Memoirs of a British Agent

by R. H. Bruce Lockhart

  To Germany and to Professor Tilley I owe much. Tilley was an Australian who had become more Prussian than the Prussians, even to the extent of dropping the “e” from his name and signing himself after the manner of the great German soldier of fortune. His methods were Spartan and pitiless, but he showed me how to work—a virtue which, in spite of many backslidings, I have never entirely lost. He taught me two other valuable lessons—respect for institutions and customs other than English and the secret of mastering foreign languages. The first has helped me throughout my life in my relations with foreigners. The second was to stand me in good stead when seven years later I went to Russia. If Tilley is still alive, I hope he will see this tribute to his thoroughness. In my life his was the one influence which I can describe as wholly beneficial.

  From Berlin I was sent to Paris, where I came under the influence of that good and godly man, Paul Passy. From him I acquired an excellent French accent and my first insight into Welsh revivalist methods. Passy, who was the son of Frédéric Passy, the eminent French jurist and pacifist, was the gentlest of Calvinists. As a young man he had wanted to be a missionary and, serious in all things, he had trained himself for his arduous career by eating rats. An affection of the lungs prevented this great scholar from burying himself in the wilds of China or the remoter South Sea Islands. The heathens’ loss became science’s gain, and to-day the name of Passy is linked eternally with the names of Sweet and Viëtor in the honours list of the pioneers of modern phonetics. In spite of his absorption in his linguistic studies, Passy never abandoned his good works or his reclamation of sinners. When first I knew him he was under the influence of Evan Roberts, the Welsh evangelist, and for the only time in a varied career I had the strange experience of appearing on the platform and singing Welsh revivalist hymns in French before a Paris slum audience. Passy said the prayers and played the harmonium with three fingers, while I sang the solos supported by a chorus of three trembling English students.

  If life is a succession of accidents, the series in my own life has been rapid. After three years in France and Germany, I returned to England in order to undergo a final preparation for the Indian Civil Service. Fate and my own genius for drifting ruled otherwise. In 1908, my uncle, one of the pioneers of the rubber-growing industry in the Malay States, came home from the East and fired my imagination with wonderful tales of the fortunes that were to be made almost for the asking in that elusive and enchanting land. Already the travel-bug had entered my blood, and in my desire for new worlds and pew adventures, I decided to throw in my lot with the rubber-planters and to go East.

  My student days in Berlin and Paris had been serious and blameless. In Germany a passionate devotion to Heine—even to-day I can recite by heart most of the Intermezzo and the Heimkehr—inspired me with an innocent attachment to the daughter of a German naval officer. I sailed my boat on Wannsee by moonlight. I sighed over my Pilsener on the terrace of a Schlachtensee café. I sang—in the presence of her mother—the latest and most romantic Viennese and Berlin Lieder. And I mastered the German language. But there were no adventures, no escapades, no excesses. In France I steeped myself in the exotic sentimentalism of Loti, whom I once met and whose eccentricities and mincing manners failed to cure me of an admiration which I feel to this day for the charm and beauty of his prose. But my tears were shed over “Les Désenchantées” in solitude. I learnt the farewell letter of Djénane by heart. Three years later it was to be of good service to me in my examination for the Consular Service. But I learnt it for the mortification of my own soul. I made no attempt to imitate the long series of “Mariages de Loti.” Now the East was to lead me along the broad highway of her unrestricted temptations.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NO JOURNEY will ever give me the same enchantment as that first voyage to Singapore. It remains in the memory as a delicious day-dream in which I can recall every incident and which never fails to console me in moments of sadness. Far more clearly than the numerous travelling companions I have since met, I can see in my mind’s eye the captain, the smoking-room steward, the deck hands, the obese and romantic purser, and the three German naval officers who were my only serious rivals for first place in the deck sports. But the real magic of that journey was in the kaleidoscope of wonderful colours and haunting landscapes which every twenty-four hours was unfolded before my eyes. This pageant I enjoyed for myself and by myself. I rose in the dark to catch that first flutter of the breeze which heralds the approach of the Eastern dawn and waited with a delicious tremor of anticipation until the great fire-ball of the sun burst through the pall of greyness and revealed where sky ended and the calmest of seas began. Alone in the bows I watched the saffron-tinted sunsets with their changing panoramas of ships and armies, of kings and castles, of knights and fair women, of adventures far more enthralling and vivid than the most thrilling film-story. I was only twenty-one, and my thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. I devoured every travel-book on which I could lay my hands. Some of the books I read then are still among my greatest treasures. Jules Boissière’s “Fumeurs d’Opium” remains the best book of its kind that I know. Others, like Swettenham’s “Unaddressed Letters,” which bears its date on every page, seem almost comic to-day. Then, however, they were tremendously real. Loti was my hero, and like Loti I wrapped myself in a mantle of melancholy solitude. At ports I fled instinctively from my countrymen and, unaccompanied by any fawning guide, explored at random what I conceived to be the native quarters. With the exception of Victor Corkran, who, years older than myself, probably found a whimsical pleasure in drawing me out and in listening to the extravagant dreams and confident ambitions of an all-too-conceited, because self-conscious, youth, I made few friends. Nevertheless, he was kind, and concealed his amusement behind a mask of sympathy. He had travelled widely and knew strange scraps of history and folk-lore which were not to be found in guide-books. On board the Buelow he was a Roman in a horde of Goths, and to-day I am grateful to him for many a valuable lesson which, doubtless, he was unaware that he was imparting.

