Manila,March 3, 1905.
I sent a long letter to you by the mail, which went out this morning; but I must begin another at once, as I want to tell you about the reception last night. Indeed, if I don’t keep a letter always going on while I am here, I shall not be able to tell you half what I want to say about Manila.
We dined at half-past seven last night, and then, with a small party of friends, drove through the town to a wharf in front of the large Cold-Storage buildings by the river. Here we had to pass over some large, flat lighters, on the decks of which the moonlight revealed myriads of enormous cockroaches hurrying about in all directions, which made us catch up our skirts and run for the launch lying alongside the lighters, and all decorated with palms and Japanese lanterns.
At the wharf some more friends had joined us, so we were quite a large party in the bows of the launch as she steamed up the Pasig, and the cool, or comparatively cool, night air was delicious. The river looked quite pretty in the moonlight, and though it was only a small, rather new moon, the light was quite strong, and the green of the trees was quite perceptible, for there is colour in the moonlight in this part of the world, where the moon does not make mere black and white outlines, but you can distinguish colours quite plainly. The Palace of Malacañan soon came in sight—a bigbuilding blazing with lights, and adorned by rows of little lamps in festoons all along the water’s edge, like Earl’s Court Exhibition.
Manila.Malacañan Palace.To face page 120.
Manila.
Malacañan Palace.
To face page 120.
We landed at a low stone wall, outlined for the occasion with red and yellow electric lights. The launch immediately in front of ours was that of the Chinese Consul, very profusely and beautifully decorated, and filled with Celestials in bright silk dresses. We stepped at once into the gardens, which come right down to the water’s edge, and found ourselves in thefête—all in full swing, with crowds of people walking up and down paths covered with sailcloth to protect the dresses. Of course everyone was going about in evening dress, as if in a ball-room at home, and feeling very hot, and looking for cool places. The idea of this perpetual heat soon becomes familiar, but sometimes it strikes the imagination, on occasions of this kind, with particular insistence. In my letters to you I can’t go on saying “It is very hot,” “It is very sultry,” and so on, and yet I know that you reading them at home, can have no idea of thesettingof all I tell you; of the terrible blazing sun all day long; the hot nights only bearable by comparison with the day; of one’s skin always moist, if it is not actually running in little rivulets, as in a Turkish bath; of even the dogs and cats spending all their lives trying to find draughts to lie in. And this, I am informed, is the “winter.”
Well, this entertainment, which was very well done indeed, reminded me more and more of Earl’s Court, as we passed under arcades of coloured lights, and the Constabulary Band played selections on a grass lawn under the trees. There was a huge open-air ball-room, built over some lawn-tennis courts, raised up and approached by a little flight of steps, and with seats all round inside a rail.
Our first duty was to present ourselves to the Governor, Mr Luke E. Wright, and his wife, who stood under a canopy of white silk, on which were embroidered the Arms of the Philippines. This coat of arms is a new invention, and this was its first appearance. It was designed by an American called Gillard Hunt, and its heraldic description is very complicated, and would probably convey as little to you as it does to me. It happened to be on the front of the programmes as well as on the canopy, so I had a good look at it, and the gist of the design is that it is all red and silver and blue, and the symbols are the Castle of Spain and a sea-lion, with a background of the stripes of the American flag. Above is the crest, which takes the form of the American Eagle, and the inscription written below is “Philippine Islands.” It makes a very pretty crest, but it is difficult to understand why the Philippine shield should be quartered with the Arms of Spain any more than if the American flag should have the Lion and the Unicorn in the corner. In fact the latter device would be far the more reasonable of the two.
Well, as I say, the Wrights and their party stood under this white silk canopy, and the aide-de-camp introduced those whom they did not know already; whereupon our hosts shook hands, repeating each guest’s name, and adding “Pleased to meet you” in kindly American fashion.
This little ceremony, the American introduction, always appals me, because I never know what one is supposed to say in answer. I am afraid I smile helplessly and murmur, “Thank you so much!” but I am sure that is not the right thing to do.
Having passed what the Manila papers call “The Gobernatorial Party,” we proceeded to drift about the grounds, which were really charminglypretty. I met a good many people I knew, and enjoyed the evening immensely. After a time I began to feel very tired, and Mr P—— took me to the ball-room, where he managed to find places, and we wedged ourselves into the row of people sitting all round. I did not dance, but I found quite enough amusement to compensate me in looking on.
The crowd was pretty mixed, of course, but “Manila at a glance” included one or two who looked like gentle-folk, and there were certainly a great many pretty dresses, which, I am told, the wearers import from Paris recklessly. Some of thecamisasworn by the native ladies were quite lovely—beautiful, delicate fabrics exquisitely embroidered and hand-painted—and in the Official Rigodon, with which the ball began, I noticed how well the wearers moved.
As a contrast, one of the most remarkable spectacles of the evening was the Gibson Girl, of whom there were several specimens to be seen strutting about. All Americans, men and women, as I have noticed at home and on the Continent, have something of this type about them, and I often wonder whether Dana Gibson has discovered the essentials of the American type, or whether he has invented a model which they admire and try to copy. Whichever it is, when it is natural it is pretty enough in moderation, but some of them have, as they would express it, “got right there,” and they may be picked out of any crowd of ordinary human shapes at a glance. Of course no human being really could have the proportions of the Gibson Girl as she is on paper, for no living thing ever had such length of leg and neck but a giraffe; only so many Americans have that type of face, with a low, pretty square forehead, thick, round nose, heavy jaw, and archedeyebrows. Corsets and high hair-pads can help towards the rest of the design. I can’t think how anyone wants to be a Gibson Girl, unless for twenty guineas a week at a theatre, as the pose and the untidy hair is inexpressibly common and shop-girlish. Moreover, I don’t see how anyone can expect to ape anything and avoid being vulgar. The Gibson Girl does not escape this latter calamity. She “gets right there just every time.”
After watching the dancing for a good while, I was taken round the grounds and given refreshment at one of the little buffets in the garden. A most amusing episode occurred at the chief of these buffets, where a big bowl of punch was being administered by the Chinese servants, who opened everything they could lay hands on—whisky, port, claret, soda, liqueurs, brandy, champagne—and poured it all into the punch. You can imagine what ludicrous stories were afloat about people who had taken one sip of this fire-water, and were reported to have been carried off half-dying, and shipped home down the river.
About half-past ten the crowds began to thin, and we left the palace, getting upon our launch again at the same place where we had landed. There was no more moon, but the stars made quite a bright light, and the air was so fresh upon the water at that hour that one could actually stand the extra warmth of a chiffon scarf across one’s bare shoulders.
March 4.
