In the Philippine Islands the American Government has tried, and is trying, to carry out exactly what the greatest geniusand most revered patriot ever known in the Philippines, José Rizal, steadfastly advocated,

—Theodore Roosevelt, then President of the United States, in a public address at Fargo, N. D., April 7, 1903.

Lineage Life and Labors

José Rizal

Philippine Patriot

A Study of the Growth of Free Ideas in the Trans-Pacific American Territory

By
Austin Craig
Assistant Professor Oriental History
University of the Philippines
Author of “The Study of José Rizal,” “El Lineaje del Doctor Rizal,” Etc.
Introduction by
James Alexander Robertson, L.H.D.

Manila
Philippine Education Company
1913

Dedication

The subject of Doctor Rizal’s first prize-winning poem was The Philippine Youth, and its theme was “Growth.” The study ofthe growth of free ideas, as illustrated in this book of his lineage, life and labors, may therefore fittingly be dedicatedto the “fair hope of the fatherland.”

Except in the case of some few men of great genius, those who are accustomed to absolutism cannot comprehend democracy. Thereforeour nation is relying on its young men and young women; on the rising, instructed generation, for the secure establishmentof popular self-government in the Philippines. This was Rizal’s own idea, for he said, through the old philosopher in “Nolime Tangere,” that he was not writing for his own generation but for a coming, instructed generation that would understandhis hidden meaning.

Your public school education gives you the democratic view-point, which the genius of Rizal gave him; in the fifty-five volumesof the Blair-Robertson translation of Philippine historical material there is available today more about your country’s pastthan the entire contents of the British Museum afforded him; and you have the guidance in the new paths that Rizal struckout, of the life of a hero who, farsightedly or providentially, as you may later decide, was the forerunner of the presentrégime.

But you will do as he would have done, neither accept anything because it is written, nor reject it because it does not fallin with your prejudices—study out the truth for yourselves.Page vi

Introduction

In writing a biography, the author, if he be discriminating, selects, with great care, the salient features of the life storyof the one whom he deems worthy of being portrayed as a person possessed of preëminent qualities that make for a characterand greatness. Indeed to write biography at all, one should have that nice sense of proportion that makes him instinctivelyseize upon only those points that do advance his theme. Boswell has given the world an example of biography that is oftenwearisome in the extreme, although he wrote about a man who occupied in his time a commanding position. Because Johnson wasJohnson the world accepts Boswell, and loves to talk of the minuteness of Boswell’s portrayal, yet how many read him, or ifthey do read him, have the patience to read him to the end?

In writing the life of the greatest of the Filipinos, Mr. Craig has displayed judgment. Saturated as he is with endless detailsof Rizal’s life, he has had the good taste to select those incidents or those phases of Rizal’s life that exhibit his greatnessof soul and that show the factors that were the most potent in shaping his character and in controlling his purposes and actions.

A biography written with this chastening of wealth cannot fail to be instructive and worthy of study. If one were to pointout but a single benefit that can accrue from a study of biography written as Mr. Craig has done that of Rizal, he would mention,I believe, that to the character of the student, for one cannot study seriously about men of character without being affectedby that study. As leading to an understanding of the character of Rizal, Mr. Craig has described his ancestry with considerablefulness and has shown how the selectivePage viiprinciple has worked through successive generations. But he has also realized the value of the outside influences and showshow the accidents of birth and nation affected by environment plus mental vigor and will produced José Rizal. With a strikinglymeager setting of detail, Rizal has been portrayed from every side and the reader must leave the biography with a knowledgeof the elements that entered into and made his life. As a study for the youth of the Philippines, I believe this life of Rizalwill be productive of good results. Stimulation and purpose are presented (yet not didactically) throughout its pages. Oneobject of the author, I should say, has been to show how both Philippine history and world history helped shape Rizal’s character.Accordingly, he has mentioned many historical matters both of Philippine and world-wide interest. One cannot read the bookwithout a desire to know more of these matters. Thus the book is not only a biography, it is a history as well. It must givea larger outlook to the youth of the Philippines. The only drawback that one might find in it, and it seems paradoxical tosay it, is the lack of more detail, for one leaves it wishing that he knew more of the actual intimate happenings, and this,I take it, is the best effect a biography can have on the reader outside of the instructive and moral value of the biography.

List of Illustrations

Portrait of Rizal FrontispiecePainted in oils by Felix Resurrection Hidalgo (in color).

Portrait GroupRizal at thirteen. Rizal at eighteen. Rizal in London. The portrait on the postage stamp.

Portrait Group1. In Luna’s home. 2. In 1890. 3. The portrait on the paper money. 4. In 1891. 5. In 1892.

Chapter I

America’s Forerunner

The lineage of a hero who made the history of his country during its most critical period, and whose labors constitute itshope for the future, must be more than a simple list of an ascending line. The blood which flowed in his veins must be tracedgeneration by generation, the better to understand the man, but at the same time the causes leading to the conditions of histimes must be noted, step by step, in order to give a better understanding of the environment in which he lived and labored.

The study of the growth of free ideas is now in the days of our democracy the most important feature of Philippine history;hitherto this history has consisted of little more than lists of governors, their term of office, and of the recital of suchincidents as were considered to redound to the glory of Spain, or could be so twisted and misrepresented as to make them appearto do so. It rarely occurred to former historians that the lamp of experience might prove a light for the feet of future generations,and the mistakes of the past were usually ignored or passed over, thus leaving the way open for repeating the old errors.But profit, not pride, should be the object of the study of the past, and our historians of today very largely concern themselveswith mistakes in policy and defects of system; fortunately for them such critical investigation under our changed conditionsdoes not involve the discomfort and danger that attended it in the days of Doctor Rizal.

Page 2In the opinion of the martyred Doctor, criticism of the right sort—even the very best things may be abused till they becomeintolerable evils—serves much the same useful warning purpose for governments that the symptoms of sickness do for persons.Thus government and individual alike, when advised in time of something wrong with the system, can seek out and correct thecause before serious consequences ensue. But the nation that represses honest criticism with severity, like the individualwho deadens his symptoms with dangerous drugs, is likely to be lulled into a false security that may prove fatal. Patriottoward Spain and the Philippines alike, Rizal tried to impress this view upon the government of his day, with fatal resultsto himself, and the disastrous effects of not heeding him have since justified his position.

The very defenses of Old Manila illustrate how the Philippines have suffered from lack of such devoted, honest and courageouscritics as José Rizal. The city wall was built some years later than the first Spanish occupation to keep out Chinese piratesafter Li Ma-hong destroyed the city. The Spaniards sheltered themselves in the old Tagalog fort till reënforcements couldcome from the country. No one had ever dared to quote the proverb about locking the door after the horse was stolen. The needfor the moat, so recently filled in, was not seen until after the bitter experience of the easy occupation of Manila by theEnglish, but if public opinion had been allowed free expression this experience might have been avoided. And the free spaceabout the walls was cleared of buildings only after these same buildings had helped to make the same occupation of the cityeasier, yet there were many in Manila who foresaw the danger but feared to foretell it.

Had the people of Spain been free to criticise the Spaniards’ way of waiting to do things until it is too late,Page 3that nation, at one time the largest and richest empire in the world, would probably have been saved from its loss of territoryand its present impoverished condition. And had the early Filipinos, to whom splendid professions and sweeping promises weremade, dared to complain of the Peninsular policy of procrastination—the “mañana” habit, as it has been called—Spain mighthave been spared Doctor Rizal’s terrible but true indictment that she retarded Philippine progress, kept the Islands miserablyruled for 333 years and in the last days of the nineteenth century was still permitting mediæval malpractices. Rizal did notbelieve that his country was able to stand alone as a separate government. He therefore desired to preserve the Spanish sovereigntyin the Philippines, but he desired also to bring about reforms and conditions conducive to advancement. To this end he carefullypointed out those colonial shortcomings that caused friction, kept up discontent, and prevented safe progress, and that wouldhave been perfectly easy to correct. Directly as well as indirectly, the changes he proposed were calculated to benefit thehomeland quite as much as the Philippines, but his well-meaning efforts brought him hatred and an undeserved death, thus provingonce more how thankless is the task of telling unpleasant truths, no matter how necessary it may be to do so. Because Rizalspoke out boldly, while realizing what would probably be his fate, history holds him a hero and calls his death a martyrdom.He was not one of those popularity-seeking, self-styled patriots who are ever mouthing “My country, right or wrong;” his devotionwas deeper and more disinterested. When he found his country wrong he willingly sacrificed himself to set her right. Suchunselfish spirits are rare; in life they are often misunderstood, but when time does them justice, they come into a fame whichendures.

Page 4Doctor Rizal knew that the real Spain had generous though sluggish intentions, and noble though erratic impulses, but it awoketoo late; too late for Doctor Rizal and too late to save the Philippines for Spain; tardy reforms after his death were uselessand the loss of her overseas possessions was the result. Doctor Rizal lost when he staked his life on his trust in the innatesense of honor of Spain, for that sense of honor became temporarily blinded by a sudden but fatal gust of passion; and ittook the shock of the separation to rouse the dormant Spanish chivalry.

Still in the main Rizal’s judgment was correct, and he was the victim of mistimed, rather than of misplaced, confidence, foras soon as the knowledge of the real Rizal became known to the Spanish people, belated justice began to be done his memory,and then, repentant and remorseful, as is characteristically Castilian, there was little delay and no half-heartedness. Anothername may now be grouped with Columbus and Cervantes among those to whom Spain has given imprisonment in life and monumentsafter death—chains for the man and chaplets for his memory. In 1896, during the few days before he could be returned to Manila,Doctor Rizal occupied a dungeon in Montjuich Castle in Barcelona; while on his way to assist the Spanish soldiers in Cubawho were stricken with yellow fever, he was shipped and sent back to a prejudged trial and an unjust execution. Fifteen yearslater the Catalan city authorities commemorated the semi-centennial of this prisoner’s birth by changing, in his honor, thename of a street in the shadow of the infamous prison of Montjuich Castle to “Calle del Doctor Rizal.”

More instances of this nature are not cited since they are not essential to the proper understanding of Rizal’s story, butlet it be made clear once for all that whateverPage 5harshness may be found in the following pages is directed solely to those who betrayed the trust of the mother country andselfishly abused the ample and unrestrained powers with which Spain invested them.

And what may seem the exaltation of the Anglo-Saxons at the expense of the Latins in these pages is intended only to pointout the superiority of their ordered system of government, with its checks and balances, its individual rights and individualduties, under which men are “free to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law.” No human being can be safely trusted withunlimited power, and no man, no matter what his nationality, could have withstood the temptations offered by the chaotic conditionsin the Philippines in past times any better than did the Spaniards. There is nothing written in this book that should conveythe opinion that in similar circumstances men of any nationality would not have acted as the Spaniards did. The easiest recognizedcharacteristic of absolutism, and all the abuses and corruption it brings in its train, is fear of criticism, and Spain drewher own indictment in the Philippines when she executed Rizal.

When any nation sets out to enroll all its scholarly critics among the martyrs in the cause of Liberty, it makes an open confessionof guilt to all the world. For a quarter of a century Spain had been ruling in the Philippines by terrorizing its subjectsthere, and Rizal’s execution, with utter disregard of the most elementary rules of judicial procedure, was the culminationthat drove the Filipinos to desperation and arrested the attention of the whole civilized world. It was evident that Rizal’sfate might have been that of any of his countrymen, and the thinking world saw that events had taken such a course in thePhilippines that it had become justifiable for the Filipinos to attempt to dissolve the politicalPage 6bands which had connected them with Spain for over three centuries.

Such action by the Filipinos would not have been warranted by a solitary instance of unjust execution under stress of politicalexcitement that did not indicate the existence of a settled policy. Such instances are rather to be classed among the mistakesto which governments as well as individuals are liable. Yet even such a mistake may be avoided by certain precautions whichexperience has suggested, and the nation that disregards these precautions is justly open to criticism.

Our present Philippine government guarantees to its citizens as fundamental rights, that no person shall be held to answerfor a capital crime unless on an indictment, nor may he be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The accused must have a speedy, public and impartialtrial, be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, be confronted with the witnesses against him, have compulsoryprocess for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and have the assistance of counsel for his defense. Not one of these safeguardsprotected Doctor Rizal except that he had an “open trial,” if that name may be given to a courtroom filled with his enemiesopenly clamoring for his death without rebuke from the court. Even the presumption of innocence till guilt was establishedwas denied him. These precautions have been considered necessary for every criminal trial, but the framers of the AmericanConstitution, fearful lest popular prejudice some day might cause injustice to those advocating unpopular ideals, prohibitedthe irremediable penalty of death upon a charge of treason except where the testimony of two reliable witnesses establishedsome overt act, inference not being admissible as evidence.

Page 7Such protection was not given the subjects of Spain, but still, with all the laxity of the Spanish law, and even if all thecharges had been true, which they were far from being, no case was made out against Doctor Rizal at his trial. According tothe laws then in effect, he was unfairly convicted and he should be considered innocent; for this reason his life will bestudied to see what kind of hero he was, and no attempt need be made to plead good character and honest intentions in extenuationof illegal acts. Rizal was ever the advocate of law, and it will be found, too, that he was always consistently law-abiding.

Though they are in the Orient, the Filipinos are not of it. Rizal once said, upon hearing of plans for a Philippine exhibitat a European World’s Fair, that the people of Europe would have a chance to see themselves as they were in the Middle Ages.With allowances for the changes due to climate and for the character of the country, this statement can hardly be called exaggerated.The Filipinos in the last half of the nineteenth century were not Orientals but mediæval Europeans—to the credit of the earlyCastilians but to the discredit of the later Spaniards.

The Filipinos of the remoter Christian barrios, whom Rizal had in mind particularly, were in customs, beliefs and advancementsubstantially what the descendants of Legaspi’s followers might have been had these been shipwrecked on the sparsely inhabitedislands of the Archipelago and had their settlement remained shut off from the rest of the world.

Except where foreign influence had accidentally crept in at the ports, it could truthfully be said that scarcely perceptibleadvance had been made in three hundred years. Succeeding Spaniards by their misrule not only added little to the gloriousachievement of their ancestors, but seemedPage 8to have prevented the natural progress which the land would have made.

In one form or another, this contention was the basis of Rizal’s campaign. By careful search, it is true, isolated instancesof improvement could be found, but the showing at its very best was so pitifully poor that the system stood discredited. Andit was the system to which Rizal was opposed.

The Spaniards who engaged in public argument with Rizal were continually discovering, too late to avoid tumbling into them,logical pitfalls which had been carefully prepared to trap them. Rizal argued much as he played chess, and was ever readyto sacrifice a pawn to be enabled to say “check.” Many an unwary opponent realized after he had published what he had considereda clever answer that the same reasoning which scored a point against Rizal incontrovertibly established the Kalamban’s majorpremise.

Superficial antagonists, to the detriment of their own reputations, have made much of what they chose to consider Rizal’shistorical errors. But history is not merely chronology, and his representation of its trend, disregarding details, was amasterly tracing of current evils to their remote causes. He may have erred in some of his minor statements; this will happento anyone who writes much, but attempts to discredit Rizal on the score of historical inaccuracy really reflect upon the captiouscritics, just as a draftsman would expose himself to ridicule were he to complain of some famous historical painting thatit had not been drawn to exact scale. Rizal’s writings were intended to bring out in relief the evils of the Spanish systemof the government of the Filipino people, just as a map of the world may put the inhabited portions of the earth in greaterprominence than those portions that are not inhabited. Neither is exact in its representation, butPage 9each serves its purpose the better because it magnifies the important and minimizes the unimportant.

In his disunited and abased countrymen, Rizal’s writings aroused, as he intended they should, the spirit of nationality, ofa Fatherland which was not Spain, and put their feet on the road to progress. What matters it, then, if his historical referencesare not always exhaustive, and if to make himself intelligible in the Philippines he had to write in a style possibly notalways sanctioned by the Spanish Academy? Spain herself had denied to the Filipinos a system of education that might havemade a creditable Castilian the common language of the Archipelago. A display of erudition alone does not make an historian,nor is purity, propriety and precision in choosing words all there is to literature.

Rizal charged Spain unceasingly with unprogressiveness in the Philippines, just as he labored and planned unwearyingly tobring the Filipinos abreast of modern European civilization. But in his appeals to the Spanish conscience and in his endeavorsto educate his countrymen he showed himself as practical as he was in his arguments, ever ready to concede nonessentials inname and means if by doing so progress could be made.

Because of his unceasing efforts for a wiser, better governed and more prosperous Philippines, and because of his frank admissionthat he hoped thus in time there might come a freer Philippines, Rizal was called traitor to Spain and ingrate. Now honest,open criticism is not treason, and the sincerest gratitude to those who first brought Christian civilization to the Philippinesshould not shut the eyes to the wrongs which Filipinos suffered from their successors. But until the latest moment of Spanishrule, the apologists of Spain seemed to think that they ought to be able to turn away the wrath evoked by the cruelty andincompetence that ran riot during centuries, by dwellingPage 10upon the benefits of the early days of the Spanish dominion.

Wearisome was the eternal harping on gratitude which at one time was the only safe tone for pulpit, press and public speech;it irritating because it ignored questions of current policy, and it was discouraging to the Filipinos who were reminded byit of the hopeless future for their country to which time had brought no progress. But with all the faults and unworthinessof the later rulers, and the inane attempts of their parasites to distract attention from these failings, there remains undimmedthe luster of Spain’s early fame. The Christianizing which accompanied her flag upon the mainland and islands of the New Worldis its imperishable glory, and the transformation of the Filipino people from Orientals into mediæval Europeans through thecolonizing genius of the early Castilians, remains a marvel unmatched in colonial history and merits the lasting gratitudeof the Filipino.

Doctor Rizal satirized the degenerate descendants and scored the unworthy successors, but his writings may be searched invain for wholesale charges against the Spanish nation such as Spanish scribblers were forever directing against all Filipinos,past, present and future, with an alleged fault of a single one as a pretext. It will be found that he invariably recognizedthat the faithful first administrators and the devoted pioneer missionaries had a valid claim upon the continuing gratitudeof the people of Tupa’s and Lakandola’s land.

Rizal’s insight discerned, and experience has demonstrated, that Legaspi, Urdaneta and those who were like them, laid broadand firm foundations for a modern social and political organization which could be safely and speedily established by reformsfrom above. The early Christianizing civilizers deserve no part of the blame for the fact that Philippine ports were not earlieropenedPage 11to progress, but much credit is due them that there is succeeding here an orderly democracy such as now would be impossiblein any neighboring country.

The Philippine patriot would be the first to recognize the justice of the selection of portraits which appear with that ofRizal upon the present Philippine postage stamps, where they serve as daily reminders of how free government came here.

The constancy and courage of a Portuguese sailor put these Islands into touch with the New World with which their future progresswas to be identified. The tact and honesty of a civil official from Mexico made possible the almost bloodless conquest whichbrought the Filipinos under the then helpful rule of Spain. The bequest of a far-sighted early philanthropist was the beginningof the water system of Manila, which was a recognition of the importance of efforts toward improving the public health andremains a reminder of how, even in the darkest days of miseries and misgovernment, there have not been wanting Spaniards whoseideal of Spanish patriotism was to devote heart, brain and wealth to the welfare of the Filipinos. These were the heroes ofthe period of preparation.

The life of the one whose story is told in these pages was devoted and finally sacrificed to dignify their common countryin the eyes of his countrymen, and to unite them in a common patriotism; he inculcated that self-respect which, by leadingto self-restraint and self-control, makes self-government possible; and sought to inspire in all a love of ordered freedom,so that, whether under the flag of Spain or any other, or by themselves, neither tyrants (caciques) nor slaves (those ledby caciques) would be possible among them.

And the change itself came through an American President who believed, and practiced the belief, that nationsPage 12owed obligations to other nations just as men had duties toward their fellow-men. He established here Liberty through Law,and provided for progress in general education, which should be a safeguard to good government as well, for an enlightenedpeople cannot be an oppressed people. Then he went to war against the Philippines rather than deceive them, because the Filipinos,who repeatedly had been tricked by Spain with unfulfilled promises, insisted on pledges which he had not the power to give.They knew nothing of what was meant by the rule of the people, and could not conceive of a government whose head was the servantand not the master. Nor did they realize that even the voters might not promise for the future, since republicanism requiresthat the government of any period shall rule only during the period that it is in the majority. In that war military gloryand quick conquest were sacrificed to consideration for the misled enemy, and every effort was made to minimize the evilsof warfare and to gain the confidence of the people. Retaliation for violations of the usages of civilized warfare, of whichFilipinos at first were guilty through their Spanish training, could not be entirely prevented, but this retaliation contrastedstrikingly with the Filipinos’ unhappy past experiences with Spanish soldiers. The few who had been educated out of Spainand therefore understood the American position were daily reënforced by those persons who became convinced from what theysaw, until a majority of the Philippine people sought peace. Then the President of the United States outlined a policy, andthe history and constitution of his government was an assurance that this policy would be followed; the American governmentthen began todo what it had not been able topromise.

The forerunner and the founder of the present regime in these Islands, by a strange coincidence, were as alikePage 13in being cruelly misunderstood in their lifetimes by those whom they sought to benefit as they were in the tragedy of theirdeaths, and both were unjustly judged by many, probably well-meaning, countrymen.

Magellan, Legaspi, Carriedo, Rizal and McKinley, heroes of the free Philippines, belonged to different times and were of differenttypes, but their work combined to make possible the growing democracy of to-day. The diversity of nationalities among theseheroes is an added advantage, for it recalls that mingling of blood which has developed the Filipinos into a strong people.

England, the United States and the Philippines are each composed of widely diverse elements. They have each been developedby adversity. They have each honored their severest critics while yet those critics lived. Their common literature, whichtells the story of human liberty in its own tongue, is the richest, most practical and most accessible of all literature,and the popular education upon which rests the freedom of all three is in the same democratic tongue, which is the most widelyknown of civilized languages and the only unsycophantic speech, for it stands alone in not distinguishing by its use of pronounsin the second person the social grade of the individual addressed.

The future may well realize Rizal’s dream that his country should be to Asia what England has been to Europe and the UnitedStates is in America, a hope the more likely to be fulfilled since the events of 1898 restored only associations of the earlierand happier days of the history of the Philippines. The very name now used is nearer the spelling of the originalPhilipinas than the Filipinas of nineteenth century Spanish usage. The first form was used until nearly a century ago, when it was corruptedalong with so many things of greater importance.Page 14

The Philippines at first were called “The Islands of the West,” as they are considered to be occidental and not oriental.They were made known to Europe as a sequel to the discoveries of Columbus. Conquered and colonized from Mexico, most of theirpious and charitable endowments, churches, hospitals, asylums and colleges, were endowed by philanthropic Mexicans. Almostas long as Mexico remained Spanish the commerce of the Philippines was confined to Mexico, and the Philippines were a partof the postal system of Mexico and dependentPage 15upon the government of Mexico exactly as long as Mexico remained Spanish. They even kept the new world day, one day behindEurope, for a third of a century longer. The Mexican dollars continued to be their chief coins till supplanted, recently,by the present peso, and the highbuttoned white coat, the “americana,” by that name was in general use long years ago. Thename America is frequently to be found in the old baptismal registers, for a century or more ago many a Filipino child wasso christened, and in the ’70’s Rizal’s carving instructor, because so many of the best-made articles he used were of Americanmanufacture, gave the name “Americano” to a godchild. As Americans, Filipinos were joined with the Mexicans when King Ferdinand VIIthanked his subjects in both countries for their loyalty during the Napoleonic wars. Filipino students abroad found, too,books about the Philippines listed in libraries and in booksellers’ catalogues as a branch of “Americana.”

Nor was their acquaintance confined to Spanish Americans. The name “English” was early known. Perhaps no other was more familiarin the beginning, for it was constantly execrated by the Spaniards, and in consequence secretly cherished by those who sufferedwrongs at their hands.

Magellan had lost his life in his attempted circumnavigation of the globe and Elcano completed the disastrous voyage in ashattered ship, minus most of its crew. But Drake, an Englishman, undertook the same voyage, passed the Straits in less timethan Magellan, and was the first commander in his own ship to put a belt around the earth. These facts were known in the Philippines,and from them the Filipinos drew comparisons unfavorable to the boastful Spaniards.

When the rich Philippine galleonSanta Ana was captured off the California coast by Thomas Candish, “threePage 16boys born in Manila” were taken on board the English ships. Afterwards Candish sailed into the straits south of “Luçon” andmade friends with the people of the country. There the Filipinos promised “both themselves, and all the islands thereabouts,to aid him whensoever he should come again to overcome the Spaniards.”

Dampier, another English sea captain, passed through the Archipelago but little later, and one of his men, John Fitzgeraldby name, remained in the Islands, marrying here. He pretended to be a physician, and practiced as a doctor in Manila. Therewas no doubt room for him, because when Spain expelled the Moors she reduced medicine in her country to a very low state,for the Moors had been her most skilled physicians. Many of these Moors who were Christians, though not orthodox accordingto the Spanish standard, settled in London, and the English thus profited by the persecution, just as she profited when thecutlery industry was in like manner transplanted from Toledo to Sheffield.

The great Armada against England in Queen Elizabeth’s time was an attempt to stop once for all the depredations of her subjectson Spain’s commerce in the Orient. As the early Spanish historian, Morga, wrote of it: “Then only the English nation disturbedthe Spanish dominion in that Orient. Consequently King Philip desired not only to forbid it with arms near at hand, but alsoto furnish an example, by their punishment, to all the northern nations, so that they should not undertake the invasions thatwe see. A beginning was made in this work in the year one thousand five hundred and eighty-eight.”

This ingeniously worded statement omits to tell how ignominiously the pretentious expedition ended, but the fact of failureremained and did not help the prestige of Spain, especially among her subjects in the Far East. After all the boastings ofwhat was going to happen, andPage 17all the claims of what had been accomplished, the enemies of Spain not only were unchecked but appeared to be bolder thanever. Some of the more thoughtful Filipinos then began to lose confidence in Spanish claims. They were only a few, but theirnumbers were to increase as the years went by. The Spanish Armada was one of the earliest of those influences which, reënforcedby later events, culminated in the life work of José Rizal and the loss of the Philippines by Spain.

At that time the commerce of Manila was restricted to the galleon trade with Mexico, and the prosperity of the Filipino merchants—inlarge measure the prosperity of the entire Archipelago—depended upon the yearly ventures the hazard of which was not so muchthe ordinary uncertainty of the sea as the risk of capture by English freebooters. Everybody in the Philippines had heardof these daring English mariners, who were emboldened by an almost unbroken series of successes which had correspondinglydiscouraged the Spaniards. They carried on unceasing war despite occasional proclamation of peace between England and Spain,for the Spanish treasure ships were tempting prizes, and though at times policy made their government desire friendly relationswith Spain, the English people regarded all Spaniards as their natural enemies and all Spanish property as their legitimatespoil.

The Filipinos realized earlier than the Spaniards did that torturing to death shipwrecked English sailors was bad policy.The result was always to make other English sailors fight more desperately to avoid a similar fate. Revenge made them moreand more aggressive, and treaties made with Spain were disregarded because, as they said, Spain’s inhumanity had forfeitedher right to be considered a civilized country.

It was less publicly discussed, but equally well known, that the English freebooters, besides committing countlessPage 18depredations on commerce, were always ready to lend their assistance to any discontented Spanish subjects whom they couldencourage into open rebellion.

The English word Filibuster was changed into “Filibusteros” by the Spanish, and in later years it came to be applied especiallyto those charged with stirring up discontent and rebellion. For three centuries, in its early application to the losses ofcommerce, and in its later use as denoting political agitation, possibly no other word in the Philippines, outside of theordinary expressions of daily life, was so widely known, and certainly none had such sinister signification.

In contrast to this lawless association is a similarity of laws. The followers of Cortez, it will be remembered, were welcomedin Mexico as the long-expected “Fair Gods” because of their blond complexions derived from a Gothic ancestry. Far back inhistory their forbears had been neighbors of the Anglo-Saxons in the forests of Germany, so that the customs of Anglo-SaxonEngland and of the Gothic kingdom of Castile had much in common. The “Laws of the Indies,” the disregard of which was theground of most Filipino complaints up to the very last days of the rule of Spain, was a compilation of such of these Anglo-Saxon-Castilianlaws and customs as it was thought could be extended to the Americas, originally called the New Kingdom of Castile, whichincluded the Philippine Archipelago. Thus the New England township and the Mexican, and consequently the early Philippinepueblo, as units of local government are nearly related.

These American associations, English influences, and Anglo-Saxon ideals also culminated in the life work of José Rizal, theheir of all the past ages in Philippine history. But other causes operating in his own day—the stories of his elders, theincidents of his childhood, thePage 19books he read, the men he met, the travels he made—as later pages will show—contributed further to make him the man he was.

It was fortunate for the Philippines that after the war of misunderstanding with the United States there existed a characterthat commanded the admiration of both sides. Rizal’s writings revealed to the Americans aspirations that appealed to themand conditions that called forth their sympathy, while the Filipinos felt confidence, for that reason, in the otherwise incomprehensiblenew government which honored their hero.

Rizal was already, and had been for years, without rival as the idol of his countrymen when there came, after deliberationand delay, his official recognition in the Philippines. Necessarily there had to be careful study of his life and scrutinyof his writings before the head of our nation could indorse as the corner stone of the new government which succeeded Spain’smisrule, the very ideas which Spain had considered a sufficient warrant for shooting their author as a traitor.

Finally the President of the United States in a public address at Fargo, North Dakota, on April 7, 1903—five years after Americanscholars had begun to study Philippine affairs as they had never been studied before—declared: ”In the Philippine Islands the American government has tried, and is trying, to carry out exactly what the greatest geniusand most revered patriot ever known in the Philippines, José Rizal, steadfastly advocated,” a formal, emphatic and clear-cut expression of national policy upon a question then of paramountinterest.

In the light of the facts of Philippine history already set forth there is no cause for wonder at this sweeping indorsement,even though the views so indorsed were those of a man who lived in conditions widely different from those about to be introducedby the new government.Page 20Rizal had not allowed bias to influence him in studying the past history of the Philippines, he had been equally honest withhimself in judging the conditions of his own time, and he knew and applied with the same fairness the teaching which holdstrue in history as in every other branch of science that like causes under like conditions must produce like results, He hadbeen careful in his reasoning, and it stood the test, first of President Roosevelt’s advisers, or otherwise that Fargo speechwould never have been made, and then of all the President’s critics, or there would have been heard more of the statementquoted above which passed unchallenged, but not, one may be sure, uninvestigated.

The American system is in reality not foreign to the Philippines, but it is the highest development, perfected by experience,of the original plan under which the Philippines had prospered and progressed until its benefits were wrongfully withheldfrom them. Filipino leaders had been vainly asking Spain for the restoration of their rights and the return to the systemof the Laws of the Indies. At the time when America came to the Islands there was among them no Rizal, with a knowledge ofhistory that would enable him to recognize that they were getting what they had been wanting, who could rise superior to theunimportant detail of under what name or how the good came as long as it arrived, and whose prestige would have led his countrymento accept his decision. Some leaders had one qualification, some another, a few combined two, but none had the three, fora country is seldom favored with more than one surpassingly great man at one time.Page 21Page 22

Chapter II

Rizal’s Chinese Ancestry

Clustered around the walls of Manila in the latter half of the seventeenth century were little villages the names of which,in some instances slightly changed, are the names of present districts. A fashionable drive then was through the settlementof Filipinos in Bagumbayan—the “new town” to which Lakandola’s subjects had migrated when Legaspi dispossessed them of theirown “Maynila.” With the building of the moat this village disappeared, but the name remained, and it is often used to denotethe older Luneta, as well as the drive leading to it.

Within the walls lived the Spanish rulers and the few other persons that the fear and jealousy of the Spaniard allowed tocome in. Some were Filipinos who ministered to the needs of the Spaniards, but the greater number were Sangleyes, or Chinese,“the mechanics in all trades and excellent workmen,” as an old Spanish chronicle says, continuing: “It is true that the citycould not be maintained or preserved without the Sangleyes.”

The Chinese conditions of these early days are worth recalling, for influences strikingly similar to those which affectedthe life of José Rizal in his native land were then at work. There were troubled times in the ancient “Middle Kingdom,” theearlier name of the corruption of the Malay Tchina (China) by which we know it. The conquering Manchus had placed their emperoron the throne so long occupied by the native dynasty whose adherents had boastingly called themselves “The Sons of Light.”The former liberal and progressive government, under which the people prospered, had grown corrupt andPage 24helpless, and the country had yielded to the invaders and passed under the terrible tyranny of the Tartars.

Yet there were true patriots among the Chinese who were neither discouraged by these conditions nor blind to the real causeof their misfortunes. They realized that the easy conquest of their country and the utter disregard by their people of thebad government which had preceded it, showed that something was wrong with themselves.

Too wise to exhaust their land by carrying on a hopeless war, they sought rather to get a better government by deserving it,and worked for the general enlightenment, believing that it would offer the most effective opposition to oppression, for theyknew well that an intelligent people could not be kept enslaved. Furthermore, they understood that, even if they were freedfrom foreign rule, the change would be merely to another tyranny unless the darkness of the whole people were dispelled. Thefew educated men among them would inevitably tyrannize over the ignorant many sooner or later, and it would be less easy toescape from the evils of such misrule, for the opposition to it would be divided, while the strength of union would opposeany foreign despotism. These true patriots were more concerned about the welfare of their country than ambitious for themselves,and they worked to prepare their countrymen for self-government by teaching self-control and respect for the rights of others.

