Iloilo, January 8, 1905.

This is my first letter to you in the New Year, and it does seem so strange to be writing 1905 already.

I wonder how you brought the year in. We were invited to a ball given by the Club Artistica, the Spanish Club, situated in a suite of very large rooms in the upper story of a big house in the Calle Real, the main street of the town, which I told you about when I was describing the amazing shops. The big basements are shops, but the long upper stories form large dwelling houses, very swagger ones, only the dust and noise are very disagreeable, and the rents about the same as flats in the best part of London, if not more. On these two accounts, most of them stand empty, displaying long rows of closed shutters, all the outside painted the prevailing bluey-grey. Some are used as clubs, however, one being this Artistica, and another, further down the street, the Filipino Club, which is called the Santa Cecilia—dedicated very appropriately to the patron saint of music, you see. These two clubs are very hospitable, and do nearly all the entertaining in the place, except for an occasional lecture at the Y.M.C.A., which, I daresay, is a wild revel, only I’ve never summoned up courage to go and see. The Swiss and Germans have a club, I believe, and the English Club has a beautiful house of its own, but neither of these institutions does anything towards the gaiety of nations, beyond playing billiards among their own members exclusively. It is a relief, however, to think that the poor fellows do not have such a very bad time as one might imagine, for they accept everything and go everywhere. The same comforting remark applies to the Americans, who have no club and don’t entertain privately, except tea or Bridge parties amongst each other. So, as I said before, it falls to the Spaniards and Filipinos to keep the place alive, and very well they do it too, if the ball on New Year’s Eve was a specimen of their average entertainments.

The Spaniards, Eurasians, and natives are all passionately fond of dancing, and really fond of it, for they do not make it a question of supper, as people do at home. All you have to do here is to clear the floor and get in some musicians (half the difficulty here is to keep groups of musicians out), and apparently your friends flow in. When we are coming home in the evenings, we often see the salas of quite little houses lighted up and full of people dancing, and I have seen small native huts having a baile of two couples jostling round in a space 10 feet square.

The chief room of the Spanish Club is a large apartment, almost a hall, where, on ordinary evenings, the members can be seen through the big lighted window-spaces, sitting about at little tables, with glasses at their elbows, playing dominoes; but for the baile the club was cleared and hung with electric lights in paper flowers, and decorated with flags and palm branches, while in a large recess at one side was a numerous string band of Filipino performers.

The music was excellent, but so slow that, as far as I was concerned, dancing was no pleasure, though that was not much of a grievance to me, as I was really far more anxious to look on than to dance.

We were invited for ten o’clock, but when we arrived at eleven the entertainment was only just getting into full swing. We had missed the opening Rigodon, a dance without which no Filipino baile could get under weigh at all, but the second half of the programme began with one, and I was very much interested to see it.

Everyone who wanted to dance the Rigodon, and there were only about three people who did not, sat round the room in an immense square, as for a cotillon, and the band struck up a very jolly old Spanish tune, to which the sides facing each other went through a few simple figures at a very slow walk. When they had done, they sat down, and the other two sides took their turn; and that, to different tunes, was the whole dance, which went on for an incredible length of time. The figures were a mixture of lancers and quadrilles, but the dancers never went out of a dignified strut, and though the first tune was followed by the inevitable Sousa marches and “Hiawatha,” however lively the music became, the dancers continued to stroll and bow and shuffle about at the same slow pace. I am told that one becomes very fond of the Rigodon, but it seemed to me intolerably dull and listless as a dance, though as a spectacle it was vastly entertaining, and gave one a chance of really seeing the people, and they were well worth the trouble of turning out after dinner to look at.