I found myself very tired yesterday after thefête, so I stayed in the house all day, except fora drive in the evening to the Escolta, which is the principal street of shops. When we came here in November, fresh from palatial Hong Kong, I thought this town the most shoddy and hideous place I had ever seen, but now I find it really difficult to recall my first impressions, for it seems a gay and handsome metropolis to the provincial from Iloilo!
At Iloilo our streets consist of ruins hastily patched up, and great fire-blackened gaps in the rows of houses, but in Manila, though there has been apparently just as much hasty patching, there are comparatively few ruins to be seen, and perhaps a trifle less string used in the harnesses of the horses. White women andMestizasgo about in hats too, which is a superfluity we do not affect in the provinces, and after so many weeks of not wearing a hat, I find it very irksome and hot to have to put one on. However, in Manila one must do as Manila does, I suppose, though the fashion, which did not obtain in the Spanish days, seems a foolish and unnecessary one, and the people who were here under the oldrégimerail helplessly against the innovation. Certainly it is no gain to the coloured ladies to hide their nice, thick black hair with the frightful “Parisian” confections which appeal to their exotic taste; but, of course, it would never do for them not to follow the fashions set by their American equals. They have, however, that strange and subtle way of the Oriental all the world over, of setting a seal of their own upon even the most slavish imitations. One feels in this, as in everything else in Manila, that if the American influence were withdrawn, in twenty-four hours all trace of that busy, kind-hearted, bustling, incongruous people would begin to melt steadily away, and in a month would be wiped clean out.
There are big, or comparatively big, shops,with a great display in the windows, and huge signs, and hurry-up-its-your-only-chance notices, and conversational advertisements in the American fashion. But when you get inside the shops there is the familiar barrenness, and there are the same half-asleep or half-drugged Filipinos and yellowMestizosyawning and trimming their nails with the same vague indifference, and nothing to sell that any human being ever wants. And the prices of the things you buy, instead of what you wanted, are enough to make your hair turn snow-white on the spot.
Manila.The Escolta.To face page 126.
Manila.
The Escolta.
To face page 126.
One fact, striking fact about the shops in this country is that the largest and most important are those of the jewellers, and the reason of this is that the Filipinos and Eurasians have a mistrust of banks and investments for their spare cash, with which they buy jewels partly for love of the glittering ornaments, and partly from some muddled idea of having their money safe in a portable form. I was talking about this to a very civil Frenchman in one of the biggest jeweller’s here this morning, while I was waiting for a ring they had been repairing, and he was very interested to hear I had come from Iloilo, for he told me he had travelled all about Panay selling jewellery a year or more ago, and that he knew that island quite well. I asked him if he had done well there, and he said yes, very good business indeed; and when I asked him what sort of things he sold, he showed me beautiful diamonds set in rather red gold, and said I would be astonished if I saw the “types” who could buy such ornaments. He said he rode a horse, as the roads were only rough tracks with broken bridges, but I don’t suppose he really did go all over the island, and fancy he must rather have gone in coasting steamers and ridden about the suburbs of the towns, for there are no inlandtowns in the Philippines, and no market, even for the best diamonds.
Talking ofMestizosreminds me of an account I heard, from a friend at the reception, of an English-Mestizowedding, which may amuse you, and is extraordinarily characteristic of these people. The bridal party assembled in church in the orthodox fashion, but the bride’s Filipino and Eurasian relations, instead of remaining in their pews, all crowded up to the altar and stood in a mass amongst the wedding-group and bridesmaids; and after this astonishing ceremony, the happy couple marched down the aisle to the strains of “The Washington Post.”
Manila,March 5, 1905.
I wrote in the morning yesterday, and after the heat of the day we drove outside the town to a nursery garden. To get there we passed through long streets of untidy suburbs, not of palm-thatch huts and bamboo groves like those in Iloilo, but very broad and treeless, with mean, low houses at intervals, and bits of waste ground strewn with lean dogs and rubbish. There are not scavenger pariahs here as in Turkey and the Near East, and I suppose they could not exist in such a climate, where the rubbish would be too putrid even for their savoury taste. There are a good many hawks about, but they don’t scavenge either, like the hawks in Egypt; all they seem to do is to hover over poultry, and every now and then get away with a young fowl or chicken. When we were driving round between Molo and Jaro a week or two ago, near the village of Mindoriao, we heard a great squawking and a scream, and looked round in time to see a hawk rise up from near anipahut with a fair-sized hen in his claws. The people rushed about the plantation and sang out, and the hawk staggered once or twice, and nearly fell with the hen, which was very big and heavy for him; but he got away at last, and the people were left gazing after him into the sky, like in the picture of “Robert with his Red Umbrella” inStruwwelpeter. But the scavenging is, or should be, done by thehalf-wild pigs with which the native quarters teem—lean, rough, black and white animals, generally very mangy, and with long legs and snouts.
A Street in Manila.Showing Electric Tram.To face page 129.
A Street in Manila.
Showing Electric Tram.
To face page 129.
A great deal of the way to the nursery we followed the route of a new electric tram, which is to be opened in the course of a few weeks, and is to connect all the suburbs with the main town. Manila is immensely proud of this tram, which is such a token of progress that it somehow or other makes up for the lack of paving and other primary symbols of civilisation. There is a railway here too, the only one in the Philippines, which goes about 150 miles inland to a place called Dugupan. There is constant talk of railways to be built all over the islands, the concessions for which are being granted, of course, to American speculators; but those who know the islands well say the railways will not benefit anyone, even the speculators, for what are wanted besides labourers are roads, just good traffic roads, kept in good repair. However, it sounds imposing to talk of so many millions of dollars to be spent on railways “to open up the Philippines,” and a great deal of philanthropic energy is, somehow, inferred.
The entrance to the nursery garden was up a narrow, sandy lane, where a lot of little, half-clad, brown children ran out after us and offered small, tousled bunches of faded flowers. Queer little souls, these Filipino children, with thin limbs and fluttering muslin garments.
On each side of the sandy lane was a field planted with rose bushes; in the garden itself nothing appeared but rows and rows of flower-pots containing green plants and ferns—the sort of plants and ferns one only sees in conservatories at home. The garden was laid out in formal earthen paths, bordered with tiles, but the gardener was anything but formal—a huge, fat, old native with Chineseeyes, got up airily in white bathing-drawers and a muslincamisa.
