Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes Read online

  1839 FRANCES CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA

  The Scottish writer Frances Calderón de la Barca (see page 126) moved to Mexico City in 1839 and stayed for two years. Her book Life in Mexico was based on letters she wrote; it was not popular in Mexico itself but provides a vivid picture of the young nation.

  At length we arrived at the heights looking down upon the great valley, celebrated in all parts of the world, with its framework of everlasting mountains, its snow-crowned volcanoes, great lakes and fertile plains, all surrounding the favoured city of Montezuma, the proudest boast of his conqueror, once of Spain’s many diadems the brightest. But the day had overcast, nor is this the most favourable road for entering Mexico. The innumerable spires of the distant city were faintly seen. The volcanoes were enveloped in clouds, all but their snowy summits, which seemed like marble domes towering into the sky. But as we strained our eyes to look into the valley, it all appeared to me rather like a vision of the Past than the actual breathing Present. The curtain of Time seemed to roll back, and to discover to us the great panorama that burst upon the eye of Cortes when he first looked down upon the tableland; the king-loving, God-fearing conqueror, his loyalty and religion so blended after the fashion of ancient Spain, that it were hard to say which sentiment exercised over him the greater sway. The city of Tenochtitlan, standing in the midst of the five great lakes, upon verdant and flower-covered islands, a western Venice, with thousands of boats gliding swiftly along its streets, long lines of low houses, diversified by the multitudes of pyramidal temples, the Teocalli, or houses of God – canoes covering the mirrored lakes – the lofty trees, the flowers and the profusion of water now wanting to the landscape – the whole fertile valley enclosed by its eternal hills and snow-crowned volcanoes – what scenes of wonder and of beauty to burst upon the eyes of these wayfaring men!…

  But my thoughts…were soon recalled to the present by the arrival of an officer in full uniform at the head of his troop, who came out by order of the government to welcome the bearer of the olive-branch from ancient Spain, and had been on horseback since the day before, expecting our arrival. As it had begun to rain, the officer, Colonel Miguel Andrade, accepted our offer of taking shelter in the diligence [stagecoach]. We had now a great troop galloping along with us, and had not gone far before we perceived that in spite of the rain, and that it already began to grow dusk, there were innumerable carriages and horsemen forming an immense crowd, all coming out to welcome us. Shortly after, the diligence was stopped, and we were requested to get into a very splendid carriage, all crimson and gold, with the arms of the republic, the eagle and nopal [cactus], embroidered in gold on the roof inside, and drawn by four handsome white horses. In the midst of this immense procession of troops, carriages and horsemen, we made our entry into the city of Montezuma.…

  What most attracts our attention are the curious and picturesque groups of figures which we see from the windows – men bronze-colour, with nothing but a piece of blanket thrown round them, carrying lightly on their heads earthen basins, precisely the colour of their own skin, so that they look altogether like figures of terra cotta: these basins filled with sweetmeats or white pyramids of grease (mantequilla); women with rebosos, short petticoats of two colours, generally all in rags, yet with a lace border appearing on their under garment: no stockings, and dirty white satin shoes, rather shorter than their small brown feet; gentlemen on horseback with their Mexican saddles and sarapes, lounging léperos, moving bundles of rags, coming to the windows and begging with a most piteous but false-sounding whine, or lying under the arches and lazily inhaling the air and the sunshine, or sitting at the door for hours basking in the sun or under the shadow of the wall; Indian women, with their tight petticoat of dark stuff and tangled hair, plaited with red ribbon, laying down their baskets to rest, and meanwhile deliberately examining the hair of their copper-coloured offspring. We have enough to engage our attention for the present.…

  I made my debut in Mexico by going to mass in the cathedral. We drove through the Alameda, near which we live, and admired its noble trees, flowers and fountains, all sparkling in the sun.…

