Читать книгу An Englishwoman in the Philippines - Mrs. Campbell Dauncey - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Iloilo, December 10, 1904.

I am sure you will be pleased to hear that we have already found a house to suit us, in fact we are quite charmed with it, and can’t be too thankful that we did not hastily take any of the others we saw. C—— went to look at some on Tuesday, but on the way he saw this one, and liked it so much that he at once came back for me to look at it, and I went off to inspect, even in the middle of the day! I agreed with him in thinking the house charming, so we took it at once—or as soon as we had finished the preliminary pantomime with the Filipino landlady, a pleasant woman, married to a Spaniard.

The house is in one of the two nicest streets, a little out off the town, on the spit of land formed by the estuary and the open sea. These two streets run parallel, but as the spit gets narrower they leave off, and end in the Government Hospital, the Cavalry Corral (stables), some Government buildings, and diminish gradually to a long road, a house, some barren land, a few palms, a pilot’s hut, a little bit of beach, some pebbles, and one small crab.

Our house faces S.-W. on a garden, and the back is all open to the river and the N.-E. Monsoon—the most important consideration here, for houses that do not get the wind are stifling and unhealthy. We saw two or three that would have suited us very well, but for the fact that they stood the wrong way, or because the through draught was impeded by some tree or building outside.

The house we have taken is in the usual style, such as I described to you in my last letter, and in one-half of the lower part lives our Spanish landlord, while in the other half, rather vault-like, se aquila. The lower parts of the houses are unhealthy, because of the malarial gases arising from the soil, and the damp, so no one lives in the basements if they can afford anything else.

The upper part of this house we are going to live in is quite a separate dwelling, as it is approached by an outside staircase, coming up upon an open balcony running round three sides of the upper story. The balcony is a great charm, and very few of the houses have this addition. I thought that the Spaniards would have made open balconies the fashion out here, but was very much surprised to see none, and can only attribute the lack of them to the fact that the settlers came from the North, in the same way that the houses have no patios, and so forth. A roofed balcony like this is not only a delightful lounge, but it keeps the house very cool, besides catching a lot of the heavy rains, and it seems incomprehensible that any sane person could build a house in this climate without one. Verandahs are, of course, quite unknown, but I daresay there is a reason for all this in the terrible Typhoons which sweep over these islands, and would make short shrift of any fancy out-works.

We come into a big hall at the back of the house, with the outer side almost all (with shutters) open to the estuary, and the front portion of the house is the sala. Off these two, open five rooms, all large and airy, and freshly painted white. In many of the houses the top of each room has a deep frieze in the shape of a pretty wooden grill, a Chinese fashion, which allows the air to circulate freely through the house—to say nothing of the remarks of the dwellers! We have not got this extra luxury, which I suppose has not been considered necessary in so airy a house.

At the back is what is called the Azotea, which in this case happens to be built over the house below. It is a big, sloping, concrete floor, on which are built the kitchen, bathroom, store-room, etc.—all very compact, and quite away from the house, and not coming between us and the wind. In this, again, some of the houses we saw were impossible, for the outbuildings on the Azotea were placed so that they stopped the draught through the house. You may think I am a little foolish on the subject of a current of air, but I assure you I am not, for in a position with no draught the pores of the skin open like so many sluices, and one’s head begins to throb.

So that is our house, which, after genuine Spanish haggling, we got for 50 pesos a month, a sum working out at about £60 a year, a very low rent indeed out here. In fact, when we set out and said we meant to give no more than 50 dollars a month for a house, we were simply laughed at, and at first were almost inclined to think it could not be done, but when we saw the numbers of houses standing empty in all the nice streets, we stuck to our sum, and are very glad now that we did so. A Spaniard or Mestizo (Eurasian) would not dream of giving more than thirty for a house like the one we have taken, but an American would give a hundred. That is where the trouble comes in—in making the people understand that we don’t mean to grind them down, nor, on the other hand, to pay foolish sums, but to give the right value for what we get.

The Back of our House.

Showing Azotea and Outbuildings.

To face page 24.

You know the way Americans go about in Europe spending the unit, which is lower than their own, like water, with no sense of value? And how they raise prices wherever they go! Well, they have done the same thing here, and an American woman, who was talking to me the other day, told me it was now beginning to be apparent to them what a mistake they had made, and they bitterly regretted having made the Philippines as expensive as America, but that it was very difficult for them to go back now to the more reasonable scale, for as soon as a Filipino found out you were an American, nothing would move him from American prices. Poor thing, she was very bitter about it, and I felt very sorry for her (as well as rather alarmed for myself), for the sums she was paying in rent and wages to live at all in Iloilo, would have kept her in comfort in London or Paris.

