1d.—half the American dollar. This is the Philippine currency, and is
named after its inventor, an American called Conant, and I wish he had
invented a cheaper unit, for 10 Conant dollars, or _pesos_, as they
are called, are nothing to spend, whereas the equivalent, an English
guinea, is an important sum, and represents four times the spending
value of 10 _pesos_. It is a silver currency, dollars and notes, and
the coins have rather a pretty design of a man sitting looking at the
sea, surrounded by most amusing inscriptions. For instance, the 5-cent,
piece is: “Five Centavos,” and underneath is “Filipinas.” Why not “Five
cents.” and “Philippines,” or else “Cinco centavos, Filipinas?” Why such
mongrel? One can only suppose it is the notion of Equality coming out in
some mysterious way by meeting the natives half-way in Spanish, which,
by-the-bye, is not their native language, and only a few of them speak it
at all.
The houses here, as I said before, are all two-storied, the upper part of
wood, and the lower of stone or concrete. The floors are of long planks
of hard, dark, native woods, which the servants polish with petroleum
pads on their feet, sliding about till the surface is like brown glass.
The walls are merely wooden partitions, painted white or green, and in
the corners of the rooms appear the big tree trunks to which the house
is lashed, sometimes just painted white like the walls, or encased in
a wooden cover. The word “lashed,” I must tell you, is not a figure of
speech, as the houses really are tied together with _bejuco_, rattan (a
strong, fibrous vine), so as to allow sufficient play for earthquakes,
which, it appears, are so frequent in these islands as to be in no way
remarkable.
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH HOUSES AT MOLO
_To face page 20._]
The “windows” are really the greater part of each side of the house
left open and fitted with shutters, sliding in grooves. Even with these
“windows” closed against rain or sun the rooms remain cool, as the
shutters are composed of wooden slats a little apart. Inside these is
another set for very rainy weather, made of small square panes, each
filled with a very thin, white, pearl oyster shell.
Taken all round, the Philippine houses are very pretty, and capable
of a great deal of decoration, though, of course, one does not want
any draperies or many ornaments about in such a climate, where such
superfluities would simply become the homes and nurseries of clouds of
mosquitoes and other small fry, besides being unendurably hot even to
look at.
At first it appears very odd to see houses without chimneys and rooms
without fireplaces, though I can’t think why they have none, as it must
be very difficult to keep the houses dry in the wet Monsoon.
LETTER IV.
A PHILIPPINE HOUSE—AMERICAN PRICES—NATIVE SERVANTS—FURNITURE
ILOILO, _December 10, 1904_.
I am sure you will be pleased to hear that we have already found a house
to suit us, in fact we are quite charmed with it, and can’t be too
thankful that we did not hastily take any of the others we saw. C—— went
to look at some on Tuesday, but on the way he saw this one, and liked it
so much that he at once came back for me to look at it, and I went off
to inspect, even in the middle of the day! I agreed with him in thinking
the house charming, so we took it at once—or as soon as we had finished
the preliminary pantomime with the Filipino landlady, a pleasant woman,
married to a Spaniard.
The house is in one of the two nicest streets, a little out off the town,
on the spit of land formed by the estuary and the open sea. These two
streets run parallel, but as the spit gets narrower they leave off, and
end in the Government Hospital, the Cavalry _Corral_ (stables), some
Government buildings, and diminish gradually to a long road, a house,
some barren land, a few palms, a pilot’s hut, a little bit of beach, some
pebbles, and one small crab.
Our house faces S.-W. on a garden, and the back is all open to the river
and the N.-E. Monsoon—the most important consideration here, for houses
that do not get the wind are stifling and unhealthy. We saw two or three
that would have suited us very well, but for the fact that they stood the
wrong way, or because the through draught was impeded by some tree or
building outside.
The house we have taken is in the usual style, such as I described to you
in my last letter, and in one-half of the lower part lives our Spanish
landlord, while in the other half, rather vault-like, _se aquila_. The
lower parts of the houses are unhealthy, because of the malarial gases
arising from the soil, and the damp, so no one lives in the basements if
they can afford anything else.
