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Who Called Rizal ‘Little Bad Boy?’

Recalling the national hero's romantic romp through Europe

By HOWIE G. SEVERINO, GMA News

December 27, 2018

In high school when I first learned about Rizal, his books and heroics, I could not relate. He was
too talented, too good to be true. He was brown like me, but that was it.

In the full bloom of adulthood, despairing of the society I was born in, I sought to know him
better. I needed evidence that a Filipino with such superhuman gifts really existed. Maybe I was
also desperately searching for some kind of inner Rizal.

There’s a problem with trying to get to know Rizal better by retracing his steps in the Philippines:
Many of the places he writes about are gone, either destroyed during World War II, like his
student stomping grounds in Intramuros, or changed beyond recognition by development, like
the Luneta where he was executed.

Many moons later as a journalist, on a working trip to Europe, I finally made his acquaintance.
Every schoolboy knows he had a world-class mind. But I also learned he had a large cheesy heart
and perhaps a libido to match.

Unlike in the Philippines, many structures that existed during his nearly nine years in Europe
remain, the essence of his old neighborhoods unchanged. Whatever changes occurred even
struck me as apt, such as his old boarding house in Ghent, Belgium which – when I visited 14
years ago – had an erotic underwear store on the ground floor; and down the street was the
building where a printing press churned out the first copies of El Filibusterismo, which when I
entered was already a store that sold tropical plants. (Rizal was of course both a lover boy and
naturalist.)

One can actually read his exuberant letters home about Paris or Madrid and still find the same
cobblestone streets or the hotels he stayed in, and feel a similar awe exploring the same
neighborhoods.

He first went to Paris in 1883, his first journey in Europe outside Spain, and stayed at the Hotel
de Paris where my documentary team, Egay Navarro and Ella Evangelista-Martelino, and I also
stayed a few days. It was popular cheap digs for Filipino students then (not so cheap now), and
would have a spectacular view in the distance of the Eiffel Tower, constructed during Rizal’s
frequent trips to Paris in the 1880s. A few doors down was the home of the wealthy Pinoy expat
Valentin Ventura, where Rizal and friends used to hang out.
Rizal loved Paris, the fabled city of light which was also then the European capital of arts, liberal
thought, and good times. It was here that Rizal formed the Kidlat Club, little more than a barkada
of Filipino bachelors in Paris. Together they went to see the Buffalo Bill cowboy exhibit at the
World Exposition of 1889. Rizal was more struck by the American Indians in the exhibit, and
reminded his compatriots that they too were called Indios by their white colonizers. Henceforth
they called themselves Los Indios Bravos.

Rizal on succeeding trips to Paris stayed with friends like Juan Luna, occupying a bed space in his
airy studio-apartment in an artists’ compound which still exists nearly unchanged. They shared a
common outhouse even in the bitter cold of winter. Rizal perfected his painting techniques here
under the watchful eyes of Luna the master, and produced there what could be the Philippines’
first comic strip, “The Turtle and the Monkey.” But on occasion Los Indios Bravos met at the Luna
residence to practice the manly art of fencing.

The Valentin home near the Hotel de Paris was a favorite meeting place. It was also walking
distance to Montemarte, then the red-light district not only of Paris but much of Europe, and the
home of the notorious Moulin Rouge, where sexy dancers would kick their legs and show flashes
of French lingerie. (It’s still in the same place with a windmill on the roof, now lit by neon.)

The Valentin abode is now a doctors’ clinic with a Rizal plaque. The smiling elderly French
caretaker told us proudly about how Filipino tour groups would stop and ogle at the building
where the national hero once enjoyed his wine and song.

- https://youtu.be/0JyAKKNoRaw

Rizal enjoyed women too, although he rarely wrote letters home about them. But we do know
he had them, inspiring some urban legends that are still repeated to this day.

I will not dwell here on the false rumor that Rizal had fathered Adolf Hitler via a “Viennese
temptress,” who was steamily described in the memoirs of his fellow expat and traveling
companion Maximo Viola. (When Hitler was conceived, if you count back nine months from the
future fascist's birth date, Rizal was in London doing research on pre-colonial Filipinas.)