We went about, and my friend chose ferns and plants, some of which were lovely, and I very much wished I could have taken some home with me to Iloilo, but for the difficulty of transporting them by theButuan. There was a charming old grey stone well in the garden, with steps leading up to it, some of them formed of beautiful old blue and green Chinese tiles, the whole shaded by big, drooping trees, which made that corner of the garden quite dark. Overhead, along the greater part of the paths, was a pergola of orchids, while all sorts of orchids grew from bundles of what looked like dried sticks tied to the posts. The sight of the orchids made me realise once again the temperature we live in, for I thought of how, on a summer’s day at home, one would find the outside air quite cold after an orchid house. It also occurred to me that it sounds all very fine to think of orchids in cheapness and profusion, but I have never yet seen an orchid that could compare as an object of beauty with a dog-rose out of a hedge.
On the way back we halted to hear some jolly tunes played by the band on the Luneta. Again there was the blue dusk; the orange and saffron horizon; and the moving crowds in white on the bright green grass plots round the bandstand. We stayed in the carriage, which moved slowly round with hundreds of others, all going in the same direction. I believe the only carriage that has the privilege of moving the other way is that of the Governor.
Going in and out of the crowd, everywhere, were two little American girls, seated astride on a bare-backed pony, with their hair floating loose behind, and tied with an immense bow of ribbon on one side of the forehead in American fashion; theirthin little legs dangling side by side on each flank of the pony. They looked very happy and solemn, and the way they stuck on was simply wonderful.
Manila.The Luneta.To face page 130.
Manila.
The Luneta.
To face page 130.
The Luneta is a pretty sight in the evening, and even amusing, but I must confess I was very much disappointed in it, because I have read so much about Manila in American magazines, in which the Luneta is described as “an evening assemblage where all the nations of the world jostle one another”;—or phrases, more lurid, to that effect; followed by “word pictures” of Jew and Moor, Chinaman and Turk, Cingalee, Slav, and Hindu, all rubbing shoulders in their respective national costumes. So I looked out for this sight particularly, but have never seen anything but men of varying degrees of white and Malay in linen suits, and women and Gibson Girls in the last scream of Paris-Manila fashions. I have asked people about it too, in case I should have been to the Luneta only on days when the Jews, Moors, etc., were unavoidably absent; but I only got laughed at for imagining such nonsense, and when I said, I had read accounts by American eye-witnesses, my friends only laughed the more.
March 6.
I am afraid I am not seeing as much of Manila as I had hoped, after all, for I find I am not well enough to go about a great deal, but what I do see I try to remember in order to tell you. Having these letters to write is an amusement in the long, hot hours in the house, so don’t think that I am giving up delirious joys to find time to write to you! All the same, if I did go out more into Manila Society, I should not have any more to tell you, for there would be nothing to describe but Bridge. That isthe only thing anyone ever does. Manila was pictured to me as a very gay place, in fact the Manila papers even go so far as to label it the “Gayest City of the Orient”; but it is really a dreadfully dull little town, with a very occasional dance to enliven the interminable round of dinner and Bridge parties, and those curious and costly luncheon parties which American women give to each other. So much I had already inferred from the Society Columns of the Manila papers, which come to us in Iloilo as a breath from the wide world! When I arrived here and saw the place, and asked some questions, I found my worst fears realised, and that far from being the gayest city of the Orient—think of Cairo, Calcutta, Colombo!—Manila is probably the dullest spot of the East or West, and any gaiety or intellect it might have is choked and strangled by Bridge and Euchre. In a country like this, where there is little or no housekeeping and no shopping to fill the minds and time of the average women, card-playing seems to attain colossal proportions, for they actually go out of their houses at eight in the morning to meet and play cards till lunch (the Americans do not use the word tiffin), and after a siesta they begin again, go home to dinner, or out to a dinner party, and probably play half the night.
The Americans in Iloilo are just as keen, however, and the first question they ask you is if you play Bridge; and if you don’t they take no further interest in you, and never dream of inviting you to their houses.
The Americans are fearfully down on the Filipino national game ofMonteabout which the natives are infatuated, and over which they ruin themselves, but the indignation of the ruling race carries very little weight, as it is all precept and no example.
I went for a little drive yesterday evening, through the old Spanish Intramuros, the Walled City, within the high old walls, which stand in a neglected moat, and are all covered with moss and grass and trailing weeds. The narrow streets are cobbled, and the quaint houses, with deep, barred basement windows, have a delightful air of repose, after the half-finished, skin-deep, hustling modernity of Americanised Manila. The whole quarter seems a far more appropriate setting than the rest of the town for the “mild-eyed lotus eaters,” which the Filipinos really are by choice, nature, and instinct. I think that if I lived in Manila (which heaven forbid should ever be my fate!) I should like to live in the Walled City—that is, if I survived the awful smells—and imagine myself in an East where there were no arc-lights, no electric trams, no drinking saloons, ice-cream sodas, “Hiawatha,” or Bridge, and where the natives would be humble, civil, prosperous, and happy.
There are some fine old gates to the Walled City, but the Americans whose idiosyncrasy it is not to reverence antiquity unless it has cost fabulous sums at Drouot’s or Christie’s, are pulling them down for no reason at all.
A great many natives bustle about American Manila in European or white linen suits, and it is a very exhausting place; but one can’t quite see the good of it all. I asked an American official (what they call “a prominent citizen”), whom I met at dinner the other night, how the Filipinos were to profit by all this bustle and book-learning.
“Why,” he said, “I guess they will learn to appreciate our civilisation and then want it, and want all the things that civilisation entails, so there will be a demand, and trade will come right along, and these islands will wake upandflourish.”
I wanted to argue, however, so I said: “Butwhy should the Filipinos wake up? Why not give the poor creatures lots of cheap food. If they have a little rice, and a banana patch, and anipahut, and no priests to bother them, that is all they want, and there will always be an inexhaustible market for the produce of the islands. It seems such a pity to daze their poor brains, and hurry them about like this.” But he said it was no good trying to talk about this to me, as I evidently could not understand the American Ideal.
So I dropped the subject, for when it comes to the American Ideal, I am hopelessly at variance, and think it better to say no more. The Ideal is this, you see, that every people in the world should have self-government and equal rights. This means, when reduced from windy oratory to common-sense, that they consider these Malay half-breeds to be capable, after six years of school-teaching by the type of master I described to you (about which type, by-the-bye, experience has given me no reason to change my mind), of understanding the motives, and profiting by the institutions which it has taken the highest white races two or three thousand years to evolve. They are supposed to be so wonderful, these flat-faced little chaps, because they have shown a sudden aptitude for the gramophone and imitation European clothes, a free and abusive press, and unlimited talk—endless talk. But it seems to me that these are the traits one is accustomed to in the emancipated coloured person all the world over. In fact, when I come to think of it, America with this funny little possession of hers is like a mother with her first child, who has never noticed anyone else’s children, and thinks her own bantling something entirely without parallel or precedent; quotes it as a miracle when it shows the most elementary symptoms of existence, and tries to bring it up on some fad of her own because it is so much moreprecious and more wonderful than any other child any one else ever had.
