FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MANILA
The China Sea has an evil reputation. On its shores one hears much about
the typhoon season and the changing monsoons, and bad sailors would, no
doubt, like to have their sailing dates determined by the Weather
Bureau; but this is not always possible.
The _Kasuga Maru_, on which we made the voyage from Yokohama to Manila,
lay in Hongkong Harbour while one of the great mid-August storms tore up
from the south and set skippers and seamen agog with fears of dreadful
conditions we would have to meet on the trip across to Manila. In the
China Sea there are cross-currents which make for bad going at the best
of times, and when they are piled up by a typhoon into great, warring
waves the result is likely to be extraordinary.
My husband cabled me to take a larger vessel, a United States army
transport which left Hongkong about the same time we did, but I was
comfortably located with my family on the little _Kasuga Maru_; the
transfer of baggage was a troublesome task; and I figured that as long
as the _Kasuga Maru_ had been afloat in south seas for a good many
years, she might be trusted to keep afloat for a few days longer.
We caught the calm between two storms. The sea had been beaten down by
torrential rains; and while great, smooth waves rose under us and sent
us rolling in a sickening zigzag all the way across, there was in them
no threat of destruction, and I really began to feel that the China Sea
had been maligned.
A feeling of intense curiosity got me out of my stateroom bright and
early on the morning of our arrival in Manila.
To the northward lay a stretch of unbroken, mountainous shoreline; while
we were headed for a narrow channel guarded by rock islands against
which the surf broke in clouds of spray.
“Corregidor,” said the skipper, pointing to a high, green hill behind
the rocks. Corregidor,—it was the first time I had ever heard the name
which since has become synonymous, in so many minds, with Gibraltar. On
the other side of the entrance to Manila Bay stood Meriveles, a
beautiful mountain, sloping gently back from the sea and up into soft,
white clouds. But Manila,—where was Manila? Cavite,—where was Cavite?
And where did the Spanish ships lie, when Dewey sailed in past
Corregidor not knowing what he would find? Questions, these, which
everybody asked in those days. Manila was twenty miles ahead at the far
end of the Bay, while Cavite, across on the south shore, in the nearer
distance, lay flat and almost invisible under low-spreading trees.
Flat; that is the word which occurs to everybody who sails for the first
time into Manila Bay. The city is built on the lowlands; low, as I
afterward learned, to the point of being below sea-level in certain
places, and subject to sudden floods in the big typhoons. But far behind
the flats are towering ranges of blue and purple hills, with here and
there a softly rounded mountain standing, seemingly, alone.
The hot sun beat down on the glassy surface of the Bay and sent back a
blinding glare which brought an ache into eyes and nerves, but we were
all too interested to seek shelter in the darkened cabin.
While our ship was still miles from shore we could see long lines of
low, red roofs and the white gleam of many domes and spires; and off to
the right we had pointed out to us the eloquent wrecks of some of the
Spanish fleet whose masts and battered hulks rose high out of the
shallow water in which they were sunk.
But for ourselves, for me, for Mrs. Wright, for Maria and the children,
the most important thing in sight was a little fleet of harbour launches
which came hurrying down the Bay to meet us. I saw my husband and
General Wright standing in the bow of one of these long before they
could pick us out in the crowd of passengers lining the rails of the
_Kasuga Maru_.
Then came the happy welcomings which make absences worth while; excited
children; everybody talking at once; explanations begun and never
finished; interruptions by customs officials—American soldiers in those
days; comments on the heat and the bright white light, and laughing
assurances that it wasn’t hot at all and that the climate was perfect;
transferring baggage to the launch; glimpsing, occasionally, strange
scenes and strange peoples; asking and answering a thousand questions;
busy, bustling, delightfully confusing hours of landing in the farthest
orient.
Our husbands turned themselves into willing “Baedekers” and instructed
us on the way. We steamed up in our little launch to the mouth of the
Pásig River, wide and deep and swift, and covered with what looked to me
like millions of small, green cabbages.
“Carabao lettuce; the river’s full of it,” explained Mr. Taft, but I was
much too occupied just then to stop and ask what “carabao lettuce” might
be.
We came up past a bristling fort at the corner of a great, grey,
many-bastioned and mediæval wall which stretched as far as I could see
down the bay shore on one side and up the river on the other.
“The Old Walled City,” said General Wright, and I knew at once that I
should love the old Walled City.
“The oldest parts of the walls were built in the seventeenth century,”
continued our animated guide-book, “and the fort on the corner is
Santiago. The big dome is the Cathedral and all the red tile roofs are
convents and monasteries. The twentieth century hasn’t reached here yet.
To all intents and purposes the Walled City is still in the Middle
Ages.” The truth is that only part of the walls are really very old—some
parts have been built within seventy years.
The river was full of strange craft; long, high prowed, cumbersome
looking boats, with rounded deck-houses roofed with straw matting and
painted in every conceivable colour and pattern, which, we were told,
were _cascoes_—cargo boats which ply the length of the Pásig and bring
down the cocoanuts and sugar-cane and other products from the middle
provinces. The only visible propelling power on these _cascoes_—and the
only power they have—are natives, naked to the waist, armed with long
bamboo poles upon which, having fixed them firmly in the mud at the
bottom of the river, they push steadily as they walk the length of the
narrow running board along the outer edge of the deck. I should say they
might make a mile in about two hours.
