LEONORA RIVERA
By the title of his novel Rizal meant not that he was touching a person
forbidden, but a subject. The words he had found in a Latin version of
the New Testament in the passage where the risen Christ is beheld by
Mary Magdalene; but he used these words in a sense wholly different
from the scriptural significance. Conditions in the Philippines he had
thought of as having become a social cancer that persisted first
because of a notion that nobody must treat or touch it. Of all the men
of his times and country, he was the only man that had the courage to
break through this barrier and the skill and perfect knowledge to
dissect the hideous growth behind.
With one of the first copies that came from the press he wrote to his
close friend, Dr. Blumentritt, a letter in which he lays bare his own
idea of his work: [77]
The novel [he says] tells of many things that until now have not
been touched upon. They are so peculiar to ourselves that we have
been sensitive about them. In this book I have attempted what no
one else seems to have been willing to do. For one thing, I have
dared to answer the calumnies that for centuries have been heaped
upon us and upon our country. I have written of the social
condition of the Philippines and of the life of the Filipinos. I
have told the truth about our beliefs, our hopes, our longings, our
complaints, and our sorrows. I have tried to show the difference
between real religion and the hypocrisy that under its cloak has
impoverished and brutalized us. I have brought out the real meaning
of the dazzling and deceptive words of our countrymen. I have
related our mistakes, our vices, and our faults. I have exposed how
weakly we accept miseries as inevitable. Where there has been
reason for it, I have given praise. I have not wept over our
misfortunes, but rather laughed at them.
No one would want to read a book full of tears, and then, too,
laughter is the best means of concealing sorrow.
The incidents that I have related are all true and have actually
occurred.
But for his habitual reticence about himself he might have said much
more; if he had known his own powers he might have spoken of his
lifelike delineations; he might have urged a gift like prophecy. All
the impression of a strong personal relation one has throughout the
reading of “Noli Me Tangere” is well founded. Into it Rizal was writing
himself. Ibarra was a prefiguration, in some respects marvelously
accurate, of himself in the days at hand when he should return to his
native country. Of the material of the book the greater part had been
verified in his own experiences. The imprisonment of Ibarra’s father
was the story of Rizal’s own mother. Father Damaso he had seen and
watched, and Father Silva no less. In Tasio, the philosophical
evolutionist, he had but drawn his own elder brother, Paciano. But
above all, the story of Maria Clara was a tragedy from his own life; at
that time a tragedy he might have feared but had not as yet
experienced, strange as that may seem.
Maria Clara is Rizal’s cousin, Leonora Rivera, his sweetheart and first
great disappointment. She was born in Camiling, province of Tarlac, on
April 11, 1867, the daughter of Antonio Rivera, who was Rizal’s uncle,
benefactor, and ardent partisan. [78] She was twelve years old when the
family moved to Manila, where they rented lodgings to students in Santo
Tomas and the Ateneo. Among these, after a time, came Cousin José
Rizal, at about the third shifting of his quarters in Manila. Leonora
was enrolled as an undergraduate at Concordia College for girls, where
Rizal’s youngest sister, Soledad, was likewise a student. He would
sometimes spend a half-holiday at Concordia to see and to amuse his
sister, whereupon he and his beautiful cousin became good friends,
although she was six years his junior. She was not only beautiful, but
she seems to have had an unusual intellect of the kind that would be
likely to attract Rizal; for she was in fact, and not by repute alone,
studious, thoughtful, of the Malay seriousness, but with also the Malay
delight in music. She sang well; she is said to have played the piano
with a skill that distinguished her even in the corps of able pianists
of which Concordia was proud. If so, the eminence was not lightly won;
for the worthy Sisters that conducted that institution taught music
thoroughly and well.
She must have been also of a sweet and gentle spirit; all the memories
extant of her twenty years after her death included this tribute. The
various commentators that have differed often about other phases of
Philippine life have been of one mind in praising the typical educated
Filipino woman and yet have not exaggerated her worth. In a world
wearied of artificiality, her simple sincerity shines to cheer as much
as to charm. Visitors that have observed her well have usually noted
the excellence of her mind, the honesty of her walk, and the reserve
strength of her character. Rizal’s mother was of this order, the
diligent ruler of the household, the laborious instructor of her
children; and, when the blows of the Spanish tyranny fell upon her
head, bearing them with the proud fortitude of a Roman matron of the
republic. Doubtless, the halo of Rizal and Leonora’s own romantic story
have magnified her intellectual stature; yet when all allowance is made
for exaggeration that may color the work of a friendly biographer, the
fact is apparent that she also was of this same admirable womanhood.
The first time she seems to have suspected in herself a feeling for her
handsome young cousin stronger than cousinly regard was on a day at her
father’s house when the young leader of the Filipino forces at the
Ateneo was brought in with a broken head and covered with dust, blood,
and glory. It was not the first time he had been so ornamented, but
only the first time she had seen him thus. At the sight of the youthful
champion of the Filipino people disabled early in the fray, Leonora ran
with speed to get warm water and bandages to dress his hurts. The rest
was easy and according to the formulæ for such cases well known and
accepted. She loved him for the battles he waged, and he loved her that
she nursed him so tenderly.
