by Yunte Huang
It was their first trip to Bangkok, the “city of wild plums.” With a population in the early nineteenth century of more than 400,000 souls, half of them perennially afloat, the city seemed to have risen from water like a deus ex machina. As the boat, rowed by eight muscular men garbed in the king’s red livery, entered the serpentine Meinam River, the twins were overwhelmed by the splendor and magnificence of the scene: Under a blazing sun, against the sultry sky, a panorama of palaces, temples, pagodas, and floating houses spread out as far as their eyes could see. Single-plank bridges arched to a giddy height of thirty feet. Spidery canals were thronged with boats. A fleet of gaudy Chinese junks was anchored in the middle of the stream, surrounded by the pandemonium of haggling traders.
Upon arrival, the twins were hurried to a secluded location, where a eunuchlike courtier drilled them on the etiquette of being in the presence of the monarch. After a sleepless night, the twins were taken to the palace in a covered hammock—the king, exercising a variant of droit de seigneur, did not want anyone else to see them before he did. But at their curious age, the twins could not help prying open the curtain and peeking at the animated street scenes of the capital. After they entered the front gate guarded by musket-armed soldiers, they reached a courtyard where a white elephant was chained to poles. Newly caught in the wild, the pachyderm was yet to be tamed before she could join the team of royal white elephants, all supposedly animated by the transmigrated souls of deceased monarchs. Of course, the twins had no idea that one day they would share with those treasured creatures the distinction of being one of the three most famous Siamese exports, the other two being white elephants and Siamese cats.
Still concealed, the twins soon arrived at the Hall of Audience, where Rama III, a corpulent man approaching forty, sat cross-legged like a Buddha on the ten-foot-high gold throne. In front of him, in a scene almost anticipating The King and I, hundreds of court officials groveled on stomachs and elbows like amphibious toads. A contemporary narrative captures the setting where the monarch viewed the twins:
The extent of the audience-chamber is thirty-five by seventy feet. The middle of the floor, about one-half of the whole width, is raised eighteen inches above the rest, leaving a sort of lobby on each side, equal to one-fourth of the breadth of the whole room, and extending its entire length. A row of six pillars, three feet square, stood on each edge of the middle floor; and the walls, ceiling, and pillars were hung with red gilt paper, and the floors were carpeted. Chandeliers and lamps of various patterns were suspended from the ceiling, and numerous Chinese paintings and mirrors adorned the walls. From a central point, the floor gently rises in an inclined plane up to the throne, at the farthest end of the apartment.6
The twins were then let out of the hammock like animals released from a cage, and were told to crawl toward the throne. As they covered the distance, obviously in tandem, the king was amused by the rare, if not surreal, sight. His Majesty launched saliva into a golden spittoon and then renewed his quid of betel and areca-nut, a pastime shared by almost all of his subjects, a national habit that blackened their teeth and, as described in countless travelogues, dismayed foreign visitors in no small degree. When the twins scampered to about forty feet from the throne, they were told to stop. As instructed the previous night, they made three salaams by placing their palms against their foreheads. Again three times they knocked their heads on the ground. As they did so, the entire cohort of officials and courtiers present also bowed three times. The king then asked some questions about them and their family. All the queries were filtered in whispers through a line of courtiers, one of whom crouched by the throne, another by the twins, and yet another somewhere in the middle—Siamese court etiquette forbade any visitor to speak to the king directly. The answers were relayed back to the king in a way that resembled the modern-day children’s game called the “Chinese Whispers”—except that here each answer with its relay was preceded by three salaams and a lengthy recitation of a string of the king’s titles: “Phra, Putie, Chucka, Ka, Rap, Si, Klau, Si, Kla, Mom, Ka Prah Putie Chow.”7
While this elaborate Siamese ritual was being performed, a few swallows flew in and out of the open court. Kneeling on the ground and stealing sidelong glances with their peripheral vision, the twins sensed the swift movement of the swallows alighting on the beams and chandeliers. The Chinese considered these migratory birds an auspicious sign because their annual return in spring coincided with the beginning of the sowing and planting season. Eschewing interest in the power and wealth—the king in his rich gold clothing, the officials in their silk sarongs—the twins, betraying their rural roots, were more interested in the swallows, which gave them much-needed distraction, or perhaps an ironic perspective. In the future, in faraway places, when hundreds of curious onlookers would gawk, scream, and taunt them as freaks on stage, they would remember this moment, when the birds flew over their heads, chirping their throaty notes, heeding neither kings nor queens with their pretensions. The birds taught the twins to free themselves, to take the wings of fancy, a momentary reverie, withdrawing deep into their inner selves, while the world looked on with contempt and disgust, awe and bemusement.
