Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries: A Memoir of the Founder of Singapore 9789813278332

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World Scientific

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Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Name(s): Bastin, John Sturgus, 1927– Title: Sir Stamford Raffles and some of his friends and contemporaries : a memoir of the founder of Singapore | John Bastin. Description: Singapore : World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte Ltd, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifier(s): OCN 1088509604 | ISBN 978-981-32-7766-3 (hardback) | ISBN 978-981-32-7833-2 (paperback) Subject(s): LCSH: Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir, 1781–1826. | Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir, 1781–1826- Friends and associates. | Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir, 1781–1826--Contemporaries. | Colonial administrators--Singapore--Biography. | Colonial administrators--Great Britain--Biography. | Singapore--History--1819–1867. Classification: DDC 959.5703092--dc23 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Text © John Sturgus Bastin Copyright © 2019 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. and John Sturgus Bastin All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher.

Desk Editor: Sylvia Koh Designer: Jimmy Low Typeset by Stallion Press Email: [email protected]

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Preface This book is published on the occasion of the bicentenary of the founding of Singapore by Sir Stamford Raffles. The first centenary of Singapore’s founding was marked by the publication of One Hundred Years of Singapore being Some Account of the Capital of the Straits Settlements from its Foundation by Sir Stamford Raffles on the 6th February 1819 to the 6th February 1919 (London, 1921), edited by Walter Makepeace, Dr. Gilbert E. Brooke and Roland St. J. Braddell, and by a smaller lessknown book entitled, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles Kt., LL.D., F.R.S. Founder of Singapore 1819 and Some of his Friends and Contemporaries (London, 1918). This was written by J.A. Bethune Cook and was based largely on material extracted from Lady Raffles’s Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830). Its content lacked originality, but its conception was new, and it has suggested the title for the present work. In the Introduction to her Memoir, Lady Raffles referred to Raffles’s principal friends in the following terms: Of the friends who assisted Sir Stamford in some of those pursuits which formed his delight and relaxation from public duty, Dr. Arnold, Dr. Jack, Dr. Horsfield, and Dr. Wallich, the world has a better knowledge than the Editor can give. Though Dr. Arnold soon fell a sacrifice to the climate, his amiable character had won Sir Stamford’s friendship, and his death was mourned with the truest sorrow. Sir Stamford loved Dr. Jack as a brother; and the society of this highly-gifted and accomplished young man, was a never-failing resource of pleasure: his early death blighted many anticipated plans of future usefulness.

The lives of these companions of Raffles are detailed in the following pages, together with those of his West Indian school friend, Richard Wynter (Winter); his fellow clerk at the East India House, William Brown Ramsay; his Scottish mentor, Dr. John Casper Leyden; his secretary in Java, Charles Chaston Assey; his Malay scribe, John Leyden Siami; his cousins, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles and Elton Hamond; and his aides-de-camp, Lieutenants Thomas Otho Travers, Robert Clement v

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Garnham, James Dalgairns, Thomas Watson and Cathcart Methven. Others who claimed his friendship are referred to in the notes: Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset, and his wife, Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset; Henry PettyFitzmaurice, Marquis of Lansdowne; Major-General Sir Miles and Lady Nightingall; William Marsden, Thomas Macquoid, William Robinson, Captain Godfrey Phipps Baker, Colonel Colin Mackenzie, Major Jeremiah Johnson, Captain Nicholas Manley, Dr. Thomas Sevestre, Captain Basil Hall R.N., Major-General Thomas Hardwicke, Captain Francis Salmond, William Wilberforce, Thomas Murdoch, Andries de Wilde, Alexander Hare, Sir Hugh Inglis and his son, Sir Robert Harry Inglis. It has been said that a man’s friends reveal the man, and if this is true then this book may perhaps be regarded as an ‘alternative’ biographical account of Raffles as seen through the lives of his friends and contemporaries. I have to thank the Council of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, for allowing me to use material already published. For documentary sources, I wish to thank the British Library, London; the Mitchell Library, Sydney; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Library of the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal- Land,- en Volkenkunde, Leiden; the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Cambridge University Library; the Library of the Royal Society, London; the Library of the Linnean Society of London; the Library of the Zoological Society of London; the Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the Library of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Sibpur); Dr. Williams’s Library, London; the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London; the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London; the Botanical and Zoological Libraries of the Natural History Museum, London; the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, London; the National Archives, Singapore; the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta; the Nationaal Archief, The Hague; the National Museum, Singapore; and the National Library, Singapore. To the staff of these institutions I express my sincere gratitude. My thanks are also due to Julie Weizenegger, Dr. Henry Noltie, Professor Kevin Tan, Mrs. Wai Yin Pryke, former Director of the National Library of Singapore, Sharon Koh, Manager of the National Library, Mr. Francis Dorai, Editor-in-Chief of the Library, and Sylvia Koh, Editor at World Scientific Publishing, Singapore. My greatest debt, however, is to my wife, who has shared my researches on Raffles over a long period of years. The book is dedicated to her with deepest love and affection. John Bastin