Then there were the curious little _bancas_; narrow canoes, hewn out of
single logs and kept on an even keel, usually, by graceful outriggers of
bamboo.
Across the river from the Walled City is the Custom House, and there, in
a few moments, we drew up at a slippery, low, stone landing and climbed
ashore. My feet, at last, were on Philippine soil.
If I had, for the time being, forgotten that a war was going on I was
immediately reminded of it. The Custom House was in the hands of the
Military Government and it was surrounded by khaki-clad guards who all
stood stiffly at attention as my husband and General Wright passed. All
our necessary luggage had been released and put into the hands of
orderlies to be delivered, so we were free to start at once for home.
My husband had written me that the Philippine horses and the Philippine
cockroaches were just about the same size, but I was hardly prepared for
the diminutive turn-out to which he proudly escorted me. Two little
brown ponies, no higher than my shoulder, and with very shaggy manes and
foretops, were hitched to a Victoria which had been built to fit them.
When I stepped in and sat down, with Charlie on my lap, I felt twice my
natural size and it seemed impossible to me that there was still ample
room for Mr. Taft.
On the box were two stolid little men, dignified by the titles of
coachman and footman. They each wore white linen trousers and thin
shirts which hung outside, making them look as if they had forgotten a
most important act in the process of dressing. Their bare feet were
thrust into heelless red carpet-slippers, while on their heads were
wide, flopping, shapeless straw hats which they did not trouble to take
off at our approach.
The streets were full of such conveyances as ours, and others of
varieties even more astonishing. Maria, with Robert and Helen, followed
in a _quilez_—a miniature, one-horse omnibus affair into which the
passengers climbed from the rear. Then there were _calesas_,
_caromatas_, _carretelas_ and carabao carts.
The carabao carts interested me particularly, and there seemed to be
more of them than of anything else. The cart itself was nothing,—just a
few planks nailed together and balanced upon a pair of heavy, broad,
wooden wheels,—but the beast attached to it was really extraordinary.
The first carabao I saw had horns at least six feet across. Indeed, they
all have very long horns, and how they keep from obstructing traffic in
the narrow streets I never did understand. They do obstruct traffic, as
matter of fact, but not with their horns; only with their slow motions.
Nobody can possibly know just what the word slow signifies until he has
seen a carabao move. Great, grey, thick-skinned, hairless beast; his
hide is always caked with mud, and he chews and walks at exactly the
same pace while the half-naked, sleepy driver on the cart behind him
gives an occasional jerk on the thin rope attached to the ring in his
nose.
It was sometime before I came to know _calesas_, _caromatas_ and
_carretelas_ apart, though their only likeness lies in the fact that
each has two wheels and to each is attached one busy little bit of a
horse. The _calesa_ and _caromata_ are the better class vehicles, while
the _carretela_ is a plebeian public carryall in which there always
seems to be “room for one more.” I saw dozens of these packed with
Filipinos; the driver—always and inevitably smoking—sitting close up
behind his horse and lashing it continually while it struggled sturdily
along and looked every minute as if it would be lifted off its feet by
the overbalancing weight behind it. It was something of a shock to see
many women, in _carretelas_ and on the street, smoking huge black
cigars; while I noticed, immediately, that the men, as a rule, smoke
only cigarettes.
I didn’t look for speed from our little brown creatures, but I was yet
to become acquainted with the Philippine pony. We started off over the
rough cobblestones at a pace that was truly terrifying, and everybody
else seemed to be going at about the same rate. I expected a collision
every moment. Wheels passed wheels without an inch to spare, and without
an instant’s slackening of speed. My heart was in my mouth until we got
through the maze of narrow streets in the wholesale district near the
Custom House and came out into a wide plaza which my husband informed me
was the end of the Escolta, the principal business street of the city. I
was very glad we didn’t have to drive through that; it was just about
wide enough for two carriages to pass, but it had a street-car track
right down the middle, and it was thronged. On the track was a jingling
little horse-car which seemed to get very much tangled up with the rest
of the traffic.
I got an impression of a great variety of colour in which red and yellow
seemed to predominate. The soldiers were in khaki, the officers and
civilians were in immaculate white linen, while the Filipino men and
women of the ordinary class looked as if they had made a heavy draft on
the world’s supply of red and yellow muslin, to say nothing of many
calicoes of extravagant hues and patterns.
We hurried on around the corner and came again to the banks of the river
and the Bridge of Spain. Mr. Taft wanted me to know all about everything
right away, so he kept on busily explaining things to me, but using so
many unfamiliar words that I got only a hazy impression after all.
But here was the Bridge of Spain, originally built in sixteen hundred
and something, the oldest monument to Spanish enterprise in the Islands.
And across on the other side we came abreast of the inner wall of the
city and whirled along awhile beside a wide, stagnant moat. From the
inner side I got a better idea of what the Walled City was like, and I
promised myself an early inspection of its mysteries. I wanted to walk
across the old drawbridges and through the beautiful gateways which
looked so ancient and were so suggestive of piratical and warlike
history.
