XII
Dia de Muertos—Indian booths—President de la Barra relinquishes his high office—Dinner at the Foreign Office—Historic Mexican streets—Madero takes the oath
Dia de Muertos, November 2d.
The black-hung churches and the streets are full of those mindful of their dead. I, too, of my "dead in life" as well, thinking how of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.
I went to the little Church of Corpus Cristi, opposite the Alameda, walking through the booths the Indians have spread there since generations, during three days at this season. It's all as picturesque and busy as possible, and of an informality as regards family life.
I bought some really lovely baskets, and a bright-eyed little Indian boy, belonging to some dull-eyed parents, took home for me a lot of the fragile pottery. Some of it is very decorative—soft grays with red and black designs, polished greens with flowers in two tints, and a black-lustered ware with ornamentations of scrolls and figures. I selected quite a menagerie of tiny animals, very perfectly modeled in clay and brittle to a degree, as passing as the hands that made them.
There were "toys" in the shape of small coffins, black or white, skeletons, devils of various frightfulness, even funeral cars in miniature. At one corner, as a last touch of memento mori, an Indian was offering candy coffins, which seemed to have quite a run.
I am writing at the Country Club, which is a most lovely spot at all times, but now is wrapped in a continual, superlative Indian summer. Elim said to me the first thing this morning, "Oh, I do love dat gontry clove," so here I am with him. He met me with Gabrielle, outside of the Church of Corpus Cristi, on the Alameda.
That church has a curious history. Though now shrunken and tawdry, it was one of the most important and gorgeous in the viceregal days, and had a convent attached to it for Indian maidens of patrician birth. There is an old memorial over the door recording that it was inaugurated under the 36th viceroy, Don Baltazar de Zuñiga, for the daughters of Christian caciques alone. For the ceremonial of the taking of the veil the most gorgeous of Indian costumes were worn—feather-work mantles, aigrettes sewn with pearls and emeralds, and underneath-wrappings of fine cotton.
Now the treasures of the convent are dissipated to the four winds, and as for the patrician maidens, oú sont les roses d'Antan? The only thing of interest remaining in the church is an old copy of a picture of Nuestra Señora del Sagrario, from the Toledo Cathedral, supposed to have been taken to the Rio Grande by the venturesome hidalgo, Juan de Oñate, being brought back to Mexico City only after a couple of centuries of travel and vicissitude.