A diplomat's wife in Mexico

by Edith O'Shaughnessy

Yesterday the Minister for Foreign Affairs came to present his condolences to Nelson, and also to protest against the bringing up to the Embassy of our Gatling-guns and ammunition, which are still in the customs at Vera Cruz. There are seventy cases—and not featherweights. He fell over the threshold, as he entered, and was picked up by Nelson and the butler. (It was his first visit. I don’t know if he is superstitious.) Huerta, as you may remember, in the famous bedchamber conversation at Chapultepec, had told Nelson he could get in all the guns he wanted, but to do it quietly. It is now all over the country and is making a row among Mexicans. In these days of grief and agitation, N. has happened to have an unusual amount of official work.

I have been busy all day with the list for to-morrow’s requiem Mass, and it is almost finished. My little Shorn Locks has gone up-stairs, and I am resting myself by writing these lines to you.

March 7th.

We are waiting to start for the church. You will know all the thoughts and memories that fill my heart—that descent from fog-enveloped hills into the cold, gray town to lay away my precious brother. Now I am about to start through this shimmering, wondrous morning to the black-hung church. In the end it is all the same.

March 9th.

I have not written since Saturday morning, before starting to the requiem Mass. I have been so busy seeing people and attending to hundreds of cards, telegrams, and notes. Huerta did not appear at the church, as people thought he might do. Instead, Portillo y Rojas, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, sat by us. All was beautiful and sad. Afterward we went into the sacristy to receive the condolences of our friends, as is the custom here. Though he had never trod the threshold of our Mexican dwelling, it still seemed inexpressibly empty as we returned to it. I was glad of the heaped-up desk and the living decisions awaiting N.

Huerta was very nice on seeing him to-day, called him “hijo” (“son”), gave him an affectionate abrazo, and all his sympathy. Subsequently, Nelson had a long talk with him in a little private room of the Café Colon, that Huerta approached from the back entrance. Huerta is broad in his ideas and very careful as to any remarks about the United States, in Nelson’s presence. He always speaks of President Wilson as Su Excelencia, el Señor Presidente Wilson; there are no diatribes of any kind. The thing that has really got on his nerves is our keeping his 4,000 soldiers at Fort Bliss and expecting him to pay for them. He says Mexico is not at war with the United States; that the rebels are allowed to go and come as they please, and even to organize on the frontier. Why this discrimination? He says that our government thinks he is a bandit, like Villa, but that if Washington would be just it would see that he keeps his mouth shut, does his work as well as he can in the face of the terrible injustice done him, and asks nothing of any one except to be let alone; that he could have had the power in Mexico long before he took it. He repeated that many a person of influence had urged him to put an end to the disastrous Madero administration; that he is not in politics for personal ends; that his wants are few, his habits those of an old soldier. He always insists that he did not kill Madero....

As for that, one can talk for hours and hours with all sorts of people without finding any direct evidence of any direct participation by Huerta in the death of Madero. I have come to think it an inexcusable and fatal negligence on his part, incidental to the excitement and preoccupation of those tragic days. He was astute enough to have realized that Madero dead would be even more embarrassing to him than living, and should have insisted on asylum for him where alone it was to be had. There is, however, at times a strange suspension of mental processes in Mexico; with everything possible and yet nothing appearing probable, nobody ever foresees any situation.

I had a long call yesterday from Rincon Gaillardo, Marqués de Guadalupe, the smart, youngish general. Besides his military work, he is doing something that all the members of the upper class should co-operate in—i. e., helping to amalgamate the classes. His father, Duca de Regla and “Grand d’Espagne,” was the first man in society here to receive Diaz when he came to power. In fact, in his house Diaz met Doña Carmen. He told me that Diaz wasn’t then, by any means, the kind of man he is now, after thirty years of power and knowledge.

Last night, at midnight, Nelson, who had gone to sleep early, was called down-stairs by urgent telephone messages, to hear that the Texas Rangers had dashed over the border to Sabinas Hidalgo to recover the body of the pseudo-American cattle-rustler, Vergara. Whether the report is true is not known, but of course it is an act that would be resented by all classes here, and every class really hates us.