Well, when we had settled on the house, we drove straight to the shop-streets of the town—or rather, street, for there is only one with shops, the principal thoroughfare, called the Calle Real. Some of the shops have quite big, handsome windows of plate glass, with wonderful things displayed in them, but when you get inside you find they are, like the shop window in Browning’s poem, only “astonishing the street,” and beyond the window there is nothing but a large half-empty hall, where a few languid, sallow Eurasians stand trimming their nails behind long, untidy counters. These are the Spanish, Filipino, and German shops; but the Chinese are just the reverse, with no show in the little low window, and the inside a small, poky room, crammed with everything any human being ever invented, and kept by energetic, slant-eyed men who simply won’t let you go without buying something.

The principal shop, however, is the great Store, which is kept by an English firm called Hoskyn & Co., and is said to be the best in the islands, and there we bought elemental necessaries, in the way of a few pieces of furniture, some groceries, china, glass, and so forth, at prices, when translated into shillings, to turn one faint with dismay. It was maddening to think of the lovely things we could have got for the same money at home, nevertheless these were very cheap for the Philippines, for this is a notoriously cheap “store,” which can afford to sell at low prices, as they have such an immense business, even being able to compete with the shops in Manila, where they send all manner of life’s necessaries. Though I am once more reminded of papa’s remark that he never realises what a curse human life has become till he reads through a store list.

When we had done our shopping, we came back to the house and unpacked our new household goods as they came in, hung lamps, and so on, and all that day worked hard at the house. At intervals prospective servants kept dropping in, for servants are secured here in much the same way as houses—people tell other people about the opportunity, and the news flies about in servant-land.

All shapes and sizes of Filipinos loomed on the balcony at intervals, and drifted into the hall and stood watching us till we had time to attend to them. In this country all the doors stand always open for coolness, and there are no bells, and when you go to a house you walk in at the door and sing out for a servant. Some people go so far as to have a hand bell at the top of the stairs, but the whole system seems to me ridiculous, so I have persuaded C—— to invest in a door bell, which he is going to fix to the main door into the hall.

We were unpacking and going about the house, and every now and then we would come upon a silent figure waiting, just waiting, anywhere, leaning up against something, and perfectly indifferent to time or place. This stamped him as a candidate. To each one C—— put first of all the question:

“Can you speak English?”

And when the man said “Yeees, sair,” he was refused without any further parley, for nothing will induce us to take servants who can understand what we are saying, which would make life impossible in these open houses. Besides that, when they speak English it means they have been with Americans, who spoil the Filipino servants dreadfully with their well-meant notions of equality, and give ridiculous wages as well. In the Spanish days a Filipino head-servant got 5 or 6 pesos a month, and the peso then was the Mexican dollar, which is only about two-thirds of the Conant unit. It was, and is, riches to them, but so changed are these things now, that we are considered wonderful because we have found a mayordomo or head boy willing to come to us for 10 pesos a month and a second boy for 6. An American would give them twice as much, if not more, which would simply turn them into drunkards, or gamblers, or both, or worse.

All the Philippine servants are men, as all over the East, though some women do have a native maid; but as all the women I have met do nothing but complain of the laziness and uselessness of these handmaidens, I have no idea of saddling myself with such a burden.

The two men we have engaged are about twenty years of age, but it is always very difficult to tell how old Filipinos are, as they look old when they are young and young when they are old. They can give no particular account of themselves, these two, and have unaccountably mislaid their little books of references; but we are taking them on the recommendation of their faces, which are nice, and that is just as good a standard to go by in a Filipino as in anyone else! One is a native of Guimaras; the other a Tagalo, from Luzon; and both are short, thick-set, sturdy-looking fellows who ought not to give us much trouble with falling ill. Half the time here the servants are ill with fever, or colds, or heaven knows what, for it is a race without much stamina.

One of the most aggravating characteristics of the Filipinos is the way they murmur, for they have naturally very soft voices, which become positively a whisper with shyness and awe. The English people here adopt the custom, which prevails throughout the East, of calling their servants “boys,” but the Americans use the Spanish word muchacho, and that is unfortunate, as they give all vowels the narrow, English value, making it this word muchaycho. It sounds so odd, this lack of ear, and quite alters some of the Spanish names—such as saying Cavyt for Cavite (the naval port of Manila), Caypiz for Capiz (a town in Panay), and so on, and though they pronounce Jaro exactly the same as the English town of Harrow, thank goodness they don’t go so far as to call this place Eye-low-Eye-low!

Filipino Servants.

To face page 28.

But I am wandering away from the servants, and I have not yet introduced the cook to you. We had less trouble to get this treasure than the others, as all the natives cook well by instinct—at least, they know how to make the best of what food there is to be had, which is all one wants. This particular chef is a shrivelled, pock-marked person, about 4 feet 6 in height, with an array of immense teeth, and an air of intense importance; this last characteristic being funny or annoying according to the mood one happens to be in oneself. His wages are 15 pesos a month, and as he is a married man, or says so, he is to live with his family in the town.

And that was the end of the first day, and a very long and fatiguing one in this climate.

