White Rajah

by Nigel Barley

  He was by now virtually destitute; indeed, following the Chinese insurrection, he was deeply in debt to the Borneo Company, which was itself in a parlous state. There was no line between the public exchequer of Sarawak and the private fortune of James Brooke, just as he drew no line between the whole of Sarawak and himself, so that the ruin of the one was the ruin of the other. Recent events had revived the old obsession with a steamer as the guarantee of security. ‘A penny saved is a screw in the new steamer.’ But he badly wanted money for something else. His big secret was about to come out. It bore the name of Reuben George Walker.

  Jeanine Alexander sat across from me and sipped tea. Overhead fans whispered, less to cool us off than to say that we were in the Sarawak Club, Kuching, an institution from colonial days where Brits had always been, in some sense, suffering abroad. The national motto had been ‘Dum spiro spero’, rendered jokingly by ex-pats as ‘While I sweat I hope’.

  ‘There was some writer just here,’ she said, and made it a sort of accusation. ‘She seemed to think James Brooke was some kind of screaming queen. I soon put her straight.’ The voice was Australian and very firm.

  Not wanting to be put straight, I sought refuge in a notebook. ‘Well …’ I hedged. ‘Parenthood doesn’t preclude homosexuality – as recent Malaysian political history shows us.’

  There was a loud silence in which I seemed to hear the ticking of a clock. In a sensational recent political show-trial, Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister, respectably married father of children and devout Muslim, had received a heavy jail sentence for midshipman-like activities with a chauffeur and adopted brother. His mattress had been produced as evidence in court, to great dramatic effect. It was simultaneously the most and least talked about subject in Kuching. At the Sarawak Club it was not being talked about. It was not being talked about very loudly.

  ‘And what exactly was your own link .… ?’ I asked.

  She made a face. ‘James Brooke was my great, great-great-grandfather,’ I thought at once of those vague rumours that James had had a child by a Malay wife here in Kuching, ‘through his son Reuben.

  ‘I have all the documentary evidence,’ she said.

  I raised interrogative eyebrows.

  ‘Birth certificates,’ she signed them with a finger on the polished wood, ‘tracing them back, marriage certificates. There’s no doubt about it.’ She reeled off a litany of names of relatives, constant rearrangements of the elements Reuben, George, James and Brooke.

  I tried not to look excited and stirred tea, circling up to the big question. ‘And what about the link between James and the mother?’

  ‘No,’ she said, almost with pity. ‘No, you couldn’t expect that. But there were the cheques.’

  ‘The cheques?’

  ‘Yes.’ She leaned forward. ‘There were cheques up to my grandfather’s time. Then they stopped. No more cheques. More tea?’

  Reuben George Walker seems to be first mentioned in a letter from James to Brooke Brooke in October 1855, while the latter was in England. He gave him no hint of any family relationship but asked him to look up ‘a youth named Reuben Walker who was my servant when in England – the lad was wild and unsteady – misguided as lads will be and often are – he was in trouble and thinking that he might be ruined altogether I took him. He behaved well enough with me, barring the follies of youth, and I could find no harm in him but thoughtlessness and wildness. I hear now from your aunt Savage [Margaret, James’s sister] that Reuben Walker is in Lord Ward’s stables getting on steadily.’3 Lord Ward is presumably Lord Ward of Birmingham, who was blessed with a number of residences so that it is hard to know which location is referred to. He went on to urge Brooke Brooke to establish ‘what the young fellow is like and whether he promises to be steady. It is a hard thing with a young head and light heart to resist temptation – but many and many a one with no greater crime has been driven from bad to worse.’4

  The claim that he was James’s servant is almost certainly false and intended to disguise from Brooke Brooke that in Reuben George he may be meeting his own cousin. James’s simultaneous knowledge and alleged ignorance of his nature seems deliberately misleading. Despite James’s comments, it is not clear that he has actually met Reuben at this time. He mentions him again in June 1856, complaining pettishly, ‘You do not tell me about young Reuben Walker … ascertain whether he bears a good character, and if he does send him out if he likes it. He was scampish but not really evil, and he has the making of a good man in him, with abilities above the common run. He was a favourite of mine and I can find him useful work here …’5 This does not seem to have elicited the required response so again in August he writes, ‘Why do you not send me news of Reuben Walker … You will probably hear of him at Henderson’s Livery Stables – Cockspur St. or Pall Mall. I write particularly because I do not like to be disappointed in little matters and they lay hold on my mind …’6