  The carriage drew up in front of the cathedral, built upon the site of part of the ruins of the great temple of the Aztecs; of that pyramidal temple, constructed by Ahuitzotli, the sanctuary so celebrated by the Spaniards, and which comprehended with all its different edifices and sanctuaries, the ground on which the cathedral now stands, together with part of the plaza and streets adjoining.…

  We entered the Christian edifice, which covers an immense space of ground, is of the Gothic form, with two lofty ornamented towers, and is still immensely rich in gold, silver and jewels. A balustrade running through it, which was brought from China, is said to be very valuable, but seems to me more curious than beautiful. It is a composition of brass and silver. Not a soul was in the sacred precincts this morning but miserable léperos, in rags and blankets, mingled with women in ragged rebosos…. The floor is so dirty that one kneels with a feeling of horror, and an inward determination to effect as speedy a change of garments afterwards as possible. Besides, many of my Indian neighbours were engaged in an occupation which I must leave to your imagination; in fact, relieving their heads from the pressure of the colonial system, or rather, eradicating and slaughtering the colonists, who swarm there like the emigrant Irish in the United States. I was not sorry to find myself once more in the pure air after mass; and have since been told that except on peculiar occasions, and at certain hours, few ladies perform their devotions in the cathedral. I shall learn all these particulars in time.

  1938 GRAHAM GREENE

  In 1938, Greene (see page 128), a well-known Catholic, visited Mexico to report on the effects of a recent anticlerical purge. His account was published as The Lawless Roads (1939).

  The shape of most cities can be simplified as a cross; not so Mexico City, elongated and lopsided on its mountain plateau. It emerged like a railway track from a tunnel – the obscure narrow streets lying to the west of the Zócalo, the great square in which the cathedral sails like an old rambling Spanish galleon close to the National Palace. Behind, in the tunnel, the university quarter – high dark stony streets like those of the Left Bank in Paris – fades among the tramways and dingy shops into red-light districts and street markets. In the tunnel you become aware that Mexico City is older and less Central European than it appears at first – a baby alligator tied to a pail of water; a whole family of Indians eating their lunch on the sidewalk edge; railed off among the drug-stores and the tram-lines, near the cathedral, a portion of the Aztec temple Cortés destroyed.…

  Out of the Zócalo our imaginary train emerges into sunlight. The Cinco de Mayo and the Francisco Madero, fashionable shopping streets, run like twin tracks, containing smart Mayfair stations – the best antique shops, American teashops, Sanborn’s, towards the Palace of Arts and the Alameda. Tucked behind them is the goods track – Tacuba – where you can buy your clothes cheap if you don’t care much for appearances. After the Palace of Arts the parallel tracks are given different names as they run along beside the trees and fountains of Moctezuma’s park – the Avenida Juárez full of tourist shops and milk bars and little stalls of confectionery, and the Avenida Hidalgo, where hideous funeral wreaths are made, ten feet high and six across, of mauve and white flowers. Then Hidalgo wanders off where no one troubles to go and Juárez is closed by the great Arch of the Republic, which frames a sky-sign of Moctezuma Beer, and the Hotel Regis, where the American Rotarians go and the place where they draw the lottery. We turn south-west into the Paseo de la Reforma, the great avenue Maximilian made, running right out of the city to the gates of Chapultepec, past Columbus and Guatemoc and the glassy Colon Café, like the Crystal Palace, where President Huerta, the man who shot Madero and fled from Carranza, used to get drunk (when he became helpless, they turned out the lights and people passing said, ‘The President’s going to bed’; it wouldn’t have been a good thing to see the President of Mexico ca
rried to his car), on past the Hotel Reforma and the Statue of Independence, all vague aspiration and expensive golden wings, to the lions at the gates. And on either side branch off the new smart streets, pink and blue wash and trailing flowers, where the diplomats live, and the smell of sweets blows heavily along from Juárez….

