There being no more suitable ship, Raffles was rushed back down the coast to Penang in a ‘pleasure-boat’, Olivia returning a little later.
A Presidency, such as Penang had become, had statutorily to have a Court of Justice, and in July 1808 Sir Edmond Stanley arrived to be the first Recorder. To celebrate, the rich Achinese merchant Syed Hussein gave yet another ‘splendid entertainment’. He had just founded and funded a large mosque for his compatriots. A couple of years later he demonstrated his good citizenship even further, ‘to evince his gratitude to the Government under which he has lived for many years’, by donating ‘a large sum’ to liquidate its debts. It was getting progressively harder to consider supporting the friendly, needy, and equally Anglophile current ruler of Acheen.
Before the advent of Sir Edmond, the law had been administered somewhat ineffectively, since 1801, by a John Dickens. He went off to Calcutta in a huff, resenting the fact that he had not been appointed Registrar, and angry because Raffles (who had added Licenser of the Press to his duties) did not allow a farewell address from the merchants of Prince of Wales Island, and his own gracious reply, to be printed in the Gazette. Olivia loathed Dickens: ‘He is really the most impudent, ignorant, affected envious ungrateful old Jay I ever heard of.’ Added to this unpleasantness, Sir Edmond and Governor Macalister were not getting on. Raffles again came forward and, as he put it, ‘voluntarily acted as Regular Clerk to the Crown’ i.e. as Registrar; and ‘stepping between them judiciously I am confident that I stopped a breach that might never have been healed up.’ Sir Edmond expressed his gratitude for this, as also for Mr Raffles’ ‘cheerful disposition’.
In the letter to John Leyden in which she excoriated Dickens, Olivia told him that her sister-in-law Maryanne – ‘pretty Mrs Thompson’ as Leyden called her – had ‘a beautiful little girl, two months old yesterday, and has been living on the Hill for the past month – did I tell you about our Hill?’
Both the Raffleses and the Thompsons had country retreats, atap bungalows about nine kilometres out of Georgetown, not far from Captain Light’s Suffolk House in the lee of Penang Hill. The Raffles house was at the foot of the smaller Mount Erskine, named for a long-standing civil servant in the settlement, which they peremptorily renamed Mount Olivia. ‘I have cleared my Hill,’ Raffles wrote in March 1809, seeking horticultural advice from his local friend David Brown, ‘and intend planting 3,000 coffee plants.’
Maryanne and her husband on Mount St Mary were close by, and had two more babies in quick succession. A steward of Quintin Dick Thompson’s, Edward Robarts, recorded a party at Mount St Mary: ‘After dinner in rotation tea and coffee were served up and about ten o’clock the Merry Dance led off, afterwards several songs were sung. The Boyne Water was sung by Mrs Raffles in high stile, the Banks of the Dee on the German flute by Captain Phillips and sung to by Mrs Thompson, the sweetness of her voice would melt a heart of adamant… The evening was spent in the most agreeable and pleasant manner.’
Now the Raffleses were to have a new town house, as Olivia told Leyden. ‘Mr R. is building a pretty brick house on the beach, which I hope will be finished in eight to ten weeks.’ Before he had left Penang for Malacca, Raffles commissioned this house on the seaward side of a new carriage road along the north beach, outside Georgetown. They named the house Runnymede.
As the Prince of Wales Island Gazette reported in January 1809: ‘The North Beach will, ere long, assume a very handsome appearance, when the several elegant villas, now building, are finished. The new buildings commence with Runnymede, the property of Mr Raffles, and adjoining are the grounds of Mr Hobson, Mr Robinson, Mr Erskine [whose name had just been erased from a small mountain], Captain Douglas, Mr Pearson [the former Acting Governor], and Mr Laurence, on which houses are erected.’ Runnymede was long, low and spacious, brick-built over an open, arcaded ground floor, with louvred window-shutters and carved balconies.
