big spluttering arc-light over it, shedding its cheese-white light on
nothingness—for no band ever plays there, and the glories of social
Iloilo went with the gay and courteous Spaniards. A few people go and sit
about, however, in the evenings, and it is not a bad place to loaf in for
anyone who can’t drive out to the country and is tired of the beach.
One evening, as we sat under the trees watching a group of _Mestizo_
children playing about some older people sitting on a seat, a little
_banda de musica_ came strolling by, half a dozen young Filipinos in
white trousers and _camisas_, carrying mandolins and guitars. They
stopped near to where the children were playing, and struck up a certain
beautiful waltz which one hears everywhere here—the work of some native
composer, I believe—whereupon the little things all danced about on
the white path in the fretted shadows of the trees, making a perfectly
charming picture, and all so happy and jolly it did one good to watch
them, in spite of the excessive heat.
The _banda de musica_ seemed to enjoy the fun too, for they smiled and
showed their white teeth; speaking to the children and playing one tune
after the other; and when we had to go home in time for dinner, we left
them still dancing and playing under the trees, perfectly happy, even at
that age, with anything in the nature of a _baile_.
LETTER XII.
CHINESE NEW YEAR—LABOUR CONDITIONS—A CINÉMATOGRAPH SHOW
ILOILO, _February 4, 1905_.
To-day is the Chinese New Year, and all last night the Chinamen were
letting off crackers down in the town. All to-day they have been going
on with them, too, and as the chief rejoicing seems to be to explode
the fireworks under a horse, you may imagine—no you can’t—what the
streets are like. On an ordinary day there is a good deal of pretty wild
driving and no small peril in getting about in a vehicle or on foot, but
the frightful risks one runs on every other day of the year are mild
adventures compared to this Chinese New Year.
There are a great many Chinamen, you see, for they continue to come into
the Philippines in spite of the heavy tax against them; and besides that,
so many are left over from the Spanish days that Celestials are still the
principal shopkeepers of the Islands. They make large fortunes here, I
believe—the fortunes that are ready waiting for anyone who is as clever
and industrious as a Chinaman—and so good a speculation do they think
this country that they are constantly arriving, whenever they can get
permission, paying the heavy tax, and then beginning by working for a
year or two with some friend or relation for no pay!
Of course, the Filipinos hate the idea of being cut out by strong,
hard-working, clever rivals, who make fortunes under conditions in which
they themselves starve, so they have forced the hand of the American
Government in abolishing foreign labour, which measure, so the business
men say, has been the ruin of the Philippines. They say that such a law
is wise enough in a country like America, perhaps, which is teeming
with a busy population of its own, but here it is quite different, and
“Philippines for the Filipinos” would be all very well if these people
wanted their country, which does not seem to be the case. Moreover, if
they did want it, it is too large for them, for there are 75,000,000
acres of cultivable soil in the Philippines, and the population _all
told_ is barely 7,000,000. Suppose one calculated one in ten of the
natives of all ages as a capable tiller of the earth—a _most_ unlikely
average—and _if_ three Filipinos could do the work of one Chinaman or
white man (which they can’t), even then one would think there would be
room for competition and other labour.
The magnificent forests of priceless woods simply fall into decay; the
gold and all the metals with which the country is filled, lie untouched;
the marbles are unquarried; the rich soil is uncultivated; and so these
riches must remain as long as it pays no one to work them. Men often come
to the Philippines to “prospect,” but when they find out the conditions
of labour and the rate of Export and other Duties, they go away and are
no more heard of; for, though you may run a sort of Government with
philanthropical ideas, you won’t get business to flow in on the same
system; and business men don’t care two straws if a labourer can read
Latin or understand mathematics, so long as he will work well for low
wages; but this latter ideal is the very last one the American Government
appear to encourage or aim at.
Well, we went last night to a cinématograph show, which has established
itself in a big empty basement in the Calle Real, with a large sign
outside, made of glass letters lighted behind with electricity, all in
the most approved European style. The “show” lasts for half an hour,
going on from six in the evening to about ten o’clock at night, and the
proprietor makes about 300 _pesos_ a week out of it, for he has very few
expenses, and it is the sort of thing these people love. They come out
when the show is over, stand about and expectorate for a few minutes, and
then pay their cents and go in again and enjoy the same thing about five
times running, probably without the faintest idea what it is all about
from start to finish. You remember the dreadful extent of the habit of
expectoration in Spain? You have heard about this failing in America? The
Filipino is the epitome and concentration of the two.
