Raffles

by Victoria Glendinning

  What they saw was a giant flower which the Sumatrans called ‘Petimun Sikinlili’, the Devil’s Betel Box. No larger flower has yet been discovered anywhere in the world. ‘It measured across from the extremity of the petals more than a yard,’ Raffles told the Duchess. ‘The nectarium was nine inches wide and as deep; estimated to contain a gallon and a half of water, and the weight of the whole flower eighteen pounds.’

  It was a parasite, growing on the exposed root of a vine. ‘The inside of the cup is of an intense purple; and more or less densely yellow, with soft flexible spines of the same colour… The petals are of a brick-red, with numerous pustular spots of a lighter colour. The whole substance of the flower is not less than half an inch thick, and of a firm fleshy consistency.’

  Dr Arnold described how it had no roots, no leaves, no stem, and was just ‘seated’ on its host, with a swarm of flies hovering over it. Porters carried it in a crate back to Manna, but most of it rotted away. ‘The chemical composition being fungous, it would not keep; and not having sufficient spirits, we could not keep it entire. A part of it, and two buds almost as big as a child’s head, will be sent home.’

  The giant flower was named Rafflesia arnoldii. Neither Raffles nor Arnold named it thus, but Robert Brown, in a paper read to the Linnean Society of London in 1821. Brown was the Keeper of Sir Joseph Banks’ Herbarium and Library, and specialised in the classification of plant families; he considered that Dr Arnold would have chosen that name ‘had he lived to publish an account of it.’

  Since Raffles was better known than Arnold, and since Brown chose Rafflesia as the generic name, Raffles got the credit and renown. This injustice was not of his making. He always acknowledged the discovery to be Arnold’s, as in his letter to Colonel Addenbrook, former Equerry to the late Princess Charlotte, mentioning the sad death of Dr Arnold – ‘but not until he had immortalized his name by the discovery of one of the greatest prodigies in nature…I sent a short description of this plant, with a drawing, and part of the flower itself, to Sir Joseph Banks…’ Yet even Edward Presgrave, making a similar expedition later in the year, referred in his journal to seeing ‘several of the magnificent flowers found by the Governor’ – and he had been present when Dr Arnold came back to the hut with the fleshy monster.

  The giant flower was not exactly beautiful, and it smelt vile – ‘precisely the smell of tainted beef’ according to Dr Arnold. Sir Joseph Banks thought it ‘by far the most extraordinary vegetable production I have seen.’ The publication of Brown’s paper in the Transactions of the Linnean Society included engravings and dissections of the flower and a bud, and the impact was international. The Dowager Empress of Russia was so impressed that she sent Robert Brown a topaz and diamond ring; he gave it to Sophia, tardily, shortly before he died.

  The expedition continued, sometimes with Sophia carried on a man’s shoulders. They subsisted on rice and claret. The cavalcade struggled over the mountains into Pasumah, and a wide smiling valley where the Chiefs were gathered to meet them.

  A decade of hostility seemed wiped away. Raffles made a treaty with the Chiefs ‘by which they placed themselves under the protection of the British Government, and thus all cause of dispute and misunderstanding was at once set at rest.’ Many ‘cheerfully agreed’ to be vaccinated by Dr Arnold. Raffles, always on the look-out for religious survivals behind nominal ‘Mahometism’, ‘clearly traced an ancient mythology, and obtained the names of at least twenty gods, several of whom are Hindus.’

  On the return to Manna by a different route it poured with rain, the baggage-bearers lagged behind, and they slept in their wet clothes. ‘By perseverance, however, I made a tolerable place for Lady Raffles, and, after selecting the smoothest stone I could find in the bed of a river for a pillow, we managed to pass a tolerably comfortable night.’

  Sophia took up the tale from where her husband’s letter to the Duchess left off. Next day Raffles and Dr Arnold went on ahead and the party became dispersed, until ‘Mr Presgrave and the Editor’ found themselves alone. (Sophia referred to herself as ‘the Editor’ in the Memoir.) In the dark, Mr Presgrave fell into a large pit – ‘and disappeared entirely, and with him sunk the hope of concluding the day’s journey, and his companion’s spirit.’ The Editor had a sense of humour.