No public effort toward popular education can be made under a bad government. Those opposed to Manchu rule knew of a secretsociety that had long existed in spite of the laws against it, and they used it as their model in organizing a new societyto carry out their purposes. Some of them were members of this Ke-Ming-Tong or Chinese Freemasonry as it is called, and itwas difficultPage 25for outsiders to find out the differences between it and the new Heaven-Earth-Man Brotherhood. The three parts to their nameled the new brotherhood later to be called the Triad Society, and they used a triangle for their seal.

The initiates of the Triad were pledged to one another in a blood compact to “depose the Tsing [Tartar] and restore the Ming[native Chinese] dynasty.” But really the society wanted only gradual reform and was against any violent changes. It was atfirst evolutionary, but later a section became dissatisfied and started another society. The original brotherhood, however,kept on trying to educate its members. It wanted them to realize that the dignity of manhood is above that of rank or riches,and seeking to break down the barriers of different languages and local prejudice, hoped to create an united China efficientin its home government and respected in its foreign relations.

It was the policy of Spain to rule by keeping the different elements among her subjects embittered against one another. Consequentlythe entire Chinese population of the Philippines had several times been almost wiped out by the Spaniards assisted by theFilipinos and resident Japanese. Although overcrowding was mainly the cause of the Chinese immigration, the considerationsalready described seem to have influenced the better class of emigrants who incorporated themselves with the Filipinos from1642 on through the eighteenth century. Apparently these emigrants left their Chinese homes to avoid the shaven crown andlong braided queue that the Manchu conquerors were imposing as a sign of submission—a practice recalled by the recent wholesalecutting off of queues which marked the fall of this same Manchu dynasty upon the establishment of the present republic. Thepatriot Chinese in Manila retained the ancient style, which somewhatPage 26resembled the way Koreans arrange their hair. Those who became Christians cut the hair short and wore European hats, otherwiseusing the clothing—blue cotton for the poor, silk for the richer—and felt-soled shoes, still considered characteristicallyChinese.

The reasons for the brutal treatment of the unhappy exiles and the causes of the frequent accusation against them that theywere intending rebellion may be found in the fear that had been inspired by the Chinese pirates, and the apprehension thatthe Chinese traders and workmen would take away from the Filipinos their means of gaining a livelihood. At times unjust suspicionsdrove some of the less patient to take up arms in self-defense. Then many entirely innocent persons would be massacred, whilethose who had not bought protection from some powerful Spaniard would have their property pillaged by mobs that protestedexcessive devotion to Spain and found their patriotism so profitable that they were always eager to stir up trouble.

One of the last native Chinese emperors, not wishing that any of his subjects should live outside his dominions, informedthe Spanish authorities that he considered the emigrants evil persons unworthy of his interest. His Manchu successors hadstill more reason to be careless of the fate of the Manila Chinese. They were consequently ill treated with impunity, whilethe Japanese were “treated very cordially, as they are a race that demand good treatment, and it is advisable to do so forthe friendly relations between the Islands and Japan,” to quote the ancient history once more.

Pagan or Christian, a Chinaman’s life in Manila then was not an enviable one, though the Christians were slightly more secure.The Chinese quarter was at first inside the city, but before long it became a considerable district of several streets alongArroceros near the presentPage 27Botanical Garden. Thus the Chinese were under the guns of the Bastion San Gabriel, which also commanded two other Chinesesettlements across the river in Tondo—Minondoc, or Binondo, and Baybay. They had their own headmen, their own magistratesand their own prison, and no outsiders were permitted among them. The Dominican Friars, who also had a number of missionarystations in China, maintained a church and a hospital for these Manila Chinese and established a settlement where those whobecame Christians might live with their families. Writers of that day suggest that sometimes conversions were prompted bythe desire to get married—which until 1898 could not be done outside the Church—or to help the convert’s business or to securethe protection of an influential Spanish godfather, rather than by any changed belief.

Certainly two of these reasons did not influence the conversion of Doctor Rizal’s paternal ancestor, Lam-co (that is, “Lam,Esq.”), for this Chinese had a Chinese godfather and was not married till many years later.

He was a native of the Chinchew district, where the Jesuits first, and later the Dominicans, had had missions, and he perhapsknew something of Christianity before leaving China. One of his church records indicates his home more definitely, for itspecifies Siongque, near the great city, an agricultural community, and in China cultivation of the soil is considered themost honorable employment. Curiously enough, without conversion, the people of that region even to-day consider themselvesakin to the Christians. They believe in one god and have characteristics distinguishing them from the Pagan Chinese, possiblyderived from some remote Mohammedan ancestors.

Lam-co’s prestige among his own people, as shown by his leadership of those who later settled with him inPage 28Biñan, as well as the fact that even after his residence in the country he was called to Manila to act as godfather, suggeststhat he was above the ordinary standing, and certainly not of the coolie class. This is borne out by his marrying the daughterof an educated Chinese, an alliance that was not likely to have been made unless he was a person of some education, and educationis the Chinese test of social degree.

He was baptized in the Parian church of San Gabriel on a Sunday in June of 1697. Lam-co’s age was given in the record as thirty-fiveyears, and the names of his parents were given as Siang-co and Zun-nio. The second syllables of these names are titles ofa little more respect than the ordinary “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” something like the Spanish Don and Doña, but possibly the Dominicanpriest who kept the register was not so careful in his use of Chinese words as a Chinese would have been. Following the customof the other converts on the same occasion, Lam-co took the name Domingo, the Spanish for Sunday, in honor of the day. Therecord of this baptism is still to be seen in the records of the Parian church of San Gabriel, which are preserved with theBinondo records, in Manila.

Chinchew, the capital of the district from which he came, was a literary center and a town famed in Chinese history for itsloyalty; it was probably the great port Zeitung which so strongly impressed the Venetian traveler Marco Polo, the first Europeanto see China.

The city was said by later writers to be large and beautiful and to contain half a million inhabitants, “candid, open andfriendly people, especially friendly and polite to foreigners.” It was situated forty miles from the sea, in the provinceof Fokien, the rocky coast of which has been described as resembling Scotland, and its sturdy inhabitants seem to have bornesome resemblance to thePage 29Scotch in their love of liberty. The district now is better known by its present port of Amoy.

Altogether, in wealth, culture and comfort, Lam-co’s home city far surpassed the Manila of that day, which was, however, patternedafter it. The walls of Manila, its paved streets, stone bridges, and large houses with spacious courts are admitted by Spanishwriters to be duePage 30to the industry and skill of Chinese workmen. They were but slightly changed from their Chinese models, differing mainly inornamentation, so that to a Chinese the city by the Pasig, to which he gave the name of “the city of horses,” did not seemstrange, but reminded him rather of his own country.

Famine in his native district, or the plague which followed it, may have been the cause of Lam-co’s leaving home, but it wasmore probably political troubles which transferred to the Philippines that intelligent and industrious stock whose descendantshave proved such loyal and creditable sons of their adopted country. Chinese had come to the Islands centuries before theSpaniards arrived and they are still coming, but no other period has brought such a remarkable contribution to the strongrace which the mixture of many peoples has built up in the Philippines. Few are the Filipinos notable in recent history whocannot trace descent from a Chinese baptized in San Gabriel church during the century following 1642; until recently manyhave felt ashamed of these really creditable ancestors.

Soon after Lam-co came to Manila he made the acquaintance of two well-known Dominicans and thus made friendships that changedhis career and materially affected the fortunes of his descendants. These powerful friends were the learned Friar FranciscoMarquez, author of a Chinese grammar, and Friar Juan Caballero, a former missionary in China, who, because of his own workand because his brother held high office there, was influential in the business affairs of the Order. Through them Lam-cosettled in Biñan, on the Dominican estate named after “St. Isidore the Laborer.” There, near where the Pasig river flows outof the Laguna de Bay, Lam-co’s descendants were to be tenants until another government, not yet born, and a system unknownin his day, shouldPage 31end a long series of inevitable and vexatious disputes by buying the estate and selling it again, on terms practicable forthem, to those who worked the land.

The Filipinos were at law over boundaries and were claiming the property that had been early and cheaply acquired by the Orderas endowment for its university and other charities. The Friars of the Parian quarter thought to take those of their parishionersin whom they had most confidence out of harm’s way, and by the same act secure more satisfactory tenants, for prejudice wasthen threatening another indiscriminate massacre. So they settled many industrious Chinese converts upon these farms, andflattered themselves that their tenant troubles were ended, for these foreigners could have no possible claim to the land.The Chinese were equally pleased to have safer homes and an occupation which in China placed them in a social position superiorto that of a tradesman.

Domingo Lam-co was influential in building up Tubigan barrio, one of the richest parts of the great estate. In name and appearanceit recalled the fertile plains that surrounded his native Chinchew, “the city of springs.” His neighbors were mainly Chinchewmen, and what is of more importance to this narrative, the wife whom he married just before removing to the farm was of agood Chinchew family. She was Inez de la Rosa and but half Domingo’s age; they were married in the Parian church by the samepriest who over thirty years before had baptized her husband.

Her father was Agustin Chinco, also of Chinchew, a rice merchant, who had been baptized five years earlier than Lam-co. Hisbaptismal record suggests that he was an educated man, as already indicated, for the name of his town proved a puzzle tilla present-day Dominican missionary from Amoy explained that it appeared to be the combined names for Chinchew in both thecommonPage 32and literary Chinese, in each case with the syllable denoting the town left off. Apparently when questioned from what townhe came, Chinco was careful not to repeat the word town, but gave its name only in the literary language, and when that wasnot understood, he would repeat it in the local dialect. The priest, not understanding the significance of either in thatform, wrote down the two together as a single word. Knowledge of the literary Chinese, or Mandarin, as it is generally called,marked the educated man, and, as we have already pointed out, education in China meant social position. To such minute deductionsis it necessary to resort when records are scarce, and to be of value the explanation must be in harmony with the conditionsof the period; subsequent research has verified the foregoing conclusions.

Agustin Chinco had also a Chinese godfather and his parents were Chin-co and Zun-nio. He was married to Jacinta Rafaela, aChinese mestiza of the Parian, as soon after his baptism as the banns could be published. She apparently was the daughterof a Christian Chinese and a Chinese mestiza; there were too many of the name Jacinta in that day to identify which of theseveral Jacintas she was and so enable us to determine the names of her parents. The Rafaela part of her name was probablyadded after she was grown up, in honor of the patron of the Parian settlement, San Rafael, just as Domingo, at his marriage,added Antonio in honor of the Chinese. How difficult guides names then were may be seen from this list of the six childrenof Agustin Chinco and Jacinta Rafaela: Magdalena Vergara, Josepha, Cristoval de la Trinidad, Juan Batista, Francisco Hong-Sunand Inez de la Rosa.

The father-in-law and the son-in-law, Agustin and Domingo, seem to have been old friends, and apparently of the same class.Lam-co must have seen his future wife,Page 33the youngest in Chinco’s numerous family, grow up from babyhood, and probably was attracted by the idea that she would makea good housekeeper like her thrifty mother, rather than by any romantic feelings, for sentiment entered very little into matrimonyin those days when the parents made the matches. Possibly, however, their married life was just as happy, for divorces thenwere not even thought of, and as this couple prospered they apparently worked well together in a financial way.

The next recorded event in the life of Domingo Lam-co and his wife occurred in 1741 when, after years of apparently happyexistence in Biñan, came a great grief in the loss of their baby daughter, Josepha Didnio, probably named for her aunt. Shehad lived only five days, but payments to the priest for a funeral such as was not given to many grown persons who died thatyear in Biñan show how keenly the parents felt the loss of their little girl. They had at the time but one other child, aboy of ten, Francisco Mercado, whose Christian name was given partly because he had an uncle of the same name, and partlyas a tribute of gratitude to the friendly Friar scholar in Manila. His new surname suggests that the family possessed thecommendable trait of taking pride in its ancestry.

Among the Chinese the significance of a name counts for much and it is always safe to seek a reason for the choice of a name.The Lam-co family were not given to the practice of taking the names of their god-parents. Mercado recalls both an honestSpanishencomendero of the region, also named Francisco, and a worthy mestizo Friar, now remembered for his botanical studies, but it is notlikely that these influenced Domingo Lam-co in choosing this name for his son. He gave his boy a name which in the carelessCastilian of the country was but a Spanish translation of the Chinese name by which hisPage 34ancestors had been called. Sangley, Mercado and Merchant mean much the same; Francisco therefore set out in life with a surnamethat would free him from the prejudice that followed those with Chinese names, and yet would remind him of his Chinese ancestry.This was wisdom, for seldom are men who are ashamed of their ancestry any credit to it.

The family history has to be gleaned from partially preserved parochial registers of births, marriages and deaths, incompletecourt records, the scanty papers of the estates, a few land transfers, and some stray writings that accidentally have beenpreserved with the latter. The next event in Domingo’s life which is revealed by them is a visit to Manila where in the oldParian church he acted as sponsor, or godfather, at the baptism of a countryman, and a new convert, Siong-co, whose granddaughterwas, we shall see, to marry a grandson of Lam-co’s, the couple becoming Rizal’s grandparents.

Francisco was a grown man when his mother died and was buried with the elaborate ceremonies which her husband’s wealth permitted.There was a coffin, a niche in which to put it, chanting of the service and special prayers. All these involved extra cost,and the items noted in the margin of her funeral record make a total which in those days was a considerable sum. Domingo outlivedMrs. Lam-co by but a few years, and he also had, for the time, an expensive funeral.Page 35Page 36

Chapter III

Liberalizing Hereditary Influences

The hope of the Biñan landlords that by changing from Filipino to Chinese tenantry they could avoid further litigation seemsto have been disappointed. A family tradition of Francisco Mercado tells of a tedious and costly lawsuit with the Order. Itsdetails and merits are no longer remembered, and they are not important.

History has recorded enough agrarian trouble, in all ages and in all countries, to prove the economic mistake of large holdingsof land by those who do not cultivate it. Human nature is alike the world over, it does not change with the centuries, andjust as the Filipinos had done, the Chinese at last objected to paying increased rent for improvements which they made themselves.

A Spanish judge required the landlords to produce their deeds, and, after measuring the land, he decided that they were thentaking rent for considerably more than they had originally bought or had been given. But the tenants lost on the appeal, and,as they thought it was because they were weak and their opponents powerful, a grievance grew up which was still rememberedin Rizal’s day and was well known and understood by him.

Another cause of discontent, which was a liberalizing influence, was making itself felt in the Philippines about the timeof Domingo’s death. A number of Spaniards had been claiming for their own countrymen such safeguards of personal liberty aswere enjoyed by Englishmen, for no other government in Europe then paid any attention to the rights of the individual. Learnedmen had devoted much study to the laws and rights of nations, but these Spanish Liberals insisted that it was the guaranteesgiven to the citizens, and not the political independencePage 38of the State, that made a country really free. Unfortunately, just as their proposals began to gain followers, Spain becameinvolved in war with England, because the Spanish King, then as now a Bourbon and so related to a number of other reactionaryrulers, had united in the family compact by which the royal relatives were to stamp out liberal ideas in their own dominions,and as allies to crush England, the source of the dissatisfaction which threatened their thrones.

Many progressive Spaniards had become Freemasons, when that ancient society, after its revival in England, had been reintroducedinto Spain. Now they found themselves suspected of sympathy with England and therefore of treason to Spain. While this couldnot be proved, it led to enforcing a papal bull against them, by which Pope Clement XII placed their institution under theban of excommunication.

At first it was intended to execute all the Spanish Freemasons, but the Queen’s favorite violinist secretly sympathized withthem. He used his influence with Her Majesty so well that through her intercession the King commuted the sentences from deathto banishment as minor officials in the possessions overseas.

Thus Cuba, Mexico, South and Central America, and the Philippines were provided with the ablest Spanish advocates of modernideas. In no other way could liberalism have been spread so widely or more effectively.

Besides these officeholders there had been from the earliest days noblemen, temporarily out of favor at Court, in banishmentin the colonies. Cavite had some of these exiles, who were called “caja abierta,” orcarte blanche, because their generous allowances, which could be drawn whenever there were government funds, seemed without limit to theFilipinos. The Spanish residents of the Philippines were naturally glad to entertain, supplyPage 39money to, and otherwise serve these men of noble birth, who might at any time be restored to favor and again be influential,and this gave them additional prestige in the eyes of the Filipinos. One of these exiles, whose descendants yet live in theseIslands, passed from prisoner in Cavite to viceroy in Mexico.

Francisco Mercado lived near enough to hear of the “cajas abiertas” (exiles) and their ways, if he did not actually meet someof them and personally experience the charm of their courtesy. They were as different from the ruder class of Spaniards whothen were coming to the Islands as the few banished officials were unlike the general run of officeholders. The contrast naturallysuggested that the majority of the Spaniards in the Philippines, both in official and in private life, were not creditablerepresentatives of their country. This charge, insisted on with greater vehemence as subsequent events furnished further reasonsfor doing so, embittered the controversies of the last century of Spanish rule. The very persons who realized that the accusationwas true of themselves, were those who most resented it, and the opinion of them which they knew the Filipinos held but darednot voice, rankled in their breasts. They welcomed every disparagement of the Philippines and its people, and thus made profitablea senseless and abusive campaign which was carried on by unscrupulous, irresponsible writers of such defective education thatvilification was their sole argument. Their charges were easily disproved, but they had enough cunning to invent new chargescontinually, and prejudice gave ready credence to them.

Finally an unreasoning fury broke out and in blind passion innocent persons were struck down; the taste for blood once aroused,irresponsible writers like that Retana who has now become Rizal’s biographer, whetted thePage 40savage appetite for fresh victims. The last fifty years of Spanish rule in the Philippines was a small saturnalia of revengewith hardly a lucid interval for the governing power to reflect or an opportunity for the reasonable element to intervene.Somewhat similarly the Bourbons in France had hoped to postpone the day of reckoning for their mistakes by misdeeds done infear to terrorize those who sought reforms. The aristocracy of France paid back tenfold each drop of innocent blood that wasshed, but while the unreasoning world recalls the French Revolution with horror, the student of history thinks more of theevils which made it a natural result. Mirabeau in vain sought to restrain his aroused countrymen, just as he had vainly pleadedwith the aristocrats to end their excesses. Rizal, who held Mirabeau for his hero among the men of the French Revolution,knew the historical lesson and sought to sound a warning, but he was unheeded by the Spaniards and misunderstood by many ofhis countrymen.

At about the time of the arrival of the Spanish political exiles we find in Manila a proof of the normal mildness of Spainin the Philippines. The Inquisition, of dread name elsewhere, in the Philippines affected only Europeans, had before it twoEnglish-speaking persons, an Irish doctor and a county merchant accused of being Freemasons. The kind-hearted Friar inquisitordismissed the culprits with warnings, and excepting some Spanish political matters in which it took part, this was the nearestthat the institution ever came to exercising its functions here.

The sufferings of the Indians in the Spanish-American gold mines, too, had no Philippine counterpart, for at the instanceof the friars the Church early forbade the enslaving of the people. Neither friars nor government have any records in thePhilippines which warrant beliefPage 41that they were responsible for the severe punishments of the period from ’72 to ’98. Both were connected with opposition toreforms which appeared likely to jeopardize their property or to threaten their prerogatives, and in this they were only human,but here their selfish interests and activities seem to cease.

For religious reasons the friar orders combatted modern ideas which they feared might include atheistical teachings such ashad made trouble in France, and the Government was against the introduction of latter-day thought of democratic tendency,but in both instances the opposition may well have been believed to be for the best interest of the Philippine people. Howevermistaken, their action can only be deplored not censured. The black side of this matter was the rousing of popular passion,and it was done by sheets subsidized to argue; their editors, however, resorted to abuse in order to conceal the fact thatthey had not the ability to perform the services for which they were hired. While some individual members of both the religiousorders and of the Government were influenced by these inflaming attacks, the interests concerned, as organizations, seem tohave had a policy of self-defense, and not of revenge.

The theory here advanced must wait for the judgment of the reader till the later events have been submitted. However, Rizalhimself may be called in to prove that the record and policy is what has been asserted, for otherwise he would hardly havedisregarded, as he did, the writings of Motley and Prescott, historians whom he could have quoted with great advantage tosupport the attacks he would surely have not failed to make had they seemed to him warranted, for he never was wanting inknowledge, resourcefulness or courage where his country was concerned.

No definite information is available as to what partPage 42Francisco Mercado took during the disturbed two years when the English held Manila and Judge Anda carried on a guerilla warfare.The Dominicans were active in enlisting their tenants to fight against the invaders, and probably he did his share towardthe Spanish defense either with contributions or personal service. The attitude of the region in which he lived strengthensthis surmise, for only after long-continued wrongs and repeatedly broken promises of redress did Filipino loyalty fail. Thiswas a century too early for the country around Manila, which had been better protected and less abused than the provincesto the north where the Ilokanos revolted.

Biñan, however, was within the sphere of English influence, for Anda’s campaign was not quite so formidable as the inscriptionon his monument in Manila represents it to be, and he was far indeed from being the great conqueror that the tablet on theSanta Cruz Church describes him. Because of its nearness to Manila and Cavite and its rich gardens, British soldiers and sailorsoften visited Biñan, but as the inhabitants never found occasion to abandon their homes, they evidently suffered no seriousinconvenience.

Commerce, a powerful factor, destroying the hermit character of the Islands, gained by the short experience of freer tradeunder England’s rule, since the Filipinos obtained a taste for articles before unused, which led them to be discontented andinsistent, till the Manila market finally came to be better supplied. The contrast of the British judicial system with theSpanish tribunals was also a revelation, for the foulest blot upon the colonial administration of Spain was her iniquitouscourts of justice, and this was especially true of the Philippines.

Anda’s triumphal entry into the capital was celebrated with a wholesale hanging of Chinese, which must havePage 43made Francisco Mercado glad that he was now so identified with the country as to escape the prejudice against his race.

A few years later came the expulsion of the Jesuit fathers and the confiscation of their property. It certainly weakened thegovernment; personal acquaintance counted largely with the Filipinos; whole parishes knew Spain and the Church only throughtheir parish priest, and the parish priest was usually a Jesuit whose courtesy equalled that of the most aristocratic officeholderor of any exiled “caja abierta.”

Francisco Mercado did not live in a Jesuit parish but in the neighboring hacienda of St. John the Baptist at Kalamba, wherethere was a great dam and an extensive irrigation system which caused the land to rival in fertility the rich soil of Biñan.Everybody in his neighborhood knew that the estate had been purchased with money left in Mexico by pious Spaniards who wantedto see Christianity spread in the Philippines, and it seemed to them sacrilege that the government should take such propertyfor its own secular uses.

The priests in Biñan were Filipinos and were usually leaders among the secular clergy, for the parish was desirable beyondmost in the archdiocese because of its nearness to Manila, its excellent climate, its well-to-do parishioners and the greatvariety of its useful and ornamental plants and trees. Many of the fruits and vegetables of Biñan were little known elsewhere,for they were of American origin, brought by Dominicans on the voyages from Spain by way of Mexico. They were introduced firstinto the great gardens at the hacienda house, which was a comfortable and spacious building adjoining the church, and thefavorite resting place for members of the Order in Manila.

The attendance of the friars on Sundays and fête daysPage 44gave to the religious services on these occasions a dignity usually belonging to city churches. Sometimes, too, some of themissionaries from China and other Dominican notables would be seen in Biñan. So the people not only had more of the luxuriesand the pomp of life than most Filipinos, but they had a broader outlook upon it. Their opinion of Spain was formed from acquaintancewith many Spaniards and from comparing them with people of other lands who often came to Manila and investigated the regionclose to it, especially the show spots such as Biñan. Then they were on the road to the fashionable baths at Los Baños, wherethe higher officials often resorted. Such opportunities gave a sort of education, and Biñan people were in this way more culturedthan the dwellers in remote places, whose only knowledge of their sovereign state was derived from a single Spaniard, thefriar curate of their parish.

Monastic training consists in withdrawing from the world and living isolated under strict rule, and this would scarcely seemto be the best preparation for such responsibility as was placed upon the Friars. Troubles were bound to come, and the peopleof Biñan, knowing the ways of the world, would soon be likely to complain and demand the changes which would avoid them; theresidents of less worldly wise communities would wait and suffer till too late, and then in blind wrath would wreak bloodyvengeance upon guilty and innocent alike.

Kalamba, a near neighbor of Biñan, had other reasons for being known besides its confiscation by the government. It was thescene of an early and especially cruel massacre of Chinese, and about Francisco’s time considerable talk had been occasionedbecause an archbishop had established an uniform scale of charges for the various rites of the Church. While these chargeswere often complained of, it was the poorer people (some of whom were in receiptPage 45of charity) who suffered. The rich were seeking more expensive ceremonies in order to outshine the other well-to-do peopleof their neighborhood. The real grievance was, however, not the cost, but the fact that political discriminations were madeso that those who were out of favor with the government were likewise deprived of church privileges. The reform of ArchbishopSanto y Rufino has importance only because it gave the people of the provinces what Manila had long possessed—a knowledgeof the rivalry between the secular and the regular clergy.

The people had learned in Governor Bustamente’s time that Church and State did not always agree, and now they saw dissensionswithin the Church. The Spanish Conquest and the possession of the Philippines had been made easy by the doctrine of the indivisibilityof Church and State, by the teaching that the two were one and inseparable, but events were continually demonstrating thefalsity of this early teaching. Hence the foundation of the sovereignty of Spain was slowly weakening, and nowhere more surelythan in the region near Manila which numbered José Rizal’s keen-witted and observing great grandfather among its leading men.

Francisco Mercado was a bachelor during the times of these exciting events and therefore more free to visit Manila and Cavite,and he was possibly the more likely to be interested in political matters. He married on May 26, 1771, rather later in lifethan was customary in Biñan, though he was by no means as old as his father, Domingo, was when he married. His bride, BernardaMonicha, was a Chinese mestiza of the neighboring hacienda of San Pedro Tunasan, who had been early orphaned and from childhoodhad lived in Biñan. As the coadjutor priest of the parish bore the same name, one uncommon in the Biñan records of that period,it is possible that he was aPage 46relative. The frequent occurrence of the name of Monicha among the last names of girls of that vicinity later on must be ascribedto Bernarda’s popularity as godmother.

Mr. and Mrs. Francisco Mercado had two children, both boys, Juan and Clemente. During their youth the people of the Philippineswere greatly interested in the struggles going on between England, the old enemy of Spain, and the rebellious English-Americancolonies. So bitter was the Spanish hatred of the nation which had humiliated her repeatedly on both land and sea, that theauthorities forgot their customary caution and encouraged the circulation of any story that told in favor of the Americancolonies. Little did they realize the impression that the statement of grievances—so trivial compared with the injusticesthat were being inflicted upon the Spanish colonials—was making upon their subjects overseas, who until then had been carefullyguarded from all modern ideas of government. American successes were hailed with enthusiasm in the most remote towns, andfrom this time may be dated a perceptible increase in Philippine discontent. Till then outbreaks and uprisings had been morefor revenge than with any well-considered aim, but henceforth complaints became definite, demands were made that to an increasingnumber of people appeared to be reasonable, and those demands were denied or ignored, or promises were made in answer to themwhich were never fulfilled.

Francisco Mercado was well to do, if we may judge from the number of carabaos he presented for registration, for his was amongthe largest herds in the book of brands that has chanced to be preserved with the Biñan church records. In 1783 he was alcalde,or chief officer of the town, and he lived till 1801. His name appears so often as godfather in the registers of baptismsand weddingsPage 47that he must have been a good-natured, liberal and popular man.

Mrs. Francisco Mercado survived her husband by a number of years, and helped to nurse through his baby ailments a grandsonalso named Francisco, the father of Doctor Rizal.

Francisco Mercado’s eldest son, Juan, built a fine house in the center of Biñan, where its pretentious stone foundations yetstand to attest how the home deserved the pride which the family took in it.

At twenty-two Juan married a girl of Tubigan, who was two years his elder, Cirila Alejandra, daughter of Domingo Lam-co’sChinese godson, Siong-co. Cirila’s father’s silken garments were preserved by the family until within the memory of personsnow living, and it is likely that José Rizal, Siong-co’s great-grandson, while in school at Biñan, saw these tangible proofsof the social standing in China of this one of his ancestors.

Juan Mercado was three times the chief officer of Biñan—in 1808, 1813 and 1823. His sympathies are evident from the fact thathe gave the second name, Fernando, to the son born when the French were trying to get the Filipinos to declare for King Joseph,whom his brother Napoleon had named sovereign of Spain. During the little while that the Philippines profited by the firstconstitution of Spain, Mercado was one of the two alcaldes. King Ferdinand VII then was relying on English aid, and to pleasehis allies as well as to secure the loyalty of his subjects, Ferdinand pretended to be a very liberal monarch, swearing touphold the constitution which the representatives of the people had framed at Cadiz in 1812. Under this constitution the Filipinoswere to be represented in the Spanish Cortes, and the grandfather of Rizal was one of the electors to choose the Representative.

Page 48During the next twenty-five years the history of the connection of the Philippines with Spain is mainly a record of the breakingand renewing of the King’s oaths to the constitution, and of the Philippines electing delegates who would find the Cortesdissolved by the time they could get to Madrid, until in the final constitution that did last Philippine representation wasleft out altogether. Had things been different the sad story of this book might never have been told, for though the misgovernmentof the Philippines was originally owing to the disregard for the Laws of the Indies and to giving unrestrained power to officials,the effects of these mistakes were not apparent until well into the nineteenth century.

Another influence which educated the Filipino people was at work during this period. They had heard the American Revolutionextolled and its course approved, because the Spaniards disliked England. Then came the French Revolution, which appalledthe civilized world. A people, ignorant and oppressed, washed out in blood the wrongs which they had suffered, but their libertydegenerated into license, their ideals proved impracticable, and the anarchy of their radical republic was succeeded by themilitary despotism of Napoleon.

A book written in Tagalog by a friar pointed out the differences between true liberty and false. It was the story of an oldmunicipal captain who had traveled and returned to enlighten his friends at home. The story was well told, and the catechismform in which, by his friends’ questions and the answers to them, the author’s opinions were presented, was familiar to Filipinos,so that there were many intelligent readers, but its results were quite different from what its pious and patriotic authorhad intended they should be.

The book told of the broadening influences of travel and of education; it suggested that liberty was possiblePage 49only for the intelligent, but that schools, newspapers, libraries and the means of travel which the American colonists wereenjoying were not provided for the Filipinos.

They were further told that the Spanish colonies in America were repeating the unhappy experiences of the French republic,while the “English North Americans,” whose ships during the American Revolution had found the Pacific a safe refuge from England,had developed considerable commerce with the Philippines. A kindly feeling toward the Americans had been aroused by the praisegiven to Filipino mechanics who had been trained by an American naval officer to repair his ship when the Spaniards at thegovernment dockyards proved incapable of doing the work. Even the first American Consul, whose monument yet remains in thePlaza Cervantes, Manila, though, because of his faith, he could not be buried in the consecrated ground of the Catholic cemeteries,received what would appear to be a higher honor, a grave in the principal business plaza of the city.

The inferences were irresistible: the way of the French Revolution was repugnant alike to God and government, that of theAmerican was approved by both. Filipinos of reflective turn of mind began to study America; some even had gone there; for,from a little Filipino settlement, St. Malo near New Orleans, sailors enlisted to fight in the second war of the United Statesagainst England; one of them was wounded and his name was long borne on the pension roll of the United States.

The danger of the dense ignorance in which their rulers kept the Filipinos showed itself in 1819, when a French ship fromIndia having introduced Asiatic cholera into the Islands, the lowest classes of Manila ascribed it to the collections of insectsand reptiles which a French naturalist, who was a passenger upon the ship, had broughtPage 50ashore. However the story started, the collection and the dwelling of the naturalist fared badly, and afterwards the mob,excited by its success, made war upon all foreigners. At length the excitement subsided, but too much damage to foreign livesand property had been done to be ignored, and the matter had an ugly look, especially as no Spaniard had suffered by thisoutbreak. The Insular government roused itself to punish some of the minor misdoers and made many explanations and apologies,but the aggrieved nations insisted, and obtained as compensation a greater security for foreigners and the removal of manyof the restraints upon commerce and travel. Thus the riot proved a substantial step in Philippine progress.

Following closely the excitement over the massacre of the foreigners in Manila came the news that Spain had sold Florida tothe United States. The circumstances of the sale were hardly creditable to the vendor, for it was under compulsion. Her laxgovernment had permitted its territory to become the refuge of criminals and lawless savages who terrorized the border untilin self-defense American soldiers under General Jackson had to do the work that Spain could not do. Then with order restoredand the country held by American troops, an offer to purchase was made to Spain who found the liberal purchase money a verywelcome addition to her bankrupt treasury.

Immediately after this the Monroe Doctrine attracted widespread attention in the Philippines. Its story is part of Spanishhistory. A group of reactionary sovereigns of Europe, including King Ferdinand, had united to crush out progressive ideasin their kingdoms and to remove the dangerous examples of liberal states from their neighborhoods. One of the effects of thisunholy alliance was to nullify all the reforms which Spain had introduced to secure English assistance in her time ofPage 51need, and the people of England were greatly incensed. Great Britain had borne the brunt of the war against Napoleon becauseher liberties were jeopardized, but naturally her people could not be expected to undertake further warfare merely for thesake of people of another land, however they might sympathize with them.

George Canning, the English statesman to whom belonged much of the credit for the Constitution of Cadiz, thought out a wayto punish the Spanish king for his perfidy. King Ferdinand was planning, with the Island of Cuba as a base, to begin a campaignthat should return his rebellious American colonies to their allegiance, for they had taken advantage of disturbances in thePeninsula to declare their independence. England proposed to the United States that they, the two Anglo-Saxon nations whoseideas of liberty had unsettled Europe and whom the alliance would have attacked had it dared, should unite in a protectorateover the New World. England was to guard the sea and the United States were to furnish the soldiers for any land fightingwhich might come on their side of the Atlantic.

