Raffles

by Victoria Glendinning

  The truce did not hold. In February 1813 Gillespie resigned as Commandant of the Forces ‘in the heat of passion’, and then took offence that his resignation was so readily accepted. He had assumed that the Supreme Government would prefer to see Raffles off the island than himself. Lord Minto’s son Captain George Elliot arrived in Java in the summer, bringing the news that Major-General Gillespie would be relieved by General Sir Miles Nightingall. Elliot was charged by his father Lord Minto to bring about a face-saving reconciliation between Raffles and Gillespie.

  In his memoir, written fifty years later, George Elliot made his derogatory remarks about Raffles, describing him as ‘full of trick and not so full of the truth as was desirable, and he was the most nervous man I ever knew.’ Gillespie, he saw as ‘an Irishman, a gentleman in all his feelings, but a very peppery one,’ who ‘thoroughly despised the Governor… Gillespie was my friend,’ recorded Elliot, ‘and I would have done anything for him… Raffles looked to me as a friend, and his having been appointed Governor by my father, I was anxious to assist him out of the foolish scrapes he was constantly getting into with Gillespie – for they were usually both in the wrong.’ Gillespie was ‘excellent as a second in command, but unfit for a chief, even as a military man, and still less calculated to take part in a civil Government.’

  As for Raffles, he ‘was a very able man with his pen, and understood the habits and peculiarities of the Eastern people, but he was unfit to govern and had the fatal misfortune of never inspiring Europeans with respect.’ Ironically, Raffles inspired Captain Elliot’s father, Lord Minto, not only with respect but with affection.

  On the occasion of Minto’s recall to England – a blow for Raffles – he was raised from a barony to an earldom, and became Earl of Minto and Viscount Melgund. His replacement, Lord Moira, was the Prince Regent’s crony; the Prince had leaned on the Board of Control. Minto was concerned about Raffles’ future – ‘a subject… deeply and sensibly interesting to my wishes and feelings’ – in the event of Java’s probable reversal to the Dutch. The Resident of Bencoolen (Bengkulu) in West Sumatra was retiring, and Minto offered to do everything he could to secure the position for Raffles.

  Lord Moira was to be arriving in Calcutta prematurely, with Minto still in post, which was humiliating for him as well as ‘occasioning a great embarrassment and anxiety about you,’ as he wrote to Raffles. Minto feared there might be difficulty keeping the position in Bencoolen on hold until Raffles was forced to leave Java. So while he still could, in June 1813, Minto formally appointed Raffles to the Residency of Fort Marlborough at Bencoolen ‘to take effect from your being relieved of your present office or resigning it; the allowance to commence from the time of your departure from Java.’

  ‘I am prepared and ready to meet a change whenever it may come,’ Raffles wrote to William Brown Ramsay after receiving this assurance. ‘At Bencoolen I am promised the chief authority, if removed hence; at Penang my standing in the service would insure me a seat in Council, but I confess that I should say farewell to Java with a heavy heart.’

  Captain Elliot brought with him to Java a portrait of the Earl of Minto to hang in Government House, done in Calcutta by George Chinnery – full length in full robes, his coronet on a cushion. It was a rather poor painting, and smallish. Before he left India, Minto sent to the Lieutenant-Governor and Council another Chinnery portrait of himself, ‘as large as life, and so superior as a work of art, that it may be deemed worthy of the distinguished command under which it has been performed.’ As for the smaller one, he requested ‘that Mr Raffles will be so good as to accept it as a memorial of our joint labours, and as a token of my personal esteem and affection.’

  Raffles took the small portrait with him when he left Java. He presented to Minto a tenth-century stone slab with carved inscriptions on both sides which Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mackenzie’s team of surveyors had came across near Malang in East Java. It weighed between three and four tons and was two metres tall. ‘With the consent and by the assistance of the Native Regent from Malang,’ Mackenzie had it carted the forty miles to Surabaya, whence it was shipped to Calcutta. Minto, delighted, told Raffles that ‘I shall be very much tempted to mount this Javan rock upon our Minto craigs, that it may tell eastern tales of us, long after our heads lie under other stones.’

