Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  Humble and respectfully sendeth Greetings.

  One result of this correspondence and the new treaty relations was an exchange of gifts. Of Queen Victoria’s gifts to him the King wrote:

  We on this occasion have liberty to let our native photographers take the likeness of ourselves, when we adorned with the watch decked with diamonds and the double edged sword, which were honorary royal gracious gift from your Majesty, received by us a few years ago, and seated ourselves by the tables containing the gift silver inkstand and desk together with the revolving pistol and rifle, wholly being royal gracious gift from your Majesty.

  Nor was the King to be outdone in the sumptuousness of his gifts to the Queen. According to his own list these included:

  1. The Royal official customary letter slightly written in Siamese characters upon a solid golden plate and wrapped in the Royal solid golden envelope and sealed with Royal peculiar seal and enclosed in a golden case richly enamelled.

  The translation of this Royal letter in English annexed or appended herewith.

  This is made according to the Siamese Royal custom for very respectful compliment to the Sovereign of Superior Kingdom, not to the equal or inferior always—when the superior Sovereign does not allow to be omitted.

  2. Two Royal Daguerreotype portraits, one of which is a likeness of His Majesty the First King of Siam dressed in full royal robes and decorations seated on his throne of state.

  The other is the Daguerreotype of His Majesty with the Royal consort and two Royal children seated in Their Majesties knees.

  3. A Royal Crown beautifully enamelled and set with diamonds.

  4. A Royal Ribbon with circular gold brooches richly set with rubies locked together and fixed all round with blue satin.

  And so on through thirty-four elaborate and costly gifts, and sixty-four samples of articles of merchandise mentioned in the tariff schedule of the treaty. The correspondence continued and in 1861 in a long letter the King remarked:

  … We venture to state that we are desirous of presenting your Majesty a Siamese decoration made to show a sign of ourselves or of our country, which would be appeared or known that it was offered from ourselves, whenever your Majesty might graciously decorate with it and show on any assembly or congregation, it will prove greatest honor to our name in that meeting. Also we are very desirous of receiving an honor from your Majesty’s gracious favour, by benevolently bestowing upon us any decoration in any suitable manner to be dressed on our body, and to show in principal meeting that it was bestowed on us from your Majesty as a peculiar royal gift, it will prove greatest honor to us here among Eastern Monarchies. Will the desire occurred to us be proper and agreeable or not? We are the only rule of remote or very distant country from Europe and have very different costume and appearance, yet we became an allied to our Majesty and other several rulers of civilized world, but we are afraid that the decoration made by our native artist, jeweler, gold smith, &c will be very ill construction or more titled manufacture than those of European article, so Siamese manufactured decoration may not be acceptable by your Majesty. Also we are very ignorant of the custom in furnish the style of Diploma which was said to be accustomed to accompany the offered decoration, how it shall be formed in proper manner; for this consequence we have postponed our desire to do so in the present occasion.…

  After the death of Prince Albert he wrote:

  We were sincerely grieved to learn of the decease of Your Majesty’s royal mother, and of Your Majesty’s royal consort, which two sad events happened on the last year.

  We sincerely sympathize with Your Majesty’s irrepairable losses, nevertheless, we trust that Your Majesty will find consolation in the thought that all mankind must follow this path, even those most dear to us cannot be prevented from leaving us.…

  We must now beg to express our pleasure and congratulations at learning that Your Majesty’s royal family has been increased by the birth of royal grandchildren. We sincerely trust that they may long remain and will prove a source of happiness to Your Majesty.…

  This correspondence was, of course, no random affair. It was shrewdly calculated to further friendly relations between Siam and England, and to thwart the more rapacious empire builders.