Everything in the hall was boarded up to prevent any stray, non-paying
enthusiast from getting a free peep; but all the same I saw several
little brown forms in fluttering muslin shirts, outside, where the wall
formed a side street, with eyes glued to the chinks of a door in rapt
attention; though I don’t suppose the little chaps could really see
anything but the extreme edge of the back row of benches.
In the hall we were saved from suffocation by two electric fans, and
kept awake by a Filipino playing a cracked old piano with astonishing
dexterity, rattling out the sort of tunes you hear in a circus and
nowhere else on earth. I could not help wondering where he had picked
them up, till it suddenly dawned on me that one, at least, gave me a
faint hint that perhaps the performer might once have heard “Hiawatha” on
a penny flute; so I concluded that he was playing “variations.” Pianos
never sound very well out here, and I am told it is difficult to keep
them bearable at all, for the chords have an unmusical way of going
rusty in the damp season, or else snapping with a loud _ping_.
The moving pictures were not at all bad, rather jumpy at times, but
the subjects really quite entertaining, and all the slides, from the
appearance of the figures on them, made in Germany, I imagine. The series
wound up with an interminable fairy tale in coloured pictures, really a
sort of short play, and in this one could see the German element still
more apparent, in the castles, the ancient costumes, and the whole
composition of the thing. I don’t suppose the natives in the audience had
the wildest idea what it was all about, or what the king and queen, the
good fairy, and the wicked godmother, were meant to be, probably taking
the whole story for some episode in the life of a Saint.
The audience were really more amusing to me than the pictures, and I was
quite pleased each time the light went up so that I could have a good
look at them. In the front rows, which were cheap, as they were so close
to the screen, sat the poorer people in little family groups, with clean
_camisas_ and large cigars, the women’s hair looking like black spun
glass. Our places were raised a little above them, and were patronised
by the swells who had paid 40 cents—a shilling. Amongst the elect were
one or two English and other foreigners; some fat Chinamen, with their
pigtails done up in chignons, and wearing open-work German straw hats,
accompanied by their native wives and little slant-eyed children; a few
missionaries and schoolma’ams in coloured blouses and untidy coiffures
_à la_ Gibson Girl; and one or two U.S.A. soldiers, with thick hair
parted in the middle, standing treat to their Filipina girls—these last
in pretty _camisas_, and very shy and happy. A funny little Filipino
boy near us, rigged up in a knickerbocker suit and an immense yellow
oil-skin motor-cap, was rather frightened at old Tuyay, who had insisted
on coming to the show and sitting at our feet. When she sniffed the
bare legs of this very small brown brother, he lost all his dignity and
importance, and clung blubbing to his little flat-faced mother. Poor old
Tuyay was dreadfully offended; she came and crawled right under C——’s
chair, where she lay immovable till the performance was over.
To watch the people here is an endless source of amusement to me, and I
only wish my words could be more photographic, or our photographs more
pictorial, so that I could convey to you a real impression of this queer
end of the world. That is what it is—I feel as if I had arrived at the
end of the world, where nobody cares or knows or hears or thinks of
anything, and where the inertia that is in the very air of things will
at last wear down even the vitality, pluck, and good intentions of the
Americans themselves.
I have arranged to go to Manila on the 28th, to-morrow three weeks,
by the _Butuan_, the weekly mail. We heard fearful reports of these
steamers, as I told you, when we were leaving Manila, but unfortunately
there is no other means of getting to Manila from here. I am very glad it
is arranged that I am to go, and I am looking forward very much to the
change of air and scene. C—— is very anxious for me to take a servant to
wait on me, for ladies generally take a native retainer with them when
they travel about; but I won’t hear of such extravagance, and think I
shall have far less trouble with only myself to look after, and without
the extra burden of a bewildered Filipino. A friend of ours came from
Manila the other day on a visit, with one of these appanages of state in
her wake, and he seemed to me to be more trouble than the whole journey
was worth.