  Above all, I learned to appreciate the beauty of warm colours and luxuriant vegetation. An orchid in the Malayan jungle meant more, means more to me to-day, than the most beautiful “cattleya” on the breast of the most beautiful woman. The glowing warmth of the tropical sun became a necessity to my physical existence and a stimulant to my mind. Even to-day I cannot think of those cloudless Eastern skies, those long stretches of golden sand with their background of cooling palms and lofty casuarinas without a feeling of longing which is almost akin to physical pain. Like Fauconnier’s hero I have come to believe that every country where a man cannot live naked in all seasons, is condemned to work, to war, and to the hampering restraint of moral codes. To-day, the fogs of an English winter are to me as grim a nightmare as the walls of my Bolshevik prison.

  And yet in this Malaya, which I love, which remains as the pleasantest regret in my life, and which I shall never see again, I was a failure. On my arrival in Singapore I was sent as a “creeper” to a rubber plantation outside Port Dickson. Earth knows no gem more beautiful than this tiny harbour which lies at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca. At that time it was unspoilt by the intrusion of the white man. The climate was almost perfect. Its coast-line was like an opal changing in colour with every angle of the sun. The stillness of its nights, broken only by the gentle lapping of the sea on the casuarina-crested shore, brought a peace which I shall never know again.

  I enjoyed every minute of my year there. But I was an indifferent planter. The pungent odour of the Tamil coolies I could not abide. I learnt enough of their language to carry out my duties. To-day, beyond stock-phrases of command and a string of oaths, I have forgotten every word. The Chinese, with their automatic accuracy, made no appeal to me, and the actual estate work, the filling in of check rolls, the keeping of accounts, bored me. My head-manager, a brother-in-law of the late Lord Forteviot, was easy-going and benevolent to my short-comings. Very quickly I entered into the
life of the British planter. I learnt to drink the inevitable “stengah.”1 Once a month I went with my chief to the neighbouring town of Seremban and imbibed vast quantities of gin “pahits” in the Sungei Ujong Club. At week-ends I travelled about the country playing football and hockey and making hosts of new acquaintances. The hospitality of the Malaya of those golden, prosperous days of 1908 was for a youngster almost overwhelming, and few there were who survived it unscathed.

  During my stay at Port Dickson I had one minor triumph, the echo of which I hear faintly to this day.

