As a contrast, one of the most remarkable spectacles of the evening was the Gibson Girl, of whom there were several specimens to be seen strutting about. All Americans, men and women, as I have noticed at home and on the Continent, have something of this type about them, and I often wonder whether Dana Gibson has discovered the essentials of the American type, or whether he has invented a model which they admire and try to copy. Whichever it is, when it is natural it is pretty enough in moderation, but some of them have, as they would express it, “got right there,” and they may be picked out of any crowd of ordinary human shapes at a glance. Of course no human being really could have the proportions of the Gibson Girl as she is on paper, for no living thing ever had such length of leg and neck but a giraffe; only so many Americans have that type of face, with a low, pretty square forehead, thick, round nose, heavy jaw, and arched eyebrows. Corsets and high hair-pads can help towards the rest of the design. I can’t think how anyone wants to be a Gibson Girl, unless for twenty guineas a week at a theatre, as the pose and the untidy hair is inexpressibly common and shop-girlish. Moreover, I don’t see how anyone can expect to ape anything and avoid being vulgar. The Gibson Girl does not escape this latter calamity. She “gets right there just every time.”
After watching the dancing for a good while, I was taken round the grounds and given refreshment at one of the little buffets in the garden. A most amusing episode occurred at the chief of these buffets, where a big bowl of punch was being administered by the Chinese servants, who opened everything they could lay hands on—whisky, port, claret, soda, liqueurs, brandy, champagne—and poured it all into the punch. You can imagine what ludicrous stories were afloat about people who had taken one sip of this fire-water, and were reported to have been carried off half-dying, and shipped home down the river.
About half-past ten the crowds began to thin, and we left the palace, getting upon our launch again at the same place where we had landed. There was no more moon, but the stars made quite a bright light, and the air was so fresh upon the water at that hour that one could actually stand the extra warmth of a chiffon scarf across one’s bare shoulders.
March 4.
I found myself very tired yesterday after the fête, so I stayed in the house all day, except for a drive in the evening to the Escolta, which is the principal street of shops. When we came here in November, fresh from palatial Hong Kong, I thought this town the most shoddy and hideous place I had ever seen, but now I find it really difficult to recall my first impressions, for it seems a gay and handsome metropolis to the provincial from Iloilo!
At Iloilo our streets consist of ruins hastily patched up, and great fire-blackened gaps in the rows of houses, but in Manila, though there has been apparently just as much hasty patching, there are comparatively few ruins to be seen, and perhaps a trifle less string used in the harnesses of the horses. White women and Mestizas go about in hats too, which is a superfluity we do not affect in the provinces, and after so many weeks of not wearing a hat, I find it very irksome and hot to have to put one on. However, in Manila one must do as Manila does, I suppose, though the fashion, which did not obtain in the Spanish days, seems a foolish and unnecessary one, and the people who were here under the old régime rail helplessly against the innovation. Certainly it is no gain to the coloured ladies to hide their nice, thick black hair with the frightful “Parisian” confections which appeal to their exotic taste; but, of course, it would never do for them not to follow the fashions set by their American equals. They have, however, that strange and subtle way of the Oriental all the world over, of setting a seal of their own upon even the most slavish imitations. One feels in this, as in everything else in Manila, that if the American influence were withdrawn, in twenty-four hours all trace of that busy, kind-hearted, bustling, incongruous people would begin to melt steadily away, and in a month would be wiped clean out.
There are big, or comparatively big, shops, with a great display in the windows, and huge signs, and hurry-up-its-your-only-chance notices, and conversational advertisements in the American fashion. But when you get inside the shops there is the familiar barrenness, and there are the same half-asleep or half-drugged Filipinos and yellow Mestizos yawning and trimming their nails with the same vague indifference, and nothing to sell that any human being ever wants. And the prices of the things you buy, instead of what you wanted, are enough to make your hair turn snow-white on the spot.
Manila.
The Escolta.