“Those are the Botanical Gardens,” said Mr. Taft—“the man from
Cook’s”—making a general sort of gesture toward the other side of the
street. What I saw was a small gravelled park with some avenues of fine
palms, some other kinds of trees, and a few clumps of shrubbery. We were
driving under the low-hanging branches of some magnificent old acacias,
but everything looked neglected and run down, and there didn’t seem to
be a bit of grass anywhere; just scorching sand and clay. It was really
a relief to rest one’s eyes on the awful green scum on the surface of
the moat. Manila in those days was not the beautiful, park-like,
well-kept city that it has since become. There were soldiers everywhere,
and it seemed to me we were being constantly saluted.
“And now we come to the far-famed Luneta,” said Mr. Taft, quite proudly.
“Where?” I asked. I had heard much of the Luneta and expected it to be a
beautiful spot.
“Why, here. You’re on it now,” he replied.
An oval drive, with a bandstand inside at either end,—not unlike a
half-mile race track,—in an open space on the bay shore; glaringly open.
Not a tree; not a sprig of anything except a few patches of unhappy
looking grass. There were a few dusty benches around the bandstands,
nothing else;—and all burning in the white glare of the noonday sun.
“Why far-famed?” I asked.
Then he explained in a way which made me understand that the Luneta is
not what it is, but rather what it stands for in the life of the
community. He said that in the cool of the evening there were bands in
the bandstands and that everybody in the world came and drove around and
around the oval, exchanging greetings and gossip, while the children
with their nurses played in the sand on the narrow beach. It didn’t
sound exciting to me, but I was afterward to learn that the Luneta is a
unique and very delightful institution.
We tore on at a terrific rate and came, at last, into a narrow residence
street where the rapid clatter of our ponies’ feet awoke echoes from
closely set houses which looked as if all their inhabitants were asleep.
And they were, of course, it being the _siesta_ hour.
[Illustration:
A CARVED _NARA_ OR PHILIPPINE MAHOGANY BED NOW IN MR. TAFT’S ROOM AT
NEW HAVEN
]
The houses were nearly all built in the Spanish style with high stone
basements—covered with mouldy whitewash—and frame superstructures
overhanging the street, and screened from the heat and glare with finely
woven, green bamboo curtains. Here and there the “nipa shack” of the low
class native had elbowed its way into this fashionable neighbourhood,
and through open spaces I caught glimpses of wide stretches of thatch
roofs in the near distance, where hundreds of these inflammable huts
were huddled together in “native quarters.”
When the end of the street came in sight I began to wonder. It seemed to
me we had driven many miles.
“Well, where do we live?” I asked. “Have you taken a house in the
country?”
“Not quite,” said Mr. Taft, “but nearly.”
It was the last house in the street, surrounded by a very formidable
looking, high stone wall. The first thing I knew we had whirled through
a gateway and were driving past a row of soldiers who stood at
attention, with their guns held stiffly in front of them. I knew our
house had to be guarded, but it was something of a shock for a moment,
just the same, to see the guardhouse and the trim soldiers with their
business-like equipment.
If I had expected anything very fine or beautiful in the way of a
tropical garden, I was disappointed. I don’t know whether I did or not.
The wonder to me now is how Americans ever did succeed in getting parks
and gardens made. It only means that the Filipino has learned, or is
learning how to work. He always was willing to work, a certain amount,
but he didn’t know how. My husband’s description of how he got a bit of
grading done is typical. The first conclusion he reached in Manila was
that the people knew nothing about the value of time, and it must have
been a strain on his temperate-zone nervous system to watch a squad of
men at work in his garden.
They deposited the material—as usual—as far as they could from the spot
where it was to be used; then, one after another, barelegged, bare
bodied, incessantly smoking, they would take up small shovels full of
earth, carry them all the way across the garden, resting once or twice
on the way, dump the material somewhere in the vicinity of the place
where it belonged, then drag slowly back and repeat the operation. This
was the sort of thing which made Americans, in the early days, dance
with impatience; the sort of thing which made Mr. Bryan’s campaign talk
about “cheap” Filipino labour invading the United States seem to us so
utterly ridiculous. We knew that Filipino labour was the most expensive
labour in the world; since it took ten men to do one American’s work.
My husband had written me about the difficulty he had had in securing a
suitable house, and had also explained that he was having a number of
repairs and changes made which, he hoped, would put the place in good
order by the time I arrived. The garden was large, but it boasted
neither lawns nor flowers of any kind. A few patches of grass struggling
with the hard white gravel and clay, and looking pretty hopeless,
nothing else. Around a curving drive we swung up under a porte-cochère,
over which hung a magnificent rubber tree, and, stepping from the
undersized Victoria onto the finest of white marble steps, I found
myself at home.
Our house was really the best that my husband could secure. When he
first looked at it he was certain it wouldn’t do at all. It belonged to
Chief Justice Arellano, and the army officer who went with him to look
for quarters assured him that it was the only thing in town that he
could possibly live in; but he didn’t believe it. It had been occupied
by army officers and had been greatly abused. Its furniture was broken
and piled in heaps; its walls were ragged; and its floors were scarred
and dirty.
“I’ll just have a look at some others,” said Mr. Taft.
And he did. He went all over town, and he says that every house he
looked at added some new, desirable aspect to the Arellano house, until,
finally, it became in his eyes a sort of palace which needed only a
touch here and there to make it quite perfect.