  Within a few months of my arrival in the country, I went up to Kuala Lumpur to play “rugger” for my State, Negri Sembilan, against Selangor. Kuala Lumpur is the capital of Selangor and of the Federated Malay States. Selangor itself has the largest white population of any State and, at that time, its “rugger” side contained several international players including that gargantuan and good-natured Scot “Bobby” Neill. In those days Negri Sembilan could hardly muster fifteen “rugger” players. Certainly, we had never beaten Selangor, and I doubt if we had ever beaten any other state. Notwithstanding the climate, “rugger” is the most popular of all spectacles in Malaya, and, in spite of the apparent disparity in strength between the two sides, a large gathering of Europeans and natives turned out to see the match, which was played on the Kuala Lumpur Padang. Those who witnessed this classic encounter were rewarded with one of the greatest surprises in the history of sport. The match was played about Christmas time, and Selangor were not in training. Perhaps they rated their opponents a little too lightly. At any rate at half-time Selangor were leading by a try and a penalty goal dropped by the ponderous “Bobby” to a try scored by myself. Soon after the beginning of the second half, it was obvious that Selangor were tiring, and the crowd—a Selangor crowd—delighted at the prospect of a surprise victory, cheered us on. I was fortunate enough to score a second try, and with five minutes to go the scores were level. Then, from a line-out, a big New Zealander, who had played a sterling game for us, threw the ball back to me, and from just inside half-way I dropped a goal.

  We had perpetrated the greatest joke for years, and the Selangor team and the spectators were sportsmen enough to appreciate it. I was carried off the field in triumph to the “Spotted Dog,” the once famous club which stands on the edge of the Padang. There I was surrounded by a host of people whose names I did not know, but who were old Fettesians—Scotsmen, who knew my brother or my father, and who slapped me on the back and insisted on standing me a drink. Long before dinner time I must have had a drink, perhaps several drinks, with nearly everyone in the room. By the time I arrived at the F.M.S. Hotel, where an official dinner was being given to the two teams, both teams and guests were in their places. I was met at the door by “Bobby” Neill, who informed me that the chair was being taken by the acting Resident-General, and that I had been unanimously voted into the place of honour on his right-hand at the top table. This was my first experience of the limelight of publicity, and I did not like the ordeal. My crowning achievement, however, was my conversation with the R.G., to whom I talked like a father of my experiences in the East. They must have been too vividly described, for he informed me reprovingly that he was a married man.

  “Tamil or Malay, sir?” I asked him politely.

  “Hush!” he said. “I’ve three children.”

  “Black or white, sir?” I continued with irrepressible affability.

  Fortunately, he had a sense of humour and a blind eye for the failings of twenty-one, and, when next year’s match came round, he asked me to stay with him, came to see me play, and in his speech referred to me—alas! no longer the fleet-footed speed-merchant of the previous year—as “faint yet pursuing.”

  That fitful triumph had an unpleasant sequel. As the youngest and, therefore, most insignificant and innocent member of the visiting team, I had been quartered with the parson, a fine athlete but a trifle strait-laced—especially for a padre in the tropics. Kuala Lumpur, like Rome, being built on seven hills, I had some difficulty in finding the good man’s bungalow in the early hours of the morning. Thanks, however, to the faithful “Bobby” and to other kind friends I was steered safely to my room, and by a great effort I succeeded in putting in an appearance at breakfast the next morning—Sunday morning with a three-course Sunday breakfast to celebrate it! Cold water had done wonders, and I looked not too bad, but my voice had gone. As I croaked out my answers to a fusillade of questions regarding my health and how I had slept, Mrs. Padre locked at me pityingly.

  “Ah, Mr. Lockhart,” she said. “I told you, if you did not put your sweater on after the game, you would get a chill.”

  With that she rushed from the table and brought me a glass of cough-mixture, which in that spirit of shyness, which even to this day I have never quite overcome, I was too weak to refuse. The result was instantaneous, and without a word I rushed from the room. Never before, or since, have I suffered as I suffered on that Sunday morning. I often wonder how much Mrs. Padre knew. If she intended to teach me a lesson, the rewards of the schoolmaster can never have been sweeter.

