by Amitav Ghosh
Is it not the most touching story? It ought to have cheered me but I confess it only made things worse: if I had missed Canton before, after this I found myself both yearning for it and despairing of ever seeing it again.
Seized by the blue-devils, I became prey also to nightmares: they started on the night of that fearsome storm that hit the coast a fortnight ago – you will remember it well, I am sure, for it must have given the Redruth quite a battering.
In any event, at some moment in that long, dreadful night, when the winds were easing off, I closed my eyes and thought myself to be back in Canton – but only to find it convulsed by another riot, like that of December 12th except that it was even worse.
Something appalling had happened in the city and a great mob had poured into Fanqui-town; this time there were no troops at hand to control them and the crowd was bent on destruction. I saw men running into the Maidan with flaming torches; they broke into the factories and set fire to the godowns. I escaped from my room and ran along the city walls until I reached the Sea-Calming Tower. From the top I looked down and saw a line of flames leaping above the river; the factories were on fire and they burned through the night. In the morning when the sun rose, I saw that Fanqui-town had been reduced to ashes; it was gone; everything had disappeared – Markwick’s Hotel and Lamqua’s shop and the shamshoo-dens in Hog Lane and the flagpoles in the Maidan. They had all been wiped away and in their place there were only ashes …
I am haunted by these images, Puggly dear; they return to me almost every night. Even when I awake I cannot wipe this vision from my eyes. I can paint nothing else but this; I have done a dozen versions already – I will send you one with this letter.
I would have liked to bring it to you myself, Puggly dear, but I am too stricken at this time to consider making even this short journey. It has ever been so with us Chinnerys, you know – when we are happy we soar very high and when we are not we fall into the depths of an abyss. And so it is with me now, Puggly dear.
I do envy you your felicity, my sweet, sweet Empress of Puggledom, but not, I hope, in a covetous way. I am filled with gladness for you and only wish I could share your joy … but, yes, I will own also that I do not want you to be so joyful as to forget your poor Robin.
*
Neel read through the night, and in the morning, when Deeti came down to the hut, he showed her the packet. Since she had never learned to read, the letters were of no interest to her. But the paintings that Neel had found in the packet seized her attention immediately – especially the picture of Fanqui-town in flames.
What’s this place? she demanded to know. Where is it?
It’s a place you’ve heard a lot about, said Neel. Kalua and your brother Kesri Singh were there during the wars – they must have told you about it. And Jodu too – and Paulette as well.
Ah! Is it called Chin-kalan?
Yes. Canton in English.
Why is it burning?
It’s a strange thing …
Turning the picture over Neel pointed to the bottom right-hand corner, where the words ‘Pixt. E. Chinnery, July 1839’ were written in tiny letters.
See, he said, the painter – Paulette’s friend Robin Chinnery – has put down the date as July 1839. But the destruction of the Thirteen Factories did not happen until seventeen years later. But it seems that Robin saw it in a dream.
So the place doesn’t exist any more?
Neel shook his head. No. It was burnt to the ground. One night during the wars, Canton was bombarded by British and French gunships. The townspeople saw that the foreign factories were the only part of the city that was unharmed and they were enraged. A mob set fire to the factories; they were razed and never rebuilt.
Have you been back there then?
Neel nodded. Yes. The last time was almost thirty years after my first visit. The place was changed beyond recognition. The site of the Maidan was a scene of utter desolation: the factories were gone – hardly a brick was left standing upon another. A new foreign enclave had been constructed nearby, on a mudbank that had been reclaimed and filled in. It was called Shamian Island and the houses the Europeans had built there were nothing like the Thirteen Hongs. Nor was the atmosphere of the new enclave anything like that of the Fanqui-town of old. It was a typical ‘White Town’ of the kind the British made everywhere they went – it was cut off from the rest of the city, and very few Chinese were allowed inside, only servants. The streets were clean and leafy, and the buildings were as staid and dull as the people inside them. But behind that façade of bland respectability the foreigners were importing more opium than ever from India – after winning the war the British had quickly put an end to Chinese efforts to prohibit the drug.
I hated the dull, European buildings of Shamian, with their prim façades and their pediments of murderous greed: the new enclave was like a monument built by the forces of evil to celebrate their triumphal march through history. I could not bear to linger there: it was so unlike the Canton of my memories that I began to wonder whether my recollections were only a dream. But then I went to Thirteen Hong Street, which was the only part of Fanqui-town that remained. There were still some shops there that sold paintings. In one of them I found a picture of the Maidan and the Thirteen Factories …
Neel looked down again at Robin’s painting and a catch came into his throat.
The picture cost more than I could afford, he said, but I bought it anyway. I realized that if it were not for those paintings no one would believe that such a place had ever existed.
Acknowledgements
This book follows Neel’s khabardari in attending closely to the Chinese Repository and the Canton Register (which was edited, in this period, by John Slade). Apart from these journals it relies principally on books, memoirs, documents, travelogues and word-lists that were written and compiled by people who lived in or visited Canton at around the same time as Neel: David Abeel, Colin Campbell, C. Toogood Downing, Capt. Robert Elliot, Émile D. Forgues, Shen Fu, Thomas Gardiner, Henry Gribble, Charles Gutzlaff, William C. Hunter, J. Johnson, William Kershaw, Charles W. King, W. Lobscheid, Sir Anders Ljungstedt, Gideon Nye, Samuel Shaw, George Smith, Russell Sturgis, Harriet Low, William Henry Low and several other members of this well-travelled Brooklyn family.
