rather alarming. When the carriage was passing over the bridge spanning
the Pasig, I saw crowds running and looking down on the river, so I
told the coachman to stop, and stood up and saw a fairly large coasting
steamer drawn out from the other vessels at the wharf and pulled across
the stream, where it lay in a huge wall of flames like Brünnhilde in
the opera of _Siegfried_. When I first caught sight of it, there was a
complete steamer, but it burnt up with amazing rapidity, and as I looked,
the machinery suddenly sank through the hull, the bows and stem rose up
to meet each other, and the whole thing doubled up and vanished beneath
the water. Of course there was no one left on board, but all the same it
was a gruesome sight, and one I know I shall think of all the way back to
Iloilo in that fearful little _Butuan_ with its wobbly candlesticks.
In the evening we drove out to pay some calls, and then took a little
turn out beyond Santa Mesa, which is a big residential suburb on some
low hills inland. The people living there have told me that the air
is appreciably cooler than down in Manila, and there are far fewer
mosquitoes. The latter alone would be sufficient reason for living there,
as the mosquitoes here are awful, and always hungry night and day.
[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF INLAND SUBURBS OF MANILA.
_To face page 138._]
We drove a little beyond Santa Mesa (which is, being translated, The
Holy Supper) over abominable roads through little scrubby coppices.
At one place we saw a most curious sight of hundreds of white-clad
native people, in the sunset light, passing along a broad field-path
bordered with trees; and I at first thought we had come across a
religious procession. But when we got nearer, I saw that it was a crowd
returning from the cock-pit; for every second man carried a cock under
his arm; some sitting comfortably; some draggled with blood, wounded and
miserable; some limp and dead.
I can’t tell you what a feeling of sickness came over me, for I thought
it one of the most horrible sights I had ever witnessed; and I was
glad when the procession was out of sight, and I could no longer
see the animal-like, degraded faces of the men and their miserable,
blood-stained, dying birds.
I suppose the good folk in the towns and little villages in the U.S.A.,
the electors who control Philippine affairs, would rise as one man if a
bull-fight took place in these Islands; but yet a bull-fight, horrible
though it must be, is not so bad as these cock-fights, for at least the
toreadors and matadors risk their own lives to a certain extent, and run
an equal chance with the animals they torture; so it cannot help being a
more noble, or less ignoble sport than this sickening cock-fighting. But
so much has cock-fighting become the national “sport” of the Filipino
that, as I have shown you, he is always represented, typically, with
a fighting cock under his arm. But the significance of that also, and
all its natural consequences of brutality, gambling, and cruelty, I
suppose, escaped the attention of the benevolent elector, who visited the
“Exposition” at St Louis.
One thing I can never understand, and that is why people make less fuss
about the cruelty towards an animal in proportion to its size. This
sounds ridiculous at first, but when you come to think of it, it is
absolutely true; for if horses or tigers were set to fight like these
poor fowls—one fight in one palace!—there would be a howl all over the
civilised world, would there not?
_March 9._
We had tea yesterday afternoon at four as usual, and then drove out to
Malacañan for me to call on Mrs Luke E. Wright. The grounds of the palace
looked even more beautiful by daylight than they had when lighted up at
night, and the house is very fine, with huge rooms like halls, and floors
polished into brown looking-glass, all crowded with big pictures, arms,
and handsome furniture.
Mrs Wright received us on a big open balcony-terrace overlooking the
river, with a fine view; and here we sat and had tea and talked. Some
other people came before we left, for it was Mrs Wright’s At Home day,
amongst them one of the prettiest women I have ever seen, wife of some
young man in the American Diplomatic Service, a tall, dark girl with
an exquisite face, and perfectly dressed in something very filmy and
floating, of delicate mauves, with a big black hat. Her walk, her air,
her dress, made one suddenly feel how far away Manila is from all the
world one is accustomed to, and what a small, dull, back-water of the
stream of life this is.