  These wild excursions, however, were but episodes in a life which in spite of the monotony of my work provided me with countless new interests. The Malay gentleman at large, with his profound contempt for work, made an instant appeal to me. I liked his attitude to life, his philosophy. A man who could fish and hunt, who knew the mysteries of the rivers and forests, who could speak in metaphors and make love in “pantuns,” was a man after my own heart. I learnt his language with avidity. I studied his customs and history. I found romance in the veiled mystery of his women-folk. I devoted to my Malays the energy and enthusiasm which should have been expended on the Tamil and Chinese coolies of my rubber estate. Despising the unintellectual existence of the planter, I sought my friends among the younger government officials. I showed them my poems. They invited me to admire their water-colours. There was one soulful young man—to-day he has reached the heights of Colonial eminence—with whom I played duets on the piano.

  I made friends, too, with the Roman Catholic missionaries—splendid fellows, voluntarily cutting themselves off from Europe and even from the Europeans in the East and devoting their whole life to tending their native flock and to reclaiming and educating the half-caste population.

  In the columns of the local newspaper I made my first essay in journalism, and, although my morbid efforts to expose the Japanese traffic in fallen women met with little favour, I achieved editorial recognition and a demand for more work of a similar nature as a result of a leader on the defects of Esperanto. Above all, I read, and read seriously. The average planter’s library might contain a varied selection of the prose and poetry of Kipling, but its chief stand-by in those days was the works of Hubert Wales and James Blyth. I do not know what authors have taken their place to-day, but to me Hubert Wales was neither lurid nor instructive. I made a rule never to buy a novel, and to the weekly packet of serious literature, which I received from Singapore, I owe my sanity and my escape from the clutches of the Eastern Trinity of opium, drink and women. All three were to spread the net of their temptations over me, but reading saved me from the worst effects of a combined offensive.

  1 Whisky and soda.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS MY youthful craving for solitude which led me finally into serious trouble. I was always tormenting my uncle with requests for a job on my own. At last I was sent to open up a new estate at the foot of the hills. The place, which for over a year was to be my home, was ten miles away from any European habitation. No white man had ever lived there before. The village on which my estate bordered was the headquarters of a Sultan who had been deposed and who was, therefore, not too friendly towards the English. My house, too, was a ramshackle affair, verandahless and, although slightly better than the ordinary Malay house, in no sense of the word a European bungalow. A death-rate for malaria unequalled in the whole State did not enhance the attractions of the place. My only links wit
h civilisation were a push-bike and the Malay police corporal who lived two miles away. Nevertheless, I was as happy as a mahout with a new elephant. During the day my time was fully occupied. I had to make something out of nothing, an estate out of jungle, to build a house for myself, to make roads and drains where none existed. There were, too, minor problems of administration which were a source of constant interest and amusement to me: Malay contractors who had an excuse for every backsliding; Tamil wives, who practised polyandry on a strictly practical basis—two days for each of their three husbands and a rest on Sundays; an outraged “Vulliamay,” who complained that “Ramasamy” had stolen his day; Chinese shopkeepers, who drove hard bargains with my storekeeper, and Bombay “chetties” who stood round on pay day and held my coolies in their usurious clutch.

  With this mixed collection I held sway as the sole representative of the British Raj. I dispensed justice without fear or favour, and, if there were complaints against my authority, they never reached my ears. During these first four months I was entirely care-free. I worked hard at my Malay. I wrote short stories which subsequently earned the unsolicited encomiums of Clement Shorter and were published in the “Sphere.” I began a novel on Malay life—alas, never finished and now never likely to be—and I continued my reading with praiseworthy diligence. For amusement there was football and shooting and fishing. I felled a piece of land, laid out a football ground, and initiated the Malays of the village into the mysteries of “Soccer.” In that glorious hour before sunset I shot “punai,” the small Malay blue pigeon, as they were flighting. I dabbed for “ikan harouan”—the coarse fish of the Malayan rice-ponds—with a small live frog to take the place of a daddy-long-legs. Marvellous to relate, I made friends with the deposed Sultan and especially with his wife, the real ruler of the royal household and a wizened up old lady with betel-stained lips and an eye that would strike terror into the boldest heart. Rumour had it that she had committed every crime in the penal code and many offences against God and man which were not included in that list of human shortcomings. She was, however?, the Queen Victoria of her district, and, although we subsequently became enemies, I bear her no grudge.