Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot - Austin Craig
In talking of the Katipunan one must distinguish the first society,
limited in its membership, from the organization of the days of the
Aguinaldo "republic," so called, when throughout the Tagalog provinces,
and in the chief towns of other provinces as well, adherence to the
revolutionary government entailed membership in the revolutionary
society. And neither of these two Katipunans bore any relation, except
in name and emblems, to the robber bands whose valor was displayed
after the war had ceased and whose patriotism consisted in wronging
and robbing their own defenseless countrymen and countrywomen, while
carefully avoiding encounters with any able to defend themselves.
Rizal's arrest had put an end to all hope of progress under
Governor-General Despujol. It had left the political field in
possession of those countrymen who had not been in sympathy with
his campaign of education. It had caused the succession of the
revolutionary Katipunan to the economic Liga Filipina, with talk
of independence supplanting Rizal's ambition for the return of
the Philippines to their former status under the Constitution of
Cadiz. But the victim of the arrest was at peace as he had not been
in years. The sacrifice for country and for family had been made,
but it was not to cost him life, and he was human enough to wish to
live. A visitor's room in the Fort and books from the military library
made his detention comfortable, for he did not worry about the Spanish
sentries without his door who were placed there under orders to shoot
anyone who might attempt to signal to him from the plaza.
One night the Governor-General's nephew-aide came again to the Fort
and Rizal embarked on the steamer which was to take him to his place
of exile, but closely as he was guarded he risked dropping a note
which a Filipino found and took, as it directed, to Mrs. Rizal's
cousin, Vicenta Leyba, who lived in Calle Jose, Trozo. Thus the
family were advised of his departure; this incident shows Rizal's
perfect confidence in his countrymen and the extent to which it was
justified; he could risk a chance finder to take so dangerous a letter
to its address.
On the steamer he occupied an officer's cabin and also found a Filipino
quartermaster, of whom he requested a life preserver for his stateroom;
evidently he was not entirely confident that there were no hostile
designs against him. Accidents had rid the Philippines of troublesome
persons before his time, and he was determined that if he sacrificed
his life for his country, it should be openly. He realized that the
tree of Liberty is often watered with the blood of secret as well as
open martyrs.
The same boat carried some soldier prisoners, one of whom was to be
executed in Mindanao, and their case was not particularly creditable
to Spanish ideas of justice. A Spanish officer had dishonorably
interfered with the domestic relations of a sergeant, also Spanish,
and the aggrieved party had inflicted punishment upon his superior,
with the help of some other soldiers. For allowing himself to be
punished, not for his own disgraceful act, the officer was dismissed
from the service, but the sergeant was to go to the scene of his
alleged "crime," there to suffer death, while his companions who had
assisted him in protecting their homes were to be witnesses of this
"justice" and then to be imprisoned.
After an uneventful trip the steamer reached Dapitan, in the northeast
of the large island of Mindanao, on a dark and rainy evening. The
officer in charge of the expedition took Doctor Rizal ashore with
some papers relating to him and delivered all to the commandant,
Ricardo Carnicero. The receipt taken was briefed "One countryman and
two packages." At the same time learned men in Europe were beginning
to hear of this outrage worthy of the Dark Ages and were remarking
that Spain had stopped the work of the man who was practically her
only representative in modern science, for the Castilian language
has not been the medium through which any considerable additions have
been made to the world's store of scientific knowledge.
Rizal was to reside either with the commandant or with the Jesuit
parish priest, if the latter would take him into the convento. But
while the exile had learned with pleasure that he was to meet priests
who were refined and learned, as well as associated with his happier
school days, he did not know that these priests were planning to
restore him to his childhood faith and had mapped out a plan of action
which should first make him feel his loneliness. So he was denied
residence with the priest unless he would declare himself genuinely
in sympathy with Spain.