  Captain Elliot did bring about a superficial reconciliation between Raffles and Gillespie, who were briefly allied around this time in monstering Captain Robison over the Palembang fiasco. In late August 1813 Gillespie gave a dinner for Raffles and his staff, ‘and to a person unacquainted with preceding events these two characters would have appeared a second Castor and Pollux.’ A great deal of wine was drunk, continued Travers in his journal, and ‘a most unreserved conversation took place between the two Chiefs, the result of which was reiterated professions of unlimited friendship and goodwill… I fancy few of the number witnessed before so drunken a scene.’

  Gillespie embarked for Bengal on the evening of 12 October. Lieutenant-Governor Raffles and the Lady Governess were at Buitenzorg, Colonel Gillespie having expressed a wish to ‘go off quietly’.

  He did not go off quietly. It was an emotional occasion. ‘All the staff accompanied him to the beach where he parted from them in tears.’ Captain Travers had said his private farewell earlier, at the departing hero’s house where the wine flowed freely yet again. ‘He took me by both hands and swore eternal friendship towards me and left me in a flood of tears.’ Raffles’ close friend William Robinson accompanied Major-General Gillespie on board and had a long talk with him on deck. The worry was, what was Gillespie going to say or do in Calcutta? Robinson told Travers that Gillespie declared his ‘attachment’ to Raffles and ‘his positive determination to support every measure of his administration.’

  Three days later Gillespie’s replacement, General Nightingall, arrived with his wife on the Nearchus. Everyone liked them. There was a whirl of welcoming parties.

  Travelling on the Troubridge to Bengal with Gillespie was the wife of the sacked Secretary to Government, Charles Blagrave. If Blagrave himself sailed too, his name was not on the passenger list, though he has to be credited, or discredited, along with Gillespie, for what happened after the ship reached India. At some point, they got together and compared notes.

  Major William Robison sailed for Calcutta not long afterwards, with despatches for the Supreme Government documenting the charges against him about his activities in Palembang. Robison too was consumed with resentment – against Gillespie for sure, and as much again against Raffles and his administration.

  Gillespie reached Calcutta in mid-December 1814, a few days before the Earl of Minto sailed for Madras. From there Minto sailed for England on the Hussar, captained by George Elliot, and along with his other son John, his two daughters-in-law, his grandchildren, a couple of the young boys he had freed from slavery in Malacca, a reputed small fortune, and the great stone.

  Raffles and Olivia were away from Batavia for nearly two months from mid-November 1813. They sailed up the coast, with William Robinson as Raffles’ Secretary and two ADCs, to Samarang, where the Flints were. News reached the Gazette of continual ‘public breakfasts, dinners, balls and races…and the happy guests only quit one scene of pleasure to become actors in another.’ In Batavia, good General Nightingall was left in charge

  Raffles, Olivia and their suite went from Samarang in December 1813 back to Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Three miles outside Surakarta, they were met by the civil and military authorities despatched by the Susuhunan, who welcomed them to his kraton with public ceremonies, refreshments (handed round by female slaves), compliments and toasts, volleys of musketry, and parades of gun-carriages and ceremonial spearmen. The day ended at the Residency House with all the European civil and military respectables.

  Hospitality swung back and forth between kraton and Residency throughout the visit. The Lieutenant-Governor, on horseback, inspected his host’s troops. The British flag flew over the Fort. The Lady
Governess held a drawing-room at which was performed a Javanese comedy ‘greatly enjoyed by those with the language to understand the plot and dialogue.’ The Susuhunan and his lady – whom the Gazette called the Emperor and Empress – came in the evening for a firework display; ‘two sets of dancing girls belonging to the Emperor gratified the company with a very excellent specimen of Javanese dancing; and then a conjuring show.’ The highlight of the visit was the standard royal entertainment: a fight between a tiger, or tigers, and a buffalo. These contests went on for hours, with intervals for refreshments, and often culminated in massed spearmen putting a cowed and tormented tiger to death.

  It was the same at Yogyakarta which, eighteen months on, showed few scars from the sacking. A reception party with an army of spearmen escorted Raffles and his suite up Malioboro to the kraton. There were toasts and compliments, gamelan bands, gun salutes, exchanges of gifts and reciprocal hospitalities; they were led through subterranean passages to the Water Palace, and endured another tiger fight. It was reported that the Lieutenant-Governor and the Lady Governess ‘supported the fatiguing etiquette of the day with admirable spirit and dignity.’ Raffles, describing tiger fights in The History of Java, observed that the buffalo almost always won: the Javans ‘are accustomed to compare the buffalo to the Javan and the tiger to the European, and it may be readily imagined with what eagerness they look to the success of the former.’