Suddenly, a loud clang of gongs, as if in a Siamese theater, emerged from an invisible place, followed by a flourish of music played on pipes and strings. Yellow silk curtains were pulled over the throne, shielding the godlike king from view. The entire court made the three obligatory salaams yet again and loud salutations in concert. Before the twins knew it, their viewing by the king was over.
5
Departure
For the twins, the trip to Bangkok was both eye-opening and remunerative. In addition to selling their duck eggs at the bazaar after the palace visit, they also peddled the king’s gifts as soon as they got back home. Many years later, sitting in the cool breeze of their North Carolina front porch on summer days or by the warm fireplace on winter nights, the twins would often reminisce about that unforgettable trip to the Siamese capital. By then, retired comfortably from the world and seemingly without a thing to worry about, they would express regret about selling those royal gifts for what in retrospect must have been a paltry sum. But the family had needed the money then to survive and to expand their duck and egg business. Like lake water that settles down after a stone skiffs the surface, life soon returned to its peaceful norm for the twins in their small fishing village.
Robert Hunter, however, could not forget the “wonder boys” he had “discovered.” A hardheaded Scotsman, he was not going to give up easily and let Rama III’s refusal stand in the way of his golden dream. Since his arrival in 1824, Hunter had tried, not always successfully, to exert influence on Siamese affairs. Besides his trade partnership with the king and the nobles, Hunter also worked as an intermediary for newly arrived Westerners. Siam, slowly opening up to the outside world, rich in natural resources, and populated by four million pagan souls, attracted a new wave of both fortune seekers and God’s soldiers, many of whom crossed paths with Hunter. During the 1826 Burney Mission, which opened British trade with Siam, Captain Henry Burney was eager to seek assistance from Hunter, who was indeed present, at the captain’s personal request, when the mission was received in audience by Rama III.1 Hunter was also there when the American envoy Edmund Roberts was negotiating treaty terms with the king in 1835, and, in fact, Hunter helped to correct an intentional mistranslation by a Siamese interpreter who tried to smooth over a potential conflict. According to William Ruschenberger, who accompanied Roberts, “The King stated that the Americans were on a footing with the English, which Mr. Roberts denied; saying that such was not the spirit of the Treaty. The secretary nearest the King translated the reply; that Mr. Roberts admitted it, and was very much obliged to His Majesty. Mr. Hunter, who was present, informed Mr. Roberts of the misinterpretation. He repeated what he had at first said, which was then correctly rendered.”2
With no inns or hotels available, foreign visitors often had to rely on the hospitality of local
hosts, such as Hunter, to put them up for a few nights or even weeks. Even as late as 1862, Anna Leonowens, for instance, still had trouble finding lodging upon her arrival in Bangkok and almost had to sleep under the stars until a gracious host rescued her from her plight. Hunter’s house in Bangkok was a hub for these sojourners and a center of activity. When he first arrived, Hunter had lived in a floating house, “double the size of any of the others, very neatly painted, well furnished, with a nice little verandah in front.” Not fond, however, of the dampness of a floating house, Hunter soon bought timbers and built a European-style grand mansion on the east bank of the Meinam. It was described as “a large white washed brick building two stories in height, and forming three sides of a square, the fourth being closed by a high brick wall. The ground floor was appropriated to warehouses, kitchen, and servants’ quarters, the upper portion being occupied by the Europeans.”3 According to Frederick Arthur Neale, who served as a military officer in Siam, Hunter’s new residence was “a very fine prominent house, opposite to which the British ensign proudly floated on feast days, and here every stranger found a home, for a very prince of hospitality was Mr. Hunter.” Neale, who had stayed with Hunter for a long time, later recalled the leisurely fashion in which visitors conducted business and enjoyed hospitality at Hunter’s:
We breakfasted at ten and after that meal were wont to walk backwards and forwards on the splendid balcony Mr. Hunter had erected, as much for the sake of exercise as to enjoy an uninterrupted half hour’s chat. Then Mr. Hunter betook himself to his counting house. . . . Occasionally we amused ourselves at Mr. Hunter’s by playing Lagrace and we were once or twice guilty of a game at ringtaw. Night, however, brought with it its enlivening candle lights. The darker and more stormy the night, the more brilliantly illuminated the rooms used to be, and if the weather was particularly damp, we made ourselves comfortable with a good dinner and some fine old sherry, and then as a wind up, a drop of hot whisky toddy. . . . One hour before midnight, as indicated by the old clock at Mr. Hunter’s house, was the signal for us to disperse for the night, and long before that time arrived, the whole city was hushed in deep repose.4
Given its reputation and importance, Hunter’s house, known in Siamese as “Hang Huntraa,” was dubbed the “British Factory.”