The upper part of this house we are going to live in is quite a separate
dwelling, as it is approached by an outside staircase, coming up upon an
open balcony running round three sides of the upper story. The balcony is
a great charm, and very few of the houses have this addition. I thought
that the Spaniards would have made open balconies the fashion out here,
but was very much surprised to see none, and can only attribute the lack
of them to the fact that the settlers came from the North, in the same
way that the houses have no _patios_, and so forth. A roofed balcony like
this is not only a delightful lounge, but it keeps the house very cool,
besides catching a lot of the heavy rains, and it seems incomprehensible
that any sane person could build a house in this climate without one.
Verandahs are, of course, quite unknown, but I daresay there is a reason
for all this in the terrible Typhoons which sweep over these islands, and
would make short shrift of any fancy out-works.
We come into a big hall at the back of the house, with the outer side
almost all (with shutters) open to the estuary, and the front portion of
the house is the _sala_. Off these two, open five rooms, all large and
airy, and freshly painted white. In many of the houses the top of each
room has a deep frieze in the shape of a pretty wooden grill, a Chinese
fashion, which allows the air to circulate freely through the house—to
say nothing of the remarks of the dwellers! We have not got this extra
luxury, which I suppose has not been considered necessary in so airy a
house.
At the back is what is called the _Azotea_, which in this case happens
to be built over the house below. It is a big, sloping, concrete floor,
on which are built the kitchen, bathroom, store-room, etc.—all very
compact, and quite away from the house, and not coming between us and the
wind. In this, again, some of the houses we saw were impossible, for the
outbuildings on the Azotea were placed so that they stopped the draught
through the house. You may think I am a little foolish on the subject of
a current of air, but I assure you I am not, for in a position with no
draught the pores of the skin open like so many sluices, and one’s head
begins to throb.
So that is our house, which, after genuine Spanish haggling, we got for
50 _pesos_ a month, a sum working out at about £60 a year, a very low
rent indeed out here. In fact, when we set out and said we meant to give
no more than 50 dollars a month for a house, we were simply laughed at,
and at first were almost inclined to think it could not be done, but when
we saw the numbers of houses standing empty in all the nice streets, we
stuck to our sum, and are very glad now that we did so. A Spaniard or
_Mestizo_ (Eurasian) would not dream of giving more than thirty for a
house like the one we have taken, but an American would give a hundred.
That is where the trouble comes in—in making the people understand that
we don’t mean to grind them down, nor, on the other hand, to pay foolish
sums, but to give the right value for what we get.
[Illustration: THE BACK OF OUR HOUSE.
Showing Azotea and Outbuildings.
_To face page 24._]
You know the way Americans go about in Europe spending the unit, which is
lower than their own, like water, with no sense of value? And how they
raise prices wherever they go! Well, they have done the same thing here,
and an American woman, who was talking to me the other day, told me it
was now beginning to be apparent to them what a mistake they had made,
and they bitterly regretted having made the Philippines as expensive
as America, but that it was very difficult for them to go back now to
the more reasonable scale, for as soon as a Filipino found out you were
an American, nothing would move him from American prices. Poor thing,
she was very bitter about it, and I felt very sorry for her (as well as
rather alarmed for myself), for the sums she was paying in rent and wages
to live at all in Iloilo, would have kept her in comfort in London or
Paris.
Well, when we had settled on the house, we drove straight to the
shop-streets of the town—or rather, street, for there is only one with
shops, the principal thoroughfare, called the Calle Real. Some of the
shops have quite big, handsome windows of plate glass, with wonderful
things displayed in them, but when you get inside you find they are, like
the shop window in Browning’s poem, only “astonishing the street,” and
beyond the window there is nothing but a large half-empty hall, where a
few languid, sallow Eurasians stand trimming their nails behind long,
untidy counters. These are the Spanish, Filipino, and German shops; but
the Chinese are just the reverse, with no show in the little low window,
and the inside a small, poky room, crammed with everything any human
being ever invented, and kept by energetic, slant-eyed men who simply
won’t let you go without buying something.
The principal shop, however, is the great Store, which is kept by an
English firm called Hoskyn & Co., and is said to be the best in the
islands, and there we bought elemental necessaries, in the way of a few
pieces of furniture, some groceries, china, glass, and so forth, at
prices, when translated into shillings, to turn one faint with dismay.
