Photos from the National Historical Commission of the Philippines

Rizal’s de facto relationship with Josephine Bracken, the woman referred to in his famous last farewell as ‘sweet foreigner—my darling, my delight!’ is as controversial as the hero’s retraction issue.
 

 
Like other Filipino men who found comfort and contentment in mixed cultural marriages, Rizal found happiness in his relationship with a woman from other cultural background.
 
As proven in many situations, Rizal was ahead of his compatriots in almost all life endeavours, even in the complex world of cross cultural relationship. In fact, many Filipinos, including his friend Valentin Ventura who dated a brunette, a blonde, and finally married a Spanish woman, years later followed the same path as he did, like the late rich entrepreneur Virgilio Hilario who married the first Miss Universe titled holder Armi Kuusela from Finland, Filipino businessman J. Amado Araneta who wedded Stella Marquez, a former Miss International from Columbia, actor Ogie Alcasid who married and divorced a former Miss Australia Michelle G. van Eimeren, and many other nameless Filipino men, including those living in Australia and overseas, who found the spirit of peace in a long-standing mixed cultural union.


 
Many Filipinos are unaware of the degree of affection that existed between Rizal and Bracken. The romanticised notion of Rizal as epitome of a Filipino casanova during his brief life with women from various parts of the world as his conquest overshadowed the real love and relationship he had with Bracken. Rizal was obviously happy in his liaison with the woman who filled in an emotional need during his lonely and boring days in exile in Dapitan, although his family was not happy about the relationship.
His deep concern over Bracken is quite evident and revealing in the numerous letters he penned during the later part of his four years stay in Mindanao. Those were Rizal’s efforts to bring the Irish girl closer to the members of his family.
 
Writing to his mother in 1895, Rizal said: ‘the bearer of this letter is Miss Josephine Leopoldine Taufer, whom I was on the point of marrying, counting on your consent, of course. Our relationship was broken on her suggestion on account of the numerous difficulties on the way. She is almost alone in the world; she has only very distant relatives. As I am interested in her and it is very possible that she may later decide to join me and as she may be left all alone and abandoned, I beg you to give her hospitality there, treating her as a daughter, until she shall have an opportunity or occasion to come here... Please treat Miss Josephine as a person whom I esteem and value much and whom I would not like to be unprotected and abandoned.’


 
The origin of Josephine Bracken is not clear. Her autobiography Description of My Life written early in 1897 created a very positive image of herself as a pure European and with parents from Ireland. In 1968, Austin Coates, an English author who did a research in Hong Kong four years earlier, published his book Rizal Philippine Nationalist and Martyr and the author painted her as a woman with a shady past. Coates described her as a woman ‘from a social environment very different from his [Rizal] own, that she was not on the same intellectual level as his mother and his sisters.’  The writer regarded Bracken as modestly educated, a simple little person with no pretensions to being clever. The hardship she endured in growing up, the author claimed, made her a determined woman to find someone who could provide her security in life.
 
According to the same author, the woman with an ‘Irish smiling eyes’ who captivated Rizal, was born in Hong Kong at the Victoria Barracks on 9 August 1879 to an unknown Chinese woman and a British soldier named James Bracken, a private in the 28th Regiment of Foot. When Elizabeth McBride, the legal wife of James Bracken died soon after the girl’s birth. The illegitimate child was registered falsely as the legitimate child of James Bracken and her deceased wife. She had four half-brothers and sisters. Being a military man, her father could hardly cope with the duty of a single parent to five children. Tiny Josephine, the youngest, was given away for adoption. Mr. George Taufer and his wife, a childless couple and godparents of the baby girl adopted Josephine. Mr. Taufer was a German-American engineer who worked in the British Colony and had an illegitimate daughter named Sarah by a Chinese woman. His first wife died in 1882 leaving him to take care of two little girls. Taufer’s second wife died in 1891 and the third wife did not get along with her husband’s daughters.
 
Josephine grew up distinctly European in physical appearance, only her small frame betrayed her being a mixed blood. She was barely five foot one, a perfect match to Rizal’s five foot four inches height. The brown haired Irish girl had a buxomly figure that reminded Rizal of European women who attracted him during his travels overseas. It was said that she concealed her family background— a social stigma brought about by her being an illegitimate and a Eurasian daughter. Because of her physical outlook, she was successful in projecting herself as a pure Irish and this was easily cultivated as gleaned from her autobiographical account. Coates hinted that Josephine suffered sexual abuse from the hands of her adoptive father. This is probably one of the reasons why in her own account of her life, she claimed that she left the Taufer residence and sought refuge at an Italian convent in Hong Kong. Mr. Taufer begged her to return to the family but relationship between his third wife and his daughters deteriorated shortly after her return.
 