World politics had led the enemies of England to help her revolting colonies, Napoleon’s jealousy of Britain had endowed thenew nation with the vast Louisiana Territory, and European complications saved the United States from the natural consequencesof their disastrous war of 1812, which taught them that union was as necessary to preserve their independence as it had beento win it. Canning’s project in principle appealed to the North Americans, but the study of it soon showed that Great Britainwas selfish in her suggestion. After a generation of fighting, England found herself drained of soldiers and therefore shediplomatically invited the coöperation of her former colonies; but, regardless of any formal arrangement, her navy could berelied on to prevent thosePage 52who had played her false from transporting large armies across the ocean into the neighborhood of her otherwise defenselesscolonies. That was self-preservation.

President Monroe’s advisers were willing that their country should run some risk on its own account, but they had the traditionalAmerican aversion to entangling alliances. So the Cabinet counseled that the young nation alone should make itself the protectorof the South American republics, and drafted the declaration warning the world that aggression against any of the New Worlddemocracies would be resented as unfriendliness to the United States.

It was the firm attitude of President Monroe that compelled Spain to forego the attempt to reconquer her former colonies,and therefore Mexico and Central andPage 53South America owe their existence as republics quite as much to the elder commonwealth as does Cuba.

The American attitude revealed in the Monroe Doctrine was especially obnoxious to the Spaniards in the Philippines but theirintemperate denunciations of the policy of America for the Americans served only to spread a knowledge of that doctrine amongthe people of that little territory which remained to them to misgovern. Secretly there began to be, among the stouter-heartedFilipinos, some who cherished a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the Philippines for the Filipinos.

Thoughts of separation from Spain by means of rebellion, by sale and by the assistance of other nations, had been thus putinto the heads of the people. These were all changes coming from outside, but it next to be demonstrated that Spain herselfdid not hold her noncontiguous territories as sacred as she did her home dominions.

The sale of Florida suggested that Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines were also available assets, and an offer to sell themwas made to the King of France; but this sovereign overreached himself, for, thinking to drive a better bargain, he claimedthat the low prices were too high. Thereupon the Spanish Ambassador, who was not in accord with his unpatriotic instructions,at once withdrew the offer and the negotiations terminated. But the Spanish people learned of the proposed sale and theirindignation was great. The news spread to the Spaniards in the Philippines. Through their comments the Filipinos realizedthat the much-talked-of sacred integrity of the Spanish dominions was a meaningless phrase, and that the Philippines wouldnot always be Spanish if Spain could get her price.

Gobernadorcillo Mercado, “Captain Juan,” as he was called, made a creditable figure in his office, and therePage 54used to be in Biñan a painting of him with his official sword, cocked hat and embroidered blouse. The municipal executivein his time did not always wear the ridiculous combination of European and old Tagalog costumes, namely, a high hat and ashort jacket over the floating tails of a pleated shirt, which later undignified the position. He has a notable record forhis generosity, the absence of oppression and for the official honesty which distinguished his public service from that ofmany who held his same office. He did, however, change the tribute lists so that his family were no longer “Chinese mestizos,”but were enrolled as “Indians,” the wholesale Spanish term for the natives of all Spain’s possessions overseas. This, in away, was compensation (it lowered his family’s tribute) for his having to pay the taxes of all who died in Biñan or movedaway during his term of office. The municipal captain then was held accountable whether the people could pay or not, no deductionsever being made from the lists. Most gobernadorcillos found ways to reimburse themselves, but not Mercado. His family, however,were of the fourth generation in the Philippines and he evidently thought that they were entitled to be called Filipinos.

A leader in church work also, and several times “Hermano mayor” of its charitable society, the Captain’s name appears on anumber of lists that have come down from that time as a liberal contributor to various public subscriptions. His wife wasequally benevolent, as the records show.

Mr. and Mrs. Mercado did not neglect their family, which was rather numerous. Their children were Gavino, Potenciana (whonever married), Leoncio, Fausto, Barcelisa (who became the wife of Hermenegildo Austria), Gabriel, Julian, Gregorio Fernando,Casimiro, Petrona (who married Gregorio Neri), Tomasa (laterPage 55Mrs. F. de Guzman), and Cornelia, the belle of the family, who later lived in Batangas.

Young Francisco was only eight years old when his father died, but his mother and sister Potenciana looked well after him.First he attended a Biñan Latin school, and later he seems to have studied Latin and philosophy in the College of San Joséin Manila.

A sister, Petrona, for some years had been a dressgoods merchant in nearby Kalamba, on an estate that had recently come underthe same ownership as Biñan. There she later married, and shortly after was widowed. Possibly upon their mother’s death, Potencianaand Francisco removed to Kalamba; though Petrona died not long after, her brother and sister continued to make their homethere.

Francisco, in spite of his youth, became a tenant of the estate as did some others of his family, for their Biñan holdingswere not large enough to give farms to all Captain Juan’s many sons. The landlords early recognized the agricultural skillof the Mercados by further allotments, as they could bring more land under cultivation. Sometimes Francisco was able to buythe holdings of others who proved less successful in their management and became discouraged.

The pioneer farming, clearing the miasmatic forests especially, was dangerous work, and there were few families that did notbuy their land with the lives of some of its members. In 1847 the Mercados had funerals, of brothers and nephews of Francisco,and, chief among them, of that elder sister who had devoted her life to him,Page 56Potenciana. She had always prompted and inspired the young man, and Francisco’s success in life was largely due to her wisecounsels and her devoted encouragement of his industry and ambition. Her thrifty management of the home, too, was sadly missed.

A year after his sister Potenciana’s death, Francisco Mercado married Teodora Alonzo, a native of Manila, who for severalyears had been residing with her mother at Kalamba. The history of the family of Mrs. Mercado is unfortunately not so easilytraced as is that of her husband, and what is known is of less simplicity and perhaps of more interest since the mother’sinfluence is greater than the father’s, and she was the mother of José Rizal.

Her father, Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo (born 1790, died 1854), is said to have been “very Chinese” in appearance. He had a brotherwho was a priest, and a sister, Isabel, who was quite wealthy; he himself was also well to do. Their mother, Maria Florentina(born 1771, died 1817), was, on her mother’s side, of the famous Florentina family of Chinese mestizos originating in Baliwag,Bulacan, and her father was Captain Mariano Alejandro of Biñan.

Lorenzo Alberto was municipal captain of Biñan in 1824, as had been his father, Captain Cipriano Alonzo (died 1805), in 1797.The grandfather, Captain Gregorio Alonzo (died 1794), was a native of Quiotan barrio, and twice, in 1763 and again in 1768,at the head of the mestizos’ organization of the Santa Cruz district in Manila.

Page 57Captain Lorenzo was educated for a surveyor, and his engineering books, some in English and others in French, were preservedin Biñan till, upon the death of his son, the family belongings were scattered. He was wealthy, and had invested a considerablesum of money with the American Manila shipping firms of Peele, Hubbell & Co., and Russell, Sturgis & Co.

The family story is that he became acquainted with Brigida de Quintos, Mrs. Rizal’s mother, while he was a student in Manila,and that she, being unusually well educated for a girl of those days, helped him with his mathematics. Their acquaintanceapparently arose through relationship, both being connected with the Reyes family. They had five children: Narcisa (who marriedSantiago Muger), Teodora (Mrs. Francisco Rizal Mercado), Gregorio, Manuel and José. All were born in Manila, but lived inKalamba, and they used the name Alonzo till that general change of names in 1850 when, with their mother, they adopted thename Realonda. This latter name has been said to be an allusion to royal blood in the family, but other indications suggestthat it might have been a careless mistake made in writing by Rosa Realonda, whose name sometimes appears written as Redonda.There is a family Redondo (Redonda in its feminine form) Alonzo of Ilokano origin, the same stock as their traditions givefor Mrs. Rizal’s father, some of whose members were to be found in the neighborhood of Biñan and Pasay. One member of thisfamily was akin in spirit to José Rizal, for he was fined twenty-five thousand pesos by the Supreme Court of the PhilippineIslands for “contempt of religion.” It appears that he put some original comparisons into a petition which sought to obtainjustice from an inferior tribunal where, by the omission of the word “not” in copying,Page 58the clerk had reversed the court’s decision but the judge refused to change the record.

Brigida de Quintos’s death record, in Kalamba (1856), speaks of her as the daughter of Manuel de Quintos and Regina Ochoa.

The most obscure part of Rizal’s family tree is the Ochoa branch, the family of the maternal grandmother, for all the archives,—church,land and court,—disappeared during the late disturbed conditions of which Cavite was the center. So one can only repeat whathas been told by elderly people who have been found reliable in other accounts where the clews they gave could be comparedwith existing records.

The first of the family is said to have been Policarpio Ochoa, an employé of the Spanish customs house. Estanislao ManuelOchoa was his son, with the blood of old Castile mingling with Chinese and Tagalog in his veins. He was part owner of theHacienda of San Francisco de Malabon. One story says that somewhere in this family was a Mariquita Ochoa, of such beauty thatshe was known in Cavite, where was her home, as the Sampaguita (jasmine) of the Parian, or Chinese, quarter.

There was a Spanish nobleman also in Cavite in her time who had been deported for political reasons—probably for holding liberalopinions and for being thought to be favorable to English ideas. It is said that this particular “caja abierta” was a Marquisde Canete, and if so there is ground for the claim that he was of royal blood; at least some of his far-off ancestors hadbeen related to a former ruling family of Spain.

Mariquita’s mother knew the exile, since, according to the custom in Filipino families, she looked after the business interestsof her husband. Curious to see the belle of whom he had heard so much, the Marquis made an excuse of doing business with themother, and wentPage 59to her home on an occasion when he knew that the mother was away. No one else was there to answer his knock and Mariquita,busied in making candy, could not in her confusion find a coconut shell to dip water for washing her hands from the largejar, and not to keep the visitor waiting, she answered the door as she was. Not only did her appearance realize the expectationsof the Marquis, but the girl seemed equally attractive for her self-possessed manners and lively mind. The nobleman was charmed.On his way home he met a cart loaded with coconut dippers and he bought the entire lot and sent it as his first present.

After this the exile invented numerous excuses to call, till Mariquita’s mother finally agreed to his union with her daughter.His political disability made him out of favor with the State church, the only place in which people could be married then,but Mariquita became what in English would be called a common-law wife. One of their children, José, had a tobacco factoryand a slipper factory in Meisic, Manila, and was the especial protector of his younger sister, Regina, who became the wifeof attorney Manuel de Quintos. A sister of Regina was Diega de Castro, who with another sister, Luseria, sold “chorizos” (sausages)or “tiratira” (taffy candy), the first at a store and the second in their own home, but both in Cavite, according to the variationsof one narrative.

A different account varies the time and omits the noble ancestor by saying that Regina was married unusually young to Manuelde Quintos to escape the attentions of the Marquis. Another authority claims that Regina was wedded to the lawyer in secondmarriage, being the widow of Facundo de Layva, the captain of the shipHernando Magallanes, whose pilot, by the way, was Andrew Stewart, an Englishman.

Page 60It is certain that Regina Ochoa was of Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog ancestry, and it is recorded that she was the wife ofManuel de Quintos. Here we stop depending on memories, for in the restored burial register of Kalamba church in the entryof the funeral of Brigida de Quintos she is called “the daughter of Manuel de Quintos and Regina Ochoa.”

Manuel de Quintos was an attorney of Manila, graduated from Santo Tomás University, whose family were Chinese mestizos ofPangasinan. The lawyer’s father, of the same name, had been municipal captain of Lingayan, and an uncle was leader of theChinese mestizos in a protest they had made against the arbitrariness of their provincial governor. This petition for redressof grievances is preserved in the Supreme Court archives with “Joaquin de Quintos” well and boldly written at the head ofthe complainants’ names, evidence of a culture and a courage that were equally uncommon in those days. Complaints under Spanishrule, no matter how well founded, meant trouble for the complainants; we must not forget that it was a vastly different thingfrom signing petitions or adhering to resolutions nowadays. Then the signers risked certainly great annoyance, sometimes imprisonment,and not infrequently death.

The home of Quintos had been in San Pedro Macati at the time of Captain Novales’s uprising, the so-called “American revolt”in protest against the Peninsulars sent out to supersede the Mexican officers who had remained loyal to Spain when the colonyof their birth separated itself from the mother country. As little San Pedro Macati is charged with having originated theconspiracy, it is unlikely that it was concealed from the liberal lawyer, for attorneys were scarcer and held in higher esteemin those days.

The conservative element then, as later, did not oftenPage 61let drop any opportunity of purging the community of those who thought for themselves, by condemning them for crime unheardand undefended, whether they had been guilty of it or not.

All the branches of Mrs. Rizal’s family were much richer than the relatives of her husband; there were numerous lawyers andpriests among them—the old-time proof of social standing—and they were influential in the country.

There are several names of these related families that belong among the descendants of Lakandola, as traced by Mr. LutherParker in his study of the Pampangan migration, and color is thereby given, so far as Rizal is concerned, to a proud boastthat an old Pampangan lady of this descent makes for her family. She, who is exceedingly well posted upon her ancestry, endsthe tracing of her lineage from Lakandola’s time by asserting that the blood of that chief flowed in the veins of every Filipinowho had the courage to stand forward as the champion of his people from the earliest days to the close of the Spanish régime.Lakandola, of course, belonged to the Mohammedan Sumatrans who emigrated to the Philippines only a few generations beforeMagellan’s discovery.

To recall relatives of Mrs. Rizal who were in the professions may help to an understanding of the prominence of the family.Felix Florentino, an uncle, was the first clerk of the Nueva Segovia (Vigan) court. A cousin-german, José Florentino, wasa Philippine deputy in the Spanish Cortes, and a lawyer of note, as was also his brother, Manuel. Another relative, less near,was Clerk Reyes, of the Court of First Instance in Manila. The priest of Rosario, Vicar of Batangas Province, Father Leyva,was a half-blood relation, and another priestly relative was Mrs. Rizal’s paternal uncle, Father Alonzo.Page 62Page 63These were in the earlier days when professional men were scarcer. Father Almeida, of Santa Cruz Church, Manila, and FatherAgustin Mendoz, his predecessor in the same church, and one of the sufferers in the Cavite trouble of ’72—a deporté—were mostdistantly connected with the Rizal family. Another relative, of the Reyes connection, was in the Internal Revenue Serviceand had charge of Kalamba during the latter part of the eighteenth century.

Mrs. Rizal was baptized in Santa Cruz Church, Manila, November 18, 1827, as Teodora Morales Alonzo, her godmother being arelative by marriage, Doña Maria Cristina. She was given an exceptionally good fundamental education by her gifted mother,and completed her training in Santa Rosa College, Manila, which was in the charge of Filipino sisters. Especially did thereligious influence of her schooling manifest itself in her after life. Unfortunately there are no records in the institution,because it is said all the members of the Order who could read and write were needed for instruction and there was no onecompetent who had time for clerical work.

Brigida de Quintos had removed to the property in Kalamba which Lorenzo Alberto had transferred to her, and there as earlyas 1844 she is first mentioned as Brigida de Quintos, then as Brigida de Alonzo, and later as Brigida Realonda.Page 64

Chapter IV

Rizal’s Early Childhood

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda, the seventh child of Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado y Alejandro and his wife, Teodora Morales Alonzo Realonda y Quintos,was born in Kalamba, June 19, 1861.

He was a typical Filipino, for few persons in this land of mixed blood could boast a greater mixture than his. Practicallyall the ethnic elements, perhaps even the Negrito in the far past, combined in his blood. All his ancestors, except the doubtfulstrain of the Negrito, had been immigrants to the Philippines, early Malays, and later Sumatrans, Chinese of prehistoric timesand the refugees from the Tartar dominion, and Spaniards of old Castile and Valencia—representatives of all the various peopleswho have blended to make the strength of the Philippine race.

Shortly before José’s birth his family had built a pretentious new home in the center of Kalamba on a lot which FranciscoMercado had inherited from his brother. The house was destroyed before its usefulness had ceased, by the vindictiveness ofthose who hated the man-child that was born there. And later on the gratitude of a free people held the same spot sacred becausethere began that life consecrated to the Philippines and finally given for it, after preparing the way for the union of thevarious disunited Chinese mestizos, Spanish mestizos, and half a hundred dialectically distinguished “Indians” into the unitedpeople of the Philippines.

José was christened in the nearby church when three days old, and as two out-of-town bands happened to be in Kalamba for alocal festival, music was a feature ofPage 65the event. His godfather was Father Pedro Casañas, a Filipino priest of a Kalamba family, and the priest who christened himwas also a Filipino, Father Rufino Collantes. Following is a translation of the record of Rizal’s birth and baptism: “I, theundersigned parish priest of the town of Calamba, certify that from the investigation made with proper authority, for replacingthe parish books which were burned September 28, 1862, to be found in Docket No. 1 of Baptisms, page 49, it appears by thesworn testimony of competent witnesses thatJosé Rizal Mercado is the legitimate son, and of lawful wedlock, of Don Francisco Rizal Mercado and Doña Teodora Realonda, having been baptizedin this parish on the 22d day of June in the year 1861, by the parish priest, Rev. Rufino Collantes, Rev. Pedro Casañas beinghis godfather.”—Witness my signature.
(Signed)Leoncio Lopez.

Page 66José Rizal’s earliest training recalls the education of William and Alexander von Humboldt, those two nineteenth century Germanswhose achievements for the prosperity of their fatherland and the advancement of humanity have caused them to be spoken ofas the most remarkable pair of brothers that ever lived. He was not physically a strong child, but the direction of his firststudies was by an unusually gifted mother, who succeeded, almost without the aid of books, in laying a foundation upon whichthe man placed an amount of well-mastered knowledge along many different lines that is truly marvelous, and this was donein so short a time that its brevity constitutes another wonder.

At three he learned his letters, having insisted upon being taught to read and being allowed to share the lessons of an eldersister. Immediately thereafter he was discovered with her story book, spelling out its words by the aid of the syllabary or“caton” which he had propped up before him and was using as one does a dictionary in a foreign language.

The little boy spent also much of his time in the church, which was conveniently near, but when the mother suggested thatthis might be an indication of religious inclination, his prompt response was that he liked to watch the people.

To how good purpose the small eyes and ears were used, the true-to-life types of the characters in “Noli Me Tangere” and “ElFilibusterismo” testify.

Three uncles, brothers of the mother, concerned themselves with the intellectual, artistic and physical training of this promisingnephew. The youngest, José, a teacher, looked after the regular lessons. The giant Manuel developed the physique of the youngster,until he had a supple body of silk and steel and was no longer a sickly lad, though he did not entirely lose his somewhatdelicatePage 67looks. The more scholarly Gregorio saw that the child earned his candy money—trying to instill the idea into his mind thatit was not the world’s way that anything worth having should come without effort; he taught him also the value of rapidityin work, to think for himself, and to observe carefully and to picture what he saw.

Sometimes José would draw a bird flying without lifting pencil from the paper till the picture was finished. At other timesit would be a horse running or a dog in chase, but it always must be something of which he had thought himself and the ideamust not be overworked; there was no payment for what had been done often before. Thus he came to think for himself, ideaswere suggested to him indirectly, so he was never a servile copyist, and he acquired the habit of speedy accomplishment.

Clay at first, then wax, was his favorite play material. From these he modeled birds and butterflies that came ever nearerto the originals in nature as the wise praise of the uncles called his attention to possibilities of improvement and encouragedhim to further effort. This was the beginning of his nature study.

José had a pony and used to take long rides through all the surrounding country, so rich in picturesque scenery. Besides thesehorseback expeditions were excursions afoot; on the latter his companion was his big black dog, Usman. His father pretendedto be fearful of some accident if dog and pony went together, so the boy had to choose between these favorites, and alternatedwalking and riding, just as Mr. Mercado had planned he should. The long pedestrian excursions of his European life, thoughspoken of as German and English habits, were merely continuations of this childhood custom. There were other playmates besidesthe dog and the horse, especially doves that lived in several houses about thePage 69Mercado home, and the lad was friend and defender of all the animals, birds, and even insects in the neighborhood. Had hischildish sympathies been respected the family would have been strictly vegetarian in their diet.

At times José was permitted to spend the night in one of the curious little straw huts which La Laguna farmers put up duringthe harvest season, and the myths and legends of the region which he then heard interested him and were later made good useof in his writings.

Sleight-of-hand tricks were a favorite amusement, and he developed a dexterity which mystified the simple folk of the country.This diversion, and his proficiency in it, gave rise to that mysterious awe with which he was regarded by the common peopleof his home region; they ascribed to him supernatural powers, and refused to believe that he was really dead even after thetragedy of Bagumbayan.

Entertainment of the neighbors with magic-lantern exhibitions was another frequent amusement, an ordinary lamp throwing itslight on a common sheet serving as a screen. José’s supple fingers twisted themselves into fantastic shapes, the enlargedshadows of which on the curtain bore resemblance to animals, and paper accessories were worked in to vary and enlarge therepertoire of action figures. The youthful showman was quite successful in catering to the public taste, and the knowledgehe then gained proved valuable later in enabling him to approach his countrymen with books that held their attention and gavehim the opportunity to tell them of shortcomings which it was necessary that they should correct.

Almost from babyhood he had a grown-up way about him, a sort of dignity that seemed to make him realize and respect the rightsof others and unconsciously disposed his elders to reason with him, rather than scold himPage 70for his slight offenses. This habit grew, as reprimands were needed but once, and his grave promises of better behavior werefaithfully kept when the explanation of why his conduct was wrong was once made clear to him. So the child came to be notan unwelcome companion even for adults, for he respected their moods and was never troublesome. A big influence in the formationof the child’s character was his association with the parish priest of Kalamba, Father Leoncio Lopez.

The Kalamba church and convento, which were located across the way from the Rizal home, were constructed after the great earthquakeof 1863, which demolished so many edifices throughout the central part of the Philippines.

The curate of Kalamba had a strong personality and was notable among the Filipino secular clergy of that day when responsibilityhad developed many creditable figures. An English writer of long residence in the Philippines,Page 71John Foreman, in his book on the Philippine Islands, describes how his first meeting with this priest impressed him, and tellsus that subsequent acquaintance confirmed the early favorable opinion of one whom he considered remarkable for broad intelligenceand sanity of view. Father Leoncío never deceived himself and his judgment was sound and clear, even when against the opinionsand persons of whom he would have preferred to think differently. Probably José, through the priest’s fondness for childrenand because he was well behaved and the son of friendly neighbors, was at first tolerated about the convento, the Philippinename for the priest’s residence, but soon he became a welcome visitor for his own sake.

He never disturbed the priest’s meditations when the old clergyman was studying out some difficult question, but was a keenobserver, apparently none the less curious for his respectful reserve. Father Leoncío may have forgotten the age of his listener,or possibly was only thinking aloud, but he spoke of those matters which interested all thinking Filipinos and found a sympathetic,eager audience in the little boy, who at least gave close heed if he had at first no valuable comments to offer.

In time the child came to ask questions, and they were so sensible that careful explanation was given, and questions werenot dismissed with the statement that these things were for grown-ups, a statement which so often repels the childish zealfor knowledge. Not many mature people in those days held so serious converse as the priest and his child friend, for fearof being overheard and reported, a danger which even then existed in the Philippines.

That the old Filipino priest of Rizal’s novels owed something to the author’s recollections of Father Leoncío is suggestedby a chapter in “Noli Me Tangere.” Ibarra, viewing Manila by moonlight on the first nightPage 72after his return from Europe, recalls old memories and makes mention of the neighborhood of the Botanical Garden, just beyondwhich the friend and mentor of his youth had died. Father Leoncio Lopez died in Calle Concepción in that vicinity, which wouldseem to identify him in connection with that scene in the book, rather than numerous others whose names have been sometimessuggested.

Two writings of Rizal recall thoughts of his youthful days. One tells how he used to wander down along the lake shore and,looking across the waters, wonder about the people on the other side. Did they, too, he questioned, suffer injustice as thepeople of his home town did? Was the whip there used as freely, carelessly and unmercifully by the authorities? Had men andwomen also to be servile and hypocrites to live in peace over there? But among these thoughts, never once did it occur tohim that at no distant day the conditions would be changed and, under a government that safeguarded the personal rights ofthe humblest of its citizens, the region that evoked his childhood wondering was to become part of a province bearing hisown name in honor of his labors toward banishing servility and hypocrisy from the character of his countrymen.

The lake district of Central Luzon is one of the most historic regions in the Islands, the May-i probably of the twelfth centuryChinese geographer. Here was the scene of the earliest Spanish missionary activity. On the southPage 73shore is Kalamba, birthplace of Doctor Rizal, with Biñan, the residence of his father’s ancestors, to the northwest, and onthe north shore the land to which reference is made above. Today this same region at the north bears the name of Rizal Provincein his honor.

The other recollection of Rizal’s youth is of his first reading lesson. He did not know Spanish and made badPage 74work of the story of the “Foolish Butterfly,” which his mother had selected, stumbling over the words and grouping them withoutregard to the sense. Finally Mrs. Rizal took the book from her son and read it herself, translating the tale into the familiarTagalog used in their home. The moral is supposed to be obedience, and the young butterfly was burned and died because itdisregarded the parental warning not to venture too close to the alluring flame. The reading lesson was in the evening andby the light of a coconut-oil lamp, and some moths were very appropriately fluttering about its cheerful blaze. The littleboy watched them as his mother read and he missed the moral, for as the insects singed their wings and fluttered to theirdeath in the flame he forgot their disobedience and found no warning in it for him. Rather he envied their fate and consideredthat the light was so fine a thing that it was worth dying for. Thus early did the notion that there are things worth morethan life enter his head, though he could not foresee that he was to be himself a martyr and that the day of his death wouldbefore long be commemorated in his country to recall to his countrymen lessons as important to their national existence ashis mother’s precept was for his childish welfare.

When he was four the mystery of life’s ending had been brought home to him by the death of a favorite little sister, and heshed the first tears of real sorrow, for until then he had only wept as children do when disappointed in getting their ownway. It was the first of many griefs, but he quickly realized that life is a constant struggle and he learned to meet disappointmentsand sorrows with the tears in the heart and a smile on the lips, as he once advised a nephew to do.

At seven José made his first real journey; the family went to Antipolo with the host of pilgrims who in MayPage 75visit the mountain shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Safe Travel. In the early Spanish days in Mexico she was the special patronessof voyages to America, especially while the galleon trade lasted; the statue was brought to Antipolo in 1672.

A print of the Virgin, a souvenir of this pilgrimage, was, according to the custom of those times, pasted inside José’s woodenchest when he left home for school; later on it was preserved in an album and went with him in all his travels. Afterwardsit faced Bougereau’s splendid conception of the Christ-mother, as one who had herself thus suffered, consoling another mothergrieving over the loss of a son. Many years afterwards Doctor Rizal was charged with having fallen away from religion, buthe seems really rather to have experienced a deepening of the religious spirit which made the essentials of charity and kindnessmore important in his eyes than forms and ceremonies.

Yet Rizal practiced those forms prescribed for the individual even when debarred from church privileges. The lad doubtlessgot his idea of distinguishing between the sign and the substance from a well-worn book of explanations of the church ritualand symbolism “intended for the use of parish priests.” It was found in his library, with Mrs. Rizal’s name on the flyleaf.Much did he owe his mother, and his grateful recognition appears in his appreciative portrayal of maternal affection in hisnovels.

His parents were both religious, but in a different way. The father’s religion was manifested in his charities; he used tokeep on hand a fund, of which his wife had no account, for contributions to the necessitous and loans to the irresponsible.Mrs. Rizal attended to the business affairs and was more careful in her handling of money, though quite as charitably disposed.Her early training in Santa Rosa had taught her the habit of frequent prayerPage 76and she began early in the morning and continued till late in the evening, with frequent attendance in the church. Mr. Rizaldid not forget his church duties, but was far from being so assiduous in his practice of them, and the discussions in thehome frequently turned on the comparative value of words and deeds, discussions that were often given a humorous twist bythe husband when he contrasted his wife’s liberality in prayers with her more careful dispensing of money aid.

Not many homes in Kalamba were so well posted on events of the outside world, and the children constantly heard discussionsof questions which other households either ignored or treated rather reservedly, for espionage was rampant even then in theIslands. Mrs. Rizal’s literary training had given her an acquaintance with the better Spanish writers which benefited herchildren; she told them the classic tales in style adapted to their childish comprehension, so that when they grew older theyfound that many noted authors were old acquaintances. The Bible, too, played a large part in the home. Mrs. Rizal’s copy wasa Spanish translation of the Latin Vulgate, the version authorized by her Church but not common in the Islands then. Rizal’sfrequent references to Biblical personages and incidents are not paralleled in the writings of any contemporary Filipino author.

The frequent visitors to their home, the church, civil and military authorities, who found the spacious Rizal mansion a convenientresting place on their way to the health resort at Los Baños, brought something of the city, and a something not found bymany residents even there, to the people of this village household. Oftentimes the house was filled, and the family wouldnot turn away a guest of less rank for the sake of one of higher distinction, though that unsocial practice was frequentlyfollowed by persons who forgot their self-respect in toadying to rank.

Page 77Little José did not know Spanish very well, so far as conversational usage was concerned, but his mother tried to impresson him the beauty of the Spanish poets and encouraged him in essays at rhyming which finally grew into quite respectable poeticalcompositions. One of these was a drama in Tagalog which so pleased a municipal captain of the neighboring village of Paete,who happened to hear it while on a visit to Kalamba, that the youthful author was paid two pesos for the production. Thiswas as much money as a field laborer in those days would have earned in half a month; although the family did not need thecoin, the incident impressed them with the desirability of cultivating the boy’s talent.

José was nine years old when he was sent to study in Biñan. His master there, Justiniano Aquino Cruz, was of the old schooland Rizal has left a record of some of his maxims, such as “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” “The letter enters with blood,”and other similar indications of his heroic treatment of the unfortunates under his care. However, if he was a strict disciplinarian,Master Justiniano was also a conscientious instructor, and the boy had been only a few months under his care when the pupilwas told that he knew as much as his master, and had better go to Manila to school. Truthful José repeated this conversationwithout the modification which modesty might have suggested, and his father responded rather vigorously to the idea and itwas intimated that in the father’s childhood pupils were not accustomed to say that they knew as much as their teachers. However,Master Justiniano corroborated the child’s statement, so that preparations for José’s going to Manila began to be made. Thiswas in the Christmas vacation of 1871.

Biñan had been a valuable experience for young Rizal. There he had met a host of relatives and from them heard much of thepast of his father’s family. His maternalPage 78grandfather’s great house was there, now inhabited by his mother’s half-brother, a most interesting personage.

This uncle, José Alberto, had been educated in British India, spending eleven years in a Calcutta missionary school. Thiswas the result of an acquaintance which his father had made with an English naval officer who visited the Philippines about1820, the author of “An Englishman’s Visit to the Philippines.” Lorenzo Alberto, the grandfather, himself spoke English andhad English associations. He had also liberal ideas and preferred the system under which the Philippines were representedin the Cortes and were treated not as a colony but as part of the homeland and its people were considered Spaniards.

The great Biñan bridge had been built under Lorenzo Alberto’s supervision, and for services to the Spanish nation during theexpedition to Cochin-China—probably liberal contributions of money—he had been granted the title of Knight of the AmericanOrder of Isabel the Catholic, but by the time this recognition reached him he had died, and the patent was made out to hisson.

An episode well known in the village—its chief event, if one might judge from the conversation of the inhabitants—was a visitwhich a governor of Hongkong hadPage 79made there when he was a guest in the home of Alberto. Many were the tales told of this distinguished Englishman, who wasSir John Bowring, the notable polyglot and translator into English of poetry in practically every one of the dialects of Europe.His achievements along this line had put him second or third among the linguists of the century. He was also interested inhistory, and mentioned in his Biñan visit that the Hakluyt Society, of which he was a Director, was then preparing to publishan exceedingly interesting account of the early Philippines that did more justice to its inhabitants than the regular Spanishhistorians. Here Rizal first heard of Morga, the historian, whose book he in after years made accessible to his countrymen.A desire to know other languages than his own also possessed him and he was eager to rival the achievements of Sir John Bowring.

In his book entitled “A Visit to the Philippine Islands,” which was translated into Spanish by Mr. José del Pan, a liberaleditor of Manila, Sir John Bowring gives the following account of his visit to Rizal’s uncle:

The Philippines had just had a liberal governor, De la Torte, but even during this period of apparent liberalness there existeda confidential government order directing that all letters from Filipinos suspected of progressive ideas were to be openedin the post. This violation of the mails furnished the list of those who later suffered in the convenient insurrection of’72.

An agrarian trouble, the old disagreement between landlords and tenants, had culminated in an active outbreak which the governmentwas unable to put down, and so it made terms by which, among other things, the leader of the insurrection was establishedas chief of a new civil guard for the purpose of keeping order. Here again was another preparation for ’72, for at that timethe agreement was forgotten and the officer suffered punishment, in spite of the immunity he had been promised.

Religious troubles, too, were rife. The Jesuits had returned from exile shortly before, and were restricted to teaching workin those parishes in the missionary district where collections were few and danger was great. To make room for those whomthey displaced the better parishes in the more thickly settled regions were taken from Filipino priests and turned over tomembers of the religious Orders. Naturally there was discontent. A confidential communication from the secular archbishop,Doctor Martinez, shows that he considered the FilipinosPage 81had ground for complaint, for he states that if the Filipinos were under a non-Catholic government like that of England theywould receive fairer treatment than they were getting from their Spanish co-religionaries, and warns the home government thattrouble will inevitably result if the discrimination against the natives of the country is continued.

