USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 81
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The Mexicans are natural artists in all lines, and when I say Mexicans I mean the mixed race of Indian and Spanish blood; for they are the people of Mexico, the ruling class, the statesmen, the scholars, the artists, the everything that is good and promising and progressive in Mexico. A native-born Spaniard can not even hold office in Mexico under the constitution, so great is the hatred of that nation born and bred in the people whom they oppressed for so many centuries. This feature is mutual. Those of pure Spanish blood look down upon and despise the Mestizos, and the Mesitzo can not find words to express his contempt and hatred of the Spanish. Altimiranti, a noted statesman, who died a few years since and who was a full-blooded Indian, said that if he knew that he had a drop of Spanish blood in his veins he would open them and let it out.
Juarez, the greatest President Mexico ever had, was a full-blooded Indian. Diaz, the present progressive President, has a large admixture of Indian blood, and is a very handsome man of his type. The same is true of all of Mexico's great men.
The Indians of Mexico are not of the same race as our red Indians of the United States, however, it must be remembered, but of a higher and more civilized type, as a a rule, although there are many Indian races in Mexico who differ greatly in point of development and in racial peculiarities. Cortez recognized nine distinct races. Some are of a very low type; some of a very high type.
In the state of Oaxaca, to the southeast of the state of Mexico, the native popu- lation is of a very high order. The capital of the state of Oaxaca is also called "Oaxaca," and presents the anomaly of a city of forty thousand inhabitants, without even a carriage road giving access to it.
This isolated city has its own university and has produced more great men than any other in Mexico. Juarez came from Oaxaca, and was a graduate of its university. The same is true of Diaz, the present President, and of Senor Matteo Romero, the accomplished Mexican Minister at Washington for so many years past, the latter two being Meztizos or Mexicans, and the former, as before stated having been an Indian.
Another great center of letters and art, second only to the City of Mexico, if indeed it does not lead it in this respect, is the City of Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco, on the Pacific slope, off to the northwest of Mexico.
The Mexicans are also a nation of musicians. No town or village of any size is without its string band, many of the instruments being of native manufacture. Even the pure-blooded Indians are almost universally musicians and make their own instru- ments.
The Indian women are also expert in many kinds of fancy-work; embroidering with feathers, ante-dating Cortez; and the fine drawn-thread needlework of Mexico, which is so much admired, is wrought by them, some of it being so delicate, that it can only be done at midday with the work held between the eyes and the sun. This is not an accomplishment learned from the Spanish, as I understand it, but is a native acquirement of the Indian women themselves.
I went to Mexico entirely unattended .. I was the first American lady, or lady of any other nation, so far as I could learn, who ever went through the country in that way, stopping over at the various cities and visiting them, as I would in any other country. The camareros (chambermaids ) are all men, and contrary to the generally received opinion that they are all thieves, I never had a pin's worth taken from me during my four months' sojourn in Mexico.
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Respectable Mexican ladies do not go on the street unaccompanied by some other female, as a rule, even though escorted by a husband or brother, as people may not know that he is a husband or brother. A duenna accompanies her, or a female servant trots along in the rear. This rule is adhered to very strictly in the provincial towns, but is beginning to be ignored, to some extent, in the City of Mexico; some especially strong-minded Mexican ladies asserting their independence of suspicion, by adopting the American custom in this respect.
Upon my first visit to a city, I generally hired a mozo (male servant) who would consider two reals (twenty-five cents) a day, ample compensation, and twice that amount, princely remuneration for his services, to go about with me for a day or two, to show me the way, and carry my packages, as the Mexican cities are like most of those of Europe, not regularly laid out; the City of Mexico itself, however, being an exception to the rule, although even there, the names of the streets, even when continuous, change every two or three blocks, as they do everywhere in Mexico, which increases . the difficulty of finding one's way about.
The religion of the great mass of the people of Mexico, is the Roman Catholic. It is pre-eminently a country of churches. No village, however small, is without one, or perhaps two or three, and even the open country frequently shows an isolated church crowning some distant hill. Time was when the church virtually ruled the state; owned about a third of the property in the whole country, and at least a quarter of the City of Mexico itself; was the banker of the people; in fact, was so powerful that it dictated terms to the government.
