Reflecting on Porfirio Díaz

Thursday is the 100th anniversary of the death of President Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico for thirty years between 1876 and 1911. With only one exception, he was re-elected every four years during that time. However, he is not a president you see honored by many statues or street names.

For most of the 20th century Díaz was called a dictator or tyrant. He has been described as heavy-handed, iron-fisted or sometimes both. His long rule is the reason for Mexico’s fierce constitutional ban on re-election to public office. For this Díaz did get streets named for him. Nearly every town in Mexico has a street named “No Reelección.”

Faced with the armed insurgency of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Díaz presented his resignation to the Chamber of Deputies on May 25, 1911. In a four-paragraph, single-page typed letter, he even used the word “revolution” as the reason for his resignation.

Though there is little public adulation of Díaz, there is recognition of him in strange places.

General Porfirio Díaz is one of the officers listed as being taken prisoner by the French on an oval-shaped monument in Puebla’s Zócalo. The monument honors the “exemplary surrender of the Army of the East under the command of General Jesús Ortega,” to French General Élie Frédéric Forey on May 17, 1863. Díaz somehow escaped from the French army and continued fighting against the French Intervention under President Benito Juárez.

Though the Mexicans did not defeat the French, Díaz emerged a military war hero. He remained loyal to President Juárez through Maximilian’s reign but had developed presidential ambitions of his own.

In an 1876 coup, soon after death of Juárez, Díaz assumed the presidency and was president for 30 of the next 34 years the period known as the Porfiriato.

Despite having made his military fame fighting the French during Maximilian’s short-lived Mexican Empire, Díaz was a great admirer of everything French. Think Porfiriato when you see the French- style buildings in downtown Mexico City. 

Their steep metal roofing was a 19th century European design to assure snow would slide off easily — hardly necessary in tropical Mexico.

In fact, the most spectacular and beautiful buildings in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico were either built or started during the Porfiriato. The domed Monument to the Revolution was really meant to be the dome over the center of the legislative palace the opus magnus Díaz was constructing.

Porfirio Díaz is one of the most easily recognizable figures in Mexico’s 20th-century murals. I have no doubt Díaz would have been delighted with his portraits as immortalized by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Both were members of the post-revolutionary mural art movement. They intentionally ridiculed Díaz’ vanity; the satire would have been lost on him.

Rivera portrayed Díaz prominently in the murals in the National Palace’s central staircase his chest covered with medals and wearing a white-plumed hat just as Díaz portrayed himself in his official presidential portrait.

Siqueiros’ mural in Chapultepec Castle would certainly have filled President Díaz with pride sitting in the presidential chair seemingly oblivious to the swooning crowd of top-hatted members of high society pressing in around him while swirling women dance in front of him.

The railroads became the signature trademark of the Porfiriato. Twenty thousand kilometers of track were laid during his tenure. Telegraph lines, paralleling the tracks, served as the long arm of the Díaz administration’s control over the rest of the country.

Reliable, scheduled long-distance transportation became the norm during the Porfiriato. The president himself traveled the length of the country in the presidential railroad coach. He personally inaugurated public works projects of French design, many of them railroad related. Any city on a railroad line has buildings dating back to the Porfiriato ― if only the train station.

Though there was very good material progress during his tenure, pressure built up in society. Díaz’s long term in office meant little turnover at all levels of government and left little opportunity for young lawyers to advance in government positions. A closed dictatorial system left middle-class professionals and business owners increasingly marginalized and in search of alternative forms of government.

Rapid capitalist transformation of the rural countryside meant increasing the size of the haciendas and mass dispossession of land, water and traditional rights of Mexico’s rural villages.

The ensuing Revolution was one of the first wars in which trains served as troop transports. In fact

a steam locomotive and a coal car are an outdoor display at the Museum of the Revolution.

And, it was aboard a train that Díaz would set off on his exile to Paris. Díaz rode the train from Mexico City to Veracruz where, after having coffee at one of my favorite restaurants, La Parroquia, he departed aboard the Ypiranga into exile to France. He died at 85 years of age on July 2, 1915, and is buried in Paris’ elegant Mountparnasse. General Gustave León Niox, who Díaz had fought against in Mexico, walked in Díaz’s funeral procession.

Art as tax, tax as art

Artists pay taxes in Mexico and the country benefits for generations. How can this be when artists aren’t typically the wealthiest members of society?