It backed directly on the Bay, and among the first things he did was to
have a sea-wall built which he thought added safety to the top-heavy
structure, but which, during the typhoon season, really cost him more
than it was worth. Every time a big wind came and roughed up the Bay a
little, a part of his wall went out. His first complaint to me was that
he had been “holding that wall down” all summer, and that part of it was
always sure to try to get away every time he found himself particularly
occupied with harassing governmental difficulties.
He had had sod laid down between the house and the sea-wall, and had
watched it for awhile with a faith which should have been rewarded, but
the salt spray came dashing over it and he had to have it carefully
taken up and moved around to the sheltered side of the house. Good sod
was scarce in Manila in those days.
My husband was certainly glad to see me, and I don’t doubt that General
Wright was just as glad to see his wife. The two of them had been
“keeping house” together for three months under conditions wholly new to
them, and I gathered that they found a bachelor existence rather
complicated and, in certain details, annoying. In some ways, after the
manner of men, they had permitted the house to run itself and I did not
find it easy to break up the system which had been inaugurated.
The house was not perfect, by any means, but it was big and roomy and
had what a woman knows as “great possibilities”; possibilities which I
found had to be slowly developed with the assistance of a somewhat
taciturn and not altogether willing _ménage_.
Coming in from the grand marble steps one passed up a short, but
spacious hardwood stairway into a wide central hall which opened out on
a tile floored verandah, overlooking the Bay and running the entire
width of the house. This verandah was enclosed by sliding windows
divided into panes about six inches square, not any two of which were
the same colour. All the other windows in the house were made of
beautiful, translucent pearl-shell in four inch sections—more like
screens than windows—which let in the light and kept out the glare, but
on the verandah the architect had tried to surpass himself, with the
result that royal purple, orange, pink, bright blue and green glass
disclosed to one a multicoloured and distracting stretch of otherwise
beautiful bay. The hard white light was a thousand times more bearable
than such a kaleidoscope, and after I got home those windows were seldom
closed.
On either side of the broad central hall were two large rooms; one the
dining-room, the others commodious bedrooms; while over the
porte-cochère was a small drawing room. Downstairs were the baths and
three large rooms and a duplicate of the upstairs verandah. This part of
the house, which was dry and well built, I forthwith turned over to the
children.
Some of the furniture was very fine; big hardwood tables and old Spanish
pieces made from the beautiful woods of the Islands, but everything was
greatly in need of the polisher’s brush and chamois. The floors,
alternating, broad, hand hewn planks of _nara_ and _ipil_, were as fine
as any I ever saw, though they, too, needed long and painstaking
attention. In the bedrooms were high canopied and mosquito-netted beds
with cane bottoms, exactly like cane-bottomed chairs, and without
mattresses. Everything else was wicker.
The thing which caught my attention first, however, were the fans. My
husband had written me, with great pride and satisfaction, that he had
put in electric fans, and that they had “saved his life.” I had some
sentimental attachment for them on this account—until I saw them. But
when I saw them I felt at once that everything else, to be in keeping,
ought surely to be swathed in fly-specked pink gauze. The electric fans
were of the variety associated in one’s mind with ice-cream “parlours”;
two broad blades attached to the ceiling in the middle of the room. They
had been installed in both the dining-room and _sala_—or
sitting-room—and it was not possible in either room to see anything
else. These fans were the subject of endless contention between Mr. Taft
and me, but I gave in and left them to continue their mission of saving
his life. He says yet that I often acknowledged on hot nights that he
was right about them, but I never did.
My husband had secured his house staff in Hongkong, through the kind
offices of Admiral Dewey’s servant, Ah Man, as I have already written,
but being new to the ways of the Oriental, he was destined very quickly
to gather some unique experience. There were four of them: the cook, the
number one boy, the number two boy and the laundryman. The laundryman
was Mr. Taft’s own inspiration. The Filipino laundryman, he had heard,
takes the linen of his master’s household down to some stream,
preferably the shallows of the Pásig, and hammers it into ribbons on
smooth rocks which he uses for washboard purposes. Then he spreads the
articles on the grass to dry, and the consequences were found, not
infrequently, to be a bad outbreak on the master’s skin of what is known
as “adobe itch,” a troublesome disease. So Mr. Taft had engaged a
Chinese laundryman and had sent back to San Francisco for tubs and
washboards and wringers and all the necessary paraphernalia, and had
installed an up-to-date laundry in his own house, where the orders were
to boil the clothes and hang them on a line. It worked perfectly, though
it did take the Chinaman from the wilds of Shanghai some time to learn
the uses of the various modern implements.
In Manila the marketing is usually done by the cook, but in our
household this duty was delegated to the number one boy. One day the
cook and the number two boy came to Mr. Taft with the announcement that
they could not remain in the house with number one boy; that number one
boy was a thief; that he smoked opium all the time he was supposed to be
marketing; and that he was a bad Chinaman generally. Mr. Taft had always
given number one boy the money with which to pay the other boys’
salaries and the cash market charges, so he said to the cook:
“Has number one always paid your wages?”
“Yes,” said the cook, with an eloquent shrug of his shoulders, “just my
wages and nothing more.”
This meant, of course, that number one boy was committing the
unforgivable sin of not dividing the “squeeze.”