We went on to call on the wife of Commissioner Worcester, a scientist as
well as a politician, and, as his title implies, one of the Americans
on the Philippine Commission. The Worcesters’ house was a little
higher up the river, and again we sat on a balcony-terrace, but this
one was all hung with plants and creepers, and overshadowed by dark
green trees, through which could be seen the blue-green soapy-looking
river swirling past, and the opposite bank with flat fields of emerald
grass and bits of bright blue sky. The rail of the balcony was bordered
with plants in pots, while all sorts of queer orchids and things grew
on the over-hanging branches. It was like a scene in a play, I thought,
and the shade of the deep trees was delightful, though they made the
balcony rather steamy and airless. Mrs Worcester showed me some of the
most lovely needlework I ever saw; all this native embroidery on _piña_
muslin, of which she is a keen _connaisseuse_ and collector. Some of the
pieces were as fine as the most delicate lace, and one large shawl, in
particular, was a marvel of embroidery on what I took to be very fine
net, but discovered to be drawn threads!
I have been finding out about prices here, in case we are sent to Manila
later on, and the result of my investigations is that I pray we may be
kept in the Provinces! Rents are appalling, the equivalent of our £100 a
year being quite a modest rent for a small unfurnished house, and wages
are more than double what is given in Iloilo. You can’t get a cook to
look at you here for less than 40 _pesos_ a month, which is £48 a year!
Most of the cooks are Chinese, I believe, as it is considered rather
common to have a native cook, though why this is I am unable to find
out, for the Filipinos are excellent cooks. But that is just where the
American Ideal of Philippines for the Filipinos begins to fall through,
and I noticed at Malacañan Palace that all the servants were Chinese,
and was told that they were an institution of Mrs Taft, the wife of the
last Governor, the man who, as I told you, I think, was _the_ original
pro-Filipino. One hears a good deal about this Governor Taft, who is now
Secretary of War in the U.S.A. He was the first American Civil Governor
of the Philippines, and seems to have a very strong personality, which he
flung into the pro-Filipino cause for all he was worth, on which account
he has become a sort of patron saint, rivalling Dr Rizal, with the
natives, who believe he is working tooth and nail in the U.S.A. for the
independence he promised them.
It is as impossible to get a clear idea of Mr Taft as of any other
public personage, for while some people tell me he is a high-souled,
disinterested philanthropist, who will live up to every word he has
uttered, others vow that he is only an American politician with a
skin-deep catch-vote policy, and that having got the billet he wanted in
America, he is quite capable of turning imperialist if it suits his book.
What is one to believe?
One thing they all agree in, which is that he has personal magnetism and
a great deal of social charm, which great gifts have stood him in very
good stead, I have no doubt, with the Filipinos, and have more to do with
his vast popularity with these Orientals than any vows and protestations;
and, perhaps helped to make up for the _faux-pas_ about the Chinese
servants, which still rankles in the native mind.
LETTER XVII.
DEMOCRACY AND SOCIETY IN MANILA
MANILA, _March 10, 1905_.
I am still in Manila, you see, but am going home to-morrow, so I will
write a line to go out by the next mail, which I should miss if I waited
till I get to Iloilo.
I rambled off so in my last letter that I quite forgot to tell you about
a party we went to at the house of some very rich _Mestizos_; a sort of
reception, with desultory dancing, but in the afternoon, or rather, the
evening hours before dinner.
When we arrived, at about six, the party was in full blast; rooms cleared
for action, blaze of electric lights, string band, crowds of pretty
frocks, and grounds all lighted up with arcades of paper lanterns. This
climate lends itself particularly to such entertainments, with the warm
evenings, and there is not much trouble in the way of preparation, with
big, open houses and polished floors.
Our host was a small man, Filipino altogether, but his wife, a tall and
very pretty Mestiza, “had fewer annas to the rupee,” and was exquisitely
dressed.
I walked about the pretty rooms and met many friends, besides recognising
many of those I had seen at the Malacañan _fête_, and saw again the
pretty young woman who had charmed me so at the palace, when we were
calling there. She looked prettier than ever amongst a crowd, though
they were all very smart, and some of the American women really well
dressed with nice hats.
This is such a small place, and so few travellers ever come here that
everyone knows everyone else, which makes parties very pleasant, though
I noticed, again, that the Americans are not really democratic a bit,
and there is a great deal of social distinction made, and people do not
recognise others whom they really know perfectly well.
