Chapter VI: Part 6

He left the room for a moment to give an order, explaining he had sent for a reproduction of himself that Madame Obregon had presented to him, and that he would like to show me. Presently two small children came in: “These are the reproductions of me!” he said, laughingly ... the boy about 4 years old was certainly like him. The little girl, rather frail and white, less so. I wondered at those small children not being in bed, it must have been nearly ten o’clock. No wonder they looked pale!

The President then took us upstairs to another large uninhabited reception room, to show us a picture done from photographs by a Spanish artist! The picture had its face to the wall, and when turned round by two attendants, for our inspection, it was obviously just what a picture would be like done from photographs! I felt it had better go back with its face to the wall. I also thought of Colonel Miller, the U. S. Military Attaché, who informed me sometime ago, that visiting a pottery he found that a workman had modelled from photographs an “excellent and most clever likeness of Obregon.”... He paid the workman two pesos for it and intended to “present it” to the President. Done from photographs, for two pesos. How can one compete? I cannot help smiling as I recall the three distinguished portrait painters, who, on hearing I was coming to Mexico, bade me cable to them if there was any work to do, so that they might come immediately. To switch off from this train of thought I asked, if I were not indiscreet in doing so, what the President’s impression was of the condition of Russia from the reports of his representatives whom he had sent there three months ago. He explained that the representatives had not yet returned, but one was to arrive in about sixty days. Meanwhile they have orders not to send communications by mail. His own private opinion was that every movement has something good as well as bad in it. He thought the result of the Russians having been so long oppressed, was that they were now like birds let out of a cage, and not knowing quite what to do with their freedom.... I thought to myself, this is the most non-committal opinion I have ever heard expressed! and I marvelled at the unhesitating readiness of the man, who is really a soldier, yet talks like a diplomat! My impression was of a man of no culture and little education. His face shows no trace of thought or even anxiety, he is quick, cautious and strong-minded. I asked him before I left, whether his disinclination to be modelled by me was influenced by the fact that I had done Lenin and Trotzky. He said most emphatically that this was not the case, and that he was far too independent a man to entertain such small ideas. He seemed really rather worried lest I should think him discourteous, and he begged me to tell him what he could do for me, as he would like to be my best friend in Mexico,--would I come and see him whenever I liked without any pretext being necessary and if I could not produce an interpreter, he would. “But in three years ...” he said, “I shall speak French!” “and ... I Spanish,” I said. He picked me flowers from the roof garden, took my arm and helped me upstairs and expressed in every outward way his desire to be friendly. He said to me, as I was leaving: “You must know in your heart that I am right ...” and of course I do know it. I have already said it. Obregon has not yet done anything to immortalize his name in History ... he may ‘go’ tomorrow, and another take his place ... I said to him, “Well, do something _quickly_ to justify my doing your bust!”

Meanwhile let us “wait and see” what he is going to do!

MONDAY, JULY 25, 1921. _Mexico City._

I see in the newspaper that Einstein has returned to Germany. His criticism of the United States is quoted in the MEXICAN POST. He abuses them after all their hospitality, he laughs at their adulation. He says the men are the lapdogs of the women.... I suppose the American man’s attitude towards woman is about as extreme in one direction as the German’s attitude is extreme in another. As a woman I can only say, “Thank God for the American man.” I suppose the word ‘Hausfrau’ is almost an international word. It describes a certain type of woman, and it is a German type. The German man has made her so. Einstein may well scoff at the position of woman in the States. To him the chivalry of the American man is not easily understood. As for American people’s enthusiasm over the Einstein theory, “which they did not understand,” that is probably why they enthused, which they otherwise might not.

This evening at five,--Mr. Malbran called for me, and drove me to the Ministry of Finance, to keep our appointment with de la Huerta. The familiar view of a busy Government office recalled Moscow. We passed through two rooms in which people were waiting, and I waited only about three minutes in a third room full of men. The realization that all these people were waiting to see him made me rather anxious, but we were shown in almost immediately to the Minister’s great big reposeful room. We were joined by a young man, his English interpreter, and all four of us sitting round in a circle, conversation began, rather formally. The feeling was: “Well now you’re here, say something,” and through an interpreter I am shy to begin. Mr. Malbran also makes me nervous! This feeling of restraint, however, only lasted for a few minutes. When we had acquitted ourselves of mutual compliments, telling each other that we had heard so much about the other, and how interested we were in meeting one another, I said that I had so many things that I wanted to talk to him about, and so many questions I wanted to ask. He replied in a most gracious manner, that I had but to ask anything I liked, without reserve. So I broke the ice by asking rather flippantly, why the Government didn’t make use of all the young men who were selling bananas and mangoes in the streets, and put them to work on making roads. I said there were such beautiful places to see and so hard to get to. He took my question more seriously than I had anticipated. He said that the economic position of the country had to be straightened out first, and that meanwhile all the important things were held up. “If only,” he said, “England would recognize us and help to stabilize us, instead of creating this wall around us, we might get out onto our feet.” I told him that his words sounded like an echo of Moscow, and he said, “Russia is more fortunate than we, for she has her recognition now and we have not.”

