Mexico -- History -- 1910-1946; Mexico City (Mexico) -- Social life and customs
Have been busy to-day looking over things and getting boxes and trunks
off to be repaired. A feeling of migration is in the air. A lot of
damage was done getting to Mexico. A locksmith asked fifteen francs
to open that small trunk where I keep my papers and give me a new key.
He took the fifteen francs, but brought no key until pressure was put
on him, when he sent back a key that fitted, having, however, a large,
ornamental wrought-iron handle from the viceregal period. I should say
that takes up more room than all our other keys together. It would look
better in a _vitrine_.
If the end comes suddenly, which I don't believe, we can get out
comfortably and with the philosophy engendered by the fact that, after
all, these are not our Lares and Penates.
We dine at the British Legation to-night. The Stronges are very
comfortably and handsomely installed, though the drawing-room, with
its pale-blue hangings, endless modern chairs and cabinets and small
tables, sent out from England, make it less artistic, to my mind, than
in its former spare furnishing with Hohler's lovely old things.
Just home from the Country Club, where I left N. starting out on
a "foursome" with Susana Garcia Pimentel,[44] Señor Bernal, her
brother-in-law, and an unknown fourth. On those beautiful links she
seemed more beautiful than ever, with a tall slenderness, an exceeding
and arresting straightness of feature, long, idealized "Hapsburg chin,"
and what we call a "complexion" not often seen here. She was Diana-like
as she started off in a thin, extremely expensive, white, unmistakably
French dress and an equally French flopping Leghorn hat, the little
Indian caddy following with the _arrow-case_.
I called on Madame Madero, senior, yesterday, and found more than a
hint of the patriarchal--sons and daughters and grandchildren coming
and going. They seem quiet, dignified people. The father came in as I
was sitting there with various other visitors, and the two daughters
rose and kissed his hand and called him _papacito_. The devotion of
families and the permanence of ties here is quite remarkable, a decided
contrast to the more airy conjugal relations in the United States.
After tea had been served we went into the big drawing-room, where
I sat with some anonymous, silent, big-hatted, small-footed Mexican
women, while Angela Madero sang charmingly and easily, without the
tiresome urging so often necessary. She speaks of going abroad or
to New York to study, when political affairs are quite settled.
The house,[45] recently built in the handsome Colonia Juarez, Calle
Berlin, is comfortable but banal, without the good things of the "old"
families. Few books--in fact, like most of the modern Mexican houses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account