Among the guests Hunter hosted were Jacob Tomlin and Karl Gutzlaff, who arrived in August 1828 as the earliest Protestant missionaries to Siam. Sent by the London Missionary Society, Tomlin was from Lancashire with a degree from Cambridge and nothing else to brag about, whereas Gutzlaff was a German whose colorful exploits would leave a large footprint in Asia.5 Condemning Buddhism as a “system of the grossest lies,” and claiming that all Asians were dishonest, Tomlin and Gutzlaff devoted themselves to saving these pagan souls. Unlike their Roman Catholic predecessors (and competitors), who had kept a low profile in Siam, Tomlin and Gutzlaff were carried away by their Protestant zealotry. They “freely distributed literature regarding the imminent eclipse of false doctrines such as Buddhism,” a brazen act that immediately incurred the wrath of the king, who ordered the expulsion of the two missionaries. But Hunter intervened, protesting that “neither had broken any law and that their presence was allowed under the treaties of 1822 and 1826.”6 Permitted to stay, the Protestant duo went on to produce the first Siamese translation of the Bible, even though they managed to garner only a handful of conversions, chiefly among their Chinese servants and assistants. Ironically, a reverse conversion might have occurred: Before leaving Siam in 1831, Gutzlaff became a naturalized subject of China by being adopted into the clan of Kwo, taking the name Shih-lee and wearing Chinese garb. As described in his journals, he now had to “conform entirely to the customs of the Chinese, and even to dispense with the use of European books.”7 Whether Gutzlaff’s Sinicization meant he truly went native or it was merely a scheme deployed by an overzealous missionary to get closer to the Chinese—it’s more likely the latter—he felt, like many other transients in Bangkok at the time, deeply indebted to Hunter for assistance. This eccentric German, whose name still graces a busy street in Hong Kong, would later play a key role in the diplomatic negotiations during the First Opium War between China and Great Britain.
ROBERT HUNTER’S HOUSE, BANGKOK
Despite his great influence, Hunter was not always successful in his interventions in the foreign affairs of Siam. One time, Hunter took a guest, Captain Wellar of the bark Pyramus, hunting in the fields. Wellar wandered off and found himself within the precincts of a Buddhist monastery, where evening prayers were being held. Unaware of the Buddhist taboo on taking lives, Wellar shot two pigeons, and soon all hell—whether Christian or Buddhist—broke loose. The monks, alarmed by the crackle of firearms on monastery grounds, rushed out to find Wellar nonchalantly collecting his kill. When the monks tried to wrest the pigeons from his hand and to take his gun, a scuffle ensued. Even though they were not the legendary Shaolin monks trained in martial arts, these sons of Muang Tai ganged up on the Westerner who had showed no respect for innocent lives. When Hunter finally caught up with his friend, Wellar had already been knocked out cold. Seething with anger, Hunter went to the Siamese officials and demanded justice, threatening that if the demand was not met, he would “take the Pyramus in front of the royal palace and let the King hear from the mouth of her guns.” As if that was not enough, he further threatened to send for foreign troops and “establish British rule in Siam.” But the king was unperturbed by the threats and rebuffed Hunter by stating that “the monks had their own ecclesiastical judiciary in which he could not meddle.”8 Incidents such as this indicated both the extraordinary position Hunter held at the court and the limits of his influence, which seemed not enough to sway the king’s position on matters of justice or on allowing the conjoined twins to leave the country. For the latter, Hunter would need additional help, and it came in the form of a Bible-thumping American ship captain named Abel Coffin.