March 7.
Yesterday we went to buy prison-made goods at Bilibid, which is the big jail of Manila, and of the whole Philippine Islands. When anyone has committed a serious crime, he is sent up to Bilibid to eke out the period that has to elapse before he is carted back to his original island to be executed. The prison is a mass of half-finished-looking grey stone buildings, where prisoners in yellow-striped jerseys, like gigantic wasps, were going about behind iron railings.
We went into a huge stone hall, where there were quantities of all sorts of basket-work furniture on show; a row of carriages, all prison-made; and at the farther end a white man standing behind some glass-covered tables containing little objects for sale. I wanted to get some small souvenirs to send home, and examined carefully all the little trifles and curios in black wood, bone, and silver, with which the cases were filled; but I could not see anything that was uncommon or characteristic, or even worth buying at all. All the things looked to me as if someone had been to Naples or Colombo, and come back and told the Filipinos what to make, for here were souvenir teaspoons, paper knives of black wood, bone hairpins, and so on, and not one of them of a pattern one has not seen prepared for the traveller in every city of the world. I hunted all through the cases, and amongst the furniture in the hall, but could find nothing distinctive—everything was well made, but utterlybanal. However, this did not concern me much, as what I had really come for was ordinaryfurniture, and this I managed to get to my satisfaction, and a little cheaper than in the Chinamen’s shops in Iloilo, which is to say exactly double the prices of Hong Kong.
Amongst a great many things stored in a corresponding hall upstairs were some basket chairs of an uncommon pattern, with a back like a huge spreading peacock’s tail; but, though they were pretty, these chairs did not strike me as characteristic of a people living innipahuts, but much more like the suggestion of a wandering admirer ofl’art nouveau.
Besides the chairs, I noticed some small columns of hard Filipino woods, intended for flower stands, but the price asked for them was 10pesos(one guinea) each, which I thought ridiculous for plain, flat, polished wood. It appeared that they were derelict from the St Louis Exhibition, or, as it is called, “Exposition,” and on each was resting, temporarily, a little figure carved in wood and painted in bright colours, representing a Filipino man or woman—the woman in red skirt (notsarong) andcamisa, and the men with their shirts outside, and carrying a fighting cock under one arm. By-the-bye, there is fierce indignation and terrible offence taken by the Filipinos about that same “Exposition,” as the Philippine section was got up attractively barbarous, with too much of the savage element, wild-men-of-the-woods in fantastic hovels, and so forth, to please the educated and high-class natives andMestizos, who want independence, and thinktheyare more likely to get it than the prehistoric savage.
On the way out here I met a German who had been to St Louis, and who told me that the two chief exhibits were the Boer War and the Philippine section, and that the latter was nearly all savages in huts, with fish-corralsin artificial ponds, and allthat sort of thing. I remember he was quite surprised to hear that there was any other town than Manila, or any civilisation in the Philippines except the marvellous dawn that rose with the Stars and Stripes. I believe that was very largely the impression produced in America, and not quite ingenuously—that the inhabitants of these islands were a race of naked cannibals and savages who were suddenly being transformed into the educatedMestizo, who goes to college in America and returns here to write seditious articles and talk his head off. Well, whatever the impression desired or produced, the way it was brought about has caused endless anger amongst those Islanders who would rather be thought civilised than picturesque.
March 8.
I have been out shopping this morning, going out at such an unusual hour because heavy rain had fallen in the night, and the air was fresh in the morning. It is nice to have a fresh morning, for the early part of the day here is heavy, and day dawns thick and foggy. At least, the mornings are thick and foggy in comparison with the exquisite clearness of the dawn and early hours of the day in Iloilo. Talking of that, I am much struck by the colour of the sky here—all over the Philippines, I mean, or rather, all over where I have been—for though it is very blue, it is a whity-blue, a thick sort of colour, not a bit transparent like the sky of Southern Europe or North Africa. I can’t quite describe it, but when one looks up at the zenith one does not seem to be looking into illimitable spaces of transparency, and the thick white of the horizon stretches far upwards.
On this shopping expedition I went to buysome things for the house that I thought I might be able to get cheaper and better here than in Iloilo. The principal street of shops is, as I told you, the Escolta, and the next in importance is the Calla Rosario, where the shops are kept by Chinamen and one or two Japanese.
On the way there I saw a steamer on fire, which was a great sight, but rather alarming. When the carriage was passing over the bridge spanning the Pasig, I saw crowds running and looking down on the river, so I told the coachman to stop, and stood up and saw a fairly large coasting steamer drawn out from the other vessels at the wharf and pulled across the stream, where it lay in a huge wall of flames like Brünnhilde in the opera ofSiegfried. When I first caught sight of it, there was a complete steamer, but it burnt up with amazing rapidity, and as I looked, the machinery suddenly sank through the hull, the bows and stem rose up to meet each other, and the whole thing doubled up and vanished beneath the water. Of course there was no one left on board, but all the same it was a gruesome sight, and one I know I shall think of all the way back to Iloilo in that fearful littleButuanwith its wobbly candlesticks.
In the evening we drove out to pay some calls, and then took a little turn out beyond Santa Mesa, which is a big residential suburb on some low hills inland. The people living there have told me that the air is appreciably cooler than down in Manila, and there are far fewer mosquitoes. The latter alone would be sufficient reason for living there, as the mosquitoes here are awful, and always hungry night and day.
Bird’s-Eye View of Inland Suburbs of Manila.To face page 138.
Bird’s-Eye View of Inland Suburbs of Manila.
To face page 138.
We drove a little beyond Santa Mesa (which is, being translated, The Holy Supper) overabominable roads through little scrubby coppices. At one place we saw a most curious sight of hundreds of white-clad native people, in the sunset light, passing along a broad field-path bordered with trees; and I at first thought we had come across a religious procession. But when we got nearer, I saw that it was a crowd returning from the cock-pit; for every second man carried a cock under his arm; some sitting comfortably; some draggled with blood, wounded and miserable; some limp and dead.
I can’t tell you what a feeling of sickness came over me, for I thought it one of the most horrible sights I had ever witnessed; and I was glad when the procession was out of sight, and I could no longer see the animal-like, degraded faces of the men and their miserable, blood-stained, dying birds.
I suppose the good folk in the towns and little villages in the U.S.A., the electors who control Philippine affairs, would rise as one man if a bull-fight took place in these Islands; but yet a bull-fight, horrible though it must be, is not so bad as these cock-fights, for at least the toreadors and matadors risk their own lives to a certain extent, and run an equal chance with the animals they torture; so it cannot help being a more noble, or less ignoble sport than this sickening cock-fighting. But so much has cock-fighting become the national “sport” of the Filipino that, as I have shown you, he is always represented, typically, with a fighting cock under his arm. But the significance of that also, and all its natural consequences of brutality, gambling, and cruelty, I suppose, escaped the attention of the benevolent elector, who visited the “Exposition” at St Louis.