On his previous brief visit to the Islands he had been repelled from
the Ateneo with the statement that till he ceased to be anti-Catholic
and anti-Spanish he would not be welcome. Padre Faura, the famous
meteorologist, was his former instructor and Rizal was his favorite
pupil; he had tearfully predicted that the young man would come to
the scaffold at last unless he mended his ways. But Rizal, confident
in the clearness of his own conscience, went out cheerfully, and when
the porter tried to bring back the memory of his childhood piety by
reminding him of the image of the Sacred Heart which he had carved
years before, Rizal answered, "Other times, other customs, Brother. I
do not believe that way any more."
So Rizal, a good Catholic, was compelled to board with the commandant
instead of with the priest because he was unwilling to make
hypocritical professions of admiration for Spain. The commandant and
Rizal soon became good friends, but in order to retain his position
Carnicero had to write to the Governor-General in a different strain.
The correspondence tells the facts in the main, but of course
they are colored throughout to conform to Despujol's character. The
commandant is always represented as deceiving his prisoner and gaining
his confidence only to betray him, but Rizal seems never to have
experienced anything but straightforward dealing.
Rizal's earliest letter from Dapitan speaks almost enthusiastically
of the place, describing the climate as exceptional for the tropics,
his situation as agreeable, and saying that he could be quite content
if his family and his books were there.
Shortly after occurred the anniversary of Carnicero's arrival in the
town, and Rizal celebrated the event with a Spanish poem reciting
the improvements made since his coming, written in the style of the
Malay loa, and as though it were by the children of Dapitan.
Next Rizal acquired a piece of property at Talisay, a little bay close
to Dapitan, and at once became interested in his farm. Soon he built
a house and moved into it, gathering a number of boy assistants about
him, and before long he had a school. A hospital also was put up for
his patients and these in time became a source of revenue, as people
from a distance came to the oculist for treatment and paid liberally.
One five-hundred-peso fee from a rich Englishman was devoted by Rizal
to lighting the town, and the community benefited in this way by his
charity in addition to the free treatment given its poor.
The little settlement at Talisay kept growing and those who lived
there were constantly improving it. When Father Obach, the Jesuit
priest, fell through the bamboo stairway in the principal house, Rizal
and his boys burned shells, made mortar, and soon built a fine stone
stairway. They also did another piece of masonry work in the shape of
a dam for storing water that was piped to the houses and poultry yard;
the overflow from the dam was made to fill a swimming tank.
The school, including the house servants, numbered about twenty and
was taught without books by Rizal, who conducted his recitations
from a hammock. Considerable importance was given to mathematics,
and in languages English was taught as well as Spanish, the entire
waking period being devoted to the language allotted for the day,
and whoever so far forgot as to utter a word in any other tongue was
punished by having to wear a rattan handcuff. The use and meaning of
this modern police device had to be explained to the boys, for Spain
still tied her prisoners with rope.
Nature study consisted in helping the Doctor gather specimens
of flowers, shells, insects and reptiles which were prepared and
shipped to German museums. Rizal was paid for these specimens by
scientific books and material. The director of the Royal Zooelogical
and Anthropological Museum in Dresden, Saxony, Doctor Karl von Heller,
was a great friend and admirer of Doctor Rizal. Doctor Heller's father
was tutor to the late King Alfonso XII and had many friends at the
Court of Spain. Evidently Doctor Heller and other of his European
friends did not consider Rizal a Spanish insurrectionary, but treated
him rather as a reformer seeking progress by peaceful means.
Doctor Rizal remunerated his pupils' work with gifts of clothing,
books and other useful remembrances. Sometimes the rewards were
cartidges, and those who had accumulated enough were permitted to
accompany him in his hunting expeditions. The dignity of labor was
practically inculcated by requiring everyone to make himself useful,
and this was really the first school of the type, combining the use
of English, nature study and industrial instruction.
On one occasion in the year 1894 some of his schoolboys secretly
went into the town in a banca; a puppy which tried to follow them
was eaten by a crocodile. Rizal tired to impress the evil effects of
disobedience upon the youngsters by pointing out to them the sorrow
which the mother-dog felt at the loss of her young one, and emphasized
the lesson by modeling a statuette called "The Mother's Revenge,"
wherein she is represented, in revenge, as devouring the cayman. It
is said to be a good likeness of the animal which was Doctor Rizal's
favorite companion in his many pedestrian excursions around Dapitan.