It was maddening to think of the lovely things we could have got for
the same money at home, nevertheless these were very cheap for the
Philippines, for this is a notoriously cheap “store,” which can afford
to sell at low prices, as they have such an immense business, even being
able to compete with the shops in Manila, where they send all manner
of life’s necessaries. Though I am once more reminded of papa’s remark
that he never realises what a curse human life has become till he reads
through a store list.
When we had done our shopping, we came back to the house and unpacked
our new household goods as they came in, hung lamps, and so on, and all
that day worked hard at the house. At intervals prospective servants
kept dropping in, for servants are secured here in much the same way as
houses—people tell other people about the opportunity, and the news flies
about in servant-land.
All shapes and sizes of Filipinos loomed on the balcony at intervals, and
drifted into the hall and stood watching us till we had time to attend to
them. In this country all the doors stand always open for coolness, and
there are no bells, and when you go to a house you walk in at the door
and sing out for a servant. Some people go so far as to have a hand bell
at the top of the stairs, but the whole system seems to me ridiculous, so
I have persuaded C—— to invest in a door bell, which he is going to fix
to the main door into the hall.
We were unpacking and going about the house, and every now and then we
would come upon a silent figure waiting, just waiting, anywhere, leaning
up against something, and perfectly indifferent to time or place. This
stamped him as a candidate. To each one C—— put first of all the question:
“Can you speak English?”
And when the man said “Yeees, sair,” he was refused without any further
parley, for nothing will induce us to take servants who can understand
what we are saying, which would make life impossible in these open
houses. Besides that, when they speak English it means they have been
with Americans, who spoil the Filipino servants dreadfully with their
well-meant notions of equality, and give ridiculous wages as well. In
the Spanish days a Filipino head-servant got 5 or 6 _pesos_ a month, and
the _peso_ then was the Mexican dollar, which is only about two-thirds
of the Conant unit. It was, and is, riches to them, but so changed are
these things now, that we are considered wonderful because we have found
a _mayordomo_ or head boy willing to come to us for 10 _pesos_ a month
and a second boy for 6. An American would give them twice as much, if not
more, which would simply turn them into drunkards, or gamblers, or both,
or worse.
All the Philippine servants are men, as all over the East, though some
women do have a native maid; but as all the women I have met do nothing
but complain of the laziness and uselessness of these handmaidens, I have
no idea of saddling myself with such a burden.
The two men we have engaged are about twenty years of age, but it is
always very difficult to tell how old Filipinos are, as they look old
when they are young and young when they are old. They can give no
particular account of themselves, these two, and have unaccountably
mislaid their little books of references; but we are taking them on the
recommendation of their faces, which are nice, and that is just as good
a standard to go by in a Filipino as in anyone else! One is a native of
Guimaras; the other a Tagalo, from Luzon; and both are short, thick-set,
sturdy-looking fellows who ought not to give us much trouble with falling
ill. Half the time here the servants are ill with fever, or colds, or
heaven knows what, for it is a race without much stamina.
One of the most aggravating characteristics of the Filipinos is the way
they murmur, for they have naturally very soft voices, which become
positively a whisper with shyness and awe. The English people here
adopt the custom, which prevails throughout the East, of calling their
servants “boys,” but the Americans use the Spanish word _muchacho_, and
that is unfortunate, as they give all vowels the narrow, English value,
making it this word _muchaycho_. It sounds so odd, this lack of ear, and
quite alters some of the Spanish names—such as saying Cavyt for Cavite
(the naval port of Manila), Caypiz for Capiz (a town in Panay), and so
on, and though they pronounce Jaro exactly the same as the English town
of Harrow, thank goodness they don’t go so far as to call this place
Eye-low-Eye-low!
[Illustration: FILIPINO SERVANTS.
_To face page 28._]
But I am wandering away from the servants, and I have not yet introduced
the cook to you. We had less trouble to get this treasure than the
others, as all the natives cook well by instinct—at least, they know how
to make the best of what food there is to be had, which is all one wants.