But Viola’s flowery account of Rizal’s “encounter” in Vienna in May 1887 is worth quoting: “In
one of our tours of that city, he encountered the figure of a temptress in the form of a Viennese
woman… of extraordinary beauty and irresistible attraction, who seemingly had been expressly
invited to offer for a moment the cup of mundane pleasure to the apostle of Philippine freedom.”

It’s the only known instance of a one-night stand — or “cup of mundane pleasure” — by our
apostle of freedom.

But we do know he had short-term affairs and near-engagements, and left a trail of broken hearts
in Europe, while carrying a torch for his first real love, Leonor Rivera, who was pining for him in
the Philippines. She would eventually marry an Englishman and burn all of Rizal’s love letters.
Perhaps Rizal’s most serious affair in Europe was with the tisay Nelly (or Nellie) Boustead, the
lovely daughter of a wealthy Frenchman married to a Pinay from Manila. Dashing Pepe and
affable Nelly had fallen madly in love while the former was visiting the Boustead vacation home
in the French seaside resort town of Biarritz in 1891. Her father was a supporter of the Filipino
exile community and an admirer of Rizal’s talents.

Nelly then enjoyed “crush ng bayan” status in the competitive world of Filipino male exiles, and
eventually grew enamored with the alpha male, Rizal.

Aside from Josephine Bracken in Dapitan and perhaps his long-distance sweetheart Leonor, Nelly
was the only woman Rizal ever considered settling down with, if one is to judge from existing
correspondence.

The famously pacifist Rizal became so protective of Nelly that he nearly ended up in a duel after
hearing what has been described as “unsavory remarks” about the French-Filipina.

Rizal and Nelly met in Paris in the summer of 1889, and became part of a barkada along with the
Luna brothers Antonio and Juan and Nelly’s younger sister Adelina. They used to meet for fencing
lessons every Sunday in the courtyard of Juan’s studio.

She turned up in a famous photograph of Rizal fencing with Juan Luna on one of those Sundays.
Zoom in on the feminine face of the sitting figure in the corner and it is Nelly's lovestruck visage.

In one of the few photographs that show Rizal’s playful side, supposedly after posing for a Luna
painting, he appears amused at himself wearing the disheveled turban mounted on his head. He
smirks and looks away from the camera; an arm’s reach away is Nelly Boustead, wearing a veil
and a more bashful expression as she too looks away from the camera. She’s pretty, with soft,
mixed-race features, and could easily pass for one of those colegialas I danced with in my teen-
age soiree days. In between the two was their mutual friend Paz Pardo de Tavera, Juan Luna’s
wife, who looked stern by contrast.

One can easily imagine Rizal and Nelly making flirtatious eye contact right before the picture was
snapped and they had to suddenly look away.

As so often happens with barkadas that include attractive single ladies and randy bachelors, this
little group was nearly torn apart by a love triangle that featured Rizal and Antonio’s rivalry for
Nelly’s charms.

But at first, the besotted Antonio confided in Rizal, even writing an anguished letter to his friend
shortly after Christmas of 1889:
“Does she still love me? Since 16 November I have not heard from her although I wrote her a
letter some twenty days ago… I should like to know if I am making myself ridiculous by candidly
believing in a love that no longer exists. This is really ridiculous.”

Little did he know then that Nelly had the hots for Rizal, who himself had a famed eye for young
beauty.

When it was becoming clear that he was part of a love triangle, Antonio wrote Rizal again, this
time about Nelly’s chilling effect on his friendship with his compatriot, strongly implying a
betrayal, even dishonesty on Rizal’s part:

“We have no reason to be cold to each other, for many times I asked you if you felt love for Nelly
and you told me no. Consequently I was already sure of you, certain you are my friend… Therefore
chico, we ought to continue as friends as I thought we never ceased to be.”

The rivalry over Nelly nearly destroyed the political movement growing around Rizal, who had by
then published Noli Me Tangere to great underground acclaim.

