Yesterday I had my first reception. About fifty people came—the chers collègues and some of the colony, mostly only those whose orbit sometimes crosses the diplomatic orbit. There were flowers in every available receptacle. I made a delicious punch myself, if I do say it, and Mrs. Burnside poured tea; but I miss so many of the familiar and friendly faces of our first sojourn—Mr. James Brown Potter and the Riedls, Mr. Butler, and many others.
Monday I am giving a “bridge” for Lady C. I cannot yet have any one for lunch or dinner, but I want to give some little sign on her arrival. The Cardens are a very great addition to an ever-narrowing circle.
Great Britain stands pat on its recognition of Huerta, which adds greatly to his prestige in the eyes of his own people, and is most welcome in view of the approaching elections. We understand the ticket will be Huerta and Blanquet, in spite of Washington’s frowns.
I do not know the real qualities of Blanquet, up to now faithful supporter of Huerta and his Minister of War. The dramatic fact that, in the firing-squad at Querétaro, it was he who gave the coup de grâce to Maximilian, has always overtopped everything else. The pictures of Maximilian in the National Museum, poor, blond, blue-eyed gentleman, show him utterly unfitted to grapple with the situation, though filled with the best intentions. He was like some rabbit, or other helpless animal, caught in a trap. When one has seen archdukes on their native heaths, one realizes that they are not of the material to wrestle with the descendants of Montezuma; though I don’t know that we, in spite of all our “efficiency,” are being any more successful!
Great Britain will be very polite, but will not depart one hair’s-breadth from what it has decided on as its Mexican policy, involving big questions, not alone of prestige, but oil, railways, mines, etc. In fact, the British reply to Mr. Bryan in to-day’s newspaper quite clearly says that England will be delighted to follow any policy from Washington as long as it does not interfere with what the British Foreign Office has decided to do. They simply can’t understand our not protecting American lives and interests. Their policy here is purely commercial, while ours, alas! has come to be political.
Great excitement is predicted for Sunday, the day of the election, but all the timid have to do is to stay at home, if their curiosity permits.
The import duties are raised 50 per cent. from the twenty-eighth of October. But it will, fortunately, bear less heavily on the frijoles- and banana-eating part of the population than on those who want breakfast-foods and pâté de foie gras.
A cook comes to-day, highly recommended, but I can see just the sort of things she will turn out, if left to herself—fried bananas, goat stew, etc. She comes accompanied by her little girl of three. One of the washerwomen also has a child with her, and there are tentative remarks from other quarters regarding offspring. But the house is so big that a few indwellers, more or less, make no difference; and I am not sorry, in these uncertain times, to harbor a few bright-eyed, soft-skinned, silent brown babies under my roof. The handsome Indian maid who came to the city from her pueblo, because her stepfather was too attentive, has gone. She simply vanished; but as the other servants, on inquiry, don’t seem worried, I suppose it is all right. They have a way of leaving after they get their month’s wages, though their departure is generally preceded by some such formality as declaring that their grandmother is dead, or their aunt ill. Where they go is a mystery.
To-morrow we lunch at the Simon’s. He is the clever French Inspecteur des Finances of the Banco Nacional. They have a handsome house in the Paseo, an excellent French chef, and are most hospitable. She is witty and cultivated; we sometimes call her “la belle cuisinière.” In the evening we dine with Rieloff, the musical German consul-general, who will serve Beethoven and Bach very beautifully, after dinner. I am very little disposed to go out in the evening here, and N. is nearly always busy with despatches until a late hour. There is something in the air, nearly 8,000 feet in the tropics, which discourages night life, even in normal times, and tertulias[2] of any kind are infrequent. At ten the streets are deserted and the Mexicans all under some sort of cover. Even in the big houses they take the most abstemious of evening meals, and go to bed early, to be ready for the exceeding beauty of the early morning.
All the foreigners here have nerves. What would be peaceful, dove-like households at sea-level, become scenes of breakage of all description at this altitude, and all sorts of studies might be made on the subject of “air pressure” on the life of man and woman. There is not the accustomed amount of oxygen in the air and, with all the burning-up processes of the body lessened, there is an appalling strain on the nerves. Hence many tears!