This particular _chef_ is a shrivelled, pock-marked person, about 4
feet 6 in height, with an array of immense teeth, and an air of intense
importance; this last characteristic being funny or annoying according to
the mood one happens to be in oneself. His wages are 15 _pesos_ a month,
and as he is a married man, or says so, he is to live with his family in
the town.
And that was the end of the first day, and a very long and fatiguing one
in this climate.
When we came back next morning we found that the _boys_, who had been
left in charge of the house and what furniture we had fixed up, had
already swept and polished the floors, which made an immense difference
to the appearance of the place, and the lamps were filled and trimmed.
There is electric light in the town, but it is so very bad, and is the
cause of so much complaint, that all have to supplement their expensive
electricity with oil lamps before they can read. We are, therefore, not
going to have it put on, though it would be quite easy, as the wire
passes over us from next door. The efficiency and intelligence of the new
servants pleased us very much, but all the same we observed cautiously to
each other: “New brooms sweep clean.”
We left the new brooms still sweeping, and went off to the shops again,
and once more spent important and heart-breaking sums on the bare
necessities of life. This time it was furniture, at the shop of a Chinese
Eurasian, where we got a lot of things that look very nice, though they
are not anything wonderful in the way of wood; but in these light, open
houses with no fires and no carpets, it is not necessary to have such
rich-looking furniture as at home. If one likes to spend still more
money, there are beautiful things to be had made from magnificent hard
Philippine woods, but the high price of labour, the poverty everywhere,
and lack of capital and enterprise, have made these hard-wood things so
dear that they are luxuries. The ordinary furniture is, in spite of the
cent.-per-cent. import duties, either made out of Oregon pine, or else
imported ready made from Vienna; but an insect called _buc-buc_, with
which the country abounds, eats these soft pine woods, though it will
not touch the native mahogany, teak, ebony, etc. It is not as if this
Philippine timber were swept off for export, for no trade is done with
it as no cheap labour is to be had, and splendid trees just decay in the
crowded forests on the hills.
For our _sala_ we invested in basket furniture, a necessity in this
heat, for padded chairs or cushions would be unendurable. The bamboo
and rattan, of which Chinamen would make all sorts of pretty chairs and
couches for a few _pesos_ a piece, grow plentifully here, but in the
Philippines such articles are only to be had at three times the price, as
they are imported from China, for the Filipinos are too lazy and stupid
to make anything of the materials given them by “_el buen Dios_,” and
if they did, the scale of wages, set by the American Government, would
make the things even more expensive than those imported. So the reeds
rot, and the woods rot; and we, for our part, cannot cease to regret that
we did not, while we were in Hong Kong, invest in some of the cheap and
beautiful furniture we saw there, but we took local advice and forbore
to import anything into this land of prohibitive tariffs; though now we
discover that, tariffs and all, we should have found it cheaper to have
brought the things with us.
All this expense of life springs from the accepted interpretation of the
maxim, “Philippines for the Filipinos,” which saying was invented by
the late (and first) Governor-General of the Philippines, a man of the
name of Taft, who is now Secretary of War in the United States. I suppose
the idea caught on in America, and the good people there, whose opinion
controls affairs in this country, which they have never seen, think
that prohibitive tariffs and the exclusion of cheap Chinese or Japanese
labour, must be a good thing for these depopulated islands if it is a
benefit to the overcrowded U.S.A.
As a matter of fact, when applied to an indolent, indifferent race, the
result is stagnation and starvation prices, which is a terrible state
of affairs in a hot country like this, where food and labour ought to
be plentiful and cheap, or nothing will pay. I can’t think that the
Americans really believe the Filipinos to be as high a development of
the human race as they are themselves; but since they wish, with the
best intentions, to allow the Filipinos to benefit by American systems
of government, these Malays must first learn the A B C of such a system.
Whether they are capable of profiting by such lessons, or whether they
are so foreign to the essence of this race as to ruin it, remains to be
demonstrated.
Well, I must get back to the house again, and the end of the story is
that we moved into our house on Thursday, the 8th, and slept here that
night. We were able to do this so soon, as people have been very kind in
lending us things—sheets and towels from one, table-linen from another,
and so on—but all the same I wish our cases would come, as there is such
a responsibility about other people’s gear.
