I am suspicious of the claim, quoted in some travel guides as ‘fact’, that biographers have been coy and that it was really tertiary syphilis, considering that his wife never showed any symptoms.
Raffles left Singapore for the third and final time on 9 June 1823 at the age of 42. Three years had transformed ‘a haunt of pirates to the abode of enterprise, security and opulence’. He only had three years more to live, three years he was to spend in the company’s displeasure and, it seems, those of the gods, too. When the couple finally left Bencoolen on 2 February 1824, a devastating fire broke out on their ship. Raffles lost all his possessions: his manuscripts and memoirs, his valuables, his maps, his natural history drawings – all gone.
When Raffles eventually reached Plymouth, he heard some good news at last: the status of Singapore had been settled with the Treaty of London between Great Britain and Holland. The Equator divided their spheres of influence: Bencoolen was surrendered to the Dutch, but Singapore and Penang remained British while Malacca was returned to Britain. The three ports became collectively known as the Straits Settlements; they led to the colonisation of the whole of Malaya and served as a springboard to China: Hong Kong would be ceded within a generation.
Raffles waited for compensation for his losses during the fire and a pension from the company. In the meantime, he issued a subscription to buy a plot of land above Regent’s Park and house the tropical animals he’d brought back from Java and Sumatra. They became the first residents of the London Zoological Gardens which he co-founded with Sir Humphrey Davy (of the miners’ lamp fame). Raffles was elected as London Zoo’s first president and, if you visit the Lion House, you can see his bust outside.
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A glowering, grey sky shrouds the colonial buildings, a fit setting for the war memorials on the opposite side of the Padang. A small stone-paved path leads to the first marble column facing City Hall, dedicated to ‘Our Glorious Dead’. Each of the five steps is inscribed with a Great War year: 1914, all the way to 1918. Its foundation stone, laid on 15 November 1920, was attended by George Clemenceau, and its unveiling, on 31 March 1922, was made by the Duke of Windsor. ‘We are met here to do honour to the men who, in common with many others from all parts of our great Empire, died that we as an Empire might live,’ said the Duke. Within two decades another, Asian, empire would take over Singapore and shatter the image of Britannia forever. And, like the city itself, which has had to learn how to live in cramped conditions, the memorial has been recycled: a second inscription is unveiled when you look at the cenotaph from the other side. Conveniently, the ground slopes down, allowing for seven steps at the back inscribed each with a year from World War Two, a war that was not observed from afar but was felt and suffered for in the city itself.
The paved promenade in front has a space-age view: two huge constructions that look like two giant metallic flies’ eyes dominate the landscape. This is the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Sydney Opera House wannabes that lack the grace of the Australian original, though I’m sure the acoustics are no less than perfect. New states in search of self-definition want to be patted in the back for their cultural credentials and Singapore, like Sydney, has opted for a showcase edifice devoted to Western culture: opera and symphonies, ballet and theatre. From another angle the flies’ eyes remind me of two monstrous durians that have fallen gracelessly out of the sky. Prince Charles is right about modern architecture in one respect: when it fails, it fails with great aplomb.
The Esplanade development, completed in the mid-nineties when the Asian ‘tigers’ seemed to grow and grow with no upper limit, appears curiously lifeless today, and pales in comparison with, say, Raffles Place. The restaurants – Chinese, Thai, Italian – have the plastic atmosphere of fast food joints with the obligatory cockroach running on the odd, well-polished floor. The setting is spectacular, but the menus look routine and the seats appear cheap. Through the glass panes, the Embassy Restaurant – recommended in older guides – is closed ‘until further notice’. So, there is a limit to expansion and a frontier to the dream, as everyone found out in the Asian market meltdown of 1997. Although it suffered much, much less than the rest of them – Singapore’s economy actually expanded by 0.4 per cent during that period – even this most dynamic of the ‘tigers’ had to count its teeth and lick its wounds.
