01-059
1882.12.29
From: José Rizal
To: Paciano Rizal
Living expenses at Madrid higher than at Barcelona — Importance of knowing European languages — Invites young men with means to study abroad.
* * *
Madrid, 30 December 1882
MR. PACIANO RIZAL
MY DEAR BROTHER,
I received your letter of 12 November and I’m informed of its content.
From Uncle Antonio I received 50 pesos which I believe didn’t come from home and nevertheless they came at the right time for I was waiting for my December allowance. Hitherto, I thought that the last 100 pesos I received were for my winter clothing and matriculation fee.
I’m very glad that you have understood that the amount you used to send me, while more than enough for Barcelona, is not so here where expenses are double. Living economically forty pesos are enough, if clothing expenses were excluded. With this amount one can go to the theater once a week but not more often. Perhaps he may have a surplus of one or two pesos a month if he has not had extraordinary expenses. One of the things that further deplete my money is laundry, chocolate, and coffee, because living as I do in one house, where I’m admirably comfortable, and lunching at another, I have to take breakfast elsewhere, for they don’t give it where I lunch. With 50 pesos one is well off and still can save for bad times.
I consider it a great blessing of Providence that we have not been ruined by so many calamities, such as have occurred over there.
I hope you’ll make a profit and harvest the sugar with your usual tact and good luck, because, in that way, can be fulfilled one of my wishes, which is to see you here for a year or two, and Marianito, Maneng, and the others successively.
I intend to go to Paris or Rome in June. I don’t know yet whether I should improve further my French, which I already know fairly well, or see Rome and her monuments and learn Italian. It would be very desirable that before you come I should know how to speak French, English, and German so that we would not be fooled in our travels. For not knowing any of these languages one spends much and travels poorly.
I don’t know if you have received a letter from Sir Alebett Croates, dealer in steam engines, concerning an arrangement that would turn out cheaper for you.
Be informed of the contents of my other letters.
Tell your friends — those who have means — that I invite their sons to come to these countries. I should like the coming generation — the generation that will govern and lead Calamba at the beginning of the 20th century — to be enlightened, brilliant, intelligent, and progressive.
Your brother,
J. RIZAL