It is not clear where Josephine stayed permanently when she arrived back in Hong Kong. There were accounts that she had been accommodated for some periods of time in the homes of exiled Filipino revolutionaries such as the rented residence of couple Don Felipe and Marcela Agoncillo at 535 Morrison Hill Road near Happy Valley where the first and official Philippine flag was sewn. (more on this in a separate blog)
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| Jose M. Basa |
For being Rizal's wife, and out of poverty, Josephine pleaded to Jose M. Basa for a share of Rizal's library collection that was entrusted to him for safekeeping. She also wrote Rizal's close confidant Ferdinand Blumentritt in Germany seeking his assistance in her quest as rightful heir. Although sympathetic to her plight, Basa politely turned her down because Rizal's mother and siblings objected and that she could not produce legal proof of her marriage to Dr. Rizal. Although she could have made efforts to secure it from the Spanish clergy in Manila, she must have realized the futility, amidst the vindictiveness of Spanish friars for the hostilities she had shown in the Philippines earlier. Also, she did not have the funds to finance the stake for her claim. Besides, the Philippine revolution was raging and the country was in the midst of chaos and disarray, a crucial time when Spanish colonial control over the Philippines was on the verge of collapse.
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| Julio Llorente |
In early 1898, Hong Kong resident-Filipino Julio Llorente (who, in 1893, gave an introduction letter to George Taufer and Josephine for Dr. Rizal in Dapitan) introduced his fellow Cebuano-
kababayan, Vicente Abad, to Josephine who needed to learn English for business transactions on behalf of his family's Tabacalera company in the colony. Back home in the meantime, on June 12, 1898, the entire Philippines was declared liberated from Spanish colonial rule in a ceremony officiated by Emilio Aguinaldo in Kawit, Cavite province, him "elected" as first Philippine President. But not too long after that, the Philippine-American war began that would last for four years.
The student-teacher tandem, Josephine and Vicente, led to an intimate courtship by the latter that eventually progressed to the couple's exchange of wedding vows on December 15, 1898 at the Catholic Cathedral of Immaculate Conception, the same church now nestled on 16 Caine Road where Josephine was baptized as an infant.
Josephine was 22 years old.
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