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Contents Prefacev Abbreviationsix Chapter One

The East India House and William Brown Ramsay

2

Chapter Two

The Scottish Poet and Orientalist John Leyden16

Chapter Three

The American Naturalist Thomas Horsfield in Java90

Chapter Four

Raffles’s Secretary and Aides-De-Camp 158

Chapter Five

The British Naval Surgeon Joseph Arnold in Java176

Chapter Six

 affles’s Cousins and the Publication of R The History of Java

192

Chapter Seven

Raff les and Joseph Arnold in Sumatra218

Chapter Eight

Thomas Horsfield in Sumatra and London250

Chapter Nine

 he Scottish Naturalist William Jack in Penang, T Singapore and Sumatra268

Chapter Ten

 he Danish Naturalist Nathaniel Wallich and the T Singapore Botanic Garden300

Chapter Eleven Raff les and his Malay Clerk John Leyden Siami374 Chapter Twelve R  aff les’s Friends in England and the Founding of the Zoological Society of London382 Bibliography405 Index455

vii

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Abbreviations Add. MSS. BKI BL BM Bull. Br. Mus. nat. History (hist. Ser.) DAB D.T.C.

JIA JMBRAS JSBRAS Kon. Bibl. KITLV MLS MSS. Eur. NA n. NSA NHD NHM NLS Pr. Coll. Proc. Linn. Soc.

Additional Manuscripts, British Library Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land – en Volkenkunde, Leiden British Library British Museum Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) (Historical Series) Dictionary of American Biography, New York Dawson Turner Collection of the correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, Department of Botany, Natural History Museum, London Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, Singapore Journal Malaysian [Malayan] Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur Journal Straits Branch Royal Asiatic Society, Singapore Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde, Leiden Mitchell Library, Sydney European Manuscripts, British Library Nationaal Archief, The Hague note [where ‘note’ appears in an unabbreviated form it refers to this book] National Archives, Singapore Natural History Drawings, British Library Natural History Museum, London Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Private collection Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London ix

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x  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

SNL TNI Trans. Linn. Soc. VBG VKI

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Singapore National Library Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s [Nederlandsch] Indië, Batavia (Jakarta), Zalt-Bommel Transactions of the Linnean Society of London Verhandelingen Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Batavia, Jakarta Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde, Leiden

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‘Do not my dear friend think that I am led to it by a vain ambition of raising a Name – it is an act of duty & gratitude only – In these Countries has my little independence been gained – In these Countries have I passed the most valuable if not perhaps, the whole period of my public life – I am linked to them by many a bitter and many a pleasant tie – It is here that I think I may have done some little good and instead of frittering away the stock of zeal and means that may yet be left me in objects for which I may not be fitted I am anxious to do all the good I can here, where experience has proved to me that my labours will not be thrown away’ Raffles to Nathaniel Wallich, Singapore 17 April 1823, on the establishment of the Singapore Institution

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Chapter One

The East India House and William Brown Ramsay ‘I am at this instant more animated with affection towards you than ever – I think of you and I feel for you, as I would for a Brother –’ Raffles to William Brown Ramsay, 11 September 1814