One thing I can never understand, and thatis why people make less fuss about the cruelty towards an animal in proportion to its size. This sounds ridiculous at first, but when you come to think of it, it is absolutely true; for if horses or tigers were set to fight like these poor fowls—one fight in one palace!—there would be a howl all over the civilised world, would there not?
March 9.
We had tea yesterday afternoon at four as usual, and then drove out to Malacañan for me to call on Mrs Luke E. Wright. The grounds of the palace looked even more beautiful by daylight than they had when lighted up at night, and the house is very fine, with huge rooms like halls, and floors polished into brown looking-glass, all crowded with big pictures, arms, and handsome furniture.
Mrs Wright received us on a big open balcony-terrace overlooking the river, with a fine view; and here we sat and had tea and talked. Some other people came before we left, for it was Mrs Wright’s At Home day, amongst them one of the prettiest women I have ever seen, wife of some young man in the American Diplomatic Service, a tall, dark girl with an exquisite face, and perfectly dressed in something very filmy and floating, of delicate mauves, with a big black hat. Her walk, her air, her dress, made one suddenly feel how far away Manila is from all the world one is accustomed to, and what a small, dull, back-water of the stream of life this is.
We went on to call on the wife of Commissioner Worcester, a scientist as well as a politician, and, as his title implies, one of the Americans on the Philippine Commission. The Worcesters’house was a little higher up the river, and again we sat on a balcony-terrace, but this one was all hung with plants and creepers, and overshadowed by dark green trees, through which could be seen the blue-green soapy-looking river swirling past, and the opposite bank with flat fields of emerald grass and bits of bright blue sky. The rail of the balcony was bordered with plants in pots, while all sorts of queer orchids and things grew on the over-hanging branches. It was like a scene in a play, I thought, and the shade of the deep trees was delightful, though they made the balcony rather steamy and airless. Mrs Worcester showed me some of the most lovely needlework I ever saw; all this native embroidery onpiñamuslin, of which she is a keenconnaisseuseand collector. Some of the pieces were as fine as the most delicate lace, and one large shawl, in particular, was a marvel of embroidery on what I took to be very fine net, but discovered to be drawn threads!
I have been finding out about prices here, in case we are sent to Manila later on, and the result of my investigations is that I pray we may be kept in the Provinces! Rents are appalling, the equivalent of our £100 a year being quite a modest rent for a small unfurnished house, and wages are more than double what is given in Iloilo. You can’t get a cook to look at you here for less than 40pesosa month, which is £48 a year! Most of the cooks are Chinese, I believe, as it is considered rather common to have a native cook, though why this is I am unable to find out, for the Filipinos are excellent cooks. But that is just where the American Ideal of Philippines for the Filipinos begins to fall through, and I noticed at Malacañan Palace that all the servants were Chinese, and was told that they were an institution of Mrs Taft, the wife of the last Governor, the man who, as I toldyou, I think, wastheoriginal pro-Filipino. One hears a good deal about this Governor Taft, who is now Secretary of War in the U.S.A. He was the first American Civil Governor of the Philippines, and seems to have a very strong personality, which he flung into the pro-Filipino cause for all he was worth, on which account he has become a sort of patron saint, rivalling Dr Rizal, with the natives, who believe he is working tooth and nail in the U.S.A. for the independence he promised them.
It is as impossible to get a clear idea of Mr Taft as of any other public personage, for while some people tell me he is a high-souled, disinterested philanthropist, who will live up to every word he has uttered, others vow that he is only an American politician with a skin-deep catch-vote policy, and that having got the billet he wanted in America, he is quite capable of turning imperialist if it suits his book. What is one to believe?
One thing they all agree in, which is that he has personal magnetism and a great deal of social charm, which great gifts have stood him in very good stead, I have no doubt, with the Filipinos, and have more to do with his vast popularity with these Orientals than any vows and protestations; and, perhaps helped to make up for thefaux-pasabout the Chinese servants, which still rankles in the native mind.
Manila,March 10, 1905.
I am still in Manila, you see, but am going home to-morrow, so I will write a line to go out by the next mail, which I should miss if I waited till I get to Iloilo.
I rambled off so in my last letter that I quite forgot to tell you about a party we went to at the house of some very richMestizos; a sort of reception, with desultory dancing, but in the afternoon, or rather, the evening hours before dinner.
When we arrived, at about six, the party was in full blast; rooms cleared for action, blaze of electric lights, string band, crowds of pretty frocks, and grounds all lighted up with arcades of paper lanterns. This climate lends itself particularly to such entertainments, with the warm evenings, and there is not much trouble in the way of preparation, with big, open houses and polished floors.
Our host was a small man, Filipino altogether, but his wife, a tall and very pretty Mestiza, “had fewer annas to the rupee,” and was exquisitely dressed.
I walked about the pretty rooms and met many friends, besides recognising many of those I had seen at the Malacañanfête, and saw again the pretty young woman who had charmed me so at the palace, when we were calling there. She looked prettier than ever amongst a crowd,though they were all very smart, and some of the American women really well dressed with nice hats.
This is such a small place, and so few travellers ever come here that everyone knows everyone else, which makes parties very pleasant, though I noticed, again, that the Americans are not really democratic a bit, and there is a great deal of social distinction made, and people do not recognise others whom they really know perfectly well.
The army is just as superior as the soldier set in any garrison in any kingdom; and if a man is a merchant, unless his business happens to bring in a large income, it would be absurd for him or his family to expect to be asked to the exclusive dinners and parties at which the administrative, military, and millionaire set congregate. I don’t think I am at all keen to be a democrat, even a theoretical one, for it must be very tiresome to have no real social position of your own, but to depend on some one else’s recognition of your claims to a certain income, an appointment, or who you are seen with, and what you wear—and then, when all is said and done, to be the social equal of your workmen and servants. Not that I suppose for a moment that anyone is really a democrat, for I have never yet read or heard of such a being, and certainly I have never seen one.
I have discussed this subject, in all good nature, and generally half in fun, with nearly all the Americans I have met, for it is one that interests me enormously; and the gist of all they tell me—or imply, which is better—is that all Americans are the equals of those above but not of those below them. If I suggest a social distinction betweenanycitizen of the United States and the King of England, the mere idea of such a proposition makes these democrats go intofits of laughter; but when I ask them if they, personally, would consider it an indignity to be sent to dine in the King’s kitchen with his scullions, they generally get quite offended and can’t see that at all. I think, too, that these subtleties of democratic etiquette must be even more distracting to the simple Filipino brain than they are to persons like myself, for though the “little brown brother” is now being taught that all men are equal, he can see without doubt that a native orMestizowith plenty of money can get the wives of the highest American officials to visit his house, whereas the poorer relative is not even recognised.
