Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

There are about twenty rooms on the one floor, all of them good sized and some of them enormous, and it took a great many servants to keep the place in order. The floors were all of beautiful hardwoods and it required a permanent force of six muchachos to keep them in a proper state of polish. The Filipino method of polishing floors is interesting. Your muchacho ties either banana leaves or some sort of bags on his bare feet, then he skates up and down, up and down, until the floors get so slick that he himself can hardly stand up on them. It is easy to imagine that six boys skating together in the spaciousness of the Palace might cut fancy figures and have a delightful time generally, if they thought they were unobserved. Filipinos of the muchacho class always play like children, no matter what they are doing, and they have to be treated like children.

The Palace furniture, which must have been very fine in Spanish days, was of red narra, or Philippine mahogany, handsomely carved and displaying on every piece the Spanish coat-of-arms. But during the changing Spanish régimes some one with a bizarre taste had covered all the beautiful wood with a heavy coat of black paint. The effect was depressingly sombre to me.

The porcelain, however, or what was left of it, was unusually good. The Spanish coat-of-arms in beautiful colours was reproduced on each plate against a background of a dark blue canopy. I must say there were quite as many reminders of Spanish authority as I could wish for and I frequently felt that some noble Don might walk in at any moment and catch me living in his house.

But, it didn’t take us long to get settled down in our new domain, and I soon ceased to regret the sea breezes and the salt baths of Malate. Malacañan enjoyed a clean sweep of air from the river and our open verandah was in many ways an improvement on the gaudily glazed one that we had gradually become accustomed to in the other house. The Malacañan verandah, being much of it roofless, was of little use in the daytime, but on clear evenings it was the most delightful spot I have ever seen. I began to love the tropical nights and to feel that I never before had known what nights can be like. The stars were so large and hung so low that they looked almost like raised silver figures on a dark blue field. And when the moon shone—but why try to write about tropical moonlight? The wonderful sunsets and the moonlit nights have tied more American hearts to Manila and the Philippines than all the country’s other charms combined. And they are both indescribable.

TWO VIEWS OF MALACAÑAN PALACE. THE FIRST PICTURE SHOWS THE WIDE, ROOFLESS VERANDA OVER THE PASIG RIVER

When I lived in Malate and could look out across the open, white-capped bay to far-away Mt. Meriveles, I sometimes forgot I was in the Tropics. But at Malacañan when we gazed down on the low-lapping Pásig, glinting in the starlight, and across the rice fields on the other side where swaying lanterns twinkled from beneath the outline of thatched roofs, there was little to remind us that we were Americans or that we had ever felt any air less soothing than the soft breeze which rustled the bamboo plumes along the bank.

Our household was in every way much enlarged on our change of residence and circumstances. There were eight or nine muchachos in the house, two extra Chinese helpers in the kitchen, and the staff of coachmen and gardeners increased on even a larger scale. Our stable of ponies multiplied to sixteen, and even then there were too few for our various needs. It is difficult for the dweller in the Temperate Zone to realise how small an amount of work the native of the Tropics, either man or beast, is capable of.

We thought at first that the salary attached to the office of Governor of the Philippines was quite splendid, but we soon gave up any idea we might have had of saving a little of it for a rainy day. Our rainy day was upon us. It rained official obligations which we had to meet. The mere cost of lighting Malacañan was enough to keep a modest family in comfort. I don’t know about conditions at the Palace now, but I imagine they have not changed much, and I do know that Manila is a more expensive place in which to live than it was in my time. And yet there is serious talk of reducing the salary of the Governor-General. It seems a pity. This would place the office in a class with Ambassadorships which nobody but rich men can accept. The present salary, with nice management and a not too ambitious programme, will just about cover expenses, but I feel sorry for the wife of the Governor who must try to do what is expected of her on less.

My cook, who had been quite independent of me at Malate, became at Malacañan wholly unapproachable. I don’t know why, but so it was. He occupied quarters opening on one of the courts below and connected with the dining-room by an outside staircase up which I was never able to inveigle him. I had to deliver my orders from the top of the stairs and when he had listened to just as much as he cared to hear he would disappear through the kitchen door, and no amount of calling would bring him back. As the kitchen was an ante-chamber to a sort of Chinese catacombs, extending over a good part of the basement, I never ventured to follow him and I had to swallow my wrath as best I could.