My Heart Lies South: The Story of My Mexican Marriage by Elizabeth Borton de Treviño ~ 1953. This edition: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1953. Hardcover. 248 pages.
My rating: 8/10.
*****
I found this book among my mother’s boxes in her attic which I was supposed to go through and “deal with” when she downsized from the too-many-staircases rambling family home to the tiny-but-manageable single-level house she’s in now. I almost put it into the Sally Ann box, but something stayed my hand. “Elizabeth Borton de Treviño…. I know that name, somehow,” I thought, and that was enough to put it into my keeper pile instead.
Some years passed (well, six years, to be exact, because Mom moved in 2007, and much of what I brought home is still in “temporary” storage here, still waiting to be “dealt with” – and honestly, the only boxes I’ve cracked open are the ones full of books) and then one day I looked at My Heart Lies South again. And the penny finally dropped.
Elizabeth Borton de Treviño. Of course! I, Juan de Pareja. The 1966 Newbery Award winning historical fiction about the Spanish painter Velazquez and his personal slave, Juan de Pareja. I’d read this some years ago, and found it a well-written juvenile historical fiction, and that was why the name of the author sounded so familiar.
I opened My Heart Lies South, as I should have done six years ago, and started reading bits here and there. Far from being the serious and sober biography I had expected from the rather unprepossessing dustjacket – (“Don’t judge a book by its cover” – I know, I know) – the passages I read were wry and funny and interesting. And when I settled down to tread it cover to cover, it definitely did not disappoint. Another hidden bookish gem, I think we could safely say.
*****
Elizabeth Borton was born in 1904, in Bakersfield, California, and, encouraged by her parents, started writing at a very young age. After graduating from Stanford University in 1925 with a degree in Latin American History, Elizabeth went on to the Boston Conservatory of Music to study violin. She then worked as a reporter for the Boston Herald, and spent five seasons in Hollywood interviewing film personalities.
With her strong interest in all things Latin American, Elizabeth was continually talking about going to Mexico, and one day, in 1934, her editor broke down and sent her off with a handful of tickets, vouchers and contact lists, telling her to “just write something” once she got there. And with her eventual meeting with the representative of the Monterrey Chamber of Commerce, one Luis de Treviño, Elizabeth’s future, though she didn’t know it at the time, was about to take a very different turn from her life as an independent American career woman.
“Hello Luis!” said Bill. “This is Miss Borton. When you get to Vallecillo, buy her an ice-cold beer.”
Luis laughed nervously. There is nothing he likes better than a cold beer, but the lady he had taken across the border for the Chamber of Commerce two weeks before had resisted the beer with desperation as if it might be the first step in a seduction, and the lady last week had been Dorothy Dix, who was even then rather tired from pushing seventy or so and inclined to be tart with young men eager to waste her time in taverns.
…
I was turned over to the vaccination, immigration, and customs authorities, and at last, in a car which had been provided by the Chamber of Commerce, complete with chauffeur, we set out for Monterrey. I had my hair tied up in a scarf and I was wearing a large black hat as well as sun glasses. Now the sun began to go down and long violet shadows crept across the plain. I took off my hat.
“Ah,” breathed Luis.
I undid the scarf.
“So?” remarked Luis.
I took off the black glasses.
“Wonderful,” he decided, aloud. He leaned toward me and looked at me soulfully.
“Shall I sing you a song about love?” he asked.
“Why yes,” I agreed, thinking this must be a gag.
But he launched into “Palm Trees Drunk with the Sun,” went on to “The Sea Gulls,” and then sang “The Green Eyes,” in a light baritone voice.
“Very nice,” commented the chauffeur from the front seat. “Now sing ‘Farolito.'”
He sang it. After our beer in Vallecillo, Luis sang other songs. He sang all the way to Monterrey.
I didn’t realize it, but I was being courted.
As you can see from the photo of the author, taken from the jacket of the book published eighteen years after her marriage, the initial attraction on looks alone is understandable!
Luis shows Elizabeth the attractions of Monterrey, including things definitely off the tourist track, such as his family ranchito, and, significance unknown to Elizabeth at the time, the private parlour of his beloved mother, Mamacita. He also takes her dancing, in company with a respectable engaged couple, a situation that made all of Monterrey society take note…
I was left at my hotel. But a sort of die had been cast. Luis had cast it and with his eyes open. He had taken a strange woman to dance. Just any strange woman, and the incident might have been passed over as a wild oat on the part of the fifth Trevino. But he had taken the strange woman in company with a pareja of his best friends, an engaged couple! Two plus two equals four. Dancing with one girl all evening, with an engaged pareja to make up the party, means something serious! Phones rang in Monterrey; the news went round. Only I was in the dark.
