Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

My hopes for the evening were blasted. About five o’clock the heavens opened and such a sheet of water descended upon my refreshment tent and my strings of gay paper lanterns as one never sees in the Temperate Zone. It was raining in torrents when our guests began to arrive, and if many of those invited had not been kept at home by the weather I don’t know what I should have done with the crowd. I had a wide hall, a small reception room, a dining-room and the verandah, but two thousand people are a good many, and I’m sure a large majority of them came in spite of the weather. It was a “crush,” and a warm, moist crush, but it was a gala occasion, everybody was in good humour and the evening passed much more pleasantly than I had any reason to expect. This was the first entertainment of such proportions that I had undertaken in Manila, and I saw at once that, as the Governor’s wife, I should need all the spaciousness of Malacañan Palace.

I think General MacArthur was pleased with our farewell hospitality to him; he seemed to be; and I think his feelings toward Mr. Taft, when he left the Islands the next day, were exceedingly friendly. But we heard later that letters had come from companions of his on the ship which said that he very keenly resented the fact that the new Governor had not seen fit to mention him with praise in his Inaugural address. Mr. Taft said he was very sorry, but, in view of the relations which were known to exist between the Military government and the Commission, he thought it would have been very difficult to find the tactful words which would have satisfied the General, and in uttering which he would not have stultified himself.

I am quite sure that General MacArthur never disliked my husband personally. His resentment was against the Commissioners in their official capacity, whereby his own authority was diminished. In later years, as Secretary of War, Mr. Taft met him very often and their relations were always perfectly cordial. After his death there was considerable newspaper comment to the effect that he had been very badly treated. There was no refutation of the charges, but everybody familiar with the facts knew they had no foundation. When Mr. Taft was Secretary of War, on his recommendation General MacArthur was given the highest rank in the United States Army, that of Lieutenant-General, and at his own request was sent by Mr. Taft on a mission to travel through China with his son, an Army officer, as his aide, and to make a military report upon the country. On his return, at his own request, he was not assigned to specific command, but was ordered to his home at Milwaukee to prepare the report on China, and there he remained by his own choice until his retirement.

On the morning of July 5, we moved to Malacañan, and General Chaffee, who succeeded General MacArthur, took our house on the Bay. There was a great deal of contention with regard to this exchange of houses. Mr. Taft knew that to the mind of the Filipinos the office of Governor, without the accustomed “setting” and general aspects of the position, would lose a large part of its dignity and effectiveness. He also knew that a Civil Government, unless it were quartered in the Ayuntamiento, the recognised seat of government, would inspire but little confidence or respect. The outward semblance is all-important to the Filipino mind, yet knowing this the Military authorities clung with dogged tenacity to every visible evidence of supremacy, and it took an order from Washington to get them to vacate the Ayuntamiento in which they had, in the beginning, refused the Commission adequate office room. An official order also turned the Governor’s residence over to the new Governor and, at the same time, relieved Mr. Taft of the necessity for deciding what to do with our house in Malate. It was the best available house in the city and every man on the Commission wanted it, so if the War Department had not taken it for the Commanding General somebody’s feelings surely would have suffered. Mr. Taft had about decided to toss a coin in the presence of them all to see which one of his colleagues should have it.

In some ways we regretted that the move was necessary, for we were very comfortable in our “chalet,” as Señor Juan de Juan had editorially called it, and invigorating dips in the high breakers of the Bay had become one of our pleasantest pastimes. But we knew that no amount of executive orders could turn our homely and unpalatial abode into a gubernatorial mansion, so we needs must move for the effect on the native mind, if for nothing else. Not until we did, would the Filipinos be convinced that Civil Government was actually established.

Not that I wasn’t well pleased with the idea of living in a palace, however unlike the popular conception of a palace it might be. I had not been brought up with any such destiny in view and I confess that it appealed to my imagination.

Malacañan is old and rather damp and, in my time, some of it had not been furnished or finished according to modern ideas, but in size and dignity it leaves nothing to be desired, and it has historic associations which give it an atmosphere that I found to be quite thrilling. It contains many fine, old-world Spanish portraits, and there is one large canvas of especial interest which hangs at the head of the main stairway. It depicts the ceremony through which Magellan made peace with the natives of Cebu when he landed on that island in April, 1521. This consisted of drawing blood from the breasts of the principal parties to the contract, the one drinking that of the other. The Spaniards called it the Pacto de Sangre, or the Blood Pact, and so the picture is named. In our own day the Katipunan League, the strongest and most sinister of all the insurrectionary secret societies, are said to have adopted this ceremony in their rites of initiation, and members of the League could be identified by a peculiar scar on the breast.

The grounds at Malacañan contain, perhaps, twenty acres, and in those days there were fields and swamps in the enclosure as well as lawns and fountains, flower-beds and kitchen gardens. There were five or six good-sized houses in the grounds for the use of secretaries and aides, and the stables were very large.

I would not care to hazard a guess as to the number of parientes we sheltered in the quarters of our employés. Mr. Taft called these quarters our “Filipino tenement” and “Calle Pariente,” but screened with shrubbery and spreading down the sides of a twenty-acre lot the colony did not seem as conspicuous as our huddled tribe had been in Malate.

The Palace is architecturally Spanish, yet it lacks the large patio, having two small courts instead. The lower floor, on a level with the ground, is really nothing more than a basement and has no usable spaces in it except some raised offices and cloak rooms. Frequently during bad typhoons I have seen water two and three feet deep in the entrance hall, but it always receded very rapidly and seldom gave us any inconvenience. The entrance, which is paved with marble, is very broad, and there is a wide and imposing staircase of polished hardwood leading to the reception hall above. The great living-rooms open one into another, giving a fine perspective, and they lead, through a dozen different doorways, on to a splendid, white-tiled verandah which runs out to the bank of the Pásig River. There is a picturesque, moss-covered river landing on the verandah below.