There is no use going into what “squeeze” means in the Orient. It may
come partly out of the master’s pocket and partly out of the pockets of
the tradesmen; nobody knows. But the housekeeper soon learns that she
gains nothing by trying to circumvent the system in doing the marketing
herself. The “squeeze” works, no matter who does the buying, and it soon
comes to be recognised as a legitimate part of household expenses. The
only thing that one can do is to make a complaint when it becomes too
heavy.
It seems to have been very heavy in my husband’s establishment, and
investigation proved to him that it was necessary to let number one go,
so when I arrived there were just the two upstairs servants, the cook
and number two, who had been promoted to the proud position of number
one.
[Illustration:
A TYPICAL PHILIPPINE RIVER SCENE AND SOME FILIPINO LAUNDRY WORK
]
I went immediately to work to order my household as I always had been
used to doing, and there’s where I began to get my experience of the
Oriental character. My cook was a wrinkled old Chinaman who looked as if
he had concealed behind his beady little eyes a full knowledge of all
the mysteries of the East, to say nothing of its vague philosophies and
opium visions. He called me “Missy” and was most polite, but in all the
essentials he was a graven image. He was an unusually good cook, though
he did exactly as he pleased, and seemed to look upon my feeble efforts
at the direction of affairs with a tolerant sort of indifference. He
would listen to my instructions most respectfully, carefully repeat
after me the nice menus I devised, say, “yes, Missy,” then return to his
kitchen and cook whatever suited his fancy.
It took me sometime to get used to this, but I came to value him highly,
especially when I learned that he had, finely developed, one glorious
characteristic of his kind. He could make something out of nothing. If
Mr. Taft sent word at six o’clock, or even as late as seven, that he had
invited four or five of his associates to dinner to continue a
discussion begun earlier in the day, or for some other reason, I had
only to tell Ah Sing that there would be seven or eight instead of three
at dinner, and a perfect dinner would be served. Where he got his
supplies with which to meet these sudden demands I never knew. I learned
to accept the gifts of the gods without comment, which is the only thing
to do in the East.
Ah Sing was particularly proud of his sweets. He loved to make puddings
and pies with lavish decorations upon them, though none of the family
cared much for such delicacies. One evening, shortly after my arrival, I
was giving quite a formal dinner party; I had, as usual, given the cook
a menu well thought out and, I believed, wholly appropriate to the
occasion and the climate. For a sweet I had ordered an ice with some
small cakes, and I was pleasantly surprised to see them duly served. But
just as the party was about to rise from the table and go out on the
verandah for coffee, in came Mr. Number One Boy with a ponderous,
steaming bread-pudding, all covered with coloured ornaments, which he
smilingly displayed for the benefit of the astonished party. It had to
be served, of course, and I felt that my explanations regarding Ah
Sing’s eccentricities didn’t make much of an impression.
Over none of the servants did I exercise the control I thought to be
necessary, but this was due to the fact that for three months they had
been obeying the master; the master had paid them their wages, and to
the master they looked for all orders. It took me sometime to discover
this, but when I did I began to handle household accounts without
assistance.
It was about the end of the typhoon season and the predictions were that
there would be no more heavy storms. But it began to rain and blow one
day with rather more force than I had ever seen before, and I was told
that we were in the midst of a typhoon. “Oh, well,” I thought, “if this
is all I don’t see why there is so much talk about it.” It was just a
very hard and very persistent storm. When I began to think it was about
time for it to have blown itself out I was awakened one night by what
seemed to me to be the bombardment of heavy artillery. My bed was
shaking under me, the house was swaying, and the noise was terrifying. I
jumped up with an instant idea of _insurrectos_, and a feeling that I
must meet the situation on my feet; then I realised, at once, that it
was the typhoon. It was as if all the winds that had blown for two days
had gathered themselves together and were hurling themselves in one
blast upon us. I reached for the electric switch, but there were no
lights; I turned the button time and again; nothing happened. I fumbled
for matches all over my room and could find none. My nerves were just at
the crying out point when my door was thrown open and in rushed Maria,
holding aloft a glimmering candle.
She was shaking with fright.
“Nellie,” she exclaimed, “I just can’t stand it any longer! Do let’s
find everything there is to light and call Will and sit out in the
_sala_. Heaven only knows what’s going to happen!”
We searched around and found some more candles; then I went to call my
husband. He was sleeping as soundly as if nothing at all were happening.
I shook him and called him and shook him again. I thought he never would
wake up, but finally he did, and just then I heard the crash of a tree
blowing down in the garden, while the floor seemed to heave under my
feet.
“What’s the matter?” asked my sleepy husband.
“Will, there’s an awful storm. Please come out in the _sala_ and sit
with Maria and me.”
“All right,” he said, and slowly got himself into an all-enveloping
dressing gown.
We huddled ourselves in chairs in the big hallway and sat listening.
Rain always comes with the wind in typhoons and the dash of water
against the windows and the sides of the house was deafening. But the
noise was suddenly punctuated by a gentle snore. Mr. Taft had settled
himself back in his chair and gone quietly to sleep. Maria’s nerves were
on edge; without a word she jumped up and shook her tired-out
brother-in-law most vigorously, crying above the roar of the storm:
“Will Taft, what do you think we waked you up for? You can’t go back to
sleep. We want you to stay awake and comfort us!”
“All right, Maria,” said he, with the utmost good nature; whereupon he
sat up, changed his position to one more comfortable, and proceeded to
lapse again into peaceful slumber.