_À propos_ of servants, we had an amusing and very characteristic
adventure with the cook a day or two ago, when it occurred to us that for
some time past we had not seen what we thought was the worth of a _peso_
and a half of food appearing on the table, and nearly all the dishes
seemed to be concocted from ingredients out of the _dispensa_; and eggs
which, tiny though they are, cost the same as fresh-laid ones of ordinary
size at home. What is more, they go bad so quickly that the price is
really more, because so many have to be thrown away. Well, C—— said to
the cook quite amiably that that functionary must revert to his original
plan of giving us a daily list of his expenses, and the cook replied,
very sulkily, “_Si señor_.”
Next morning, when I was giving out stores, the cook said:
“I should like to leave the _señora’s_ service to-morrow. I can’t read or
write, as the _señora_ knows, and the cook downstairs, who used to do my
list for me, has gone away.”
Of course I knew every word of this to be an utter lie, and that my wily
friend was only “trying it on,” as they say, because he knew it would be
very inconvenient for us to dismiss him before I went to Manila. But I
did not flatter him or “play up” to him by looking the least surprised
or put out; I merely answered, very gravely and politely: “Certainly,
_cocinero_, that will suit us perfectly. I will see about your wages.”
Such a look of utter disgust and surprise came over his
monkey-face—exactly like Brookes’ monkey with the frying-pan—but I said
nothing, and went on serving out potatoes and tinned fruit, and giving
orders as to how I wished to have the things cooked.
When C—— came home and heard this domestic history, he wanted to go
and find the cook, and call him and his ancestry every name under the
sun; but I implored him not to pander to the creature’s vanity by such
a compliment as letting him think for one instant that we wished him
to stay. So no words were said; but we observed that the _menu_ was
immensely improved.
Next morning, when Domingo came for the cook’s marketing money, instead
of sending it out, I went out myself and said: “Well, do you want the
_gastos_ money or your wages?”
“Oh,” said the cook, with a regular sort of rogue’s way he has of looking
you straight in the eye, “I will take the _gastos_. I will remain with
the _señora_ to-day, as I see she has not been able to get another cook.”
Inwardly I gasped; but I thought it better not to take any notice of
such impudence, so I pretended I had not understood what he had said,
and replied that I was very sorry he had not been able to find another
situation, and that the _señor_ would permit him to stay on. He opened
his mouth as if he were going to answer, but evidently changed his mind,
for he said nothing, but just held out his hand for the money.
Since which skirmish he has given us better food, and better cooked than
we have ever had from him, and a daily list of expenses is handed to me
without comment.
I hope I don’t bore you with my simple domestic stories? But this one I
felt I must really tell you, as it is so absolutely characteristic of the
half “cute” Filipino.
Talking of native characters, there is a strange but very typical
hairdresser along our street, with one poor-looking little room opening
on to the road as his whole shop. All the barbers here do their business
in the evenings, when their saloons may be seen brightly lighted, with
men inside being operated on, while others loaf and gossip, but we have
never seen a sign of a customer in our neighbour’s little shop. Perhaps
he does business in the day time, and though we doubt it, we always
hope this is the case. In the evenings his door stands wide open, and
inside, the barber is to be seen lying back in an old armchair, with
his bare feet on the basin, playing an old fiddle in absolute peace and
contentment, while he watches his reflection in a big looking-glass.
In a sort of wild and whimsical way he makes me think of The Lady of
Shalott, and I fancy that some day a real customer will come riding by,
when the mirror will “crack from side to side,” and the hairdresser will
look out and see the world as it really is, and just die of misery.
But I am sure that as long as he sits and plays like that, it would be a
thousand pities if anyone came in with foolish and mundane ideas about
shaving chins or cutting hair.
The burst of heat I told you of, is over, and the days are cool again,
by comparison. Also, last night rain fell, and we got some water in our
tank, after the preliminary excitement of diverting the pipe to let the
dirt wash off the roof. This is a most important consideration, and as
the servants are very apt to leave the pipe over the cistern, instead of
moving it, so that when rain comes the first dirt will run away, one has
to turn out at any hour of the day or night, when rain begins to rattle
on the roofs. And how these tropical showers do rattle and roar, so that
one cannot hear the other speak without “hailing the main top,” as papa
would call it.