The army is just as superior as the soldier set in any garrison in
any kingdom; and if a man is a merchant, unless his business happens
to bring in a large income, it would be absurd for him or his family
to expect to be asked to the exclusive dinners and parties at which
the administrative, military, and millionaire set congregate. I don’t
think I am at all keen to be a democrat, even a theoretical one, for it
must be very tiresome to have no real social position of your own, but
to depend on some one else’s recognition of your claims to a certain
income, an appointment, or who you are seen with, and what you wear—and
then, when all is said and done, to be the social equal of your workmen
and servants. Not that I suppose for a moment that anyone is really
a democrat, for I have never yet read or heard of such a being, and
certainly I have never seen one.
I have discussed this subject, in all good nature, and generally half
in fun, with nearly all the Americans I have met, for it is one that
interests me enormously; and the gist of all they tell me—or imply, which
is better—is that all Americans are the equals of those above but not
of those below them. If I suggest a social distinction between _any_
citizen of the United States and the King of England, the mere idea of
such a proposition makes these democrats go into fits of laughter; but
when I ask them if they, personally, would consider it an indignity to
be sent to dine in the King’s kitchen with his scullions, they generally
get quite offended and can’t see that at all. I think, too, that these
subtleties of democratic etiquette must be even more distracting to the
simple Filipino brain than they are to persons like myself, for though
the “little brown brother” is now being taught that all men are equal,
he can see without doubt that a native or _Mestizo_ with plenty of money
can get the wives of the highest American officials to visit his house,
whereas the poorer relative is not even recognised.
Emerson told his countrymen the truth once for all when he said that
“humanity loves a lord,”—and it will have “lords,” and must make “lords,”
and the best-intentioned Americans in the world will no more make these
half-bred Malays equals of each other, or any one else, than _they_ are
of each other or negroes.
You will laugh at me for my vehemence, I expect! But you can’t think how
aggravating it is to have a principle for ever forced down your throat
by the good folk who blatantly and utterly disregard the practice. So
the end of my reflections is that I am quite content to curtsey to a
king—_and_ to make my Filipino servants call me _señora_, and put on a
clean _camisa_ when they come into my presence.
I have wandered away from the _Mestizo_ party, but not so very far in
reality, for it is at such gatherings that such reflections occur to me,
along with speculations about the floor, and the refreshments, and how
much duty that woman paid for that frock. The refreshments, by-the-bye,
were very well done; and indeed, so was the whole party, and the charming
manners of the host and hostess did a great deal towards making
everything go off well.
Yesterday I spent a harrowing morning trying to buy some vests for C——.
Perfectly ordinary white cotton vests, such as the men wear here under
their white linen coats, but more difficult to track and procure in
Manila than so many birds of paradise. When I told my friends I was going
to get vests, they were amazed and asked me why I did such an eccentric
thing, instead of sending to Hong Kong for them like everyone else. But I
was rather on my mettle about it, and said I would get them in Manila in
one of the Chinese shops, for people in Iloilo had done this thing, and
why not I?
At one shop, where I had been told to go, a weary-looking Chinaman was
sitting in a chair at the shop door, and first I tried Spanish on him,
but with no result, not even a flicker of intelligence on his face. I
might have been talking in Pekin. So I said, “Do you sell cotton vests?”
“Wests? No. No have got wests.” And he spoke in a tired, helpless drawl,
as if his soul had been deadened by a life of trying to get “wests.”
But I was not to be put off, as I had been to six other shops and was
getting tired. So I said, “But I was told you sold vests. I don’t mean
waistcoats,” which I know _they_ often do, “I mean things to wear under a
coat. Vests.”
“Oh, yes. Allitee wests. Mellikan-Filipino store on Escolta. Oh, yes;
me savvy all about wests.” And he looked beyond me as if he had been
marooned in mid-ocean. I think it was really opium, which one gets
accustomed to in the Filipinos as well, for sometimes they are simply
maddening when they speak as though in a dream, staring with dull eyes.
The end of the vest story was that at last I tracked what I wanted to
a Chinese shop, where the display in the windows consisted of tin pans,
sausages, bead curtains, picture postcards, and things like that. After
a tour of the Escolta, I had arrived at this shop by the advice of the
coachman, to whom I managed to explain my wishes by a lurid pantomime
in the middle of the street. When the coachman at last understood that
I wanted to buy vests, and not to make him take his off, we went, as
I say, to this Chinese shop with the unpromising window-decorations.
