Evening
My luncheon for Hanihara went off very pleasantly, at Chapultepec. That restaurant is the knife with which I have cut the gordion knot of entertaining. The new Italian minister was there, the Norwegians, Mr. E. N. Brown, president of the National Railways, Parra, from the Foreign Office, and others. We reached home at four o’clock, and I drove immediately to the Garcia Pimentels, where Don Luis was waiting to show me some of the special treasures in his library. Up-stairs, the handsome daughters and their equally handsome friends, married and single, were sewing for the Red Cross. We meet there every Tuesday. Each daughter had a beautifully embroidered rebozo thrown over her smart Paris gown à la Mexicana—heirlooms of the family.
The house is one of the noble, old-style Mexican edifices, with a large patio, and a fine stairway leading up to the corridor that winds around its four palm- and flower-banked sides. Large, handsome rooms, with pictures, rare engravings, priceless porcelains, and old brocades, open from the corridor. I merely put my head in at the door of the big drawing-room where they were working, as Don Luis was waiting for me in his library down-stairs. I spent a couple of delightful hours with him, among his treasures, so lovingly guarded through generations. Oh, those fascinating title-pages in reds and blacks, that thick, rich-feeling hand-woven paper, that changeless ink, fit to perpetuate those romantic histories and the superhuman achievement of the men of God! I could scarcely put down the beautifully written letter of Cortés to Charles V., wherein he tells of the Indians as he found them. They so closely resemble the Indians as I have found them.
Many of Don Luis’s most valuable books and manuscripts were found in Spain, and his library of Mexicana embraces everything obtainable down to our own time.9 His wife is a charming woman, very grande dame, cultivated, and handsome. She and her daughters are always busy with countless works of charity. Just now they are busy making up little bundles of layettes for the maternity home. It does make one’s fingers nimble to see Indian women obliged to wrap their babies in newspapers!
I had just time to get home and dress for dinner at the British Legation, but we came away at half past nine, leaving the rest of the party playing bridge. I had on again the gray-and-silver Worth dress, but I feel sad without my black things.