Last night dinner at the Japanese Legation. A very elaborate and beautiful centerpiece arrangement of tiny lake and grove decorated the table, and the food was very good. That was the Belgian touch. They are used to la bonne chère. All the dinners now are a sort of hail and farewell for Von Hintze and ourselves newly arrived, and the departing Romeros, who have been here some time and are very popular.
There is always a lot of talk about the Japanese in Mexico, but their real history here, as I have discovered, is not disquieting. Some Japanese statesman (of course I forget his name) first conceived the idea in 1897 of starting coffee-plantations on a large scale in Chiapas. The pioneers were called "colonists," and were followed by "immigrants." All had bad luck with the enterprise at first, but by economy and industry finally got prosperous.
As for Horigutchi himself, amiable and intelligent and, of course, unusually intimate with the French language, it is said he knows how the Emperor of Korea died, pués quién sabe? At any rate, he is peaceful and smiling now, his Belgian wife is dressy and hospitable, and he has an interesting little daughter. The house is the usual compromise between good Japanese things and expensive European ones, always painful to our esthetic sense, and doubtless to theirs as well.
Again I have waked up to this wondrous sun and these open windows, and the shining, flower-planted patio. Am having a little luncheon here. Von H. Stalewski, the Russian minister, Martinez del Campo, third introducer of ambassadors (he of the charming English), and the Simons and the French chargé. A magnificent blue Puebla bowl, such as were used in olden days for baptismal feasts, now very difficult to find, decorates the center of the round table, filled with red and purple sweet-peas—guisantes de olor they call them; fifty cents for the whole glory. All our cakes, ices, etc., are ordered from the Café de l'Opéra, kept by French people in the Avenida Cinco de Mayo, where the Mexicans drop in between five and eight for tea or chocolate or some sort of consummation.
Von H. is finding himself out of his natural orbit here. His eyes filled with tears when he said to me at dinner at the Italian Legation the other night: "I miss my friends." We were having a little exchange of sentiments and illusions. I imagine he is un sensitif, and it is a far cry from what we have had and known before. He has the world manner, varied official experience, and an unexplained personal equation.
There had been no diplomatic dinners for six months here on account of the troubles, and when everybody has had one things will settle down again.
June 18th.
Your letter saying you were thinking of the Pentecostal fires on the Umbrian hills, has come. I forget all pains, if pains there were, and am glad of that and all other experiences life has given us together.
Mrs. Wilson goes to the United States next week for several months until her boys are settled in school and college. I shall miss her very much. Besides being one of the most admirable women I have known in public life, she is a pearl of a chefesse.
I have dwelt much on my easy, pleasant days here, surrounded by new beauty and new interests, books, companions—on this experience of an unknown land with nothing of the "pace that kills," nothing of the wearing "concurrence" of the great cities. In fact, I am experiencing to the full, in Elliott's phrase, "the comforts of the tropics."