In November of the same year the Gazette noted, under the lightly ironic heading ‘The Beau Monde and the Gaieties of Penang’, that Mr Robinson had ‘a select party of friends to dinner at his mansion on the North Beach,’ followed by ‘a most elegant fete’ given by Mr Clubley, who had also built on the North Beach. ‘The dancing began between 8 and 9, and Mr Clubley had the honour of leading Mrs Raffles down the first dance, to the tune of “Off She Goes”.’ Olivia was now in her late thirties. A midshipman on a vessel anchored in Penang observed Mr Raffles coming aboard ‘with a rather elderly lady, dressed rather fantastically, a good and clever creature, and one already celebrated in song – ‘Rosa’ [he meant Thomas Moore’s ‘Nona’] of a certain little bard. Ye gods! Well, anything but Rosa! How well your poetic flights thus point to a discrepancy!’ The young are cruel.
William Robinson, the civil servant who gave the select dinner party, became Raffles’ most ‘intimate friend’. When he finally left Penang, he told Leyden that William Robinson was ‘the only friend I leave behind… if ever we establish our Eastern Empire he must not be left out – he possesses every local qualification with the best heart and not the worst head in the world.’
This is eavesdropping on the dream of an ‘Eastern Empire’ which Raffles and Leyden were privately projecting. There was a twitch of the fantasist in both of them. Raffles was to pursue the vision, but Penang was not the right place for a visionary. In spite of the parties and the pretty new houses, the Presidency of Prince of Wales Island was failing in its purpose. Trade was good and fortunes were being made by private traders. But the point of the expansion was to develop the island as a naval arsenal and a regional centre of shipbuilding, and this was not happening. Skilled labour, and even the timber for ship-building, had not materialised, whether by bad management or a miscalculation of local resources. In 1810, the failure was faced up to, and the ship-building programme transferred to Trincomalee on the east coast of Ceylon.
Pepper prices were falling. There was a bad fire in Georgetown in March 1808, when much of the wooden, atap-roofed housing stock was lost. Much property in the town was up for sale, and much sick leave was taken, including by William Clubley, Assistant Secretary to Government and therefore to Secretary Raffles. Penang, with its now pointlessly enlarged establishment, was costing the Company more than it was bringing in. Raffles was among the first to realise that there was not much future for Penang, nor for anyone who got stuck there.
Apart from the satisfaction gained from being indispensable, there was little pleasure or profit in his situation, and Olivia complained to Leyden: ‘He has taken the enormous task of Registrar and without fee or present reward – Secretary without assistant, or any one who can afford him the least possible assistance – the consequence begins to shew itself very soon – he is ill and quite worn – and I dread another long lingering fit of illness such as he had last, which was brought on by intense labour of mind and body.’
He did become ill again, with jaundice, and again sought permission to take a short sea voyage. He and Olivia went straight back to Malacca, for two and a half months this time, staying with Farquhar in an apartment on the upper floor of Government House. Isabella Bird lodged there all alone in 1879, and left a description of great arched corridors leading to large dim rooms with floors of Dutch red tiles, blue-washed walls, whitewashed rafters, and ‘ancient beds of portentous height’. There had been more animation when Raffles stayed there, but nothing much else would have changed.
Government House was built into the lower slopes of the Hill. It was several storeys high on the facade facing the town, but the back was single-storey, with open tiled arcades extending into a garden where Farquhar kept a menagerie of native birds in aviaries and wild animals in cages. According to the munshi Abdullah, Farquhar had a leopard, a wild cat, a wild dog, a porcupine, a cassowary, various kinds of monkeys, and a tiger, which he shot dead after it mauled a Chinese carpenter repairing his cage. The tiger was then skinned and stuffed.
Farquhar was interested in all branches of natural history. Many Malayan f
lora and fauna were unknown in the West, let alone properly described and classified. Farquhar sent specimens of birds and animals to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, and plants to the Calcutta Botanic Garden. He had also, ever since his arrival in Malacca, been building up a collection of coloured natural-history drawings commissioned from local Chinese artists. These were exquisite in execution, if not always scientifically satisfactory.
John Leyden had opened Raffles’ eyes to the intrinsic interest of the world of linguistic and cultural scholarship and to the added value that published research might lend to a career. Now William Farquhar opened Raffles’ eyes to the fascination of zoology and botany – and to a new field for his pursuit of excellence, and of excelling. Natural history was to become his main preoccupation, and collecting a part of his claim to fame. He learned from Farquhar, as he had learned from Leyden.