When I entered and asked for vests, everyone brightened up, and a very
yellow old man took an opium pipe out of his mouth, and said something in
guttural words to a fat youth in the comfortable _négligé_ of a pair of
blue cotton trousers and a jade bangle.
This person evidently understood English, for he waived my Spanish aside
and began to talk very fast in _pidgin_, which, when you hear the real
thing, and not on the stage at home, is very difficult to understand.
However, he seemed to bring the word “wests” in pretty often, so I began
to feel hopeful, and made the old man draw a chair up to the counter for
me, and sat down.
Presently, after a fearful lot of talk with several other fat, yellow
youths, and a great deal of hauling down and putting away again of bales
and boxes, and sharp rebukes from another old Chinaman with a bead
counting-board, who was doing his accounts in a big book with Indian ink
and a paint brush, the boy who was attending to me came back to where I
sat, and threw down a pile of big, flat bundles with a triumphant air,
exclaiming “Wests!”
No such luck, however, for the bundles contained coloured furniture
cretonnes. So I set to work to explain again, but it was not so easy as
it had been in the Spanish shops, for no one, as far as I could see, had
on such a thing as a vest, an open coat being the most they wore above
the waist line. I did not dare to go out and make a demonstration with
the coachman, so I just struggled along with pantomime and bits of French
and German, which really did just as well as English or Spanish; till at
last a light dawned on a Celestial brain, and they all said some word
in Chinese to each other, and nodded and grinned and replied: “Allitee,
Mississy. Have got.”
And at last a box was opened, inside which were really and truly white
cotton vests. But the size was unfortunately intended for very small
and consumptive youths, so I had to begin another long and troublesome
explanation that the person they were intended for was forty-two inches
round the chest, which was conveyed by calculations and juggling with a
metre tape.
“Ah,” said the two old men. “Can catchee flom Hong Kong. All same
steamer. You waitee two tlee days.”
I said I knew that already, and explained that I was going to Iloilo
to-morrow.
“Velly good,” said one old man. “Mollow can get. Catchee flom one piecee
Chinaman in Manila.”
“Can’t I go to the other Chinaman myself?” I asked.
“Me catchee wests. Mollow can get number one size west.”
However, while this was going on, a bright idea had evidently occurred to
one of the shop boys, who had been looking so hard at me that I thought
he was ill; but he suddenly left the shop, going out of a doorway with
big Chinese letters in gold on a red placard over it, and came back, just
as I was leaving the shop, with the very things I wanted—a dozen of them
in a big cardboard box.
Such, then, is shopping in Manila, and it is only the replica of how I
tried to match embroidery cotton in the Spanish shop it had been bought
in; and the other despairing adventure I had when I went in search of
fruit dishes. So I now understand why everyone said it was absurd of me
to think I could “go shopping” in Manila, and I wished I had done as
everyone else does, and got the things direct from Hong Kong, and saved
all the trouble, as well as the annoyance of paying double; for, duty and
all, it is cheaper to get things in oneself.
I am glad to be going home to Iloilo, as the weather is beginning to get
pretty hot, and Iloilo is much cooler than this. Of course in Manila one
has the advantages of the Australian provisions from the Cold Storage,
which means fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit, besides being able to get
any amount of ice, all of which luxuries are a great aid towards bearing
up in a hot season; but the air at Iloilo is so much lighter, and the
fresh mornings and evenings down there are wonderful tonics.
As to the social attractions of Manila, they are no better than those at
Iloilo. Bridge! How one gets to hate the very sound of the name of the
game! And now when I see a group chained silently round a Bridge table, I
can only think of the Souls tied to their Vices in the Frescoes of Hell
in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
I met at dinner the other night the wife of a very “prominent citizen,”
who was a source of infinite delight to me in an elaborate defence I
drew out of her by pretending I knew nothing about the game. I find this
is the only safe course, by-the-bye, as, if you admit any knowledge of
Bridge, you are forced to play whether you like it or not—or whether you
can afford it or not, which is more important!
