Source: Mrs Campbell Dauncey [Enid Campbell Dauncey], An Englishwoman in the Philippines (New York, E.P. Dutton, 1906), pp. 96-99
Text: Well, we went last night to a cinematograph show, which has established itself in a big empty basement in the Calle Real, with a large sign outside, made of glass letters lighted behind with electricity, all in the most approved European style. The “show” lasts for half an hour, going on from six in the evening to about ten o’clock at night, and the proprietor makes about 300 pesos a week out of it, for he has very few expenses, and it is the sort of thing these people love. They come out when the show is over, stand about and expectorate for a few minutes, and then pay their cents and go in again and enjoy the same thing about five times running, probably without the faintest idea what it is all about from start to finish. You remember the dreadful extent of the habit of expectoration in Spain? You have heard about this failing in America? The Filipino is the epitome and concentration of the two.
Everything in the hall was boarded up to prevent any stray, non-paying enthusiast from getting a free peep; but all the same I saw several little brown forms in fluttering muslin shirts, outside, where the wall formed a side street, with eyes glued to the chinks of a door in rapt attention; though I don’t suppose the little chaps could really see anything but the extreme edge of the back row of benches.
In the hall we were saved from suffocation by two electric fans, and kept awake by a Filipino playing a cracked old piano with astonishing dexterity, rattling out the sort of tunes you hear in a circus and nowhere else on earth. I could not help wondering where he had picked them up, till it suddenly dawned on me that one, at least, gave me a faint hint that perhaps the performer might once have heard “Hiawatha” on a penny flute; so I concluded that he was playing “variations.” Pianos never sound very well out here, and I am told it is difficult to keep them bearable at all, for the chords have an unmusical way of going rusty in the damp season, or else snapping with a loud ping.
The moving pictures were not at all bad, rather jumpy at times, but the subjects really quite entertaining, and all the slides, from the appearance of the figures on them, made in Germany, I imagine. The series wound up with an interminable fairy tale in coloured pictures, really a sort of short play, and in this one could see the German element still more apparent, in the castles, the ancient costumes, and the whole composition of the thing. I don’t suppose the natives in the audience had the wildest idea what it was all about, or what the king and queen, the good fairy, and the wicked godmother, were meant to be, probably taking the whole story for some episode in the life of a Saint.
The audience were really more amusing to me than the pictures, and I was quite pleased each time the light went up so that I could have a good look at them. In the front rows, which were cheap, as they were so close to the screen, sat the poorer people in little family groups, with clean camisas and large cigars, the women’s hair looking like black spun glass. Our places were raised a little above them, and were patronised by the swells who had paid 40 cents — a shilling. Amongst the elect were one or two English and other foreigners; some fat Chinamen, with their pigtails done up in chignons, and wearing open-work German straw hats, accompanied by their native wives and little slant-eyed children; a few missionaries and schoolma’ams in coloured blouses and untidy coiffures à la Gibson Girl; and one or two U.S.A. soldiers, with thick hair parted in the middle, standing treat to their Filipina girls – these last in pretty camisas, and very shy and happy. A funny little Filipino boy near us, rigged up in a knickerbocker suit and an immense yellow oil-skin motor-cap, was rather frightened at old Tuyay, who had insisted on coming to the show and sitting at our feet. When she sniffed the bare legs of this very small brown brother, he lost all his dignity and importance, and clung blubbing to his little flat-faced mother. Poor old Tuyay was dreadfully offended; she came and crawled right under C—-‘s chair, where she lay immovable till the performance was over.
Comments: Mrs Campbell Dauncey (born Enid Rolanda Gambier) (1875-1939) was an English travel writer and magazine contributor. She visited the Philippines over 1904-05, at the time of the American occupation following the Philippine–American War of 1899-1902. Her book is written as a series of letters; the above extract comes from a letter dated 4 February 1905, written from Iloilo. ‘Hiawatha’ refers to the The Song of Hiawatha cantatas written by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
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