In 1957 artists David Alvaro Siqueiros and Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl) visited Hacienda authorities at the Finance Secretariat (Hacienda) with a unique proposal. A friend of theirs — also an artist — heavily in arrears on taxes, faced imprisonment. Siqueiros and Dr. Atl asked, “How about if he pays his taxes with works of art rather than pesos?”

Hugo B. Margáin, an independently minded Hacienda official later to become the treasury secretary, agreed to give it a try. The “Pago en Especie” (Payment in Kind) program was off and running.

Nearly 60 years later, Mexico is enriched by 6,500 pieces of art received through this program. They are housed in the Palacio del Arzobispado just north of the Palacio Nacional and overflow into other exhibit areas and warehouses. This patrimony is considered one of the world’s most valuable contemporary art collections.

And they travel. Hacienda sends exhibits throughout Mexico and other countries. “In addition to lending works of art to museums we currently have shows in Turkey, Russia and a collection on its way to Brazil,” commented Hacienda’s Director General of Cultural Promotion Juan Ramón San Cristóbal. “In the past year we’ve had shows on five continents.”

I met Sr. San Cristóbal last week at the beautiful Olmedo Museum in southern Mexico City. He was there to open a new exhibit in Olmedo’s “Payment in Kind Room.”

The concept of artists paying their taxes in kind is unique to Mexico but is receiving favorable publicity in other countries. The U.S. magazine The Atlantic ran a feature article on Mexico’s Payment in Kind program last month. It explains, “The program is simple—donations are made according to reported sales. If an artist sells between one and five pieces of art in a given year, he or she donates one piece to the federal government. If the artist sells between six and eight pieces, he or she donates two, and so on, with an annual cap of six donations. Only painters, sculptors, and graphic artists can participate, though program administrators are currently considering whether to include performance art as an acceptable means of payment.”

There is a jury to qualify the artists and evaluate submitted pieces. Quoted in The Atlantic, artist Antonio “Gritón” Ortiz says, “You might think we would be tempted to scribble something on a napkin to pay our taxes. But aside from being convenient, inclusion in the program is a source of pride.”

Artist Flor Minor’s show opened at the Olmedo last week. “Architecture of the Intimate” features 24 pieces of art, most owned by Hacienda. The show includes sculpture, drawings, and lithographs. The sculptures, all male nudes, are mostly performing various forms of manual labor.

Minor has participated in 15 collective and 25 individual exhibits throughout Mexico and has been a part of the Payment in Kind program since 2004. She’s donated even more art than her contribution required because she sees the benefit of having work in a prestigious national collection.

I was fortunate to have some time alone with Ms. Minor to ask about her art. She told me the Payment in Kind program “is a way to get my work out and be seen without leaving my workshop. At the beginning of my career I was known for my drawing and lithographs. In 2009 I had my first sculpture exhibit. This show promotes this other phase of my art.”

Her large sculpture “Equilibrium” intrigued me and I wondered whether this human balancing act was even possible. I asked Ms. Minor if she uses models for accuracy. “In none of my artwork have I used a model,” she said. “ I only use myself. I know how muscles work. I twist around, contorting my body to see what is possible. How do I move my leg, how do my fingers flex? I’d like to work with a model. Maybe I don’t because I haven’t yet found my model.”

She laughed when I replied, “You use a woman’s body to sculpt men!” I suggested that in her workshop she might have mirrors. “No, I start from the consciousness I have of my own body. I may not know the names of the muscles and bones but I know they’re there and I know their shapes.”

What I know is that the concept of payment in kind is allowing the Mexican public to have access to art that might otherwise be held only in private collections, as well as permitting artists to pursue their avocation — a win-win for us all.

“Architecture of the Intimate” will be on exhibit at the Museo Dolores Olmedo through August 17, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Mondays.

Honoring Siqueiros

Highly controversial artist David Alfaro Siquieros (1896-1974) has been honored with two major re-inaugurations within the last month.  The City of Los Angeles and the Getty Institute unveiled restored "América Tropical" on Olvera Street, eighty years to the day after Siqueiros himself unveiled the outdoor mural for the first time.  The 9.95 million dollar project includes a viewing platform and interpretive center about the artist and the mural.  