Formally on the afternoon of the next day, I was taken to call on Mamacita. While we sat in the sala, Luis disappeared, to return with a tray on which sat Mamacita’s best small silver liqueur glasses. In each was a thimbleful of sweet vermouth. On a plate there were some little yellow cakes that melted into a puff of flavour when bitten. These were Mamacita’s famous polvorones de maizena (cornstarch puff cookies), the engagement cake… They were a kind of symbol. All unknowing I ate the engagement cakes and tasted the engagement vermouth.
Later Luis brought me a small yellow-striped kitten and dropped it into my lap.
“Oh, the darling! I wish I could have him,” I cried. “But I am leaving tomorrow for Mexico City and I have lots of work to do. I won’t be home in California for weeks.”
Mamacita said calmly, “Galatea has kittens like these every four months. You will have a kitten.”
Paling visibly, Luis scooped up the kitten and left. I wondered what had happened, but it seemed he had only recognized his mother’s acceptance of me. Mamacita had decided that I was to come to Monterrey, marry Luis, and receive a kitten from the fecund Galatea. He had been working toward this, but it was serious, and it sobered him to realize he was practically a married man.
Elizabeth eventually catches on, and with the blessing of both sets of parents, the couple is married and sets up housekeeping in Monterrey, on a shoestring budget. Culture shock hits strong and hard, as Elizabeth is suddenly immersed in traditional Mexican society, and finds herself floundering more than a little in her new role as the wife of an established, upper class Mexican husband. Luckily Mamacita and Papacito, Elizabeth’s new parents-in-law, are firmly behind her, and guide Elizabeth through the maze of “proper” behaviour, and cover up her most blatant mistakes. Of which there are many, reported in full by the author.
I am afraid I am not at all familiar with Mexican society of the time period of the memoir – the 1930s – or even of the present day – but after reading My Heart Lies South I have a clear and mostly positive impression of a world in which family comes before all else, and in which women, though subject to the strictest of behavioural expectations from their menfolk, have an enormous influence and hidden power, which they can wield for either good or ill. Elizabeth’s family, visiting some years after her marriage, shake their heads in wonder and tell Elizabeth that she has wandered into a world frozen in the 1800s. Elizabeth, having carved out her domestic niche after significant struggle, agrees, but states that she is deeply happy, and that she now fully enjoys the more positive aspects of this steeped-in-tradition world.
This full acceptance of uber-traditional female roles may have modern-day feminists grinding their teeth in despair, and it also does appear, from the glowing reviews which this book receives on the “Godly womanhood” websites I’ve stumbled across while researching the author, that the more conservative “right-wing” types have embraced this memoir as an estimable example of true femininity.
I find that I fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Elizabeth and Luis seemed, from all reports I’ve read, to have a most successful and happy marriage, which is an accomplishment worth celebrating, no matter in which society it is achieved. Elizabeth continued with her successful writing career after her marriage, managed to find time to keep up with her music, created a beloved home, and adapted very well to the expectations of her in-laws, while still staying in close contact with her American friends and relations. It seems to me that her life was most reasonably “fulfilled”; she certainly does not come across as downtrodden in any way, and she speaks of her integration into Mexican society with affection and sharp-eyed realism.
All of this to say that I enjoyed this book greatly.
There also exists an expurgated “Young People’s Edition” of My Heart Lies South, got up, I am sure, to piggyback on the perennial success of I, Juan de Pareja. Apparently all the more risqué bits are left out – and there are a few – so I can’t really see the point of that, as when Elizabeth shares some of her more “adult” anecdotes she’s really at her best. So look for the original version, which has been reprinted numerous times, instead. (And to add insult to injury, the cover of the junior version is not at all dignified, and hints at a jolly comedy, which, for all of its humour, this memoir is definitely not.)
My Heart Lies South has two companion memoirs, Where the Heart Is, and The Hearthstone of My Heart. I’m a bit taken aback by the Heart-y-ness of the titles – definitely working the theme to the utmost! – but I’ll be keeping an eye out for these, as I’m sure they will be worth investigating.
Barb, this sounds so interesting! I know nothing about life in Mexico during that period either – despite living just north of Mexico in Texas. I’ll have to look for a copy of this – thanks!
The book was a bestseller and reprinted numerous times, so it should be around. I’m thinking it would be in the library system. I’m going to check here to see if they have the other volumes of memoir, but as they were lower profile I am not too optimistic. I haven’t seen the “Young People’s Version” myself, but I did see comments here and there to the effect that the “best bits” were taken out – so I would avoid that unless it is the only version available. 🙂