Father Francisco Sanchez, Rizal's instructor in rhetoric in the Ateneo,
made a long visit to Dapitan and brought with him some surveyor's
instruments, which his former pupil was delighted to assist him in
using. Together they ran the levels for a water system for the the
town, which was later, with the aid of the lay Jesuit, Brother Tildot,
carried to completion. This same water system is now being restored
and enlarged with artesian wells by the present insular, provincial
and municipal governments jointly, as part of the memorial to Rizal
in this place of his exile.
A visit to a not distant mountain and some digging in a spot supposed
by the people of the region to be haunted brought to light curious
relics of the first Christian converts among the early Moros.
The state of his mind at about this period of his career is indicated
by the verses written in his home in Talisay, entitled "My Retreat,"
of which the following translation has been made by Mr. Charles
Derbyshire. The scene that inspired this poem has been converted by
the government into a public park to the memory of Rizal.
My Retreat
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove's confine;
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
Its roof the frail palm-leaf and its floor the cane,
Its beams and posts of the unhewn wood;
Little there is of value in this hut so plain,
And better by far in the lap of the mount to have lain,
By the song and the murmur of the high sea's flood.
A purling brook from the woodland glade
Drops down o'er the stones and around it sweeps,
Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough cane's aid;
That in the still night its murmur has made,
And in the day's heat a crystal fountain leaps.
When the sky is serene how gently it flows,
And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays;
But when the rains fall a torrent it goes
Boiling and foaming through the rocky close,
Roaring uncheck'd to the sea's wide ways.
The howl of the dog and the song of the bird,
And only the kalao's hoarse call resound;
Nor is the voice of vain man to be heard,
My mind to harass or my steps to begird;
The woodlands alone and the sea wrap me round.
The sea, ah, the sea! for me it is all,
As it massively sweeps from the worlds apart;
Its smile in the morn to my soul is a call,
And when in the even my fath seems to pall,
It breathes with its sadness an echo to my heart.
By night an arcanum; when translucent it glows,
All spangled over with its millions of lights,
And the bright sky above resplendent shows;
While the waves with their sighs tell of their woes--
Tales that are lost as they roll to the heights.
They tell of the world when the first dawn broke,
And the sunlight over their surface played;
When thousands of beings from nothingness woke,
To people the depths and the heights to cloak,
Wherever its life-giving kiss was laid.
But when in the night the wild winds awake,
And the waves in their fury begin to leap,
Through the air rush the cries that my mind shake;
Voices that pray, songs and moans that partake
Of laments from the souls sunk down in the deep.
Then from their heights the mountains groan,
And the trees shiver tremulous from great unto least;
The groves rustle plaintive and the herds utter moan,
For they say that the ghosts of the folk that are gone
Are calling them down to their death's merry feast.
In terror and confusion whispers the night,
While blue and green flames flit over the deep;
But calm reigns again with the morning's light,
And soon the bold fisherman comes into sight,
As his bark rushes on and the waves sink to sleep.
So onward glide the days in my lonely abode;
Driven forth from the world where once I was known,
I muse o'er the fate upon me bestow'd;
A fragment forgotten that the moss will corrode,
To hide from mankind the world in me shown.
I live in the thought of the lov'd ones left,
And oft their names to my mind are borne;
Some have forsaken me and some by death are reft;
But now 'tis all one, as through the past I drift,
That past which from me can never be torn.
For it is the friend that is with me always,
That ever in sorrow keeps the faith in my soul;
While through the still night it watches and prays,
As here in my exile in my lone hut it stays,
To strengthen my faith when doubts o'er me roll.
That faith I keep and I hope to see shine
The day when the Idea prevails over might;
When after the fray and death's slow decline,
Some other voice sounds, far happier than mine,
To raise the glad song of the triumph of right.
I see the sky glow, refulgent and clear,
As when it forced on me my first dear illusion;
I feel the same wind kiss my forehead sere,
And the fire is the same that is burning here
To stir up youth's blood in boiling confusion.