The men wore white suits, most of them buttoned-up white coats of the every day sort. There were three Englishmen in evening dress, one or two in white mess jackets, and several advanced young Filipinos in grey tweeds. The American women wore every sort of outfit, from the missionaries and schoolma’ams in blouses and boots to the more exalted personages in evening dress; while the Filipinas, Mestizas, and most of the Spaniards had on the native muslin camisa, some of them exquisitely embroidered and hand-painted, and always worn with European skirts of appalling colours and cut. One little brown woman had on a long train of scarlet plush, with huge white lace butterflies fixed across and down the front, which made one burst into perspiration merely to look at; and another was in emerald green velvet, with straggling bands of gold braid meandering over it in such a queer way that I could not resist walking round her to see if any point of view would make the lines come out as a pattern, but they refused to go by any rule of any art—even the “newest.”

As to the waltzes, which formed the chief part of the programme, they were very amusing too, for the variety of styles was infinite, though the universal pace was so slow. The Spaniards and Mestizos dance very well, and by that, of course, I mean Filipinos in general, for it is very difficult to distinguish between them, and to say where one race begins and the other leaves off. They are slow and graceful. The Americans are equally slow, but not very graceful, for they walk instead of dance, holding each other in such a peculiar way, sideways and very close, the man leaning very far back, with his partner falling towards him, and the hands that are clasped held very high, and swinging up and down.

At twelve o’clock everyone began to cheer and shake hands as the New Year came in; while the band played the American National Anthem, which is a most magnificent air, and then the Spanish Anthem, and then a few bars of “God Save the King,” which did for us and the Germans equally well, and which we all thought a very nice little compliment. Filipino waiters came in, carrying trays covered with tall glasses full of some sort of champagne cup, and everyone drank healths, shook hands, and wished their friends a Happy New Year. We stayed on a little longer, and I danced a two-step with a very nice American, which was the best dance I had the whole evening, for it is one in which they excel, though they perform it quite differently to what we are told at home is “the real American way to dance it,” as they do not plunge down the room in straight lines in the English fashion, but turn round more and make more of a waltz of it.

Suddenly, during an interval between dances in the middle of the programme, without a word of warning, a Mestiza sat down at the piano and played an accompaniment to which a young Eurasian, in a painfully blue satin dress, and with her face a ghastly grey-white with thick powder, sang a truly terrible song. She screamed in an awful manner, and I wondered that policemen did not rush up from the streets to see what was the matter, but she was perfectly self-possessed, and faced the audience with the aplomb and self-confidence of a prima-donna. I never heard such “singing” in my life—it was the sort of thing that is so bad that you feel all hot and ashamed, and sorry, and don’t want to catch the eye of any relation of the performer. This happened not once, but several times, and is, I am told, a custom in Filipino bailes.

When we left at about half-past one, the ball was in full swing, and I afterwards heard that it went on till half-past four or five. Indefatigable people! I don’t know how they can keep it up so, for, of course, the heat was very great—a temperature in which no one would dream of dancing at home, and not a breath of cool air anywhere, but I suppose they become accustomed to it.

One thing I have mentioned may strike you as odd, and that is the mixture of races and Eurasians, but there is socially no marked colour-distinction here as in every other country in the world, and this, I imagine, is because the natives of the civilised parts of the Philippines have been Christians for centuries, and intermarried with a Christian race. The fusion is not, however, really very complete, as one can see from a glance, at any gatherings, where the people of various shades of white and brown keep very much together. Some of the Eurasian women are quite pretty, but they spoil their little round faces with thick layers of powder over their nice brown skins, and use perfumes that nearly knock one down. The white men are friendly with many of the Mestizos, and dance with their pretty daughters, and are even occasionally foolish enough to marry the latter; but white women keep quite apart from the coloured folk, and it would be an unheard-of thing to dance with one; while as to marrying a Filipino, no woman one could speak to would ever dream of such a horrible fate. That is where the real impassable gulf is fixed. The Americans profess not to recognise any distinction, however, for, as I explained before, they announce that they consider the Filipino of any class as their social and every other equal, and have the expression “little brown brother” (invented by Mr. Taft), which is supposed to convey and establish this generous sentiment. The sentiment, apart from any political utility it may possess, is a noble one, but it does more credit to the heart of the Americans than to their wisdom.

