{"id":236905,"date":"2019-11-08T09:36:09","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T14:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=236905"},"modified":"2019-11-08T09:36:09","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T14:36:09","slug":"rizal-at-the-british-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/11\/08\/rizal-at-the-british-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Rizal at the British Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
National hero Dr. Jose P. Rizal’s register of admission at the British Museum Reading Room (Photo courtesy of Sir Arnold Villafuerte, Knight Grand Officer of Rizal)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0–The Knights of Rizal held its 7th European Regional Assembly last August 30 \u2013 September 1, 2019 in London, United Kingdom with the theme \u201cIsalin ang Rizalismo sa Gawaing Pagbabago\u201d (Translate Rizalism to Transformative Action).<\/p>\n

Area Commander Sir Alfonso Taguiang, Knight Grand Officer of Rizal, was at the helm of the event.<\/p>\n

The celebration also marked the 130th year of publication of Dr. Jose Rizal\u2019s Specimens of Tagal Folklore (May 1889), Two Eastern Fables (July 1889) and his annotations of Antonio de Morga\u2019s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, a product of his numerous visits to the British Museum.<\/p>\n

One of the activities of the 7th ERA was a visit to the British Museum to view Rizal’s Register of Admission to the Reading Room.<\/p>\n

“I was fortunate enough to be of assistance to the London organizers since I was previously in contact with the British Museum while I was working on a paper on Rizal,” he said.<\/p>\n

His previous engagements with the Museum led to facilitating Taguiang’s request for the delegates of the 7th ERA to see the Register.<\/p>\n

Dr. Rizal arrived in London in the last week of May 1888. On the 25th of May, he arrived at the Grand Hotel Midland, the train\u2019s final stop from Liverpool. The hotel is more familiar in today\u2019s London as St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, the fa\u00e7ade of which doubled as Kings\u2019 Cross station to Harry Potter\u2019s Platform 9 \u00be.<\/p>\n

By mid-August 1888, Rizal embarked on writing the Filipino\u2019s glorious past. He registered as a reader at the British Museum on 16 August 1888. In order to study books or manuscripts held by the Museum, it was necessary to make an application and be given permission. Those granted admission were issued a ticket which had to be presented when visiting the Reading Room.<\/p>\n

Decoding the Registry<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Registry entries are numbered according to the arrival of the guests.<\/p>\n

Looking at the Registry, the left column markings would tell us that Rizal was the 15th person to be registered on 16th August 1888 (16\/15), with 16 marking the day of the month and 15 as the order of registration. The A34470 that appears below the 16\/15 is the number of Rizal\u2019s application form to the Museum while 3561 is the accession number for the documents that he presented to request access to the Round Reading Room. These documents were likely to be a reference letter and a letter by Rizal making such a request.<\/p>\n

The registry did not make any mention who Rizal\u2019s referee was unlike in the previous entries. For example, in the entry on Karl Marx in 1850, it was clear who his referee was, the German Dr. William Plate. Dr. Plate was the same referee listed on another entry, that of Dr. Reinhold Rost who was Rizal\u2019s neighbor and friend at Primrose Hill.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Rizal, Rost, Marx, Engels in Victorian London<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Rost has always been credited as the one responsible for Rizal\u2019s admittance to the British Museum. This is not surprising considering the influence of Rost and the friendship that existed between the two men.<\/p>\n

To put the doubt in my mind to rest, I inquired from the Museum who Rizal\u2019s referee was. I found out that while it was still necessary to submit a referee in 1889, sadly, in the case of Rizal, the application form may have been lost or at least no longer in the British Museum (as it is the case with most earlier applications).<\/p>\n

To date, there is no record of who was his referee. It may, therefore, be necessary to inquire deeper from the British Library if they have it as the Library kept some of them when they moved out of the British Museum building. As of this time, it does not appear in the Library\u2019s catalogue but it does not mean it is not there, if it is there.<\/p>\n

In the main column, the entries \u2013 the name and the address \u2013 were written by Rizal, identifying himself as a doctor (Dr.) and writing down his address.<\/p>\n

Rizal frequented the Reading Room, copying by hand the entire Morga book and making annotations using available accounts of other scholars. Fortunately, access to the Reading Room, as the whole of the British Museum, was free of charge. During Rizal\u2019s time, readers were issued with a ticket just once and there was not a need to renew it.<\/p>\n

The reader\u2019s ticket was presented if the staff would not recognize the person. Rizal would have been very easy to recognize with his Asian features.<\/p>\n

The library was open Monday-Saturday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. from January to April and October-December and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. from May to August. It was a very busy place with up to 490 people visiting on one day.<\/p>\n

Rizal took advantage of the resources available at the Reading Room. After leaving London in early 1889 for Paris, Rizal continued to visit the Museum. He found its materials and collections more adequate than those in continental Europe.\u00a0(PNA)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

(About the author: Geronimo Suliguin took postgraduate courses in historical and diplomatic studies at Oxford University. He is Assistant Director at the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs.)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0–The Knights of Rizal held its 7th European Regional Assembly last August 30 \u2013 September 1, 2019 in London, United …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":236906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236907,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236905\/revisions\/236907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}