East India House, Leadenhall Street, London Engraving c. 1799

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The East India House and William Brown Ramsay   3

T

homas Stamford Bingley Raffles, the founder of Singapore, was born at sea on board his father’s ship Ann in the harbour of Port Morant on the eastern point of Jamaica on 6 July (5 July by sea-reckoning) 1781. The Ann was a trim copper-sheathed ship of 260 tons, built in Scotland in 1765, and owned by Hibbert, Purrier & Horton of Mincing Lane, London. Her commander, Benjamin Raffles (1739–1811), was one of the most experienced of the captains involved in the West India trade out of the port of London, having been at sea from the age of 16, when he left the Mathematical School of Christ’s Hospital in the City of London.1 His first command in 1764 was as master of the Morant, and he became commander of the Ann early in 1776, the year in which he married Ann Lyde, the 21-year-old daughter of Ann Salter and Edward Lyde, a prosperous London oilman and purveyor of soap, candles and glue in The Strand.2 The marriage ceremony was performed by Ann Lyde’s brother-in-law, the Reverend John Lindeman, in the church of St. Mary Somerset in Upper Thames Street, London, the witnesses being Captain Raffles’s father, Thomas Raffles, a long-serving clerk in the Prerogative Office, Doctors’ Commons, London; his sister, or great aunt, Mary Raffles; William Lindeman, father of the Reverend John Lindeman, and the latter’s wife, Harriot Lindeman, sister of Ann Lyde.3 Captain Raffles’s wife probably sailed with him aboard the Ann for Jamaica in February 1777 and also possibly on the following voyage between November 1777 and July 1778, but she was ashore when she gave birth to their daughter Ann on 27 August 1779 since the child was baptised at St. Dunstan in the East in London on 26 September 1779 and buried in the following January in the south vault under St. Dunstan’s school.4 She joined her husband later that year when the Ann sailed with the London fleet for the West Indies and she gave birth to her son when the ship was anchored in the harbour of Port Morant. He was named after Thomas Stamford, the plantation overseer of the Harbourhead Estate in Jamaica,5 and Thomas Bingley Sr., an insurance broker of Exchange Alley, Cornhill, later of 21 Birchen Lane, Cornhill, London, both close friends of his father.6 Captain Benjamin Raffles’s engagement in the West India trade is discussed in detail in John Bastin and Julie Weizenegger, The Family of Sir Stamford Raffles (Singapore, 2016), pp. 28–43.

1

Ibid., pp. 34–5, 164 n.27.

2

Ibid., pp. 34–5.

3

Ibid., pp. 47, 170 n.1.

4

Ibid., pp. 36, 161 n.15.

5

Ibid., pp. 29, 160 n.4, 170 n.2.

6

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4  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

He was christened on 26 July at Port Royal by Thomas Davis, chaplain of HMS Princess Royal (90 guns), one of the ships assigned to convoy the Ann and other merchantmen to England. Six days later, on 1 August, a violent hurricane struck Jamaica, causing great damage to the sugar plantations in the west of the island, and driving nearly 100 ships ashore in Port Royal harbour, including the Ann, though she was later reported to be securely anchored. The homeward-bound ships eventually sailed in three divisions between 19 and 23 August and arrived safely at Portsmouth on 2 January 1782 and at Gravesend 12 days later.7 This seems to have been the last voyage Ann Raffles made with her husband for she gave birth to a quick succession of children, mainly girls. Harriot was born on 27 November 1783 and baptised by the Reverend John Lindeman on 4 July 1784 at the Church of St. Michael and All Angels at Eaton Bishop in Herefordshire, when her brother Thomas Stamford was re-baptised, this time with the omission of the name of Bingley.8 She was followed by Leonora, who was born on 8 July and baptised on 5 August 1785 at St. Mary’s Church, Islington, Middlesex,9 and by Elizabeth, who was born on 4 March and baptised on 14 March 1787 at St. Benet Fink Church, Threadneedle Street, London. She died on 3 March 1791, a day before her fourth birthday at Walcott Place, Lambeth, and was buried at St. Mary’s Church, Lambeth, on 9 March 1791. A second son, Benjamin, was born on 12 April 1788 but died three days later. He was followed by Mary Anne, who was born on 21 May and baptised on 26 June 1789 at St. Mary’s Church, Lambeth,10 and by Ann, who was born on 9 April and baptised on 12 May 1793 at St. Mary’s Church, Lambeth.11 During these and subsequent years, the Raffles family occupied a succession of houses in London, the constant changes reflecting the declining fortunes of Captain Raffles in the West India trade. The first recorded residence of the family was at No. 149 Fenchurch Street, where Ann Raffles was born in 1779 and died the following year. A second house at an unrecorded address in the parish of Hornsey, Middlesex, was occupied between 1783 and 1784, and a third at No. 17 Throgmorton Street between 1786 and 1787. This was followed between 1789 and 1796 by a house at Walcott Place (later New Road), Lambeth, and then by a house Ibid., p. 36.