_À propos_ of these same cases, we are rather uneasy in our minds about
them, as we are beginning to hear alarming rumours of Customs duties to
be paid. Wedding presents used to be exempt, but quite lately duties were
levied on them, and I am afraid we shall have to pay for our own things,
which is a bore, not to say rather a blow.
We got through all our trunks, etc., that we had with us with a
perfunctory opening of one box, a few questions, and the signing of
papers, the only trouble being C——’s gun, which they took away, and he
will not be able to get a licence, or allowed to have it out of the
Customs House before he finds two “bonds” of 100 dollars each. That is,
in clear English, he must find two people who are prepared to bet the
American Government 100 dollars each that he is not going to sell the gun
to an Insurgent.
So, barring the gun anxiety, we got our boxes in all right, and are told
it would have gone equally well with the cases had we had them with
us, but as they are coming out by freight, they will be subject to the
duties. However, the authorities tell us it will not be very severe—C——
went and inquired about it, as he said he would rather not take our
spoons and forks and things out of bond, but would prefer to send them
back to Hong Kong rather than pay a large sum. So, all things considered,
C—— is not reassured, so he has arranged to have the cases sent here
unopened and in bond; and is going to open them, in bond, at the Custom
House, and have the contents appraised before he decides what to do with
them. The only reasonable hope is that many of the contents, such as
plate, may be exempt, or very lightly taxed, as they are articles that
could not possibly be produced in the Philippines; but when I mentioned
this to a Customs official, he replied that such an idea had nothing to
do with the system of taxation.
This is a fearfully long letter, but even now I feel I have not told you
half I wanted to.
LETTER V.
HOUSEKEEPING IN ILOILO
ILOILO, _December 17, 1904_.
We are settling down very comfortably into our charming house, which we
like more and more, and are continually congratulating ourselves on our
luck in having found such a nice home.
There is nothing special to tell you about since I last wrote, so I will
try to give you some idea of my housekeeping, of which I think I have not
yet told you anything beyond just mentioning how many servants we have.
I find that the cook—he with the important manner and the big teeth—has
been an under-cook in an American hotel, or what he is pleased to call
an American hotel, by which I take it he means one of the saloons or
eating-houses in the town. So far, however, he has proved himself a very
good cook indeed, which is even more necessary here than anywhere else,
for food in the Philippines has but little variety, and is not nourishing
at its best. Every morning I give this person a _peso_ and a half, with
which he goes off to the market and buys whatever takes his fancy, or,
more probably, what is to be had, which generally takes the form of an
incredibly small and thin fowl—alive; one or two little fish; some green
peppers or egg-plants, and always a few very small, half-ripe tomatoes.
With these and with help from the store-room, he concocts a very good
lunch and dinner, and, doubtless, makes a good thing out of it, but most
cooks charge 2 dollars for the same _menu_, and he really provides for
us very well. I supply tea, salt, butter, lard, tinned fruits, potatoes,
macaroni—in fact all the dry provisions usually kept in a store-room, I
don’t know what is the technical name for them.
The store-room (_dispensa_, they call it), where these treasures are
hoarded up, is a very nice little dark cabin, with shelves all round,
which I made the boys clean out and wipe everywhere with petroleum,
an excellent precaution against the numberless and extraordinary
animals with which one has to share the house. I got tall glass jars
for protection against cockroaches, and tins to keep mice off, and
wire-netting for rats, and naphthaline to astonish the scorpions and
spiders; and last, but by no means least, a good strong padlock for human
beings! When the tins and bottles were all arranged, they looked very
home-like.
We get up at half-past five or six, and I give one of the _boys_ 20[2]
cents, with which he goes out and buys bread for the day at the shop
of some Chinaman down the street. It is necessary to get small daily
supplies of everything, for food will not keep. Some people have told
me fearful anecdotes about the horrors perpetrated by the Chinamen in
the making of their bread, and these faddists have theirs made at home,
but the Chinese bread tastes quite good, and is much more light and
digestible than that made by the house-cooks. As our cook has cooked for
Americans, he knows how to make the hot cakes which are the great feature
of American breakfasts, but we won’t have them, for they are deadly
anywhere, especially in the tropics.