A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

by Mary H. Fee

The young girls are exceedingly attractive. They are slender, and their heads sit beautifully above long swan-like necks. They dress their hair in a rather tightly drawn pompadour, and ornament it with filigree combs set with seed pearls, or, if they are able, with jewelled butterflies and tiaras. Jewellery is not only a fashion here, but an investment. Outside of Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, banks are practically unknown. The provincial man who is well to do puts his money into houses and lands or into jewellery for his womankind. The poor emulate the rich, and wear in imitation what their wealthy neighbors can afford in the real.

A Filipino Mother and Family

All the children except the baby attended the public school.

Filipino women never affect the dominating attitude assumed by young American coquettes. They have an infinite capacity for what we call small talk and repartee; and, as they never aim for brilliancy and are quite natural and unaffected, their pretty ways have all the charm that an unconscious child’s have. They love dress, and in one lightning flash will take you in from head to foot, note every detail of your costume, and, the next day, imitate whatever parts of it please their fancy and fall in with their national customs. They are adepts at mimicry and among themselves will lash us mercilessly. They straighten up their shoulders, pull in the abdomen, and strut about with a stiff-backed walk and with their hands hanging stiffly at their sides. They themselves are full of magnetism and can advance with outstretched hand and greet you in such a way as to make you believe that your coming has put sunshine in their lives. Their chief talk is of lovers in the two stages of pretendiente and novio, and they are full of hints and imputations to one another of love affairs. Among young people, in spite of the restrictions put about them to keep the opposite sexes from meeting tête-à-tête or the remotest chances of “spooning,” the air is surcharged with romance. Apparently the Filipino boy has no period in his development in which he hates girls. At twelve or fourteen he waxes sentimental, and his love notes are the most reeking examples of puppy love and high tragedy ever confiscated by an outraged teacher. When written in the vernacular they are not infrequently obscene, for one of the saddest phases of early sentiment here is that it is never innocent; but in English they run to pathos. One ludicrous phase of love-making is the amount of third-person intervention—an outsider thrusting himself into the matter to plead for his lovelorn chum. For some years I made a collection of confiscated billet-doux, but they were destroyed in one of the frequent fires which visit Manila. I can, however, produce a fair imitation of one of these kindly first aids to the wounded. This is the prevailing style:

Miss ——,

Lovely and Most Respectable Lady:

I am do me the honor to write to you these few unworthy lines to tell you why you are breaking the heart and destroying a good health of my friend Pedro. Always I am going to his house every night, and I am find him weeping for you. He is not eating for love of you. He cannot sleep because he is think about your eyes which are like the stars, and your hairs which are the most beautiful of all the girls in this town. Alas! my friend must die if you do not give him a hope. Every day he is walking in front of your house, but you do not give to him one little word of love. Even you do not love him, you can stop his weep if you like to send him one letter, telling to him that you are not angry to him or to me, his friend.

I have been informed by several persons that there is an official etiquette about this sort of correspondence. When a boy decides that he has fallen in love with a schoolmate or with any other young girl, no matter whether he knows her or not, he writes her a letter in the first person similar to the above. If she ignores the letter utterly, he understands that he does not please her—in brief, that “No Irish need apply.” But if she answers in a highly moral strain, professing to be deeply shocked at his presumption, and informing him that she sees no way to continue the acquaintance, he knows that all is well. He sends her another letter, breathing undying love, and takes steps to be introduced at her home. Once having obtained a calling acquaintance, he calls at intervals, accompanied by seven or eight other young men, and, in the general hilarity of a large gathering, endeavors to snatch a moment in which to gaze into the star-like eyes of his innamorata, or to gloat over her “hairs which are the most beautiful.”

The lover’s habit of fortifying himself with the society of his fellow men would be the last which an American boy could understand. But a Filipino swain rarely presents himself alone at a house to call. He feels, perhaps, that it makes him conspicuous. The whole race, for that matter, is given to the habit of calling in droves. If a Filipino girl goes to an office on business, her mother and father do not constitute a sufficient escort. Her brothers, cousins, a few admirers, and possibly a female friend or two are added to the parental guardians, till the bodyguard assumes the appearance of a delegation large enough to negotiate a treaty. One of the division superintendents tells a story which shows the humorous American recognition of the inconveniences of this habit. The Superintendent had recommended two young girls as pensionadas, or government students, in the Manila Normal School. It was their duty, on arriving in Manila, to report to the Director of Education; and they must have done so in the usual force, for the Director’s official telegram, announcing their arrival, began in this pleasing strain: “Miss—— and Miss——, with relatives and friends, called this morning.”