Raffles and Farquhar also mulled over again the mistake of dismantling the Fort at Malacca, and the good reasons for retaining both the settlement and its defences.
Raffles and Olivia arrived back in Penang on 29 October 1808, and Raffles produced a long report on Malacca only two days later. It must have been written or at least drafted in Malacca, fuelled by discussion with Farquhar. He passed his report to Governor Macalister to be sent on to the Board of Control and the Court of Directors in London.
It was another strong appeal, paralleling Farquhar’s previous memo, for the retention of a garrison in Malacca as complementary to Penang. He did not refer in his report to Farquhar’s contribution, or acknowledge Farquhar as the main source of the general arguments, which were much the same, though he deferred briefly to Farquhar’s specialist expertise: ‘It does not fall within my line to submit the actual advantages of Malacca as to its natural defences… They can be professionally pointed out by Captain Farquhar, the Engineer officer now in charge of the Government.’ He recommended that Captain Farquhar be authorised to lay out ‘a small sum’ for the repair of some defensive works, and the erection of others.
Raffles’ ideas were not always initially his own; and neither were his discoveries nor even his enthusiasms. But having adopted them, he picked them up and ran, either carrying them forward himself – as others, by temperament or circumstances, would or could not – or enabling those with the necessary qualities. In this, Raffles did what entrepreneurs and managers always do. He did not have a magpie mind, picking up bright bits and pieces. He had a mind like a magnet, drawing in what caught his imagination and taking it further.
In the case of Malacca, Farquhar’s views on the Fort were known. His memo was on file in Penang, Calcutta and London, so there could be no question of Raffles’ report masquerading as a new view. But with his minimal reference to Captain Farquhar, he seems to be limiting Farquhar’s contribution to his engineering expertise at the expense of his informed geopolitical opinions. Raffles was also assuming the seniority of the civil branch over the military which, in the Company hierarchy, was correct, though a constant source of friction. The Secretary to Government in Penang had more clout than the Commandant of Malacca.
Governor Norman Macalister duly forwarded Raffles’ report to London. It was a whole year before there was a response – which was highly favourable. ‘We have derived much satisfaction from the perusal of Mr Raffles’ report, and we desire that you will communicate to that gentleman that we entertain a favourable sense of the talents he has evinced upon that occasion.’
This was a high point in Raffles’ standing with those in power at India House. For a short period he was their golden boy. A copy of his Malacca report was sent to the Governor-General Lord Minto in Calcutta in February 1809, with Governor Macalister’s endorsement. Minto agreed that it would be ‘highly inexpedient’ to withdraw the garrison from Malacca. The destruction of the fortifications at Malacca was countermanded, though the damage had already been done.
Damage had also been done to the relationship between Raffles and Farquhar, which escalated into torturous hostility, to the detriment of both their reputations years later in Singapore. When Sophia Raffles published her Memoir of her husband in 1830, Farquhar wrote a letter to the Asiatic Journal protesting against many of her judgments, among them the statement that it was only when her husband’s representations on Malacca were received, that the orders for the destruction of the Fort were countermanded. ‘Now I happened to be in command of Malacca at the period alluded to,’ wrote Farquhar, and ‘the truth was’ that he himself had sent a petition to Government against the destruction, ‘which petition was recommended by me to the most favourable consideration of Government.’ Unfortunately and unfairly, the truth also was that it was Raffles’ report and not Farquhar’s that had made the difference.
Submitting Raffles’ Malacca report to the Court of Directors, Governor Macalister drew their attention to the ‘unwearied zeal and assiduity with which he has since the formation of the establishment devoted his talents to the furtherance of the Company’s interests.’ (‘Zeal’ was the ultimate praise word, implying commitment, energy, enterprise.) ‘The situation of Secretary,’ continued Macalister, ‘affords facilities for the person holding it of acquiring a better knowledge of your affairs here than any other officer below Council; and I can with truth say, that Mr Raffles’ abilities and general conduct give him a right to my recommendation… I understand that he has submitted to his friends an application to be provisionally appointed to the first vacancy, and I shall be happy if my recommendation may weigh with the Honourable Court in his behalf.’