Timothy Whalen, director of the Getty Conservation Institute explained "Part of the significance of this mural is not just the importance of Siqueiros, a major 20th century figure, but the fact that it was censored. . .  That contributes to our understanding of it as much as what he originally painted."  

Almost concurrently, Siqueiros' Cuernavaca workshop known as La Tallera was re-inaugurated by the federal government as a museum.  I visited La Tallera last weekend and was welcomed to the newly refurbished museum by Public Relations Chief, Yolanda Rodriguez.  I asked her that question I've often wanted to ask but didn't so as to not let on that I didn't know -- "why did he refer to his workshop as feminine?"

"Siqueiros gave it that name because it is a place of gestation, fecundity, creation, hence its femininity.  He designed it as an industrial-sized workshop to give birth to mural art projects."

My first visit to La Tallera was shortly after Siqueiros' death, in the company of Roberto Berdecio, a Bolivian artist and muralist in his own right, who had worked closely with Siqueiros on América Tropical in 1932 as well as other projects in New York and Mexico.

From Berdecio I learned Siqueiros knew La Tallera was where he would produce his last big project -- the Siqueiros Polyforum.   He had worn out his welcome with the Mexican government -- to the point of being incarcerated.  Marcos Manuel Suarez became his backer and financier.  It was Suarez's architects who built Siqueiros' Tallera just a couple of kilometers from Suarez's Casino de la Selva Hotel, which was to host the Polyforum.

Suarez, had been one of those many teenagers who sailed from Sevilla to Veracruz, sent, by their Spanish mothers, to America "to become a man".  It was sink or swim for the boys armed with more names of family members who had preceded them than cash.  Suarez did very well, but adhered to his mantra of having nothing to do with bandits -- his name for bankers.  He worked with his own money.  When Mexico City was awarded the 1968 Olympic Games, Suarez said "there's not enough hotel space for such an event," and he undertook the project of building Mexico City's largest hotel -- Hotel de Mexico (now World Trade Center Mexico).  The Olympics came and went and the Hotel de Mexico wasn't finished until after Suarez's death when his sons enlisted the aid of bandits.

To make his new hotel more attractive, Suarez, over Siqueiros' objections, changed the location of the Polyforum from Cuernavaca to Mexico City.  Indeed, long before the Hotel de Mexico was functioning, the rooftop revolving restaurant and the ground level Polyforum, with the world's largest mural, were open and generating income.  

The financial demands of the construction of the Hotel de Mexico sucked resources from the Polyforum.  After her husband's death, Angelica Arenal viuda de Siqueiros took out a full-page ad in Excelsior complaining to Suarez that what her husband had foreseen was indeed happening -- forcing him to scrimp and save meant the Polyforum was deteriorating quickly and hence affecting her husband's artistic reputation.

Despite the change in venue of the Polyforum it was at La Tallera that Siqeiros' turned out murals that are inside, outside, even on top of, his artistic extravaganza close to the intersection of Mexico City's Insurgentes Avenue and Viaducto Miguel Aleman. 

As an artist, Siqueiros took us, as viewers, into account.  Back in 1932 he painted América Tropical with the pedestrian in mind.  "A mural visible from the street on the second floor of a building should not just be a large-scale painting hanging on the wall.  It needs to be painted with the viewer-in-motion, in mind."  

Though La Tallera's main exhibit revolves around the design and content of the murals that make up the Polyforum, another deals with Siqueiros' concept of polyangularity -- taking into account where the viewer will be standing, sitting, or walking.  At his Palace of Fine Arts murals he imagines us leaning against a cool marble column while our arm rests on a brass railing.  On Olvera Street we're viewing América Tropical day after day as we walk to work.  Some viewers of the Polyforum are airline passengers on approach to MEX looking down on the roof of the building.

Siqueiros' last words, inscribed on a plaque that used to lie on his bed in his Cuernavaca home, were "I fear I don't have much time, and I have so much yet to do."  One year earlier he had intended to restore América Tropical, but was denied a U.S. visa.  I wonder which illuminated consul was responsible for that.  That censored mural was still on his mind.

The legacy of Rufino Tamayo

As he finished his five hour interview with Angelica Arenal, widow of artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, the editor of Excelsior newspaper asked:  All my readers will want to know:  whose fault was it that you are in this hospital bed?"  If she hadn't had weights hanging from all her extremities I'm sure she would have patted him on the arm when she answered, "Young man, it was nobody's fault but my own.  What else could I have expected of the most nefarious street corner in Cuernavaca?  The corner of Diaz Ordaz and Rufino Tamayo?"

