Raffles

by Victoria Glendinning

  At home in England capital punishment was a cruel public spectacle. Cousin Thomas went out of his way to attend a beheading in London on 1 May of that same year, 1820: ‘This morning five of the conspirators of Cato Street were hanged, and their heads cut off, at the Old Bailey. The mob immense, but no riot; not many soldiers there, St Sepulchre’s Church railing was stove in by the pressure of the mob, and several people hurt, but none killed.’ Then Cousin Thomas trotted off to hear a sermon at St Bride’s.

  Raffles described the Batta way of disposing of one’s elderly parents. They were suspended by their hands from the horizontal branch of a tree, and when they could hang on no longer, and fell, they were sliced and eaten. He told the Duchess about a neighbourly modification by which other people’s old parents, not one’s own, were disposed of in this manner.

  He was not back at Bencoolen until mid-March 1820 after an absence, to no good purpose, of nearly six months. Phillips officially took over as Governor of Penang on 1 March. Raffles’ vain bid was a salutary reality check. He brought with him on the Indiana Maryanne and William Flint and their little son Charley, with Dr William Jack and Captain Robert Hull, one of Sophia’s younger brothers. Sophia’s third child, a second boy, was born on 21 May. He was christened Stamford Marsden, but they called him Cooksey.

  Major Farquhar, due for leave when he agreed to take on Singapore, said he would take up the leave in 1820. Raffles accepted this, and appointed Travers to take over as Resident and Commandant. Flint was going to Singapore too, to be Master Attendant and Storekeeper. Farquhar wished Raffles himself would come, ‘from a conviction of the public benefit likely to accrue in the present state of the rising colony by your personal presence, even if for ever so limited a time,’ in order to ‘strengthen by every possible means the present ardour of feeling, increasing confidence and attachment towards the British Government and Nation.’ It was Sir Stamford Raffles who had the real authority, and the glamour, however well-liked Farquhar was. Farquhar acknowledged with pride the success of Singapore, ‘the extraordinary rise of which from a small fishing village into a considerable commercial port in the short period of fourteen months surpasses perhaps anything of the kind in Eastern records.’

  For whatever reason, Farquhar announced he was postponing his departure until the end of August 1821, though he would welcome Captain Travers and family as his guests in the interim, and Travers could help out in the Pay Department. So when Travers arrived, he learned he was to have a long wait before he took office, and a dreary job. What’s more, Farquhar did not go at the end of August. He did not go that year at all, nor the next year, nor the next. Travers did not wait that long. He packed it in and took his family home to Ireland.

  Nevertheless the months Travers spent in Singapore were a revelation: ‘A plain on the sea beach affords ample space for the troops. At the rear stands a hill commanding a most extensive and beautiful prospect.’ Fresh water was available ‘wherever you please to sink a well.’ The population had now passed the 6,000 mark. Ships and boats arrived every day, loading and unloading goods, attracted by the exemption from port duties, ‘a busy, bustling scene’. Maryanne and her son Charles – ‘Charley Boy’ – arrived to join William Flint, and ‘we were constantly together.’ Travers sailed for Europe with his family in December 1820, not before sending a memo to the Supreme Government seeking compensation for the disappointment and expenses incurred.

  Raffles sent Maryanne potatoes to plant in Singapore, and ‘several cases of Nutmeg plants which I hope will be the foundation of a valuable plantation at Singapore for Charley Boy.’ And then, a PS: ‘Elton Hamond has blown his brains out.’

  He did it on New Year’s Eve 1819. In a letter left for Crabb Robinson, Hamond pleaded ‘not guilty’ to self-murder. ‘If anything is a man’s own, it is surely his life… Go on, be as merry as you can. If you can be religious, good. But don’t sink the man in the Christian.’ Raffles’ mother, with her daughter Ann, went to lodge in Margate on the Kent coast with Elton’s mother, her sister Elizabeth. ‘Remember me kindly to my Aunt Hamond,’ wrote Raffles. ‘The melancholy fate of Elton must have affected her and god knows she has had her troubles – some she deserved but Heaven in mercy will forgive her.’

  He had the grace not to mention that the melancholy fate of Elton put paid to the second edition of The History of Java. Elton held all the materials.

