A Visit to Don Otavio

"Here it is then, the heartland of Mexico, the oldest country in the New World, where Montezuma lived in flowered splendor among the volcanoes and lily-ponds and volcanoes of Tenochtitlan... where Cortes walked a year into the unknown, the blank unmeasured ranges of no return, with a bravery inconceivable in an age of doubt ..."
-- Sybille Bedford, A Visit to Don Otavio

When Sybille Bedford died earlier this year she left us with a genre classic; A Visit to Don Otavio (1953) is the witty and warm tale of her travels through Mexico.

What first appealed to me about this book was Bedford's wry tone. And I was intrigued by her independence. At the outset of her journey from New York in the 1940s, she and her companion make two large pink gins in their train compartment. They carry glasses in a leather case, fresh tomatoes, basil, a vial of olive oil, a pepper mill and "a shining limpid" Portuguese sparkling rosé -- all without the merest concern of raising eyebrows. That's the kind of woman I would love to roam with -- and adopt as a role model.

A German by birth, Bedford is accompanied by her ironic American friend Ester Murphy Arthur (referred to in the book only as E.) through what The New York Times called, in its review, "a still inscrutable country."

The two are welcomed as guests of Don Otavio at his grand family home on the banks of Lake Chapala in Jalisco. Otavio is an upper class gentleman struggling to retain his property and servants despite bankruptcy. Bedford spends a lot of time here, giving her the chance to absorb the pace of life and interact with her hosts in their daily lives.

When she does venture away, the author offers poignant observations of places such as Oaxaca, Queretero, Guanajuato, Taxco and Guadalajara. In Mexico City she is, "swept into rapids of doing, hooting, selling...the pavements are narrow and covered with fruit ... Now a parrot shrieks at one from an upper window, lottery tickets flutter in one's face... one's skirt clutched at by a baby."