7

Ibid., pp. 165 n.28, 170–1 n.3.

8

Ibid., pp. 171–2 n.4.

9

Ibid., pp. 172–3 n.5.

10

Ibid., pp. 173–4 n.6.

11

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in East Lane, Walworth, where in the nearby fields Raffles joined his younger cousin, Thomas Raffles, in flying his ‘kyte’.12 A leasehold property described as a ‘Genteel, Substantial Dwelling-House’ at No. 10 Camden Street, Islington, was next occupied by the family between 1798 and 1800,13 followed by rented accommodation in the Apollo Buildings in the parish of Newington St. Mary in the borough of Southwark to the north of Walworth Fields. These changes must have had an unsettling effect on the whole family which, according to Raffles’s later testimony, was living in such ‘obscurity and distress’ that he was reprimanded by his mother for his ‘extravagance’ in burning a candle in his room. His earnings, he stated, ‘went to their relief, but it was insufficient. Long-standing debts, and a want of the means to prevent still further involvement, caused me many a bitter moment’.14 It was at Walcott Place, Lambeth, that two young West Indian children came to live with the family, Richard and Elizabeth Wynter, the illegitimate children of Captain Raffles’s friend, Nathaniel Phillips,15 whose Pleasant Hill estate bordered that of Thomas Stamford in the sugar district of St. Thomas in the East, Jamaica. Their mother was a free mulatto woman named Charlotte Wynter, and Captain Raffles brought the children to England in March 1789 aboard his ship West Indian to have them educated. The 10-year-old Elizabeth, known as ‘Betsy’, was born on 15 July 1779,16 and her seven-year-old brother, Richard, on 27 November 1782. He was a year younger than Raffles and he remained one of his life-long friends, joining him later in west Sumatra as a sugar planter when Raffles was LieutenantGovernor of Fort Marlborough.17 The young Wynter’s experiences of life on a sugar plantation in Jamaica must have formed part of their early childhood conversations and were undoubtedly the source of Raffles’s life-long detestation of slavery and all forms of forced labour. Elizabeth Wynter was enrolled in a girls’ school in The Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, ‘Reminiscences’, John Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009), pp. 19, 227.

12

Bastin and Weizenegger, Family of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 45–6.

13

SNL:Raffles to the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, 14 October 1819. Confirmation of Raffles’s statement about the decline in the social standing of his family seems indicated by the fact that his sister Leonora was apprenticed in January 1808 to a ‘very Respectable milliner’ for a fee of £15, which was paid by his cousin Elton Hamond, who also gave her £5 ‘to smarten her appearance’ (Elton Hamond to Raffles, 26 January 1808, Dr. Williams’s Library, London).

14

Bastin and Weizenegger, Family of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 161–3 n.15, and passim.

15

Ibid., p. 162 n.15.

16

Ibid., pp. 162–3 n.15. Wynter clearly accepted the system of slavery as it existed in the West Indies because he was registered in 1817 as the owner of four slaves in the parish of St. Thomas in the East in Jamaica, one of whom, a ten-year-old boy, was named William Wynter. The slaves remained in his name until his death in 1832, when they came into possession of his sister, who acted as his attorney.