  Tradition has it that Reuben simply turned up, out of the blue, at James’s London hotel in 1858, but this seems most unlikely. For in February 1857 James is writing to Brooke Brooke yet again, urging that a huge operation be set in train.

  I received your kind letter of December yesterday. The intelligence of Reuben Walker has distressed me for I reproach myself for losing sight of him during my own troubles. You say you will find him if in the land of the living and (I add) ascertain his death if it has occurred. Should you have failed as yet in doing either with certainty, you must at once write to Templer and Booty to use the machinery requisite for the search – giving them every information in your power.

  1st. The young grooms at Lord Ward’s will know something more than the older lads, and through them you may know his haunts in London where the people may be acquainted with his history and movements.

  2nd. His enlistment seems certain, his death doubtful. If he enlisted in 1855 an application to the Horse Guards would provide the information wanting, as they could give the number of his regiment and the returns would supply the date and manner of his death.

  Failing at the Horse Guards, a letter addressed to the Commanding Officers of regimental depots (cavalry and infantry) would elicit the information – and Aldershot would be a good place to enquire.

  3rd. At the same time an advertisement in The Times and Bell’s Weekly Newspaper (?) will most likely attract his attention if living, or the attention of some of his fellow soldiers if dead. He should be described thus – Reuben George Walker – age about 21 – who lived when young at Brighton and who was lately a groom at Lord Ward’s stable and before in the service of Sir J.B., supposed to have enlisted in the army in 1855, will learn something to his advantage by applying in person or by writing to Messrs. Cameron and Booty and any person giving certain information respecting him, whether living or dead, will receive £5 reward.

  If he be found in the army, let him be bought out and taken good care of and provided for till I send further directions. My letter should given [sic] to him and be directed to write me …7

  It is again interesting that he gets Reuben’s age wrong if he was indeed born in 1834 as his tombstone and other records allege; and that the passage about being in the service of Sir J.B. has been added in over the line. Later, the press advertisements were looked for by James and Reuben, and could not be found. Probably Brooke Brooke, not realising the nature of this attachment, simply could not be bothered to go to so much trouble.

  At the time of the Chinese insurrection James had received a false report that Reuben was dead, and it is to this that he now attributes his fever. Perhaps this is, then, the true source of James’s unusual apathy and despair during these events. Then Reuben is dramatically restored to life, located alive and well in the military. Strings are pulled – by Keppel and others – to obtain his release. James finally meets Reuben, ‘the dear little fellow’, in Gibraltar in 1857 on the way home. It is on Christmas Day, in Reuben’s erstwhile home town of Brighton, at the Savages’ house, that he finally comes clean
in a letter to Brooke Brooke.

  Now for Reuben. I told you he might be my son. I may tell you now that it is as certain as any fact can be. The letters I received from his mother (through another hand) carried conviction to my mind at once, because they mentioned names and circumstances and dates which could not have been known excepting by her and myself. The second letter when his death was reported urged me to seek him and to protect him if to be found – that from me alone he might claim help and love as he derived his life from me and as I was his sole natural protector in the eyes of God. She urged me not to seek her or to blast the reputation for which she sacrificed her son. There was a good deal more to the same effect and it carried conviction to my mind. I was anxious to get Reuben quietly – to avoid exposure and judge where I should place him and what he was like – but these plans were upset by the report of his death and afterwards by the fear that he would be ordered to India and probably be lost again. I cannot tell you how much I suffered mentally and bodily – there was the dastard fear of publicity – and worse that his character would be bad, and his manner and habits unfit him for a higher sphere of life. My alarm that I should never see him, cured me of these lesser doubts, and broke through the barriers of reserve – Keppel came to my assistance and F. Alderson’s [son of Baron Alderson, judge in the court of Exchequer and a supporter of James Brooke, F. Alderson was briefly employed in the Sarawak administration] vague recollections afforded me a plea for obtaining his discharge without introducing my own name. This is the true reason that brought me home and if other means had failed I should have gone to Gibraltar and carried him away …8