The subject of Russia just broke down any remaining formalities or restraint. We were, as one might say, “off.” He asked me pointblank did I think the majority in Russia were better off since the new system. I looked at Mr. Malbran, the polished diplomat, who was following this discussion with attention. “At the risk of Mr. Malbran thinking me a Bolshevik, (and we all laughed) I confess that in my humble opinion, the majority are better off, that is to say, the working people have more. They certainly have no less.”

“If those are your views,” de la Huerta said,“can you explain an alleged interview with you, in a Mexican paper, in which you are quoted as saying that, ‘Communism in Russia has completely broken down.’” I denied having made any such statement, and not being able to read Spanish, that was the first I had heard of it. He asked if I had heard in Russia any opinions expressed about Mexico. I was sorry to have to admit that I had not. No one at that time associated me in the least with anything but England, and as I did not understand Russian, I lost much that I might have learned from overhearing.

“And what do you think of Mexico, and of the present Government?” he asked. I said rather humbly, that it was perfectly bewildering, and that I did not understand it. But I knew some of the details of their labor laws which were extremely liberal, and I admired very much. “And what do you think of the contrast between our palaces and our poor--?” he asked me. I said I hadn’t seen many palaces....

“But you have anyway seen Pani’s, and Malbran’s!” he said laughing.

“Yes, but your climate is kind, and your poor do not look so wretched, as for instance in England.”

“Come with me some day ... I will show you,” he offered.

I said that anything he could show me would be greatly appreciated. He promised to snatch an hour or two next Thursday at three. “And when you have seen some of the misery of these people, you will wonder why some of us have not given our lives to ameliorate their lot.”

I said, “the first thing that should be done here--is Hygiene”.

The Minister agreed, “And next is education.” He agreed again but added: “All that depends on the economic position of the country.”

I said, “You have your soil full of richness, your country is richer than almost any other country, why do not you Mexicans get up and possess it, instead of allowing the foreigner to come in and exploit it?”

“Understand ...” he answered, “that after years of oppression, when we were, as it were, a nation of slaves, we gained our liberty, and before we knew what use to make of it, the experienced foreigner came to show us and he took things into his own hands. Today it complicates our machinery beyond words.”

Conversation began to be a mix-up of Spanish, French and English. When the Minister’s interpreter failed in his English, Malbran came to the rescue in French. The Minister understood enough English to prompt in the translations, and I understood enough Spanish to get the spirit of his meaning.

“It must be a wonderful thing,” I said, “to be in a position of power, and to be able to help in the uplift of the workers.”

He said he had devoted twenty years of his life to this task, at the risk of being abused and misunderstood. He told us of his organization of a labor representation within the Government as early as 1916, before Russia ever began her revolution. He said it had been hard work, and things had not gone as they should go, they had been wrongly organized. The revolutions that had occurred one after another in Mexico had not helped the masses.

“Revolution,” he said, “is composed of three factors. The first is propaganda,--the second is armed force and the third is evolution; and we began unfortunately with armed force, the propaganda followed and the evolution was only partial.”

We discussed the difference between proletariat and democracy, he quoted Lenin, who believes in the one, but he believes in the other. He rather deplored the fact that the Third Internationale had broken away from democracy. I cannot quote the discussion, it was too long and too intricate, and I would risk to misquote. But he spoke with an earnestness and a keenness that even interpretation did not spoil. He said that he did all he could, and all he dared to do, to further the cause of the laboring masses, but he was handicapped, out of loyalty to his President and a desire not to compromise his country, by going too far in the world movement. But he insisted several times upon the fact that there would be no real amelioration of suffering in the world, until people had generally realized their duty towards their fellows, of helping and sharing. I said I did not know why I interested myself in the destiny of the “proletaire” but that I could not help it, and that it was a subject that always roused me.

The Minister, with visionary eyes, said almost passionately, “Sometimes I feel like a woman with a great love in her heart, that she longs to tell but has to suppress because of the conventions of the world that surround her, and which force her, almost nun-like, to preserve in silence,” and it sounded beautiful in Spanish.

Malbran, whom he had referred to as “our conservative friend!” had become interested, and towards the end he ceased to be interpreter and joined in the discussion.

I thought of all the people in all the rooms who were patiently and impatiently waiting to see their Minister of Finance, who was engaged in Socialist arguments with this strange party! At the end, I said I felt I had drunk deep of clear pure water! and he said chivalrously that it had been a great pleasure to him to have opportunity of once in awhile “letting himself go....”

He repeated his promise about fetching me Thursday, to see.... He did not precisely define _what_.