In 1893, Taufer was afflicted with an eye disease, a double cataracts rendered him blind. No doctor in Hong Kong could cure him. It was at this stage that Josephine learned from another Filipino, Rizal’s former schoolmate and friend Julio Llorente, about the Filipino who ten years previously established at the Rednaxela Terrace, near the Bracken residence, an eye clinic and he became a prominent Filipino eye surgeon in the Crown Colony. He was Rizal.
 
Early in 1895, Josephine, with her blind adoptive father arrived in Dapitan to seek the help of Rizal. He examined him and found that the cause of his blindness was venereal disease and frankly told the blind man that nothing he could do to help him.
 
The short stay of the patient in Dapitan was memorable days to both Bracken and Rizal who found themselves in love with each other, but it was a brief affair. Taufer objected to the relationship. Besides, the old man had to go back to Hong Kong with his daughter. Rizal was feeling uncertain about his relationship with Bracken. This he confided to her mother. ‘Miss Bracken who has been behaving towards me better than I expected, is leaving now and though she tells me that she is coming back, I do not believe that she will decide to do so afterwards, because this is a very lonely place and everything is lacking here.’
 
Bracken, however, returned to Dapitan a few weeks later to become the ‘wife’ of Rizal. Despite refusal of the church to marry them, the couple lived in harmony and happily as de facto husband and wife. She kept him company, took care of his clothes better than he could have imagined and he believed that ‘there could be anyone like her in her place’ and praised her for the way she obeys him and looked after him that ‘would likely not be done by a Filipina.’
 


 
Rizal no doubt, found joy and happiness in his live-in relationship with Bracken. He treated her as his wife until the last days of his life. This affection is seen through his numerous letters to the members of his family, particularly sister Narcisa who was kind and sympathetic to her brother’s Irish partner. Bracken was devoted to him, a doting ‘housewife’, a good companion and mate to Rizal. She assisted him in his daily routine in Dapitan.
 
Writing to his sister Narcisa, Rizal said: ‘She [Bracken] cannot send you anything for she has no moment of rest now and although she likes this, she cannot however dry fish or make pickles.’ In a letter to another sister Trinidad, Rizal confided to her that Bracken ‘is better than her reputation, and since she has been staying with me, her little defects are being corrected. She is meek and obedient, and not hard-headed; besides she has a good heart. What we only need is to pay a curate, that is to say it is not necessary to us.’
 
They had not quarrelled and their relationship was always gay and jesting. For the townfolks of Dapitan, it was a scandal and Rizal was aware of it. He admitted that it was very scandalous to live ‘better than many married people’, but he said that they worked together and were contented about his life with Bracken.
 
That Rizal was very much concerned of Bracken being treated by his sisters and parents as one of the family was obvious in his letters to the members of his family repeatedly stating his feeling and how he valued his de facto wife. In another letter to his sister Trinidad: ‘Miss Bracken gratefully returns your regards. She was about to go back on this mail boat and take along the cabinet, but she had some trouble and she will go on the next boat’. Months later, Bracken was sending Rizal’s sister Trinidad a box of cacao, books for nieces Angelica and Delfina, and dried fish she prepared for Sr. Neneng, Sra. Sisa, and aunts, and Mr. Hino.
 
When Rizal’s nephew Moris, son of his sister Maria, arrived in Dapitan, he brought with him stockings gift from Rizal’s mother, for Bracken. The other nephews of Rizal, Teodosio and Estanislao also lived in Dapitan and learned English from Bracken. She took care of the three boys who fondly called her auntie. She liked very much the little boys and particularly affectionate to Moris whom she made a pair of bathing pants and a shirt.
 
Later, showing his deep affection for his de facto wife, Rizal described his Irish partner again as ‘good, obedient, and meek’. He repeated the fact that all that was needed was marriage but thinking all the while his mother’s words that it is better to be in the grace of God than married in mortal sin. No doubt, they lived in harmony. ‘...when I lecture to her, she does not answer back. If you come and live with her, I hope you will get along with her. Moreover, she has nobody else in the world but me. I’m all her kindred’, Rizal said in another letter.


 
Uncertainty of their future together troubled Rizal no end. This situation was compounded when Bracken had a miscarriage early in March 1896 and was very seriously ill. She gave birth prematurely to a stillborn child—a boy who was named Francisco. To Bracken, the hope of having a real home when the baby came was lost forever.
 