Under such circumstances any institution would become corrupt, and the church was no exception. In 1859, Juarez, then President, issued a pronunciamento con- fiscating the church property, all except churches in actual use, and a house for the priests. This may strike you as a singular provision, but where there were so many churches (one hundred and twenty-seven in the City of Mexico alone, and forty in the little city of Queretaro-containing no more than forty thousand inhabitants), there were many not in use for public services. All convents and monasteries were sup- pressed, their property confiscated, and the members of the orders compelled to dis- band or leave the country. The Jesuits were banished altogether.
This confiscation of the church property to the people, however, has not turned out well, as a rule. If the fine old convent buildings could have been appropriated by the state, and transformed into hospitals, schools and eleemosynary institutions gen- erally, it would have resulted in saving, to worthy uses, a vast aggregation of valuable, and in many cases, magnificent buildings, which are fast falling into decay.
The common people in Mexico are generally Catholics, but the ruling class-at least the men-are generally free-thinkers. Their wives and children, however, are, as a rule, Roman Catholics. Men in Mexico, as elsewhere, seem to like to have their wives and children (at least, female children) religious, whatever they may be themselves.
The Protestant movement has made considerable headway in some portions of Mexico. It had its origin in the State and City of Oaxaca, for it commenced in Mexico, as everywhere else, from within, and among pure-blooded Indians, an evan- gelical society having been formed, with its president and secretary, and regular meetings held for a long time before any Protestant missionary set foot in Mexico; but its converts are confined almost exclusively to the so-called lower classes, the Episcopal Church alone having made any progress with the aristocratic and cultured classes, and that only in the City of Mexico, where. it owns the fine old church of the Franciscans, a native minister officiating, and counts a number of ex-Catholic priests among its converts.
The Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists have also made respectable headway in the City of Mexico, as well as in some of the provincial towns.
The abandoned convents make fine ruins, although it fills one with sadness to see such valuable property-the result of so much effort on the part of man-going
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to waste. One beautiful old convent that I visited in Queretaro, that of San Augustin, had all of the arches of the upper and lower corridors, surrounding the patio, of elaborately carved stonc. Washwomen were pursuing their avocation about the cen- tral fountain, and donkeys wandered in and out of the abandoned ground-floor rooms; but they are not all thus deserted. There is occasionally a convent which is still put to valuable uses. Some have been converted into hotels, like the Hotel del Jardin, in the City of Mexico, which is the old refectory of the Franciscan Convent, and built around the beautiful old convent garden which gives it its name.
The Hotel Zacatecano, at Zacatecas, is another converted convent. To the Amer- ican the building itself is a most delightful surprise. It was a portion of the church property confiscated under Juarez in 1859, and is a most beautiful specimen of Moorish architecture. It is about three centuries old, having been begun in 1576 and completed in 1596.
One realizes the ancientness of these border cities of Mexico, with their convents and churches, when one stops to reflect that Christian church bells were ringing in Chihuahua and Zacatecas nearly fifty years before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock; and not only in Old Mexico, but on what is now our own side of the Rio Grande, at Yslete, Tex., as well as at Santa Fe, N. M., not much later, and long before the Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving.
But to return to my convent. It is built around an open court or patio, entered from the street by means of an arched and paved carriage-way, and surrounded on both the lower and upper stories by arched corridors, open on the inner side, around which all of the rooms are ranged, opening upon it by means of great, heavy, wooden double doors, both the jambs and lintels of which are of solid stone, with caps sup- ported by carved stone brackets. The arches of the corridors are the most beautiful part of the structure.
The pillars supporting the arches, and the arches themselves, are of carved stone, Hispano-Morisco and Aztec symbols appearing conjointly in the decorations; pilas- ters, representing the rising flame of the Aztec sacred fires, being cut in relief upon the face of the pillars, with mystic Arabic designs above. Even in the City of Mexico itself no such beautiful court as this exists.