The Jesuit method of education in their newly established “Ateneo Municipal” was a change from that in the former schools.It treated the Filipino as a Spaniard and made no distinctions between the races in the school dormitory. In the older institutionsof Manila the Spanish students lived in the Spanish way and spoke their own language, but Filipinos were required to talkLatin, sleep on floor mats and eat with their hands from low tables. These Filipino customs obtained in the hamlets, but didnot appeal to city lads who had become used to Spanish ways in their own homes and objected to departing from them in school.The disaffection thus created was among the educated class, who were best fitted to be leaders of their people in any dangerousinsurrection against the government.

However, a change had to take place to meet the Jesuit competition, and in the rearrangement Filipino professors were givena larger share in the management of the schools. Notable among these was Father Burgos. He had earned his doctor’s degreein two separate courses, was among the best educated in the capital and by far the most public-spirited and valiant of theFilipino priests.

Page 82He enlisted the interest of many of the older Filipino clergy and through their contributions subsidized a paper,El Eco Filipino, which spoke from the Filipino standpoint and answered the reflections which were the stock in trade of the conservativeorgan, for the reactionaries had an abusive journal just as they had had in 1821 and were to have in the later days.

Such were the conditions when José Rizal got ready to leave home for school in Manila, a departure which was delayed by themisfortunes of his mother. His only, and elder, brother, Paciano, had been a student in San José College in Manila for someyears, and had regularly failed in passing his examinations because of his outspokenness against the evils of the country.Paciano was a great favorite with Doctor Burgos, in whose home he lived and for whom he acted as messenger and go-betweenin the delicate negotiations of the propaganda which the doctor was carrying on.

In February of ’72 all the dreams of a brighter and freer Philippines were crushed out in that enormous injusticePage 83which made the mutiny of a few soldiers and arsenal employés in Cavite the excuse for deporting, imprisoning, and even shootingthose whose correspondence, opened during the previous year, had shown them to be discontented with the backward conditionsin the Philippines.

Doctor Burgos, just as he had been nominated to a higher post in the Church, was the chief victim. Father Gomez, an old man,noted for charity, was another, and the third was Father Zamora. A reference in a letter of his to “powder,” which was hisway of saying money, was distorted into a dangerous significance, in spite of the fact that the letter was merely an invitationto a gambling game. The trial was a farce, the informer was garroted just when he was on the point of complaining that hewas not receiving the pardon and payment which he had been promised for his services in convicting the others. The whole affairhad an ugly look, and the way it was hushed up did not add to the confidence of the people in the justice of the proceedings.The Islands were then placed under military law and remained so for many years.

Father Burgos’s dying advice to Filipinos was for them to be educated abroad, preferably outside of Spain, but if they coulddo no better, at least go to the Peninsula. He urged that through education only could progress be hoped for. In one of hisspeeches he had warned the Spanish government that continued oppressive measures would drive the Filipinos from their allegianceand make them wish to become subjects of a freer power, suggesting England, whose possessions surrounded the Islands.

Doctor Burgos’s idea of England as a hope for the Philippines was borne out by the interest which the British newspapers ofHongkong took in Philippine affairs. They gave accounts of the troubles and picked flaws in the garbled reports which theofficials sent abroad.

Page 84Some zealous but unthinking reactionary at this time conceived the idea of publishing a book somewhat similar to that whichhad been gotten out against the Constitution of Cadiz. “Captain Juan” was its name; it was in catechism form, and told ofan old municipal captain who deserved to be honored because he was so submissively subservient to all constituted authority.He tries to distinguish between different kinds of liberty, and the especial attention which he devotes to America shows howlive a topic the great republic was at that time in the Islands. This interest is explained by the fact that an American companyhad just then received a grant of the northern part of Borneo, later British North Borneo, for a trading company. It was believedthat the United States had designs on the Archipelago because of treaties which had been negotiated with the Sultan of Suluand certain American commercial interests in the Far East, which were then rather important.

Americans, too, had become known in the Philippines through a soldier of fortune who had helped out the Chinese governmentin suppressing the rebellion in the neighborhood of Shanghai. “General” F. T. Ward, from Massachusetts, organized an armyof deserters from European ships, but their lack of discipline made them undesirable soldiers, and so he disbanded the force.He then gathered a regiment of Manila men, as the Filipinos usually found as quartermasters on all ships sailing in the Eastwere then called. With the aid of some other Americans these troops were disciplined and drilled into such efficiency thatthe men came to have the title amongPage 85the Chinese of the “Ever-Victorious” army, because of the almost unbroken series of successes which they had experienced.A partial explanation, possibly, of their fighting so well is that they were paid only when they won.

The high praise given the Filipinos at this time was in contrast to the disparagement made of their efforts in Indo-China,where in reality they had done the fighting rather than their Spanish officers. When a Spaniard in the Philippines quotedof the Filipino their customary saying, “Poor soldier, worse sacristan,” the Filipinos dared make no open reply, but theyconsoled themselves with remembering the flattering comments of “General” Ward and the favorable opinion of Archbishop Martinez.

References to Filipino military capacity were banned by the censors and the archbishop’s communication had been confidential,but both became known, for despotisms drive its victims to stealth and to methods which would not be considered creditableunder freer conditions.Page 86

Chapter V

Jagor’s Prophecy

Rizal’s first home in Manila was in a nipa house with Manuel Hidalgo, later to be his brother-in-law, in Calle Espeleta, astreet named for a former Filipino priest who had risen to be bishop and governor-general. This spot is now marked with atablet which gives the date of his coming as the latter part of February, 1872.

Rizal’s own recollections speak of June as being the date of the formal beginning of his studies in Manila. First he wentto San Juan de Letran and took an examination in the Catechism. Then he went back to Kalamba and in July passed into the Ateneo,possibly because of the more favorable conditions under which the pupils were admitted, receiving credit for work in arithmetic,which in the other school, it is said, he would have had to restudy. This perhaps accounts for the credit shown in the scholasticyear 1871–72. Until his fourth year Rizal was an externe, as those residing outside of the school dormitory were then called.The Ateneo was very popular and so great was the eagerness to enter it that the waiting list was long and two or three years’delay was not at all uncommon.

There is a little uncertainty about this period; some writers have gone so far as to give recollections of childhood incidentsof which Rizal was the hero while he lived in the house of Doctor Burgos, but the family deny that he was ever in this home,and say that he has been confused with his brother Paciano.

The greatest influence upon Rizal during this period was the sense of Spanish judicial injustice in the legal persecutionsof his mother, who, though innocent, for two years was treated as a criminal and held in prison.

Page 87Much of the story is not necessary for this narrative, but the mother’s troubles had their beginning in the attempted revengeof a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, one of a body of Spaniards who were no credit to the mother country and whom Rizal neverlost opportunity in his writings of painting in their true colors. This official had been in the habit of having his horsefed at the Mercado home when he visited their town from his station in Biñan, but once there was a scarcity of fodder andMr. Mercado insisted that his own stock was entitled to care before he could extend hospitality to strangers. This the officialbitterly resented. His opportunity for revenge soon came, and was not overlooked. A disagreement between José Alberto, themother’s brother in Biñan, and his wife, also his cousin, to whom he had been married when they were both quite young, ledto sensational charges which a discreet officer would have investigated and would assuredly have then realized to be unfounded.Instead the lieutenant accepted the most ridiculous statements, brought charges of attempted murder against Alberto and hissister, Mrs. Rizal, and evidently figured that he would be able to extort money from the rich man and gratify his revengeat the same time.

Now comes a disgruntled judge, who had not received the attention at the Mercado home which he thought his dignity demanded.Out of revenge he ordered Mrs. Rizal to be conducted at once to the provincial prison, not in the usual way by boat, but,to cause her greater annoyance, afoot around the lake. It was a long journey from Kalamba to Santa Cruz, and the first eveningthe guard and his prisoner came to a village where there was a festival in progress. Mrs. Rizal was well known and was welcomedin the home of one of the prominent families. The festivities were at their height when the judge, who had been on horsebackand so had reached the townPage 88earlier, heard that the prisoner, instead of being in the village calaboose, was a guest of honor and apparently not sufferingthe annoyance to which he had intended to subject her. He strode to the house, and, not content to knock, broke in the door,splintered his cane on the poor constable’s head, and then exhausted himself beating the owner of the house.

These proceedings were revealed in a charge of prejudice which Mrs. Rizal’s lawyers urged against the judge who at the sametime was the one who decided the casePage 89and also the prosecutor. The Supreme Court agreed that her contention was correct and directed that she be discharged fromcustody. To this order the judge paid due respect and ordered her release, but he said that the accusation of unfairness againsthim was contempt of court, and gave her a longer sentence under this charge than the previous one from which she had justbeen absolved. After some delay the Supreme Court heard of this affair and decided that the judge was right. But, becauseMrs. Rizal had been longer in prison awaiting trial than the sentence, they dated back her imprisonment, and again orderedher release. Here the record gets a little confused because it is concerned with a story that her brother had sixteen thousandpesos concealed in his cell, and everybody, from the Supreme Court down, seemed interested in trying to locate the money.

While the officials were looking for his sack of gold, Alberto gave a power of attorney to an overintelligent lawyer who wordedhis authority so that it gave him the right to do everything which his principal himself could have done “personally, legallyand ecclesiastically.” From some source outside, but not from the brother, the attorneyPage 90heard that Mrs. Rizal had had money belonging to Alberto, for in the extensive sugar-purchasing business which she carriedon she handled large sums and frequently borrowed as much as five thousand pesos from this brother. Anxious to get his handson money, he instituted a charge of theft against her, under his power of attorney and acting in the name of his principal.Mrs. Rizal’s attorney demurred to such a charge being made without the man who had lent the money being at all consulted,and held that a power of attorney did not warrant such an action. In time the intelligent Supreme Court heard this case anddecided that it should go to trial; but later, when the attorney, acting for his principal, wanted to testify for him underthe power of attorney, they seem to have reached their limit, for they disapproved of that proposal.

Anyone who cares to know just how ridiculous and inconsistent the judicial system of the Philippines then was would do wellto try to unravel the mixed details of the half dozen charges, ranging from cruelty through theft to murder, which were madeagainst Mrs. Rizal without a shadow of evidence. One case was trumped up as soon as another was finished, and possibly theaffair would have dragged on till the end of the Spanish administration had not her little daughter danced before the Governor-Generalonce when he was traveling through the country, won his approval, and when he asked what favor he could do for her, presenteda petition for her mother’s release. In this way, which recalls the customs of primitive nations, Mrs. Rizal finally was enabledto return to her home.

Doctor Rizal tells us that it was then that he first began to lose confidence in mankind. A story of a school companion, thatwhen Rizal recalled this incident the red came into his eyes, probably has about the same foundation as the frequent storiesof his weeping with emotion upon other people’s shoulders when advised of momentousPage 91Page 92changes in his life. Doctor Rizal did not have these Spanish ways, and the narrators are merely speaking of what other Spaniardswould have done, for self-restraint and freedom from exhibitions of emotion were among his most prominent characteristics.

Some time during Rizal’s early years of school came his first success in painting. It was the occasion of a festival in Kalamba;just at the last moment an important banner was accidentally damaged and there was not time to send to Manila for another.A hasty consultation was held among the village authorities, and one councilman suggested that José Rizal had shown considerableskill with the brush and possibly he could paint something that would pass. The gobernadorcillo proceeded to the lad’s homeand explained the need. Rizal promptly went to work, under the official’s direction, and speedily produced a painting whichthe delighted municipal executive declared was better than the expensive banner bought in Manila. The achievement was explainedto all the participants in the festival and young José was the hero of the occasion.

During intervals of school work Rizal found time to continue his modeling in clay which he procured from the brickyard ofa cousin at San Pedro Macati.

Rizal’s uncle, José Alberto, had played a considerable part in his political education. He was influential with the Regencyin Spain, which succeeded Queen Isabel when that sovereign became too malodorous to be longer tolerated, and he was the personalfriend of the Regent, General Prim, whose motto, “More liberal today than yesterday, more liberal tomorrow than today,” hewas fond of quoting. He was present in Madrid at the time of General Prim’s assassination and often told of how this wisepatriot, recognizing the unpreparedness of the Spanish people for a republic, opposed the efforts forPage 93what would, he knew, result in as disastrous a failure as had been France’s first effort, and how he lost his life throughhis desire to follow the safer course of proceeding gradually through the preparatory stage of a constitutional monarchy.Alberto was made by him a Knight of the Order of Carlos III, and, after Prim’s death, was created by King Amadeo a KnightCommander, the step higher in the Order of Isabel the Catholic.

Events proved Prim’s wisdom, as Alberto was careful to observe, for King Amadeo was soon convinced of the unfitness of hispeople for even a constitutional monarchy, told them so, resigned his throne, and bade them farewell. Then came a republicmarked by excesses such as even the worst monarch had not committed; among them the dreadful massacre of the members of thefilibustering party on the steamerVirginius in Cuba, which would have caused war with the United States had not the Americans been deluded into the idea that they weredealing with a sister republic. America and Switzerland had been the only nations whichPage 94had recognized Spain’s new form of government. Prim sought an alliance with America, for he claimed that Spain should be linkedwith a country which would buy Spanish goods and to which Spain could send her products. France, with whom the Bourbons wishedto be allied, was a competitor along Spain’s own lines.

During the earlier disturbances in Spain a party of Carlists were sent to the Philippine Islands; they were welcomed by thereactionary Spaniards, for devotion to King Carlos had been their characteristic ever since the days when Queen Isabel hadtaken the throne that in their opinion belonged to the heir in the male line. Rizal frequently makes mention of this disloyaltyto the ruler of Spain on the part of those who claimed to be most devoted Spaniards.

Along with the stories of these troubles which Rizal heard during his school days in Manila were reports of how these exileshad established themselves in foreign cities, Basa in Hongkong, Regidor in London, and Tavera in Paris. At their homes inthese cities they gave a warm welcome to such Filipinos as traveled abroad and they were always ready to act as guardiansfor Filipino students who wished to study in their cities, Many availed themselves of these opportunities and it came to bean ambition among those in the Islands to get an education which they believed was better than that which Spain afforded.There was some ground for such a belief, because many of the most prominent successful men of Spanish and Philippine birthwere men whose education had been foreign. A well-known instance in Manila was the architect Roxas, father of the presentAlcalde of Manila, who learned his profession in England and was almost the only notable builder in Manila during his lifetime.

Paciano Rizal, José’s elder brother, had retired fromPage 95Manila on the death of Doctor Burgos and devoted himself to farming; in some ways, perhaps, his career suggested the characterof Tasio, the philosopher of “Noli Me Tangere.” He was careful to see that his younger brother was familiar with the liberalliterature with which he had become acquainted through Doctor Burgos.

The first foreign book read by Rizal, in a Spanish translation, was Dumas’s great novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo,” andthe story of the wrongs suffered by the prisoner of the Château d’If recalled the injustice done his mother. Then came thebook which had greatest influence upon the young man’s career; this was a Spanish translation of Jagor’s “Travels in the Philippines,”the observations of a German naturalist who had visited the Islands some fifteen years before. This latter book, among othercomments, suggested that it was the fate of the North American republic to develop and bring to their highest prosperity thelands which Spain had conquered and Christianized with sword and cross. Sooner or later, this German writer believed, thePhilippine Islands could no more escape this American influence than had the countries on the mainland, and expressed thehope that one day the Philippines would succumb to the same influence; he felt, however, that it was desirable first for theIslanders to become better able to meet the strong competition of the vigorous young people of the New World, for under Spainthe Philippines had dreamed away its past.

“With the altered condition of things, however, all this has disappeared. The colony can no longer be kept secluded from theworld. Every facility afforded for commercial intercourse is a blow to the old system, and a great step made in the directionof broad and liberal reforms. The more foreign capital and foreign ideas and customs are introduced, increasing the prosperity,enlightenment, and self-esteem of the population, the more impatiently will the existing evils be endured.

England can and does open her possessions unconcernedly to the world. The British colonies are united to the mother countryby the bond of mutual advantage, viz., the produce of raw material by means of English capital, and the exchange of the samefor English manufactures. The wealth of England is so great, the organization of her commerce with the world so complete,that nearly all the foreigners even in the British possessions are for the most part agents for English business houses, whichwould scarcely be affected, at least to any marked extent, by a political dismemberment. It is entirely different with Spain,which possesses the colony as an inherited property, and without the power of turning it to any useful account.

Government monopolies rigorously maintained, insolent disregard and neglect of the half-castes and powerful creoles, and theexample of the United States, were the chief reasons of the downfall of the American possessions. The same causes threatenruin to the Philippines; but of the monopolies I have said enough.

Half-castes and creoles, it is true are not, as they formerly were in America, excluded from all orificial appointments; butthey feel deeply hurt and injured through the crowds of place-hunters which the frequent changes of Ministers send to Manilla.The influence, also, of the American element is at least visible on the horizon, and will be more noticeable when the relationsincrease betweenPage 97the two countries. At present they are very slender. The trade in the meantime follows in its old channels to England andto the Atlantic ports of the United States. Nevertheless, whoever desires to form an opinion upon the future history of thePhilippines, must not consider simply their relations to Spain, but must have regard to the prodigious changes which a fewdecades produce on either side of our planet.

For the first time in the history of the world the mighty powers on both sides of the ocean have commenced to enter upon adirect intercourse with one another—Russia, which alone is larger than any two other parts of the earth; China, which containswithin its own boundaries a third of the population of the world; and America, with ground under cultivation nearly sufficientto feed treble the total population of the earth. Russia’s furtherrôle in the Pacific Ocean is not to be estimated at present.

The trade between the two other great powers will therefore be presumably all the heavier, as the rectification of the pressingneed of human labour on the one side, and of the corresponding overplus on the other, will fall to them.

“The world of the ancients was confined to the shores of the Mediterranean; and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans sufficed atone time for our traffic. When first the shores of the Pacific re-echoed with the sounds of active commerce, the trade ofthe world and the history of the world may be really said to have begun. A start in that direction has been made; whereasnot so very long ago the immense ocean was one wide waste of waters, traversed from both points only once a year. From 1603to 1769 scarcely a ship had ever visited California, that wonderful country which, twenty-five years ago, with the exceptionof a few places on the coast, was an unknown wilderness, but which is now covered with flourishing and prosperous towns andcities, divided from sea to sea by a railway, and its capital already ranking the third of the seaports of the Union; evenat this early stage of its existence a central point of the world’s commerce, and apparently destined, by the proposed junctionof the great oceans, to play a most important part in the future.

In proportion as the navigation of the west coast of America extends the influence of the American element over the SouthPage 98Sea, the captivating, magic power which the great republic exercises over the Spanish colonies1 will not fail to make itself felt also in the Philippines. The Americans are evidently destined to bring to a full developmentthe germs originated by the Spaniards. As conquerors of modern times, they pursue their road to victory with the assistanceof the pioneer’s axe and plough, representing an age of peace and commercial prosperity in contrast to that bygone and chivalrousage whose champions were upheld by the cross and protected by the sword.

A considerable portion of Spanish America already belongs to the United States, and has since attained an importance whichcould not possibly have been anticipated either under the Spanish Government or during the anarchy which followed. With regardto permanence, the Spanish system cannot for a moment be compared with that of America. While each of the colonies, in orderto favour a privileged class by immediate gains, exhausted still more the already enfeebled population of the metropolis bythe withdrawal of the best of its ability, America, on the contrary, has attracted to itself from all countries the most energeticelement, which, once on its soil and, freed from all fetters, restlessly progressing, has extended its power and influencestill further and further. The Philippines will escape the action of the two great neighbouring powers all the less for thefact that neither they nor their metropolis find their condition of a stable and well-balanced nature.

It seems to be desirable for the natives that the above-mentioned views should not speedily become accomplished facts, becausetheir education and training hitherto have not been of a nature to prepare them successfully to compete with either of theother two energetic, creative, and progressive nations. They have, in truth, dreamed away their best days.”

Page 99This prophecy of Jagor’s made a deep impression upon Rizal and seems to furnish the explanation of his life work. Henceforthit was his ambition to arouse his countrymen to prepare themselves for a freer state. He dedicated himself to the work whichDoctor Jagor had indicated as necessary. It seems beyond question that Doctor Rizal, as early as 1876, believed that Americawould sometime come to the Philippines, and wished to prepare his countrymen for the changed conditions that would then haveto be met. Many little incidents in his later life confirm this view: his eagerness to buy expensive books on the United States,such as his early purchase in Barcelona of two different “Lives of the Presidents of the United States”; his study of thecountry in his travel across it from San Francisco to New York; the reference in “The Philippines in a Hundred Years”; andthe studies of the English Revolution and other Anglo-Saxon influences which culminated in the foundation of the United Statesof America.

Besides the interest he took in clay modeling, to which reference has already been made, Rizal was expert in carving. Whenfirst in the Ateneo he had carved an imagePage 100of the Virgin of such grace and beauty that one of the Fathers asked him to try an image of the Sacred Heart. Rizal complied,and produced the carving that played so important a part in his future life. The Jesuit Father had intended to take the imagewith him to Spain, but in some way it was left behind and the schoolboys put it up on the door of their dormitory. There itremained for nearly twenty years, constantly reminding the many lads who passed in and out of the one who teachers and pupilsalike agreed was the greatest of all their number, for Rizal during these years was the schoolboy hero of the Ateneo, andfrom the Ateneo came the men who were most largely concerned in making the New Philippines. The image itself is of batikulin,an easily carved wood, and shows considerable skill when one remembers that an ordinary pocketknife was the simple instrumentused in its manufacture. It was recalled to Rizal’s memory when he visited the Ateneo upon his first return from Spain andwas forbidden the house by the Jesuits because of his alleged apostasy, andPage 101again in the chapel of Fort Santiago, where it played an important part in what was called his conversion.

The proficiency he attained in the art of clay modeling is evidenced by many of the examples illustrated in this volume. Theynot only indicate an astonishing versatility, but they reveal his very characteristic method of working—a characteristic basedon his constant desire to adapt the best things he found abroad to the conditions of his own country. The same characteristicappears also in most of his literary work, and in it there is no servile imitation; it is careful and studied selection, adaptationand combination. For example, the composition of a steel engraving in a French art journal suggested his model in clay ofa Philippine wild boar; the head of the subject in a painting in the Luxembourg Gallery and the rest of a figure in an engravingin a newspaper are combined in a statuette he modeled in Brussels and sent, in May, 1890, to Valentina Ventura in place ofa letter; a clipping from a newspaper cut is also adapted for his model of “The Vengeance of the Harem”; and as evidence ofhis facility of expressing himself in this medium, his clay modeling of a Dapitan woman may be cited. One day while in exilehe saw a native woman clearing up the street in front of her home preparatory to a festival; the movements and the attitudesof the figure were so thoroughly typical and so impressed themselves on his mind that he worked out this statuette from memory.Page 102

In a literary way Rizal’s first pretentious effort was a melodrama in one act and in verse, entitled “Junta al Pasig” (Besidethe Pasig), a play in honor of the Virgin, which was given in the Ateneo to the great edification of a considerable audience,who were enthusiastic in their praise and hearty in their applause, but the young author neither saw the play nor paid anyattention to the manner of its reception, for he was downstairs, intent on his own diversions and heedless of what was goingon above.

Thursday was the school holiday in those days, andPage 104Rizal usually spent the time at the Convent of La Concordia, where his youngest sister, Soledad, was a boarder. He was a greatfriend of the little one and a welcome visitor in the Convent; he used to draw pictures for her edification, sometimes teasingher by making her own portrait, to which he gave exaggerated ears to indicate her curiosity. Then he wrote short satiricalskits, such as the following, which in English doggerel quite matches its Spanish original:

“The girls of Concordia College
Go dressed in the latest of styles—
Bangs high on their foreheads for knowledge—
But hungry their grins and their smiles!”

Some of these girls made an impression upon José, and one of his diary entries of this time tells of his rude awakening whena girl, some years his elder, who had laughingly accepted his boyish adoration, informed him that she was to marry a relativeof his, and he speaks of the heart-pang with which he watched the carromata that carried her from his sight to her wedding.

José was a great reader, and the newspapers were giving much attention to the World’s Fair in Philadelphia which commemoratedthe first centennial of American independence, and published numerous cuts illustrating various interesting phases of Americanlife. Possibly as a reaction from the former disparagement of things American, the sentiment in the Philippines was then veryfriendly. There was one long account of the presentation of a Spanish banner to a Spanish commission in Philadelphia, andthe newspapers, in speaking of the wonderful progress which the United States had made, recalled the early Spanish allianceand referred to the fact that, had it not been for the discoveries of the Spaniards, their new land would not have been knownto Europe.

Page 105Rizal during his last two years in the Ateneo was a boarder. Throughout his entire course he had been the winner of most ofthe prizes. Upon receiving his Bachelor of Arts diploma he entered the University of Santo Tomás; in the first year he studiedthe course in philosophy and in the second year began to specialize in medicine.

The Ateneo course of study was a good deal like that of our present high school, though not so thorough nor so advanced. Still,the method of instruction which has made Jesuit education notable in all parts of the world carried on the good work whichthe mother’s training had begun. The system required the explanation of the morrow’s lesson, questioning on the lesson ofthe day and a review of the previous day’s work. This, with the attention given to the classics, developed and quickened facultieswhich gave Rizal a remarkable power of assimilating knowledge of all kinds for future use.

The story is told that Rizal was undecided as to his career, and wrote to the rector of the Ateneo for advice; but the Jesuitwas then in the interior of Mindanao, and by the time the answer, suggesting that he should devote himself to agriculture,was received, he had already made his choice. However, Rizal did continue the study of agriculture, besides specializing inmedicine, carrying on double work as he took the course in the Ateneo which led to the degree of land surveyor and agriculturalexpert. This work was completed before he had reached the agePage 106fixed by law, so that he could not then receive his diploma, which was not delivered to him until he had attained the ageof twenty-one years.

In the “Life” of Rizal published in Barcelona after his death a brilliant picture is painted of how Rizal might have followedthe advice of the rector of the Ateneo, and have lived a long, useful and honorable life as a farmer and gobernadorcillo ofhis home town, respected by the Spaniards, looked up to by his countrymen and filling an humble but safe lot in life. Todayone can hardly feelPage 107that such a career would have been suited to the man or regret that events took the course they did.

Poetry was highly esteemed in the Ateneo, and Rizal frequently made essays in verse, often carrying his compositions to Kalambafor his mother’s criticisms and suggestions. The writings of the Spanish poet Zorilla were making a deep impression upon himat this time, and while his schoolmates seemed to have been more interested in their warlike features, José appears to havegained from them an understanding of how Zorilla sought to restore the Spanish people to their former dignity, rousing theirpride through recalling the heroic events in their past history. Some of the passages in the melodrama, “Junta al Pasig,”already described, were evidently influenced by his study of Zorilla; the fierce denunciation of Spain which is there putin the mouth of Satan expresses, no doubt, the real sentiments of Rizal.

In 1877 a society known as the Liceo Literario-Artistica (Lyceum of Art and Literature) offered a prize for the best poemby a native. The winner was Rizal with the following verses, “Al Juventud Filipino” (To the Philippine Youth). The prize wasa silver pen, feather-shaped and with a gold ribbon running through it.

The next competition at the Liceo was in honor of the fourth centennial of the death of Cervantes; it was open to both Filipinosand Spaniards, and there was a dispute as to the winner of the prize. It is hard to figure out just what really happened;the newspapers speak of Rizal as winning the first prize, but his certificate says second, and there seems to have been somesort of compromise by which a Spaniard who was second was put at the head. Newspapers, of course, were then closely censored,but the liberalLa Oceania contains a number of veiled allusions to medical poets, suggesting that for the good of humanity they should not be permittedto waste their time in verse-making. One reference quotes the title of Rizal’s first poem in saying that it was giving a wordof advice “To the Philippine Youth,” and there are other indications that for some considerable time the outcome of this contestwas a very live topic in the city of Manila.

Page 110Rizal’s poem was an allegory, “The Council of the Gods”—“El consejo de los Dioses.” It was an exceedingly artistic appreciationof the chief figure in Spanish literature. The rector of the Ateneo had assisted his former student by securing for him neededbooks, and though Rizal was at that time a student in Santo Tomás, the rivalries were such that he was still ranked with thepupils of the Jesuits and his success was a corresponding source of elation to the Ateneo pupils and alumni. Some people havestated that Father Evaristo Arias, a notably brilliant writer of the Dominicans, was a competitor, a version I once published,but investigation shows that this was a mistake. However, sentiment in the University against Rizal grew, until matters becameso unpleasant that he felt it time to follow the advice of Father Burgos and continue his education outside of the Islands.

Just before this incident Rizal had been the victim of a brutal assault in Kalamba; one night when he was passing the barracksof the Civil Guard he noted in the darkness a large body, but did not recognize who it was, and passed without any attentionto it. It turned out that the large body was a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, and, without warning or word of any kind, hedrew his sword and wounded Rizal in the back. Rizal complained of this outrage to the authorities and tried several times,without success, to see the Governor-General. Finally he had to recognize that there was no redress for him. By May of 1882Rizal had made up his mind to set sail for Europe, and his brother, Paciano, equipped him with seven hundred pesos for thejourney, while his sister, Saturnina, intrusted to him a valuable diamond ring which might prove a resource in time of emergency.

José had gone to Kalamba to attend a festival there, when Mr. Hidalgo, from Manila, notified him that his boat was ready tosail. The telegram, asking his immediatePage 111return to the city, was couched in the form of advice of the condition of a patient, and the name of the steamer,Salvadora, by a play on words, was used in the sense of “May save her life.” Rizal had previously requested of Mr. Ramirez, of thePuerta del Sol store, letters of introduction to an Englishman, formerly in the Philippines, who was then living in Paris.He said nothing more of his intentions, but on his last night in the city, with his younger sister as companion, he droveall through the walled city and its suburbs, changing horses twice in the five hours of his farewell. The next morning heembarked on the steamer, and there yet remains the sketch which he made of his last view of the city, showing its waterfrontas it appeared from the departing steamer. To leave town it was necessary to have a passport; his was in the name of JoséMercado, and had been secured by a distant relative of his who lived in the Santa Cruz district.

After five days’ journey the little steamer reached thePage 112Page 113English colony of Singapore. There Rizal saw a modern city for the first time. He was intensely interested in the improvements.Especially did the assured position of the natives, confident in their rights and not fearful of the authorities, arouse hisadmiration. Great was the contrast between the fear of their rulers shown by the Filipinos and the confidence which the nativesof Singapore seemed to have in their government.

At Singapore, Rizal transferred to a French mailPage 114Page 115Steamer and seems to have had an interesting time making himself understood on board. He had studied some French in his Ateneocourse, writing an ode which gained honors, but when he attempted to speak the language he was not successful in making Frenchmenunderstand him. So he resorted to a mixed system of his own, sometimes using Latin words and making the changes which regularlywould have occurred, and when words failed, making signs, and in extreme cases drawing pictures of what he wanted. This versatilitywith the pencil, for many of his offhand sketches had humorous touches that almost carried them into the cartoon class, interestedofficers and passengers, so that the young student had the freedom of the ship and a voyage far from tedious.

The passage of the Suez Canal, a glimpse of Egypt, Aden, where East and West meet, and the Italian city of Naples, with itshistoric castle, were the features of the trip which most impressed him.Page 116

Chapter VI

The Period of Preparation

Rizal disembarked at Marseilles, saw a little of that famous port, and then went by rail to Barcelona, crossing the Pyrenees,the desolate ruggedness of which contrasted with the picturesque luxuriance of his tropical home, and remained a day at thefrontier town of Port-Bou. The customary Spanish disregard of tourists compared very unfavorably with the courteous attentionwhich he had remarked on his arrival at Marseilles, for the custom house officers on the Spanish frontier rather remindedhim of the class of employes found in Manila.

At Barcelona he met many who had been his schoolmates in the Ateneo and others to whom he was known by name. It was the customof the Filipino students there to hold reunions every other Sunday at the café, for their limited resources did not permitthe daily visits which were the Spanish custom. In honor of the new arrival a special gathering occurred in a favorite caféin Plaza de Catalonia. The characteristics of the Spaniards and the features of Barcelona were all described for Rizal’s benefit,and he had to answer a host of questions about the changes which had occurred in Manila. Most of his answers were to the effectthat old defects had not yet been remedied nor incompetent officials supplanted, and he gave a rather hopeless view of thefuture of their country. Somewhat in this gloomy mood, he wrote home for a newly established Tagalog newspaper of Manila,his views of “Love of country,” an article not so optimistic as most of his later writings.

In Barcelona he remained but a short time, long enough, however, to see the historic sights around that city, which was establishedby Hannibal, had numberedPage 117many noted Romans among its residents, and in later days was the scene of the return of Columbus from his voyages in the NewWorld, bringing with him samples of Redskins, birds and other novel products of the unknown country. Then there were the magnificentboulevards, the handsome dwellings, the interest which the citizens took in adorning their city and the pride in the results,and above all, the disgust at all things Spanish and the loyalty to Catalonia, rather than to the “mother-fatherland.”

The Catalan was the most progressive type in Spain, but he had no love for his compatriots, was ever complaining of their“mañana” habits and of the evils that were bound to exist in a country where Church and State were so inextricably intermingled.Many Catalans were avowedly republicans. Signs might be seen on the outside of buildings telling of the location of republicanclubs, unpopular officials were hooted in the streets, the newspapers were intemperate in their criticism of the government,and a campaign was carried on openly which aimed at changing from a monarchy to a democracy, without any apparent molestationfrom the authorities. All these things impressed the lad who had seen in his own country the most respectfully worded complaintsof unquestionable abuses treated as treason, bringing not merely punishment, but opprobrium as well.

He, himself, in order to obtain a better education, had had to leave his country stealthily like a fugitive from justice,and his family, to save themselves from persecution, were compelled to profess ignorance of his plans and movements. His namewas entered in Santo Tomás at the opening of the new term, with the fees paid, and Paciano had gone to Manila pretending tobe looking for this brother whom he had assisted out of the country.