We got down into the street, and found the car, and drove away with a strange sense of excitement and stimulation, at least I did, and as for Malbran, who had been rather silent on our way there, he was now quite expansive. We talked animatedly all the way back to the Geneva Hotel, where he dropped me. We discussed the psychology of de la Huerta, I said I would hate to be disillusioned, but that my instinct told me the man had all the passion and the sincerity of the Russians I had known in Moscow. We agreed that if de la Huerta had been imprisoned for years by a Czarist regime, he would be as fanatical and as ready to give his life for the cause, as volcanic and ruthless as any of the Russian Revolutionaries. Of the few people I have met so far in Mexico, de la Huerta is by far the most interesting.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1921. _Mexico City._

When I returned from riding at midday, it was to find Pani’s car waiting for me, and the information that four times people had called to take me to the “Haripeyo” that was taking place at the bull ring since 11 o’clock. I hurriedly changed my clothes, cursing fate, that I had not been told of this in time. Arrived there I was welcomed by Pani, and Malbran. There were quite a lot of people, but I didn’t know who they were. I regretted not having had the chance of asking my friends. In the ring there were about a dozen men on horseback, and one of them I recognized as my friend Guadalupe. He looked extremely picturesque in his leather clothes and huge brimmed white hat embroidered in gold. The game seemed to be to chase a wild horse and lassoo it. Dick was wildly excited. He shouted: “That’s good!” at the top of his voice when the pony was violently thrown to the ground. It may have been a wild horse, but a tame horse fed on oats is wilder. This animal looked unkempt, moth-eaten, and dazed, I suppose from fright. It must be a rotten game for the horse, to be tripped up when he’s galloping full speed. They would lassoo his front legs together and then his back legs so that the animal lay on the ground helpless, then a man would straddle it, and the horse would rise to his feet with the man on his back. They did the same with a bull, having previously pursued it, caught it by the tail, given the tail a twist round the man’s leg, which just threw the galloping bull with a thud to the ground. Almost the best feat was performed by a rider who pursued the wild horse, caught it by the mane and jumped from his own horse on the back of the wild one, as they galloped side by side. They are wonderful riders these Mexicans. They can sit anything and cannot be shaken off! But I would like to see them on a powerful big horse with an English saddle.

Dick and I spent the afternoon in the garden of the American Embassy. There is a little round clear blue-tiled pond full of goldfish, and Dick paddled and played and was completely happy. I asked Mr. Summerlin for news, as I get nothing to read but the MEXICAN POST. But he was full of mystery and told me nothing about anything. When people get a suspicion that one may be writing, they became terribly secretive. I remember a time when I used to hear state secrets, and people used to talk about things in front of me as if I were perfectly idiotic and negligible.

Today I asked Mr. Summerlin: “Is recognition any nearer...?” He shrugged his shoulders in true diplomatic fashion--it told me nothing. That he was very busy and finally called away on urgent matters, was all I learnt. We might be on the eve of war for all I know! The people one meets are supremely indifferent to everything. The newspapers record certain rebellions in various parts, no one even reads them. Even the Tampico Oil ‘hold up’ is now a thing of the past, the papers hardly mention it at all, nor the oil wells that are on fire; it is as if the Mexican nation was so blasé with excitements that nothing any longer can stir their interest.

THURSDAY, JULY 28, 1921. _Mexico City._

Punctually at 3 o’clock, and true to his word, de la Huerta fetched me in his car. Mr. Malbran was of the party, and as also Mr. Rubio, the good-looking young man who interprets for him. To my great joy he told the chauffeur to drive to El Disirto. It is one of the places I want to see. If the expedition was meant to show me the poverty of Mexico, one did not have to go far, the outskirts of the town are as sordid, dirty, and miserable as can be. But out in the open road, (and a beautiful road it was) we met almost a procession of Indians, one behind the other, walking into the town with their loads. These loads consist chiefly of terra-cotta pots and cooking utensils, piled up, in and around a wooden case, the whole weight of which is carried by a strap round the forehead. Thus, barefooted and bent double, heads straining forward against the weight, muscles of their necks swollen, lips sometimes blue, and bulging eyes focussed on the ground immediately in front, the Indian man, woman and boy will walk twelve kilometres. De la Huerta, pointing to some Indians on burros, said: “Those are the privileged classes.”

“How are you going to better the conditions of these people?” I asked....

“Caramba!” he exclaimed with a gesture of perplexity, and this needed no interpretation.

“What is your motive in showing me ‘La misere’ of Mexico...?”

He said: “Your bourgeois friends have shown you what they had to show,” and he referred laughingly to yesterday’s Haripeyo and the description in the newspapers of the smart people present. “Each of us shows you his own side...”. He went on to tell me that in olden days, the poverty and distress was hidden from visitors as much as possible, but that times had changed, and to-day everything was open for anyone who wished to investigate. “It is good that foreigners should see what we made our Revolution for.” I was a little bit perplexed, and remarked: “But how has it helped, if the people are still in this condition?”