Both court and corridors are paved with tile, as are all of the rooms in the house as well. Trees, shrubs and flowering plants of many kinds are arranged about the patio, set in earthenware vases, tubs and casks, and an octagonal jardiniere, with its shelves similarly filled, rises in a pyramid in the middle, crowned with a statue repre- senting, one would imagine, the Mexican Minerva, her head adorned with a chaplet of cactus leaves, and a sword in her hand.
The roof of the building is flat, with great domes rising on two sides and smaller ones at the four corners. The walls are fully four feet through, and the rooms have lofty ceilings and arc much larger than in most first-class American hotels. So it seems the monks were not cramped for room when within the confines of their cells.
Heavy shutters, made of some wood which, like that of the doors, is seemingly as hard as iron, close the double windows. When these shutters are closed and barred, and the key (nearly a foot long ), turned in the rusty lock, which one is sure no burglar's tools can pick, on account of the weight of the key if for no other reason, one feels as secure against intrusion from the evilly disposed as though in a veritable fortress. In fact thesc ancient convents and churches served a double purpose in the old days, being places of refuge for the people-actually fortresses of defense-as well as relig- ious retreats, and their strength was often put to the test, even up to a very recent period.
At Guadelupe, a suburb of Zacatecas, five miles distant, an old convent is con- verted into a hospicio para ninos-an asylum for boys-where two hundred orphans are learning all sorts of trades, etc., besides receiving a regular schooling in text books.
Don Jose M. Mirandi, a very courtly and handsome gentleman, and a man of great wealth, and who, as I understand, acts in this capacity through philanthropy
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alone, is director of the hospicio, and took the utmost pains to have me see the work- ings of the institution in detail.
The pupils of musical talents have been formed into an orchestra and supplied with brass instruments. They meet at four o'clock every afternoon in a large hall, under the tuition of Don Bernabe Santoyo of Zacatecas, director de musica del Hos- picio. I was so fortunate as to be present at this hour, and to my mingled surprise and delight, doubtless by prearrangement of Director Miranda, the band struck up "The Star Spangled Banner " as I made my appearance, in honor of La Americana, only one of the numerous instances I witnessed while in Mexico of the graceful gallantry of these charming people. The boys of this school also receive a military training, being divided into companies, uniformed and supplied with arms.
In the rear of all the buildings are extensive huertas (gardens), where vegetables and fruits are raised. It is said that this orphanage owns a barra, or twenty-fourth share in the great San Rafael mine, from which it derives a very large annual income, sufficient to pay all of the expenses of the institution.
In front of the church and orphanage is a beautiful public garden filled with rare trees and flowers, and with a fountain in the center.
The church is one of the handsomest in Mexico, it, together with the Colegio Apostolico adjoining (the convent already referred to), having been founded in 1707, but its splendors pale before those of the Capella de Guadelupe, or Chapel of Guadelupe, adjoining, which is modern, having been only recently completed at a cost, it is said, of a quarter of a million, and is the most beautiful church of its size in Mexico, if not in the world.
It was built by a rich lady of Zacatecas, since deceased, Señora Dominga Miranda, sister of Señor Miranda, director of the hospicio just described, who spared no expense in either the building or its decorations, the best artists of the City of Mexico being employed for the latter. It is built in the form of a Greek cross, with a dome in the center. The walls are adorned with the most beautiful pictures of sacred scenes, painted directly upon them, and the metal work of the chancel rail and gates, as well as of the entrance doors, is of the most elaborate description, brass and bronze being the materials employed, while the floor is inlaid in mosaics of the richest woods.
Speaking of charitable institutions I must not forget the Maternity Hospital at Pueblo. The Maternity Hospital is very extensive and perfect in every detail, embody- ing all modern improvements in the way of sanitation and hygiene. It is built around a very large court, on which all the rooms open by way of the corridors. It cost $200,000, and, strange to say, was endowed and built by an old bachelor, who has since gone to his reward.