The next morning Maria and I drove down through the town to see the
effects of the typhoon. Three trees were uprooted in our own garden, and
across the street a house was flattened out. Groups of Filipinos stood
here and there talking and gesticulating in their usual manner, but
nobody seemed unduly excited. We saw many houses unroofed, and once in a
while we met a native with a piece of nipa or tin roofing balanced on
his head, quietly carrying it back where it belonged.
We drove down through the Escolta and into the crowded Tondo district
beyond, and there we suddenly found ourselves hub-deep in a flood. The
below-the-sea-level quarters were under several feet of water, and we
got a sudden revelation as to why all the nipa houses are built on such
high and unsightly stilts. Crowds of Filipinos were paddling through the
flood, most of them carrying some part of a house, or other belonging,
and nearly all of them playing and splashing like pleased children.
_Bancas_—long canoes from the river—were plying from house to house as
if it were an everyday affair and conditions were quite normal.
I had heard a great deal about the severity of typhoons, but as I had
passed a whole season in the East and had crossed the China Sea during
the typhoon season without encountering one, I began rather to scoff at
the general fear of them. But I never did after that; when anybody said
typhoon I knew exactly what it meant. The water subsided rapidly and in
a day or two Manila showed few signs of the fury which had passed, but
for several days the Commission continued to receive reports pf the
damage done and the lives lost throughout the surrounding country. It
was the worst and the last storm of that year.
When we arrived in Manila we found the social atmosphere somewhat
peculiar. Members of our own party, who had crossed the Pacific on the
_Hancock_, welcomed us at once with dinners and teas and other kinds of
parties; also a number of Army ladies called without delay, and our
circle broadened rapidly. But General MacArthur, who was the Military
Governor and lived at Malacañan Palace, did not entertain anybody except
a select military circle. He sent an aide with cards, of course, and he
accepted our invitations to dinner, but that was all. Not that we
minded, except that it made it rather awkward and added something to the
“feeling” that all was not well between the Army and the new civil
government.
The Commission had been for three months busily engaged in investigating
conditions, as directed by the President, before they assumed any
authority, and then they acted with no haste. We were impatiently
awaiting news from America with regard to the Presidential election. It
was thought to be futile to take any definite steps toward the
establishment of local governments and the inauguration of far-reaching
reforms until the status of American control should be settled. Mr.
Bryan had promised political independence, and if Mr. Bryan were elected
all the Commission’s plans would go for naught.
The provincial and municipal codes were completed; certain important
questions between the Church and the people were being considered, and
many open sessions were held for discussion, with the purpose of
advising the people that they would be listened to by a civil
government. In the meantime the _insurrectos_ were keeping things lively
in a guerilla warfare with small squads of greatly harassed and very
much disgusted American soldiers. There were occasional rumours about
uprisings in Manila—when the guard at our gate would be doubled—but Mr.
Taft assured us that Manila was as safe as New York or Chicago and we
really had few fears.
General MacArthur continued to resent the coming of the Commission and
to consider himself personally humiliated by their being appointed to
divide his power. He was still in command of about seventy thousand men
and had the general executive control of a large civil force, but this,
apparently, was not enough. The tone he adopted in his correspondence
with the Commission kept them in a constant state of controlled anger.
They were very careful in return to observe every courtesy and to
manifest an earnest desire for harmony and co-operation. They were
tremendously interested in their problems and wanted much to succeed,
but their efforts at conciliation did little good. The General objected
to almost every suggestion put forward by them and did not hesitate to
tell them in plain words that he did not welcome advice from them
concerning military or any other matters. It was really a very difficult
situation.
The Commission thought General MacArthur took an entirely erroneous view
of the attitude of the Philippine people in general, and that in
everything he did he moved with an exasperating slowness. They wanted a
large native constabulary which they knew could successfully be
organised and relied upon to render great assistance in the pacification
of the Islands. He did not agree with them and held the matter up for
many months. He was not in sympathy with any move they made, and his
greatest cross was that he had no power to veto their legislation. He
saw military dangers in all manner of things without being able to state
just what they were, and he was always calling for more troops, while
the Commission was entertaining hopes that it would not be a great
length of time before a large part of the troops already there could be
recalled. I find my husband writing at this time:
“General MacArthur, knowing that we differ from him as to the condition
of things in the Islands, makes it a point to send me an account of each
disaster as if it vindicated his view. This is not the spirit of a man
who is likely to succeed in giving energy to a campaign which will bring
about successful results, but the matters will solve themselves in spite
of his slowness of movement and lack of enthusiasm....
“The minute the policy with respect to these Islands is settled by
Bryan’s defeat and the election of McKinley, the leniency which has been
almost too great towards _ladrones_ and these murdering generals will
have to be changed. They must be given an opportunity to come in and if
they do not come in in a short time, they ought to be deported from the
country and sent to Guam. This will have an effect so healthy that a
short time will see accomplished what we desire. There will be a great
awakening for some of these men who have come to rely on the supineness
of the Americans, and who do not understand that we can be severe when
we choose....
“It was General Otis who inaugurated the plan of laughing at the
insurrection, of capturing men and letting them go, and the result is
that they have laughed at us, but with a little tightening of the reins
their laugh will cease....