LETTER XIII.
SOME INFLUENCES OF CLIMATE, SCENERY, AND RELIGION
ILOILO, _February 18, 1905_.
You must excuse my writing still being rather bad, as my illness has left
me so weak that I shall not be out of bed for some days longer, in fact I
am beginning to be fearfully afraid that I may not be well enough to go
to Manila on the 28th after all. However, I have ten days to get well in,
which gives me hope, and my progress so far has been simply wonderful,
which is due to the extraordinary luck I have had in finding such good
doctors and such a charming and clever nurse.
I am much disappointed in having missed the visit of a U.S.A. man-of-war,
the _Rainbow_, which is on a cruise through the Islands, and has come
here for a couple of days. She is the flagship of the squadron the
Americans keep in the China seas, and a very fine ship, I believe.
Last night her crew gave a sing-song in the theatre, to which I persuaded
C—— to go, and was very glad I had done so, as he enjoyed it immensely,
and says it was a very good sort of Christy Minstrel “show.” It ended
with a small play, done by real “American Negroes,” as they are called.
The _Rainbow_ gave the same entertainment in Hong Kong, just before we
arrived, and I heard then how good it was. This afternoon we have been
invited to a reception to be held on board, but, of course, that also is
out of the question for me, and C—— will be busy at the office till very
late.
There is a great deal of work at the office now, as the chief business in
this island is sugar, and this is the height of the “season,” when great
loads of thousands of sacks go out every day to be put into steamers and
sailing vessels off the estuary. They have a rough factory here where
the cane is crushed, and the stuff exported is a thick, brown sort of
sand (_don’t_ make a joke about sand and sugar!), a great deal of which
goes to Europe and America, but most to Hong Kong, where it is refined in
great factories. The refined sugar that comes back from Hong Kong is what
we buy here; and, though an English company has started a sugar refinery
in Manila, they find that the conditions of trade in the Philippines are
such that they can only _just_ compete with the stuff refined elsewhere
and imported subject to the export tax and the enormous duties.
I think I am very lucky in having such a nice room to be ill in. It is
very large and shady, with three windows and two doors, and I look out
on a bright garden belonging to the house opposite, and a green field
and trees, which is charming. Through the trees are glimpses of the grey
backs of the houses in the street parallel to this, and then a thick,
high belt of palms, which hides the open sea.
This is the S.-W. side of the house. The back, to the N.-E., looks out
across a rough garden of fresh, thick grass to half a mile or so of
shallows, where the tide fluctuates, and beyond is the strip of blue
river, which looks so narrow seen from here that the big steamers which
go by seem to be sailing on dry land. Beyond, again, comes a fringe of
bright green palms, and then the open sea—a stretch of darkest blue—and a
bit of hilly, verdant Guimaras.
I think one of the great beauties of the views here is that the sky is
never quite cloudless—there are always very white clouds somewhere in
the dome of intense blue, which give relief and value to all the colours
below.
On days when the Monsoon is not too high, we open the shutters looking
towards the river, but these open wooden slats keep the houses quite
cool, even when the shutters are closed. I wish there were something like
the _tatties_ of India; but no one out here has ever heard of such a
thing. The open shutters are very nice though, and the view framed in the
dark opening which faces us at table is like looking at a large, bright
picture. Sometimes the tide is right up to the garden wall, the sky
cloudy, and the water like slate. At other times, when it is far out, the
shallows turn into mud-flats, with groups of native women wading about
in their bright red clothes, looking for mysterious fish which Filipinos
alone dare eat and live.
Some friends from Manila were looking out of the hall window a little
time ago, and said, “What a lovely view. I should never tire of that.” I
said we never did, which was quite true.