  When the party came back together, they hurtled down the rapids towards Manna on rafts. They still had to ride back to Bencoolen along the shoreline – ‘Very trying,’ wrote the Editor, ‘in the middle of the day, on account of tigers; the glare from the sea, the heat of the sand on the beach, the vertical rays of a tropical sun, without any shade…after the fatigue and exposure already experienced, were distressing to all, and proved fatal to one of the party.’ By the time they were half way, Dr Arnold was running a high fever.

  Sophia was as strong as an ox. It is amazing that she did not miscarry. Dr Arnold survived this bout but, to quote Travers, he ‘gradually decayed.’

  On a more modest inland excursion, Raffles climbed hills behind Bencoolen, and about twelve miles out of town on the ‘Hill of Mists’ (Bukit Kabut), ‘where no European had before ever set foot,’ he decided to build his country house. There was a fine view, and the temperature was six degrees lower than on the coast. The forests around bristled with elephants and tigers. ‘One of the villagers told me that his father and grandfather were carried off by tigers, and there is scarcely a family that has not lost some of its members by them.’ Raffles did rather like scaring the Duchess.

  He cleared his Hill and put up a bungalow. ‘To be sure we are not so grand as in Java,’ he wrote to Maryanne, ‘but then we are more retired, and as I advance in age’ – he was writing on his thirty-seventh birthday – ‘retirement becomes more and more congenial to me.’

  But not yet. There was fresh trouble in Palembang. The Dutch claimed it, with the island of Banca, as a natural dependency of Java, and sent out Raffles’ old colleague H.W. Muntinghe as Commissioner. Muntinghe turned Sultan Najmuddin out of the royal palace, claiming the pre-existence of a treaty transferring authority to the Dutch. Najmuddin appealed to Raffles, who despatched a mission led by Captain Francis Salmond to ‘offer protection’ to Najmuddin; Salmond made a treaty with him, ‘having ascertained that the Sultan had in no way committed himself to the Netherlands Government by any legal act,’ and hoisted the Union Jack on the Fort. Obviously Muntinghe would not stand by under such provocation.

  But before the drama played out, Raffles was off again. Two days after telling Maryanne about the congeniality of ‘retirement’, on 8 July 1818, he, Sophia, Dr Horsfield and Dr Arnold sailed on The Lady Raffles for Padang on another pioneering expedition.

  Raffles was bent on exploring on foot the ancient kingdom of Menangkabau (the Menang Highlands), over the barrier of mountains and almost in the centre of the island. Menangkabau had long ago ruled over all Sumatra, and still, in William Marsden’s nice phrase, received ‘a shadow of homage’ throughout the island. Raffles knew that Menangkabau people had built a city on an island they called Singapura, provoking hostility from the Kingdom of Majapahit in Java. The last King of Singapura fled in 1252.

  Raffles found the British Resident at Padang, Charles Holloway, profoundly unhelpful. No Europeans ever went to Menangkabau. Access was impossible. Raffles took no notice. The main group – two hundred coolies with their loads, a fifty-strong military escort, and personal servants – left on 14 July: ‘A most ridiculous cavalcade,’ Raffles told the Duchess, ‘the interest of which was much heightened by the quixotic appearance of my friend Dr Horsfield who was borne along on the shoulders of four of the party in order that preceding us he might gain time for botanizing.’

  Dr Arnold was too unwell to go when Raffles and Sophia with their escort left two days later. Dr Horsfield sent a note back to Raffles: ‘I must inform you that there are many difficult passages; I should not, however, despair of your progress…but as for Lady Raffles, I almost doubt whether, in favourable weather, she could come on, as in many places a lad
y cannot be carried.’

  Sophia was an obstinate woman. On she went. They were away for fifteen days, struggling across the mountains and then emerging into the rich agricultural Tiga-blas country and on into the heart of Menangkabau, where they found ‘the wreck of a great empire’. Raffles described all he saw to the Duchess in a detailed diary-letter, now of considerable historical interest.

  They came across ancient inscribed stones, and a Hindu image. For Raffles, this was ‘classical ground’. His beliefs about the origins of the pre-Islamic Malay world seemed justified. He entered into a treaty of friendship with the Sultan of Menangkabau, naming him the Lord Paramount of all the Malays; for Raffles envisaged the ancient sovereignty of Menangkabau being re-established, and all Sumatra unified under British influence. Padang was the gateway to Menangkabau, as he informed the Secret Committee in London, ‘and it is my intention to refuse admission to the Dutch at Padang until I receive further orders from England.’

  Back in Padang they heard that Dr Joseph Arnold had died, and Charles Holloway, the unhelpful Resident, had drowned at sea.