I breathe here the winds that perchance have pass'd
O'er the fields and the rivers of my own natal shore;
And mayhap they will bring on the returning blast
The sighs that lov'd being upon them has cast--
Messages sweet from the love I first bore.
To see the same moon, all silver'd as of yore,
I feel the sad thoughts within me arise;
The fond recollections of the troth we swore,
Of the field and the bower and the wide seashore,
The blushes of joy, with the silence and sighs.
A butterfly seeking the flowers and the light,
Of other lands dreaming, of vaster extent;
Scarce a youth, from home and love I took flight,
To wander unheeding, free from doubt or affright--
So in foreign lands were my brightest days spent.
And when like a languishing bird I was fain
To the home of my fathers and my love to return,
Of a sudden the fierce tempest roar'd amain;
So I saw my wings shatter'd and no home remain,
My trust sold to others and wrecks round me burn.
Hurl'd out into exile from the land I adore,
My future all dark and no refuge to seek;
My roseate dreams hover round me once more,
Sole treasures of all that life to me bore;
The faiths of youth that with sincerity speak.
But not as of old, full of life and of grace,
Do you hold out hopes of undying reward;
Sadder I find you; on your lov'd face,
Though still sincere, the pale lines trace
The marks of the faith it is yours to guard.
You offer now, dreams, my gloom to appease,
And the years of my youth again to disclose;
So I thank you, O storm, and heaven-born breeze,
That you knew of the hour my wild flight to ease,
To cast me back down to the soil whence I rose.
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green;
I have found a home in the pleasant grove's confine,
In the shady woods, that peace and calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
The Church benefited by the presence of the exile, for he drew the
design for an elaborate curtain to adorn the sanctuary at Easter
time, and an artist Sister of Charity of the school there did the
oil painting under his direction. In this line he must have been
proficient, for once in Spain, where he traveled out of his way to
Saragossa to visit one of his former teachers of the Ateneo, who
he had heard was there, Rizal offered his assistance in making some
altar paintings, and the Jesuit says that his skill and taste were
much appreciated.
The home of the Sisters had a private chapel, for which the teachers
were preparing an image of the Virgin. For the sake of economy the
head only was procured from abroad, the vestments concealing all
the rest of the figure except the feet, which rested upon a globe
encircled by a snake in whose mouth is an apple. The beauty of the
countenance, a real work of art, appealed to Rizal, and he modeled
the more prominent right foot, the apple and the serpent's head, while
the artist Sister assisted by doing the minor work. Both curtain and
image, twenty years after their making, are still in use.
On Sundays, Father Sanchez and Rizal conducted a school for the people
after mass. As part of this education it was intended to make raised
maps in the plaza of the chief city of the eight principal islands of
the Philippines, but on account of Father Sanchez's being called away,
only one. Mindanao, was completed; it has been restored with a concrete
sidewalk and balustrade about it, while the plaza is a national park.
Among Rizal's patients was a blind American named Taufer, fairly well
to do, who had been engineer of the pumping plant of the Hongkong Fire
Department. He was a man of bravery, for he held a diploma for helping
to rescue five Spaniards from a shipwreck in Hongkong harbor. And he
was not less kind-hearted, for he and his wife, a Portuguese, had
adopted and brought up as their own the infant daughter of a poor
Irish woman who had died in Hongkong, leaving a considerable family
to her husband, a corporal in the British Army on service there.
The little girl had been educated in the Italian convent after the
first Mrs. Taufer died, and upon Mr. Taufer's remarriage, to another
Portuguese, the adopted daughter and Mr. Taufer's own child were
equally sharers of his home.
This girl had known Rizal, "the Spanish doctor," as he was called
there, in Hongkong, and persuaded her adopted father that possibly
the Dapitan exile might restore his lost eyesight. So with the two
girls and his wife, Mr. Taufer set out for Mindanao. At Manila his
own daughter fell in love with a Filipino engineer, a Mr. Sunico,
now owner of a foundry in Manila, and, marrying, remained there. But
the party reached Dapitan with its original number, for they were
joined by a good-looking mestiza from the South who was unofficially
connected with one of the canons of the Manila cathedral.