A year later with the full approbation of their parents they were
betrothed. Mr. Rivera was fond of his nephew; to the aunt, José was at
least not objectionable, though she seems to have been a lady of a
captious and changeable temperament. It was the uncle that first
suggested Rizal’s withdrawal from the Philippines when it became
evident that the governing class had marked him as a young man to be
suppressed. Mr. Rivera knew well enough what that would mean in Santo
Tomas and elsewhere: every avenue closed, every possible obstacle
thrown in his way. The malice he had aroused he could hope to defeat in
some measure if he could win in Europe a training and a distinction
that would on his return provide him with a practice in spite of
Spanish opposition. Mr. Rivera assisted his flight, sent him money
while he was pursuing his studies in Madrid, and showed at all times a
sincere interest in his welfare. The lovers had a tender parting just
before Rizal went aboard his ship that night; as a sign or image of his
presence when he should be far away he left with her a poem that began:
The summons sounds, predestinate and grim,
The iron clanging of the tongue of fate,
That drives me on a pathway strange and dim
And strikes my flowers of hope all desolate.
Thou know’st,—thou other, dearer soul of mine—
How hard it is to say farewell, and part;
Through clouds that darken, suns that shine,
I venture—but I leave with thee my heart.
At Madrid he wrote her regularly and with deep affection and received
replies that, his diary says, gave him unbounded joy, as these entries
indicate:
1884. January 10. Received two letters, one from Uncle Antonio
[Leonora’s father] and the other from L. Nov. 30. The letter from
Leonora was lovely with a sweet ending.
January 25. To-night I had a sad dream. I returned to the
Philippines, but oh, what a sad reception! Leonora had been
unfaithful; an inexcusable unfaithfulness without any remedy.
April 13. To-day I received letters from Leonora, Uncle Antonio,
and Changoy. I am well satisfied with what Leonora writes but not
with her state of health. [79]
No trait is more to be emphasized in observing the Filipino people than
their respect for womanhood. It is hardly less than phenomenal. In
Burma the women may have as much power; in Filipinas they have power
and respect as well as affection. Rizal was all of this order; the most
sacred object in the world was his mother; the next most sacred the
woman that should be his wife; after her came his sisters. He had
developed in advance of his times a certain philosophy of feminism that
has since become much more general. In his letters he dwelt upon it. He
thought the Filipino woman might be one of the great instruments for
the deliverance of the country, exercising her power and influence
conscientiously for education and liberty. Therefore, every Filipino
woman ought to prepare herself for this service by utilizing every road
to knowledge and enlarging her understanding of the nation and its
possibilities. He believed that a general effort on these lines by the
educated women would make a profound impression upon the young and be
invaluable in the next generation.
There seems to have been no flaw in his attachment to Leonora; his
career abroad has been searched in vain for a reminiscence of an
escapade. He lived a life of purity and that self-control that he held
to be the first demand of the moral code he professed. Seldom has the
biographer a career like this to write in which appears not enough of
human frailty to spice the narrative. He had made for himself certain
rules of conduct—abstemiousness, temperance, chastity, no wasting of
time, no wasting of health—and to these he adhered with the stern
inflexibility of an ascetic. The artist is usually saved, says Edmund
Clarence Stedman, by his devotion to beauty. Rizal was an artist, and
never has knelt before the ideal of beauty a worshiper more devout. The
beauty of righteousness seemed to rule out of him all promptings to the
coltish excesses of youth; that, and the dignity of his love, and his
conception of the gravity of his mission. He that is called to bring
light to his people must not linger at the wayside inn nor ruin their
hopes by capitulation to man’s grosser senses.
Meantime, the Riveras had moved from Manila to Dagupan, in the province
then called Laguna. The reputation that Rizal had left behind him was
not bettered by the handling it had from the governing class after his
flight. Evil propaganda has always been easy to great power in any
form. In his absence the spies and agents provocateurs of the
Government made it but the day’s work to smear with lies the name of
Rizal. “Some of it will stick,” is the philosophy of the professional
slanderer. In this case the word proved true enough. Mrs. Rivera seems
to have been much affected by the sad decline and fall of her
prospective son-in-law. She was an excellent lady but one that set
exaggerated store by the verdict of society and what Shelley called the
great god “They Say.” Among all colonists everywhere this is a deity of
might. With the slender group of Filipinos that strove to grasp the
skirts of a society drawn disdainfully away from them, the cult
amounted sometimes to a frenzy.
The reports that came from Madrid about Leonora’s lover, or were
affirmed to come thence, were no salve to the mother’s wounded
sensibilities. He was said to associate with sad young dogs,
revolutionists and outcasts and all that, with Filipinos that had been
exiled after the governmental sand-dance of 1872 and with other
agencies of treason. The thought of the career that such a man would
probably have in the Philippines seems to have struck Mrs. Rivera with
inexpressible terror. What her friends and social co-mates would say
when her daughter should be married to one sure to be a pariah if not a
victim of the garrote was beyond her strength to endure.
