In The Footsteps of Stamford Raffles

by Nigel Barley

  The principal flings open a door and a strange scene is frozen in bright light, rows and rows of Chinese boys in PT kit, baying like rugger hearties, one pursuing another over the seats with a rolled newspaper, raised to strike. They leap to their feet, faces blank like all boys in the presence of authority.

  ‘Good morning, sirs,’ they pipe. A prefect comes forward with an expression of radiant innocence and looks at me steadily, almost defying me to contradict such obvious virtue. The innocence is a border guard. You shall not, it says, go beyond this and see behind it.

  ‘Please take a seat, sirs,’ he says smoothly, ‘and witness our colourful brass-band tradition.’ Two seats are immediately vacant. There is dithering. Perhaps we should stay. Embarrassment of foreign visitor seeing odd habits, unpredictable foreign reaction. Perhaps we should go. We half crouch over proffered seats. As our buttocks commence their final descent, the principal thinks better of it and hustles me out.

  ‘Aha, yes. Traditions, traditions. Aha, yes, the boys in the band, you understand. They are good boys. Our chief problem here is too great enthusiasm.’

  ‘Do you,’ I ask, ‘have racial quotas?’

  ‘No, no. 84 per cent Chinese, 9 per cent Indian, 7 per cent Malay.’

  ‘But no quotas?’

  ‘No, no. It just works out that way.’

  He reels off statistics: ‘96 per cent of Raffles boys go on to higher education. We have 1,640 pupils and 91 teachers. They take Cambridge Certificate, you know. All teaching in English, though we teach the other tongues of Singapore.’ That would perhaps not have pleased Raffles, dedicated as he was to the knowledge of Malay.

  ‘Raffles,’ I ask, ‘is he important?’ The principal stops dead and looks at me genuinely shocked.

  ‘Important? Of course he is important. Did you not see his arms as you came in? Actually,’ he confides, ‘I personally decided to use them. Perhaps the College of Heralds would not agree, but …’ He looks at me fiercely. ‘Raffles belongs to us. The government, you know, have a sort of copyright on the name of Raffles – Raffles lighthouse, hotel etc. But nowadays you need government permission to use the name. If you go to our rugger matches, you will hear the boys calling out the name of Raffles, a sort of war-cry. We have a little ceremony for the making of prefects, where …’ No, no more ceremonies, no … ‘Raffles was unlike the common run of imperialists, so we preserve his name. Singapore is not like colonies where we have to pull down statues and change all the street names. Singapore was not grabbed, it was built by Raffles. We are proud of him.’

  So perhaps here, at last, was to be found that love that Raffles craved, for jealous ownership has the lineaments of love, and institutional pride dwells fondly on the symbols of its own greatness.

  We arrive back at the coat of arms. The principal points to the motto.

  ‘Auspicium Melioris Aevi. Do you know what that means?’ How many tongue-tied little boys had he put through this on their first day at R.I.?

  ‘Er … Ah … “A brighter future through more aggressive marketing”?’ No. Wait. That was another place. ‘Something like “Let us hope for better days.”’

  ‘Wrong,’ snaps the principal. ‘Noun not verb. You will never get anywhere until you learn the difference between a noun and … That is to say, a better rendition would be: “The hope of a better age”. That is what Singapore is all about. There is too much selfishness and aggression, too much pushing and shoving. “One people, one nation, one Singapore.” You know the slogan? Hah. That too is what Singapore is all about.’

  As I leave, the prefect is supervising boys who are picking up litter outside the school. He wishes me goodbye and sketches a bow, but lowering eyes spot a sweet wrapper at my feet. Instinctively he pounces on it, becomes confused at having to pull it from under my shoe, sees nowhere to put it and desperately stuffs the wrapper, blushing, into his top pocket. It is hard to be the hope of a better age, a noun and not a verb.