“They dread deportation more than anything else and I have written to
Secretary Root and asked him to have a prison constructed at Guam to
which we may send those whom we think worthy of a less punishment than
hanging. The insurrection must be suppressed for the benefit of the
United States and, still more, for the benefit of the Filipino people.
The lenient methods, having been tried for two years, must be changed to
those more severe....
“The insurrection, such as it is now, is nothing more than a conspiracy
against the sovereignty of the United States sustained by murder and
assassination of Filipinos by Filipinos....
“MacArthur is drawing the reins a little tighter, though not as tight as
we think he ought to draw them, and he has now imprisoned about fifteen
hundred insurgents. There have been a great many arrests made in Manila,
which has been the head centre of the insurrection in the way of raising
money. I should think there have been fifty or sixty insurgent officers
arrested in the city....
“I sent a telegram to the Secretary of War on Sunday night which was
signed by Buencamino and other prominent Filipinos, about a dozen of
them, in which they spoke out with emphasis about the continuation of
the insurrection. They propose to organise what they call a
counter-revolution; that is, they mean they will organise a military
movement among the Filipinos against Filipinos. They are getting very
tired and weary of this murder and assassination policy without which
the insurrection could not last a week....
“You could hardly believe the closeness with which the Presidential
matters are being watched by the Filipinos, and how they follow the
speeches made against the Republican cause. General Smith, away down on
the island of Negros, told me he had found speeches by Hoar and Bryan,
and other anti-expansionists and anti-imperialists, in the most remote
mountains of his district....
“Every one is waiting and it is not impossible that should Bryan be
elected there might be some riotous demonstration among the natives. The
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Señor Arellano, has made
arrangements, should Bryan be elected, to leave the islands three days
after the announcement. He is the ablest Filipino in the islands, by far
the best lawyer and a man of the highest probity. He says that much as
he is interested in the success and prosperity of his fellow citizens,
he knows that they are utterly incapable of self-government and should
the guiding hand of the United States be withdrawn, chaos, conscription
and corruption would follow inevitably....”
I have taken these excerpts at random from my husband’s letters to his
brother during the months of September and October, 1900, and they serve
to show the situation which existed and will illustrate the fact that we
were living in interesting times. But they deal only with the
insurrection, while the main body of his correspondence shows that the
Commissioners were engaged upon legislative matters of the gravest
import which would be rendered entirely superfluous should Mr. Bryan be
elected and his announced policies be carried into effect. In that event
they proposed immediately to turn matters back to the military
government and withdraw, leaving Mr. Bryan to face the problems which
they knew he would soon discover had to be dealt with from the
standpoint of constructive statesmanship.
In the meantime the peace movement was rapidly gaining adherents among
the people in spite of the still active _insurrectos_, or rather,
because of them and their methods; while everybody seemed to welcome the
change from a strictly military to a partially civil government.
The popularity of the Commission, as offering a change from the
strictness of military rule, was becoming every day more marked. Juan de
Juan, a Spaniard, and editor of the lively organ _El Progreso_, which
was always in opposition to anything American, said that on the first of
September when the Commission began to exercise its authority, he
intended to devote the whole front page of his paper to just three
words: “Gracias a Dios,”—Thanks to God! Juan de Juan was a good deal of
a Bohemian and really cared little what happened so long as he got a
sensation out of it. September first came and went, and I don’t remember
whether he made good this extravagant threat or not. I presume he didn’t
for, though I had been in Manila less than a week, I surely would have
remembered.
After the Commission had been in power for just a month, and while the
excited interest in events in the United States was at its height, Juan
de Juan broke out in a characteristic Spanish editorial, a translation
of which has been preserved. We had entertained Juan de Juan at dinner,
and he evidently was impressed. We made it a rule from the beginning
that neither politics nor race should influence our hospitality in any
way, and we came thus to have a very wide and diverse acquaintance. The
editorial in _El Progreso_ gives such a curious picture of attitude and
conditions in general, as well as of my husband, my family and my home,
that I think I must quote it,—at least in part. It is headed simply:
SEÑOR TAFT
The most uncompromising jingoes; the rabid partisans of militarism, as
well as the men of democratic sentiments who consider the occupation
of the Philippines as an odious Cæsarism, respect and venerate the
President of the Civil Commission, whose surname serves as the caption
of these lines. Uprightness and _bonhommie_ always demand recognition.
Before the _Hancock_, bearing this statesman, had anchored in Manila
Bay, the echo of his reputation and the radiations of the brilliant
aureole which his success in the judiciary of his country had
_imposed_ upon him—and we underline the word imposed because the
characteristic trait of Mr. Taft is his modesty—had reached the
Philippines. The Filipinos awaited him with the same pleasing
curiosity with which a child opens a toy with a concealed surprise,
and the foreigners as the incarnation of those American patriarchal,
democratic ideas with which Castelar portrayed to his followers the
country of Lincoln.
Behind that spacious brow of the thinker, between his liberal
tendencies and the incomparable exactions of the enormous burdens
which his country undertook in Paris, fierce struggles are waging. The
President of the American Civil Commission has broad shoulders, but
the weight of a people whom patriotism endows with the strength of a
colossus is very great.