Josefina Bracken, the Irish girl, was lively, capable and of congenial
temperament, and as there no longer existed any reason against his
marriage, for Rizal considered his political days over, they agreed
to become husband and wife.
The priest was asked to perform the ceremony, but said the Bishop
of Cebu must give his consent, and offered to write him. Rizal at
first feared that some political retraction would be asked, but
when assured that only his religious beliefs would be investigated,
promptly submitted a statement which Father Obach says covered about
the same ground as the earliest published of the retractions said to
have been made on the eve of Rizal's death.
This document, inclosed with the priest's letter, was ready for the
mail when Rizal came hurrying in to reclaim it. The marriage was off,
for Mr. Taufer had taken his family and gone to Manila.
The explanation of this sudden departure was that, after the blind
man had been told of the impossibility of anything being done for his
eyes, he was informed of the proposed marriage. The trip had already
cost him one daughter, he had found that his blindness was incurable,
and now his only remaining daughter, who had for seventeen years
been like his own child, was planning to leave him. He would have to
return to Hongkong hopeless and accompanied only by a wife he had
never seen, one who really was merely a servant. In his despair he
said he had nothing to live for, and, seizing his razor, would have
ended his life had not Rizal seized him just in time and held him,
with the firm grasp his athletic training had given him, till the
commandant came and calmed the excited blind man.
It resulted in Josefina returning to Manila with him, but after a
while Mr Taufer listened to reason and she went back to Dapitan,
after a short stay in Manila with Rizal's family, to whom she had
carried his letter of introduction, taking considerable housekeeping
furniture with her.
Further consideration changed Rizal's opinion as to marriage, possibly
because the second time the priest may not have been so liberal in his
requirements. The mother, too, seems to have suggested that as Spanish
law had established civil marriage in the Philippines, and as the local
government had not provided any way for people to avail themselves of
the right, because the governor-general had pigeon-holed the royal
decree, it would be less sinful for the two to consider themselves
civilly married than for Rizal to do violence to his conscience
by making any sort of political retraction. Any marriage so bought
would be just as little a sacrament as an absolutely civil marriage,
and the latter was free from hypocrisy.
So as man and wife Rizal and Josefina lived together in Talisay. Father
Obach sought to prejudice public feeling in the town against the
exile for the "scandal," though other scandals happenings with less
reason were going on unrebuked. The pages of "Dapitan", which some
have considered to be the first chapter of an unfinished novel, may
reasonably be considered no more than Rizal's rejoinder to Father
Obach, written in sarcastic vein and primarily for Carnicero's
amusement, unless some date of writing earlier than this should
hereafter be found for them.
Josefina was bright, vivacious, and a welcome addition to the little
colony at Talisay, but at times Rizal had misgivings as to how it came
that this foreigner should be permitted by a suspicious and absolute
government to join him, when Filipinos, over whom the authorities
could have exercised complete control, were kept away. Josefina's
frequent visits to the convento once brought this suspicion to an open
declaration of his misgivings by Rizal, but two days of weeping upon
her part caused him to avoid the subiect thereafter. Could the exile
have seen the confidential correspondence in the secret archives
the plan would have been plain to him, for there it is suggested
that his impressionable character could best be reached through the
sufferings of his family, and that only his mother and sisters should
be allowed to visit him. Steps in this plot were the gradual pardoning
and returning of the members of his family to their homes.
Josefina must remain a mystery to us as she was to Rizal. While she
was in a delicate condition Rizal played a prank on her, harmless
in itself, which startled her so that she sprang forward and struck
against an iron stand. Though it was pure accident and Rizal was
scarcely at fault, he blamed himself for it, and his later devotion
seems largely to have been trying to make amends.
The "burial of the son of Rizal," sometimes referred to as occurring at
Dapitan, has for its foundation the consequences of this accident. A
sketch hastily penciled in one of his medical books depicts an
unusual condition apparent in the infant which, had it regularly
made its appearance in the world some months later, would have been
cherished by both parents; this loss was a great and common grief
which banished thereafter all distrust upon his part and all occasion
for it upon hers.