When I am well again, and if C—— can get away, I hope to be able to
go beyond the roads to Jaro and Molo, though they are beautiful and
inexhaustible. With all the beauty, however, I begin to have the same
sort of feeling about this country that that old friend of ours, General
R——, had about the girl at the Aldershot ball. You remember the story
he told us of how he saw her exquisite face across the ball-room, and
insisted on a common friend introducing him to her? And when he and the
friend had got half way across the ball-room, the old general said:
“Stop! Take me away. Get me out of it. Her face has never changed and
never can change. It isn’t a face. It’s a mask, sir, a mask! It is not a
human being. Come away!”
Well, I feel like that about Philippine scenery, which can be dark
or light according to the reflections thrown on it, but it has never
changed, and even if there is a slight change, when that has passed
it will always and for ever be the same greens and the same blue. No
alternation to red and yellow autumn, no brown and purple winter, no
delicate spring—nothing but perpetual, chromo-lithograph mid-summer,
which has always seemed to me the least beautiful season of the year.
When the wet Monsoon blows, I believe that season is counted as a sort
of spring, for various trees then come into bloom, but, for the great
part, everything just goes on growing and dying, and growing and dying
in dull routine, like the natives. In fact I often think the much-abused
Filipino is only a prototype, as it were, a sort of reflection, of his
country. It seems as if this were so, too, for those who go away to Hong
Kong or Japan to be educated, and come back full of civilisation and
enthusiasms, soon cast off their energy like a slough and return to the
shiftless, slouching habits of the land where it is “always afternoon.”
For them such habits are natural, and perhaps necessary, but a worse
effect is that white men get like that too, in time, and though they
may work well enough at the business by which they live, they become
indifferent, shiftless, careless about dress and the niceties of our
civilisation; everything is too much trouble, and they just jog along
in a half-animal routine. The young ones still fret for the world they
have left, which remains fresh in their memories; but this life takes
hold on men, and they become so rooted in its ways that they deteriorate
and can never live happily anywhere else again—in the same way that a
mind deteriorates on the slip-shod mental fare of magazine-reading, and
cannot be happy with anything that requires more effort to assimilate.
This, then, I find is the secret of that “nameless” fascination of
the Far East that one hears and reads so much about—it is the secret
of deterioration which is so easy, and elevation which is so hard, so
useless, so unnecessary—let us lie in a long chair and drink one whisky
peg after the other—who cares what the home papers say—what rot it is
to bother about anything but poker and shooting, or why old Wing Chang
bought Brown’s pony.
And when you think of the _real_ meaning of “Ship me somewhere east of
Suez”—well, you can’t think of it till you live there yourself for a
month or two. My refrain is, “Ship me somewhere west of Suez,” where
there is health for body and soul—the west of the exquisite thrush and
the lilac bush, instead of the empty, gaudy parrot and the flaming,
scentless canna.
Heavens! What a tirade!
_One_ woman have I met who likes the Philippines; though many, as I know,
love India, and the Straits, and Ceylon. But then those are generally
people who go away to “hills” and so on, or take trips home. Here there
are no “hills,” and a trip home is a serious life-problem. Just so, this
one woman who has been found to like the Philippines happens to be the
wife of a missionary, so, of course, she goes every hot season for a
“nice long holiday” to Japan.
It occurs to me that you may imagine we have savages here when I
speak of missionaries, but that is not the case, in this island at
any rate, for these good people are here—oh such a lot of them!—to
convert the Filipinos from Roman Catholicism. This is really a work
of supererogation, for, though the Spanish priests did ill-treat
the Filipinos, the natives are free now from that terror, and this
religion, with its mysteries and pomp, appeals to them, and suits their
dispositions perfectly.
I am afraid the unbiassed observer would find the missionaries far more
convincing in their enthusiasm, if it led them to give up the beautiful
houses and comfortable carriages they enjoy here, their tea-parties,
lectures, and so on, and go and rough it in some of the other islands,
where there are plenty of savages, Mahommedans, devil-worshippers,
cannibals, and all sorts of unreclaimed sheep.
Before I left home, I remember a very enthusiastic but woefully ignorant
old lady being filled with excitement when she heard I was going to the
Philippine Islands, and showing me missionary journals with a great deal
written in them about “the good work” being done out here. At first I
very naturally thought it was the savages who were being tackled, but—“Oh
dear no!” she cried, quite shocked. “The poor Filipinos are being saved
from the dreadful influence of the Roman Catholics.”