We must concede to all the leading authorities whom America has sent
to the Philippines the trait of being industrious. We know that
General Otis worked more than twelve hours a day; MacArthur, that
Daban of the American Army through the rapidity of his advancement,
follows the same course as his predecessor, and Mr. Taft leaves his
house every morning at eight and, as unostentatiously as a clerk,
proceeds to become a part of his chair in the Ayuntamiento. There his
first occupation is glancing over the American press, and what is of
interest in the Spanish papers.
Then the show begins. Paterno, Macabulos, Montenegro, some envoy from
Cebu, for example, who come to sound him, as the slang saying goes,
arrive. Mr. Taft has the same respectful smile for all, the same
courtesy, and addresses them all in the same terms, which his athletic
Secretary, Mr. Fergusson, repeats in Spanish with the gravity of a
Sphinx and the fidelity of a phonograph. When the matter warrants it,
Mr. Pepperman, the chief stenographer of the Commission, enters the
office and proceeds to take notes of the interview.
In this way the Americans are forming a luminous record which, united
to what were our archives, which they preserve through the terms of
the Treaty of Paris, will guide them well in the administration of the
Philippines.
Later Mr. Taft becomes engulfed in the examination of the bills which
the other members of the Commission present for him to study; he
discusses their text with his colleagues, listens to all their
observations, and judging them by a standard most favorable to the
interests of the Philippines, the most liberal within the instructions
from Washington—it is proper to say that Mr. Taft is the most
democratic element of the Commission—he expresses his opinion,
generous, calm and noble, which assuredly, in view of his personal
prestige, must carry great weight in the framing of the bills, whose
execution is entrusted to the Military governor.
To dissipate the gloomy smoke of the conflagration, to still the
groans of those who fall in this immense _expoliarium_ into which
fatality has converted the Philippine fields, is the mission which the
men composing the American Commission desire to bring to a successful
issue. To make peace. For this they came, and if fortune does not
reserve for them the happy chance of accomplishing so beautiful an
ideal, they will retire, and the factor they represent in the problem
to be solved, with its distinguishing traits of civil moderation, will
be substituted as a system that has failed, by another, wherein the
martial power will prevail over political wisdom.
As General MacArthur undoubtedly spends many hours over maps of the
Philippines, Mr. Taft also often rests his gaze on a map covering one
of the walls of his office, tracing, _in mente_, a railroad which,
crossing the island, shall drown with the cheery whistle of the
locomotive the moans of the victims of war. Thus would Mr. Taft like
to pacify the Philippines.
* * * * *
It is now one o’clock P.M. and Mr. Taft is at home, where this
personage stands out more boldly before us, since the trials through
which the country is passing do not permit us yet to judge him
politically.
The President of the Commission, in his private life, has many points
of similarity with Count de Caspe, that stainless gentleman the
Filipinos still recall with veneration. Excepting the brilliancy of
those splendid entertainments with which he endeavoured to blot out
all racial differences by mingling in fraternal embrace Filipinos and
Spaniards at the Malacañan villa, there ordinarily reigned in the
governor’s mansion the placid silence of the home of a well-to-do
retired merchant. The Countess, who on Thursdays did the honours of
her _salon_ with exquisite tact, was during the other days of the week
a housekeeper who did not disdain to go to a grocery store to make
purchases, or to look over the laundry list.
The same thing happens in the elegant _chalet_ at Malate where Mr.
Taft lives. This is a quiet and peaceful home, a temple erected to the
affections, under whose roof Mr. Taft rests some hours after the
efforts which his political work demands.
His table reflects his modest character. Four courses, two kinds of
fruit, a dessert and sauterne compose the menu of the luncheon where
Mr. Taft is always accompanied by some guest, either Filipino,
American or Spanish. During the meal politics are banished; if the
guest is a Filipino who speaks French Mrs. Taft interrogates him on
the customs of the archipelago; if he is Spanish, as to the toilettes
worn in Manila by the ladies at the most brilliant receptions held
here; as to the favourite musical composer of the Hispano-Filipino
society; and this conversation increases in attraction when Miss
Herron, sister-in-law of Mr. Taft and the incarnation of the modern
woman’s education, takes part therein. Miss Herron speaks French
correctly, has travelled much, and journeyed through Spain like an
intelligent tourist. The architectural lace-work of the Alhambra
charmed her, and she went into ecstasies over the orange blossoms
growing along the banks of the Guadalquivir. With what Miss Herron was
not in harmony, and she berates them like an unsubsidised journalist,
were the Spanish railroads. Miss Herron is right.
The children, Robert, about eleven years old; Helen, a girl of nine,
and Charles, a baby of three, who is the king of the household:—the
McKinley, as it were, of this patriarchal republic—do not come to the
table; they eat with the governess.
After the meal, in the fine gallery overlooking the sea, sipping the
coffee, Mr. Taft talks of the education of his children, of the
difficulties met in the Philippines in the solution of so interesting
a problem; and his wife converses of the charitable work she expects
to undertake when she shall have assumed a more permanent place in the
Archipelago, which Magellan discovered for Spain, and which, through a
horrible fatality, is no longer ours. Politics are also eschewed on
the gallery.
Needless to say this extraordinary editorial afforded us all boundless
amusement; we began to caution Mr. Taft frequently about the careful
preservation of his “aureole” and Maria and I decided that we would have
to walk warily indeed, if we were destined to be so minutely reported.