He explained that things were slowly progressing, that the development was from the coast towards the centre, he said proudly, that the State of Sonora, of which he is Governor (elected by a tremendous majority) has no such conditions, and he expressed the desire that I might see his State--“But these people” and he waved towards the patient procession, remarking as he did so upon the expression of suffering in their faces--“these people are better off even than they were. In the days of Porfirio Diaz they worked as they are worked today, but they worked for an employer. They were whipped to work. They were slaves. They had even to marry according to their employers’ selection. Today they are doing the work for themselves, they do it of free choice, and whatever small gain they make, it is theirs.”

I quoted what a friend had told me, that the Indians would rather sell bananas in the gutter, than own a bit of land and have to cultivate it. De la Huerta’s face took a savage expression: “Try and take away a piece of land from the Indian who owns it and see what happens ...” he said.

Under the thirty years peaceful reign of Porfirio Diaz, a handful of people prospered, a propertied class and a rich leisured class sprang up, “But the working people were as you see them here on the road. Are you surprised they rose in revolt?”

I told him that Russia seemed to be concentrating all her propaganda on the next generation, and that the obsession of the moment was education. De la Huerta said in reply, that after he became Governor of Sonora, he increased the schools from eighty to four hundred and twenty-seven in one year. The man is evidently full of ideas and ideals, but he has not a free hand. He referred to the criticism of the world, and said it was necessary to show what effort and what aims there were. I told him that what was far more convincing than seeing conditions was meeting people. Of himself, for instance, I had heard great criticism, from a certain class. But it was only necessary to meet him to see that he was a sincere idealist, and not in the least as the world described him. De la Huerta turned to the mobile-faced Malbran, and said: “There! Let your diplomatic mind take in all this....” I said laughingly, that I thought the Argentine Minister would make a very excellent Ambassador to Russia, when his time was up in Mexico, but the others said his initiation had only just begun, and he would not be ready for quite a while!

El Desirto is round a corner, at the top of a mountain. The mountain is covered with trees, and profuse vegetation. Our car climbed and zig-zagged and encircled. On our left was a precipice. On our right a steep straight bank. We were within half a mile of Desirto, when it suddenly began to pour rain, thunder and lightning and hail, as it only can in the mountains. De la Huerta ordered that the car should turn round and go back. He said it would be dangerous to attempt the remainder of that half mile in the rain. I was terribly disappointed at not getting there and thought him unnecessarily fussy, and alarmist, but ... trust these people to know their own country! In less than five minutes, what had been a perfectly smooth, good, dusty road, suddenly became greasy and sticky, so that our car skidded crabwise down the hill. Seeing a precipice on one side, and a car not under control was alarming in the extreme. Behind us came a Ford, and it also slid drunkenly down the road, and I felt that no brakes would be able to stop it bumping us. Mercifully for us it went sideways into the ditch, and mercifully for them it was not the precipice side! We stopped and put chains on round our wheels,--it took time. De la Huerta was perfectly calm and philosophical but apologetic, he said this addition from above was _not_ part of his programme!

Even with chains our car too went into the ditch, and as by this time the rain had slackened, I was delighted to get out and walk, but the road was so slippery that even arm in arm, the Minister and I could hardly stand up. I picked a variety of wild flowers, and watched de la Huerta surrounded by clamoring Indians who wanted pesos for having helped the car out of the ditch--it was rather an attractive scene, and he really does love his Indians! I say “his” Indians, because he has Indian blood in his veins, but he told me also that his grandfather was a Spaniard from Granada and his mother was the daughter of a Polish Jew, born in France. It is a glorious mix-up.

I asked him if it would be possible for me to stop and see Villa on my way to California, and if so would he give me a letter of introduction. De la Huerta laughed, he said it would be quite possible and that with a letter from him I would be quite safe.... (Safe--from what?) I told him I mean to leave in about ten days. “Yes,” he said, “if the Mexican government allows you to go!” I told him about the Mexican Consul in New York hesitating to visé my passport, because Mexico did not want any Bolsheviks, and I said how surprised I had felt at Mexico suddenly becoming so respectable.

“Do you consider a conservative attitude respectable?” he asked, adding: “I call respectability having a sincere and independent opinion, and having the courage to acknowledge it....” Then with a sudden impulse he plucked at a scarlet flower in my hand, one that I had gathered among the rocks, and half audibly, more to himself than to me, he said: “That represents the life blood of these toiling people....”

Later, when we neared home, he remarked: “Ah! if we could only work at ease, without the shadow of that spectre in the North....”

We agreed that no country could independently work out its salvation, except Russia, who was not overshadowed. We had got back to Mexico City, and I was nearing my ‘home’ when suddenly he asked: “What is your impression of Trotzky...? I told him I had compromised myself on two continents shouting his praises!

“And Lenin...?”

I told him. Then came this astonishing final question:

“Is Trotzky a good man?”