Early in the fall Rizal removed to Madrid and enteredPage 118the Central University there. His short residence in Barcelona was possibly for the purpose of correcting the irregularityin his passport, for in that town it would be easier to obtain acedula, and with this his way in the national University would be made smoother. He enrolled in two courses, medicine, and literatureand philosophy; besides these he studied sculpture, drawing and art in San Carlos, and took private lessons in languages fromMr. Hughes, a well-known instructor of the city. With all these labors it is not strange that he did not mingle largely insocial life, and lack of funds and want of clothes, which have been suggested as reasons for this, seem hardly adequate. Joséhad left Manila with some seven hundred pesos and a diamond ring. Besides, he received funds from his father monthly, whichwere sent through his cousin, Antonio Rivera, of Manila, for fear that the landlords might revenge themselves upon their tenantfor the slight which his son had cast upon their university in deserting it for a Peninsular institution. It was no easy taskin those days for a lad from the provinces to get out of the Islands for study abroad.

Rizal frequently attended the theater, choosing especially the higher class dramas, occasionally went to a masked ball, playedthe lotteries in small amounts but regularly, and for the rest devoted most of his money to the purchase of books. The greaterpart of these were second-hand, but he bought several standard works in good editions, many with bindings de luxe. Among thebooks first purchased figure a Spanish translation of the “Lives of the Presidents of the United States,” from Washingtonto Johnson, morocco bound, gilt-edged, and illustrated with steel engravings—certainly an expensive book; a “History of theEnglish Revolution;” a comparison of the Romans and the Teutons, and several other books which indicated interest in the freersystemPage 119of the Anglo-Saxons. Later, another “History of the Presidents,” to Cleveland, was added to his library.

The following lines, said to be addressed to his mother, were written about this time, evidently during an attack of homesickness:

In Madrid a number of young Filipinos were intense enthusiasts over political agitation, and with the recklessness of youth,were careless of what they said or how they said it, so long as it brought no danger to them. A sort of Philippine socialclub had been organized by older Filipinos and Spaniards interested in the Philippines, with the idea of quietly assistingtoward improved insular conditions, but it became so radical under the influence of this younger majority, that its conservativemembers were compelled to drop out and the club broke up. The young men were constantly holding meetings to revive it, butnever arrived at any effective conclusions. Rizal was present at some of these meetings and suggested that a good means ofpropaganda would be a book telling the truth about Philippine conditions and illustrated by Filipino artists. At first theproject was severely criticised; later a few conformed to the plan, and Rizal believed that his scheme was in a fair way ofaccomplishment. At the meeting to discuss the details, however, each member of the company wanted to write upon the Filipinowoman, and the rest of the subjects scarcely interested any of them. Rizal was disgusted with this trifling and dropped theaffair, nor did he ever again seem to take any very enthusiastic interest in such popular movements. His more mature mindput him out of sympathy with the younger men. Their admiration gave him great prestige, but his popularity did not arise fromcomradeship, as he had but very few intimates.

Early in his stay in Madrid, Rizal had come across aPage 122second-hand copy, in two volumes, of a French novel, which he bought to improve his knowledge of that language. It was EugeneSue’s “The Wandering Jew,” that work which transformed the France of the nineteenth century. However one may agree or disagreewith its teachings and concede or dispute its literary merits, it cannot be denied that it was the most powerful book in itseffects on the century, surpassing even Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which is usually credited with having hurried onthe American Civil War and brought about the termination of African slavery in the United States. The book, he writes in hisdiary, affected him powerfully, not to tears, but with a tremendous sympathy for the unfortunates that made him willing torisk everything in their behalf. It seemed to him that such a presentation of Philippine conditions would certainly arouseSpain, but his modesty forbade his saying that he was going to write a book like the French masterpiece. Still, from thistime his recollections of his youth and the stories which he could get from his companions were written down and revised,till finally the half had been prepared of what was finally the novel “Noli Me Tangere.”

Through Spaniards who still remembered José’s uncle, he joined a lodge of Masons called the “Acacia.” At this time few Filipinosin Spain had joined the institution, and those were mostly men much more mature than himself. Thus he met leaders of Spanishnational life who were men of state affairs and much more sedate, men with broader views and more settled opinions than theirresponsible class with whom his school companions were accustomed to associate. A distinction must be made between the Masonryof this time and the much more popular institution in which Filipinos later figured soPage 123largely when Professor Miguel Morayta became head of the Grand Lodge which for a time was a rival of that to which the “Acacia”owed allegiance, and finally triumphed over it.

In 1884 Rizal had begun his studies in English; he had been studying French during and since his voyage to Spain; Italianwas acquired apparently at a time when the exposition of Genoa had attracted Spanish interest toward Italy, and largely throughthe reading of Italian translations of works which he knew in other languages. German, too, he had started to study, but hadnot advanced far with it. Thus Rizal was preparing himself for the travels through Europe which he had intended to make fromthe time when he first left his home, for he well knew that it was only by knowing the language of a country that it wouldbe possible for him to study the people, see in what way they differed from his own, and find out which of their customs andwhat lessons from their history might be of advantage to the Filipinos.

A feature in Rizal’s social life was a weekly visit to the home of Don Pablo Ortigas y Reyes, a liberal Spaniard who had beenCivil Governor of Manila in General de La Torre’s time. Here Filipino students gathered, and were entertained by the charmingdaughter of the home, Consuelo, who was the person to whom were dedicated the verses of Rizal usually entitled “á la SenoritaC. O. y R.”

In Rizal’s later days he found a regular relaxation inPage 124playing chess, in which he was skilled, with the venerable ex-president of the short-lived Spanish republic, Pi y Margal.This statesman was accused of German tendencies because of his inclination toward Anglo-Saxon safeguards for liberty, andwas a champion of general education as a preparation for a freer Spain.

Rizal usually was present on public occasions in Filipino circles and took a leading part in them, as, for example, when hedelivered the principal address at the banquet given by the Madrid Filipino colony in honor of their artist countrymen, afterLuna and Hidalgo had won prizes in the Madrid National exposition. He was also at the New Year’s banquet when the studentsgathered in the restaurant to bid farewell to the old and usherPage 125Page 126in the new year, and his was the chief speech, summarizing the remarks of the others.

In 1885, having completed the second of his two courses, with his credentials of licentiate in medicine and also in philosophyand literature, Rizal made a trip through the country provinces to study the Spanish peasant, for the rural people, he thought,being agriculturists, would be most like the farmer folk of his native land. Surely the Filipinos did not suffer in the comparison,for the Spanish peasants had not greatly changed from the day when they were so masterfully described by Cervantes. It seemedto Rizal almost like being in Don Quixote’s land, so many were the figures who might have been the characters in the book.

The fall of ’85 found Rizal in Paris, studying art, visiting the various museums and associating with the Lunas, the Taverasand other Filipino residents of the French capital, for there had been a considerable colony in that city ever since the troublesof 1872 had driven the Tavera family into exile and they had made their home in that city. In Paris a fourth of “Noli Me Tangere”was written, and Rizal specialized in ophthalmology, devoting his attention to those eye troubles that were most prevalentin the Philippines and least understood. His mother’s growing blindness made him covet the skill which might enable him torestore her sight. So successfully did he study that he became the favorite pupil of Doctor L. de Weckert, the leading authorityamong the oculists of France, and author of a three-volume standard work. Rizal next went to Germany, having continued hisstudies in its language in the French capital, and was present at Heidelberg on the five hundredth anniversary of the foundationof the University.

Because he had no passport he could only attend lectures, but could not regularly matriculate. He lived inPage 127one of the student boarding houses, with a number of law students, and when he was proposed for membership in the Chess Clubhe was registered in the Club books as being a student of law like the men who proposed him. These Chess Club gatherings werequite a feature of the town, being held in the large saloons with several hundred people present, and the contests of skillwere eagerly watched by shrewd and competent judges. Rizal was a clever player, and left something of a record among the experts.

The following lines were written by Rizal in a letter home while he was a student in Germany:

From Heidelberg he went to Leipzig, then famous for the new studies in psychology which were making the science of the mindalmost as exact as that of the body, and became interested in the comparison of race characteristics as influenced by environment,history and language. This probably accounts for the advanced views held by Rizal, who was thoroughly abreast of the new psychology.These ideas were since popularized in America largely through Professor Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University, who was afellow-student of Rizal at Heidelberg and also had been at Leipzig.

A little later Rizal went to Berlin and there became acquainted with a number of men who had studied the Philippines and knewit as none whom he had ever met previously. Chief among these was Doctor Jagor, the author of the book which ten years beforehad inspired in him his life purpose of preparing his people for the time when America should come to the Philippines. Thenthere was Doctor Rudolf Virchow, head of the Anthropological Society and one of the greatest scientists in the world. Virchowwas of intensely democratic ideals,Page 130he was a statesman as well as a scientist, and the interest of the young student in the history of his country and in everythingelse which concerned it, and his sincere earnestness, so intelligently directed toward helping his country, made Rizal atonce a prime favorite. Under Virchow’s sponsorship he became a member of the Berlin Anthropological Society.

Rizal lived in the third floor of a corner lodging house not very far from the University; in this room he spent much of histime, putting the finishing touches to what he had previously written of his novel, and there he wrote the latter half of“Noli Me Tangere” The German influence, and absence from the Philippines for so long a time, had modified his early radicalviews, and the book had now become less an effort to arouse the Spanish sense of justice than a means of education for Filipinosby pointing out their shortcomings. Perhaps a Spanish school history which he had read in Madrid deserves a part of the creditfor this changed point of view, since in that the author, treating of Spain’s early misfortunes, brings out the fact thatmisgovernment may be due quite as much to the hypocrisy, servility and undeserving character of the people as it is to thecorruption, tyranny and cruelty of the rulers.

Page 131The printer of “Noli Me Tangere” lived in a neighboring street, and, like most printers in Germany, worked for a very moderatecompensation, so that the volume of over four hundred pages cost less than a fourth of what it would have done in England,or one half of what it would cost in economical Spain. Yet even at so modest a price, Rizal was delayed in the publicationuntil one fortunate morning he received a visit from a countryman, Doctor Maximo Viola, who invited him to take a pedestriantrip. Rizal responded that his interests kept him in Berlin at that time as he was awaiting funds from home with which topublish a book he had just completed, and showed him the manuscript. Doctor Viola was much interested and offered to use themoney he had put aside for the trip to help pay the publisher. So the work went ahead, and when the delayed remittance fromhis family arrived, Rizal repaid the obligation. Then the two sallied forth on their trip.

After a considerable tour of the historic spots and scenic places in Germany, they arrived at Dresden, where Doctor Rizalwas warmly greeted by Doctor A. B. Meyer, the Director of the Royal Saxony Ethnographical Institute. He was an authority uponPhilippine matters, for some years before he had visited the Islands to make a study of the people. With a countryman residentin the Philippines, Doctor Meyer made careful and thorough scientific investigations, and his conclusions were more favorableto the Filipinos than the published views of many of the unscientific Spanish observers.

In the Museum of Art at Dresden, Rizal saw a painting of “Prometheus Bound,” which recalled to him a representation of thesame idea in a French gallery, and from memory he modeled this figure, which especially appealed to him as being typical ofhis country.Page 132

In Austrian territory he first visited Doctor FerdinandPage 133Blumentritt, whom Rizal had known by reputation for many years and with whom he had long corresponded. The two friends stayedat the Hotel Roderkrebs, but were guests at the table of the Austrian professor, whose wife gave them appetizing demonstrationsof the characteristic cookery of Hungary. During Rizal’s stay he was very much interested in a gathering of tourists, arrangedto make known the beauties of that picturesque region, sometimes called the Austrian Switzerland, and he delivered an addressupon this occasion. It is noteworthy that the present interest in attracting tourists to the Philippines, as an economic benefitto the country, was anticipated by Doctor Rizal and that he was always looking up methods used in foreign countries for buildingup tourists’ travel.

One day, while the visitors were discussing Philippine matters with their host, Doctor Rizal made an off hand sketch of DoctorBlumentritt, on a scrap of paper which happened to be at hand, so characteristic that it serves as an excellent portrait,and it has been preserved among the Rizal relics which Doctor Blumentritt had treasured of the friend for whom he had so muchrespect and affection.

With a letter of introduction to a friend of Doctor Blumentritt in Vienna, Nordenfels, the greatest of Austrian novelists,Doctor Viola and Doctor Rizal went on to the capital, where they were entertained by the Concordia Club. So favorable wasthe impression that Rizal made upon Mr. Nordenfels that an answer was written to thePage 134Page 135note of introduction, thanking the professor for having brought to his notice a person whom he had found so companionableand whose genius he so much admired. Nordenfels had been interested in Spanish subjects, and was able to discuss intelligentlythe peculiar development of Castilian civilization and the politics of the Spanish metropolis as they affected the overseaspossessions.

After having seen Rome and a little more of Italy, they embarked for the Philippines, again on the French mail, from Marseilles,coming by way of Saigon, where a rice steamer was taken for Manila.Page 136

Chapter VII

The Period of Propaganda

The city had not altered much during Rizal’s seven years of absence. The condition of the Binondo pavement, with the sameholes in the road which Rizal claimed he remembered as a schoolboy, was unchanged, and this recalls the experience of Ybarrain “Noli Me Tangere” on his homecoming after a like period of absence.

Doctor Rizal at once went to his home in Kalamba. His first operation in the Philippines relieved the blindness of his mother,by the removal of a double cataract, and thus the object of his special study in Paris was accomplished. This and other likesuccesses gave the young oculist a fame which brought patients from all parts of Luzon; and, though his charges were moderate,during his seven months’ stay in the Islands Doctor Rizal accumulated over five thousand pesos, besides a number of diamondswhich he had bought as a secure way of carrying funds, mindful of the help that the ring had been with which he had firststarted from the Philippines.

Shortly after his arrival, Governor-General Terrero summoned Rizal by telegraph to Malacañan from Kalamba. The interview provedto be due to the interest in the author of “Noli Me Tangere” and a curiosity to read the novel, arising from the copious extractswith which the Manila censors had submitted an unfavorable opinion when asking for the prohibition of the book. The recommendationof the censor was disregarded, and General Terrero, fearful that Rizal might be molested by some of the many persons who wouldfeel themselves aggrieved by his plain picturing of undesirable classes in the Philippines, gave him for a bodyguard a youngSpanish lieutenant,Page 137José Taviel de Andrade. The young men soon became fast friends, as they had artistic and other tastes in common. Once theyclimbed Mr. Makiling, near Kalamba, and placed there, after the European custom, a flag to show that they had reached thesummit. This act was at first misrepresented by the enemies of Rizal as planting a German banner, for they started a storythat he had taken possession of the Islands in the name of the country where he was educated, which was just then in unfriendlyrelations with Spain over the question of the ill treatment of the Protestant missionaries in the Caroline Islands. This samestory was repeated after the American occupation with the variation that Rizal, as the supreme chief and originator of theideas of the Katipunan (which in fact he was not—he was even opposed to the society as it existed in his time), had placedthere a Filipino banner, in token that the Islands intended to reassume the independent condition of which the Spanish haddispossessed them.

“Noli Me Tangere” circulated first among Doctor Rizal’s relatives; on one occasion a cousin made a special trip to Kalambaand took the author to task for having caricatured her in the character of Doña Victorina. Rizal made no denial, but merelysuggested that the book was a mirror of Philippine life, with types that unquestionably existed in the country, and that ifanybody recognized one of the characters as picturing himself or herself, that person would do well to correct the faultswhich therein appeared ridiculous.

A somewhat liberal administration was now governingPage 138the Philippines, and efforts were being made to correct the more glaring abuses in the social conditions. One of these reformsproposed that the larger estates should bear their share of the taxes, which it was believed they were then escaping to agreat extent. Requests were made of the municipal government of Kalamba, among other towns, for a statement of the relationthat the big Dominican hacienda bore to the town, what increase or decrease there might have been in the income of the estate,and what taxes the proprietors were paying compared with the revenue their place afforded.

Rizal interested the people of the community to gather reliable statistics, to go thoroughly into the actual conditions, andto leave out the generalities which usually characterized Spanish documents.

He asked the people to coöperate, pointing out that when they did not complain it was their own fault more than that of thegovernment if they suffered injustice. Further, he showed the folly of exaggerated statements, and insisted upon a definiteand moderate showing of such abuses as were unquestionably within the power of the authorities to relieve. Rizal himself preparedthe report, which is an excellent presentation of the grievances of the people of his town. It brings forward as special pointsin favor of the community their industriousness, their willingness to help themselves, their interest in education, and concludeswith expressing confidence in the fairness of the government, pointing out the fact that they were risking the displeasureof their landlords by furnishing the information requested. The paper made a big stir, and its essential statements, likeeverything else in Rizal’s writings, were never successfully challenged.

Conditions in Manila were at that time disturbed owing to the precedence which had been given in a local festival to the Chinese,because they paid more money. ThePage 139Filipinos claimed that, being in their home country, they should have had prior consideration and were entitled to it by law.The matter culminated in a protest, which was doubtless submitted to Doctor Rizal on the eve of his departure from the Islands;the protest in a general way met with his approval, but the theatrical methods adopted in the presentation of it can hardlyhave been according to his advice.

He sailed for Hongkong in February of 1888, and made a short stay in the British colony, becoming acquainted there with JoseMaria Basa, an exile of ’72, who had constituted himself the especial guardian of the Filipino students in that city. Thevisitor was favorably impressed by the methods of education in the British colony and with the spirit of patriotism developedthereby. He also looked into the subject of the large investments in Hongkong property by the corporation landlords of thePhilippines, their preparation for the day of trouble which they foresaw.

Rizal was interested in the Chinese theater, comparing the plays with the somewhat similar productions which existed in thePhilippines; there, however, they had been given a religious twist, which at first glance hid their debt to the Chinese drama.The Doctor notes meeting, at nearby Macao, an exile of ’72, whose condition and patient, uncomplaining bearing of his manytroubles aroused Rizal’s sympathies and commanded his admiration.

With little delay, the journey was continued to Japan, where Doctor Rizal was surprised by an invitation to make his homein the Spanish consulate. There he wasPage 140hospitably entertained, and a like courtesy was shown him in the Spanish minister’s home in Tokio. The latter even offeredhim a position, as a sort of interpreter, probably, should he care to remain in the country. This offer, however, was declined.Rizal made considerable investigation into the condition of the various Japanese classes and acquired such facility in theuse of the language that with it and his appearance, for he was “very Japanese,” the natives found it difficult to believethat he was not one of themselves. The month or more passed here he considered one of the happiest in his travels, and itwas with regret that he sailed from Yokohama for San Francisco. A Japanese newspaper man, who knew no other language thanhis own, was a companion on the entire journey to London, and Rizal acted as his interpreter.

Not only did he enter into the spirit of the language but with remarkable versatility he absorbed the spirit of the Japaneseartists and acquired much dexterity in expressing himself in their style, as is shown by one of the illustrations in thisbook. The popular idea that things occidental are reversed in the Orient was amusingly caricatured in a sketch he made ofa German face; by reversing its lines he converted it into an old-time Japanese countenance.

The diary of the voyage from Hongkong to Japan records an incident to which he alludes as being similar to that of Aladdinin the Tagalog tale of Florante. The Filipino wife of an Englishman, Mrs. Jackson, who was a passenger on board, told Rizala great deal about a Filipino named Rachal, who was educated in Europe and had written a much-talked-of novel, which she describedand of which she spoke in such flattering terms that Rizal declared his identity. The confusion in names is explainedPage 141Page 142by the fact that Rachal is a name well known in the Philippines as that of a popular make of piano.

At San Francisco the boat was held for some time in quarantine because of sickness aboard, and Rizal was impressed by thefact that the valuable cargo of silk was not delayed but was quickly transferred to the shore. His diary is illustrated witha drawing of the Treasury flag on the customs launch which acted as go-between for their boat and the shore. Finally, thefirst-class passengers were allowed to land, and he went to the Palace Hotel.

With little delay, the overland journey was begun; the scenery through the picturesque Rocky Mountains especially impressedhim, and finally Chicago was reached. The thing that struck him most forcibly in that city was the large number of cigar storeswith an Indian in front of each—and apparently no two Indians alike. The unexpressed idea was that in America the remembranceof the first inhabitants of the land and their dress was retained and popularized, while in the Philippines knowledge of thefirst inhabitants of the land was to be had only from foreign museums.

Niagara Falls is the next impression recorded in the diary, which has been preserved and is now in the Newberry Library ofChicago. The same strange, awe-inspiring mystery which others have found in the big falls affected him, but characteristicallyhe compared this world-wonder with the cascades of his native La Laguna, claiming for them greater delicacy and a daintierenchantment.

From Albany, the train ran along the banks of the Hudson, and he was reminded of the Pasig in his homeland, with its muchgreater commerce and its constant activity.

At New York, Rizal embarked on theCity of Rome, then the finest steamer in the world, and after a pleasantPage 143voyage, in which his spare moments were occupied in rereading “Gulliver’s Travels” in English, Rizal reached England, andsaid good-by to the friends whom he had met during their brief ocean trip together.

Rizal’s first letters home to his family speak of being in the free air of England and once more amidst European activity.For a short time he lived with Doctor Antonio Maria Regidor, an exile of ’72, who had come to secure what Spanish legal Businesshe could in the British metropolis. Doctor Regidor was formerly an official in the Philippines, and later proved his innocenceof any complicity in the troubles of ’72.

Doctor Rizal then boarded with a Mr. Beckett, organist of St. Paul’s Church, at 37 Charlecote Crescent, in the favorite NorthWest residence section. The zoölogicalPage 144gardens were conveniently near and the British Museum was within easy walking distance. The new member was a favorite withall the family, which consisted of three daughters besides the father and mother.

Rizal’s youthful interest in sleight-of-hand tricks was still maintained. During his stay in the Philippines he had sometimesamused his friends in this way, till one day he was horrified to find that the simple country folk, who were also lookingon, thought that he was working miracles. In London he resumed his favorite diversion, and a Christmas gift of Mrs. Beckettto him, “The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist,” indicated the interest his friends took in this amusement.One of his own purchases was “Modern Magic,” the frontispiece of which is the sphinx that figures in the story of “El Filibusterismo.”

It was Rizal’s custom to study the deceptions practiced upon the peoples of other lands, comparing them with those of whichhis own countrymen had been victims. Thus he could get an idea of the relative credulity of different peoples and could alsoaccount for many practices the origin of which was otherwise less easy to understand. His investigations were both in booksand by personal research. In quest of these experiences he one day chanced to visit a professional phrenologist; the bump-readerwas a shrewd guesser, for he dwelt especially upon Rizal’s aptitude for learning languages and advised him to take up thestudy of them.

This interest in languages, shown in his childish ambition to be like Sir John Bowring, made Rizal a congenialPage 145Page 146companion of a still more distinguished linguist, Doctor Reinhold Rost, the librarian of the India Office. The Raffles Libraryin Singapore now owns Doctor Rost’s library, and its collection of grammars in seventy languages attests the wide range ofthe studies of this Sanscrit scholar.

Doctor Rost was born and educated in Germany, though naturalized as a British subject, and he was a man of great musical taste.His family sometimes formed an orchestra, at other times a glee club, and furnished all the necessary parts from its own members.Rizal was a frequent visitor, usually spending his Sundays in athletic exercises with the boys, for he quickly became proficientin the English sports of boxing and cricket. While resting he would converse with the father, or chat with the daughters ofthe home. All the children had literary tastes, and one, Daisy, presented him with a copy of a novel which she had just translatedfrom the German, entitled “Ulli.”

Some idea of Doctor Rizal’s own linguistic attainments may be gained from the fact that instead of writing letters to hisnephews and nieces he made for them translations of some of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. They consist of some fortymanuscript pages, profusely illustrated, and the father is referred to in a “dedication,” as though it were a real book. TheHebrew Bible quotation is in allusion to a jocose remark once made by the father that German was like Hebrew to him, the versebeing that in which the sons of Jacob, not recognizing that their brother was the seller, were bargaining for some of Pharaoh’ssurplus corn, “And he (Joseph) said, How is the old man, your father?” Rizal always tried to relieve by a touch of humor anythingthat seemed to him as savoring of affectation, the phase of Spanish character that repelled him and the imitation of whichPage 147by his countrymen who knew nothing of the un-Spanish world disgusted him with them.

Another example of his versatility in language and of its usefulness to him as well, is shown in a trilingual letter writtenby Rizal in Dapitan when the censorship of his correspondence had become annoying through ignorant exceptions to perfectlyharmless matters. No Spaniard available spoke more than one language besides his own and it was necessary to send the letterto three different persons to find out its contents. The critics took the hint and Rizal received better treatment thereafter.

Another one of Rizal’s youthful aspirations was attained in London, for there he began transcribing thePage 148Page 149Page 150early Spanish history by Morga of which Sir John Bowring had told his uncle. A copy of this rare book was in the British Museumand he gained admission as a reader there through the recommendation of Doctor Rost. Only five hundred persons can be accommodatedin the big reading room, and as students are coming from every continent for special researches, good reason has to be shownwhy these studies cannot be made at some other institution.

Besides the copying of the text of Morga’s history, Rizal read many other early writings on the Philippines, and the manifestunfairness of some of these who thought that they could glorify Spain only by disparaging the Filipinos aroused his wrath.Few Spanish writers held up the good name of those who were under their flag, and Rizal had to resort to foreign authoritiesto disprove their libels. Morga was almost alone among Spanish historians,Page 151Page 152but his assertions found corroboration in the contemporary chronicles of other nationalities. Rizal spent his evenings inthe home of Doctor Regidor, and many a time the bitterness and impatience with which his day’s work in the Museum had inspiredhim, would be forgotten as the older man counseled patience and urged that such prejudices were to be expected of a littleeducated nation. Then Rizal’s brow would clear as he quoted his favorite proverb, “To understand all is to forgive all.”

Doctor Rost was editor ofTrübner’s Record, a journal devoted to the literature of the East, founded by the famous Oriental Bookseller and Publisher of London, NicholasTrübner, and Doctor Rizal contributed to it in May, 1889, some specimens of Tagal folklore, an extract from which is appended,as it was then printed:

Page 154The Filipino colony in Spain had established a fortnightly review, published first in Barcelona and later in Madrid, to enlightenSpaniards on their distant colony, and Rizal wrote for it from the start. Its name,La Solidaridad, perhaps may be translated Equal Rights, as it aimed at like laws and the same privileges for the Peninsula and the possessionsoverseas.

From the Philippines came news of a contemptible attempt to reach Rizal through his family—one of many similar petty persecutions.His sister Lucia’s husband had died and the corpse was refused interment in consecrated ground, upon the pretext that thedead man, who had been exceptionally liberal to the church and was of unimpeachable character, had been negligent in his religiousduties. Another individual with a notorious record of longer absence from confession died about the same time, and his funeraltook place from the church without demur. The ugly feature about the refusal to bury Hervosa was that the telegram from thefriar parish-priest to the Archbishop at Manila in asking instructions, was careful to mention that the deceased was a brother-in-lawof Rizal. Doctor Rizal wrote a scorching article forLa Solidaridad under the caption “An Outrage,” andPage 155took the matter up with the Spanish Colonial Minister, then Becerra, a professed Liberal. But that weakling statesman, moreliberal in words than in actions, did nothing.

That the union of Church and State can be as demoralizing to religion as it is disastrous to good government seems sufficientlyestablished by Philippine incidents like this, in which politics was substituted for piety as the test of a good Catholic,making marriage impossible and denying decent burial to the families of those who differed politically with the ministersof the national religion.

Page 156Of all his writings, the article in which Rizal speaks of this indignity to the dead comes nearest to exhibiting personalfeeling and rancor. Yet his main point is to indicate generally what monstrous conditions the Philippine mixture of religionand politics made possible.

The following are part of a series of nineteen verses published inLa Solidaridad over Rizal’s favorite pen name of Laong Laan:

Rizal’s congenial situation in the British capital was disturbed by his discovering a growing interest in the youngest ofthe three girls whom he daily met. He felt that his career did not permit him to marry, nor was his youthful affection forhis cousin in Manila an entirelyPage 158forgotten sentiment. Besides, though he never lapsed into such disregard for his feminine friends as the low Spanish standardhad made too common among the Filipino students in Madrid, Rizal was ever on his guard against himself. So he suggested toDoctor Regidor that he considered it would be better for him to leave London. His parting gift to the family with whom hehad lived so happily was a clay medallion bearing in relief the profiles of the three sisters.

Other regretful good-bys were said to a number of young Filipinos whom he had gathered around him and formed into a club forthe study of the history of their country and the discussion of its politics.

Rizal now went to Paris, where he was glad to be again with his friend Valentin Ventura, a wealthy Pampangan who had beentrained for the law. His tastes and ideals were very much those of Rizal, and he had sound sense and a freedom from affectationwhich especially appealed to Rizal. There Rizal’s reprint of Morga’s rare history was made, at a greater cost but also inbetter form than his first novel. Copious notes gave references to other authorities and compared present with past conditions,and Doctor Blumentritt contributed a forceful introduction.

When Rizal returned to London to correct the proofsheets, the old original book was in use and the copy could not be checked.This led to a number of errors, misspelled and changed words, and even omissions of sentences, which were afterwards discoveredand carefully listed and filed away to be corrected in another edition.

Possibly it has been made clear already that, while Rizal did not work for separation from Spain, he was no admirer of theCastilian character, nor of the Latin type, for that matter. He remarked on Blumentritt’s comparison of the Spanish rulersin the Philippines with thePage 159Czars of Russia, that it is flattering to the Castilians but it is more than they merit, to put them in the same class asRussia. Apparently he had in mind the somewhat similar comparison in Burke’s speech on the conciliation of America, in whichhe said that Russia was more advanced and less cruel than Spain and so not to be classed with it.

During his stay in Paris, Rizal was a frequent visitor at the home of the two Doctors Pardo de Tavera, sons of the exile of’72 who had gone to France, the younger now a physician in South America, the elder a former Philippine Commissioner. Theinterest of the one in art, and of the other in philology, the ideas of progress through education shared by both, and manyother common tastes and ideals, made the two young men fast friends of Rizal. Mrs. Tavera, the mother, was an interestingconversationalist, and Rizal profited by her reminiscences of Philippine official life, to the inner circle of which her husband’sposition had given her the entrée.

On Sundays Rizal fenced at Juan Luna’s house with his distinguished artist-countryman, or, while the latter was engaged withVentura, watched their play. It was on one of these afternoons that the Tagalog story of “The Monkey and the Tortoise”1 was hastily sketched as a joke to fill the remaining pages of Mrs. Luna’s autograph album, in which she had been insistingRizal must write before all its space was used up. A comparison of the Tagalog version with a Japanese counterpart was publishedby Rizal in English, inTrübner’s Magazine, suggesting that the two people may have had a common origin. This study received considerable attention from other ethnologists,and was among the topics at an ethnological conference.

At times his antagonist was Miss Nellie Baustead, who had great skill with the foils. Her father, himself bornPage 160in the Philippines, the son of a wealthy merchant of Singapore, had married a member of the Genato family of Manila. At theirvilla in Biarritz, and again in their home in Belgium, Rizal was a guest later, for Mr. Baustead had taken a great likingto him.

The teaching instinct that led him to act as mentor to the Filipino students in Spain and made him the inspiration of a mutualimprovement club of his young countrymen in London, suggested the foundation of a school in Paris. Later a Pampangan youthoffered him $40,000 with which to found a Filipino college in Hongkong, where many young men from the Philippines had obtainedan education better than their own land could afford but not entirely adapted to their needs. The scheme attracted Rizal,and a prospectus for such an institution which was later found among his papers not only proves how deeply he was interested,but reveals the fact that his ideas of education were essentially like thosePage 161carried out in the present public-school course of instruction in the Philippines.

Early in August of 1890 Rizal went to Madrid to seek redress for a wrong done his family by the notorious General Weyler,the “Butcher” of evil memory in Cuba, then Governor-General of the Philippines. Just as the mother’s loss of liberty, yearsbefore, was caused by revengeful feelings on the part of an official because for one day she was obliged to omit a customarygift of horse feed, so the father’s loss of land was caused by a revengeful official, and for quite as trivial a cause.

Mr. Mercado was a great poultry fancier and especially prided himself upon his fine stock of turkeys. He had been accustomedto respond to the frequent requests of the estate agent for presents of birds. But at one time disease had so reduced thenumber of turkeys that all that remained were needed for breeding purposes and Mercado was obliged to refuse him. In a ragethe agent insisted, and when that proved unavailing, threats followed.

Page 162But Francisco Mercado was not a man to be moved by threats, and when the next rent day came round he was notified that hisrent had been doubled. This was paid without protest, for the tenants were entirely at the mercy of the landlords, no fixedrate appearing either in contracts or receipts. Then the rent-raising was kept on till Mercado was driven to seek the protectionof the courts. Part of his case led to exactly the same situation as that of the Biñan tenantry in his grandfather’s time,when the landlords were compelled to produce their title-deeds, and these proved that land of others had been illegally includedin the estate. Other tenants, emboldened by Mercado’s example also refused to pay the exorbitant rent increases.

The justice of the peace of Kalamba, before whom the case first came, was threatened by the provincial governor for takingtime to hear the testimony, and the case was turned over to the auxiliary justice, who promptly decided in the manner desiredby the authorities. Mercado at once took an appeal, but the venal Weyler moved a force of artillery to Kalamba and quarteredit upon the town as if rebellion openly existed there. Then the court representatives evicted the people from their homesandPage 163directed them to remove all their buildings from the estate lands within twenty-four hours. In answer to the plea that theyhad appealed to the Supreme Court the tenants were told their houses could be brought back again if theyPage 164won their appeal. Of course this was impossible and some 150,000 pesos’ worth of property was consequently destroyed by thecourt agents, who were worthy estate employees. Twenty or more families were made homeless and the other tenants were forbiddento shelter them under pain of their own eviction. This is the proceeding in which Retana suggests that the governor-generaland the landlords were legally within their rights. If so, Spanish law was a disgrace to the nation. Fortunately the Rizal-Mercadofamily had another piece of property at Los Baños, and there they made their home.