17

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Islington, and Richard became a pupil of the Headmaster, Dr. James Anderson, at the Mansion House Boarding School in King Street, Hammersmith, where he was joined by Raffles in 1793. Wynter’s annual school fees of £33.10s.5d. were paid by his wealthy father in Jamaica, but similar fees soon proved too high for Captain Raffles, who after two years withdrew his son from school so that he might help to support his family.18 In 1795, at the age of 14, and against his wishes, Raffles was employed in the office of the Secretary of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street, London, as an ‘extra clerk’, with the duties and status described by the essayist Charles Lamb, who had entered the Accountant-General’s office of the Company three years earlier: ‘[T]here are in the India house what are called Extra Clerks, not on the Establishment, … but employed in Extra business, by-jobs – these get about £50 a year, or rather more, but never rise –’.19 There was a marked social difference between the ‘extra clerks’ and clerks on the establishment although both owed their appointments to the patronage of a Director of the East India Company. Raffles gained his position through the influence of his uncle Charles Hamond, a London wholesale tea merchant of No. 21 Milk Street, Cheapside,20 and possibly through that of his godfather, Thomas Bingley Sr.,21 and his son, Thomas Bingley Jr., an insurance broker of Birchin Lane, London, who in 1795 held £1,000 of East India Company stock.22 During the years he spent working as an ‘extra clerk’, Raffles was paid an annual salary of £50, which contrasted with the clerks on the establishment who received no salary during their first three years of probationary service but could petition for the payment of an annual gratuity of between £10 in the first year, and up to £30 in the third year, after which they were paid a regular salary of £40 in the fourth year and £70 in the fifth.23 Ibid., pp. 49–51, 174 n.8; Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 20.

18

Lamb to Southey, 27 December 1798, The Letters of Charles Lamb (ed.) E.V. Lucas (London, 1935), vol. I, p. 144.

19

On Charles Hamond, see Chapter Six and Bastin and Weizenegger, Family of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 74, 160 n.4, 164 n.27.

20

Bastin and Weizenegger, Family of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 29, 160 n.4.

21

Ibid., p. 160 n.4. It was Thomas Bingley Jr., and not his father, who arrived in Java in 1812, as stated in Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 32 n.7.

22

By contrast, Charles Lamb, as a clerk on the establishment of the East India Company, was paid no salary during his first three years of service between 1792 and 1794, except for an annual grant of £30. The first payment of his salary in 1795 amounted to £40 and by 1801 it was £100 per annum, rising thereafter by annual increments of £10 (and in 1809 by £20) to reach £240 in 1815, £480 in 1816, £700 in 1821, and £730 in 1825, when he received a retirement pension of £450 (C.A. Prance, Companion to Charles Lamb (London, 1983), p. 299).

23

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For these pecuniary rewards, the clerks were required to work a basic six-hour day, from nine or ten o’clock in the morning until three or four in the afternoon, unless there was a heavy press of business when additional unpaid time was required. Lamb complained in 1796 of ‘starving at the India House’ after being engaged there until nearly seven o’clock in the evening without dinner, and he later told the poet William Wordsworth that on occasion he had been required to work at the office from 10 in the morning until 11 o’clock at night, with only two hours for dinner.24 The constant drudge of work affected his health, as it did that of Raffles, who developed signs of tuberculosis and was ordered to take a period of leave from his duties. Walking some 30 or 40 miles a day in Wales for two weeks he returned to the India House with his health miraculously restored.25 The Secretary’s Department in the East India House was responsible for the business conducted by the Company’s Court of Directors and the Committee of Correspondence, and was also involved in dealing with the correspondence with the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, popularly known as the India Board of Control. In Raffles’s time, the Secretary’s Department had a staff of about 50 clerks, half of whom were ‘extra clerks’. The gloomy offices were divided by seven-foot-high compartments, or ‘compounds’, each accommodating six clerks. The compounds were surrounded by metal railings with doors which could be locked at night, or whenever the occupants were busy and wanted to avoid interruption. Seated on their high stools,26 the clerks bent over their desks copying the endless despatches and correspondence generated by ‘the Grandest Society of Merchants in the Universe’, their eyes under constant strain, especially in winter when they wrote by the light of candles, their bodies warmed by a single fire at the end of the room. It was a dismal existence in equally dismal surroundings, relieved only by the comradeship of the clerks who joined on one Saturday of the year in ‘the grand feast day’, described by Lamb as the ‘yearly turtle feast’. There was also the comradeship to be gained from membership of one of the three regiments of Lamb to Coleridge, 2 December 1796, Lamb to Wordsworth, 7 April 1815, Letters of Charles Lamb, vol. I, p. 60; vol. II, p. 155. There was sufficient leisure, however, for Lamb to be able to conduct much of his private correspondence at the India House on East India Company paper.