  Raffles and Olivia returned to Batavia and to more trouble.

  Chapter 7

  Theatre of Shadows

  Java 1814–1816

  On his return Raffles spent an intense fortnight composing a massive Minute for the Supreme Government in Calcutta, dated 11 February 1814, explaining his land-rent reforms and stressing their positive consequences. He was setting out his stall for the new Governor-General, Lord Moira. He did not know Moira: in his mid-fifties, distinctly ugly, born into the Irish Protestant Ascendency and with a distinguished military career behind him.

  Moira’s main aim in India was to make enough money to clear his debts. A dedicated Freemason, his arrival in Calcutta saw a flurry of resurgent activity in the several Masonic Lodges. Minto too was a Freemason, and before he left Java he initiated Raffles into a small select Lodge, ‘Virtutis et Artis Amici’ on a coffee estate near Buitenzorg belonging to the Lodge’s Master, Nicholas Engelhard. In July 1813 Raffles was ‘raised’ to the third degree of Freemasonry in the Lodge of Friendship at Surabaya, and ‘perfected’ before he left Java in the Rose Croix Chapter in the Lodge ‘La Vertueuse’ in Batavia. The top Dutch in Batavia were all Masons. The Brotherhood did not mean much to Raffles except in that it was a private ‘club’ that no public man could ignore.

  Lord Moira had no Brotherhood sympathy with Raffles and Java – a ‘drain’, as he wrote in his journal for 1 February 1814: ‘Instead of the surplus revenue which, for giving importance to the conquest, was asserted to be forthcoming from that possession, it could not be maintained without the Treasury, as well as the troops of Bengal. Just now, in the height of our exigencies, we receive an intimation from the Lieutenant-Governor that he cannot pay his provincial corps unless we allow him 50,000 Spanish dollars monthly in addition to the prodigious sums which we already contribute to his establishment.’

  John Palmer, the know-all merchant prince, became very thick with Moira and was briefing against Raffles, writing to the naval commander Sir Home Popham on 10 February: ‘What right Lord Minto had to nominate Mr Raffles prospectively, and therefore keep the office [Bencoolen] vacant (already one year) indefinitely, nothing but the calm stoical impudence of his country can determine. Lord Moira must be an ass – as indeed I believe he is – if he does not spurn such presumption.’

  William Robinson gave a ball for Olivia’s forty-third birthday on 18 February 1814. Just then, news reached Raffles that there was spiteful talk in Calcutta about his participation in the Government land-sales. He spent the whole day of the birthday party writing a Minute setting out the details of his withdrawal from all interest in the properties, in consequence of anonymous ‘insinuations’ being made ‘prejudicial to my public character.’

  Worse was to come. A week later a ship from Bengal brought him a blue packet, tied with red tape and sealed. It contained what amounted to the impeachment of Lieutenant-Governor Raffles by Major-General Gillespie, which had been laid before Lord Moira. Gillespie did not act alone. Charles Blagrave abetted him, and gave evidence to the Supreme Council.

  Shocked, Raffles called Travers into his office and together they went through the charges of maladministration and corruption. Gillespie questioned the efficacy of the land-rent reforms, of the currency manipulations, and the private motives for the land-sales; also the impropriety of McQuoid’s plurality of appointments, and the profits to individuals of coffee plantations – previously a Government monopoly – on the sold lands.

  Raffles had committed no crime. There was no rule against a Company official acquiring property. But it was bad practice for the Government authority who was selling the land, and laid down the system of valuations and auctions, and drew up the conditions of sale, to become himself an investor – and secretly. It was, as his superiors informed him, ‘a grave indiscretion.’ Gillespie implied that by means of private contracts and low valuations, Raffles enriched his friends. The well-heeled Dutch were in fact the only people, apart from some Chinese, who could afford to buy (and though not prohibited, the Chinese were not encouraged); and the whole purpose of the land-sales was to raise enough cash for the Government to dispense with the ‘toilet paper’ money.