Weyler’s motives in this matter do not have to be surmised, for among the (formerly) secret records of the government thereexists a letter which he wrote when he first denied the petition of the Kalamba residents. It is marked “confidential” andis addressed to the landlords, expressing the pleasure which this action gave him. Then the official adds that it cannot haveescaped their notice that the times demand diplomacy in handling the situation but that, should occasion arise, he will actwith energy. Just as Weyler had favored the landlords at first so he kept on and when he had a chance to do something forthem he did it.

Finally, when Weyler left the Islands an investigation was ordered into his administration, owing to rumors of extensive andsystematic frauds on the government, but nothing more came of the case than that Retana, later Rizal’s biographer, wrote abook in the General’s defense, “extensively documented,” and also abusively anti-Filipino. It has been urged (not by Retana,however) that the Weyler régime was unusually efficient, because he would allow no one but himself to make profits out ofthe public, and therefore, while his gains were greater than those of his predecessors, the Islands really received more attentionfrom him.

Page 165During the Kalamba discussion in Spain, Retana, until 1899 always scurrilously anti-Filipino, made the mistake of his life,for he charged Rizal’s family with not paying their rent, which was not true. While Rizal believed that duelling was murder,to judge from a pair of pictures preserved in his album, he evidently considered that homicide of one like Retana was justifiable.After the Spanish custom, his seconds immediately called upon the author of the libel. Retana notes in his “Vida del Dr. Rizal”that the incident closed in a way honorable to both Rizal and himself—he, Retana, published an explicit retraction and abjectapology in the Madrid papers. Another time, in Madrid, Rizal risked a duel when he challenged Antonio Luna, later the General,because of a slighting allusion to a lady at a public banquet. He had a nicer sense of honor in such matters than prevailedin Madrid, and Luna promptly saw the matter from Rizal’s point of view and withdrew the offensive remark. This second incidentcomplements the first, for it shows that Rizal was as willing to risk a duel with his superior in arms as with one not soskilled as he. Rizal was an exceptional pistol shot and a fair swordsman, while Retana was inferior with either sword or pistol,but Luna, who would have had the choice of weapons, was immeasurably Rizal’s superior with the sword.

Owing to a schism a rival arose against the old Masonry and finally the original organization succumbed to the offshoot. DoctorMiguel Morayta, Professor of History in the Central University at Madrid, was the head of the new institution and it had grownto be very popular among students. Doctor Morayta was friendly to the Filipinos and a lodge of the same name as their paperwas organized among them. For their outside work they had a society named the Hispano-Filipino Association, of which Moraytawas president, with convenient clubroomsPage 166and a membership practically the same as the Lodge La Solidaridad.

Just before Christmas of 1890, this Hispano-Filipino Association gave a largely attended banquet at which there were manyprominent speakers. Rizal stayed away, not because of growing pessimism, as Retana suggests, but because one of the speakerswas the same Becerra who had feared to act when the outrage against the body of Rizal’s brother-in-law had been reported tohim. Now out of office, the ex-minister was again bold in words, but Rizal for one was not again to be deceived by them.

The propaganda carried on by his countrymen in the Peninsula did not seem to Rizal effective, and he found his suggestionswere not well received by those at its head. The story of Rizal’s separation from La Solidaridad, however, is really not material,but the following quotation from a letter written to Carlos Oliver, speaking of the opposition of the Madrid committee ofFilipinos to himself, is interesting as showing Rizal’s attitude of mind:

“I regret exceedingly that they war against me, attempting to discredit me in the Philippines, but I shall be content providedonly that my successor keeps on with the work. I ask only of those who say that I created discord among the Filipinos: Wasthere any effective union before I entered political life? Was there any chief whose authority I wanted to oppose? It is apity that in our slavery we should have rivalries over leadership.”

And in Rizal’s letter from Hongkong, May 24, 1892, to Zulueta, commenting on an article by Leyte inLa Solidaridad, he says:

“Again I repeat, I do not understand the reason of the attack, since now I have dedicated myself to preparing for our countrymena safe refuge in case of persecutionPage 167and to writing some books, championing our cause, which shortly will appear. Besides, the article is impolitic in the extremeand prejudicial to the Philippines. Why say that the first thing we need is to have money? A wiser man would be silent andnot wash soiled linen in public.”

Early in ’91 Rizal went to Paris, visiting Mr. Baustead’s villa in Biarritz en route, and he was again a guest of his hospitablefriend when, after the winter season was over, the family returned to their home in Brussels.

During most of the year Rizal’s residence was in Ghent, where he had gathered around him a number of Filipinos. Doctor Blumentrittsuggested that he should devote himself to the study of Malay-Polynesian languages, and as it appeared that thus he couldearn a living in Holland he thought to make his permanent home there. But his parents were old and reluctant to leave theirnative land to pass their last years in a strange country, and that plan failed.Page 168

He now occupied himself in finishing the sequel to “Noli Me Tangere,” the novel “El Filibusterismo,” which he had begun inOctober of 1887 while on his visit to the Philippines. The bolder painting of the evil effectsPage 169of the Spanish culture upon the Filipinos may well have been inspired by his unfortunate experiences with his countrymen inMadrid who had not seen anything of Europe outside of Spain. On the other hand, the confidence of the author in those of hiscountrymen who had not been contaminated by the so-called Spanish civilization, is even more noticeable than in “Noli Me Tangere.”

Rizal had now done all that he could for his country; he had shown them by Morga what they were when Spain found them; through“Noli Me Tangere” he had painted their condition after three hundred years of Spanish influence; and in “El Filibusterismo”he had pictured what their future must be if better counsels did not prevail in the colony.

These works were for the instruction of his countrymen, the fulfilment of the task he set for himself when he first read DoctorJagor’s criticism fifteen years before; time only was now needed for them to accomplish their work and for education to bringforth its fruits.Page 170

Chapter VIII

Despujol’s Duplicity

As soon as he had set in motion what influence he possessed in Europe for the relief of his relatives, Rizal hurried to Hongkongand from there wrote to his parents asking their permission to join them. Some time before, his brother-in-law, Manuel Hidalgo,had been deported upon the recommendation of the governor of La Laguna, “to prove to the Filipinos that they were mistakenin thinking that the new Civil Code gave them any rights” in cases where the governor-general agreed with his subordinate’sreason for asking for the deportation as well as in its desirability. The offense was having buried a child, who had diedof cholera, without church ceremonies. The law prescribed and public health demanded it. But the law was a dead letter andthe public health was never considered when these cut into church revenues, as Hidalgo ought to have known.

Upon Rizal’s arrival in Hongkong, in the fall of 1891, he received notice that his brother Paciano had been returned fromexile in Mindoro, but that three of his sisters had been summoned, with the probability of deportation.

A trap to get Rizal into the hands of the government by playing upon his affection for his mother was planned at this time,but it failed. Mrs. Rizal and one of her daughters were arrested in Manila for “falsification of cedula” because they no longerused the name Realonda, which the mother had dropped fifteen years before. Then, though there were frequently boats runningto Kalamba, the two women were ordered to be taken there for trial on foot. As when Mrs. Rizal had been a prisoner before,the humane guards disobeyed their ordersPage 171and the elderly lady was carried in a hammock. The family understood the plans of their persecutors, and Rizal was told byhis parents not to come to Manila. Then the persecution of the mother and the sister dropped.

In Hongkong, Rizal was already acquainted with most of the Filipino colony, including Jose M. Basa, a ’72 exile of great energy,for whom he had the greatest respect. The old man was an unceasing enemy of all the religious orders and was constantly gettingout “proclamations,” as the handbills common in the old-time controversies were called. One of these, against the Jesuits,figures in the case against Rizal and bears some minor corrections in his handwriting. Nevertheless, his participation init was probably no more than this proofreading for his friend, whose motives he could appreciate, but whose plan of actionwas not in harmony with his own ideas.

Letters of introduction from London friends secured for Rizal the acquaintance of Mr. H. L. Dalrymple, a justice of the peace—whichis a position more coveted and honored in English lands than here—and a member of the public library committee, as well asof the board of medical examiners. He was a merchant, too, and agent for the British North Borneo Company, which had recentlysecured a charter as a semi-independent colony for the extensive cession which had originally been made to the American TradingCompany and later transferred to them.

Rizal spent much of his time in the library, reading especially the files of the older newspapers, which contained frequentmention of the Philippines. As an old-time missionary had left his books to the library, the collection was rich in writingsof the fathers of the early Church, as well as in philology and travel. He spent much time also in long conversations withEditor Frazier-SmithPage 172of theHongkong Telegraph, the most enterprising of the daily newspapers. He was the master of St. John’s Masonic lodge (Scotch constitution), whichRizal had visited upon his first arrival, intensely democratic and a close student of world politics. The two became fastfriends and Rizal contributed to theTelegraph several articles on Philippine matters. These were printed in Spanish, ostensibly for the benefit of the Filipino colonyin Hongkong, but large numbers of the paper were mailed to the Philippines and thus at first escaped the vigilance of thecensors. Finally the scheme was discovered and theTelegraph placed on the prohibited list, but, like most Spanish actions, this was just too late to prevent the circulation of whatRizal had wished to say to his countrymen.

With the first of the year 1892 the free portion of Rizal’s family came to Hongkong. He had been licensed to practice medicinein the colony, and opened an office, specializing as an oculist with notable success.

Another congenial companion was a man of his own profession, Doctor L. P. Marquez, a Portuguese who had received his medicaleducation in Dublin and was a naturalized British subject. He was a leading member ofPage 173the Portuguese club, Lusitania, which was of radically republican proclivities and possessed an excellent library of bookson modern political conditions. An inspection of the colonial prison with him inspired Rizal’s article, “A Visit to VictoriaGaol,” through which runs a pathetic contrast of the English system of imprisonment for reformationPage 174with the Spanish vindictive methods of punishment. A souvenir of one of their many conferences was a dainty modeling in claymade by Rizal with that astonishing quickness that resulted from his Uncle Gabriel’s training during his early childhood.

In the spring, Rizal took a voyage to British North Borneo and with Mr. Pryor, the agent, looked over vacant lands which hadbeen offered him by the Company for a Filipino colony. The officials were anxious to grow abaca, cacao, sugar cane and coconuts,all products of the Philippines, the soil of which resembled theirs. So they welcomed the prospect of the immigration of laborersskilled in such cultivation, the Kalambans and other persecuted people of the Luzon lake region, whom Doctor Rizal hoped totransplant there to a freer home.

A different kind of governor-general had succeeded Weyler in the Philippines; the new man was Despujol, a friend of the Jesuitsand a man who at once gave the Filipinos hope of better days, for his promises were quickly backed up by the beginnings oftheir performance. Rizal witnessed this novel experience for his country with gratification, though he had seen too many disappointmentsto confide in the continuance of reform, and he remembered that the like liberal term of De la Torre had ended in the Cavitereaction.

He wrote early to the new chief executive, applauding Despujol’s policy and offering such coöperation as he might be ableto give toward making it a complete success. No reply had been received, but after Rizal’s return from his Borneo trip theSpanish consul in HongkongPage 175Page 176assured him that he would not be molested should he go to Manila.

Rizal therefore made up his mind to visit his home once more. He still cherished the plan of transferring those of his relativesand friends who were homeless through the land troubles, or discontented with their future in the Philippines, to the districtoffered to him by the British North Borneo Company. There, under the protection of the British flag, but in their accustomedclimate, with familiar surroundings amid their own people, a New Kalamba would be established. Filipinos would there havea chance to prove to the world what they were capable of, and their free condition would inevitably react on the neighboringPhilippines and help to bring about better government there.

Rizal had no intention of renouncing his Philippine allegiance, for he always regretted the naturalization of his countrymenabroad, considering it a loss to the country which needed numbers to play the influential part he hoped it would play in awakeningAsia. All his arguments were for British justice and “Equality before the Law,” for he considered that political power wasonly a means of securing and assuring fair treatment for all, and in itself of no interest.

With such ideas he sailed for home, bearing the Spanish consul’s passport. He left two letters in Hongkong with his friendDoctor Marquez marked, “To be opened after my death,” and their contents indicate that he was not unmindful of how littleregard Spain had had in his country for her plighted honor.

“The affection that I have ever professed for you suggests this step, and time alone can tell whether or not itPage 177is sensible. Their outcome decides things by results, but whether that be favorable or unfavorable, it may always be saidthat duty urged me, so if I die in doing it, it will not matter.

“I realize how much suffering I have caused you, still I do not regret what I have done. Rather, if I had to begin over again,still I should do just the same, for it has been only duty. Gladly do I go to expose myself to peril, not as any expiationof misdeeds (for in this matter I believe myself guiltless of any), but to complete my work and myself offer the example ofwhich I have always preached.

“A man ought to die for duty and his principles. I hold fast to every idea which I have advanced as to the condition and futureof our country, and shall willingly die for it, and even more willingly to procure for you justice and peace.

“With pleasure, then, I risk life to save so many innocent persons—so many nieces and nephews, so many children of friends,and children, too, of others who are not even friends—who are suffering on my account. What am I? A single man, practicallywithout family, and sufficiently undeceived as to life. I have had many disappointments and the future before me is gloomy,and will be gloomy if light does not illuminate it, the dawn of a better day for my native land. On the other hand, thereare many individuals, filled with hope and ambition, who perhaps all might be happy were I dead, and then I hope my enemieswould be satisfied and stop persecuting so many entirely innocent people. To a certain extent their hatred is justifiableas to myself, and my parents and relatives.

“Should fate go against me, you will all understand that I shall die happy in the thought that my death willPage 178end all your troubles. Return to our country and may you be happy in it.

“Till the last moment of my life I shall be thinking of you and wishing you all good fortune and happiness.”

“The step which I am taking, or rather am about to take, is undoubtedly risky, and it is unnecessary to say that I have consideredit some time. I understand that almost every one is opposed to it; but I know also that hardly anybody else comprehends whatis in my heart. I cannot live on seeing so many suffer unjust persecutions on my account; I cannot bear longer the sight ofmy sisters and their numerous families treated like criminals. I prefer death and cheerfully shall relinquish life to freeso many innocent persons from such unjust persecution.

“I appreciate that at present the future of our country gravitates in some degree around me, that at my death many will feeltriumphant, and, in consequence, many are wishing for my fall. But what of it? I hold duties of conscience above all else,I have obligations to the families who suffer, to my aged parents whose sighs strike me to the heart; I know that I alone,only with my death, can make them happy, returning them to their native land and to a peaceful life at home. I am all my parentshave, but our country has many, many more sons who can take my place and even do my work better.

“Besides I wish to show those who deny us patriotism that we know how to die for duty and principles. What matters death,if one dies for what one loves, for native land and beings held dear?

“If I thought that I were the only resource for the policy of progress in the Philippines and were I convinced that my countrymenwere going to make use of my services,Page 179perhaps I should hesitate about taking this step; but there are still others who can take my place, who, too, can take myplace with advantage. Furthermore, there are perchance those who hold me unneeded and my services are not utilized, resultingthat I am reduced to inactivity.

“Always have I loved our unhappy land, and I am sure that I shall continue loving it till my latest moment, in case men proveunjust to me. My career, my life, my happiness, all have I sacrificed for love of it. Whatever my fate, I shall die blessingit and longing for the dawn of its redemption.”

Suspicion of the Spanish authorities was justified. The consul’s cablegram notifying Governor-General Despujol. that Rizalhad fallen into their trap, sent the day of issuing the “safe-conduct” or special passport, bears the same date as the secretcase filed against him in Manila, “for anti religious and anti patriotic agitation.” On that same day the deceitful Despujolwas confidentially inquiring of his executive secretary whether it was truePage 180that Rizal had been naturalized as a German subject, and, if so, what effect would that have on the governor-general’s rightto take executive action; that is, could he deport one who had the protection of a strong nation with the same disregard forthe forms of justice that he could a Filipino?

This inquiry is joined to an order to the local authorities in the provinces near Manila instructing them to watch the comingsand goings of their prominent peoplePage 181during the following weeks. The scheme resembled that which was concocted prior to ’72, but Governor-General de la Torte washonest in his reforms. Despujol may, or may not, have been honest in other matters, but as concerns Rizal there is no lackof proof of his perfidy. The confidential file relating to this part of the case was forgotten in destroying and removingsecret papers when Manila passed into a democratic conqueror’s hands, and now whoever wishes may read, in the Bureau of Archives,documents which the Conde de Caspe, to use a noble title for an ignoble man, considered safely hidden. As withPage 182Weyler’s contidential letter to the friar landlords, these discoveries convict their writers of bad faith, with no possibilityof mistake.

This point in the reformed Spanish writer’s biography of Rizal is made occasion for another of his treacherous attacks uponthe good name of his pretended hero. Just as in the land troubles Retana held that legally Governor-General Weyler was justifiedin disregarding an appeal pending in the courts, so in this connection he declares: ”(Despujol) unquestionably had been deceivedby Rizal when, from Hongkong, he offered to Despujol not to meddle in politics.” That Rizal meddled in politics rests solelyupon Despujol’s word, and it will be seen later how little that is worth; but, politics or no politics, Rizal’s fate was settledbefore he ever came to Manila.

Rizal was accompanied to Manila by his sister Lucia, widow of that brother-in-law who had been denied Christian burial becauseof his relationship to Rizal. In the Basa home, among other waste papers, and for that use, she had gathered up five copiesof a recent “proclamation,” entitled “Pobres Frailes” (Poor Friars), a small sheet possibly two inches wide and five long.These, crumpled up, were tucked into the case of the pillow which Mrs. Hervosa used on board. Later, rolled up in her blanketsand bed mat, or petate, they went to the custom house along with the other baggage, and of course were discovered in the rigorousexamination which the officers always made. How strict Philippine customs searches were, Henry Norman, an English writer oftravels, explainsPage 183by remarking that Manila was the only port where he had ever had his pockets picked officially. His visit was made at aboutthe time of which we are writing, and the object, he says, was to keep out anti friar publications.

Rizal and his sister landed without difficulty, and he at once went to the Oriente Hotel, then the best in town, for Rizalalways traveled and lived as became a member of a well-to-do family. Next he waited on the Governor-General, with whom hehad a very brief interview, for it happened to be on one of the numerous religious festivals, during which he obtained favorableconsideration for his deported sisters. Several more interviews occurred in which the hopes first given were realized, sothat those of the family then awaiting exile were pardoned and those already deported were to be returned at an early date.

One night Rizal was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the masters and wardens of the Masonic lodges of Manila, and hewas surprised and delighted at the progress the institution had made in the Islands. Then he had another task not so agreeable,for, while awaiting a delayed appointment with the Governor-General, he with two others ran up on the new railway to Tarlac.Ostensibly this was to see the country, but it was not for a pleasure trip. They were investigating the sales of Rizal’s booksand trying to find out what had become of the money received from them, for while the author’s desire had been to place themat so low a price as to be within the reach of even the poor, it was reported that the sales had been few and at high prices,so that copies were only read by the wealthy whose desire to obtain the rare and much-discussed novels led them to pay exorbitantfigures for them.

Rizal’s party, consisting of the Secretary of one of the lodges of Manila, and another Mason, a prominent school-teacher,were under constant surveillance and aPage 184minute record of their every act is preserved in the “reserved” files, now, of course, so only in name, as they are no longersecret. Immediately after they left a house it would be thoroughly searched and the occupants strictly questioned. In spiteof the precautions of the officials, Rizal soon learned of this, and those whom they visited were warned of what to expect.In one home so many forbidden papers were on hand that Rizal delayed his journey till the family completed their task of carryingthem upstairs and hiding them in the roof.

At another place he came across an instance of superstition such as that which had caused him to cease his sleight-of-handexhibitions on his former return to the Islands. Their host was a man of little education but great hospitality, and the partywere most pleasantly entertained. During the conversation he spoke of Rizal, but did not seem to know that his hero had comeback to the Philippines. His remarks drifted into the wildest superstition, and, after asserting that Rizal bore a charmedlife, he startled his audience by saying that if the author of “Noli Me Tangere” cared to do so, he could be with them atthat very instant. At first the three thought themselves discovered by their host, but when Rizal made himself known, theold man proved that he had had no suspicion of his guest’s identity, for he promptly became busy preparing his home for thesearch which he realized would shortly follow. On another occasion their host was a stranger whom Rizal treated for a temporaryillness, leaving a prescription to be filled at the drug store. The name signed to the paper was a revelation, but the firstresult was activity in cleaning house.

No fact is more significant of the utter rottenness of the Spanish rule than the unanimity of the people in their discontent.Only a few persons at first were in open opposition, but books, pamphlets and circulars were eagerlyPage 185sought, read and preserved, with the knowledge generally, of the whole family, despite the danger of possessing them. At times,as in the case of Rizal’s novels, an entire neighborhood was in the secret; the book was buried in a garden and dug up tobe read from at a gathering of the older men, for which a dance gave pretext. Informers were so rare that the possibilityof treachery among themselves was hardly reckoned in the risk.

The authorities were constantly searching dwellings, often entire neighborhoods, and with a thoroughness which entirely disregardedthe possibility of damaging an innocent person’s property. These “domiciliary registrations” were, of course, supposed tobe unexpected, but in the later Spanish days the intended victims usually had warning from some employee in the office whereit was planned, or from some domestic of the official in charge; very often, however, the warning was so short as to giveonly time for a hasty destruction of incriminating documents and did not permit of their being transferred to other hidingplaces. Thus large losses were incurred, and to these must be added damages from dampness when a hole in the ground, the insideof a post, or cementing up in the wall furnished the means of concealment. Fires, too, were frequent, and such events attractedso much attention that it was scarcely safe to attempt to save anything of an incriminating nature.

Six years of war conditions did their part toward destroying what little had escaped, and from these explanations the readermay understand how it comes that the tangled story of Spain’s last half century here presents an historical problem more puzzlingthan that of much more remote times in more favored lands.

It seems almost providential that the published statement of the Governor-General can be checked not only by an account whichRizal secretly sent to friends, butPage 186also by the candid memoranda contained in the untruthful executive’s own secret folios. While some unessential details ofRizal’s career are in doubt, not a point vital to establishing his good name lacks proof that his character was exemplaryand that he is worthy of the hero-worship which has come to him.

After Rizal’s return to Manila from his railway trip he had the promised interview with the Governor-General. At their previousmeetings the discussions had been quite informal. Rizal, in complimenting the General upon his inauguration of reforms, mentionedthat the Philippine system of having no restraint whatever upon the chief executive had at least the advantage that a well-disposedgovernor-general would find no red-tape hindrances to his plans for the public benefit. But Despujol professed to believethat the best of men make mistakes and that a wise government would establish safeguards against this human fallibility.

The final, and fatal, interview began with the Governor-General asking Rizal if he still persisted in his plan for a Filipinocolony in British North Borneo; Despujol had before remarked that with so much Philippine land lying idle for want of cultivationit did not seem to him patriotic to take labor needed at home away for the development of a foreign land. Rizal’s former replyhad dealt with the difficulty the government was in respecting the land troubles, since the tenants who had taken the oldrenters’ places now also must be considered, and he pointed out that there was, besides, a bitterness between the partieswhich could not easily be forgotten by either side. So this time he merely remarked that he had found no reason for changinghis original views.

Hereupon the General took from his desk the five little sheets of the “Poor Friars” handbill, which he said had been foundin the roll of bedding sent with Rizal’s baggagePage 187to the custom house, and asked whose they could be. Rizal answered that of course the General knew that the bedding belongedto his sister Lucia, but she was no fool and would not have secreted in a place where they were certain to be found five littlepapers which, hidden within her camisa or placed in her stocking, would have been absolutely sure to come in unnoticed.

Rizal, neither then nor later, knew the real truth, which was that these papers were gathered up at random and without anyknowledge of their contents. If it was a crime to have lived in a house where such seditious printed matter was common, thenRizal, who had openly visited Basa’s home, was guilty before ever the handbills were found. But no reasonable person wouldbelieve another rational being could be so careless of consequences as to bring in openly such dangerous material.

The very title was in sarcastic allusion to the inconsistency of a religious order being an immensely wealthy organization,while its individual members were vowed to poverty. News, published everywhere except in the Philippines, of losses sustainedin outside commercial enterprises running into the millions, was made the text for showing how money, professedly raised inthe Philippines for charities, was not so used and was invested abroad in fear of that day of reckoning when tyranny wouldbe overthrown in anarchy and property would be insecure. The belief of the pious Filipinos, fostered by their religious exploiters,that the Pope would suffer great hardship if their share of “Peter’s pence” was not prompt and full, was contrasted with anothernewspaper story of a rich dowry given to a favorite niece by a former Pope, but that in no way taught the truth that the Headof the Church was not put to bodily discomfort whenever a poor Filipino failed to come forward with his penny.

Page 188Despujol managed to work himself into something like a passion over this alleged disrespect to the Pope, and ordered Rizalto be taken as a prisoner to Fort Santiago by the nephew who acted as his aide.

Like most facts, this version runs a middle course between the extreme stories which have been current. Like circulars mayhave been printed at the “Asilo de Malabon,” as has been asserted; these certainly came from Hongkong and were not introducedby any archbishop’s nephew on duty at the custom house, as another tale suggests. On the other hand, the circular was themerest pretext, and Despujol did not act in good faith, as many claim that he did.

It may be of interest to reprint the handbill from a facsimile of an original copy:

Pobres Frailes!

Acaba de suspender sus pages un Banco, acaba de quebrarse elNew Oriental.

Grandes pédidas en la India, en la isla Mauricio al sur de Africa, ciclónes y tempestades acabaron con su podeíro, tragnádosemás de 36,000,000 de pesos. Estos treinta y seis millones representaban las esperanzas, las economías, el bienestar y el porvenirde numerosos individuos y familias.

Entre los que más han sufrido podemos contar á la Rvda. Corporacion de los P. P. Dominicos, que pierden en esta quiebra muchoscientos de miles. No se sabe la cuenta exacta porque tanto dinero se les envía de aquí y tantos depósitos hacen, que se neçesitarlanmuchos contadores para calcular el immense caudal de que disponen.

Pero, no se aflijan los amigos ni triunfen los enemigos de los santos monjes que profesan vote de pobreza.

A unos y otros les diremos que pueden estar tranquilos. La Corporacion tiene aun muchos millones depositados en los Bancosde Hongkong, y aunque todos quebrasen, y aunque se derrumbasen sus miles de casas de alquiler, siempre quedarian sus curatesyPage 189haciendas, les quedarían los filipinos dispuestos siempre á ayunar para darles una limosna. ¿Qué son cuatrocientos ó quinientosmil? Que se tomen la molestia de recorrer los pueblos y pedir limosna y se resarcirán de esa pérdida. Hace un año que, porla mala administracion de los cardenales, el Papa perdió 14,000,000 del dinero de San Pedro; el Papa, para cubrir el déficit,acude á nosotros y nosotros recogemos de nuestrostampipis el último real, porque sabemos que el Papa tiene muchas atenciones; hace cosa de cinco años casó á una sobrina suya dotándolade un palacio y 300,000 francos ademas. Haced un esfuerzo pues, generosos filipinos, y socorred á los dominicos igualmente!

Además, esos centanares de miles perdidos no son de ellos, segun dicen: ¿cómo los iban à tener si tienen voto de pobreza?Hay que creerlos pues cuando, para cubrirse, dicen que son de los huérfanos y de las viudas. Muy seguramente pertenceríanalgunos á las viudas y á los huérfanos de Kalamba, y quién sabe si á los desterrados maridos! y los manejan los virtuososfrailes sólo á título de depositarios para devolverlos despues religiosamente con todos sus intereses cuando llegue el díade rendir cuentas! Quién sabe? Quién mejor que ellos podía encargarse de recoger los pocos haberes mientras las casas ardían,huían las viudas y los huérfanos sin encontrar hospitalidad, puesse habia prohibido darles albergue, mientras los hombres estaban presos ó perseguidos? ¿Quién mejor que los dominicos para tener tanto valor, tanta audaciay tanta humanidad?

Pero, ahora el diablo se ha llevado el dinero de los huérfanos y de las viudas, y es de temer que se lleve tambien el resto,pues cuando el diablo la empieza la ha de acabar. Tendría ese dinero mala procedencia?

Si asl sucediese, nosotros los recomendaríamos á los dominicos que dijesen con Job:Desnudo salí del vientre de mi madre (España), y desnudo volveré allá; lo dió el diablo, el diablo se lo llevó; bendito seael nombre del Señor!

Fr. Jacinto.

Manila: Imprenta de los Amigos del Pais.

Chapter IX

The Deportation to Dapitan

As soon as Rizal was lodged in his prison, a room in Fort Santiago, the Governor-General began the composition of one of themost extraordinary official documents ever issued in this land where the strangest governmental acts have abounded. It isapology, argument, and attack all in one and was published in theOfficial Gazette, where it occupied most of an entire issue. The effect of the righteous anger it displays suffers somewhat when one knowshow all was planned from the day Rizal was decoyed from Hongkong under the faithless safe-conduct. Another enlightening featureis the copy of a later letter, preserved in that invaluable secret file, wherein Despujol writes Rizal’s custodian, as jailer,to allow the exile in no circumstances to see this number of theGazette or to know its contents, and suggests several evasions to assist the subordinate’s power of invention. It is certainly astrange indignation which fears that its object shall learn the reason for wrath, nor is it a creditable spectacle when onebeholds the chief of a government giving private lessons in lying.

A copy of theGazette was sent to the Spanish Consul in Hongkong, also a cablegram directing him to give it publicity that “Spain’s good name mightnot suffer” in that colony. By his blunder, not knowing that the Lusitania Club was really a Portuguese Masonic lodge andfull of Rizal’s friends, a copy was sent there and a strong reply was called forth. The friendly editor of theHongkong Telegraph devoted columns to the outrage by which a man whose acquaintance in the scientific world reflected honor upon his nation,was decoyed to what was intended to be his death, exiled to “an unhealthful, savagePage 191Page 192spot,” through “a plot of which the very Borgias would have been ashamed.”

The British Consul in Manila, too, mentioned unofficially to Governor-General Despujol that it seemed a strange way of showingSpain’s often professed friendship for Great Britain thus to disregard the annoyance to the British colony of North Borneocaused by making impossible an entirely unexceptionable plan. Likewise, in much the same respectfully remonstrant tone whichthe Great Powers are wont to use in recalling to semi-savage states their obligations to civilization, he pointed out howSpain’s prestige as an advanced nation would suffer when the educated world, in which Rizal was Spain’s best-known representative,learned that the man whom they honored had been trapped out of his security under the British flag and sent into exile withoutthe slightest form of trial.

Almost the last act of Rizal while at liberty was the establishment of the “Liga Filipina,” a league or association seekingto unite all Filipinos of good character for concerted action toward the economic advancement of their country, for a higherstandard of manhood, and to assure opportunities for education and development to talented Filipino youth. Resistance to oppressionby lawful means was also urged, for Rizal believed that no one could fairly complain of bad government until he had exhaustedand found unavailing all the legal resources provided for his protection. This was another expression of his constant teachingthat slaves, those who toadied to power, and men without self-respect made possible and fostered tyranny, abuses and disregardof the rights of others.

The character test was also a step forward, for the profession of patriotism has often been made to cloak moral shortcomingsin the Philippines as well as elsewhere.Page 193Rizal urged that those who would offer themselves on the altar of their fatherland must conform to the standard of old, and,like the sacrificial lamb, be spotless and without blemish. Therefore, no one who had justifiablyPage 194been prosecuted for any infamous crime was eligible to membership in the new organization.

The plan, suggested by a Spanish Masonic society called C. Kadosch y Cia., originated with José Maria Basa, at whose instanceRizal drafted the constitution and regulations. Possibly all the members were Freemasons of the educated and better-to-doclass, and most of them adhered to the doctrine that peaceably obtained reforms and progress by education are surest and best.

Rizal’s arrest discouraged those of this higher faith, for the peaceable policy seemed hopeless, while the radical element,freed from Rizal’s restraining influence and deeming the time for action come, formed a new and revolutionary society whichpreached force of arms as the only argument left to them, and sought its membership among the less-enlightened and poorerclass.

Their inspiration was Andrés Bonifacio, a shipping clerk for a foreign firm, who had read and re-read accounts of the FrenchRevolution till he had come to believe that blood alone could wipe out the wrongs of a country. His organization, The Sonsof the Country, more commonly called the Katipunan, was, however, far from being as bloodthirsty as most Spanish accounts,and those of many credulous writers who have got their ideas from them, have asserted. To enlist others in their defense,those who knew that they were the cause of dissatisfaction spread the report that a race war was in progress and that theKatipuneros were planning the massacre of all of the white race. It was a sufficiently absurd statement, but it was made evenmore ridiculous by its “proof,” for this was the discovery of an apron with a severed head, a hand holding it by the hairand another grasping the dagger which had done the bloody work. This emblem, handed down from ancient days as an object lessonof faithfulness even to death, has beenPage 195known in many lands besides the Philippines, but only here has it ever been considered anything but an ancient symbol. Asreasonably might the paintings of martyrdoms in the convents be taken as evidence of evil intentions upon the part of theiroccupants, but prejudice looks for pretexts rather than reasons, and this served as well as any other for the excesses ofwhich the government in its frenzy of fear was later guilty.

In talking of the Katipunan one must distinguish the first society, limited in its membership, from the organization of thedays of the Aguinaldo “republic,” so called, when throughout the Tagalog provinces, and in the chief towns of other provincesas well, adherence to the revolutionary government entailed membership in the revolutionary society. And neither of thesetwo Katipunans bore any relation, except in name and emblems, to the robber bands whose valor was displayed after the warhad ceased and whose patriotism consisted in wronging and robbing their own defenseless countrymen and countrywomen, whilecarefully avoiding encounters with any able to defend themselves.