24

Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), pp. 3–4.

25

Thomas De Quincey, ‘Recollections of Charles Lamb’, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey (ed.) David Mason (London, 1896–7), vol. III, p. 89.

26

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the Brigade of Royal East-India Volunteers, which had been formed by the East India Company in 1796 against the threat of a French invasion. Each regiment consisted of 500 rank-and-file, 20 drummers, 30 sergeants and some 35 officers, the field officers being selected from the Directors of the Company. Together with other loyal men, young and old, Raffles enlisted as an Ensign in the Third Regiment after it was formed in 1799 under the command of Colonel John Roberts, one of the Directors. Like the rest, he turned out regularly in his uniform at the drill-hall of the Third Regiment in Bishopsgate, round the corner from the Company’s offices in Leadenhall Street, and shouldering his musket he joined in regimental parades, reviews and marches.27 It was not always comradeship among the clerks, however, judging by a story told in old age by Robert Ibbetson (1789–1880), Governor of the Straits Settlements, who in 1805 accompanied his father to the East India House to thank one of the Directors for nominating him as a Writer on the Presidency Government of Prince of Wales Island (Penang). While his father was taken to see the Director, he was left in a room occupied by two clerks, one of whom was standing in front of the fire when another came and kicked him away. ‘The one who was removed from the fire in so undignified a manner’, Ibbetson related, ‘was Mr Raffles, who became the celebrated Sir Stamford Raffles’.28 In 1800, when Raffles was appointed a junior clerk on the establishment on a salary of £70 a year, and was required as in all cases involving employment in the departments of the Accountant and Secretary to enter into a personal bond of £500, he again called on Thomas Bingley Jr. and Charles Hamond to act as sureties for this amount.29 Raffles’s promotion is recorded in the Court Minutes of the Company of 16 July 1800 as ‘the junior clerk in the Secretary’s office on the usual terms’, with the Bond dated 23 July. A year later, on 7 July 1801, a day after his 20th birthday, he was paid a gratuity of £20, which included arrears from the previous mid-summer, and in 1802, he received £98, including a gratuity of £30 paid on 21 July, possibly for extra hours worked. In 1803, his salary was £100, and Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 24, 26. The Brigade of Royal East-India Volunteers had been formed two years after the formation of the first Volunteer Corps in England. There was a rapid expansion of Volunteers in the succeeding years, especially in 1803 when the threat of a French invasion appeared more real. See Peter Lloyd, The French are Coming!-1805-The Invasion Scare of 1803–5 (Tunbridge Wells, 1991), pp. 128–44.

27

Sir Archibald Anson, About Others and Myself 1745 to 1920 (London, 1920), p. 285. On Ibbetson, see Marcus Langdon, Penang The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830 (Penang, 2013), vol. I, pp. 332–42.

28

Bastin and Weizenegger, Family of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 160 n.4.