She had also the strange notion that steals into the minds of some
subjugated people that intermarriage with the dominant color promises
relief from the sting of inferiority. About this time the railroad was
being extended to Dagupan, and a young English engineer, Henry C.
Kipping, came to take charge of the building of the last section of the
new line from Bayambang. His work took him often to Dagupan, where he
met and fell in love with Leonora. He seems to have urged his suit with
ardor and persistence and to have had from the beginning an adroit
partisan in Leonora’s mother. Here had come, as if by the order of
Providence, a means to save her daughter from an unhappy marriage. How
much better to wed an English engineer than a Filipino agitator! With
joy she seized every opportunity to praise the ingenious Kipping, gave
thanks (for she was of a resolute devotion) to the wisdom that had
arranged all this, and even prepared to give it help of her own
devising. [80]
Cold fell her eulogies on Leonora’s ears. When Kipping talked love to
her she told him frankly that she was engaged to marry Rizal, whom she
loved and would always love, and that another suitor was for her
impossible.
Nothing in Kipping’s reports of these chilly receptions daunted Mrs.
Rivera, her heart being set on this match. She knew well the weight of
parental authority among her people. Also, she had faith in the effects
of absence, if judiciously interpreted and assisted. She can hardly
have read the novels of Charles Reade, but that eminent author would
have found in her a character all made to his mind. She now had resort
to an expedient that was one of favorite practice among his own
villains. Many a reader of his it has left cold, deeming it impossible
or extravagant. Behold, then, vindication for the novelist, and
straight from history. Mrs. Rivera augmented the glacial effects of
separation by stopping all letters between the young lovers. To this
end she bribed two postal clerks. [81] For a monthly stipend they
agreed to bring to her all the letters that Leonora wrote to José and
all the letters that José wrote to Leonora.
Months went by and not a word came from Madrid. Leonora began to droop
under the suspense. Skilfully and industriously her mother plied her
with insinuations and the wise shaking of the head so eloquent to the
anxious. We could and if we would, and that line of ambiguous givings
out. At last, she openly declared that Rizal had found another
sweetheart. Leonora hysterically affirmed her faith in her lover. But
the physical fact persisted that mail after mail arrived from Spain and
not a line from Rizal. “He is sick,” said Leonora, “and I am here, I
cannot take care of him.” The next time the expected letter failed she
said deliberately, “I know José. He has given his word. He will die
before he breaks it.”
The mother seems to have known how to beat down this spirit. At last
she brought to an issue the slow, sure undermining in which she had
been employing her wits. “If you truly love me, you ought to remember
that, after God, you owe to me all you are, and after God, then, you
owe me your duty. I urge this marriage, not because it means anything
to me, but because I am your mother. I seek your true happiness. All
the hope of my life is centered upon it. Do you wish to kill your
mother?”
At this, Leonora capitulated. So great is the maternal influence in the
Filipino household it is likely that most other Filipino girls in the
same conditions would have yielded. According to Miss Sevilla,
Leonora’s sympathetic biographer, the daughter now fell into the
mother’s arms and said:
“I owe you my life; I will sacrifice it for you, and make this marriage
as you wish, but you will find that I shall not live long after it. In
return, I ask you three things, that I shall not again be asked to play
or to sing, that my piano shall be kept locked, and that you shall be
at my side when I am married.” [82]
The next day she burned the letters she had received from Rizal before
her mother had interfered with her happiness. Following a Filipino
custom, she put the ashes into a little box which she covered with a
piece of the dress she had worn when she was betrothed and a piece of
the dress she had worn when she yielded to her mother about Kipping.
The box is still in existence. It bears on its covers the letters “J”
and “L” worked in gold. [83]
The wedding was fixed for June 17, at Dagupan. A few days before this
date, Mrs. Rivera was called to Manila by some business transaction in
which she must take a part. She seems to have forgotten the postal
clerks, or they to have forgotten their employment; for while she was
gone a letter arrived from Rizal to Leonora, and it fell into her
hands. She opened it with wonder and trembling, and lo! it was filled
with tender reproaches for her long silence. He had written to her
regularly by every mail, but all these months had come not a word in
answer. Had she forgotten him?
The next scene may be deemed to justify the writers both of fiction and
of melodrama. Leonora waited in silence until her mother returned from
Manila, for her quick intelligence showed her unerringly who had been
the author of this wreck of her happiness. The moment her mother opened
the door the storm broke. Leonora, for once, defied the restraint the
Filipino girl must traditionally feel in the presence of her parents
and spared nobody in her passionate denunciation of the treachery of
which she had been the victim. Mrs. Rivera seems to have admitted
everything and borne with composure the whirlwind of her daughter’s
wrath. She knew that the discovery had come too late to disturb her own
success. The wedding was close at hand, the banns had been cried, the
guests invited, the peculiar Filipino pride was involved and her
daughter would hold to her word.
Kipping was baptized and became a Catholic. The wedding took place at
the appointed hour. Afterward some of her relatives recalled that it
was a ceremony without joy or good omens. They said that from it the
bride returned in a state of chill lassitude. Contrary to her mother’s
hopes, the marriage proved unhappy, and Leonora survived it only two
years.