Lick its wounds like Raffles…
Despite his colossal historical status the man Raffles must have been unbearable. He was too much of a lone wolf and had argued and offended everyone in his whirlwind path: from the Dutch and English Crowns to the East India Company Board and from his military attaché in Java to his old friend Farquhar. It is in this life we pay for our sins, not any other, and Raffles’ behaviour came back to haunt him in the final act.
In April 1826, a few years after he had arrived back in London, he received two letters from the company. The first was, in modern terms, a job appraisal which can be summarised as, ‘your actions were wrong, risky and uncondoned but with the benefit of hindsight we forgive you since Singapore ended up a success’. The second was a thunderbolt. Not only did the board refuse to compensate him for his losses, not only did they not issue him a pension, but they asked for their money back. Hastings had let him draw his salary during the years he spent in London between Java and Sumatra but without explicit authorisation. Now Accounts Receivable – the bane of us all – demanded this amount back (with interest), along with the expenses Raffles claimed in founding Singapore. To cap it all, the company demanded reimbursement for his ‘precipitate and unauthorised emancipation of the company’s slaves.’
The bitterness must have broken Raffles. Three months later, on 5 July 1826, one day short of his forty-fifth birthday, he collapsed at the bottom of the stairs in his country house near Edgware. An autopsy found that he died of a stroke brought upon by a brain tumour. The funeral at St Mary’s Church in Hendon was private and sparsely attended. Raffles had a knack of making enemies even posthumously: the parish priest turned down all requests for any commemorative plaque until his own death 50 years later, because of the deceased’s ‘unchristian and thoughtless actions in Java and Bencoolen’. By that, the good servant of God meant the slaves’ manumission.
It was thus that Raffles’ bodily whereabouts were lost and forgotten; only in 1914 were his remains rediscovered, and an inscription was hung above his burial vault. History, of course, keeps its own pantheon that exists independently of human pettiness: within eight years of Raffles’ death, a statue had been commissioned by his considerable fanbase and placed in the north isle of Westminster Abbey.
Raffles’s only surviving daughter, Emma, lived until the age of 19. His widow, Sophia, settled with the company on a much reduced amount within seven months of Raffles’s death and wrote a memoir of his life which she published in 1830. She died in their Edgware estate in 1858 at the age of 72; hardly an age reached by a syphilitic.
Today, London Zoo survives, bigger and grander, at the same site in Regent’s Park. Nineteen species of Rafflesia have been identified, and there is a specimen at Kew Gardens that attracts scores of nose-pinching visitors every time it deigns to bloom. The temple of Borobudur is a Unesco World Heritage site, Indonesia’s most popular tourist attraction.
And Singapore is a thriving metropolis of four million people.
CHAPTER THREE
ON INNS AND VALUABLES
The Innkeeper was watching Master Sushan intently. He had invited the Master and his retinue to dine in his establishment. He had provided him with his best rice wine, served him on his best porcelain and offered him a set of golden chopsticks. This was no ordinary inn: it was well known among people living up to ten thousand li away and all government messengers carrying imperial documents had commended its luxurious ambience. Old terracotta statues adorned every corner; calligraphy masterpieces hung from the walls; and the tablecloths were made of the best quality silk.
The Innkeeper craved a morsel of the philosophical insight Master Sush
an possessed; the only thing he longed for in return for his hospitality was an enlightened koan from the lips of the Master. In vain did he hover around the sage and his two closest disciples; they were eating and drinking slowly and quietly, as if meditating before, during and after every mouthful. He tried to draw the Master into conversation by asking him if everything was alright, or whether he was happy with the food? the wine? the service? – yet Sushan would only smile and nod imperceptibly with his head.
The Innkeeper’s frustration grew and grew so that eventually he dared sit down at the table with them and ask them the question that had been lingering in his mind.
‘Forgive my impertinence, Oh, Master,’ he said, ‘please enlighten your poor servant whose belief in your wisdom is beyond compare. I have surrounded myself with beautiful objects but I still don’t know: what is the most valuable thing in the world?’
As if on cue, a disciple spoke.