29

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in the following year, it was raised to £110, part of which was allocated for the upkeep of his family, following his father’s forced retirement from the West India trade four years earlier. The payment of the gratuity of £20 in 1801 appears to have been the occasion for Raffles to leave home, for he is recorded between June and November 1801 as a 20-year-old ‘Established’ clerk in the Secretary’s Office of the East India Company, on a salary of £20 (obviously the gratuity paid in his new post), residing at No. 7 East Place, Lambeth, a relatively new house erected 15 years earlier when East Street (now Lollard Street) was being developed.30 On 18 November 1801, he took out insurance on the house with the Sun Fire Office, and he remained there until some time between June 1803 and June 1804, when he moved to an unknown address in Bloomsbury, having borrowed on 15 October 1804 another £50 from his uncle, Charles Hamond.31 The only known friendship Raffles formed during his years at the East India House was with another clerk named William Brown Ramsay. He was the son of the Secretary of the East India Company, William Ramsay, and was a year or two younger than Raffles. He gained employment as a clerk in his father’s department on 13 June 1797 so that he was much the same age as Raffles when he entered the Company’s service. He was promoted more quickly, however, since he was appointed a junior clerk on the establishment on 16 July 1800, the day when Raffles also received his appointment. In letters written to Ramsay from Java some years later, Raffles declared that he regarded him with ‘the affection of a Brother’ and as his most valuable and intimate friend in England.32 Ramsay was described in 1815 by Raffles’s aide-de-camp, Captain Thomas Otho Travers (1785–1844), as ‘mild and gentle in his manners, kind, attentive and considerate in his actions, pleasing, entertaining and lively in his conversation’.33 Raffles’s first wife, Olivia Mariamne, regarded him with some affection,34 but his second wife, Sophia, found him a little too polished for her liking, describing a dinner in September 1816, when Ramsay was living with Raffles at Cheltenham, to his ‘gentle[man]ly, imposing Manners

Ibid., p. 51.

30

Bond signed by Raffles, dated 15 October 1804, Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

31

Raffles to W.B. Ramsay, 21 October 1812 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/20). For other letters from Raffles to Ramsay, see Chapter Two, including note 66.

32

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, January 1815.

33

Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 33 n.38.

34

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[having] all due effect’.35 Raffles corresponded regularly with Ramsay when he was in Java but not, seemingly, when he was in Sumatra, probably because Ramsay had resigned from the Company on 6 August 1817 on a pension of £300 and the politics of East India House was no longer a subject of interest between them. Nevertheless, their friendship was renewed when Raffles returned to England in 1824, and Ramsay acted as one of the pall bearers at his funeral two years later. Ramsay died on 24 October 1850, two years after marrying Catherine Steploe, with whom he had cohabited since 1832, the marriage being regarded as one of convenience by the Trustees of the Regular Widows Fund, who reduced her widow’s pension to £100, half the normal entitlement.36 The friendship formed with the young Ramsay bore important results for it brought Raffles more directly under the notice of Ramsay’s father, whose house, with its private entrance at the west end of the East India House, he must often have visited. William Ramsay Sr. was about 57 years of age when Raffles first met him, having spent the whole of his life in the service of the East India Company. After five years of unpaid employment in the departments of the Secretary and the Accountant-General, he was appointed a salaried clerk on 15 June 1768, Assistant Secretary on 15 July 1783, and Secretary on 20 June 1792.37 Raffles obviously stood in some favour with him, not only as a friend of his son, but also because Ramsay recognised in him an exceptional talent. In 1804, following the decision of the Directors of the Company to elevate Penang to the status of the Presidency Government of Prince of Wales Island, Ramsay strongly recommended him for the post of Assistant Secretary in the new administration. In making his recommendation to the Director Sir Hugh Inglis (1744–1820), Ramsay declared that the loss of such an assistant in his department would cause him ‘the greatest inconvenience, and that it would be like the loss of a limb to him’, yet he felt bound to recommend one possessing such superior talents and so amiable a private character. After confirming Raffles’s suitability and qualifications for the post, Inglis gave his support to Ramsay’s recommendation and Raffles was accordingly appointed to the new post on a salary of £1,500 a year.38 Sophia Hull to Mary Anne Flint, 26 September 1816 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/15).

35

Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 25.

36

Ibid., p. 25.

37

D.C. Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897), p. 11.