  ‘Would that I could infuse into the Institution a portion of that spirit and soul by which I would have it animated as easily as I endow it with lands etc. It will be long in its infancy and to arrive at maturity will require all the aid of friends and constant support. It is my last public act and rise or fall, it will always be a satisfactory reflection that I have done my best towards it. I pray you befriend it …’

  – T. S. Raffles

  * * *

  ‘It is a criminal offence,’ says the sign, ‘not to flush the toilet after use. Fine $500.’

  ‘They say,’ offered the man as we performed the Hindu hand gesture of emptiness under the blow-dryer, ‘that they have put cameras in some of the WCs to check. Also the lifts. They have hidden cameras to catch those who urinate in the lifts. It is good. People should not be dirty.’

  You come out of the curry shop and try to cross the road. A sign reminds you that it is an offence to cross except at a light. Fine $500.

  Across the legally uncrossable street is a huge banner. It urges you to go to night classes. Another offers exercise classes for the elderly. A poster entices with civil defence, warns against wasting water.

  And then the penny drops. A school is not only Raffles’ memorial, it has become the model for the whole of Singapore. The entire nation is a vast school. The residents are orderly pupils to be instructed and led, as Raffles would have said, ‘towards the light’. Change is always improvement. Structure and regulation are good in themselves. Above it all is the headmaster, or maybe principal, a being of a different order, who always knows best. A little strict and old-fashioned, certainly benevolent, incorruptible and a little frightening. Discussion with authority is always possible but, like the school debating society, it is not to be taken too seriously. It is the sound of children learning, learning to be good citizens who see how well-off they really are.

  Is it a vision of government that would have appealed to Raffles, the reformer, the pedagogue? Did he merely prefigure Lee Kuan Yew and hand on to him the sputtering torch of rationality? In the course of his life, there is a development towards authoritarianism. In his Java days Raffles always believed that, other things being equal, people would make sensible choices and behave rationally. He found himself fighting oppressive exploitation and violent monopoly. So the task of authority was to make sure that other things were indeed equal and support human free-will as an almost metaphysical duty.

  His experience at Bengkulu undermined such a belief and he drifted towards benevolent autocracy. This was further strengthened in Singapore where there was no question of respecting the many mutually incompatible cultural traditions of such a mixed population. He therefore returned to first principles and framed laws that reflected universal, i.e. British, common sense. One of his major reforms was the notion of trial by a jury to which natives would be admitted. So there is an increasing feeling that cultural differences are unimportant, that they must be made unimportant, that all are equal before – for example – the law. To some this seems progressive, to others crass cultural imperialism. Small wonder that long before he returned to Bengkulu to put his affairs in order for the return to England he was toying with the idea of attracting European settlers.

  * * *

  ‘Mr Raffles and his Lady embarked, followed by hundreds of people of all races, myself among the rest, as far as the ship: and when they had ascended the ship’s side and the crew were raising the anchor Mr Raffles called me to him and I went into his cabin where I observed that his face was flushed as if he had been wiping his tears. He told me to return and not be distressed: “If it is to be I will see you again.” His Lady now came and gave me twenty-five dollars, saying “I give these to your children in Malacca,” and when I heard that my heart burned the more by this act of grace. I thanked her very much, clasping them by the hand in tears, and then descended to my sampan and when I had been off some distance I turned round and saw Mr Raffles looking out of the window when I again saluted him. He raised his hand to me. This was just as the sails were being ho
isted; and the vessel sailed.

  Such was my separation from Mr Raffles. I was not distressed about my livelihood or because of his greatness, or because of my losing him; but because of his noble bearing, his justness, modesty and respect to his fellow men. All these I remember to this day. There are many great men besides him, clever, rich and handsome, but in good disposition, amiability and gracefulness, Mr Raffles had not his equal, and were I to die and live again such a man I could never meet again, my love of him is so great.’

  – Munshi Abdullah, Hikayat Abdullah

  Fame

  Raffles sailed for Bengkulu, calling in at Jakarta to the great consternation of the Dutch. ‘He is a Herostrate,’ declared the Dutch plenipotentiary, Van Nagell, comparing him to the man whose thirst for renown was so great that he burnt down the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus simply to be famous.