‘The most valuable thing in the world is the throne of the Emperor, for he who possesses it controls the known world,’ he said.
The other disciple took up the thread.
‘The most valuable thing in the world is the teaching of the Buddha, for he who possesses it controls the known and unknown world,’ he said.
At last, Master Sushan opened his mouth.
‘The most valuable thing in the world is the head of a dead cat,’ he declared.
The Innkeeper and the two disciples looked at each other in bafflement.
‘Why is this, Oh Master?’ they asked.
‘Because,’ Master Sushan replied, ‘no one can name its price.’
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It’s hard to get away from that man Raffles. Like his cat burglar namesake, he is invisible but ubiquitous: that skyscraper is Raffles Tower extending skywards from Raffles City shopping centre; this is Raffles Avenue leading into Stamford Road; the first parallel up is Raffles Boulevard. My sling and I are getting used to walking around being stared at. Today’s venture is one notch up from yesterday’s colonial stroll: I still feel uncomfortable going to any nightspot, but I’m hoping that a late afternoon visit to an upmarket bar will help. I need to get over my people fright, because I’ll end up agoraphobic.
I have reached the Marina Mandarin Hotel, although in Singapore it is sometimes difficult to tell where a mall starts and where a hotel begins. I’ve always wondered how Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates react to having tourists wander about outside their residences, looking in while the students are burning their toast. The experience must be similar to that in some of the five-star hotels in Singapore where you have casual shoppers pushing buttons in the lift just as you are trying to get to your room for a shower. The Marina Mandarin at least can claim a world first: it is the only hotel after which a flower has been named. It is an orchid, called Dendrobium Marina Mandarin and its appearance is as complicated to describe as the hotel’s floor plan.
Although naming an orchid after a hotel is a first, the ease with which these flowers breed and mutate has led to an explosion of silly names. If you don’t believe me, go to the National Orchid Garden in Singapore and look around by the crane fountain: you will be dazzled by a sprinkling of Golden Showers, small yellow orchids named in a long-disappeared, innocent past. These very gardens only recently bred an orchid called Dendrobium Jackie Chan and, lest we forget our sporting heroes, a local supporter created the Holttumara Singapore Netball Team.
I was over at the National Orchid Garden earlier because I love their glamour. I am not alone: they have been admired by Ancient Greek philosophers and Chinese emperors, and similarly Singapore’s fondness for flamboyant flora goes back a long way. Its national flower is, itself, a purple orchid: the all year bloomer Vanda Miss Joaquim, chosen in a 1981 competition by Singapore’s Ministry of Culture as part of an overall strategy to foster and bolster national pride and identity. It is sort of ‘native’ to Singapore, having been cultivated in the garden of an Armenian lady, Miss Agnes Joaquim, back in 1893. Pleased immensely by her hybrid she duly registered it in Sander’s List, the Who’s Who of orchids, and entered it in several competitions, winning in the Rarest Flower category at the 1899 Singapore Flower Show. That was the peak of her success with the Vanda, since she died, unmarried, a few months later. One century on, like so many low-rise dwellings, her garden and her house on Narcis Street have been demolished to provide space for a shopping mall.
I don’t know who first thought about it, but give the guy some kudos: orchid breeding is now used for political flattery. My jaw dropped when I walked into the VIP Orchid Garden and came across the lavender-like Dendrobium Margaret Thatcher (withered), named during the British prime minister’s visit to the gardens in April 1985. At least she saw her orchid bloom; this is more than can be said for Princess Diana: her sparkling white jasmine-like hybrid with a pink centre was named in her memory a month after she died. There is the orchid de rigueur for Nelson Mandela (golden brown) but there is also an orange/mocha Dendrobium for Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and a white, pink and yellow Mokara for Bertie Ahern. Still, it is the Vanda Tsolmon, dedicated to the wife of the Mongolian prime minister, that delivers the ultimate political snub: its shrubs are refusing to flower.
Ah, orchids are great fun. Now, where am I?