Angelica's husband, David Afaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), liked to say "I won".  He lived longer than the other big name Mexican artists of the 20th century.  Jose Clemente Orozco died in 1949, Diego Rivera 1957.  Siqueiros even outlived members of the younger generation of artists such as Frida Kahlo (1954) and Jesús Guerrero Galvan (1973).

But the real winner was Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991).  Tamayo wasn’t on Siqueiros' list.  He didn't adhere to a basic idea proposed by the Sindicate of Artists and Engravers formed during the Mexican Revolution: truly revolutionary art should not only be something of beauty, it should contain a social message as well.  The clearer the message, the better the art.  For Tamayo art only needed to be something of beauty.  Many members of the post-revolutionary art movement considered him a lacky sold-out to the government.  In the meantime, Tamayo's paintings, usually not available in Mexico, were purchased in Paris or New York for twenty-five thousand dollars or more.  That’s not to say that Tamayo didn’t make waves with his art.

I remember a particularly well-planned set-up Tamayo crafted.  At a cocktail party in 1988 in Cuernavaca, Tamayo approached Governor Lauro Ortega with "I see you're building a new Palace of Justice."  With that prompt, Ortega launched into his spiel about how the State of Morelos should own its buildings, not pay rent. 

Tamayo offered the governor a portrait of Father Morelos to hang in the new building. Absolutely free.  Governor Ortega accepted right then and there. 

In the privacy of his studio, Tamayo painted.  As the date approached for the inaugural ceremony he put off the portrait's delivery date and only gave the architects the dimensions of the framed canvas.  "Put up the curtain to cover the painting and drive the nail into the wall.  I'll have it ready in time."  Tamayo personally delivered the painting wrapped in a sheet, slipping it behind the curtain minutes before the distinguished guest, President de la Madrid's arrival.   With fanfare the President pulled the drawstring.  The curtains parted.  And there was the portrait of a black man wearing a clerical collar and a bandana over his head!  Caught off-guard, the President said, "it's missing the plaque with the names of the painting and the artist."  It was a reporter who shouted, "What have you done to our hero?"  To which Tamayo replied in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone present, "It would be an act of racism to not be proud of him as he was." With that he turned his back on the assemblage and departed.  Touché, Siqueiros.  

As Mexico's best known artist, Tamayo traveled the world in his nineties in the nineties, with awards lavished on him wherever he went.  In many interviews he repeated, "I've been a socialist all my life.  I just didn't think my political views should be part of my art."  Indeed Mexico City's furthest-to-the-left daily newspaper owes him a debt of gratitude for lithographs and paintings he donated for fundraising to get the newspaper started.

In the 1970's, Rufino and his wife Olga offered their large collection of other artists' contemporary art to the Mexican people if an appropriate building were built for it.  The nation donated land in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park and an award-winning museum was built.  Though named Tamayo Museum, it hasn't been a place to see much of Tamayo’s work, just as Oaxaca's Tamayo Museum does not house his work either -- it features his and Olga's collection of prehispanic art.  

Now, however, for a short time we can enjoy a very special treat.  Mexico City's recently remodeled Tamayo Museum is hosting two "chapters" of Tamayo's paintings.  The first, "Tamayo/Trajectories," will run until November.  Forty-seven paintings, mostly from private collections both domestic and foreign, many exhibited for the first time, are arranged by topics:  still-lifes, female nudes, male nudes, portraits, landscapes, and scenes from Mexicans' daily lives.  There is even a watermelon section.  Tamayo was a great painter of watermelons, his slices are usually positioned on a tabletop.  Other Mexican artists enjoy arranging watermelon slices as a star -- a red star with the colors of the flag.   

There is a magic to Tamayo's landscapes and cityscapes.  In his unusual style, which lacks clearly outlined figures, Tamayo suggests a setting which we as viewers complete in our own mind and, in doing so, we realize it is a scene only seen in Mexico.    

Don't miss it.  When Chapter 2 opens, Chapter 1's paintings will have already been returned to their homes.  Texts and informational material is in both Spanish and English.

A one-stop mural shop

The areas around the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Rectoría (administration building) offers a unique view, where one can see monumental art by different artists, all of it created in the same time period: 1952.