  The Editor gave birth yet again but the child did not live long. Mortality still raged in Bengkulu, gathering in friends and colleagues. The Editor herself was so ill Raffles despaired of her life. They scanned the horizon each anxious day, watching for a sign of the ship that was to take them back to England. They knew, if it did not come soon, they would never see their native shores again. ‘We are daily treading on the edge of eternity,’ wrote Raffles. The Editor was poisoned with laudanum, debilitated with thirty leeches and tortured with hot baths in the name of medicine. The ship was the Fame. Still it did not come.

  It was to be three long months before the vessel finally appeared. Raffles and the Editor embarked thankfully. Their entire worldly goods and the collections of plants, animals and books that were the result of a lifetime’s research took up a third of the ship. Four of their children they left behind in the Bengkulu graveyard.

  ‘The ship was everything we could wish; and having closed my charge here much to my satisfaction, it was one of the happiest days of my life. We were, perhaps, too happy: for in the evening came a sad reverse. Sophia had just gone to bed, and I had thrown off half my clothes, when a cry of fire, fire! roused us from our calm content, and in five minutes the whole ship was in flames! I ran to examine whence the flames principally issued, and found that the fire had its origin immediately under our cabin. Down with the boats. Where is Sophia? – Here. The children? – Here. A rope to the side. Lower Lady Raffles. Give her to me, says one; I’ll take her, says the Captain. Throw the gunpowder overboard. It cannot be got at; it is in the magazine close to the fire. Stand clear of the powder. Scuttle the water-casks. Water! water! Where’s Sir Stamford? Come into the boat, Nilson! Nilson, come into the boat. Push off, push off. Stand clear of the after part of the ship …

  We then hauled close to each other, and found the Captain fortunately had a compass but we had no light except from the ship. Our distance from Bencoolen we estimated to be about fifty miles in a south-west direction. There being no landing place to the southward of Bencoolen, our only chance was to regain that port. The Captain then undertook to lead, and we to follow in a N.N.E. course, as well as we could; no chance, no possibility being left, that we could again approach the ship; for she was now one splendid flame, fore and aft, and aloft, her masts and sails in a blaze, and rocking to and fro, threatening to fall in an instant. There goes her mizen mast! Pull away my boys! There goes the gunpowder! Thank God! Thank God!’

  – T. S. Raffles

  They lost everything, clothes, money, the property of others for which Raffles had accepted responsibility. Yet the loss that Raffles felt most bitterly was that of his natural history collection. One hundred and twenty-two cases of ‘curiosities’ were destroyed as well as all Raffles’ papers. It was enough to break most men. But, as always, his greatest comfort was the love shown by his former subjects. The morning after their return to Bengkulu he began to redraw the maps he had been working on for years and sent locals into the forests to begin collecting specimens anew.

  ‘And when I heard this news I was breathless, remembering all the Malay books of ancient date collected from various countries – all these lost with the wonderful collection. As to his other property I do not care, for if his life was spared he could reinstate them. But the books could not be recovered for none of them were printed but in manuscript – they were so rare that one country might have two of them; that is what distressed me …’

  – Munshi Abdullah, Hikayat Abdullah

  Ironically, Raffles’ scholastic attention had dealt Malay literary studies the greatest blow it would ever receive.

  * * *

  When I got back to England, a letter was waiting on the mat, its stamp the portrait of the President, in miniature, that hangs on a hundred million Indonesian walls. The postmark was Bengkulu.

  ‘You have perhaps forgotten me,’ it said. ‘My name is Yusuf. We met on a bus and talked and I asked for your address.’ Yusuf? I remembered no Yusuf but then you meet so many people …

  ‘I wanted to warn you about giving your address to just anyone who asks for it. You are kind and do not know how bad people here can be. If they have your address they have power over you.

  ‘For example, there was a man in the market at Padang selling pills and showing pictures of you. They were not nice pictures. I asked my father about what you said about Bung Karno and Bengkulu people and I think you were wrong.

  Bung Karno did not fight with Bengkulu people. He admired them for their piety so much that he built them a mosque and wanted to live in Bengkulu for ever but the Dutch made him leave.