“From what point of view good?”

“Morally....”

I could not embark at this last moment upon a discussion of what are morals through an interpreter. I thought. I hesitated. I wondered, as I never had wondered before, about Trotzky, and then I admitted that so far as I knew, Trotzky was a moral man!

FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1921. _Mexico City._

This evening José Vasconselos came to see me and we talked for nearly two hours. He is head of the Department of Education. I am told he is one of the most brilliant and most promising men of Mexico. I felt that a talk with him would do much to help me to understand what the present Government is aiming at, and what effort is being made for the future of Mexico. I tackled him at once very frankly about his education system. I said to him: “The bourgeois tell me that you have caused to be printed 20,000 copies of Shakespeare and Homer for illiterate Indians, who can neither read nor write.”

This criticism was no news to him, he proceeded to explain to me that these classics were for the town libraries, and there were 10,000 towns. “What would you put in the libraries?” he asked--“What would you have the people read as soon as they can read?” He said that he was basing his system on the Carnegie System, and that during one of the former Revolutions when he was an exile, he lived at San Antonio, Texas. There he went into the Public Library and borrowed an edition of Plato. Every book that is loaned is inscribed with the name and date of the person to whom it is loaned. “In one year, that volume of Plato had been loaned to thirty people, and that was San Antonio, a community of cowboys.”

He explained to me his great difficulty in getting enough books for the 10,000 libraries. He said that if he wrote to Madrid for 10,000 volumes of Don Quixote, they could only supply him with 500. So he must get them printed himself. He promised me a complete set of the standard library works. This had nothing to do with the elementary books distributed to the schools. He said he would like me to see, in some of the little towns how keen the Indian parents are on education for their children.

“When the next generation are educated--then will evolve the real Socialist State!” he said.

He referred to the reign of Porfirio Diaz as having accomplished nothing for the education of the masses. His ideas about social reform are Spartacist, he quoted Liebknecht and said that he favored the plan of limited fortunes, rather than communism, as the one seemed to him to kill initiative, and he did not like the idea of being a slave to the State. The only class he really despised was the bourgeois, “people who eat three meals a day, how can their brains work--?” People who assume an attitude of culture, but who never open a book, certainly not a classic. How dared they attempt to criticize! “The only thing in their favor in this country is that at least they don’t have any part in the affairs of the government!”

Vasconselos is a queer personality, mixture of Spanish and Mexican, yet he said he cared nothing for the civilization of the Occident, he understood better the Orient, and followed in the train of Tagore, whom he talked of with great admiration. I asked him whether on the whole he was satisfied with the way things were shaping for Mexico, and he said he was certainly satisfied. That in his opinion revolutions were a thing of the past, there were a stirring and an awakening all through the land.

We discussed literature, art, social reforms, education of children, Russian evolution, the compromises of Lenin, the activities of Trotzky, the prejudices, the ignorances, the indifferences of the bourgeois, the national spirit of Mexico, the planet we live in and the ineptitude of humans to adapt themselves to it. He said he felt it was almost a crime to put children into the world: “If they are stupid, indifferent and incapable of thought they are little better than the brutes, if they are intellectuals and have any ideas and ideals at all, then they suffer unendurably--No, this world, even with its mountains and its lakes and its vegetation, it is no place for humans...!”

SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1921. _Puebla._

We left Mexico City by the 5 P.M. train for Puebla. The train was full and the first class compartment resembled a dirty tramcar. (I qualify the tram car, because there are tramcars that are clean, but this was not.) A wedding party came to see off a honeymoon couple. They were a quiet and completely self-absorbed pair. I watched them rather unmercifully. It took us five hours to get to Puebla. Long before that time, the bride-groom, so smartly attired in frock coat, varnished button boots, and cloth cap, wearied of his collar and deposited it like a crown on his bride’s knees. He seemed happier so, and looked much more himself with a handkerchief round his neck. Towards the end of the journey, he seemed very impatient. Behind Dick and me sat a large cigar smoking man, who in a foreign accent asked if we were English. He was from Manchester, and had lived in Mexico 26 years! He told us what hotel to go at Puebla, (we had reserved no rooms). He insisted on buying lemonade and chicken for us at the wayside station. Finally he took possession of our luggage and said he would himself take us to our hotel in his car.

He was met on the platform by his son, and in his car sat his wife and his daughter. I tried to back out discreetly and take a taxi, but they were all very insistent, and kind. Finally, one hotel being full, he found us rooms in the second. I asked him his name. He was the British Vice Consul.

JULY 31, 1921.

Dick, who was sleeping with me, had an attack of croup so that I was awake most of the night. At dawn I was awakened by bugles of a regiment riding into town, besides the clanging of church bells, and the crowing of cocks! Shortly after that we got up.

Dick insisted on looking up some of his “ship friends” who live in the town. We found them, and left him in their back garden playing in their water tank. It was a great chance to see some of the churches, and drive round the town, and do the things that bore Dick.