Since Governor Macalister on his own admission found it hard to frame a letter, the likelihood is that this one was drafted by the person to whom it referred. Raffles was looking for a transfer, and promotion. Meanwhile he took on yet another commitment (unpaid), as one of the first three Commissioners of the new Court of Requests for the recovery of small debts. He wrote to William Brown Ramsay in England that he feared his health would not permit him to carry on in this way for long. ‘My constitution was always delicate; with care I have no doubt it could last as long here as in England. Without it, I am afraid they will work the willing horse to death.’ And again, to William Brown Ramsay: ‘A Secretary is, in general the organ, but in some places the very soul.’ He felt he was neither. ‘You can guess the situation. The arrogance that a temporary exaltation has given to some is scarce to be borne with, except by such a patient body as mine.’ He himself was experiencing the kind of ‘temporary exaltation’ he diagnosed in others. His multiple offices and his ‘zeal’ did not endear him to all in Penang.
Change for the better came through the Governor-General in Calcutta, Lord Minto. Raffles did not know Minto, but John Leyden did. Leyden talked about his friend, and impressed upon the Governor-General the importance of Raffles’ work on Malayan subjects, reinforcing the approving noises about Raffles’ talents which emanated from India House. Raffles sent Leyden a paper he wrote on the ‘Malayan Nation’, with special reference to what he had learned from people he talked with in Malacca – local traders, and tribal people from the dense forests of the interior and from isolated Malay kampongs. Leyden showed the paper to Minto ‘who was greatly pleased and desired me to say he should be gratified in receiving immediately from yourself any communications respecting the eastern parts of a similar nature.’
The paper was submitted to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta; and Minto praised publicly Raffles’ project of translating ‘the Malay Laws’ in an address to the College of Fort William. Leyden sent Raffles a printed report of the address, which was drafted by Leyden himself, and Olivia replied: ‘Who but you could, who but your dear self would have remembered my beloved and every way worthy husband in the elegant and honourable manner in which we saw his name. Ah my dear friend I shed many grateful tears on the paper, as did your friend. The little paltry wretches here were astonished and nearly maddened by envy… ’
Another lesson Raffles had now learnt was the importance, and the relative ease, of going straight to the top. The price t
o be paid was the resentment of those less gifted or enterprising.
Maryanne’s husband Quintin Dick Thompson died on 9 June 1809 after just three days’ illness, aged twenty-six. He joined Francis Light, Philip Dundas and many others in the tree-shaded Protestant cemetery.
Perhaps to comfort her, Maryanne’s two elder sisters, Harriet and Leonora Raffles, made the voyage out from England, and the following year joined the household at Runnymede, as probably Maryanne and her three little children did too.
Thompson had been Acting Naval Agent in Penang. Raffles, as his brother-in-law’s executor, and with the acquiescence of Governor Macalister and of Rear-Admiral William O’Brien Drury of the Royal Navy in Penang, took the job over. The post was unpaid, but its holder took commission on all transactions. The immediate and only reason why Raffles was authorised to occupy the position was to sign off Thompson’s accounts.
But Raffles held on to the job. Henry Pearson, who had disliked Raffles ever since he backed Macalister as Governor in preference to him, lodged a lengthy written complaint to Council on behalf of the naval establishment. Mr Raffles should never have taken a situation ‘so entirely incompatible with that of a confidential Secretary to the Government, and in violation of the positive orders of the Honourable the Court of Directors… I did not, for a moment, imagine that he should wish or expect to retain the situation, but that he was merely closing the accounts of his brother-in-law.’
Raffles himself, as Secretary, had to sign the reply on behalf of the Governor and Council, conveying that ‘your intimation of Mr Secretary Raffles being in possession of the office of Naval Agent at this Port is the first that has reached them on this subject, and the Board now cannot sufficiently express their regret that such an irregularity has tacitly been permitted to exist for even a single day.’ In permitting Mr Raffles to assume ‘the temporary charge of the office of Naval Agent,’ the Governor was aware that ‘such indulgence in no way sanctioned arrangements unconnected with the accounts of his brother-in-law.’
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