  In Bencoolen there was news from Palembang. Captain Salmond, having refused to lower the Union Jack, had been taken prisoner by Muntinghe, then shipped out and delivered back to Bencoolen.

  Raffles wrote an angry and eloquent letter to the Dutch authorities. This became dignified as the ‘Protest’; he got it published in the principle London newspapers and reprinted in the Annual Register for 1819. In the middle of composing it he found time to write to his mother, on hearing of the deaths of his sister Harriet and her new baby – ‘poor girl… You see it is not those who are exposed to most dangers who suffer first.’

  His Protest attracted attention, but not in a good way. Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords raised Salmond’s arrest as an outrage against the British Government, but was squashed by the Secretary for the Colonies: Sir Stamford was merely a commercial agent with no political authority, and the mission to Palembang should never have taken place. The Secretary to the East India Company, now Joseph Dart, wrote to Calcutta recommending that Raffles be better controlled, his ‘proper functions’ being only those of ‘the Company’s commercial Resident’ at Bencoolen. The Board of Control remarked on the ‘inconvenience’ of the continuance at Bencoolen ‘of a person, however individually respectable, who has in so many instances overstepped the limits of his duty.’ The Netherlands Ambassador in London delivered his own protest. The political climate in London was entirely in favour of conciliating the Dutch for fear of jeopardising a major Anglo-Dutch Treaty. The Marquess of Hastings (as Lord Moira had become) wrote to the Dutch Governor of Java disassociating the Supreme Government from Raffles’ actions.

  Raffles had precipitated a diplomatic disaster, and then made things worse. In order to frighten the Dutch in Palembang he sent off an armed force to which he gave the jolly name of Sumatran Hill Rangers. Muntinghe responded to their approach by calling for reinforcements from Java. The former Sultan Badaruddin, in a bid to clear his name with the Dutch, then stuck his oar in, saying that the massacre of the Dutch garrison in 1811 had come about because Raffles had written to him from Malacca encouraging him to kill all the Dutch. So it was all Raffles’ fault. (Raffles’ message had been highly ambiguous, his precise meaning adrift in translation.)

  Raffles was in hot water. He applied for permission to travel to Calcutta in order to explain about Palembang, to argue for the retention of Padang, and to impress upon the Governor-General the potential value of Sumatra. The omens, surprisingly, were good. ‘It was painful to me,’ replied the Marquess of Hastings, ‘that I had, in the course of my public duty, to express an opinion unfavourable to your measures in Java.’ His disapprobation ‘affected their prudence alone,’ and credit was due to Raffles’ ‘anxious and unwearied exertions’ with results ‘highly creditable to the British Government.’

  Sophia and Raffles, with Sophia’s brother William Hull, sailed for Calcutta, leaving Charlotte in Bencoolen with Nurse Grimes, ‘quite a treasure’. ‘Do you not pity Lady Raffles,’ her husband wrote to the Duchess of Somerset, ‘and think me hard-hearted to drag her about in her present state, but she will not remain from me, and what can I do?’

  Every woman prioritises either the man or the child, and Sophia was definitely a woman for the man.

  Raffles could not persuade the Supreme Government in Calcutta to hold on to Padang, and was instructed to have absolutely nothing more to do with Palembang. The Sumatran Hill Rangers were to be recalled. Lord Hastings would not honour the treaty Raffles made with the Sultan of Menangkabau, or agree that the whole island of Sumatra should be played for by the restoration of Menangkabau sovereignty.

  Raffles bit on the bullet and in November apologised formally. ‘His Lordship in Council may be assured that my proceedings will be entirely influenced by the orders which I have now received and that in all future communications with the agents of the Dutch Government the most conciliatory and amicable spirit shall be manifested.’

  He added that ‘I left England under the full impression that I was not only Resident at Bencoolen but in fact Political Agent for the Malay States’ and attached a copy of the briefing letter issued to him in 1817. While this required him to collect and transmit intelligence on the operations of the Dutch and Americans in the Archipelago, it certainly did not authorise military or even diplomatic interventions. He heard however that his explanation was ‘perfectly satisfactory to the Governor-General.’

  Raffles was already on to something else, and would soon transform a humiliating episode into a personal triumph.