Few months later, the Philippine revolution broke out and Rizal’s name was implicated as the titular head of the uprising. Following events was fast. His application to serve the Spanish armies in Cuba was accepted. Rizal ended his Dapitan exile of four years, thirteen days, and a few odd hours. Meanwhile, Bracken role as Rizal’s wife continued. While on board the cruiser Castilla at the Manila Bay, he communicated with her and asked from his wife personal things a husband needed like shirt-collars and cuffs. Bracken’s letters to Rizal at this stage proved her unwavering love for her husband, despite the difficulties she encountered living with Rizal’s parents and unmarried sisters in Manila. Bracken wrote: ‘... I am very sorry that I have a mistake of your cloth, not sending your pants and waistcoat, but as you said you are not in great need of it I only send you some more collars and cuffs....’
 
Informing Rizal about her situation with his parents, Bracken said: ‘Ah, my dear, I am suffering a great deal with them in Trozo; it is quite true they ought to be ashamed of me, as they say in my face and in the presence of Sra. Narcisa and their children, because I am not married to you. So if you hear that I don’t go to Trozo any more don’t be surprised.’
 
Four days later, Bracken again wrote to her husband and said ‘... I would like very much to go with your dear family but you know what I have written to you. I would like to go alone so I can speak to you better for in your family’s presence we can [not?] be very free to each other.’ She wanted very much to see him but sensibly enough stayed behind. ‘I know, my dear, it breaks my heart to go and bid you goodbye, but, dear, what can I do than to suffer until the Good God brings you back to me again... Love, I will love you ever, love, I will leave thee never; ever to me precious to thee; never to part, heart bound to heart, or never to say goodbye’, Bracken told her husband whom she would only see once more before he was executed by the Spanish authorities.

Many questions have been asked on whether Rizal actually married Bracken few hours before his execution. The late ambassador Leon Ma. Guerrero who wrote the prize winning biography of Rizal, The First Filipino, believed that there was a marriage. In her own words, Bracken said: ‘On the 20th of July 1896, Dr. Rizal left Dapitan for Cuba as a doctor in the army but unfortunately, they brought him back again and shot him on the 30th of December 1896[;] before his execution he married me at 5 o’clock in the morning.’


 
 
On 15 December 1898, less than two years after the execution of Rizal, Josephine Bracken married Don Vicente Abad, a Cebuano Spanish mestizo who was connected with the Tabacalera, a Filipino owned tobacco company in Hong Kong. The union was blessed with one child, a daughter named Dolores. In 1901, the couple returned to the Philippines and lived at the Abad family house on Magdalena Street, Tondo, Manila.
For a while, Bracken taught English in a school. She was a typical housewife who was a good cook and her cuisine included Irish, Chinese and Spanish dishes. It was a happy life with a loving husband, caring in-laws, and a lovely daughter but her frail body was suffering from a dreaded illness - tuberculosis of the larynx. Her serious health condition brought her back to Hong Kong hoping that the cool climate in the British colony would improve her condition. Dolores was left behind under the care of her father’s brother Jose Abad y Recio. On 15 March 1902, at the age of 26 years Bracken died in Hong Kong, the land of her birth. Her remains were buried in the Catholic section of the Happy Valley cemetery of the Crown Colony.
 


 
Writing about the role of Bracken in Rizal’s life, writer Guerrero had this to say: ‘she plays a special part that spite, prejudice of many kinds, jealousy, the peculiar possessiveness of women, and the peculiar malice and unkindness of men, have too long deprecated and obscured.


 
But for all the sneers and shrugs and sly uncomprehending smiles, she is the one woman whom Rizal loved; Leonor Rivera was a boyish fancy, the nostalgic phantom that haunted fitfully his years in exile; all the rest: Consuelo, Suzanne, Gertrude with her breakfast tray, Sei-Ko and her tales of the samurai, Nelly the proselytiser, had never really made him pause in his restless journeys, never really pierced the armour of his cold passion for his country and his right and liberties’.


 
Guerrero believed that Rizal truly loved Josephine. After all ‘he was her husband twice over, her open lover in defiance of all his innate propriety and sensibility; she was the one woman with whom he shared that most jealously prized of all his possessions, his name, and also his heart’s intimacies.’
 
Another Rizal biographer said echoed a similar tone of Bracken’s worth and how she loved Rizal: ‘from the moment she entered Rizal’s life to the hour when she returned into the anonymity whence she came, was like a leaf borne by the wind. All she knew for certain was that she loved him, in a simple, dutiful way. She did not understand him. She knew nothing of his political aspirations his writings, his educational ideas, then or ever. She wishes only to serve him, be with him, love him and be loved. If Josephine Bracken had a stronger personality she would have been a figure of great tragedy. But there is no tragedy about a leaf borne on the wind - only beauty and pathos.’
 
 

 

 

 

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