At a reunion of Filipino exiles in Madrid in the summer of 1890, Antonio got drunk and his
bitterness about being rejected by Nelly came out in a stream of insulting words about the comely
lass. Rizal overheard Antonio, an argument ensued, ending in a challenge to a duel. It’s not clear
who made the challenge, but lucky for the budding nation, cooler heads reigned and Antonio
apologized once he sobered up.

After Rizal, then 29, visited the Boustead villa in the French seaside town of Biarritz in the winter
of 1891, Antonio knew that he had lost in the contest for Nelly’s heart.

He wrote Rizal once more about Nelly:

“With respect to Nelly, frankly, I think there is nothing between us more than one of those
friendships enlivened by being fellow countrymen. It seems to me that there is nothing more. My
word of honor… I believe that she will bring happiness not only to you but to any other man who
is worthy of her. I congratulate you as one congratulates a friend.”

The triangle collapsed, Rizal was free to pursue Nelly. He also got the endorsement from his
fellow expats, such as Tomas Arejola:

“See if Mademoiselle Boustead suits you, court her, and marry her, and we are here to applaud
such a good act.”

Rizal spent more than six weeks with the Bousteads in Biarritz and proved himself again to be a
world-class multi-tasker. Aside from courting the alluring Nelly, enough to distract most men
from concentrating on anything else, Rizal finished his second novel El Filibusterismo during this
seaside interlude. Begun in Calamba, the book had taken all of four years. As soon as he finished,
he wrote his best friend Blumentritt and left for Paris the next day.

Rizal’s letters to Nelly have yet to be discovered, but her missive from the family villa in Biarritz
after Rizal left reveals that he had more in mind than a French fling. But before she could respond
to Rizal’s proposal, she insisted on one condition:

“When they (Nelly’s parents) wanted to know what my feelings towards (you) were, I told them
that I could not manifest them before knowing whether you have decided to embrace Christianity
as I understand it.”

Nelly wanted Rizal to convert to Protestantism. Amid his skepticism about organized religion, he
apparently declined and stopped entertaining the notion of a future together.

Rizal’s relationship with Nelly was his most intense in Europe, according to most accounts. But
perhaps the most intriguing was his affair in Brussels, Belgium, while still carrying a torch for Nelly
in France.

These simultaneous love interests coincided with a low point in his overseas years. When Rizal's
family lost their Calamba estate to the friars and his brother Paciano could no longer send him a
regular allowance, Rizal left Paris in 1890 and moved to Brussels, Belgium which had a lower cost
of living. He stayed in a boarding house in a quiet neighborhood and this is where the historical
accounts get interesting.

From existing letters, it has been established that Rizal had carried on an affair with a certain
Suzanne, without resolving his feelings for Nelly.

Most historical accounts assume that this Brussels flame was Suzanne Jacoby, one of the middle-
aged spinster sisters who managed the boarding house.

This May-October relationship was asserted by historians long ago and accepted as gospel truth
by many since, but it has been debunked by more recent scholars, including Rizal enthusiasts
from Belgium who have researched those days in our hero's life in minute detail.

Unless Rizal suddenly developed a taste for older women, it's unlikely that he would have chosen
the 45-year-old Ms. Jacoby over the other Suzanne living in the same boarding house, the
landlady’s 18-year-old niece Suzanne Thill, who like her titas was originally from Luxembourg.

The proof of this relationship is found in pining letters to Rizal where he is endearingly called “my
little bad boy” by a certain “petite Suzanne.”

French-speaking Belgian Jean-Paul (JP) Verstraeten, who has been championing Rizal in Europe
for decades, told me that Rizal’s girlfriend’s signing her letters “petite Suzanne” meant there was
another, older Suzanne in the same place whom Rizal knew, probably the spinster aunt. Besides,
JP asks mischievously, “Do you think Rizal would fall for a woman over 40 years old?”

No known pictures of Ms. Thill remain. But while in Brussels, our hero would create and send to
his friend Valentin Ventura in Paris a bust of a Caucasian lass with exquisite young features,
prompting Ventura to write him asking who his model could be. No one seems sure if Rizal ever
answered his query. But it certainly did not remind Ventura of a middle-aged spinster.