Five years ago this grand array of art and architecture was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site as "an outstanding example of the application of the principles of 20th Century modernism merged with features stemming from pre-Hispanic Mexican tradition . . . . one of the most significant icons of modern urbanism and architecture in Latin America".

Approaching the Rectoría from the south on Insurgentes Avenue, David Alfaro Siqueiros' tile mosaic is the first of the artistic statements to come into view.  Be it on canvas or murals, Siqueiros liked texture in his art.  On the south side of the Rectoría he took a bold step towards his goal of producing three-dimensional mural art by including curved surfaces of faces, arms, hands, and pencils emerging from the wall.

Three-dimensional mural art sounds like a contradiction in terms, but Siqueiros achieved it a decade later in the Siqueiros Polyforum, when he incorporated metal sculpture into his mural art.

An untiled smaller Siqueiros mural on the north side of the Rectoría is less attractive, but has a clearer message.  The hand, fingers, and pencil point to a list of dates:  1520, 1810, 1857, 1910, 19??, referring to the conquest of Mexico, proclamation of independence, laws of reform and new constitution, revolution, and the next social upheaval.  Back in 1952 who ever thought we would live to see the year 2000?  The open-ended date has been restored many times after students painted in the date of the next upheaval. 

Just north of the Rectoría is the library building designed and decorated by architect and muralist Juan O'Gorman.  As it was a library building, O'Gorman put in very few windows.  Except for vents in the stairwells and translucent onyx in the lower-floor reading rooms, the entire building is covered on the outside with natural stone mosaic.

The west and south sides of O’Gorman’s library are visible from the Rectoría.  The west portrays the university shield and university life.  At first glance, the shield appears to be framed by a double-headed eagle; however, it is two different majestic birds. The Aztec eagle of the Mexican shield and the South American condor are on either side of a map of Latin America--the western hemisphere sans Canada and the United States.  The letters BN and HN in the top corners are abbreviations of the collections housed in the building:  Biblioteca Nacional (national book library) and Hemeroteca Nacional (national periodicals library). 

On the south side of the library building O'Gorman gives us views of European life.  In two large circles he presents the European views of the universe.  Ptolemy's theory positions the earth in the center of the universe, contrasting with Copernicus' revolutionary theory where the earth is one of many planets in the solar system, all part of a much larger universe.  

The opposite side of the library building portrays the Aztec view, with the island of Mexico-Tenochtitlan as the center of the universe, connected by canals to the rest of its known world. 

Each side of the library building is a perfect rectangle.  A cardboard box could have been the maquette for its design.  It has become the emblematic building on the university campus, photographed in every Spanish language textbook you've ever had.  

When proud Siqueiros -- upset over being eclipsed by young upstart Juan O'Gorman – was asked what he thought of the library building, he replied "Juanito has given us a "gringa vestida de China Poblana,"”  He implied it could have been a building taken from Manhattan and just dressed up Mexican -- as the China Poblana.  (The China Poblana wasn't Chinese at all, but likely a captive slave brought from India as a child, who, because of her intellect and beauty, became a sensation in Puebla during the viceroyalty period.)

Across Insurgentes Avenue lies the university stadium.  Its stone mosaic is Diego Rivera's rendition of the university shield flanked by athletes.  Under it all is Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.  The stadium was refurbished for the 1968 Olympic games and a dish for the Olympic flame was added above Rivera's mosaic.  The shallow chromed dish always makes me think of another artist; James Metcalf.  

Born in New York, Metcalf died earlier this year in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacan.  As a sculptor and metallurgist his search of ancient techniques led him from Paris to Mexico where he found them in Santa Clara.  Craftsmen there were using a pre-hispanic design of bellows and technique for shaping copper ingots heated in charcoal fires to produce the copper kettles used throughout Mexico known as "cazos de Don Vasco".  

Shortly after the conquest Vasco de Quiroga allowed copper production to continue in Santa Clara, but insisted it be to produce a Spanish designed kettle.  By applying ancient techniques to produce modern design, Metcalf put Santa Clara del Cobre "on the map" of artistic metallurgic production and was commissioned to make a hand-hammered copper bowl for the flame in Olympic stadium.   

Hopefully you’ll be on the UNAM campus someday soon.  Enjoy seeing these very different works by three of Mexico’s great muralists.  