Rizal’s arrest had put an end to all hope of progress under Governor-General Despujol. It had left the political field inpossession of those countrymen who had not been in sympathy with his campaign of education. It had caused the succession ofthe revolutionary Katipunan to the economic Liga Filipina, with talk of independence supplanting Rizal’s ambition for thereturn of the Philippines to their former status under the Constitution of Cadiz. But the victim of the arrest was at peaceas he had not been in years. The sacrifice for country and for family had been made, but it was not to cost him life, andhe was human enough to wish to live. A visitor’s room in the Fort and books from the military library made his detention comfortable,for he did not worryPage 196about the Spanish sentries without his door who were placed there under orders to shoot anyone who might attempt to signalto him from the plaza.

One night the Governor-General’s nephew-aide came again to the Fort and Rizal embarked on the steamer which was to take himto his place of exile, but closely as he was guarded he risked dropping a note which a Filipino found and took, as it directed,to Mrs. Rizal’s cousin, Vicenta Leyba, who lived in Calle José, Trozo. Thus the family were advised of his departure; thisincident shows Rizal’s perfect confidence in his countrymen and the extent to which it was justified; he could risk a chancefinder to take so dangerous a letter to its address.

On the steamer he occupied an officer’s cabin and also found a Filipino quartermaster, of whom he requested a life preserverfor his stateroom; evidently he was not entirely confident that there were no hostile designs against him. Accidents had ridthe Philippines of troublesome persons before his time, and he was determined that if he sacrificed his life for his country,it should be openly. He realized that the tree of Liberty is often watered with the blood of secret as well as open martyrs.

The same boat carried some soldier prisoners, one of whom was to be executed in Mindanao, and their case was not particularlycreditable to Spanish ideas of justice. A Spanish officer had dishonorably interfered with the domestic relations of a sergeant,also Spanish, and the aggrieved party had inflicted punishment upon his superior, with the help of some other soldiers. Forallowing himself to be punished, not for his own disgraceful act, the officer was dismissed from the service, but the sergeantwas to go to the scene of his alleged “crime,” there to suffer death, while his companions who had assisted him in protectingtheir homes were to be witnesses of this “justice” and then to be imprisoned.

Page 197After an uneventful trip the steamer reached Dapitan, in the northeast of the large island of Mindanao, on a dark and rainyevening. The officer in charge of the expedition took Doctor Rizal ashore with some papers relating to him and delivered allto the commandant, Ricardo Carnicero. The receipt taken was briefed “One countryman and two packages.” At the same time learnedmen in Europe were beginning to hear of this outrage worthy of the Dark Ages and were remarking that Spain had stopped thework of the man who was practically her only representative in modern science, for the Castilian language has not been themedium through which any considerable additions have been made to the world’s store of scientific knowledge.

Rizal was to reside either with the commandant or with the Jesuit parish priest, if the latter would take him into the convento.But while the exile had learned with pleasure that he was to meet priests who were refined and learned, as well as associatedwith his happier school days, he did not know that these priests were planning to restore him to his childhood faith and hadmapped out a plan of action which should first make him feel his loneliness. So he was denied residence with the priest unlesshe would declare himself genuinely in sympathy with Spain.

On his previous brief visit to the Islands he had been repelled from the Ateneo with the statement that till he ceased tobe anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish he would not be welcome. Padre Faura, the famous meteorologist, was his former instructorand Rizal was his favorite pupil; he had tearfully predicted that the young man would come to the scaffold at last unlesshe mended his ways. But Rizal, confident in the clearness of his own conscience, went out cheerfully, and when the portertried to bring back the memory of his childhood piety by reminding him of the image of the Sacred Heart whichPage 198he had carved years before, Rizal answered, “Other times, other customs, Brother. I do not believe that way any more.”

So Rizal, a good Catholic, was compelled to board with the commandant instead of with the priest because he was unwillingto make hypocritical professions of admiration for Spain. The commandant and Rizal soon became good friends, but in orderto retain his position Carnicero had to write to the Governor-General in a different strain.

The correspondence tells the facts in the main, but of course they are colored throughout to conform to Despujol’s character.The commandant is always represented as deceiving his prisoner and gaining his confidence only to betray him, but Rizal seemsnever to have experienced anything but straightforward dealing.

Rizal’s earliest letter from Dapitan speaks almost enthusiastically of the place, describing the climate as exceptional forthe tropics, his situation as agreeable, and saying that he could be quite content if his family and his books were there.

Shortly after occurred the anniversary of Carnicero’s arrival in the town, and Rizal celebrated the event with a Spanish poemreciting the improvements made since his coming, written in the style of the Malay loa, and as though it were by the childrenof Dapitan.

Next Rizal acquired a piece of property at Talisay, a little bay close to Dapitan, and at once became interested in his farm.Soon he built a house and moved into it, gathering a number of boy assistants about him, and before long he had a school.A hospital also was put up for his patients and these in time became a source of revenue, as people from a distance came tothe oculist for treatment and paid liberally.

One five-hundred-peso fee from a rich Englishman wasPage 199devoted by Rizal to lighting the town, and the community benefited in this way by his charity in addition to the free treatmentgiven its poor.Page 200

The little settlement at Talisay kept growing and those who lived there were constantly improving it. When Father Obach, theJesuit priest, fell through the bamboo stairway in the principal house, Rizal and his boys burned shells, made mortar, andsoon built a fine stone stairway. They also did another piece of masonry work in thePage 201shape of a dam for storing water that was piped to the houses and poultry yard; the overflow from the dam was made to filla swimming tank.

The school, including the house servants, numbered about twenty and was taught without books by Rizal, who conducted his recitationsfrom a hammock. Considerable importance was given to mathematics, and in languages English was taught as well as Spanish,the entire waking period being devoted to the language allotted for the day, and whoever so far forgot as to utter a wordin any other tongue was punished by having to wear a rattan handcuff. The use and meaning of this modern police device hadto be explained to the boys, for Spain still tied her prisoners with rope.

Nature study consisted in helping the Doctor gather specimens of flowers, shells, insects and reptiles which were preparedand shipped to German museums. Rizal was paid for these specimens by scientific books and material. The director of the RoyalZoölogical and Anthropological Museum in Dresden, Saxony, Doctor Karl von Heller, was a great friend and admirer of DoctorRizal. Doctor Heller’s father was tutor to the late King Alfonso XII and had many friends at the Court of Spain. EvidentlyDoctor Heller and other of his European friends did not consider Rizal a Spanish insurrectionary, but treated him rather asa reformer seeking progress by peaceful means.

Doctor Rizal remunerated his pupils’ work with giftsPage 202Page 203of clothing, books and other useful remembrances. Sometimes the rewards were cartidges, and those who had accumulated enoughwere permitted to accompany him in his hunting expeditions. The dignity of labor was practically inculcated by requiring everyoneto make himself useful, and this was really the first school of the type, combining the use of English, nature study and industrialinstruction.

On one occasion in the year 1894 some of his schoolboys secretly went into the town in a banca; a puppy which tried to followthem was eaten by a crocodile. Rizal tired to impress the evil effects of disobedience upon the youngsters byPage 204pointing out to them the sorrow which the mother-dog felt at the loss of her young one, and emphasized the lesson by modelinga statuette called “The Mother’s Revenge,” wherein she is represented, in revenge, as devouring the cayman. It is said tobe a good likeness of the animal which was Doctor Rizal’s favorite companion in his many pedestrian excursions around Dapitan.

Father Francisco Sanchez, Rizal’s instructor in rhetoric in the Ateneo, made a long visit to Dapitan and brought with himsome surveyor’s instruments, which his former pupil was delighted to assist him in using. Together they ran the levels fora water system for the the town, which was later, with the aid of the lay Jesuit, Brother Tildot, carried to completion. Thissame water system is now being restored and enlarged with artesian wells by the present insular, provincial and municipalgovernments jointly, as part of the memorial to Rizal in this place of his exile.

A visit to a not distant mountain and some digging in a spot supposed by the people of the region to be haunted brought tolight curious relics of the first Christian converts among the early Moros.

The state of his mind at about this period of his career is indicated by the verses written in his home in Talisay, entitled“My Retreat,” of which the following translation has been made by Mr. Charles Derbyshire. The scene that inspired this poemhas been converted by the government into a public park to the memory of Rizal.Page 205

My Retreat

By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove’s confine;
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.

Its roof the frail palm-leaf and its floor the cane,
Its beams and posts of the unhewn wood;
Little there is of value in this hut so plain,
And better by far in the lap of the mount to have lain,
By the song and the murmur of the high sea’s flood.

A purling brook from the woodland glade
Drops down o’er the stones and around it sweeps,
Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough cane’s aid;
That in the still night its murmur has made,
And in the day’s heat a crystal fountain leaps.

When the sky is serene how gently it flows,
And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays;
But when the rains fall a torrent it goes
Boiling and foaming through the rocky close,
Roaring uncheck’d to the sea’s wide ways.

The howl of the dog and the song of the bird,
And only the kalao’s hoarse call resound;
Nor is the voice of vain man to be heard,
My mind to harass or my steps to begird;
The woodlands alone and the sea wrap me round.

The sea, ah, the sea! for me it is all,
As it massively sweeps from the worlds apart;
Its smile in the morn to my soul is a call,
And when in the even my fath seems to pall,
It breathes with its sadness an echo to my heart.

By night an arcanum; when translucent it glows,
All spangled over with its millions of lights,
And the bright sky above resplendent shows;
While the waves with their sighs tell of their woes—
Tales that are lost as they roll to the heights.

They tell of the world when the first dawn broke,
And the sunlight over their surface played;
When thousands of beings from nothingness woke,
To people the depths and the heights to cloak,
Wherever its life-giving kiss was laid.

But when in the night the wild winds awake,
And the waves in their fury begin to leap,
Through the air rush the cries that my mind shake;
Voices that pray, songs and moans that partake
Of laments from the souls sunk down in the deep.

Then from their heights the mountains groan,
And the trees shiver tremulous from great unto least;
The groves rustle plaintive and the herds utter moan,
For they say that the ghosts of the folk that are gone
Are calling them down to their death’s merry feast.

In terror and confusion whispers the night,
While blue and green flames flit over the deep;
But calm reigns again with the morning’s light,
And soon the bold fisherman comes into sight,
As his bark rushes on and the waves sink to sleep.

So onward glide the days in my lonely abode;
Driven forth from the world where once I was known,
I muse o’er the fate upon me bestow’d;
A fragment forgotten that the moss will corrode,
To hide from mankind the world in me shown.

I live in the thought of the lov’d ones left,
And oft their names to my mind are borne;
Some have forsaken me and some by death are reft;
But now ’tis all one, as through the past I drift,
That past which from me can never be torn.

For it is the friend that is with me always,
That ever in sorrow keeps the faith in my soul;
While through the still night it watches and prays,
As here in my exile in my lone hut it stays,
To strengthen my faith when doubts o’er me roll.

That faith I keep and I hope to see shine
The day when the Idea prevails over might;
When after the fray and death’s slow decline,
Some other voice sounds, far happier than mine,
To raise the glad song of the triumph of right.

I see the sky glow, refulgent and clear,
As when it forced on me my first dear illusion;
I feel the same wind kiss my forehead sere,
And the fire is the same that is burning here
To stir up youth’s blood in boiling confusion.

I breathe here the winds that perchance have pass’d
O’er the fields and the rivers of my own natal shore;
And mayhap they will bring on the returning blast
The sighs that lov’d being upon them has cast—
Messages sweet from the love I first bore.

To see the same moon, all silver’d as of yore,
I feel the sad thoughts within me arise;
The fond recollections of the troth we swore,
Of the field and the bower and the wide seashore,
The blushes of joy, with the silence and sighs.

A butterfly seeking the flowers and the light,
Of other lands dreaming, of vaster extent;
Scarce a youth, from home and love I took flight,
To wander unheeding, free from doubt or affright—
So in foreign lands were my brightest days spent.

And when like a languishing bird I was fain
To the home of my fathers and my love to return,
Of a sudden the fierce tempest roar’d amain;
So I saw my wings shatter’d and no home remain,
My trust sold to others and wrecks round me burn.

Hurl’d out into exile from the land I adore,
My future all dark and no refuge to seek;
My roseate dreams hover round me once more,
Sole treasures of all that life to me bore;
The faiths of youth that with sincerity speak.

But not as of old, full of life and of grace,
Do you hold out hopes of undying reward;
Sadder I find you; on your lov’d face,
Though still sincere, the pale lines trace
The marks of the faith it is yours to guard.

You offer now, dreams, my gloom to appease,
And the years of my youth again to disclose;
So I thank you, O storm, and heaven-born breeze,
That you knew of the hour my wild flight to ease,
To cast me back down to the soil whence I rose.

By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green;
I have found a home in the pleasant grove’s confine,
In the shady woods, that peace and calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.

Page 211The Church benefited by the presence of the exile, for he drew the design for an elaborate curtain to adorn the sanctuaryat Easter time, and an artist Sister of Charity of the school there did the oil painting under his direction. In this linehe must have been proficient, for once in Spain, where he traveled out of his way to Saragossa to visit one of his formerteachers of the Ateneo, who he had heard was there, Rizal offered his assistance in making some altar paintings, and the Jesuitsays that his skill and taste were much appreciated.

The home of the Sisters had a private chapel, for which the teachers were preparing an image of the Virgin. For the sake ofeconomy the head only was procured from abroad, the vestments concealing all the rest of the figure except the feet, whichrested upon a globe encircled by a snake in whose mouth is an apple. The beauty of the countenance, a real work of art, appealedto Rizal, and he modeled the more prominent right foot, the apple and the serpent’s head, while the artist Sister assistedby doing the minor work. Both curtain and image, twenty years after their making, are still in use.

On Sundays, Father Sanchez and Rizal conducted a school for the people after mass. As part of this education it was intendedto make raised maps in the plaza of the chief city of the eight principal islands of the Philippines, but on account of FatherSanchez’s being called away, only one. Mindanao, was completed; it has beenPage 212restored with a concrete sidewalk and balustrade about it, while the plaza is a national park.

Among Rizal’s patients was a blind American named Taufer, fairly well to do, who had been engineer of the pumping plant ofthe Hongkong Fire Department. He was a man of bravery, for he held a diploma for helping to rescue five Spaniards from a shipwreckin Hongkong harbor. And he was not less kind-hearted, for he and his wife, a Portuguese, had adopted and brought up as theirown the infant daughter of a poor Irish woman who had died in Hongkong, leaving a considerable family to her husband, a corporalin the British Army on service there.

The little girl had been educated in the Italian convent after the first Mrs. Taufer died, and upon Mr. Taufer’s remarriage,to another Portuguese, the adopted daughter and Mr. Taufer’s own child were equally sharers of his home.

This girl had known Rizal, “the Spanish doctor,” as he was called there, in Hongkong, and persuaded her adopted father thatpossibly the Dapitan exile might restore his lost eyesight. So with the two girls and his wife, Mr. Taufer set out for Mindanao.At Manila his own daughter fell in love with a Filipino engineer, a Mr. Sunico, now owner of a foundry in Manila, and, marrying,remained there. But the party reached Dapitan with its original number, for they were joined by a good-looking mestiza fromthe South who was unofficially connected with one of the canons of the Manila cathedral.

Josefina Bracken, the Irish girl, was lively, capable and of congenial temperament, and as there no longer existed any reasonagainst his marriage, for Rizal considered hisPage 213political days over, they agreed to become husband and wife.

The priest was asked to perform the ceremony, but said the Bishop of Cebu must give his consent, and offered to write him.Rizal at first feared that some political retraction would be asked, but when assured that only his religious beliefs wouldbe investigated, promptly submitted a statement which Father Obach says covered about the same ground as the earliest publishedof the retractions said to have been made on the eve of Rizal’s death.

This document, inclosed with the priest’s letter, was ready for the mail when Rizal came hurrying in to reclaim it. The marriagewas off, for Mr. Taufer had taken his family and gone to Manila.

The explanation of this sudden departure was that, after the blind man had been told of the impossibility of anything beingdone for his eyes, he was informed of the proposed marriage. The trip had already cost him one daughter, he had found thathis blindness was incurable, and now his only remaining daughter, who had for seventeen years been like his own child, wasplanning to leave him. He would have to return to Hongkong hopelessPage 214and accompanied only by a wife he had never seen, one who really was merely a servant. In his despair he said he had nothingto live for, and, seizing his razor, would have ended his life had not Rizal seized him just in time and held him, with thefirm grasp his athletic training had given him, till the commandant came and calmed the excited blind man.

It resulted in Josefina returning to Manila with him, but after a while Mr Taufer listened to reason and she went back toDapitan, after a short stay in Manila with Rizal’s family, to whom she had carried his letter of introduction, taking considerablehousekeeping furniture with her.

Further consideration changed Rizal’s opinion as to marriage, possibly because the second time the priest may not have beenso liberal in his requirements. The mother, too, seems to have suggested that as Spanish law had established civil marriagein the Philippines, and as the local government had not provided any way for peoplePage 215to avail themselves of the right, because the governor-general had pigeon-holed the royal decree, it would be less sinfulfor the two to consider themselves civilly married than for Rizal to do violence to his conscience by making any sort of politicalretraction. Any marriage so bought would be just as little a sacrament as an absolutely civil marriage, and the latter wasfree from hypocrisy.

So as man and wife Rizal and Josefina lived togetherPage 216in Talisay. Father Obach sought to prejudice public feeling in the town against the exile for the “scandal,” though otherscandals happenings with less reason were going on unrebuked. The pages of “Dapitan”, which some have considered to be thefirst chapter of an unfinished novel, may reasonably be considered no more than Rizal’s rejoinder to Father Obach, writtenin sarcastic vein and primarily for Carnicero’s amusement, unless some date of writing earlier than this should hereafterbe found for them.

Josefina was bright, vivacious, and a welcome addition to the little colony at Talisay, but at times Rizal had misgivingsas to how it came that this foreigner should be permitted by a suspicious and absolute government to join him, when Filipinos,over whom the authorities could have exercised complete control, were kept away. Josefina’s frequent visits to the conventoonce brought this suspicion to an open declaration of his misgivings by Rizal, but two days of weeping upon her part causedhim to avoid the subject thereafter. Could the exile have seen the confidential correspondence in the secret archives theplan would have been plain to him, for there it is suggested that his impressionable character could best be reached throughthe sufferings of his family, and that only his mother and sisters should be allowed to visit him. Steps in this plot werethe gradual pardoning and returning of the members of his family to their homes.

Josefina must remain a mystery to us as she was to Rizal. While she was in a delicate condition Rizal played a prank on her,harmless in itself, which startled her so that she sprang forward and struck against an iron stand. Though it was pure accidentand Rizal was scarcely at fault, he blamed himself for it, and his later devotion seems largely to have been trying to makeamends.

Page 217The “burial of the son of Rizal,” sometimes referred to as occurring at Dapitan, has for its foundation the consequences ofthis accident. A sketch hastily penciled in one of his medical books depicts an unusual condition apparent in the infant which,had it regularly made its appearance in the world some months later, would have been cherished by both parents; this losswas a great and common grief which banished thereafter all distrust upon his part and all occasion for it upon hers.

Rizal’s mother and several of his sisters, the latter changing from time to time, had been present during this critical period.Another operation had been performed upon Mrs. Rizal’s eyes, but she was restive and disregarded the ordinary precautions,and the son was in despair. A letter to his brother-in-law, Manuel Hidalgo, who was inclined toward medical studies, says,“I now realize the reason why physicians are directed not to practice in their own families.”

A story of his mother and Rizal, necessary to understand his peculiar attitude toward her, may serve as the transition fromthe hero’s sad (later) married experience to the real romance of his life. Mrs. Rizal’s talents commanded her son’s admiration,as her care for him demanded his gratitude, but, despite the common opinion, he never had that sense of companionship withher that he enjoyed with his father. Mrs. Rizal was a strict disciplinarian and a woman of unexceptionable character, butshe arrogated to herself an infallibility which at times was trying to those about her, and she foretold bitter fates forthose who dared dispute her.

Just before José went abroad to study, while engaged to his cousin, Leonora Rivera, Mrs. Rivera and her daughter visited theirrelatives in Kalamba. Naturally the young man wished the guests to have the best of everything; one day when they visiteda bathing placePage 218near by he used the family’s newest carriage. Though this had not been forbidden, his mother spoke rather sharply about it;José ventured to remind her that guests were present and that it would be better to discuss the matter in private. Angry becauseone of her children ventured to dispute her, she replied: “You are an undutiful son. You will never accomplish anything whichyou undertake. All your plans will result in failure.” These words could not be forgotten, as succeeding events seemed tomake their prophecy come true, and there is pathos in one of Rizal’s letters in which he reminds his mother that she had foretoldhis fate.

His thoughts of an early marriage were overruled because his unmarried sisters did not desire to have a sister-in-law in theirhome who would add to the household cares but was not trained to bear her share of them, and even Paciano, who was in hisfavor, thought that his younger brother would mar his career by marrying early.

So, with fervent promises and high hopes, Rizal had sailed away to make the fortune which should allow him to marry his cousinLeonora. She was constantly in his thoughts and his long letters were mailed with regular frequency during all his first yearsin Europe; but only a few of the earliest ever reached her, and as few replies came into his hands, though she was equallyfaithful as a correspondent.

Leonora’s mother had been told that it was for the good of her daughter’s soul and in the interest of herPage 219happiness that she should not become the wife of a man like Rizal, who was obnoxious to the Church and in disfavor with thegovernment. So, by advice, Mrs. Rivera gradually withheld more and more of the correspondence upon both sides, until finallyit ceased. And she constantly suggested to the unhappy girl that her youthful lover had forgotten her amid the distractionsand gayeties of Europe.

Then the same influence which had advised breaking off the correspondence found a person whom the mother and others joinedin urging upon her as a husband, till at last, in the belief that she owed obedience to her mother, she reluctantly consented.Strangely like the proposed husband of the Maria Clara of “Noli Me Tangere,” in which book Rizal had prophetically picturedher, this husband was “one whose children should rule ”—an English engineer whose position had been found for him to makethe match more desirable. Their marriage took place, and when Rizal returned to the Philippines she learned how she had beendeceived. Then she asked for the letters that had been withheld, and when told that as a wife she might not keep love lettersfrom any but her husband, she pleaded that they be burned and the ashes given her. This was done, and the silver box withthe blackened bits of paper upon her dresser seemed to be a consolation during the few months of life which she knew wouldremain to her.

Another great disappointment to Rizal was the action of Despujol when he first arrived in Dapitan, for he still believed inthe Governor-General’s good faith and thought in that fertile but sparsely settled region he might plant his “New Kalamba”without the objection that had been urged against the British North Borneo project. All seemed to be going on favorably forthe assembling of his relatives and neighbors in what then would be noPage 220Page 221longer exile, when most insultingly, the Governor-General refused the permission which Rizal had had reason to rely upon hisgranting. The exile was reminded of his deportation and taunted with trying to make himself a king. Though he did not knowit, this was part of the plan which was to break his spirit, so that when he was touched with the sufferings of his familyhe would yield to the influences of his youth and make complete political retraction; thus would be removed the most reasonable,and therefore the most formidable, opponent of the unnatural conditions Philippines and of the selfish interests which wereprofiting by them. But the plotters failed in their plan; they had mistaken their man.

During all this time Rizal had repeated chances to escape, and persons high in authority seem to have urged flight upon him.Running away, however, seemed to him a confession of guilt; the opportunities of doing so always unsettled him, for each timethe battle of self-sacrifice had to be fought over again; but he remained firm in his purpose. To meet death bravely is onething; to seek it is another and harder thing; but to refuse life and choose death over and over again during many years isthe rarest kind of heroism.

Rizal used to make long trips, sometimes cruising for a week in his explorations of the Mindanao coast, and some of his friendsproposed to charter a steamer in Singapore and, passing near Dapitan, pick him up on onePage 222of these trips. Another Philippine steamer going to Borneo suggested taking him on board as a rescue at sea and then landinghim at their destination, where he would be free from Spanish power. Either of these schemes would have been feasible, buthe refused both.

Plans, which materialized, to benefit the fishing industry by improved nets imported from his Laguna home, and to find a marketfor the abaka of Dapitan, were joined with the introduction of American machinery, for which Rizal acted as agent, among plantersof neighboring islands. It was a busy, useful life, and in the economic advancement of his country the exile believed he wasas patriotic as when he was working politically.

Rizal personally had been fortunate, for in company with the commandant and a Spaniard, originally deported for politicalreasons from the Peninsula, he had gained one of the richer prizes in the government lottery. These funds came most opportunely,for the land troubles and succeeding litigation had almost stripped the family of all its possessions. The account of thefirst news in Dapitan of the good fortune of the three is interestingly told in an official report to the Governor-Generalfrom the commandant. The official saw the infrequent mail steamer arriving with flying bunting and at once imagined some highauthority was aboard; he hastened to the beach with a band of music to assist in the welcome, but was agreeably disappointedwith the news of the luck which had befallen his prisoner and himself.

Not all of Dapitan life was profitable and prosperous. Yet in spite of this Rizal stayed in the town. This was pure self-sacrifice,for he refused to make any effort for his own release by invoking influences which could have brought pressure to bear uponthe Spanish home government. He feared to act lest obstacles might be put in the way of the reforms that were apparently makingPage 223headway through Despujol’s initiative, and was content to wait rather than to jeopardize the prospects of others.

A plan for his transfer to the North, in the Ilokano country, had been deferred and had met with obstaclesPage 224which Rizal believed were placed in its way through some of his own countrymen in the Peninsula who feared his influence uponthe revenue with which politics was furnishing them.

Another proposal was to appoint Rizal district health officer for Dapitan, but this was merely a covert government bribe.While the exile expressed his willingness to accept the position, he did not make the “unequivocally Spanish” professionsthat were needed to secure this appointment.

Yet the government could have been satisfied of Rizal’s innocence of any treasonable designs against Spain’s sovereignty inthe Islands had it known how the exile had declined an opportunity to head the movement which had been initiated on the eveof his deportation. His name had been used to gather the members together and his portrait hung in each Katipunan lodge hall,but all this was without Rizal’s consent or even his knowledge.

The members, who had been paying faithfully for four years, felt that it was time that something besides collecting moneywas done. Their restiveness and suspicions led Andrés Bonifacio, its head, to resort to Rizal, feeling that a word from theexile, who had religiously held aloof from all politics since his deportation, would give the Katipunan leaders more timeto mature their plans. So he sent a messenger to Dapitan, Pio Valenzuela, a doctor, who to conceal his mission took with hima blind man. Thus the doctor and his patient appeared as on a professional visit to the exiled oculist. But though the interviewwas successfully secured in this way, its results were far from satisfactory.

Far from feeling grateful for the consideration for the possible consequences to him which Valenzuela pretended had promptedthe visit, Rizal indignantly insisted that the country came first. He cited the SpanishPage 225republics of South America, with their alternating revolutions and despotisms, as a warning against embarking on a changeof government for which the people were not prepared. Education, he declared, was first necessary, and in his opinion generalenlightenment was the only road to progress. Valenzuela cut short his trip, glad to escape without anyone realizing that Rizaland he had quarreled.

Bonifacio called Rizal a coward when he heard his emissary’s report, and enjoined Valenzuela to say nothing of his trip. Butthe truth leaked out, and there was a falling away in Katipunan membership.

Doctor Rizal’s own statement respecting the rebellion and Valenzuela’s visit may fitly be quoted here:

“I had no notice at all of what was being planned until the first or second of July, in 1896, when Pio Valenzuela came tosee me, saying that an uprising was being arranged. I told him that it was absurd, etc., etc., and he answered me that theycould bear no more. I advised him that they should have patience, etc., etc. He added then that he had been sent because theyhad compassion on my life and that probably it would compromise me. I replied that they should have patience and that if anythinghappened to me I would then prove my innocence. ‘Besides,’ said I, ‘don’t consider me, but our country, which is the one thatwill suffer.’ I went on to show how absurd was the movement.—This, later, Pio Valenzuela testified.—He did not tell me thatmy name was being used, neither did he suggest that I was its chief, or anything of that sort.

“Those who testify that I am the chief (which I do not know, nor do I know of having ever treated with them), what proofsdo they present of my having accepted this chiefship or that I was in relations with them or with their society? Either theyhave made use of myPage 226name for their own purposes or they have been deceived by others who have. Where is the chief who dictates no order and makesno arrangement, who is not consulted in anything about so important an enterprise until the last moment, and then when hedecides against it is disobeyed? Since the seventh of July of 1892 I have entirely ceased political activity. It seems somehave wished to avail themselves of my name for their own ends.”

This was Rizal’s second temptation to engage in politics, the first having been a trap laid by his enemies. A man had cometo see Rizal in his earlier days in Dapitan, claiming to be a relative and seeking letters to prominent Filipinos. The deceitwas too plain and Rizal denounced the envoy to the commandant, whose investigations speedily disclosed the source of the plot.Further prosecution, of course, ceased at once.

The visit of some image vendors from Laguna who never before had visited that region, and who seemed more intent on escapingnotice than interested in business, appeared suspicious, but upon report of the Jesuits the matter was investigated and nothingreally suspicious was found.

Rizal’s charm of manner and attraction for every one he met is best shown by his relations with the successive commandantsat Dapitan, all of whom, except Carnicero, were naturally predisposed against him, but every one became his friend and champion.One even asked relief on the ground of this growing favorable impression upon his part toward his prisoner.

At times there were rumors of Rizal’s speedy pardon, and he would think of going regularly into scientific work, collectingfor those European museums which had made him proposals that assured ample livelihood and congenial work.

Then Doctor Blumentritt wrote to him of the ravagesPage 227of disease among the Spanish soldiers in Cuba and the scarcity of surgeons to attend them. Here was a labor “eminently humanitarian,”to quote Rizal’s words of his own profession, and it made so strong an appeal to him that, through the new governor-general,for Despujol had been replaced by Blanco, he volunteered his services. The minister of war of that time, General Azcarraga,was Philippine born. Blanco considered the time favorable for granting Rizal’s petition and thus lifting the decree of deportationwithout the embarrassment of having the popular prisoner remain in the Islands.

The thought of resuming his travels evidently inspired the following poem, which was written at about this time. The translationis by Arthur P. Ferguson:

The Song of the Traveler

Like to a leaf that is fallen and withered,
Tossed by the tempest from pole unto pole;
Thus roams the pilgrim abroad without purpose,
Roams without love, without country or soul.

Following anxiously treacherous fortune,
Fortune which e’en as he grasps at it flees;
Vain though the hopes that his yearning is seeking,
Yet does the pilgrim embark on the seas!

Ever impelled by invisible power,
Destined to roam from the East to the West;
Oft he remembers the faces of loved ones,
Dreams of the day when he, too, was at rest.

Chance may assign him a tomb on the desert,
Grant him a final asylum of peace;
Soon by the world and his country forgotten,
God rest his soul when his wanderings cease!

Often the sorrowful pilgrim is envied,
Circling the globe like a sea-gull above;
Little, ah, little they know what a void
Saddens his soul by the absence of love.

Home may the pilgrim return in the future,
Back to his loved ones his footsteps he bends;
Naught will he find but the snow and the ruins,
Ashes of love and the tomb of his friends.

Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter.
Stranger thou art in the land of thy birth;
Others may sing of their love while rejoicing,
Thou once again must roam o’er the earth.

Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Dry are the tears that a while for thee ran;
Pilgrim, begone! And forget thy affliction,
Loud laughs the world at the sorrows of man.Page 229

Chapter X

“Consummatum Est”

Notice of the granting of his request came to Rizal just when repeated disappointments had caused him to prepare for stayingin Dapitan. Immediately he disposed of his salable possessions, including a Japanese tea set and large mirror now among theRizal relics preserved by the government, and a piece of outlying land, the deed for which is also among the Rizalana in thePhilippines library. Some half-finished busts were thrown into the pool behind the dam. Despite the short notice all was readyfor the trip in time, and, attended by some of his schoolboys as well as by Josefina and Rizal’s niece, the daughter of hisyoungest sister, Soledad, whom Josefina wished to adopt, the party set out for Manila.

The journey was not an uneventful one; at Dumaguete Rizal was the guest of a Spanish judge at dinner; in Cebu he operatedsuccessfully upon the eyes of a foreign merchant; and in Iloilo the local newspaper made much of his presence.

The steamer from Dapitan reached Manila a little too late for the mail boat for Spain, and Rizal obtained permission to awaitthe next sailing on board the cruiserCastilla, in the bay. Here he was treated like a guest and more than once the Spanish captain invited members of Rizal’s family tobe his guests at dinner—Josefina with little Maria Luisa, the niece and the schoolboys, for whom positions had been obtained,in Manila.

The alleged uprising of the Katipunan occurred during this time. A Tondo curate, with an eye to promotion, professed to havediscovered a gigantic conspiracy. Incited by him, the lower class of Spaniards in Manila made demonstrations against Blancoand tried to force thatPage 230ordinarily sensible and humane executive into bloodthirsty measures, which should terrorize the Filipinos. Blanco had knownof the Katipunan but realized that so long as interested parties were using it as a source of revenue, its activities wouldnot go much beyond speechmaking. The rabble was not so far-seeing, and from high authorities came advice that the countrywas in a fever and could only be saved by blood-letting.

Wholesale arrests filled every possible place for prisoners in Manila. The guilt of one suspect consisted in having visitedthe American consul to secure the address of a New York medical journal, and other charges were just as frivolous. There wasa reign of terror in Luzon and, to save themselves, members of the Katipunan resorted to that open warfare which, had Blanco’sprudent counsels been regarded, would probably have been avoided.