The town is overburdened with churches, but their exteriors are so decorative that one is glad they exist. The domes are tiled, either with blue and white or yellow. They glisten in the sun like enamel. I went into one called “Of the Company” and happened upon a service with a cardinal. At least, I suppose he was a cardinal. He was dressed in the color of that name. This crimson melodramatic figure seemed to me emblematical of the inquisitorial Church of Spain. Sitting all over the floor were Indian women with their babies, and when the organ subsided, there was a real baby chorus.

The church entrances are the congregating places (as in Italy) of the most wretched beggars. I could not help wondering why a man with no legs submits to living his remaining life on a plank with four wheels; why old age with its skin wizened like a walnut can bear the degradation of extreme filth, and of asking charity on bended knee; and why a blind individual can roll sightless grey orbs and fix them on me while so doing. Why don’t they end life? Why is it endurable? But almost worse in my estimation, was the woman who passed me by, bent double by an enormous load on her back, and dragged down by a baby tied in a bundle to her breast. Must she bear both those burdens?

At midday, there was supposed to be a “battle of flowers.” I have seen the real thing on the Riviera, where the national temperament is joyous. But can people here have a real spontaneous out-burst, when the big sad-eyed Indian stands at the street corner, gaping and incapable of throwing off the melancholy of generations? A few dressed-up cars appeared, but there was no profuse flower throwing. Perhaps, like me, the Pueblans were economizing. Anyway, it was so dull and half-hearted that we took a train to San Francisco.

This is a church and garden on the outskirts of the city. Soon we rambled on, up and up, to a hill summit, from which one viewed the city in the plain, and Popocatapetl with its snow peak, emerging through a bank of cloud. It was beautiful on our hilltop, wild, deserted, peaceful, and the persistent Church bells came to us distantly. We had been told by Dick’s “ship friends,” that it was not possible to go outside the town without a man, and so we had Dick. He found a dew pond, and was perfectly happy.

Puebla is an old town built by the Spaniards. It is more Mexican than Mexico City. There are more sombrero’d people and more flocks of laden burros, and more houses with little “patios,” than in Mexico. The shops are more attractive because they contain Mexican things, instead of, as in Mexico City, inferior foreign goods, in a desire to be cosmopolitan. There are more old tiled houses in Puebla. Fewer people speak English. No one in the hotel understands anything. This evening Louise tried to explain to a group of five that we wanted mineral water. They did not understand until she made a noise of a bottle exploding.

MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 1921. _Puebla._

We caught a 10 o’clock train to Cholula. It was terribly crowded, but we managed to get a front seat in the second car.

Halfway along the line, the front car ran off the track. It took at least an hour and a half hard work on the part of a crowd of Indians, to get it back again. They all looked so clean in their white linen pajama suits (they look like this) tied round the waist with a faded and fringed blue or red sash, and the absurdly big sombrero hat, and bare feet. One wonders how a working man can wear white, it seems so impractical, and yet these men looked cleaner than Dick when he is in white, at the end of a day! How can they dig as they do, with naked feet on the iron spade?

We sat down on the grass in a broiling sun and watched their efforts to reinstate the car. Presently, on his private trolley, arrived the “traffic superintendent,” a young stalwart American, who threw off his coat, displaying a khaki shirt and a large revolver in his belt. There was no mistaking him for anything but an American. He was the rather brutal, square-jaw’ed type. He contained in his face everything that the Latin and the Indian lacked: force, determination, power to command. Moreover, he was broad-shouldered and a head taller than anyone else. When he lifted a crowbar and attempted to do any work himself, the Indians fell back and watched him openmouthed! I said things to myself about the Anglo-Saxon race.

He heard me call Dick, and asked me instantly if I were English. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to. I asked him if he had been in the war, and of course he had, been at Chateau Thierry, and in every other fray. He said he was working for an English company (which the tramcar system is), and that nearly all the superintendents and heads of the English lines were Americans. I was surprised at this, for we had good colonizers, and if we can get on with natives in India, South Africa, Australia, Nigeria, etc., why not with Mexicans. I told him so. He explained that the Mexican is quite different to work with and very difficult; that he is very sensitive and touchy, and that he will only work with good will, “as a matter of fact” he said, “I have _not_ their good will as you can see by my hip,” and he patted his revolver. “Why not?” I asked. “They’re Bolsheviks!” he explained, and unfortunately for me, at that moment, the car went back onto the rails and there was a rush for the seats. We secured our same front row, but another man came and sat next to us, who had not hitherto been there. I disliked the look of him, and before we had gone very far, it was evident he was drunk. He was not an Indian, but the world-wide white type that can be revolting and repulsive. The look on his face made me feel quite sick. I felt if I had a revolver it would have been an awfully good thing to shoot him, because nobody could have minded, and it so obviously would have been a helpful thing to do. When he bent across Louise and bought a couple of bananas off the Indian on my left, and offered them to Dick, I said firmly “_no_.” So he looked at me, a terrible look, and threw the two bananas out of the window, and the change he got back from paying for them followed the bananas. He then turned round and entertained the whole car behind us, at our expense. Though, what he said we could not understand.