2
THE NOVEL AS THE EDUCATOR OF THE IMAGINATION. By MISS MAY ROGERS.
Edgar Fawcett says:
" We, who write novels for existing time, Should face our task with fortitude sublime. Twice daily now we hear our critics mourn The unpleasant fact that we were ever born."
Howells complains of the " little digs " that an- noy authors, and he attributes them to woman's intru- sion among critics. The most spiteful feminine dig into masculine vanity is as a pin-scratch to a dagger- thrust in comparison with the ordeal of some of our women novelists, who are suspected of being their own heroines; with ruthless disregard of the rights of privacy, the lives of these authoresses are reviewed as a commentary on their romances. The career of the woman artist is beset with pain and peril, between the impertinent gossip and the malignant slanderer, whispers the insinuator, who is always anonymous. Anyone who aspires to sit in critical councils should know that observation and imagination are essentials in artistic creation, and not identical experience. Criticism should have the positive value of recogniz- ing talent rather than the negative quality of defining MISS MAY ROGERS. limitations. The service of criticism is to cultivate, and as critics, St. Beuve, Arnold and Lowell are educators. Guy de Maupassant advised the critic to say to the novelist: " Make us something beautiful in the form which suits you best, according to your own temperament." This ideal attribute could be possible in France, but the young English or American novelist should early learn that the English-reading public buys translations of the most naturalistic of foreign novels, but it demands that the balance of virtue be sustained by the conventionality of fiction originally written in English. Our novelists must conform or be accused of immorality. A novelist should be an artist, who can imagine and tell astory that will entertain and move his readers. If his art is true, the ethical situation will be evident without emphasis. Thackeray is more critical than psychological. With sardonic scorn he lashes snobbery, vulgarity in high places, and human folly. His incessant expressions of hate divert us from judging the characters by the author's sermon about them. But in his historical novel he leaves the narration to that grand gentleman, Henry Esmond. Most English readers do not agree with Mr. Taine in admiring the constructive art of Henry Esmond more than the satire of Vanity Fair. The difficult
Miss May Rogers is a native of Dubuque, Iowa. Her parents were Thomas Rogers, of New York, a distinguished lawyer, scholar and orator, and Anna Burton Rogers, of Delaware. She was educated in the public schools and by private instruct- ors in Greek, Latin and French. She has traveled in Europe and extensively in the United States, having lectured in New York City, New Orleans, Washington, ('heyenne, San Francisco and Des Moines. Miss Rogers is one of the Board of Directors of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and is a Daughter of the American Revolution. She was president of the Dubuque Ladies' Literary Association for several years. Miss Rogers is a descendant of Dutch and Huguenot ancestors, who emigrated, that they might enjoy religious liberty. Her literary works are the Waverly Dictionary of the characters in Scott's novels, newspaper editorials, lectures and reviews. Her profession is journalism and lecturing. Her postoffice address is No. 547 Locust Street, Dubuque, Iowa.
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task of historical fiction has never been better executed, and since Thackeray, only Romola and John Inglesart can be compared with Henry Esmond, which revivified the age of Queen Anne. Emerson felt that it was a "jugglery" for a novelist to com -. bine characters and fortunes fancifully and sensationally, for he said there was in nature a "magic by which she fits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruits of his character." Realism is a protest against "jugglery " with the logic of character. Mr. Hardy in his great novel was guilty of " jugglery " when he makes a betrayed girl return to her betrayer. As Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to ridicule the bombastic tales of chivalry, so the realistic novel is a reaction from the hysteria and exaggeration of old-fashioned romanticism. The conscience of realistic art is sincerity in describ- ing the facts of life. Ouida reminds us that the passion-flower is as real as the potato. The reality of the beautiful and the heroic is as much in the province of realism as is the reality of the horrible and the commonplace. Truth is the only restraint of a realist, and whether he writes of flowers or potatoes is a question of taste and, perhaps, of vision.
