A diplomat's wife in Mexico

by Edith O'Shaughnessy

A gusty day on this usually wind-still plateau. The pale yellow streamers of the banana-tree are torn to tatters, but one must forgive an occasional vagary in this climate, unsurpassed in its steady beauty, and which has the further recommendation that one can count on wearing one’s winter clothes in summer, and one’s summer clothes in winter....

Disorder here has been most prejudicial to French interests. Since Maximilian’s time, especially, they have had the habit of investments in Mexico. Now billions of francs are unproductive. It will be a fine bill poor old Uncle Sam will get from la belle France!

7.30.

My callers are all gone, and Elim is playing bull-fight with a red-velvet square from one of the tables, talking Spanish to himself and making every gesture of his game true to life. I am thankful the bull-fight season is over. No more doleful-faced servants of a Sunday, heartbroken, like children, because they are not swelling the gay throng passing the Embassy to the Ring, and making me feel like a wretch because they aren’t all there.

Nelson went down to try to look at his guns, presumably at the customs. At least, he is as near as that, with ears full of promises.

A telegram from Aunt L. says she starts up from the Hot Country in a day or two. I am having the lovely corner room next mine made ready for her.

March 14th.

We learn that the guns and ammunition supposed to be got in quietly, as Embassy stores, bore on the invoice the name of the colonel in charge at the Springfield arsenal. Hence these tears! They are now reposing in a deserted church near the military station, outside the city. There would have been no trouble had they been sent as Nelson requested. Now endless runnings are necessary.

My house is overrun with children. They tell me it looks like an orphanage, at the back. Such nice, little, bright-eyed Aztecs. In this stricken land how can I deny shelter and food to little children who are, so to speak, washed up at my door? The cook has three, the washerwoman two, and the chambermaid is going to present us with another. La recherche de la paternité shows the responsible person to have been our quiet, trusty messenger, Pablo. I will deduct ten pesos a month from his wages for six months—a salutary proclama to everybody else of my sentiments. I will send her to the hospital, and she will soon be back. The washerwoman has just borrowed ten dollars to change her lodgings, as the leva are after her husband. I sometimes feel like one of the early friars. Nothing that is Indian is foreign to me.

Last night Dr. Ryan was telling us, after dinner (Patchin, who is returning to New York, also was here), of the killing of Gustavo Madero, of which he was an eye-witness and concerning whose death so many versions are current. Shortly after one o’clock, on going back to the Ciudadela, where Felix Diaz was quartered, to attend to wounded who had been brought in, Ryan encountered Madero being brought out with a guard of twelve men. Diaz didn’t want him there, saying he was not his prisoner, but Huerta’s. Madero was gesticulating in a hysterical manner and waving his arms in the air. As Ryan afterward learned, he was offering the guards money if they would see him safely out of town. His nerve seemed suddenly to leave him and he began to run, whereupon one of the guards fired, hitting him in the eye as he turned his head to look behind him. The other eye was glass. This gave rise afterward to stories that his eyes had been gouged out. On his continuing to run, the whole guard fired at him, and he fell, riddled with bullets. Ryan afterward examined the body and found ten or twelve wounds. It all took place in the little park before the Ciudadela. This is the authentic account, and at least we know that Huerta was in no way responsible for his death. Doubtless had Gustavo kept his nerve, instead of trying to run, he would be alive to-day. He was an awful bounder, but had qualities of vitality, intellect, and a certain animal magnetism. His is the famous remark that “out of a family of clever men, the only fool was chosen for President.” He wasn’t more than thirty-five or thirty-six, and loved life. He had a power of quick repartee, a glancing eye, and hands seeking treasure. Well, that is all over, but it remains part of the unalterable history of Mexico. Poor, revolution-ridden Mexico! Everybody here has been one kind, generally two kinds, of revolutionist. Huerta served under Diaz, was gotten rid of, and served under Madero, whom he got rid of. Orozco was the friend of Madero against Diaz, then against Madero under Huerta, and so it goes. The history of almost every public man shows like changes of banner, and as for revolution fomenters, the United States have certainly played a consistent and persistent rôle for three years, outdone by no individual or faction here.