  Raffles’ worry about his book sharpened when he received in Bencoolen, in early 1821, a copy of John Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago, published the previous year in three volumes, with maps and engravings. He wrote to Cousin Thomas in that state of nervous agitation peculiar to authors faced with a new work on their own subject. The second edition of The History of Java ‘would certainly have superseded the necessity for Crawfurd’s work – at least to a considerable extent.’ Crawfurd’s book ‘will I dare say run through a second edition, and as it is written in a very popular style will I doubt not have a successful run.’ It had ‘all the characteristics of the author, that is to say, considerable talent, an imposing manner, much assurance and assumption, and very little principle. It does not contain one fact that is new to me and most of the reasoning and conclusions are founded on partial views. He has laid himself open to very serious attack by stating only as many facts and just such facts as suit his own theory and has either glossed over or omitted the others altogether.’ He concluded it would be better to postpone his own second edition until he was back in England, and concentrate on collecting material for it.

  Raffles did not review Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archepelago – or not exactly. The Quarterly Review, a Tory journal founded by the young publisher John Murray, carried in February 1823 a late notice of Crawfurd’s book combined with remarks on the first volumes of Proceedings of the Agricultural Society established in Sumatra, and on Malayan Miscellanies, both published in Bencoolen.

  The piece was written by John Barrow, who had been with Lord Macartney to China and was a Fellow of the Royal Society, which may be how Raffles knew him. It was not uncommon for the (always unsigned) articles in the Quarterly to be compiled by a regular contributor from ‘fragments’ supplied by an outside expert or interested party. The treatment of Crawfurd’s book is dismissive. The reviewer was ‘disappointed’ that ‘the author has not gone beyond those more civilised portions which had already been so fully treated, and has left the remainder nearly as much a blank as he found it.’ The book suffered from ‘insufficient data’ and a ‘pseudo-philosophical spirit.’

  Special criticism was made of Crawfurd’s argument for the inferiority of the ‘East Insular Negro…supported by the description of a solitary individual brought to England by Sir Stamford Raffles.’ (This was Dick, the Papuan boy.) In addition, Crawfurd had reproduced, without any acknowledgment, the drawing of this individual ‘so recently published in Sir Stamford Raffles’ History of Java.’

  Commenting next on the Proceedings of the Bencoolen Agricultural Society, Barrow informed the Quarterly’s readers: ‘It opens with a sensible and well-written address, by Sir T.S.Raffles, who probably will in no great length of time bring the districts of Sumatra contiguous to our settlement into the same state of prosperity as the island of Java enjoyed under his most judicious and active sway.’ The information on Sumatra ‘enables us to conclude that a great extension of European capital and enterprise is alone wanting to render Bencoolen a valuable and important possession.’ Raffles must have sent Barrow a pretty comprehensive packet of ‘fragments’; and a notice of Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago was transformed into a promotion of Sir Stamford Raffles.

  Anxiety remained that the expanding settlement in Singapore might have to be evacuated and handed over to the Dutch. The ‘paper war’ crackled on. The Dutch Ambassador in London, the British Ambassador in Brussels, Foreign Secretaries and statesmen in both countries, the Court of Directors, John Palmer, Lord Hastings, the Java Government – all wrote hundreds of pages of protests and
counter-protests, some on a lofty geopolitical level and some vituperative of Sir Stamford Raffles.

  Raffles had a few supporters in India House, among them Sophia’s brother-in-law Peter Auber, Charles Grant, and the hydrographer James Horsburgh FRS, who wrote to the Court of Directors that ‘the settlement of Singapore, lately established by Sir Stamford Raffles’ was in his opinion ‘of the utmost importance both in a political and commercial point of view to the British Empire.’ He wished this opinion to be communicated to Mr Canning. In fact the European powers had no intention of going to war over it, and the longer Singapore flourished, the less likely it was to be handed over.

  In Bencoolen, Raffles retreated into a private Garden of Eden, planting coffee and spice-gardens on his property, and an avenue of cloves up to his country house. Sophia and ‘the three pets’ were well, Leopold ‘the handsomest and the most princely little fellow that ever lived.’ The house, Permatang Balan, was airy and spacious: ‘We have a Noble Bed Room, 32 feet by 22 with a Verandah and Venetian doors all round.’ Sophia was ‘as big as the house.’ As he wrote to his mother, ‘My three little darlings are rapidly advancing to make way for a fourth – if we go on at this rate we shall require at least two ships to convey us home.’

