Letty del Rosario: Portrait of a Lady

If you should drop in to visit her anytime of the day or even at night, you would go up the driveway of her Forbes Park home, walk to a vine-wreathed entrance and ring the bell. A mayordomo clad in immaculate white from top to soft canvas shoes will open the door, greet you politely and usher you in through an open courtyard into the air-conditioned living room. It is a very formally decorated salon. The ambiance is one of rich but restrained elegance. Antique tapestries hang on the wall, thick vintage carpets on the shining narra floor. The sofas are upholstered in damask and are flanked with Louis XV chairs and small, carved side tables. All around there are crystal vases with tasteful fresh flower arrangements and on the coffee table are bric-a-brac of Baccarat crystal. On one side, on top of a baby grand piano, are pictures of glamorous people in formal evening dress and on one wall is a large portrait done in gold leaf by well-known society artiste Muchi Dampiere. It shows a slim, sloe-eyed beauty reclining against an antique Chinese jar, her beautiful black hair hanging down over smooth shoulders, her delicate hands with long tapered fingers resting languidly on a gloriously printed pure silk gown that barely covers her dainty sandaled feet.

While you are gazing entranced at the portrait, the lady of the house comes down the stairs leading from her bedroom and joins you. She is dressed in a colorful silk mumu, her long hair is put up in a smooth chignon, her sloe eyes twinkle with bubbling laughter. She says, "Once that painting was borrowed for an exhibit and a visiting American offered five thousand dollars for it. A friend of mine told him, ‘For five thousand dollars you might also get the model!’"

And that is Letty Lizares del Rosario at 90, still tall, slim, sophisticated and timelessly elegant, but with a warm friendliness and a piquant sense of humor that keeps her from being intimidating.

Having lunch with Letty is pure pleasure. There are always canapés served on silver trays by Carlos, her mayordomo who has been doing this for her for some 40 years. There are always things like smoked salmon with anchovies and fresh lemon juice squeezed with individual silver lemon squeezers, and trays of assorted cheeses and, of course, wine. A gourmet lunch is served formally by her well-trained staff, as they do everyday.

Talk is always lively and up to the minute, but if you insist on stories of her life, she will tell you all kinds of anecdotes, about her very early childhood (which she does not say was spent in a mansion that was and still is a show piece in Iloilo, although now it has been donated to a religious order and is a convent), how she spent much of her growing up as an intern at Assumption from first grade. "I spent more years of my life with the nuns than with my parents"–talk of convent bred! She came out only on weekends and everywhere she went she was chaperoned by her cousin Estrella Ybiernas (who, incidentally, is still around at 100 years old!). "You know how it was then–I could not even go to the movies without a chaperone".

So how did she meet her husband with all that strict chaperoning? Letty laughs again. "Would you believe I met him in the backroom behind the throne of the Queen of the Manila Carnival! He had just come home from six years at Cornell University. He was so good looking all the girls were after him. I guess he was tired of it and so he married me." She was barely 19. "The nuns were all shocked when I told them I was quiting school because I was getting married!"

Letty’s eyes get misty when she talks of the happy years she and her husband Manuel del Rosario spent on their hacienda "raising sugar (he took up agriculture in Cornell) and children and dogs". She sparkles as she tells of her many trips to Europe, especially Spain where she used to spend several months a year for many years. After three hours of remembering the "good old days", Letty sums up her 90 years by saying, "I have been very lucky–life has been good to me."

Does she have any formula for a long and happy life? She says, "I think it is because I always see the good side of people–you know, everybody has a good side and if you concentrate on the good side of people, Life becomes very pleasant".

At 90, Letty continues to live a gracious, pleasant life. In her beautiful home, surrounded by her faithful old retainers, with grandchildren (and even an eight-month-old great-grand son) coming in and out, with a household and properties to run, and friends to play bridge with or go out with for an evening of dancing, she is living "happily ever after", a portrait of a real lady, the last of the Grande Dames.

They do not make them like her any more. Perhaps because it takes 90 years to make one!