Cruising the Castle's interior

Last Tuesday was the anniversary of the heroic defense of Chapultepec Castle by the Niños Heroes on September 13, 1847.  Though an important event which has shaped Mexico's thought, there are many more reasons to visit that historic place.  

The hill on which the Castle is built was known as Grasshopper Hill, sacred to the Aztecs, a favorite retreat of their emperors; its spring a source of water for Tenochtitlan, later to be Mexico City. Mexicans use the Nahuatl derived word for grasshoppers -- chapulin; hence Chapultepec -- rather than the Spanish saltamontes -- hill jumper.  

In 1785 Viceroy Bernardo de Galvez built what was to be the first component of a sprawling Castle that has grown as it has gone through different uses.  During two extended periods it housed the Military Academy; for more than 50 years the Presidential residence, and since 1944 the National History Museum.  

Despite the Castle’s extensive history, it has become identified with French imposed Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlotta even though Maximilian did not build the Castle and only lived there a brief two years. Chapultepec is the only Royal Castle in North America used to actually house sovereigns.

In keeping with Mexico's museumography the displays are excellent and follow a theme.  Once inside the building you'll choose a route to follow.   One area contains National History exhibits.  As to be expected there are swords and military uniforms, but exhibits of historical periods also go into surprising depth. Murals by O’Gorman, Orozco, and Siquieros are history lessons in themselves.  Another route takes you through the living quarters portion of the Castle looking northeast along Paseo de la Reforma.  As palatial as any European castle, and kept in excellent condition, the rooms are decorated as they were by different occupants.  Some are as Maximilian and Carlotta may have used them, others furnished as they were when Porfirio Diaz lived in them; the last room is furnished as it was under President Lazaro Cardenas.  Cardenas felt it inappropriate for a revolutionary president to be living in such opulence and moved the official residence to Los Pinos, also located in Chapultepec Park.   

Over the years The Castle has gained prestige as a setting for dialog.  Is the open feeling of the glass enclosed space with the buffering effect of the forest and the secure feeling at the top of the promontory conducive to understanding?  The 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accord put an end to the civil war in El Salvador.  This year meetings have been hosted in the Castle for dialog between the movement headed by Javier Sicilia and the highest ranking members of both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. 

Most visitors walk a wide path that spirals around the hill and soon has them above tree level looking out over Chapultepec forest, the largest urban park in Latin America.   A few visitors with special needs or VIP status are allowed to ride the elevator from the base of the hill and step out inside the Castle at the top. 

I rode that elevator once -- in the company of a U.S. high-school student with extensive knowledge of the 1846-47 war and a desire to see the parapet where Juan Escutia jumped to his death.  Remembering my previous visit on a windy day, when the French doors in the residential palace area were banging between the walls and the ends of chains attached to their doorknobs, we took forty rubber doorstoppers purchased from a street vendor on Tacuba street.  Once inside the building I asked to see the director of the museum.  "Not available," we were told, "perhaps later."  Upon finishing our visit I asked again and got the same reply.  I told the security guard I'd try another day, and that the reason for my query was to make a gift to the museum. 

Benjamin Weems, his aunt and I proceeded to walk down the long exit path.  Just as we reached the bottom a guard came running down the walkway calling after us.  In the absence of the Director, the Administrator would see us!  We were hustled, like dignitaries, through a tunnel, to the elevator, escorted by two guards to the Administrative Offices.  Perhaps they thought I had a valuable artifact to contribute.  I suddenly was struck by the possibility the administrator might think my doorstops irreverent or worse, irrelevant and a waste of his time.   With some trepidation we were ushered into the presence of the Administrator where I had to finally open my bag and present my matching rubber doorstops.  I was afraid that what had seemed like such a wonderful idea would appear to be mere silliness.  

The Administrator betrayed neither amusement nor annoyance.  He expressed appreciation and charmingly explained that rubber doorstops, made in China, would not be in keeping with 19^th century doors; he agreed that something along their lines was necessary and graciously accepted our gift. 

Benjamin maintained perfect decorum until we were once again descending the walkway and were out of earshot of the guards.  The three of us broke into relieved and sustained laughter.  Since then we have referred to this visit as the Doorstop Caper.

I highly recommend a visit to this enchanting Castle.  If you go, please let me know if rubber doorstoppers are in place, or even better a 19^th century rendition.