Emerson told his countrymen the truth once for all when he said that “humanity loves a lord,”—and it will have “lords,” and must make “lords,” and the best-intentioned Americans in the world will no more make these half-bred Malays equals of each other, or any one else, thantheyare of each other or negroes.
You will laugh at me for my vehemence, I expect! But you can’t think how aggravating it is to have a principle for ever forced down your throat by the good folk who blatantly and utterly disregard the practice. So the end of my reflections is that I am quite content to curtsey to a king—andto make my Filipino servants call meseñora, and put on a cleancamisawhen they come into my presence.
I have wandered away from theMestizoparty, but not so very far in reality, for it is at such gatherings that such reflections occur to me, along with speculations about the floor, and the refreshments, and how much duty that woman paid for that frock. The refreshments, by-the-bye, were very well done; and indeed, so was the whole party, and the charming manners of the host andhostess did a great deal towards making everything go off well.
Yesterday I spent a harrowing morning trying to buy some vests for C——. Perfectly ordinary white cotton vests, such as the men wear here under their white linen coats, but more difficult to track and procure in Manila than so many birds of paradise. When I told my friends I was going to get vests, they were amazed and asked me why I did such an eccentric thing, instead of sending to Hong Kong for them like everyone else. But I was rather on my mettle about it, and said I would get them in Manila in one of the Chinese shops, for people in Iloilo had done this thing, and why not I?
At one shop, where I had been told to go, a weary-looking Chinaman was sitting in a chair at the shop door, and first I tried Spanish on him, but with no result, not even a flicker of intelligence on his face. I might have been talking in Pekin. So I said, “Do you sell cotton vests?”
“Wests? No. No have got wests.” And he spoke in a tired, helpless drawl, as if his soul had been deadened by a life of trying to get “wests.”
But I was not to be put off, as I had been to six other shops and was getting tired. So I said, “But I was told you sold vests. I don’t mean waistcoats,” which I knowtheyoften do, “I mean things to wear under a coat. Vests.”
“Oh, yes. Allitee wests. Mellikan-Filipino store on Escolta. Oh, yes; me savvy all about wests.” And he looked beyond me as if he had been marooned in mid-ocean. I think it was really opium, which one gets accustomed to in the Filipinos as well, for sometimes they are simply maddening when they speak as though in a dream, staring with dull eyes.
The end of the vest story was that at last Itracked what I wanted to a Chinese shop, where the display in the windows consisted of tin pans, sausages, bead curtains, picture postcards, and things like that. After a tour of the Escolta, I had arrived at this shop by the advice of the coachman, to whom I managed to explain my wishes by a lurid pantomime in the middle of the street. When the coachman at last understood that I wanted to buy vests, and not to make him take his off, we went, as I say, to this Chinese shop with the unpromising window-decorations. When I entered and asked for vests, everyone brightened up, and a very yellow old man took an opium pipe out of his mouth, and said something in guttural words to a fat youth in the comfortablenégligéof a pair of blue cotton trousers and a jade bangle.
This person evidently understood English, for he waived my Spanish aside and began to talk very fast inpidgin, which, when you hear the real thing, and not on the stage at home, is very difficult to understand. However, he seemed to bring the word “wests” in pretty often, so I began to feel hopeful, and made the old man draw a chair up to the counter for me, and sat down.
Presently, after a fearful lot of talk with several other fat, yellow youths, and a great deal of hauling down and putting away again of bales and boxes, and sharp rebukes from another old Chinaman with a bead counting-board, who was doing his accounts in a big book with Indian ink and a paint brush, the boy who was attending to me came back to where I sat, and threw down a pile of big, flat bundles with a triumphant air, exclaiming “Wests!”
No such luck, however, for the bundles contained coloured furniture cretonnes. So I set to work to explain again, but it was not so easy as it had been in the Spanish shops, for no one, as far as I could see, had on such a thing as a vest, an opencoat being the most they wore above the waist line. I did not dare to go out and make a demonstration with the coachman, so I just struggled along with pantomime and bits of French and German, which really did just as well as English or Spanish; till at last a light dawned on a Celestial brain, and they all said some word in Chinese to each other, and nodded and grinned and replied: “Allitee, Mississy. Have got.”
And at last a box was opened, inside which were really and truly white cotton vests. But the size was unfortunately intended for very small and consumptive youths, so I had to begin another long and troublesome explanation that the person they were intended for was forty-two inches round the chest, which was conveyed by calculations and juggling with a metre tape.
“Ah,” said the two old men. “Can catchee flom Hong Kong. All same steamer. You waitee two tlee days.”
I said I knew that already, and explained that I was going to Iloilo to-morrow.
“Velly good,” said one old man. “Mollow can get. Catchee flom one piecee Chinaman in Manila.”
“Can’t I go to the other Chinaman myself?” I asked.
“Me catchee wests. Mollow can get number one size west.”
However, while this was going on, a bright idea had evidently occurred to one of the shop boys, who had been looking so hard at me that I thought he was ill; but he suddenly left the shop, going out of a doorway with big Chinese letters in gold on a red placard over it, and came back, just as I was leaving the shop, with the very things I wanted—a dozen of them in a big cardboard box.
Such, then, is shopping in Manila, and it is only the replica of how I tried to match embroiderycotton in the Spanish shop it had been bought in; and the other despairing adventure I had when I went in search of fruit dishes. So I now understand why everyone said it was absurd of me to think I could “go shopping” in Manila, and I wished I had done as everyone else does, and got the things direct from Hong Kong, and saved all the trouble, as well as the annoyance of paying double; for, duty and all, it is cheaper to get things in oneself.
I am glad to be going home to Iloilo, as the weather is beginning to get pretty hot, and Iloilo is much cooler than this. Of course in Manila one has the advantages of the Australian provisions from the Cold Storage, which means fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit, besides being able to get any amount of ice, all of which luxuries are a great aid towards bearing up in a hot season; but the air at Iloilo is so much lighter, and the fresh mornings and evenings down there are wonderful tonics.
As to the social attractions of Manila, they are no better than those at Iloilo. Bridge! How one gets to hate the very sound of the name of the game! And now when I see a group chained silently round a Bridge table, I can only think of the Souls tied to their Vices in the Frescoes of Hell in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
I met at dinner the other night the wife of a very “prominent citizen,” who was a source of infinite delight to me in an elaborate defence I drew out of her by pretending I knew nothing about the game. I find this is the only safe course, by-the-bye, as, if you admit any knowledge of Bridge, you are forced to play whether you like it or not—or whether you can afford it or not, which is more important!
