw enough of blood and brutality. The audience cheered, laughed, sang, shouted. Almost it sounded like a baseball game. The more blood flowed, the more they shouted with joy. The bulls were young ones, too young to be very fierce. They would not face the horses at all, and to enliven them, the bandolaria were charged with a time fuse and exploded like a firework with loud detonations, and burnt interiorly. For some time after the explosion, smoke emanated from the burnt, black, bleeding wound in the bull’s back. One animal in terror jumped the paling. The killing with the sword at the end was bungled every time. The sword missed the vital spot and was plunged up to the hilt in the brute’s shoulder, to be withdrawn, on the first opportunity, dripping with blood, and restruck again, and again. The mob cheering the while. When the last bull was killed the crowd flooded the ring, and the dead bull was mutilated by people who carried away bits of it as souvenirs. When the carcass had been finally dragged away on a rope by two mules and a pool of blood marked the spot, boys besieged it, dipped naked feet in it, seemed hypnotized and enthralled by the sight and touch of blood.
The horrible thing is that after the sixth bull had been tormented to death, one’s own feelings as regards the sight of blood were almost blunted. Frankly I longed to see a man killed for a change, instead of the bull. There was something ridiculous about these swaggering men with their long lances, astride horses that could hardly stand up, and that had to be urged towards the bull by men who lashed them from behind. Chiefly the bull seemed to be pursued more than pursuing.
September 27, 1921. San Antonio, Texas.
My appeal to Washington met with a response that has been a revelation to me of American chivalry. We passed the border yesterday at dawn. I faced it with some trepidation, but we received the greatest courtesy and consideration. After reexamination of Dick (who is much better) they retracted the verdict of trachoma.
Six weeks accumulation of mail has met me here. My head is buzzing with taking it all in. The reading did not cheer me. From England, on all sides gloomy accounts politically and privately. They ask me to return to their gloom. Of course one has occasional moments of homesickness when the desire to see one’s own world is overwhelming. But one is happier away here. There is daylight instead of darkness. There is air to breath. There’s life. Everything and everyone is young, vital, active, hopeful.
We are resting for three or four days. The town has been badly dilapidated by the recent floods. One goes in to a shop to ask for something—and ever the same reply: “Our stock was washed away by the flood—we cannot supply you.” We drove out to the Breckenridge Park and beheld with amazement the impudent little stream that caused the havoc.
There is nothing to do in this semi-American, semi-Mexican town. But the hotel is pure American, full of standardized American luxury. It seems wonderful. I ring the bell of my bedroom and ask the room service to send me a jug—(no a pitcher I have to call it, else they don’t understand)—a pitcher of lemonade. I don’t always want the lemonade but I love to see it when it comes. The glass jug is a real object of beauty—a work of art. It is full of sliced oranges, carmine cherries, ice and green leaved herb. It is a riot of color, a delight to the eye. I might be drinking in a dream the sap of irridescent precious stones!
I am making use of those quiet days to try and tame Dick. At present he is a savage. He keeps on hitching his trousers up as one unaccustomed to wearing clothes. He exclaims: “Jesus!” when unduly stirred. He learnt it from the Texas boys in camp. He is not sure what he may or may not eat in his fingers and is very clumsy with his fork.
To counter-balance this he has acquired a useful knowledge of things. For instance one of his games it to lay pipe lines—oil of course. He knows something about locomotives, and what the very newest type is like inside as compared with the old (the Baldwin locomotive representative took a fancy to him). He has a smattering of knowledge about gods and things you find in the earth. But he isn’t (at present) fit to tea out at five o’clock in a drawing room with any of my friends’ children.