In our Dubuque library last year, out of a circulation of over twenty-five thou- sand books over nineteen thousand were juveniles and fiction. The report of the Chicago public library for 1892 states that over forty-two per cent of the circulation was English prose fiction, and over twenty per cent was juvenile literature. The Nineteenth Century Magazine for June, 1893, states that the per cent of fiction in the Battersea free libraries of England was four-fifths of the circulation. But of a circu- lation of five millions in the Boston public library, extending over five years, four- fifths of the books were juvenile and fiction.
Novels are the amusement and refreshment of our practical, overworked, over- wrought age. Even children tire of monotony and seek the fairies. Novels are read by those who read no other books, and they are also the recreation of scholars and thinkers. Charles Darwin said they rested him. As long as age cherishes tender memories, and as long as love is the dream of youth, romance will be the most fasci- nating literature. A description of all the novels now being read would be a mirror of the multiform modern mind. Any human interest is a legitimate theme for the novelist, and it is as useless to dogmatize about the sphere of the novel as it is useless to dogmatize about the sphere of woman. There are novels for those who admire philosophic analysis, and for those who want exciting adventures on land and on sea, and also for those who ask that their love stories shall give information about history, science, reform, theology and politics. Harriet Martineau wrote Political Economy in the story form, and I am surprised that there was not a tariff novel dur- ing the last campaign. .
In this age of the telegram and the paragraph, the novelist who wishes to be read must be brief as well as brilliant. Tourgeneff's method was to condense and to con- centrate. Guy De Maupassant made the short story popular in France by his genius in eliminating the superfluous. His thirteen short tales, published as the Odd Number, are masterpieces of concise but artistically adequate treatment. Our American novel- ists have been most artistic as writers of short stories, whether we judge the result by effectiveness of story telling, or keenness of character sketching or carefulness in lit- erary construction. In the long list of our successful writers of short stories there has been no discrimination against our sex in the awards of honor. Mrs. Jewett's art is so finished that Howells compares her with Maupassant, to her advantage. I think Miss Woolsen's finest story is her short novel, "For the Major," which has a touch of ideal grace. New England has her Mary Wilkin, and we in Iowa are proud of our Octave Thanet, who spoke at the literary congress of the American flavor of our short stories. International novels have the charm of cosmopolitan culture, but they are not contributions to a distinctive national literature, which must be written from an American point of view about the characteristics of our people, with their local atmos- phere. The late Sidney Lanier delivered a series of lectures on the development of the English novel at Johns Hopkins University in 1881. He believed that the novel,
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modern music and modern science are the simultaneous expressions of the growth of individuality in man. Richardson, the founder of the English novel, was born in 1689; the musician, Sebastian Bach, in 1685, and the scienist, Newton, in 1642. Thus being born in the same half century, he regards them as contemporary results of the Renaissance. He argues that man's desire to have individual knowledge of his phys- ical environments produced the scientist, man's desire to utter his individual emotions toward the Infinite gave us the modern art and artist of music; man's desire to know the life of his fellow-man resulted in the novel. The drama was inadequate for portrayal of the minute complexities of modern personalities. The novelist succeeded the chorus, and the novel was evolved out of the classic and Elizabethan dramas. Before the printing press the multitudes were entertained and instructed by the thea- ter. The reading public of today studies the story of human life. With the progress of the democratic idea of the rights of man has grown a sense of the kinship of men. In England the novel of individual traits, of manners and domestic life, with an avowed or implied moral motive, began with Richardson's Pamela in 1740, and in this field of fiction the English novel is unrivaled. In his history of European morals, Mr. Lecky charges man's intolerance to feeble imagination, which prevents him from understanding people of a different religion, pursuit, age, country, or temperament from his own. He claims that men tortured in the past and persecute today because they are too imaginative to be tolerant or just. What they can not realize they believe to be evil, and he says that this " power of realization forms the chief tie between our moral and intellectual natures." We think that only those who are intentionally cruel would continue to inflict pain if they knew the suffering they caused. He con- cludes that the " sensitiveness of a cultivated imagination" makes men humane and tolerant. Thus imaginative literature is a civilizer when it develops tolerance through sympathy.
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