  Sophia wrote in the Memoir that ‘the beauty, the retirement, the quiet domestic life, which he led in this happy retreat, soon restored his health.’ He rose at four, worked in the garden until breakfast, and wrote and studied until dinner. Then he walked in his plantations, ‘always accompanied by his children.’ ‘I have thrown politics far away,’ he told William Brown Ramsay. And to the Duchess, in June 1820: ‘My dear little Charlotte is, of all creatures, the most angelic I ever beheld…she has a soft heart, and is so full of mildness and gentleness that I fear she will have many trials to go through in this unfeeling world. Her brother Leopold, however, will take her part; for he has the spirit of a lion and is absolutely beautiful.’ At two and a half, Charlotte chattered in English, Hindustani or Malay, depending on her company.

  As for himself, ‘I am no longer striding from one side of India to another, overleaping mountains, or forming new countries – I am trying to do the best I can with a very old and nearly worn-out one.’ He did admit physical frailty to the Duchess; he did not think that he would last more than another two or three years in the Indies.

  Besides, there were ‘my dear little rogues’ to consider. Charlotte was advanced for her age. ‘In two or three years both her mind and body will require a colder climate.’ But to send the children home ‘as people usually send their children from this country, is out of the question.’ Raffles could not think of breaking up the family. He planned for them all to leave together when the time was right. ‘Leopold will also, in two or three years, have grown beyond my management, and it will be time to commence upon the rudiments of a better education than I can give him.’

  Sophia, in retrospect, thought ‘this was one of the most happy periods’ in Raffles’ whole life. She recalled how, after their dinner guests left, her husband was ‘fond of walking out with the Editor, and enjoying the delicious coolness of the night land-wind, and a moon whose beauty only those who have been in tropical climates can judge of.’

  He had attained his great object in the establishment of Singapore. He was on good terms with the natives and Chiefs in Bencoolen. He was taking a census of the settlement and its hinterland, and building new roads, and compiling a comparative vocabulary of the Nias and Batta languages. He had ordered an armed incursion into the offshore island of Nias, where slave auctions were attended by traders from all over the region, in the hope of suppressing the revolting trade. This was another of Raffles’ unauthorised initiatives which infuriated his employers in London, and for which he was censured. And Bencoolen showed no profit. ‘The charges of the establishment have, I fear, rather increased than otherwise,’ he confessed to Peter Auber in July 1820. But then ‘all changes and reforms’ are expensive, and although ‘all my plans lead to real and practical economy, some liberality in effecting them is indispensible in the nature of things.’

  The fourth baby, Ella Sophia, was born on Stamford Marsden Raffles’ first birthday. Sophia made a good recovery: ‘She seems so contented that I am almost afraid there is another on the stocks and yet god forbid!’ This letter to Maryanne, written 23 June 1821, has an undertow of foreboding. The Flints had complaints about Singapore. Raffles advised Maryanne and her husband to keep to themselves, and avoid quarrels. ‘I wish to God Farquhar himself would be more particular in his own conduct.’ Farquhar, now Lieutenant-Colonel Farquhar, was sending his reports to Bengal, with copies to Raffles, and not the other way round as instructed.

  ‘Leopold has been unwell for the past fortnight and is a good deal pulled down, but we think he is getting better…’

  Chapter 12

  ‘My Almost Only Child’

  Bencoolen and Singapore 1821–1823

  On 27 June 1821, the day fixed for baby Ella’s christening, their world changed. ‘Our house of joy has been turned into a house of mourning.’ The letters say it all.

  ‘How shall I tell you,’ Raffles wrote to Maryanne, ‘that we have lost our dear darling Leopold… This awful event has overwhelmed us with so much sorrow and misery, that it is impossible to write – tis a cruel stroke and of all my Children, to take the flower – is cruel indeed, and our hearts are ready to break. My whole Soul was wrapped up in him…Poor Sophia is heartbroken and wretched…the other children are well – but really they are nothing in the scale to our dear Leopold…My heart is too full to add more.’