  In the year before Anna came to Siam there was an exchange of letters between the King and Abraham Lincoln. It was of an entirely different character. The King had read that in the traveling menageries, which were very popular in the rural areas of the United States, the elephant was regarded as the most remarkable of the animals on display. He had further read that there had been an importation of camels from Arabia. His fertile brain immediately conceived a service that he thought he might render the United States. He wrote:

  Somdetch Phra Paramendr Maha Mongkut, by the blessing of the highest superagency of the whole universe, the King of Siam, the sovereign of all interior tributary countries adjacent and around in every direction, viz: Laws of Shiengs on northwestern and northern; Law Kaus on northern to northeastern to southeastern; most of the Malay peninsula on southern and southwestern; and Kariengs on the western to northwestern points, and the professor of the Magadhe language and Buddhistical literature, &c., &c., &c., to his most respected excellent presidency, the President of the United States of America, who, having been chosen by the citizens of the United States as most distinguished, was made President and Chief Magistrate in the affairs of the nation for an appointed time of office.

  It has occurred to us that if, on the continent of America, there should be several pairs of young male elephants turned loose in forest where there was abundance of water and grass, in any region under the sun’s declination both north and south, called by the English the torrid zone, and all were forbidden to molest them, to attempt to raise them would be well, and if the climate there should prove favorable to elephants, we are of opinion that after a while they will increase until they become large herds, as there are here on the continent of Asia, until the inhabitants of America will be able to catch and tame and use them as beasts of burthen, making them of benefit to the country, since elephants, being animals of great size and strength, can bear burdens and travel through uncleared woods and matted jungles, where no carriage and cart roads have yet been made.

  We on our part, will procure young male and female elephants, and forward them, one or two pairs at a time.

  When the elephants are on board the ship, let a steamer take it in tow, that it may reach America as rapidly as possible, before they become wasted and diseased by the voyage.

  When they arrive in America do not let them be taken to a cold climate out of the regions under the sun’s declinations or torrid zone, but let them with all haste be turned out to run wild in some jungle suitable for them, not confining them any length of time.

  If these means can be done, we trust that the elephants will propagate their species hereafter in the continent of America.

  Mr. Lincoln already had a great deal on his hands, what with the Civil War and other difficulties, but his reply was courteous:

  I appreciate most highly your Majesty’s tender of good offices in forwarding to this government a stock from which a supply of elephants might be raised on our own soil. This government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful in the present condition of the United States. Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce.

  I shall have occasion at no distant day to transmit to your Majesty some token or indication of the high sense which this government entertains of your Majesty’s friendship.

  Meantime, wishing for your Majesty a long and happy life, and for the generous and emulous people of Siam the highest possible prosperity, I commend both to the blessings of Almighty God.

  Your good friend,

 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

  Washington, February 3, 1862.

  By the President: William H. Seward,

  Secretary of State.

  On foreign mail days Anna always spent from eight to ten hours with the King’s outgoing letters. The work was delicate and difficult because His Majesty was both fickle and tyrannical. It seemed impossible to please him. He would write letters, sign them, affix his seal, and dispatch them in his own mailbags to Europe, America, or elsewhere. Then, later, he would order Anna to write to the parties addressed to say that the instructions they contained had been an error—her error, of translation, or transcription, or anything but his intention. Sometimes she succeeded in slyly wording these second letters in such a way as to reverse the orders without compromising either the King or herself. But not always.

  One thing she insisted on. If she was to work in the same room with His Majesty, she must be allowed to stand upright in his presence. The frog-like crouch that had been permitted her as a special dispensation was intolerable for more than a few minutes. The King agreed. He specified, however, that she must sit down when he did, on a chair if he sat on a chair, on the floor if he sat on the floor. This was acceptable to Anna. In operation the compromise proved somewhat arduous in spite of its reasonableness, since His Majesty’s favorite position was prone with a book propped up before him, his heels swaying to and fro in the air.