When we came back next morning we found that the boys, who had been left in charge of the house and what furniture we had fixed up, had already swept and polished the floors, which made an immense difference to the appearance of the place, and the lamps were filled and trimmed. There is electric light in the town, but it is so very bad, and is the cause of so much complaint, that all have to supplement their expensive electricity with oil lamps before they can read. We are, therefore, not going to have it put on, though it would be quite easy, as the wire passes over us from next door. The efficiency and intelligence of the new servants pleased us very much, but all the same we observed cautiously to each other: “New brooms sweep clean.”

We left the new brooms still sweeping, and went off to the shops again, and once more spent important and heart-breaking sums on the bare necessities of life. This time it was furniture, at the shop of a Chinese Eurasian, where we got a lot of things that look very nice, though they are not anything wonderful in the way of wood; but in these light, open houses with no fires and no carpets, it is not necessary to have such rich-looking furniture as at home. If one likes to spend still more money, there are beautiful things to be had made from magnificent hard Philippine woods, but the high price of labour, the poverty everywhere, and lack of capital and enterprise, have made these hard-wood things so dear that they are luxuries. The ordinary furniture is, in spite of the cent.-per-cent. import duties, either made out of Oregon pine, or else imported ready made from Vienna; but an insect called buc-buc, with which the country abounds, eats these soft pine woods, though it will not touch the native mahogany, teak, ebony, etc. It is not as if this Philippine timber were swept off for export, for no trade is done with it as no cheap labour is to be had, and splendid trees just decay in the crowded forests on the hills.

For our sala we invested in basket furniture, a necessity in this heat, for padded chairs or cushions would be unendurable. The bamboo and rattan, of which Chinamen would make all sorts of pretty chairs and couches for a few pesos a piece, grow plentifully here, but in the Philippines such articles are only to be had at three times the price, as they are imported from China, for the Filipinos are too lazy and stupid to make anything of the materials given them by “el buen Dios,” and if they did, the scale of wages, set by the American Government, would make the things even more expensive than those imported. So the reeds rot, and the woods rot; and we, for our part, cannot cease to regret that we did not, while we were in Hong Kong, invest in some of the cheap and beautiful furniture we saw there, but we took local advice and forbore to import anything into this land of prohibitive tariffs; though now we discover that, tariffs and all, we should have found it cheaper to have brought the things with us.

All this expense of life springs from the accepted interpretation of the maxim, “Philippines for the Filipinos,” which saying was invented by the late (and first) Governor-General of the Philippines, a man of the name of Taft, who is now Secretary of War in the United States. I suppose the idea caught on in America, and the good people there, whose opinion controls affairs in this country, which they have never seen, think that prohibitive tariffs and the exclusion of cheap Chinese or Japanese labour, must be a good thing for these depopulated islands if it is a benefit to the overcrowded U.S.A.

As a matter of fact, when applied to an indolent, indifferent race, the result is stagnation and starvation prices, which is a terrible state of affairs in a hot country like this, where food and labour ought to be plentiful and cheap, or nothing will pay. I can’t think that the Americans really believe the Filipinos to be as high a development of the human race as they are themselves; but since they wish, with the best intentions, to allow the Filipinos to benefit by American systems of government, these Malays must first learn the A B C of such a system. Whether they are capable of profiting by such lessons, or whether they are so foreign to the essence of this race as to ruin it, remains to be demonstrated.

Well, I must get back to the house again, and the end of the story is that we moved into our house on Thursday, the 8th, and slept here that night. We were able to do this so soon, as people have been very kind in lending us things—sheets and towels from one, table-linen from another, and so on—but all the same I wish our cases would come, as there is such a responsibility about other people’s gear.

À propos of these same cases, we are rather uneasy in our minds about them, as we are beginning to hear alarming rumours of Customs duties to be paid. Wedding presents used to be exempt, but quite lately duties were levied on them, and I am afraid we shall have to pay for our own things, which is a bore, not to say rather a blow.

We got through all our trunks, etc., that we had with us with a perfunctory opening of one box, a few questions, and the signing of papers, the only trouble being C——‘s gun, which they took away, and he will not be able to get a licence, or allowed to have it out of the Customs House before he finds two “bonds” of 100 dollars each. That is, in clear English, he must find two people who are prepared to bet the American Government 100 dollars each that he is not going to sell the gun to an Insurgent.

So, barring the gun anxiety, we got our boxes in all right, and are told it would have gone equally well with the cases had we had them with us, but as they are coming out by freight, they will be subject to the duties. However, the authorities tell us it will not be very severe—C—— went and inquired about it, as he said he would rather not take our spoons and forks and things out of bond, but would prefer to send them back to Hong Kong rather than pay a large sum. So, all things considered, C—— is not reassured, so he has arranged to have the cases sent here unopened and in bond; and is going to open them, in bond, at the Custom House, and have the contents appraised before he decides what to do with them. The only reasonable hope is that many of the contents, such as plate, may be exempt, or very lightly taxed, as they are articles that could not possibly be produced in the Philippines; but when I mentioned this to a Customs official, he replied that such an idea had nothing to do with the system of taxation.

This is a fearfully long letter, but even now I feel I have not told you half I wanted to.