  Two days later he added another letter to the packet to tell her that Captain Harry Auber, Sophia’s brother-in-law who was staying with them, had also died; and that ‘the loss of Sophia’s milk has proved really serious to our last babe – Ella – poor little thing, we hardly know whether it will live or die, we think it better today.’ Sophia was ‘getting about’ again but ‘far from being herself.’ Raffles himself had been ‘desperately ill’, his legs and feet swollen from the knees down. ‘I am however getting better and do not mean to die this bout.’

  By September, little Ella was now ‘one of the finest and most lovely children that ever was seen,’ but ‘poor Cooksey’ was teething and running a fever. ‘Charlotte is becoming a great girl and is wonderfully improving… On the whole, we are beginning to revive.’

  Not until November did Sophia manage to pick up her pen to tell her mother about the loss of Leopold. As for Raffles, ‘I am at this moment under the operation of mercury, and maintain but a crazy existence.’ Then on 20 December: ‘Our dear Charlotte was suddenly taken ill in the same manner as poor Leopold and for about a week we had no hope for her life.’ Against their principles, they were now set on despatching the three children home under the charge of Nurse Grimes. ‘Poor dears, we should not be justified in keeping [them] here longer at such risk merely for our own gratification.’ His handwriting was shaky.

  Charlotte remained ‘terribly pulled down and altered, no one would know her to be the same child.’ The plan was for the children and Nurse Grimes to leave in March, ‘so that you may rest assured we do not calculate upon any further increase in this country. What we may do at home [in England] is another thing – time enough for that.’ Sophia liked being pregnant, and Raffles was uxorious. Sophia was in reasonable health, but ‘for my part I am complaining [i.e. suffering] and fear I cannot stand the climate much longer… I hope Flint is making a collection of handsome Tortoiseshell for me. I don’t mind what may be the quantity, but the quality must be the best… If he falls in with a lot of cheap diamonds, I would like to have them.’ Raffles’ great fear was of the whole family landing up back in England with nothing to live on. None of them had ever been any good at saving.

  Then a ‘new and most unexpected affliction’ knocked them back. Fourth of January 1822, to Maryanne: ‘Last night robbed us of our last and only remaining Boy.’

  Cooksey’s teething troubles seemed be
tter, but then ‘he was seized with a violent bowel complaint.’ They had left him in ‘apparently a tranquil and reviving sleep,’ but were soon called up, ‘and in less than half an hour he was a corpse – poor fellow he now lies in his coffin.’ Charlotte was ‘a perfect skeleton without life and spirits and scarcely knows anyone. All our hopes depend on our being able to get her off early for England’ with baby Ella, but they still had to wait two or three months for the arrival of the Borneo. ‘Poor Sophia – will you not pity her from your soul…but god’s will be done and we must be reconciled.’

  Sophia was ‘in agony’ at the idea of sending Charlotte home ‘in a ship without a medical man and poor accommodation’ but she did not think of accompanying the children herself. As Raffles wrote, it would be hard parting with them ‘but as she prefers her husband to her children her determination to remain with me was no difficult matter.’

  Ten days later he opened the letter to add a postscript: ‘Charlotte has just been snatched from us. I have nothing more to add.’

  Within six months, he and Sophia had lost three of their children. They were shattered in spirit and body, suffering themselves from the dysentery that had drained the life from the children, and poisoned by mercury treatments. Raffles had attacks of what he called ‘brain fever’ – the crippling headaches which confined him to the bedroom and ‘almost made me mad.’

  Raffles’ response to the collapse of their hopes was to send in his resignation to the Company, giving extreme ill health as the reason and requesting to be relieved of his present charge ‘at the close of the next year.’ A few more years’ salary seemed no longer a priority. As he said to Cousin Thomas, on 29 January 1822: ‘We were never very covetous of affluence – and riches are now of less value to us than ever.’ He was cultivating oats and barley on his estate on which he hoped to see a good return before he left, and experimenting with milling sugar, with no experience – ‘We took our model from the Encyclopaedia.’ The reply to his resignation letter from India House expressed conventional regret, and ‘Although we have had occasion strongly to express our disapprobation of some of your proceedings at Fort Marlborough, we are disposed fully to acknowledge your integrity, zeal and ability.’