LEONORA RIVERA
By the title of his novel Rizal meant not that he was touching a person forbidden, but a subject. The words he had found in a Latin version of the New Testament in the passage where the risen Christ is beheld by Mary Magdalene; but he used these words in a sense wholly different from the scriptural significance. Conditions in the Philippines he had thought of as having become a social cancer that persisted first because of a notion that nobody must treat or touch it. Of all the men of his times and country, he was the only man that had the courage to break through this barrier and the skill and perfect knowledge to dissect the hideous growth behind.
With one of the first copies that came from the press he wrote to his close friend, Dr. Blumentritt, a letter in which he lays bare his own idea of his work:[1]
The novel [he says] tells of many things that until now have not been touched upon. They are so peculiar to ourselves that we have been sensitive about them. In this book I have attempted what no one else seems to have been willing to do. For one thing, I have dared to answer the calumnies that for centuries have been heaped upon us and upon our country. I have written of the social condition of the Philippines and of the life of the Filipinos. I have told the truth about our [[119]]beliefs, our hopes, our longings, our complaints, and our sorrows. I have tried to show the difference between real religion and the hypocrisy that under its cloak has impoverished and brutalized us. I have brought out the real meaning of the dazzling and deceptive words of our countrymen. I have related our mistakes, our vices, and our faults. I have exposed how weakly we accept miseries as inevitable. Where there has been reason for it, I have given praise. I have not wept over our misfortunes, but rather laughed at them.
No one would want to read a book full of tears, and then, too, laughter is the best means of concealing sorrow.
The incidents that I have related are all true and have actually occurred.
But for his habitual reticence about himself he might have said much more; if he had known his own powers he might have spoken of his lifelike delineations; he might have urged a gift like prophecy. All the impression of a strong personal relation one has throughout the reading of “Noli Me Tangere” is well founded. Into it Rizal was writing himself. Ibarra was a prefiguration, in some respects marvelously accurate, of himself in the days at hand when he should return to his native country. Of the material of the book the greater part had been verified in his own experiences. The imprisonment of Ibarra’s father was the story of Rizal’s own mother. Father Damaso he had seen and watched, and Father Silva no less. In Tasio, the philosophical evolutionist, he had but drawn his own elder brother, Paciano. But above all, the story of Maria Clara was a tragedy from his own life; at that time a tragedy he might have feared but had not as yet experienced, strange as that may seem. [[120]]
Maria Clara is Rizal’s cousin, Leonora Rivera, his sweetheart and first great disappointment. She was born in Camiling, province of Tarlac, on April 11, 1867, the daughter of Antonio Rivera, who was Rizal’s uncle, benefactor, and ardent partisan.[2] She was twelve years old when the family moved to Manila, where they rented lodgings to students in Santo Tomas and the Ateneo. Among these, after a time, came Cousin José Rizal, at about the third shifting of his quarters in Manila. Leonora was enrolled as an undergraduate at Concordia College for girls, where Rizal’s youngest sister, Soledad, was likewise a student. He would sometimes spend a half-holiday at Concordia to see and to amuse his sister, whereupon he and his beautiful cousin became good friends, although she was six years his junior. She was not only beautiful, but she seems to have had an unusual intellect of the kind that would be likely to attract Rizal; for she was in fact, and not by repute alone, studious, thoughtful, of the Malay seriousness, but with also the Malay delight in music. She sang well; she is said to have played the piano with a skill that distinguished her even in the corps of able pianists of which Concordia was proud. If so, the eminence was not lightly won; for the worthy Sisters that conducted that institution taught music thoroughly and well.
She must have been also of a sweet and gentle spirit; all the memories extant of her twenty years [[121]]after her death included this tribute. The various commentators that have differed often about other phases of Philippine life have been of one mind in praising the typical educated Filipino woman and yet have not exaggerated her worth. In a world wearied of artificiality, her simple sincerity shines to cheer as much as to charm. Visitors that have observed her well have usually noted the excellence of her mind, the honesty of her walk, and the reserve strength of her character. Rizal’s mother was of this order, the diligent ruler of the household, the laborious instructor of her children; and, when the blows of the Spanish tyranny fell upon her head, bearing them with the proud fortitude of a Roman matron of the republic. Doubtless, the halo of Rizal and Leonora’s own romantic story have magnified her intellectual stature; yet when all allowance is made for exaggeration that may color the work of a friendly biographer, the fact is apparent that she also was of this same admirable womanhood.
The first time she seems to have suspected in herself a feeling for her handsome young cousin stronger than cousinly regard was on a day at her father’s house when the young leader of the Filipino forces at the Ateneo was brought in with a broken head and covered with dust, blood, and glory. It was not the first time he had been so ornamented, but only the first time she had seen him thus. At the sight of the youthful champion of the Filipino people disabled early in the fray, Leonora ran with speed to get warm water and bandages to dress his hurts. The rest was easy and according [[122]]to the formulæ for such cases well known and accepted. She loved him for the battles he waged, and he loved her that she nursed him so tenderly.
A year later with the full approbation of their parents they were betrothed. Mr. Rivera was fond of his nephew; to the aunt, José was at least not objectionable, though she seems to have been a lady of a captious and changeable temperament. It was the uncle that first suggested Rizal’s withdrawal from the Philippines when it became evident that the governing class had marked him as a young man to be suppressed. Mr. Rivera knew well enough what that would mean in Santo Tomas and elsewhere: every avenue closed, every possible obstacle thrown in his way. The malice he had aroused he could hope to defeat in some measure if he could win in Europe a training and a distinction that would on his return provide him with a practice in spite of Spanish opposition. Mr. Rivera assisted his flight, sent him money while he was pursuing his studies in Madrid, and showed at all times a sincere interest in his welfare. The lovers had a tender parting just before Rizal went aboard his ship that night; as a sign or image of his presence when he should be far away he left with her a poem that began:
The summons sounds, predestinate and grim,