  ‘Raffles too was not a good man as you said. I have cousins in Bengkulu who all have blue eyes. Indonesian peoples do not have blue eyes. This must be from your Raffles. The fort there was built by Raffles to make Bengkulu people suffer and they had to grow crops in buffalo shit and were not paid for it. If you doubt this, you can go there and look for yourself but I think you would be afraid to. He did not even give them the buffalo shit.

  ‘If you want to, you can send me a letter. You already have my address.’

  I stared at it baffled. Yusuf? Then the penny dropped. Buffalo shit – bullshit. This must be Yet and May. Had I told them about all this? Probably. They were tweaking my tail. It was Minang humour again.

  * * *

  This time there would be no deliberate stopping on the way, no jaunts, no edifying visits to mines, but with relatives and festivities there were already delays enough. The Raffleses were in such a rush to get back to their one surviving child that the wheels of the carriage caught fire. On the trip home there had been no compromises. Raffles had worked out a timetable of self-improvement.

  ‘Before breakfast – One hour mathematics or logic – one hour Latin, Greek or Hebrew.

  After breakfast, from 10 to 11 – In committing to paper and arranging and reviewing what I studied before breakfast.

  From 11 to 1 – Writing an account of my administration in the East.

  From 2 to 4 – General reading and reading out to Sophia.

  In the evening for one hour – Reading out a play of Shakespeare’s, or other entertaining productions.

  By this arrangement, I have, in the morning, by rising at 6, one hour of exercise before breakfast, and half an hour for the same after breakfast. One hour from 1 to 2 for tiffin and exercise, and after dinner from 5 to 7, two hours for exercise or relaxation in the cool of the evening. As the servants are always behindhand in furnishing the meals, I may freely trust to their affording me time for dressing by such delays …’

  He was, we must try to remember, a man on his way to retirement on grounds of ill-health. His only plans were to become a farmer in a small way of business … or perhaps a magistrate … maybe even Parliament.

  ‘I was enabled to see the Chairman and Deputy of the E.I. Company and most of my best friends. The feeling, I am glad to say, seems very general in my favour, and I trust that before Christmas something will be done by those in power to acknowledge my past Services and remunerate me for my losses.’

  – T. S. Raffles

  Raffles worked away at a do
cument that would be a justification for his entire life’s work with the Company, but his health declined and he was plagued with crippling headaches that made work impossible even for him. Then Farquar began bickering in the Court of Directors over his conduct at Singapore. But Raffles was not too weary to embrace a new project of natural history, the establishment of London Zoo. It was both a joy and a national duty.

  But wherever he was, Java, Bengkulu or Singapore, Raffles always contrived to move a little outside the main settlement into the country. In the present case, this meant Hendon, where he bought a small property next to that of the antislavery campaigner, William Wilberforce, and installed his family and his adopted nephew Charles. He knew he was really a gentleman farmer, just as Bung Karno was really a painter.

  * * *

  It was an incredibly hot spring day with thick, honeyed sunlight, the sort of day so rare in England it seems the exclusive preserve of glazed childhood memories. Almost the final ethnographic expedition I owed to Raffles, by underground train to Hendon Central, bursting out from the dark of the tunnels into brilliant sunshine with trees reaching out in benign English growth.

  To travel to Hendon, as to Nias, involves not just space but time. There are the rounded shapes of London Underground standard architecture, known from childhood outings to that zoo founded by Raffles, a main street of red-brick shops from the fifties with the familiar names of suburbia. I need no map to find the church where Raffles lies. The unconscious rules of rural planning pin it firmly to the top of the hill, though recent motorways smash through the village like a fist.

  The church is ‘embosomed’, as Raffles would have it, in greenery, also pubs, also Ford Cortinas slewn to the kerb’s edge by traditional British lager louts. They sit in the sunshine, swilling, bare-torsoed, wattles of pink flab lavishly on display. I enter the churchyard and walk through the gravestones naming those who have ‘fallen asleep’ and ‘gone to rest’, but the building is locked. Of course. This is London.