  Fortunately the King was often busy in other parts of the Palace. While Anna worked, His Majesty’s principal private secretary, whose title was Phra Alak, lolled in the sunniest corner of the room, stretching his limbs and nodding. Anna never saw him other than drowsy, for all the sleep he ever managed to get was stolen. The King’s working moods were capricious; he was busy while the average man slept and asleep while his secretaries waited with important letters, papers, dispatches. Anna was called in the middle of the night many times to assist in some letter so important that the writing of it could not wait until morning, only to learn the next day that the mail boat had been held at its mooring for hours waiting for the royal correspondence which could not be sent because His Majesty had fallen asleep.

  Phra Alak was on twenty-four-hour duty. He and the King had played together as boys, studied and entered the priesthood together. He had been at once slave, friend, and classmate, so it was natural that he should have become confidential secretary as well. But it was not an easy life. The old man was stiff with continual stooping to his task, and subdued by a life of service in which he was threatened and cuffed, then taken into favor the next moment; was kicked and beaten on the head, then restored to confidence and bosom-companionship, as the King’s mood veered.

  Usually he bore the ills of his employment with patience, but there were times when, goaded beyond endurance, he fled to a home of his own about forty yards from the Grand Palace to snatch some rest and refreshment in the company of his young wife. Then the King would waken and demand him. A messenger would be sent to find him, and Phra Alak would plead that he was ill and could not possibly rise from his bed. Or he would tell his wife to say that he was out and that she did not know where he was, while he hid under a mountain of bedclothes. He had used this trick so often that its very staleness infuriated the King, who invariably sent officers to seize the terrified wife and lock her up as hostage for the scribe’s appearance.

  At dusk Phra Alak would emerge, rested and contrite, and prostrate himself at the gate of the Palace. The King, who had spies posted in every corner of the city and knew as well as Phra Alak himself what his secretary had been doing, would stroll forth. Seeing his recalcitrant slave stretched on the threshold, he would fly into a genuine rage and order him beaten with sixty lashes across the bare back and decapitated on the spot. While two attendants flew right and left—one for the blade and the other for the thong—His Majesty would seize whatever came handy and belabor his friend on the head and shoulders.

  Having thus relieved his feelings, the King would dispatch the royal secretary for ink-horn and papyrus, and begin dictating letters, orders, appointments. The scimitar and lash were slow in arriving on these occasions. The slaves sent after them had played their parts in the masque many times and knew that the King would have forgotten his rage before they appeared. Perhaps in the very thick of dictating, the King would remember Phra Alak’s wife and would order someone near to him to release her.

  It did not seem strange to Anna, then, that to Phra Alak there was no greater luxury than napping in the sun for an hour or two. “Mem khrap,” he murmured dreamily on one particular morning, “I hope in the chat na (the next birth), I shall be a free man.”

  “I hope so sincerely, Phra Alak,” she answered. “I hope that you’ll be an Englishman or an American, for then you’ll be sure to be independent.”

  She was busy that morning with a letter to the Earl of Clarendon. She had found that any attempt at partial correction only made the King’s meaning ambiguous and dulled the striking originality of his style. So she had learned to copy his letters with literal exactness. On this occasion she was merely debating whether to leave “wilful” and “well-wishing” out of the sentence, “I hasten with wilful pleasure to write in reply to your Lordship’s well-wishing letter.…”

  In the summer and fall of 1862 the King’s correspondence was especally full of the affairs of the Malay provinces. The Governor of the Straits Settlements, which were still officially part of India, had been charged with the power to negotiate treaties with the Malay principalities. These treaties first recognized a Malay state as “independent,” which meant independent of Siam, and then bound it by commerce, diplomacy, and force to the expanding British Empire. Colonel W. Orfeur Cavenagh, who was destined to be the last of the Indian governors, was aggressively pushing British control farther and farther up the peninsula.