This good lady told me that it was quite true that she and the other
American ladies play cards all day, informing me that every morning she,
herself, played Bridge from eight to twelve, either in her own house or
in that of a friend. I said:
“But how about your housekeeping?”
“Why,” she answered, “if you have a good Chinese cook that don’t amount
to anything.”
“But it must be an awful bore,” I said, “in this climate to put on a
dress and a hat and go out in the hottest part of the day.”
To which she replied that if I would let her teach me Bridge I should
understand why she did these things. She was very amusing, in her dry,
American way, and made us all laugh very much at the comical things she
said. However, she was really in earnest about her offer to teach me; but
I said I was very grateful, only I thought I would rather remain ignorant
as long as I could if it “took” so badly as she described.
I feel much better in health for the change; and everybody here, both my
hosts and others, have been so kind to me that I am quite sorry to leave
them all. There are several pleasant people down in Iloilo, but I think a
change of society does one as much good as anything else, don’t you?
This will go out by the Hong Kong mail to-morrow, and I will catch the
next one by writing as soon as I get home, and sending the letter by the
_Butuan_ when she returns.
LETTER XVIII.
THE RETURN VOYAGE AND MY COMPANIONS
S.S. “BUTUAN,” _March 12, 1905_.
I will begin a letter to you now, as I may not have much time for writing
just after I get home. Not that there is really any fear of my letter
to you coming off second best in any case! You say how much you like my
letters, and what a pleasure they are to you, but they can’t be half
such a treat as yours are to me. I can’t tell you what it is to hear all
the home news, and about the frosty days, and the Christmas shops, and
the cold, jolly winter, and all the things one longs for out here with a
longing that is absolutely painful in this everlasting, sweltering heat.
Talking of heat, I don’t think I told you about a place above Manila away
inland, called Benguet? It is nick-named the Simla of Manila because it
is a cool region, high up in the mountains, where there are pine trees,
and frost at night, and fireplaces in the houses. This resort is not
much good to the average person, however, for it is three days’ journey
from Manila by rail and road—when the said road is not swept away, which
is its usual condition—and the trip costs more than to go to Japan. The
governor and the whole administration move up _en masse_ in the hot
season, and they have very nice houses, but there is not much in the way
of accommodation for mere mortals. This is the only attempt at “hills” in
the Philippines, which is a great pity, but then there are no roads, and
the places away from the big towns are not at all safe. Even round about
Manila the country is infested with what are officially called _Ladrones_
(robbers), who are really Insurgents, and quite recently the wife of a
Filipino official was kidnapped, and there was a great fuss about it.
The _Butuan_ is, on this trip, even less of a floating paradise than
when I came in her, for, on arriving on board yesterday, I found to my
horror that she was simply swarming with a Filipino boys’ school going
on an Easter outing to Iloilo. I wonder if you can even faintly imagine
what that means, or even dimly picture the condition of the ship, when I
tell you that there are seven four-berth cabins and we carry seventy-two
first-class passengers!
I consider myself fortunate in being in the best cabin again, with
nothing worse to put up with than the company of a pleasant native and
her little maidservant. She, the mistress, is a full-blooded Filipina,
and fearfully indignant at any insinuations to the contrary; a fat,
swarthy person, with a good-tempered, flat face that is probably handsome
according to its standards, and she wears a costume reduced to the last
limits of propriety, in the form of an untidy skirt, a spotlessly white
loose linen jacket, and slippers—which, I must say, is a most enviable
get-up in this temperature.
She tells me she was first married to a Spaniard, who left her very well
off, and her present husband is a German-American in the coastguard
service in Manila. She is now on a visit to her brother in the Island of
Negros. I took this person to be about thirty; but she tells me she is
forty-three, and that her good temper has kept her young looking, which I
can quite believe, for she takes the most “unpleasant episodes” with the
greatest amiability, and is really quite a charming companion. She says
that her husband is of a worrying nature, so he looks forty——
“Which is a very good thing,” she says, laughing all over her jolly fat
brown face, “as he is only twenty-eight. Did you see him when we left
Manila? He came to see me off.”
But unfortunately I had missed this individual amongst the seething
crowds that pushed about the deck till we started, and were then bundled
over the side and down a plank like so many sheep. I can’t think why on
earth none of these places have a gangway for the steamers.