While the excitement was at its height, with a number of executions failing to satisfy the blood-hunger, Rizal sailed forSpain, bearing letters of recommendation from Blanco. These vouched for his exemplary conduct during his exile and statedthat he had in no way been implicated in the conspiracies then disturbing the Islands.

The Spanish mail boat upon which Rizal finally sailed had among its passengers a sick Jesuit, to whose care Rizal devotedhimself, and though most of the passengers were openly hostile to one whom they supposed responsible for the existing outbreak,his professional skill led several to avail themselves of his services. These were given with a deference to the ship’s doctorwhich made that official an admirer and champion of his colleague.

Three only of the passengers, however, were really friendly—one Juan Utor y Fernandez, a prominent Mason and republican, anotherex-official in the PhilippinesPage 231who shared Utor’s liberal views, and a young man whose father was republican.

But if Rizal’s chief adversaries were content that he should go where he would not molest them or longer jeopardize theirinterests, the rabble that had been excited by the hired newspaper advocates was not so easily calmed. Every one who feltthat his picture had been painted among the lower Spanish types portrayed in “Noli Me Tangere” was loud for revenge. The clamorgrew so great that it seemed possible to take advantage of it to displace General Blanco, who was not a convenient tool forthe interests.

So his promotion was bought, it is said, to get one Polavieja, a willing tool, in his place. As soon as this scheme was arranged,a cablegram ordering Rizal’s arrest was sent; it overtook the steamer at Suez. Thus as a prisoner he completed his journey.

But this had not been entirely unforeseen, for when the steamer reached Singapore, Rizal’s companion on board, the Filipinomillionaire Pedro P. Roxas, had deserted the ship, urging the ex-exile to follow his example. Rizal demurred, and said suchflight would be considered confession of guilt, but he was not fully satisfied in his mind that he was safe. At each portof call his uncertainty as to what course to pursue manifested itself, for though he considered his duty to his country alreadydone, and his life now his own, he would do nothing that suggested an uneasy conscience despite his lack of confidence inSpanish justice.

At first, not knowing the course of events in Manila, he very naturally blamed Governor-General Blanco for bad faith, andspoke rather harshly of him in a letter to Doctor Blumentritt, an opinion which he changed later when the truth was revealedto him in Manila.

Upon the arrival of the steamer in Barcelona the prisonerPage 232was transferred to Montjuich Castle, a political prison associated with many cruelties, there to await the sailing that veryday of the Philippine mail boat. The Captain-General was the same Despujol who had decoyed Rizal into the power of the Spaniardsfour years before. An interesting interview of some hours’ duration took place between the governor and the prisoner, in whichthe clear conscience of the latter seems to have stirred some sense of shame in the man who had so dishonorably deceived him.

He never heard of the effort of London friends to deliver him at Singapore by means of habeas-corpus proceedings. Mr. Regidorfurnished the legal inspiration and Mr. Baustead the funds for getting an opinion as to Rizal’s status as a prisoner whenin British waters, from Sir Edward Clarke, ex-solicitor-general of Great Britain. Captain Camus, a Filipino living in Singapore,was cabled to, money was made available in the Chartered Bank of Singapore, as Mr. Baustead’s father’s firm was in businessin that city, and a lawyer, now Sir Hugh Fort, K.C., of London, was retained. Secretly, in order that the attempt, if unsuccessful,might not jeopardize the prisoner, a petition was presented to the Supreme Court of the Straits Settlements reciting the factsthat Doctor José Rizal, according to the Philippine practice of punishing Freemasons without trial, was being deprived ofhis liberty without warrant of law upon a ship then within the jurisdiction of the court.

According to Spanish law Rizal was being illegally held on the Spanish mail steamerColon, for the Constitution of Spain forbade detention except on a judge’s order, but like most Spanish laws the Constitution wasnot much respected by Spanish officials. Rizal had never had a hearing before any judge, nor had any charge yet been placedagainst him. The writ of habeas corpus was justified,Page 233provided theColon were a merchant ship that would be subject to British law when in British port, but the mail steamer that carried Rizal alsohad on board Spanish soldiers and flew the royal flag as if it were a national transport. No one was willing to deny thatthis condition made the ship floating Spanish territory, and the judge declined to issue the writ.

Rizal reached Manila on November 3 and was at once transferred to Fort Santiago, at first being held in a dungeon “incomunicado”and later occupying a small cell on the ground floor. Its furnishings had to be supplied by himself and they consisted ofa small rattan table, a high-backed chair, a steamer chair of the same material, and a cot of the kind used by Spanish officers—Page 234canvas top and collapsible frame which closed up lengthwise. His meals were sent in by his family, being carried by one ofhis former pupils at Dapitan, and such cooking or heating as was necessary was done on an alcohol lamp which had been presentedto him in Paris by Mrs. Tavera.

An unsuccessful effort had been made earlier to get evidence against Rizal by torturing his brother Paciano. For hours theelder brother had been seated at a table in the headquarters of the political police, a thumbscrew on one hand and pen inthe other, while before him was a confession which would implicate José Rizal in the Katipunan uprising. The paper remainedunsigned, though Paciano was hung up by the elbows till he was insensible, and then cut down that the fall might revive him.Three days of this maltreatment made him so ill that there was no possibility of his signing anything, and he was carted home.

It would not be strictly accurate to say that at the close of the nineteenth century the Spaniards of Manila were using thesame tortures that had made their name abhorrent in Europe three centuries earlier, for there was some progress; electricitywas employed at times as an improved method of causing anguish, and the thumbscrews were much more neatly finished than thoseused by the Dons of the Dark Ages.

Rizal did not approve of the rebellion and desired to issue a manifesto to those of his countrymen who had been deceived intobelieving that he was their leader. But the proclamation was not politic, for it contained none of those fulsomely flatteringphrases which passed for patriotism in the feverish days of 1896. The address was not allowed to be made public but it waspassed on to the prosecutor to form another count in the indictment of José Rizal for not esteeming Spanish civilization.

Page 235The following address to some Filipinos shows more clearly and unmistakably than any words of mine exactly what was the stateof Rizal’s mind in this matter.

Finally a court-martial was convened for Rizal’s trial, in the Cuartel de España. No trained counsel was allowed to defendhim, but a list of young army officers was presented from which he might select a nominal defender. Among the names was onewhich was familiar, Luis Taviel de Andrade, and he proved to be the brother of Rizal’s companion during his visit to the PhilippinesinPage 2371887–88. The young man did his best and risked unpopularity in order to be loyal to his client. His defense reads pitiablyweak in these days but it was risky then to say even so much.

The judge advocate in a ridiculously bombastic effusion gave an alleged sketch of Rizal’s life which showed ignorance of almostevery material event, and then formulated the first precise charge against the prisoner, which was that he had founded anillegal society, alleging that the Liga Filipina had for its sole object to commit the crime of rebellion.

The second charge was that Rizal was responsible for the existing rebellion, having caused it, bringing it on by his unceasinglabors. An aggravating circumstance was found in the prisoner’s being a native of the Philippines.

The penalty of death was asked of the court, and in the event of pardon being granted by the crown, the prisoner should atleast remain under surveillance for the rest of his life and pay as damages 20,000 pesos.

The arguments are so absurd, the bias of the court so palpable, that it is not worth while to discuss them. The parallel proceedingsin the military trial and execution of Francisco Ferret in Barcelona in 1909 caused worldwide indignation, and the illegalityof almost every step, according to Spanish law, was shown in numerous articles in the European and American press. Rizal’scase was even more brazenly unfair, but Manila was too remote and the news too carefully censored for the facts to becomeknown.

Page 238The prisoner’s arms were tied, corded from elbow to elbow behind his back, and thus he sat through the weary trial while thepublic jeered him and clamored for his condemnation as the bloodthirsty crowds jeered and clamored in the French Reign ofterror.

Then came the verdict and the prisoner was invited to acknowledge the regularity of the proceedings in the farcical trialby signing the record. To this Rizal demurred, but after a vain protest, affixed his signature.

He was at once transferred to the Fort chapel, there to pass the last twenty-four hours of his life in preparing for death.The military chaplain offered his services, which were courteously declined, but when the Jesuits came, those instructorsof his youth were eagerly welcomed.

Rizal’s trial had awakened great interest and accounts of everything about the prisoner were cabled by eager correspondentsto the Madrid newspapers. One of the newspaper men who visited Rizal in his cell mentions the courtesy of his reception, andrelates how the prisoner played the host and insisted on showing his visitor those attentions which Spanish politeness considersdue to a guest, saying that these must be permitted, for he was in his own home. The interviewer found the prisoner perfectlycalm and natural, serious of course, but not at all overwhelmed by the near prospect of death, and in discussing his careerRizal displayed that dispassionate attitude toward his own doings that was characteristic of him. Almost as though speakingof a stranger he mentioned that if Archbishop Nozaleda’s sane view had been taken and “Noli Me Tangere” not preached against,he would not have been in prison, and perhaps the rebellion would never have occurred. It is easy for us to recognize thatthe author referred to the misconception of his novel, which had arisen from the publication of the censor’sPage 239extracts, which consisted of whatever could be construed into coming under one of the three headings of attacks on religion,attacks on government, and reflections on Spanish character, without the slightest regard to the context.

But the interviewer, quite honestly, reported Rizal to be regretting his novel instead of regretting its miscomprehension,and he seems to have been equally in error in the way he mistook Rizal’s meaning about the republicans in Spain having ledhim astray.

Rizal’s exact words are not given in the newspaper account, but it is not likely that a man would make admissions in a newspaperinterview, which if made formally, would have saved his life. Rizal’s memory has one safeguard against the misrepresentationswhich the absence of any witnesses favorable to him make possible regarding his last moments: a political retraction wouldhave prevented his execution, and since the execution did take place, it is reasonable to believe that Rizal died holdingthe views for which he had expressed himself willing to suffer martyrdom.

Yet this view does not reflect upon the good faith of the reporter. It is probable that the prisoner was calling attentionto the illogical result that, though he had disregarded the advice of the radical Spaniards who urged him to violent measures,his peaceable agitation had been misunderstood and brought him to the same situation as though he had actually headed a rebellionby arms. His slighting opinion of his great novel was the view he had always held, for like all men who do really great things,he was the reverse of a braggart, and in his remark that he had attempted to do great things without the capacity for gainingsuccess, one recognizes his remembrance of his mother’s angry prophecy foretelling failure in all he undertook.

Page 240His family waited long outside the Governor-General’s place to ask a pardon, but in vain; General Polavieja had to pay theprice of his appointment and refused to see them.

The mother and sisters, however, were permitted to say farewell to Rizal in the chapel, under the eyes of the death-watch.The prisoner had been given the unusual privilege of not being tied, but he was not allowed to approach near his relatives,really for fear that he might pass some writing to them—the pretext was made that Rizal might thus obtain the means for committingsuicide.

To his sister Trinidad Rizal spoke of having nothing to give her by way of remembrance except the alcohol cooking lamp whichhe had been using, a gift, as he mentioned, from Mrs. Tavera. Then he added quickly, in English, so that the listening guardwould not understand, “There is something inside.”

The other events of Rizal’s last twenty-four hours, for he went in to the chapel at seven in the morning of the day precedinghis execution, are perplexing. What purported to be a detailed account was promptly published in Barcelona, on Jesuit authority,but one must not forget that Spaniards are not of the phlegmatic disposition which makes for accuracy in minute matters andeven when writing history they are dramatically inclined. So while the truthfulness, that is the intent to be fair, may notbe questioned, it would not be strange if those who wrote ofPage 241what happened in the chapel in Fort Santiago during Rizal’s last hours did not escape entirely from the influence of the nationalcharacteristics. In the main their narrative is to be accepted, but the possibility of unconscious coloring should not bedisregarded.

In substance it is alleged that Rizal greeted his old instructors and other past acquaintances in a friendly way. He askedfor copies of the Gospels and the writings of Thomas-à-Kempis, desired to be formally married to Josefina, and asked to beallowed to confess. The Jesuits responded that first it would be necessary to investigatePage 242how far his beliefs conformed to the Roman Catholic teachings. Their catechizing convinced them that he was not orthodox anda religious debate ensued in which Rizal, after advancing all known arguments, was completely vanquished. His marriage wasmade contingent upon his signing a retraction of his published heresies.

The Archbishop had prepared a form which the Jesuits believed Rizal would be little likely to sign, and they secured permissionto substitute a shorter one of their own which included only the absolute essentials for reconciliation with the Church, andavoided all political references. They say that Rizal objected only to a disavowal of Freemasonry, stating that in England,where he held his membership, the Masonic institution was not hostile to the Church. After some argument, he waived this pointand wrote out, at a Jesuit’s dictation, the needed retraction, adding some words to strengthen it in parts, indicating hisCatholic education and that the act was of his own free will and accord.

The prisoner, the priests, and all the Spanish officials present knelt at the altar, at Rizal’s suggestion, while he readhis retraction aloud. Afterwards he put on a blue scapular, kissed the image of the Sacred Heart he had carved years before,heard mass as when a student in the Ateneo, took communion, and read his à-Kempis or prayed in the intervals. He took breakfastwith the Spanish officers, who now regarded him very differently. At six Josefina entered and was married to him by FatherBalanguer.

Now in this narrative there are some apparent discrepancies. Mention is made of Rizal having in an access of devotion signedin a devotionary all the acts of faith, and it is said that this book was given to one of his sisters. His chapel gifts tohis family have been examined, but though there is a book of devotion, “The Anchor ofPage 243Faith,” it contains no other signature than the presentation on a flyleaf. As to the religious controversy: while in DapitanRizal carried on with Father Pio Pi, the Jesuit superior, a lengthy discussion involving the interchange of many letters,but he succeeded in fairly maintaining his views, and these views would hardly have caused him to be called Protestant inthe Roman Catholic churches of America. Then the theatrical reading aloud of his retraction before the altar does not conformto Rizal’s known character. As to the anti-Masonic arguments, these appear to be from a work by Monsignor Dupanloup and thereforewere not new to Rizal; furthermore, the book was in his own library.

Again, it seems strange that Rizal should have asserted that his Masonic membership was in London when in visiting St. John’sLodge, Scotch Constitution, in Hongkong in November of 1891, since which date he had not been in London, he registered asfrom “Temple du honneur de les amis français,” an old-established Paris lodge.

Also the sister Lucia, who was said to have been a witness of the marriage, is not positive that it occurred, having onlyseen the priest at the altar in his vestments. The record of the marriage has been stated to be in the Manila Cathedral, butit is not there, and as the Jesuit in officiating would have been representing the military chaplain, the entry should havebeen in the Fort register, now in Madrid. Rizal’s burial, too, does not indicate that he died in the faith, yet it with themarriage has been used as an argument for proving that the retraction must have been made.

The retraction itself appears in two versions, with slight differences. No one outside the Spanish faction has ever seen theoriginal, though the family nearly got into trouble by their persistence in trying to get sight of it after its first publication.

Page 244The foregoing might suggest some disbelief, but in fact they are only proofs of the remarks already made about the Spanishcarelessness in details and liking for the dramatic.

The writer believes Rizal made a retraction, was married canonically, and was given what was intended to be Christian burial.

The grounds for this belief rest upon the fact that he seems never to have been estranged in faith from the Roman CatholicChurch, but he objected only to certain political and mercenary abuses. The first retraction is written in his style and itcertainly contains nothing he could not have signed in Dapitan. In fact, Father Obach says that when he wanted to marry Josefinaon her first arrival there, Rizal prepared a practically similar statement. Possibly the report of that priest aided in outliningthe draft which the Jesuits substituted for the Archbishop’s form. There is no mention of evasions or mental reservationsand Rizal’s renunciation of Masonry might have been qualified by the quibble that it was “the Masonry which was an enemy ofthe Church” that he was renouncing. Then since his association (not affiliation) had been with Masons not hostile to religion,he was not abandoning these.

The possibility of this line of thought having suggested itself to him appears in his evasions on the witness-stand at histrial. Though he answered with absolute frankness whatever concerned himself and in everyday life was almost quixoticallytruthful, when cross-examined about others who would be jeopardized by admitting his acquaintance with them, he used the subterfugeof the symbolic names of his Masonic acquaintances. Thus he would say, “I know no one by that name,” since care was alwaystaken to employ the symbolic names in introductions and conversations.Page 245

Rizal’s own symbolic name was “Dimas Alang”—Tagalog for “Noli Me Tangere”—and his nom de plume in some of his controversialpublications. The use of that name by one of his companions on the railroad trip to Tarlac entirely mystified a station master,as appears in the secret report of the espionage of that trip, which just preceded his deportation to Dapitan. AnotherPage 246possible explanation is that, since Freemasonry professes not to disturb the duties which its members owe to God, their countryor their families, he may have considered himself as a good Mason under obligation to do whatever was demanded by these superiorinterests, all three of which were at this time involved.

The argument that it was his pride that restrained him suggested to Rizal the possibility of his being unconsciously underan influence which during his whole life he had been combating, and he may have considered that his duty toward God requiredthe sacrifice of this pride.

For his country his sacrifice would have been blemished were any religious stigma to attach to it. He himself had always beencareful of his own good name, and as we have said elsewhere, he told his companions that in their country’s cause whateverthey offered on the altars of patriotism must be as spotless as the sacrificial lambs of Levitical law.

Furthermore, his work for a tranquil future for his family would be unfulfilled were he to die outside the Church. Josefina’sanomalous status, justifiable when all the facts were known, would be sure to bring criticism upon her unless corrected bythe better defined position of a wife by a church marriage. Then the aged parents and the numerous children of his sisterswould by his act be saved the scandal that in a country so mediævally pious as the Philippines would come from having theirrelative die “an unrepentant heretic.”

Rizal had received from the Jesuits, while in prison, several religious books and pictures, which he used as remembrancesfor members of his family, writing brief dedications upon them. Then he said good-by to Josefina, asking in a low voice somequestion to which she answered in English, “Yes, yes,” and aloud inquiring how she would be able to gain a living, since allhis property hadPage 247been seized by the Spanish government to satisfy the 20,000 pesetas costs which was included in the sentence of death againsthim. Her reply was that she could earn money giving lessons in English.

The journey from the Fort to the place of execution, then Bagumbayan Field, now called the Luneta, was on foot. His arms weretied tightly behind his back, and he was surrounded by a heavy guard. The Jesuits accompanied him and some of his Dapitanschoolboys were in the crowd, while one friendly voice, that of a Scotch merchant still resident in Manila, called out inEnglish, “Good-by, Rizal.”

The route was along the Malecon Drive where as a college student he had walked with his fiancée, Leonora. Above the city wallsshowed the twin towers of the Ateneo, and when he asked about them, for they were not there in his boyhood days, he spokeof the happy years that he had spent in the old school. The beauty of the morning, too, appealed to him, and may have recalledan experience of his ’87 visit when he said to a friend whom he met on the beach during an early morning walk: “Do you knowthat I have a sort of foreboding that some such sunshiny morning as this I shall be out here facing a firing squad?”

Troops held back the crowds and left a large square for the tragedy, while artillery behind them was ready for suppressingany attempt at rescuing the prisoner. None came, however, for though Rizal’s brother Paciano had joined the insurrectionaryforces in Cavite when the death sentence showed there was no more hope for José, he had discouraged the demonstration thathad been planned asPage 248soon as he learned how scantily the insurgents were armed, hardly a score of serviceable firearms being in the possessionof their entire “army.”

The firing squad was of Filipino soldiers, while behind them, better armed, were Spaniards in case these tried to evade thefratricidal part assigned them. Rizal’s composure aroused the curiosity of a Spanish military surgeon standing by and he asked,“Colleague, may I feel your pulse?” Without other reply the prisoner twisted one of his hands as far from his body as thecords which bound him allowed, so that the other doctor could place his fingers on the wrist. The beats were steady and showedneither excitement nor fear, was the report made later.

His request to be allowed to face his executioners was denied as being out of the power of the commanding officer to grant,though Rizal declared that he did not deserve such a death, for he was no traitor to Spain. It was promised, however, thathis head should be respected, and as unblindfolded and erect Rizal turned his back to receive their bullets, he twisted ahand to indicate under the shoulder where the soldiers should aim so as to reach his heart. Then as the volley came, witha last supreme effort of will power, he turned and fell face upwards, thus receiving the subsequent “shots of grace” whichended his life, so that in form as well as fact he did not die a traitor’s death.

The Spanish national air was played, that march of Cadiz which should have recalled a violated constitution, for by the lawsof Spain itself Rizal was illegally executed.

Vivas, laughter and applause were heard, for it had been the social event of the day, with breakfasting parties on the wallsand on the carriages, full of interestedPage 249onlookers of both sexes, lined up conveniently near for the sightseeing.

The troops defiled past the dead body, as though reviewed by it, for the most commanding figure of all was that which laylifeless, but the center of all eyes. An officer, realizing the decency due to death, drew his handkerchief from the deadman’s pocket and spread the silk over the calm face. A crimson stain soon marked the whiteness emblematic of the pure lifethat had just ended, and with the glorious blue overhead, the tricolor of Liberty, which had just claimed another martyr,was revealed in its richest beauty.

Sir Hugh Clifford (now Governor of Ceylon), inBlackwood’s Magazine, “The Story of José Rizal, the Filipino; A Fragment of Recent Asiatic History,” comments as follows on the disgraceful doingof that day:

Chapter XI

The After-Life in Memory

An hour or so after the shooting a dead-wagon from San Juan de Diós Hospital took Rizal’s body to Paco Cemetery. The civilgovernor of Manila was in charge and there also were present the members of a Church society whose duty it was to attend executions.

Rizal had been wearing a black suit which he had obtained for his European trip, and a derby hat, not only appropriate fora funeral occasion because of their somber color, but also more desirable than white both for the full day’s wear, since theyhad to be put on before the twenty-four hours in the chapel, and for the lying on the ground which would follow the executionof the sentence. A plain box inclosed the remains thus dressed, for even the hat was picked up and encoffined.

No visitors were admitted to the cemetery while the interment was going on, and for several weeks after guards watched overthe grave, lest Filipinos might come by night to steal away the body and apportion the clothing among themselves as relicsof a martyr. Even the exact spot of the interment was intended to be unknown, but friends of the family were among the attendantsat the burial and dropped into the grave a marble slab which had been furnished them, bearing the initials of the full baptismalname, José Protasio Rizal, in reversed order.

The entry of the burial, like that of three of his followers of the Liga Filipina who were among the dozen executed a fortnightlater, was on the back flyleaf of the cemetery register, with three or four words of explanation later erased and now unknown.On the previous page was the entry of a suicide’s death, and following it is that of the British Consul who died on thePage 252eve of Manila’s surrender and whose body, by the Archbishop’s permission, was stored in a Paco niche till it could be removedto the Protestant (foreigners’) cemetery at San Pedro Macati.

The day of Rizal’s execution, the day of his birth and the day of his first leaving his native land was a Wednesday. All thatnight, and the next day, the celebration continued the volunteers, who were particularly responsible, like their fellows inCuba, for the atrocities which disgraced Spain’s rule in the Philippines, being especially in evidence. It was their clamorthat had made the bringing back of Rizal possible, their demands for his death had been most prominent in his so-called trial,and now they were praising themselves for their “patriotism.” The landlords had objected to having their land titles questionedand their taxes raised. The other friar orders, as well as these, were opposed to a campaign which sought their transfer fromprofitable parishes to self-sacrificing missionary labors. But probably none of them as organizations desired Rizal’s death.

Rizal’s old teachers wished for the restoration of their former pupil to the faith of his childhood, from which they believedhe had departed. Through Despujol theyPage 253seem to have worked for an opportunity for influencing him, yet his death was certainly not in their plans.

Some Filipinos, to save themselves, tried to complicate Rizal with the Katipunan uprising by palpable falsehoods. But notevery man is heroic and these can hardly be blamed, for if all the alleged confessions were not secured by actual torture,they were made through fear of it, since in 1896 there was in Manila the legal practice of causing bodily suffering by mediævalmethods supplemented by torments devised by modern science.

Among the Spaniards in Manila then, reënforced by those whom the uprising had frightened out of the provinces, were a fewwho realized that they belonged among the classes caricatured in Rizal’s novels—some incompetent, others dishonest, cruelones, the illiterate, wretched specimens that had married outside their race to get money and find wives who would not knowthem for what they were, or drunken husbands of viragoes. They came to the Philippines because they were below the standardof their homeland. These talked the loudest and thus dominated the undisciplined volunteers. With nothing divine about them,since they had not forgotten, they did not forgive. So when the Tondo “discoverer” of the Katipunan fancied he saw opportunityfor promotion in fanning their flame of wrath, they claimed their victims, and neither the panic-stricken populace nor theweak-kneed government could withstand them.

Once more it must be repeated that Spain has no monopoly of bad characters, nor suffers in the comparison of her honorablecitizenship with that of other nationalities, but her system in the Philippines permitted abuses which good governments seekto avoid or, in the rare occasions when this is impossible, aim to punish. Here was the Spanish shortcoming, for these werethe defectsPage 254which made possible so strange a story as this biography unfolds. “José Rizal,” said a recent Spanish writer, “was the livingindictment of Spain’s wretched colonial system.”

Rizal’s family were scattered among the homes of friends brave enough to risk the popular resentment against everyone in anyway identified with the victim of their prejudice.

As New Year’s eve approached, the bands ceased playing and the marchers stopped parading. Their enthusiasm had worn itselfout in the two continuous days of celebration, and there was a lessening of the hospitality with which these “heroes” whohad “saved the fatherland” at first had been entertained. Their great day of the year became of more interest than furtherremembrance of the bloody occurrence on Bagumbayan Field. To those who mourned a son and a brother the change must have comeas a welcome relief, for even sorrow hasPage 255its degrees, and the exultation over the death embittered their grief.

To the remote and humble home where Rizal’s widow and the sister to whom he had promised a parting gift were sheltered, theDapitan schoolboy who had attended his imprisoned teacher brought an alcohol cooking-lamp. It was midnight before they daredseek the “something” which Rizal had said was inside. The alcohol was emptied from the tank and, with a convenient hairpin,a tightly folded and doubled piece of paper was dislodged from where it had been wedged in, out of sight, so that its rattlingmight not betray it.

It was a single sheet of notepaper bearing verses in Rizal’s well-known handwriting and familiar style. Hastily the youngboy copied them, making some minor mistakes owing to his agitation and unfamiliarity with the language, and the copy, withoutexplanation, was mailed to Mr. Basa in Hongkong. Then the original was taken by the two women with their few possessions andthey fled to join the insurgents in Cavite.

The following translation of these verses was made by Charles Derbyshire:Page 256

My Last Farewell

Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress’d,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.

On the field of battle, ’mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;
The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily white,
Scaffold of open plain, combat or martyrdom’s plight,
’Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country’s need.

I die just when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;
And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,
Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray.

My dreams, when life first opened to me,
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Were to see thy lov’d face, O gem of the Orient sea,
From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;
No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye

Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,
All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night.

If over my grave some day thou seest grow,
In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below
The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath’s warm power.

Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if on my cross a bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.

Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;
Let some kind soul o’er my untimely fate sigh,
And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high
From thee, O my country, that in God I may rest.

Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur’d pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried;
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.

And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around,
With only the dead in their vigil to see;
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;
’Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.

When even my grave is remembered no more,
Unmark’d by never a cross nor a stone;
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o’er,
That my ashes may carpet thy earthly floor,
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.

Then will oblivion bring to me no care,
As over thy vales and plains I sweep;
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,
With color and light, with song and lament I fare,
Ever repeating the faith that I keep.

My Fatherland ador’d, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e’er on high!

Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!

For some time such belongings of Rizal as had been intrusted to Josefina had been in the care of the American Consul in Manilafor as the adopted daughter of the American Taufer she had claimed his protection. Stories are told of her as a second Joanof Arc, but it is not likely that one of the few rifles which the insurgents had would be turned over to a woman. After ashort experience in the field, much of it spent in nursing her sister-in-law through a fever, Mrs. Rizal returned to Manila.Then came a brief interview with the Governor-General.Page 259He had learned that his “administrative powers” to exile without trial did not extend to foreigners, but by advice of herconsul she soon sailed for Hongkong.

Mrs. Rizal at first lived in the Basa home and received considerable attention from the Filipino colony. There was too greata difference between the freedom accorded Englishwomen and the restraints surrounding Spanish ladies however, to avoid difficultiesand misunderstandings, for very long. She returned to her adopted father’s house and after his death married Vicente Abad,a Cebuan, son of a Spaniard who had been prominent in the Tabacalera Company and had become an agent of theirs in Hongkongafter he had completed his studies there.

Two weeks after Rizal’s execution a dozen other members of his “Liga Filipina” were executed on the Luneta. One was a millionaire,Francisco Roxas, who had lost his mind, and believing that he was in church, calmly spread his handkerchief on the groundand knelt upon it as had been his custom in childhood. An old man, Moises Salvador, had been crippled by torture so that hecould not stand and had to be laid upon the grass to be shot. The others met their death standing.

That bravery and cruelty do not usually go together was amply demonstrated in Polavieja’s case and by the volunteers. Thelatter once showed their patriotism, after a banquet, by going to the water’s edge on the Luneta and firing volleys at theinsurgents across the bay, miles away. The General was relieved of his command after he had fortified a camp with siege gunsagainst the bolo-armed insurgents, who, however, by captures from the Spaniards were gradually becoming better equipped. Buthe did not escape condemnation from his own countrymen, and when he visited Giron, years after he had returned to the Peninsula,circulars were distributedPage 260among the crowd, bearing Rizal’s last verses, his portrait, and the charge that to Polavieja was due the loss of the Philippinesto Spain.

The Katipunan insurgents in time were bought off by General Primo de Rivera, once more returned to thePage 261Islands for further plunder. The money question does not concern Rizal’s life, but his prediction of suffering to the countrycame true, for while the leaders with the first payment and hostages for their own safety sailed away to live securely inHongkong, the poorer people who remained suffered the vengeance of a government which seems never to have kept a promise toits people. Whether reforms were pledged is disputed, but if any were, they never were put into effect. No more money waspaid, and the first instalment, preserved by the prudent leaders, equipped them when, owing to Dewey’s victory, they wereenabled to return to their country.

On the first anniversary of Rizal’s execution some Spaniards desecrated the grave, while on one of the niches, rented forthe purpose, many feet away, the family hung wreaths with Tagalog dedications but no name.

August 13, 1898, the Spanish flag came down fromPage 262Fort Santiago in evidence of the surrender of the city. At the first opportunity Paco Cemetery was visited and Rizal’s bodyraised for a more decent interment. Vainly his shoes were searched for a last message which he had said might be concealedthere, for the dampness had made any paper unrecognizable. Then a simple cross was erected, resting on a marble block carved,as had been thePage 263smaller one which secretly had first marked the spot, with the reversed initials “R. P. J.”

The first issue of a Filipino newspaper under the new government was entirely dedicated to Rizal. The second anniversary ofhis execution was observed with general unanimity, his countrymen demonstrating that those who were seeing the dawn of thenew day were not forgetful of the greatest of those who had fallen in the night, to paraphrase his own words.

His widow returned and did live by giving lessons in English, at first privately in Cebu, where one of her pupils was thepresent and first Speaker of the Philippine Assembly, and afterwards as a government employee in the public schools and inthe “Liceo” of Manila.

With the establishment of civil government a new province was formed near Manila, including the land across the lake to which,as a lad in Kalamba, Rizal had often wonderingly looked, and the name of Rizal Province was given it.

Later when public holidays were provided for by the new laws, the anniversary of Rizal’s execution was in the list, and ithas become the great day of the year, with the entire community uniting, for Spaniards no longer consider him to have beena traitor to Spain and the American authorities have founded a government in conformity with his teachings.

On one of these occasions, December 30, 1905, William Jennings Bryan, “The Great American Commoner,” gave the Rizal Day address,in the course of which he said:

“If you will permit me to draw one lesson from thePage 264life of Rizal, I will say that he presents an example of a great man consecrated to his country’s welfare. He, though dead,is a living rebuke to the scholar who selfishly enjoys the privilege of an ample education and does not impart the benefitsof it to his fellows. His example is worth much to the people of these Islands, to the child who reads of him, to the youngand old.”

Page 265The fiftieth anniversary of Rizal’s birth was observed throughout the Archipelago with exercises in every community by publicschools now organized along the lines he wished, to make self-dependent, capable men and women, strong in body as in mind,knowing and claiming their own rights, and recognizing and respecting those of others.

His father died early in the year that the flags changed, but the mother lived to see honor done her son and to prove herselfas worthy, for when the Philippine Legislature wanted to set aside a considerable sum for her use, she declined it with thetrue and rightfully proud assertion, that her family had never been patriotic for money. Her funeral, in 1911, was an occasionof public mourning, the Governor-General, Legislature and chief men of the Islands attending, and all public business beingsuspended by proclamation for the day.

A capitol for the representatives of the free people of the Philippines, and worthy of the pioneer democratic government inthe Orient, is soon to be erected on the Luneta, facing the big Rizal monument which will mark the place of execution of theman who gave his life to prepare his countrymen for the changed conditions.

The Tagalog Story of the Monkey and the Tortoise Illustrated by José Rizal

An English version of this story entitled “The foolish monkey and the wise turtle” is found in The First Year Book publishedby The World Book Company of New York and Manila.Page 269

The Novels of José Rizal Translated from Spanish into English

“A complete picture of the Philippines under the old regime. Their appearance ... is noteworthy as a literary event and asan important fact in the history of the American people in their world relations.”—American Review of Reviews.

“Here are two books that every American should read: not simply because a Malay novelist is a great curiosity, but becausethese romances contain a serious exposition of the conditions which prevailed in the Philippines before the American occupation.”—New York Nation.

“The best, because the most far-reaching memorial to Rizal is the translations of his picturesque novels of Filipino life.”—Current Opinion.

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