  Penang and Bencoolen were the only British positions remaining in the Archipelago following the post-war concessions to the Dutch. British trade, and the most profitable branch of it – between India and the Far East – was threatened. This anxiety was expressed by the Government in Penang and taken on board by the Governor-General. The acquisition of some modest trading-point south of Malacca, roughly equidistant between India and China, was essential if the Company was not to be excluded entirely.

  Raffles, with his charm and his zeal, was co-opted by Lord Hastings as the key figure in this project. Writing that November to the Secret Committee, Hastings regretted being ‘compelled to adopt a tone of censure on the conduct of Sir Stamford Raffles’ over Palembang. Although ‘we conceive him to have misconstrued his powers…we are fully persuaded that he was influenced by motives of unquestionable zeal for the interests of the Honourable Company and the nation.’ His confidence in Sir Stamford was such that ‘we have actually entrusted to him the conduct of an important service to the Eastward.’

  Major William Farquhar, with Malacca returned to the Dutch, had arranged to take home leave. But Lord Hastings and Raffles agreed that he was the man to investigate the islands at the southern end of the Malacca Strait and head up any new station; Farquhar had already tabled his own memo about the need for a settlement somewhere at the entrance to the Strait, and Colonel Bannerman, the Governor of Penang, had instructed him to make commercial treaties with islands near Singapore. Farquhar had success with the islands of Lingga and Rhio, where he concluded a treaty with the Chief acting on behalf of Sultan Abdul Rahman of Johore on the Malaysian mainland. All this he communicated to Raffles. The two were associated in the adventure from the beginning.

  In mid-December 1818, when he and Sophia sailed from Calcutta for Penang, Raffles wrote to Marsden, ‘We are now on our way to the Eastward, hoping to do something, but I much fear the Dutch have hardly left us an inch of ground to stand upon. My attention is principally turned to Johore, and you must not be surprised if my next letter to you is dated from the site of the ancient city of Singhapura.’ Lord Hastings’ last words to him in Calcutta were ‘Sir Stamford, you may depend on me.’

  Lord Hastings was giving Raffles a golden opportunity.

  For his other mission from Hastings, to ‘form a connection’ with Acheen, Raffles had a co-Commissioner, Captain John Monckton Coombs. John
Palmer in Calcutta was conspiring to thwart Raffles’ ‘impertinent Intrusion’ over the contested throne of Acheen, and his equally impertinent intrusion into the plan for a new trading-post.

  Palmer nobbled Captain Coombs in Penang: ‘I would fain have you prepared for the reception of our Knight, if ever he contrives to get amongst you [in Penang]… But I am doing what I may to spike a too rapidly revolving Wheel.’ As for the project of raising the British flag somewhere south of the Strait of Malacca, in a discussion with ‘A’ (the Secretary to Government in Calcutta, John Adam) he had ‘ventured to assume that it were the very height of injustice to F [Farquhar]…to foist a fresh man on the fruits of his labour; and when in truth all is accomplished that even the eminent endowment of Sir Knight could by any possibility effect.’ Farquhar was eminently qualified to carry it through ‘on his own.’

  ‘I had proceeded this far,’ continued Palmer after more verbiage, ‘when I was favoured with a call from Sir Knight, who stayed a couple of hours at my desk musing pretty largely into all the details of projected measures.’ Palmer warned Coombs, and therefore all Penang, that Raffles ‘carries instructions of his own drafting, to form stable connexions, political and commercial, where F has already put his seal, and the object of his visit appeared to be to ascertain my notion upon the nature of these relations… I had in view, however, to get the Knight out of your waters, for though I fear I may not preclude him, I trust I may shorten his stay among you.’

  What Palmer picked up from his contacts in the Supreme Government confirmed ‘my apprehension that the Knight is netting out for himself an Empire east of yours’ (i.e. Penang’s). ‘This last, unless an entire and exclusive Dominion, evidently will not satisfy his ambition; nor even yield that occupation which a restless mind and frame seem to exact.’

  Raffles was naturally open and communicative. It is painful to see him, leaning against Palmer’s desk, confiding in that snake – who ended up disarmed by Raffles’ directness: ‘I have no wish to depreciate his talent or fitness…he has been either remarkably candid or remarkably artful in the readiest acknowledgment of more than one instance of erroneous policy in Java and Sumatra…he frankly threw off his disguise as well as his reserve… He is a kind hearted man, a little selfish in his views of ambition and policy – perhaps from a conviction that the whole range of Eastern subjects does not require more than the talent of more than one ordinary man – and that man he desires to be.’