Arrived finally, two hours late, at Cholula, he was walked off by four seemingly very devoted friends. I doubt not they purposed to rid him of the rest of his money instead of letting him fling it into the grass.

In the middle of the village street we stood still and looked up and down. It was one o’clock. We had brought no food with us and we knew not where to go, nor whom to ask. A fellow traveller, respectably dressed, a Mexican farmer probably and who could speak about five words of English came to our rescue: “What you want...?” he asked.

A restaurant? He shook his head! A Hotel? He came from Cholula but had never heard of such a thing. Tourists brought their food with them, he made us understand. “But I will ask” and he went into the chemist shop. Surely, there was a restaurant, down the road. We tracked it down, he came with us. The street was formed by perfectly straight barefronted houses. It might have been an Irish village, but looking through doorways there seemed to be contained in it a whole world of gardens and patios. We entered one of these, as directed, and found ourselves in a clean bare yard. We went to the first door on the yard, but it was a bedroom. The second door was the restaurant, the third combined kitchen and chicken house. An old wizened, bent woman came forward to greet us, and two pretty young Indian girls. Could she give us food? She could.

Soon?

Immediately.

What could she give us?

Some _huevos_ (eggs) and some _carne_ (meat) with _potata_. Our kind cicerone then left us, excusing himself, he had business. We seated ourselves in the primitive room, which was clean and whitewashed, and floor tiled. They laid a cloth for us which was clean and still wet. We waited hardly any time at all before they served us a hot and excellent meal, the best I have had in Mexico, and for two pesos, the three of us. But the wizened old woman was much concerned that she could not talk with us. She longed, I could see, to know where we came from, and she kept asking why our Signore had gone away, and not returned! When her two habitual customers came in for their meals, she began great discussion with them about us. We were a great diversion. The men who came in were not Indians, they were sullen Mexicans. One of them talked to the little Indian serving girl as if she were a dog, ordered his food gruffly and never said thank you.

Women have no position in Mexico--they are supposed to exist solely for the satisfaction of men.

We said good day, and “Mucho gracias” and sallied forth into the street once more. Not knowing where to go, nor where to find the famous pyramid, and Dick being far from well, I decided to go to the nearest place in reach. This happened to be a steep hill with a white church on the summit. It had been a beacon to us for miles in the plain as we travelled steadily towards it. Slowly we ascended by wide low stone steps, that went winding up among the vegetation and wild flowers. About halfway we suddenly heard a band of music, and it came nearer and nearer. Soon there came into view a procession of white clad sombrero’d Indians playing their instruments as they came down the winding hill steps. The pageant did not come our way, but passed in front of us, and cut down into a steep and narrow path, and were lost to view among the shrub. Taking our time (for Dick seemed weak, and our hearts were thumping somewhat, as they always do with the slightest exertion at this altitude--) we eventually reached the summit. It seemed utterly deserted. The stillness was uncanny. The church, which may be old but had a renovated and very newly whitewashed appearance, had tiled domes that were quite beautiful. Tall cypresses, as in Italy, grew on the terrace in front. There was a rampart with seats all round the terrace edge. The climb had satisfied my desire, which is always to get onto a height, when arriving in a new place, in order to survey the land and ‘place oneself’. From this church height one certainly surveyed the country for miles. Louise and I walked round and round, looking everywhere for anything that might be interpreted as a pyramid. But we never satisfied ourselves on that. It was not until we got back in the evening and read up the guide book, that I learnt that was a pyramid we were on. The pagan pyramid, dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl, on the summit of which the Christians had built their church.

While thus absorbed, in the distant view, Dick disappeared. When I looked round for him he was nowhere to be seen. I went down the steep flight of steps to the half way terrace below, and called. Presently the little figure appeared from above, and followed me down. He came to me with a pious and mysterious look. “Some day” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing.” I said, “I must know, now, at once--do tell me....” He looked shy, and then explained that he had gone _inside_ the church. “It was quite a nice church inside--there were none of those awful figures like we’ve seen,--you know--and I said a prayer ... knelt down ... right up by the steps in front of the railing. Oh! just prayed for Teta-tee[10] that she might come back to us...!” It was so unexpected. I did not know that Dick believed in God. I did not know he wanted Margaret back with us ... but there in the stillness of the great Mexican plain, high up on the hill of a little town called Cholula, Margaret had not been forgotten. It seemed almost like a wireless from her.