Neel was a keen collector of documents relating to his experiences in China. His archive included parliamentary papers such as The Sessional Papers Printed by Order of the House of Lords, Session 1840, Vol VIII, Correspondence Relating to China (Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, printed by T. R. Harrison, London, 1840); and other related collections of documents like the Statement of Claims of the British Subjects interested in Opium surrendered to Captain Elliot at Canton for the Public Service (London, 1840). It also included compendia of Chinese official documents such as Portfolio Chinensis: or A Collection of Authentic Chinese State Papers Illustrative of the History of the Present Position of Affairs in China, ed. J. Lewis Shuck (Macau, 1840).
Neel’s archive was a testament to his catholic interests. It included, for example, some works of natural history, such as Cuthbert Collingwood’s Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea (John Murray, London, 1868); and several works on horticulture such as J. C. Loudon’s magisterial An Encyclopaedia of Gardening, Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture and Landscape-Gardening, including All the Latest Improvements, A General History of Gardening in All Countries and A Statistical View of Its Present State (Longman et al., London, 1824) and Sir William Chambers’ seminal work, A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, To Which is Annexed An Explanatory Discourse By Tan Chet-qua of Quang-chew-fu, Gent (London, 1773).
Neel was fortunate also in being able to acquire a copy of a book that illuminated his experiences on Great Nicobar Island: John Gottfried Haensel’s Letters on the Nicobar Islands (London, 1812). He was not so fortunate in stumbling upon Elijah C. Bridgman’s A Chinese Chrestomathy in the C
anton Dialect (S. W. Williams, Macau, 1841). He subsequently gave up all hope of publishing his own Celestial Chrestomathy and took the work in a different direction (fragments of which are available on certain websites, including www.amitavghosh.com).
Much that is said by the characters in this book is taken from their own words. Some of John Slade’s speeches are adapted from his editorials and articles, published in the Canton Register; some of Charles King’s utterances are similarly adapted from the reports of the Canton Register and from his own writings, most notably Opium Crisis: A Letter Addressed to Charles Elliot Esq. (London, 1839). Some of the speeches given by Dinyar Ferdoonjee, William Jardine, Charles W. King and H. H. Lindsay are also adaptations based upon published accounts.
Quotations from edicts and proclamations issued by Chinese officials (including Commissioner Lin) are generally adapted from translations published contemporaneously in the Chinese Repository, the Canton Register, Portfolio Chinensis and Correspondence Relating to China. In rendering passages of Neel’s Bengali version of Commissioner Lin’s letter to Queen Victoria, I have relied partly on W. C. Hunter’s translation; but mostly I have adapted it from Arthur Waley’s beautiful translation in The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (Stanford University Press, 1968).
As a supplement to Neel’s library I have relied also on the work of many contemporary and near-contemporary scholars and historians. To list all the books, articles and essays that have enriched this narrative would be impossible here, but it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge my gratitude for, and indebtedness to, the work of the following: E. N. Anderson, Robert Antony, S. F. Balfour, Jack Beeching, David Bello, Henry and Sidney Berry-Hill, Kingsley Bolton, J. M. Braga, Lucile Brockway, Anne Bulley, Hsin-Pao Chang, Gideon Chen, Weng Eang Cheong, Craig Clunas, Alice Coats, Patrick Conner, A. H. Crook, Carl L. Crossman, Stephen Dobbs, Jacques M. Downs, Wolfram Eberhard, Mark Elvin, Fa-ti Fan, Amar Farooqui, Peter Ward Fay, R. W. Ferrier, S. N. Gajendragadkar, Valery M. Garrett, John Gascoigne, L. Gibbs, Basil Greenhill, Martin Gregory, Mary and John Gribbin, Amalendu Guha, Deyan Guo, G. A. C. Herklots, A. P. Hill, Bret Hinsch, Ke-en Ho, Nan Powell Hodges, A. W. Hummell, Robin Hutcheon, Christopher Hutton, Graham E. Johnson, Russell Jones, Maneck Furdoonji Kanga, Frank Kehl, Maggie Keswick, Jane Kilpatrick, Paul Kriwaczek, Roy Lancaster, Daniel Irving Larkin, Thomas N. Layton, Zhiwei Liu, Hosea Ballou Morse, H. Le Rougetel, Elma Loines, David R. MacGregor, Joyce Madancy, Pierre-Yves Manguin, John McCoy, Wilson Menard, Erik Mueggler, Yong Sang Ng, E. H. Parker, Glen D. Peterson, James Duncan Phillips, Behesti Minocher N. Pundol Saheb, Peter Raby, Desmond Ray, H. E. Richardson, Dingxu Shi, Asiya Siddiqi, Helen F. Siu, Anthony Xavier Soares, Tan Chung, Madhavi Thampi, Adrian P. Thomas, G. R. Tibbetts, G. H. R. Tillotson, Yun Hui Tsu, Peter Valder, Paul A. Van Dyke, Arthur Waley, Barbara E. Ward, Rubie S. Watson, Tyler Whittle, G. R. Worcester, Ching-chao Wu and Liu Yu.
For help with details of fact and language, for assistance in tracking down materials, and for their support, I am greatly beholden to Robert Antony, Pengyew Chin, Amar Farooqui, Atish Ghosh, Guoliang Guo, Ashutosh Kumar, Jiajing Liu, Ming Lu, Megha Majumdar, Cecil Pinto, Rahul Srivastava, Mo-lin Yee, Xu Xi and most particularly, Kingsley Bolton and Robert McCabe. To Shernaz Italia, Freny Khodaiji and their extended families, I owe an immense and very special debt of gratitude.
The long journey upriver would have been vastly more difficult without the unflagging support of Barney Karpfinger, my agent, and Roland Philipps, my publisher and editor in the UK; without Debbie, my wife and first reader, this vessel would almost certainly have run aground; without my children, Lila and Nayan it could not have kept to its course. My mother, Anjali Ghosh, taught me to read – without her the voyage would never have begun.