Like a character drawn from a Melville novel, Coffin hailed from the whaling port of Newburyport, Massachusetts. A seasoned mariner and shrewd Yankee trader, he had made many trips to Asia, dealing in tea from China and sugar from Siam. In Bangkok, he fell in with the two Protestant missionaries, Tomlin and Gutzlaff, and befriended Hunter, the local business honcho. Coffin might not have cared much for the German chameleon in Chinese pantaloons, but he certainly spent a lot of time with Tomlin and often invited the English missionary to give sermons to his crew on the Sabbath. Tomlin’s Bangkok journals from those years made constant references to Coffin, describing their field trips together and adventures in a “godless country.” On October 13, 1828, Tomlin wrote in his journal, “At the request of Captain Coffin, commander of an American vessel, I went and delivered a short exhortation to his crew from the parable of ‘the publican and the Pharisee.’ ” A few days later, he wrote, “In the afternoon accompanied Captain Coffin within the city walls to see the cavalry and elephants exercised, but were disappointed, none appearing except half a dozen long-tailed ponies mounted by half-naked Siamese, destitute of all martial accoutrements.” Together they also witnessed the most inhuman torture of captives inside cages. As Hunter had done, Coffin went to Tomlin’s rescue when the latter ran afoul of the Siamese for his missionary work. On January 23, 1829, a party of Siamese soldiers searched Tomlin’s house under the pretense of looking for contraband opium, but Coffin put an end to the charade and forced the Phra Klang to apologize for the affront.9
What gave Coffin the unusual power in his dealings with the Siamese was the same thing that had once made Hunter the king’s favorite: firearms. In late 1828 and early 1829, when Rama III was trying to put down a revolt in a vassal state in Laos, he badly needed guns for the military campaign. Coincidentally, Coffin arrived from India with several crates of muskets that he had acquired at an auction in Calcutta. He sold the firearms to the king for a handsome profit, and the king, now with more firepower in his arsenal, quickly quashed the revolt. When he captured the rebel leader, the king p
ut him in a cage and invited Coffin, accompanied by Tomlin as indicated above, to witness the gruesome torture of the captive.
Knowing Coffin’s warm relationship with the king, Hunter, who had looked for every opportunity to advance his interest in the conjoined twins, approached the American ship captain with a proposal: They could become partners if Coffin could persuade the king to let the twins out of the country. A proud son of Puritan forefathers well versed in rhetorical persuasion, Coffin knew just what buttons to push when he broached the topic to Rama III. He appealed to the king’s vanity, suggesting that if he would allow the twins to depart, “the world might behold that the favored empire of Siam could alone produce, of all the nations of the earth, such a living wonder as the famous united brothers.”10 Still intoxicated by his recent military victory and most grateful to the Yankee’s timely infusion of firearms, the king eventually acquiesced. Overjoyed, Hunter and Coffin, though not checking at first with the family, immediately made plans to take the twins out of the country for a world tour.
Like a sign from heaven, a lunar eclipse occurred on March 20, 1829. It was a spectacular view in the night sky over Siam, and there was countrywide commotion. As soon as the dark shadow of the earth crept onto the face of the moon, eating away the silvery disk like a Chinese moon pie, a boisterous cacophony of gongs, drums, cymbals, cooking pots, and washbasins resounded everywhere, mingled with the roar of cannons and muskets fired at irregular intervals. The Chinese and Siamese believed—and still believe to a degree—that a lunar eclipse is caused by a hungry sky dog trying to devour the moon, and that people need to prevent the disaster by scaring away the evil canine with loud noises.11