  I changed my hotel – it was too brand-new – for a dustier, noisier, more native brand, though it called itself by an Anglo-Saxon name. Here I got a room with a shower and three meals a day for 5.50 pesos, say, seven shillings. Lunch consisted of six courses with a cocktail and coffee. Music was supplied through the street door; a succession of marimba players took up a collection – the marimba, gentle, sentimental, with the pleasing tinkle of a music-box. Beggars came in all through the meal (why not? It is a good strategic time) and people selling sheet music, and even rosaries, and of course lottery tickets. You couldn’t get away from lottery tickets, even in the courtyard of the cathedral. I shall always associate Mexico City with the sick smell of sweets and the lottery sellers. The lottery is the next best thing to hope of heaven – there is a draw every week, with first prizes of twenty-five thousand, fifty thousand, and sometimes one hundred thousand pesos….

  El Retiro is the swagger cabaret of Socialist Mexico, all red and gold and little balloons filled with gas, and chicken à la king. A film star at one table and a famous singer, and rich men everywhere. American couples moved sedately across the tiny dance floor while the music wailed, the women with exquisite hair and gentle indifference, and the middle-aged American businessmen like overgrown schoolboys a hundred years younger than their young women. Then the cabaret began – a Mexican dancer with great bold thighs, and the American women lost a little of their remote superiority. They were being beaten at the sexual game – somebody who wasn’t beautiful and remote was drawing the attention of their men. They got vivacious and talked a little shrilly and powdered their faces, and suddenly appeared very young and inexperienced and unconfident, as the great thighs moved. But their turn came when the famous tenor sang. The American men lit their pipes and talked all through the song and then clapped heartily to show that they didn’t care, and the women closed their compacts and listened – avidly. It wasn’t poetry they were listening to or music (the honeyed words about roses and love, the sweet dim nostalgic melody), but the great emotional orgasm in the throat. They called out for a favourite song, and the rich plump potent voice wailed on – interminably, a whole night of love. This was not popular art, or intellectual art – it was, I suppose, capitalist art. And this, too, was Socialist Mexico.

  MOSCOW

  Moscow grew up around the fortress of the Kremlin on the banks of the Moskva River in the 14th century, becoming the capital of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. It bore the brunt of attacks from the Mongols through the later medieval period. The capital of Russia was moved to St Petersburg in 1713, but Moscow remained culturally and politically key to Russia; it was occupied in 1812 by Napoleon but burned down by the Russian defenders to drive him from Russia. It was swiftly rebuilt and its status as capital was restored after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, with the seat of government again in the Kremlin.

  1636 ADAM OLEARIUS

  Adam Olearius (or Oehlschlaeger) (1599–1671) was a German scholar who became secretary to the ambassador sent by Frederick III, Duke of Holstein, to the Shah of Safavid Persia. They travelled via Moscow, where they agreed a treaty with Tsar Mikhail I in 1634, and visited again in 1636.

  The city is almost at an equal distance from all the frontiers, which is above 120 German leagues. It is about three leagues about and, no doubt, hath been hitherfore bigger than it is now. Matthieu de Michou, a canon of Cracow, who flourished at the beginning of the last age, says that in his time it was twice as big as the city of Prague. The Tartars of Crim and Precop burnt it in the year 1571, and the Poles set it afire in the year 1611 so as that there was nothing left of it but the castle; and yet now there are numbered in it above 40,000 houses and it is out of all controversy one of the greatest cities in Europe.