Let’s see. There is the old imperial NAAFI, the Britannia Club, built in the Spanish style. Like many older buildings in Singapore it is closed and under scaffolding; is it being demolished or renovated? A sign proudly shows the Health and Safety statistics: so many accident-free hours achieved in many more total man-hours toiled. The total number of fatal accidents is zero, although, confusingly, the fatalities seem to have a positive annual rate: an alarming 1.95, no units given. I consign the inexplicable to oriental mystique.
There it is – I’ve reached my destination, the most famous watering hole in South East Asia.
It is through grand establishments like the Savoy in London, the Ritz in Paris or the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro that a bourgeois narrative and perspective can be reconstituted; their mere presence helps define a city in the same way the city provides them with uniqueness in return. They are the catwalk on which celebrities sashay; their rooms and bars are the canvas for the creation of legends; and their past, peppered with showbiz anecdotes, provides the glamour. They may be the Hello! magazine alternatives to academic historical discourse, but it is there that the spirit of a metropolis chooses to dwell. They are the city and of the city at the same time, as much alive as museums are dead. So if you want to experience the Singapore of old, come to the Raffles Hotel, as imperial a relic as the Privy Council and as English as bad weather.
Surprisingly for such a colonial icon, the Raffles was a venture by four Armenians, the Sarkies brothers. They purchased a bungalow on Beach Road whose previous ownership history reflects the waxing and waning of fortunes in the raw capitalist atmosphere of the free port. It was originally built by the Dares, a well-known Singaporean-Anglo family who owned one of the four original ship chandlers’ firms. There exists a wonderful memoir by George Dare, one of the teenage boys in the family. He used to go off shooting pigeon and wild pig ‘in the jungly swamps beyond the race course and the Hindoo cremation ground’ – today’s Toa Payoh – where he was unsettled by stray dogs devouring three partly burned corpses ‘slightly grilled and smelling horribly’. After rats, controlled by Farquhar who paid one wang per corpse, and centipedes that fell from the atap roofs, stray dogs were the biggest nuisance in Singapore. On one occasion, a pack of them attacked the boy’s pony on the Esplanade and threw him down ‘dreadfully shaken and stunned’. Because of such incidents, the first three days of every month were set aside for convict labourers to catch dogs.
Yet even they weren’t as dangerous as the tigers who roamed the island. The main casualties were plantation workers who had to work in the outskirts of the jungle: in the 1840s they averaged a casualty a day. Pitfalls, cages with those captured strays as bait and shooting parties decimated the ma
n-eaters, but it took until the dawn of the new century to clear the island completely. Funnily enough, it is then that the most celebrated tiger story pops up for posterity – at Raffles.
It was the proverbial hot and steamy night in August 1902 when the drinking tuans in the Raffles Bar and Billiard Room noticed an unwelcome guest – unwelcome not because of its low breeding, but because of its fearsome character: crouching under the billiard table was an adult Bengal tiger. A tiger in the city? Why, it must have swam the Straits of Johore and stridden through the jungle, before it decided to chum it up with the punters in the bar. (‘Who’s that, old boy?’ ‘A tiger, M’lud.’ ‘Have we been introduced?’) A crack shot was summoned and the impertinent tiger soon became a trophy as well as providing a cracker of a tale that still delights tourists, combining as it does the stereotypes of imperial derring-do and English sangfroid. The truth is not as dramatic. The billiard room was a pavilion outside the main Raffles Hotel and, like any floodable structure near the waterfront, it stood on four-foot brick pillars to survive the monsoon. The tiger had escaped from a travelling circus and was as tame as can be. Scared and hungry, it found shelter underneath the billiard room, hiding among the stilts. An Indian servant spotted the animal staring through the low veranda railings and informed the management. They, in turn, brought in Mr C. M. Phillips, the schoolmaster at Raffles Institution next door, who shot the beast into legend with his Lee-Enfield rifle. When measured, the animal was found to be 7 feet 8 inches long and 3 feet 4 inches tall.
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