This good lady told me that it was quite true that she and the other American ladies play cards all day, informing me that every morning she, herself,played Bridge from eight to twelve, either in her own house or in that of a friend. I said:
“But how about your housekeeping?”
“Why,” she answered, “if you have a good Chinese cook that don’t amount to anything.”
“But it must be an awful bore,” I said, “in this climate to put on a dress and a hat and go out in the hottest part of the day.”
To which she replied that if I would let her teach me Bridge I should understand why she did these things. She was very amusing, in her dry, American way, and made us all laugh very much at the comical things she said. However, she was really in earnest about her offer to teach me; but I said I was very grateful, only I thought I would rather remain ignorant as long as I could if it “took” so badly as she described.
I feel much better in health for the change; and everybody here, both my hosts and others, have been so kind to me that I am quite sorry to leave them all. There are several pleasant people down in Iloilo, but I think a change of society does one as much good as anything else, don’t you?
This will go out by the Hong Kong mail to-morrow, and I will catch the next one by writing as soon as I get home, and sending the letter by theButuanwhen she returns.
S.S. “Butuan,”March 12, 1905.
I will begin a letter to you now, as I may not have much time for writing just after I get home. Not that there is really any fear of my letter to you coming off second best in any case! You say how much you like my letters, and what a pleasure they are to you, but they can’t be half such a treat as yours are to me. I can’t tell you what it is to hear all the home news, and about the frosty days, and the Christmas shops, and the cold, jolly winter, and all the things one longs for out here with a longing that is absolutely painful in this everlasting, sweltering heat.
Talking of heat, I don’t think I told you about a place above Manila away inland, called Benguet? It is nick-named the Simla of Manila because it is a cool region, high up in the mountains, where there are pine trees, and frost at night, and fireplaces in the houses. This resort is not much good to the average person, however, for it is three days’ journey from Manila by rail and road—when the said road is not swept away, which is its usual condition—and the trip costs more than to go to Japan. The governor and the whole administration move upen massein the hot season, and they have very nice houses, but there is not much in the way of accommodation for mere mortals. This is the only attempt at “hills” in the Philippines, which isa great pity, but then there are no roads, and the places away from the big towns are not at all safe. Even round about Manila the country is infested with what are officially calledLadrones(robbers), who are really Insurgents, and quite recently the wife of a Filipino official was kidnapped, and there was a great fuss about it.
TheButuanis, on this trip, even less of a floating paradise than when I came in her, for, on arriving on board yesterday, I found to my horror that she was simply swarming with a Filipino boys’ school going on an Easter outing to Iloilo. I wonder if you can even faintly imagine what that means, or even dimly picture the condition of the ship, when I tell you that there are seven four-berth cabins and we carry seventy-two first-class passengers!
I consider myself fortunate in being in the best cabin again, with nothing worse to put up with than the company of a pleasant native and her little maidservant. She, the mistress, is a full-blooded Filipina, and fearfully indignant at any insinuations to the contrary; a fat, swarthy person, with a good-tempered, flat face that is probably handsome according to its standards, and she wears a costume reduced to the last limits of propriety, in the form of an untidy skirt, a spotlessly white loose linen jacket, and slippers—which, I must say, is a most enviable get-up in this temperature.
She tells me she was first married to a Spaniard, who left her very well off, and her present husband is a German-American in the coastguard service in Manila. She is now on a visit to her brother in the Island of Negros. I took this person to be about thirty; but she tells me she is forty-three, and that her good temper has kept her young looking, which I can quite believe, for she takes the most “unpleasant episodes” withthe greatest amiability, and is really quite a charming companion. She says that her husband is of a worrying nature, so he looks forty——
“Which is a very good thing,” she says, laughing all over her jolly fat brown face, “as he is only twenty-eight. Did you see him when we left Manila? He came to see me off.”
But unfortunately I had missed this individual amongst the seething crowds that pushed about the deck till we started, and were then bundled over the side and down a plank like so many sheep. I can’t think why on earth none of these places have a gangway for the steamers.
She has told me endless “yarns” about the Philippines and the Filipinos, the chief points of interest being emphasised by a bang of her fan on my knee, which conveys anything to me from her views on the Papal Supremacy to her opinion about the sanitation of this ship, the latter subject taxing even her powers of pantomime.
We have so far had the marvellous luck of coolness, a clouded sky, and wind. The wind, however, is a mixed boon, for it means waves—waves which would hardly count on the Round Pond, but make theButuanroll heavily, and prove too much for the Filipino boys and youths, who are thick on the ship as swarming bees. They must be thankful to get rid—on the deck, by-the-bye—of the fearful, greasy meals which they stow away with horrible greediness. Knowing that the Filipinos eat lightly and sparingly, I remarked to my cabin mate, who came to sit next me at table, about the diet of these young countrymen of hers. She, herself, like the other native passengers, only eats very little—some chicken and a few vegetables, rice, and fruit. The gesture she made as she looked at the schoolboys was most expressive.
“Babuis!” she said, which is Visayan for pigs, and as bad as calling a Frenchmancochon. “Babuis!These Government Schools are ruining my people. I thank God that I have no son who will be taught to be insolent and unclean, and to eat like that.”
I asked her what she meant by “unclean,” and she said that the Filipinos wash a great deal, which I knew already, and are very careful in certain small details of cleanliness and sanitation, but that all the new schoolboys were little better than animals.
Opposite us at table sits a very good-looking American officer in khaki uniform, who is evidently not a keen advocate of equality, as he does not open his lips except to the captain, and even omits the little bow which the other passengers make on taking their seats at table. Moreover, he does not pass things, which is not a pretty example to the very polite Filipinos andMestizosat the table. All the Filipinos I have ever seen have those beautiful gracious Spanish manners which may mean nothing beyond mere politeness, but they do help to grease the wheels of life a great deal. The contrast to the older people of these horrible, noisy, ill-bred young “yahoos” is heartrending,—the first-fruit of the American ideal, dressed in appalling variations on the European costume; cheeky, gluttonous, self-important—just what one would expect of a mongrel Malay who is told he is the social equal of white women.
As I write this to you I am sitting on the narrow deck, trying to get as far away as I can from the schoolboy crowd, whose portion of the deck is unspeakable, apart from the fact that they think I am an American, and spit on my chair whenever they get a chance of approaching within range of it.
At the end of my chair (I brought my own with me) sits my cabin mate, looking at a lot of illustrated English papers which I have with me; and I am afraid my letter must read very disjointedly, as I am constantly leaving off to answer some of her endless and very intelligent questions.