The Spaniards did not recognise the Filipinos as equals, but treated them with every courtesy, according to their degree, and I believe that whatever the political situation may have been in those days, society went peaceably enough, for every man knew his place and kept it; a system admirably suited to an Oriental people. Now, however, the rÉgime is quite different, and the sudden glare of ultra-equalising views is what the Filipinos can neither understand nor profit by.

I wish I had been in the U.S.A to see many things for myself, but I have always read and heard much about the hard and fast line drawn in that country against “coloured” people and half-castes, and that the Americans have learned to adopt this custom from years of experience. This makes their professed attitude here very puzzling, and I can find no one who can even attempt to reconcile this extraordinary variation of opinion. Another unfathomable anomaly of American thought is that the “Equality,” Nobility of the Human Race—Rights as a human Being, and so on, are for the Filipinos, but all these grand schemes officially take no account of the fierce, naked savages; the Mahommedan tribes; the negritoes, and all the other wild natives of the Philippines; though how, or where, or when, or by whom the line is to be drawn and the distinction made is another unanswerable problem.

New Year’s Day being a holiday, we thought we would treat ourselves to a drive. So we sent one of the boys out for a carromata, which is a sort of tiny gig, with the driver sitting on a small seat in front of his fare, in fact almost on one’s lap. Rain had been falling pretty well all day, and the carromata, when it arrived, was covered with mud, and looked such a disreputable turn-out that we burst out laughing when we saw it. However, there was no other to be had, and after all it was a very good specimen, so we climbed in over the wheel, and the driver, a boy of about twelve, gave the pony a chuck and a whack, and it turned round in the direction of the Plaza, and we stuck. Then the driver got down, and when he was out of the way and the pony became visible, we saw that we weighed the cart down so much at the back that as the little animal turned round he got his neck wedged under the shaft and was held in a rigid yoke. The youthful cochero shoved him down somehow, evidently both of them quite accustomed to the trouble, and, once righted, the little beast tore along, and we had a delightful drive in the cool of the evening, enjoying the air, which was so fresh after the rain.

We did not go far out of the town, as the sky was rather threatening, but kept more or less to the ever-amusing suburbs of native huts, which literally swarm with human beings, to every one of whom there is apparently an allowance of about six babies of under one year old, and on the roofs are cocks and hens clinging to the steep thatch; while under the hut lives the family carabao (a big grey water-buffalo) in his mudhole, along with stray dogs and wild pigs which eat up the refuse.

The number of children, very young children, is something astounding, but, according to statistics, I learn that 60 per cent. of the children born in the Philippines die under one year old, so that must help to keep the numbers of grown-up people down a bit. They are miserable little languid scraps, thin and solemn, but so supremely fortunate as to wear no clothes whatever, till they are about six, when a short muslin jacket is put on, which is more for adornment than anything else. The tiny ones ride astride the mother’s hip, with little thin legs dangling, and round black head wobbling about, looking so uncomfortable, poor little souls. They are fed on rice, which they eat till their little bodies swell up to a certain tightness, when the food is taken away, and they are not allowed more till they have “gone down” again. This process results in a permanent “rice-tummy,” which makes the babies look like air-balloons set on drumsticks; but, somehow, they lose that as they get older, and if they live, are generally very slender and well made.

There is a great fuss made now about this waste of infant life, much of which is ascribed to the horrible and unhuman practices and superstitions attending the birth of a Filipino child; but I imagine from the appearance of the children themselves, that the whole question is merely an example of the Survival of the Fittest, for of so many children born in such a delicate race there must be numbers who are unable and unfit to live. They are not a hardy people, these Filipinos, and the heat, fevers, and plagues of the country affect them even more than they do the white races, oddly enough. I believe that in the wild parts the natives are stronger, and sometimes live to a great age; but there the life is simpler; the cross-breeding less frequent; in the absence of civilisation of any kind the great Darwinian Law operates even more rigorously; and the young who are sickly stand no chance at all of growing up and transmitting their weakness. The skin of these people is not a healthy skin, not a warm brown, but of a greeny-yellowy brown; their fingers are delicate and weak, and their eyes not clear or bright, but like little bits of dull plum-brown jelly.