Found your letter of May 26th on returning from a motor drive with Dearing and Mr. S. to a beautiful old town, Texcoco, where Nezahualcoyotl, the Marcus Aurelius of Mexico, lived.
Except the ancient sun-dial in the palm-planted Plaza, however, there is little to recall that civilization. A big church, built by the friars on the spot of the old temple, was filled with the usual Indian population, sitting and kneeling with their children and their burdens, and as mysterious as that Cortés found worshiping Huitzilopochtli, or any of their other gods. The Indians are religious, rather in the Oriental sense, it seems to me, than in any way resembling ours. It is certainly not given to the lower-class Anglo-Saxon to kneel with intent, uplifted eyes, outstretched arms, motionless, before some reminder of an invisible God. It does not take us that way. It seems to be as much a part of the Indian's life, that going in and out of churches, as eating or drinking, and just as essential, and why that habit, which seems to compensate for so many things obviously lacking, should be a reproach to those who instilled it I can't see. It's all most interesting to me, fresh from Prescott and Bernal Diaz. A crumbling, picturesque monastery and inconceivably desolate, dusty seminary join the church where the friars used to teach. Oh, the poor friars! There is so little account taken of their ceaseless activities, of how they found a wilderness, dotted it with churches, schools, and hospitals, stamped it with a seal of matchless beauty, brought it out of the worship of greedy gods, human sacrifices, and abominations, counting no cost, and showed as best they might dim shapes of more benign powers. I can't see what all the hue and cry is about, all the revilings. We couldn't match the record. We have disfigured Mexico wherever we have set our seal. Frankly, I'm for the friars.
A ROAD-SIDE SHRINE
Photograph by Ravell
One enters Texcoco by a broad, broken street leading into the Plaza. Interspersed too liberally between the once handsome low dwellings are the pink-and-blue pulque-shops, with their fringes of colored tissue-paper. The names of these depositories of the licor divino are often curiously bound up with the history of Mexico, and make you feel you have got hold of the "real thing." La Hija del Emperador[4] and La Reina Xochitl, a beauteous patrician, married to a Toltec king, go back to prehistoric days. El Gran Napoleon, with cocked hat and hand in his breast, painted almost life-size on a corner shop, was more picturesque than the one that had a hand in the making of their history. La Mujer del Moro gives the Moorish touch, and La Estrella del Mar recalls the buccaneers as well as the ages of faith. There was a very good one near the little viceregal bridge, with its battered coat of arms, just before we got into Texcoco, called Las Bergantinas, in memory of the spot where Cortés launched his brigantines in his attempt to take Mexico City, which then was only reached from Texcoco by water. I feel on quite intimate terms with the conqueror. It is Cortés here, and Cortés there, and Cortés everywhere. He put his seal on the whole country, and one walks quite intimately and enthusiastically with him. He was such a human sort of person, and with all his adventurous spirit very grand seigneur. Bernal Diaz tells how well and smartly he dressed, being very particular about his linen, under dark, rich garments, and inclining to a fine gem somewhere on his person, and how pleasantly he played cards, with little jokes running through it all. It reminds me of bridge evenings with the chers collègues. But all is historic on this lovely plateau. They can pull down everything and wash it in the most modern of blood, and the scent of ancient and adventurous deeds will hang round it still.
The valley was swimming in a sort of gauzy luminosity, not just light; the volcanoes, well washed yesterday afternoon, were at their most beautiful. We could not bear to turn homeward and went out through the old town, which had also enjoyed a viceregal popularity, as fine old doors and glimpses of vistas into large courtyards showed.
These patios of Mexico are most attractive. One is forever peeking in through doorways of strange houses, where flowers, children, washing, mattresses, water-jars, dogs, sometimes a palm or a cypress, contrive to make something always alluring and mostly lovely. We lunched late in the auto, under the shade of some eucalyptus-trees, and then pressed on through the lovely hills and over meadow-bounded roads till we got to the little village of Magdalena, where an indescribable melancholy mingled with the slanting bronze afternoon light filtering through the shade of the old trees. A grassy Plaza, planted with cypresses and patterned with sunken escutcheoned grave-slabs, led to the pinkish-gray church with its lovely old Spanish doors. A crumbling, broadly scalloped pink wall, with flowers, vines, and spiky green things clinging to it everywhere, surrounded the whole. The warm, lustrous air fell about us like a lovely garment. It was a place of enchantment, where we seemed to clasp hands, for a moment, with a past age of exceeding beauty.
June 11th.
Now that the political excitements have calmed down, the dinners have begun again. The Italian Legation on Tuesday, the Japanese on Thursday (Madame Horigutchi is a Belgian), the Belgian minister the next day, and there is a dinner at the Embassy on Saturday. On the 22d the British chargé gives a coronation house-warming in the new Legation, which is not yet finished enough for him to really move into.