  Raffles spent the early part of March 1814 putting together his answers to Gillespie’s charges. They were as good as the case allowed. He made one self-cheapening gesture, throwing in a gratuitous mention of Gillespie’s having procured a girl from the orphan school in Samarang. True or false, the accusation was backed by no evidence.

  There was always a party at Buitenzorg in March for Raffles’ and Olivia’s wedding anniversary, and that year there were eighty people round the dinner table, followed by a play, and dancing. ‘Mr Raffles was but little amongst us being so much engaged with his despatches,’ recorded Travers. This party, like her birthday party, cannot have been much fun for Olivia.

  It was agreed in Council that Charles Assey, as Secretary to Government, should travel to Bengal to deliver Raffles’ defence to the Supreme Government in person; and that Captain Travers should sail for England to deliver the same to the Court of Directors ‘in order to make them acquainted with a true and fair statement of the case, as well as to meet any representations that might have been privately sent by Gillespie.’ Raffles, on saying goodbye to Travers, ‘took me by the hand with tears in his eyes…“You have my life, my honour in your hands.”’ Travers’ ship put in briefly at Samarang, where he found Alexander Hare from whom he learned ‘what I had always suspected, that he was anything but Mr Raffles’ friend.’ Hare asked Travers to make the case with the Court of Directors for the retention of his position in Banjarmasin in Borneo, in the event of the reversal of Java to the Dutch. The Court of Directors would prove supremely uninterested in the issue.

  Major Robison too was in Calcutta, facing the investigation into what Raffles called his ‘disobedience of orders and dereliction of duty’ in Palembang. Robison knocked out a paper entitled ‘Some Account of the General Manner of Proceeding of the Government of Java’ and presented it to the Supreme Council, whence a copy found its way to Raffles’ desk. It was a splenetic attack on Raffles himself – his extravagance and self-promotion; the ‘pomp and parade’ of the Lieutenant-Governor and the Lady Governess; her exigent requirements and spoilt behaviour; the opulence of their ‘palaces’; the fifth-rate adventurers they kept around them and rewarded with prime jobs. The tone was so intemperate as to be a little mad.

  Raffles’ ripostes were almost as intemperate, and entirely contemptuous. As he wrote to the Supreme Government, the Lieutenant-Governor could not appear as a pauper. But howev
er crazed Robison’s outpourings, given Java’s financial straits an accusation of profligacy was the last thing Raffles needed. Everything was forwarded to the Court of Directors in London. Throughout the autumn of 1814 Raffles grappled with ‘the extraordinary representations of Major-General Gillespie and Major Robison.’ He was prepared to consign Major Robison’s rant to oblivion as evidence of ‘a disordered mind and unsound heart’ but not Gillespie’s. Even John Palmer said that ‘Gillespie’s violence renders his testimony as suspicious as Mr R’s integrity.’

  Gillespie’s charges included complaints about Raffles’ attitude to the size and maintenance of the military establishment. General Nightingall, on the other hand, was recommending the abolition of the Gun Carriage Manufactory and the demolition of ‘old and useless barracks.’ The Light Cavalry and the heavy artillery, the most expensive items, were ‘perfectly useless’ since they could go nowhere except on the Military Road. Nightingall recommended the retention only of infantry equipped with light field pieces, and 150 Cavalry and Hussars on ‘ponies of the country’ for escort duty with the Lieutenant-Governor. By September 1814 the reductions were so extreme that Nightingall judged no more could be done without incurring ‘positive detriment’.

  Major Robison was in due course acquitted of the charges made against him. Charles Blagrave was appointed Collector of Rungpore, an opium-producing area of Bengal.

  While Raffles was fighting to save his reputation, one of his most significant projects in Java, the uncovering and recording of ancient temples and antiquities, was going forward under his direction. Raffles had first heard of Borobudur when visiting Engelhard in Samarang; his garden was full of ancient stones. Maimed and headless statues lay half-buried on the roadsides and in the ditches of Central Java. Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie and his main collaborator Captain George Baker had surveyed and sketched the temples at Prambanan in 1812; Dr Horsfield too knew Prambanan and Borobudur. In 1814 Mackenzie, Baker, and a Dutch engineer, H.C.Cornelius, undertook a major investigation.