Following Fact and Fiction Into a Colonial City

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A century and a quarter earlier, the great center court had accommodated a steady traffic of people, mules, horses and dogs — to the stables, or the saddle room, the kitchen and other centers of labor behind stone pillars on all four sides. Upstairs, an open-air gallery, supported by massive vine-wreathed arches, gave access to the living areas — bedrooms, dining rooms and salons, 20 in all.

SUSAN WARD would rise early in the morning and stand in that gallery to watch the house wake up: At dawn, old Ascención would scatter grain for the doves before plodding up the stone stairs to water the flower pots and sweep the corridor. He would lift the hood from the parrot’s cage, and the bird, in perfect imitation of 10-year-old Enriqueta greeting her white poodle, would shriek: “Enrique, mi alma! Enrique, mi alma!” and then “in a conspiratorial mutter,” “Buenos días. Buenos días.”

Susan Ward admires the skill of her hostess, Emelita, at running the household. Her linen room alone, Susan tells her husband, was “a shrine.” “If I’d been a true housewife myself I’d have gone down on my knees.”

The view of the Plaza of the Martyrs from Mrs. Ward’s window would not be the same today. There are no beggars like those she saw sitting in the niches of the Morelos monument; there is no such monument in the square to Don José María Morelos y Pavón, a native son and hero of Mexican independence for whom Morelia was named.

But the square is still a neat public garden of pruned laurel trees and waving purple jacaranda. People walk or sit in quiet conversation on the benches at all hours.

Susan Ward was not allowed to wander in public alone. Aristocratic women could go out only during their brief afternoon coach ride, or “airing” as it was called. The only people really enjoying the cool air of the afternoon, she writes to her friend in New York, are the men on foot or horseback and the Indian girls who “swing up and down, and use their rebozos not to hide their faces but to enhance their eyes, and giggle and hug one another and cast slant eyes at passing boys.”

So when Susan wants to sketch the market and fountain, she must be accompanied by Emelita and a maid. She describes “... the things spread out there on the ground, under the matting roofs! Oranges, lemons, watermelons, little baby bananas, camotes (sweet potatoes), ears of their funny particolored corn, strange fruits, strange vegetables, chickens hanging by the legs like so many bouquets of Everlasting drying in an attic. Turkeys, pigs, beans, onions, vast fields of pottery and baskets, booths where were sold tortillas and pulque and mysterious sweets and coarse sugar like cracked corn.”

“Such a colorful jumble,” she says, “such a hum of life, such bright hand-woven cottons and embroidered chemises!”

The monumental fountain — a stone trio of indigenous women holding overhead an enormous tray of fruit — is still in place, as is Morelia’s baroque stone aqueduct, a mile-long row of 253 arches. The massive and ornate cathedral, built from 1640 to 1744 and known simply as the Catedral, would also have looked much the same: a two-towered, ornate structure — a hybrid of baroque, neo-Classical and Herreresque architecture — that presides over the city.

What would be a shame is if because of the restrictions on women’s movement, Susan Ward/Mary Foote might not have explored the many smaller churches and monasteries in Morelia — the Baroque Sanctuary of Guadalupe; the Temple of Saint Augustine, with its 16th-century Corinthian columns; or the Temple of the Roses, with its dark richly carved altar wall. Across the street, in a shady slip of green called Rosas Park stands a statue of Cervantes and, across from him, the seated stone figure of a monk named Don Vasco de Quiroga.

The former Convent of San Francisco has been turned into the House of the Handicrafts, where a series of rooms are set aside for the crafts of individual towns: straw baskets and crucifixes from Ichupio, gold and silver jewelry from Huetamo, ceramic masks from Tocuaro, stringed instruments from Paracho. In our visit, we bought a guitar from Juan Cano Onchí, a small, stern man with bushy black eyebrows and well-calloused hands, who picked out a sad, beautiful Spanish melody on the instrument he had made before passing it over to us.

Susan Ward dreamed of moving to a house near the forested city park and riding horses with her son. “It gives me a delightful sense of wickedness to contemplate it,” she wrote to her friend, “though I wouldn’t think of being so cavalier with the proprieties at home.” But her husband (like Mary Foote’s in real life) found no rich vein of silver in the mine, and she let go the idea of living in Michoacán.

“A short dream, but intense,” Mr. Stegner wrote. “She put it aside, and did not mope, and made the most of the trip back. It is a commentary both on her personally and on the Genteel Female that she rode the two hundred and fifty miles to Mexico City in a little over five days.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

GETTING THERE

Flights from New York to Morelia are likely to involve a connection in Houston, with round trips on Continental starting at $562, or in Mexico City, with Aeromexico round trips from Kennedy Airport starting at $785. The whole trip takes about seven and a half hours.

WHERE TO STAY

The 17th-century pink stone buildings in the city center house several comfortable hotels. Hotel de la Soledad (52-443-312-1888; www.hsoledad.com), a half block off the main square, has colonial-style rooms, a grassy courtyard and antique coaches in the galleries. Rooms start at 1,100 pesos (about $100 at 11.13 pesos to $1). On the square are Virrey de Mendoza (52-443-312-0633, www.hotelvirrey.com), starting at 1,900 pesos, and the newer Los Juaninos (52-443-312-0036, www.hoteljuaninos.com.mx), also from 1,900 pesos. Also close to the square, La Casa de las Rosas (52-443-312-3867, www.lacasadelasrosas.com) offers rooms from 1,980 pesos.

WHERE TO EAT

Most hotel restaurants serve local dishes. The restaurant in the Hotel de la Soledad offered delicious uchepos for breakfast (a sort of cornmeal in tortillas in tomato sauce with cream and jalpeños on top) for 95 pesos. Mirasoles (52-443-317 5775, www.losmirasoles.com), a chic restaurant in an ancient building three blocks west of the main square, provides a generous sampling of Michoacán fare, including corn tamale soup, churipu (broth of beef bones), chile chilaca and chongos (a sweet, milky dessert). For dinner, expect to spend 200 pesos per person or more.

WHAT TO SEE

Casa de las Artesanías, or House of the Handicrafts (52-443-312-1248), is a two-story museum shop in the former Convent of San Francisco where you can see (and buy) pottery, textiles, brass pots, gold and silver jewelry, guitars and other stringed instruments made by Purépecha Indians Open daily; free. The Catedral, built from 1660 to 1744, towers over the city center. Many ornate details have been added over the centuries, including an 18th-century silver neo-Classical baptismal font and a 20th-century pipe organ. The Museo Regional Michoacano (52-443-312-0407) showcases the history, geology, flora and fauna of the state. Closed Mondays; free.

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