After Rizal moved away from Brussels in 1890 in search of a place where he could finish writing
El Filibusterismo, petite Suzanne wrote him longingly: “Don’t delay too long writing us because I
wear out the soles of my shoes for running to the mailbox to see if there is a letter from you...
There will never be any home in which you are so loved as in that in Brussels, so, you little bad
boy, hurry up and come back.”

Her little bad boy did not come back, having gone on to Biarritz and another woman’s charms,
adding to Rizal's trail of broken hearts.

None of Rizal's letters to Suzanne Thill have been found, and JP is still searching. We may never
know exactly why she called him a “little bad boy.” But it does make our national hero come
down to earth as a playful, perhaps even horny, Pinoy bachelor in Europe. We can relate to that.

This is a revised version of an essay that was recently included in “Rizal +”, a collection of writings
and art about Jose Rizal, published by Water Dragon, Inc. in 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-Bm1ZAiGE

Rizal on Annotations of Antonio Morga’s Sucesos las Islas Filipinas

Yesterday I received an email from Veronica Pedrosa who now lives in London. She said that she
was writing a book and was at the British Museum for her research.

I texted her back that one of the less known books of Jose Rizal, “Annotations on Antonio Morga’s
Sucesos de las Islas Pilipinas” was researched and written there.

It was by way of reply on just who and what Filipinos were before the Spanish colonialists came.
I have excerpted from a translation by Austin Craig of the introduction to the book.

“As a child José Rizal heard from his uncle, José Alberto, about an ancient history of the
Philippines written by a Spaniard named Antonio de Morga. The knowledge of this book came
from the English Governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Browning, who had once paid his uncle a visit.
While in London, Rizal immediately acquainted himself with the British Museum where he found
one of the few remaining copies of that work. At his own expense, he had the work republished
with annotations that showed the Philippines was an advanced civilization prior to the Spanish
conquest. Austin Craig, an early biographer of Rizal, translated into English some of the more
important of these annotations.

Here are excerpts from Rizal’s annotations to inspire young Filipinos of today.

“To the Filipinos: In Noli Me Tangere (The Social Cancer) I started to sketch the present state of
our native land. But the effect which my effort produced made me realize that, before attempting
to unroll before your eyes the other pictures which were to follow, it was necessary first to post
you on the past. So only can you fairly judge the present and estimate how much progress has
been made during the three centuries (of Spanish rule). Like almost all of you, I was born and
brought up in ignorance of our country’s past and so, without knowledge or authority to speak
of what I neither saw nor have studied, I deem it necessary to quote the testimony of an
illustrious Spaniard who in the beginning of the new era controlled the destinies of the Philippines
and had personal knowledge of our ancient nationality in its last days.

It is then the shade of our ancestor’s civilization which the author will call before you. If the work
serves to awaken in you a consciousness of our past, and to blot from your memory or to rectify
what has been falsified or is calumny, then I shall not have labored in vain. With this preparation,
slight though it may be, we can all pass to the study of the future, wrote Rizal in Europe in 1889.

“Governor Morga was not only the first to write but also the first to publish a Philippine history.
This statement has regard to the concise and concrete form in which our author has treated the
matter. Father Chirino’s work, printed in Rome in 1604, is rather a chronicle of the Missions than
a history of the Philippines; still it contains a great deal of valuable material on usages and
customs. The worthy Jesuit in fact admits that he abandoned writing a political history because
Morga had already done so, so one must infer that he had seen the work in manuscript before
leaving the Islands.”

Here are items I have chosen from the annotations.

“By the Christian religion, Dr. Morga appears to mean the Roman Catholic which by fire and
sword he would preserve in its purity in the Philippines. Nevertheless in other lands, notably in
Flanders, these means were ineffective to keep the church unchanged, or to maintain its
supremacy, or even to hold its subjects.

These centuries ago it was the custom to write as intolerantly as Morga does, but nowadays it
would be called a bit presumptuous. No one has a monopoly of the true God nor is there any
nation or religion that can claim, or at any rate prove, that to it has been given the exclusive right
to the Creator of all things or sole knowledge of His real being.