It must be explained that Margaret is living in England with her father’s family. She is being educated with a little cousin her same age. They share a French governess, have a villa at Cannes in the winter, riding, swimming, gymnasium and special dancing classes. A house with a garden in London, dogs, rabbits, horses and birds, Rolls Royce cars, servants to wait, party frocks, lessons in deportment, and all the things that are necessary, I am told, to the perfect bringing up of a proper little girl. Not good for her, they assure me, wild trips to Mexico, wild talk about Russia, Americanization in New York, studio environment of her mother. These things are possible (though not desirable) for a boy, but for a girl.... Well, I would be selfish if I refused for her all the things that I cannot give her. Sometimes my soul rebels, and I say to myself “Two rooms, anywhere, however humble, but both children to share my standard of life....” Since last February when she saw us off on the Aquitania we have not seen our Margaret. The trip to Russia and the work it offered, enabled me to have one child to live with me, and that was Dick, who had lived with my parents ever since he was born and I had to work.

Perhaps there existed in the bottom of my heart a vague hope that Mexico might give me back Margaret, as Russia had given me back Dick. However and wherever this is eventually achieved, there is no doubt in my mind that the only crown to my work can be the reunion of us all three. Until I can build up a home and an environment worthy of Margaret, I have achieved no success. It is an incentive to work, and in the meanwhile one must not lose heart. One must not count, at night, the months that have passed since January. One must not think of the growth, in body, mind and soul, of the child who is out of sight. One must not expect her to be just as one left her. One must not think too much about her at all, for fear it gets too hard--and above all one must never allow oneself to think on lines that critics would describe as “sob-stuff.”

(Photograph by Marceau)
]

We lay on our hillside which was really a pyramid side, and the sun burnt as I tried to count how many churches there were in the plain, but gave it up as too long a job. Beautiful old toned bells kept ringing around and below us from every direction. One big church would have been ample for the size of the little town, and money and labor better spent on drainage and sanitation. While thus ruminating a cassocked priest came down the winding way, saying his prayers out loud, out of a book. By him walked an attendant who held a linen umbrella over his head to shade him. So absorbed was he in his prayers that he never noticed the Indian man and woman who got up from their seat under the tree and came towards him. He had to stop on his way when they threw themselves down on their knees before him. He blessed them with the sign of the Cross, and they remained kneeling and crossing themselves until he was out of sight and sound.

When we got back to Puebla at 5 o’clock, Dick threw himself on my bed all of a heap. I took his temperature--it was 102--I undressed him and in a few minutes he was in a heavy feverish sleep.

Twice that night he waked me suddenly by loud cries. He screamed in terror. When I put the light on he looked at me with glassy eyes and did not know me. He was momentarily delirious. Never had I any experience of such a thing. I realized in a flash all that my family thought of my bringing Dick to Mexico. I thought of Margaret and of the contrast of her proper environment. I got into a panic and resolved that if it were humanly possible for him to travel, Dick should return to Mexico by the 6:30 train next morning.

At five, when we had to get up, he was tired and weak, but his fever had subsided.

AUGUST 3, 1921. _Mexico City._

I went to see Mr. Rameo Martinez, the head of the Academia, and asked him kindly to send a plaster moulder to my hotel to cast the little sketch for a possible Russian Monument. I brought it from New York to finish here. I had a perfectly excellent Mexican “boxer” model, broadshouldered and full of muscles, that Mr. Martinez produced for me, thus enabling me to finish it. I also asked him if I could visit his open air school out in the country, at Cherubosco, which he accordingly invited me to do.

Edith Bonilla motored me out there. The students work in a patio. Martinez’ idea is the open air, no false lights. He has talked to me too of his ambition that his students shall be _Mexican_, not cosmopolitan, nor French in their art. The idea is right. But when one has looked around: what _is_ Mexican Art? There is Toltec, Maya, Aztec art. There is Spanish (colonial) evidenced in architecture. But one looks in vain for evidences of modern Mexican Art. At the school some perfectly mediocre studies were being done by students who, by their years, should have been far beyond what they were doing. There were mature men painting the eternal still life groups of pots and oranges. There was the eternal model, an old woman sitting holding a bowl. Only the model in this instance was brown instead of white. I realized with overwhelming weariness the futility of schools.... I went to a school once. A night school. I was paralysed. I achieved nothing, I was the most unpromising pupil there. Moreover I hated it and dreaded it, and only went out of sheer self-discipline. This is at a time when I had quite a lot of commissions to work at in my own studio. I benefited in no way from the school, and I don’t believe anyone else does. At best it succeeds in turning out a mould, a type, a “school.” Only once in a million times does _one_ arise, who would have arisen anyway, anyhow, anywhere. Mr. Martinez, who has worked in Paris (why?) who has no more “the soul of Mexico,” or the depth to realise it, will work in vain, open air or indoor, unless he instils some spirit into those students! Always these masters point to a student’s work and with pride call it “du Gauguin”; easy enough to make a bad Gauguin. I wonder on whom it reflects most discredit: Gauguin or the student. If only the teacher would say, “My God! All this is _awful_, let’s have something new....”