  Elsewhere, there are further details of this extraordinarily complex melodrama, which seems to draw on a Dickensian storyline. No wonder Charley Grant would term it a ‘romance’. Often James Brooke’s letters are hard to read, the hand wild and spidery, and having filled the page, he writes crosswise over it – not his usual style – as if wanting it to be illegible.

  On arriving at home I wrote to [name illegible] Alderson and his story is that Mrs. Walker being at the point of death sent a woman to the Baron’s house to find Reuben, who said that Mrs. W. was in trouble of mind as she wished to tell Reuben that ‘he was not her son but the son of a gentleman’ – for this she was seeking him – Whose Alderson does not know – but this is enough – and as to the advertisements in The Times (or some other papers), he heard of it but made no enquiry … Besides this, Reuben’s own recollections have thrown light on the mother. The woman Walker when angry with him used to tell him he was no son of hers and she would not be troubled with other people’s children – he has for years had a firm suspicion that he was not her son. There is more that I can tell you at leisure and a clue to the mother’s present home and position …9

  So it seems that Reuben’s mother may be a lady but that he was given away to be raised by a servant, which goes some way to explaining James’s enormous guilt.

  The different members of the family took the news of their new relative in rather different ways. ‘Directly your Aunt Margaret was told the fact she said she remembered now how like he was as a boy to the caricature of me taken when young – she was surprised it had not struck her before.’ It seems, then, that Margaret knew Reuben as a child and that he moved within the family circle, which contradicts the tale of his disappearance, for allegedly the link with mother and child was broken when they vanished while James was away on the Royalist in 1837. A strong physical resemblance remained. He continued, ‘[John] Templer took up my likeness from his table remarking on the resemblance as Reuben stood before him – the same hair – complexion – shape of face – colour of eyes – with the same difference of size between the right eye and the left …’10 The Johnsons, parents of Brooke Brooke, refused to believe Reuben to be anything but an impostor, while others thought this was all a clumsy ruse by James to conceal another of his unfortunate attachments.

  Harriette took a charitable view. ‘How easily the Rajah is gulled; I don’t believe he is his son a bit,’ she wrote. Frank was less tactful. ‘The Rajah must be as cracked as I have long feared if he carries out his intentions about this Reuben Walker or Brooke.’ Nevertheless, James sprang Reuben upon the missionaries in a railway station in England in 1861. ‘You should have seen Harriette’s face of dismay and disgust … I do not believe the fellow a bit, he is not an atom like the Rajah, nothing but a low-born cad I am sure,’11 wrote Frank. And while there may have been problems with Reuben’s bold revelation to the world in Brighton, these were as nothing compared to those unleashed in Sarawak.

  Brooke Brooke waxed hysterical at the mere idea that this ‘son’ was to come out east:

  The young man who you have publicly proclaimed your son, given your name, and taken to your heart and who you propose to take out to Sarawak, it requires less common sense than God has granted to me, to see must dispossess me and mine of my promised inheritance … The two or three years that would elapse before this too certain finale would be to me, years of bitter humiliation, of heat burning and disgrace. Something of this I have experienced in days gone by, and so vividly recollect that I would far prefer seeking a livelihood elsewhere, in however humble a sphere, to such degradation … I can’t write more. The heavy burthen that you have laid on me, has too confused my hand, to write coherently. How could you write so cruel a letter without apparent feeling that you were inflicting deadly stabs to me and my unfortunate wife at every line.12

  For once James wrote back a letter that was gentle, infinitely loving and kind, a letter such as he would never write again in his life. ‘Forgive me the pain I unintentionally inflicted, but I thought you so assured of your position, and of my trust in you, that I never dreamed of your being so greatly disturbed by the intelligence of my having a son and my intention of bringing him to Sarawak. Were I to wrong you and yours what a villain I should be!! … Let [Reuben] George fall into his proper place, which will not be a high one …’13 This soothed Brooke Brooke, but James would rapidly prove himself to be precisely the villain that Brooke Brooke feared.