Near us are camped a SpanishMestizoand his fat little wife, who wears a great deal of sham jewellery and a cotton dressing-gown—a very superior person, with no pretence at veiling her scorn of my Filipino friend, nor of me for talking to her.
The Filipina laughs very good-naturedly, and says theMestizasthink themselves very greatseñoras, but she herself does not find their snubs humiliating, “For,” she says, “I behave as I should, and we all come fromel buen Dios.”
She is great onel buen Dios, and one of the first of her innumerable questions was to ask about my religion. When I said I was a Protestant, she hastened, politely, to assure me that she was very broad-minded on the subjects of heretics, and refused to believe that they were all devils.
I remarked that I thought we were not much worse than anyone else.
“Oh,” she said, “I quite think you are no worse. Once we had a young man to board in our house, who was in my husband’s business, and he was a Protestant. Thepadreused to come to me very often and tell me the young man was a devil, and that I must send him away. But I would not do so, for I am broad-minded, and I said he seemed as good as anyone else, and, though he was a good man,el buen Dioshad made him a heretic for His own good reasons.”
I complimented her upon her breadth of view, and asked her if she were an Aglipayano, but at this she very indignantly declared she thought it verywicked to side against the Holy Father, and one would surely be punished for such heresy. “They are worse than the heretics,” she declared, “and besides that, they are allInsurrectos.”
“But,” I said, “if you don’t sympathise with theInsurrectos, then you like the Americans?”
“No,” she said, “I hate them,” and she made an ugly grimace.
I asked her why.
She got quite excited, and exclaimed, “Why? Why, what are they doing here? Who asked them to govern the Philippines? Who wants them?”
“Oh,” I said, “but they are a very civilised people, and are going to do you such a lot of good.”
She simply laughed, and pointed with her fan at the schoolboys in the bows.
After a little while she said, “Paciencia!In a little time they will go. I hear all my people saying that the Americans will go.”
“You want to govern yourselves, then?” I asked.
“Yes, but I don’t think we shall be able to. Some other nation will come and take the islands when we are left alone. The Japanese, many say; but we do not want the Japanese.”
On the whole she has made the voyage much more pleasant for me, for she interests me so much to talk to, and though it is uncomfortable to be at such close quarters in the cabin, nothing could exceed her kindness and good breeding, while the little maidservant is attentiveness itself.
At night I wanted to have the door open, but they were both very frightened, and implored me to shut it and lock it as well, which I readily consented to, as they were so timid, and I thought it a shame to make them uneasy, though I felt quite brave now I was no longer alone.
I daresay you are surprised at my accounts of these and other conversations in Spanish, but the fact is, though I have not tried to learn thepatoisthat obtains in the Philippines, I find it impossible not to pick up a good deal, partly from knowing Italian, I suppose, and partly from having to talk it occasionally in spite of myself. They speak badly, though, and the accent does not sound a bit like what one heard in Spain, besides which, there are so many native and Chinese words in current use. Instead of sayingandado, they sayandao;pasaoforpasado; and so on, with all the past participles, besides other variations on the pure Castilian tongue. I found that the Spanish grammars and books I had brought with me were of so little use for everyday life that I gave up trying to learn out of them, and just get along on what I pick up—though I am very shy of it, and would not for the world let any other English person hear me trying to talk! The native language is a queer, guggling noise; when written it looks all g’s and b’s and m’s, and full of uncouth combinations of hard consonants. Some of the names of places are native, but many are Spanish, and the Filipinos themselves all have fine, rolling Spanish Christian and surnames, which were dealt out to them indiscriminately by the priests.
Iloilo,14th.
Now I am home again, you see, and delighted to be back in my own house, though I had a very good time while I was away. TheButuangot in at four yesterday morning, anchoring off the mouth of the river, and deck-washing set in at once—never was it more needed!
Oh, the scenes, the sights, the noises on thatfoul steamer! At the best of times she is dirty and uncomfortable, but no words of mine can convey her unspeakable condition with those awful Filipino boys on board—at least, no words that can be set down on paper.
The air of the morning was fresh, when we dropped anchor off the mouth of the river, and a nice cold breeze blew from the shore, which at first only showed as a black line in the dark, with one or two points of light where the town lay. Gradually it became more and more distinct in the dawn, till we saw the outline of the corrugated roofs, the palm trees, and the shipping on the river, while a faint, steady crowing of cocks could be heard.
Have I told you about the cock-crowing? It is one of the features of Philippine life, and one of the things you must get accustomed to, or lie down and die. It begins before daylight, and goes on till after the sun has set—the screaming of innumerable cocks, for every living Filipino keeps one, and most have two or three.
We got a candle, and I dressed first and went on deck, where I was eventually joined by a tremendous swell in a trailing silk skirt, French blouse with lace yoke, long gold chain, white canvas shoes, and so on, whom I just managed to recognise as my cabin mate.
While we leaned over the rail waiting for theSanidad(the port doctor’s launch), she told me she thought she should be able to get away that afternoon for Negros, but she hoped she should see me again, and said I must be sure to come and pay her a visit if I went to Manila again. To which end she proceeded to write down her address on a crumpled bit of paper which she pulled out of her pocket, handing me half of it to write mine on. I saw my piece had writing on it, and I said: “But is this not something you want to keep?”
“No,” she said, “it is only a note of my home accounts for last month.”
I looked at the accounts and saw the first item was: “To thepadre—for a mass—twopesos;” then some vegetables and meat, and morepadre; then cigarettes, and againpadre, and lower down, yet againpadre.
“You seem to pay a lot to thepadre,” I said.
“Ah,” she answered, “for my mother’s soul.” (Por el alma di mi madre.) “One must get to heaven.”
“But the missionaries tell you that you need not pay money to go to heaven.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But with them one is certain to get to hell.”
If my cabin mate was a swell, she was completely eclipsed by the brilliant appearance of the fat littleMestiza, who came up on deck and leaned over the rail not far from us with a really heroic effort to appear unconscious of her gorgeous clothes. Her husband was very waxed about the moustache, and thin and pointed about the boots, and he kept shifting his sombrero with a fat hand, which displayed one very long little finger nail and a huge diamond ring. The Filipino schoolboys were got up in all sorts of suits, some in tweeds, some in linen, and one in bright blue striped silk, which had shrunk a good deal, and a straw hat with the brim made in a pattern like an ornamental cane chair-back. The little chaps were showing each other their clothes, and the older boys, of fifteen and sixteen (or that was the age they looked), were fearfully busy and important, smoking cigarettes, giving orders, and switching their legs with little walking sticks.[5]