  He refused to recognize Siam’s ancient claim to suzerainty, and in his zeal was careless of the niceties of diplomacy where they interfered with his purpose. In 1861 he had sent the sloop Coquette and the corvette H.M.S. Scout to Trengganu—one of the indisputably Siamese provinces—to compel the Sultan to surrender the ex-ruler of a Dutch island, Mahmud Mozzaffer Shah, who had taken refuge there. Governor Cavenagh’s reason for this irregular procedure was that he suspected Mahmud of plotting against the state of Pahang, next-door neighbor of Trengganu. The governor had decided to undertake the “protection” of Pahang himself. When the Sultan of Trengganu refused to yield to Cavenagh’s demands until he had received orders from Bangkok to do so, the British dismantled his fort, spiked his guns, and destroyed all the shipping in his harbor.

  Not even Cavenagh’s associates approved of his arbitrary methods. Sir Richard McCausland, Recorder of Singapore, had long been a friend of King Mongkut’s. Through him the King secured information and advice that made it possible to counter somewhat the blind determination of the governor to extend the British Raj at any cost.

  In 1862 serious trouble threatened again. The younger brother of the Sultan of Pahang invaded Pahang on his own behalf. Governor Cavenagh became convinced that Trengganu had supplied the pretender, Ahmad by name, with ninety guns and forty barrels of gun-powder, and was continuing to support him with men and supplies. Since Trengganu was tributary to Siam, Cavenagh suspected King Mongkut of complicity. On November 3 he sent an ultimatum to the Sultan in which he threatened that unless in twenty-four hours all aid to Ahmad was withdrawn and Mahmud was expelled he would order Trengganu City shelled, all its shipping seized and destroyed, and its entire coast blockaded. The Sultan proudly rejected so outrageous a demand, violating as it did the treaty between Siam and Great Britain.

  The court and city of Bangkok were electrified to learn very shortly that Governor Cavenagh had made good his threat. The Coquette, the Scout, and the Tortoise had fired two hundred rounds into the town. Siamese nobles and people seethed with anger and fear. The helpless city of Trengganu, its guns demolished by the previous British assault, had been unable to make any reply. The foreign community of Ban
gkok, too, regarded the shelling as a wanton outrage upon Thai sovereignty and speculated on the possibility that Governor Cavenagh was manufacturing incidents to justify further aggression, perhaps aimed at invasion and annexation of Siam itself.

  On the ninth of December the Coquette and the Scout anchored at Paknam, the port of Bangkok. Panic and conjecture were rife in the capital. Even the British Consul, Sir Robert Schomburgk, was alarmed. He hurriedly wrote a letter to the port authorities informing them that Lord John Hay, Commodore of the British fleet in the Indian Ocean, had brought two ships of war to anchor outside the bar and requested permission to come up on one of them to Bangkok, for what purpose the consul disclaimed all knowledge.

  When the Ministers of State, the Senabodi, had read the letter, they held a series of hasty consultations. Sir Robert informed them frankly that Lord John Hay was coming up on the eleventh, with or without permission.

  The alarm of the Siamese increased when they learned that Sir Robert was hastily warning his friends among the business men and shopkeepers to look well to the disposition of their merchandise. Lord John Hay outranked him both in birth and position and had not deigned to intimate to him what had brought the warships to Bangkok. But if Lord John intended to treat Bangkok as Trengganu had been treated they could judge for themselves what the effect would be upon the flimsy wood and bamboo structures that made up most of the city. The only calm voice was that of Mr. Thomas George Knox, the interpreter to the consulate, who assured the Senabodi that he did not believe that Lord John Hay would presume to usurp the diplomatic function of the consul by attempting negotiations backed by force in regard to the Trengganu affair. And if he did, then Mr. Knox would gladly forward a strong protest on behalf of the Siamese to London where Mr. Knox had excellent connections through Lord Stanley.

  The King and Council did not debate long. They hurriedly sent several important noblemen to the bar to escort Lord John to Bangkok. They had decided that refusal might incite the British to spike the guns and dismantle the forts which lined it at intervals. It would be wise to give them no excuse. Thus they would have to make an occasion, if determined to have one. Otherwise they would arrive in Bangkok to begin negotiations, if that was their intention, having been given a reception that would make it hard for them to open conversations on any but a friendly basis.