  The story of Reuben George Walker has all the marks of a tale told by one who is, at times, economical with the truth and, at others, excessively prone to fanciful elaboration. But what can we really know of him? The place to start James’s ‘requisite machinery’ is the Family Records Centre. It is where people come to excavate the private past, a discreet, modern building near Sadler’s Wells. Worthy publications by staff line the lobby, betraying the flourishing individual obsessions of the academically minded. In theory, they allow anyone to track down their forebears through their prison sentences or their bankruptcies, or fix their addresses on hand-drawn maps of Elizabethan England, including gibbets. There is glamour rather than shame in such distant iniquity, since it is a claim for distinction from the common herd. Noticeboards declare the presence of a rich trainspotters’ subculture, with lectures at the Genealogical Society and experts on Kentish local records about to speak at the Royal Horticultural Society Hall. Like pews in a church, the shelves and shelves of entries fan out, the whole of human life reduced to volumes of green-bound birth, black-bound death and red-bound marriage – with a special annexe for the deviant Scots. Crowds of people sweep back and forth between life and death, clutching notebooks. Going back in time, the seekers get magically older and the number of volumes for each year decreases, marking the shrinking population.

  Classification of births, deaths and marriages is by year and district. Central registration of births begins in 1837, just too late for Reuben, so he falls off the page of history. We know he died in 1874 but in the wreck of the ship The British Admiral, in the Bass Strait off Australia. So there is no death certificate. If he did not officially get born or officially die, perhaps he got married. The name Walker is distressingly common. In the nineteenth century there are plenty of Reubens, let alone Georges, a first name he later preferred. Age at death gives you a date of birth. A boy could get married at fourteen. Most were married by t
wenty-five. Play the percentages, flit from entry to entry. Dice with death. Snakes and actuarial ladders. Maybe his adopted father was Reuben George Walker too, but they crop up all over the UK. Two of them get married in Eastbourne alone, in 1849 and 1851. There are too many and hence it is impossible to fix his adopted mother just down the road in Brighton.

  James Brooke’s will, upstairs on the first floor, left Reuben £5,000 and listed his address as Walnut Tree House, Levens, Westmorland. That gives the district of registration and cuts through all the wealth of Walkers, allowing most to be discarded. And after days of searching, he finally turns up in the marriage roster, not as Reuben Walker at all but as George Brooke, in 1862, aged twenty-eight and very old for a wedding, marrying Elizabeth Mowbray. Her father’s occupation is ‘Sculptor’. His father’s is given as ‘Knight, Rajah of Sarawak’. In 1864 they give birth to a son, Reuben George Brooke, whose father is described as having the occupation of ‘Gentleman’. Reuben has finally made it from poverty to gentility.

  If Reuben George was in the army, he should be somewhere in the Public Record Office at Kew. Despite the confusing electronic glamour of swipe cards, pagers, terminals and microfilms, dowdy filing cards lurk on in the dark corners like disregarded great-aunts, and that is where the real work is still done. A whole section deals with the East India Company in a manner that is brutally frank but curiously humanised. ‘Lt. Arthur Jones, bachelor and bastard’, ‘Emma Jones, bastard, spinster, widow’ – this poor woman seems to have hopped from one anomalous status to another with no intervening stage of respectable marriage. Beneath the names are little drawings. One who ‘died by detonation’ has Bang! written in a cartoon balloon. Two bebustled ladies look over their shoulders at a departing soldier: He looks a right bachelor and bastard. A figure in dhoti with stripes tattooed on his arm decorates the card bearing details of an NCO in the Indian Native Infantry. The girl on the desk looks round nervously and whispers, ‘One of our librarians did it about twenty years ago. She got all over the place before they found out. She went a bit … funny … and left.’ Her voice drops even lower. ‘I think they made her leave.’