  It is true that, the palaces of the great lords and the houses of some rich merchants excepted, which are of brick and stone, all the rest are of wood and made up of beams and cross-pieces of fir laid one upon another. They cover them with barks of trees upon which they sometimes put another covering of turfs. The carelessness of the Muscovites and the disorders of their housekeeping are such that there hardly passes a month, nay not a week, but some place or other takes fire, which, meeting with what is very combustible, does in a moment reduce many houses; nay, if the wind be any thing high, whole streets into ashes. Some days before our arrival the fire had consumed the third part of the city; and about 5 or 6 years since, the like accident had near destroyed it all. To prevent this the Strelitz of the guard and the watch are enjoined in the night-time to carry poleaxes wherewith to break down the houses adjoining to those which are afire, by which means they hinder the progress of it with much better success than if they attempted the quenching of it. And that it may not fasten on other more solid structures, the doors and windows are very narrow, having shutters of latten [tin plate], to prevent the sparks and flashes from getting in. Those who have their houses burnt have this comfort withal that they may buy houses ready-built at a market for that purpose without the white-wall, at a very easy rate, and have them taken down, transported and in a short time set up in the same place where the former stood.

  The streets of Moscow are handsome and very broad, but so dirty after rain hath ever so little moistened the ground that it were impossible to get out of the dirt were it not for the great posts which set together make a kind of bridge which like that of the Rhine near Strasbourg, which bridges in foul weather serve for a kind of pavement.

  The city is divided into four quarters or circuits, whereof the first is called Cataygorod, that is the mid-city, as being in the midst of the others. This quarter is divided from the rest by a brick wall which the Muscovites called the crasne stenna, that is, red stone. The Moskva passes on the south side of it and the river Neglina, which joins the other behind the castle, on the north side. The Great Duke’s palace, called Kremlin and of greater extent than many other ordinary cities, takes up almost one half of it and is fortified with strong walls and a good ditch and very well mounted with cannon. In the midst are two steeples, one very high and covered with copper gilt as all the other steeples of the castle are. This steeple is called Juan Welike, that is the Great John. The other is considerable only for the bell within it, made by the Great Duke Boris Godunov, weighing 33,600 pounds. It is not tolled but upon great festivals to honour the entrance and audience of ambassadors, but to stir it there must be 24 men who pull it by a rope that comes down into the court while some others are above to help it on by thrusting. The Great Duke’s palace stands towards the farther side of the castle with that of the patriarch and apartments for several boyars [noblemen] who have places at court. There is also a very fair palace of stone according to the Italian architecture for the young prince but the Great Duke continues still in his wooden palace as being more healthy than stone structures. The exchequer and the magazine of powder and provisions are also within the castle.…

  In the spacious space before the castle is the chief market of the city kept; all day it is full of people but especially slaves and idle persons. All the marketplace is full of shops as also all the streets abutting upon it; but every trade has a station by itself, so as the mercers intermingle not with the linen or woollen drapers, nor goldsmiths with saddlers, shoemakers, tailors, furriers and the like, but every profession and trade hath its proper street, which is so much the greater convenience, in that a man does, of a sudden, cast his eye on all he can desire. Seamstresses have their shops in the midst of the market, where there is also another sort of women traders, who have rings in their mouths, and, with their rubies and turquoises, put off another commodity which is not seen in the market. There is a particular street where are sold the images of their saints. ’T
is true these go not under the name of merchandise among the Muscovites, who would make some difficulty to say they had bought a saint – but they say they receive them by way of exchange or trucking for money; and so when they buy they make no bargain, but lay down what the painter demands.

  1812 EUGÈNE LABAUME

  Captain Eugène Labaume (1783–1849) was a staff officer with Napoleon on the Russia campaign of 1812; he was of the few to survive the Grande Armée’s disastrous retreat in October–December of that year. His account of the campaign was one of the first to be published after the return to France.

  Being anxious to arrive at Moscow, we commenced our march at an early hour in the morning and passed through several deserted villages. On the banks of the Moskva towards our right were some magnificent chateaux, which the Tartars had pillaged to deprive us of every comfort which these places could afford; and the corn, ready for harvest, had either been trodden down or eaten by the horses. The haystacks, which covered the country were given to the flames and spread all around an impenetrable smoke.… About two o’clock we perceived, from the summit of a lofty hill, a thousand elegant and gilded spires which, glittering in the rays of the sun, seemed at a distance like so many globes of fire.