The civilization of the Pre-Spanish Filipinos in regard to the duties of life for that age was well
advanced, as the Morga history shows in its eighth chapter.

Morga shows that the ancient Filipinos had army and navy with artillery and other implements
of warfare. Their prized krises and kampilans for their magnificent temper are worthy of
admiration and some of them are richly damascened. Their coats of mail and helmets, of which
there are specimens in various European museums, attest their great advancement in this
industry.

Of the native Manila rulers at the coming of the Spaniards, Raja Soliman was called “Rahang
mura,” or young king, in distinction from the old king, “Rahang matanda.” Historians have
confused these personages.

The artillery cast for the new stone fort in Manila, says Morga, was by the hand of an ancient
Filipino. That is, he knew how to cast cannon even before the coming of the Spaniards, hence he
was distinguished as “ancient.” In this difficult art of ironworking, as in so many others, the
modern or present-day Filipinos are not so far advanced as were their ancestors.

From the earliest Spanish days ships were built in the islands, which might be considered
evidence of native culture. Nowadays this industry is reduced to small craft, scows and coasters.

In Morga’s time, the Philippines exported silk to Japan whence now comes the best quality of
that merchandise. Morga’s views upon the failure of Governor Pedro de Acuña’s ambitious
expedition against the Moros unhappily still apply for the same conditions yet exist.

Ancient traditions ascribe the origin of the Malay Filipinos to the island of Sumatra. These
traditions were almost completely lost as well as the mythology and the genealogies of which the
early historians tell, thanks to the zeal of the missionaries in eradicating all national
remembrances as heathen or idolatrous. The study of ethnology is restring this somewhat.

Filipinos had had minstrels who had memorized songs telling their genealogies and of the deeds
ascribed to their deities. These were chanted on voyages in cadence with the rowing, or at
festivals, or funerals, or wherever there happened to be any considerable gatherings. It is
regrettable that these chants have not been preserved as from them it would have been possible
to learn much of the Filipinos’ past and possibly of the history of neighboring islands.”

https://www.univie.ac.at/Voelkerkunde/apsis/aufi/rizal/hall03.htm

"THE FIRST PHILIPPINE HISTORY BOOK"

If the book (Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas) succeeds to awaken your conciousness of our past,
already effaced from your memory, and to rectify what has been falsified and slandered, then I
have not worked in vain, and with this as a basis, however small it may be, we shall be able to
study the future.
-- Dr. Jose Rizal Europe, 1889

When Rizal published his annotation of Antonio de Morga's Sucesos in 1890, he had already
travelled in parts of Spain, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, China,
Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and England. He could converse in Spanish, French, German,
Italian, Japanese and English. He was only 29-years-old!

In his travels he familiarized himself with each country's history, customs, ways of life and
language. He held the common sense belief that learning a people's language "will open ... the
treasures of a country, that is, the knowledge, the learning" and "its own way of thinking."
Although he was interested in the social and scientific progress he witnessed abroad and
understood the factors that lead to such advancement, he was even more fascinated by the
collage of cultural symbols that become embraced by a people as their own national identity. A
consummate student of ancient and modern history, Rizal was convinced that the enduring and
unifying strength of all great societies lies in their collective sense of tradition -- a tradition that
is carried forth and becomes that people's cultural history.

By publishing his annotated version of de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Events of the
Philippine Islands, originally published in 1609), Rizal's intent was not only to provide the Filipino
people their early history, a pre-Spanish history, but to present to them their own authentic
culture and identity. Aware of most of the books written about the Philippines, he selected the
Sucesos because he "considered it necessary to invoke the testimony of an illustrous Spaniard
who governed the destinies of the Philippines in the beginning of her new era and witnessed the
last moments of our ancient nationality." His annotations included clarifications and
amplifications of details, refutations of statements where necessary, and confirmations when
checked against other sources.

Rizal offered the annotated Sucesos to the Filipinos with the wise counsel that "to foretell the
destiny of a nation, it is necessary to open the books that tell of her past."