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The appointment was officially announced on 8 March 1805, and six days later Raffles married a widow named Olivia Mariamne Fancourt, the illegitimate daughter of George or Godfrey Devenish of Casheltauna Four Mile House, County Roscommon, by an unknown Circassian woman. She was born on 16 February 1771, probably at Madras, and was 10 years older than Raffles.39 She grew up in Ireland but in June 1787 returned to Madras where she gave birth to an illegitimate daughter by Captain John Hamilton Dempster of the East Indiaman Rose. On 26 May 1793, she married Jacob Cassivelaun Fancourt, an Assistant Surgeon on the Madras medical establishment, who was killed at Rayakottai on 5 April 1800 during the Mysore War. Four years later, when she was living in Green Street, Grosvenor Square, London, she was granted a widow’s pension from the compassionate Clive Fund of the East India Company, and it was in that year that she met Raffles, who proposed marriage to her following his appointment to Prince of Wales Island. The marriage was solemnised on 14 March 1805 at St. George’s Church, Bloomsbury, by the Reverend A.P. Poston, the entry in the marriage register reading: ‘Thomas Raffles Esquire to Olivia Mariamne Fancourt, Widow, both of this Parish, by License, on the fourteenth day of March one thousand eight hundred and five (1805) by Revd. Poston, Curate. Witnesses: Richard S. Taylor, Charles Hamond, Marianne Etherington, Maria Walthen’.40 Of the witnesses, Charles Hamond was Raffles’s uncle, the tea merchant of Cheapside, London, and Richard S. Taylor was an attorney of Field Court, Gray’s Inn, who handled Raffles’s financial and other affairs in London, and who was described by Raffles in 1809 as his friend.41 Maria Walthen was probably the mother of the young man who was to accompany Raffles to Bengkulu in 1817 but who deserted ship at Falmouth to return to his family. Of Marianne Etherington, nothing is known, apart from the confusion caused by D.C. Boulger in his Life of Sir Stamford Raffles in wrongly recording the first name as ‘Mariamne’ and setting off a chain of speculation that she might in some way be related to Olivia.42 John Bastin, Olivia Mariamne Raffles (Singapore, 2002); Bastin and Weizenegger, Family of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 56–109.

39

Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 28–9; Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 16. The marriage proved to be a happy one, Raffles stating in a letter to his cousin Elton Hamond dated 9 September 1808: ‘I am amply repaid for every trouble I had in obtaining the hand of my Olivia. We are as happy as we can wish and much more so than generally falls to the lot of most people – She is in truth my Solace in Afflication, my Nurse in Sickness & my friend at all times.’ (Dr. Williams’s Library, London).

40

Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 28–9, 71 n.24.

41

Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 16.

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During the six weeks between his marriage and departure for Penang, Raffles busied himself in raising sufficient funds against his future salary to meet the cost of the passages to India, which amounted to £150 for himself, the sum stipulated for Junior Merchants and Factors, and the same sum for his wife, who was charged according to the rank of her husband. Raffles’s sister, Mary Anne, was to accompany them, and an additional £110 had to be found for her. Furniture had also to be purchased for the cabins, and further sums laid out for the food to be supplied on board ship. This money seems to have been borrowed by Raffles from his uncle Charles Hamond, and also from the East India Agents D. Scott & Co., No. 9 Board Street Buildings, London, to whom he remitted £800 from Penang in September 1809 ‘in liquidation of my Debt to them’, and from a certain Mr. Layton to whom he remitted the same sum in 1807.43 After the repayment of these debts, Raffles was still left with a number of debt-annuities charged at an annual rate of 20 per cent, as well as the major part of his debt to his uncle. This amounted to £1,284.11.3 and caused difficulties between him and his cousin Elton Hamond in 1808 when the latter succeeded to the tea business in Milk Street, Cheapside, on his father’s death on 14 October 1807.44 On 23 April 1805, Raffles, with his wife and sister, joined the numerous officials of the new Presidency Government of Prince of Wales Island at Portsmouth, where a large fleet of East Indiamen was preparing to sail under the protection of the 74-gun HMS Blenheim (Austin Bissel) carrying the flag of the newly appointed joint-commander of the East Indies station, Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge (1758–1807). With so many ships and such a number of passengers, including military personnel of the 53rd, 56th and 67th Regiments of Foot, ‘the confusion was beyond description’, resulting in several passengers having to pay 100 guineas to the boatmen to be taken out to the ships. The Prince of Wales Island Government officials and their families sailed in the East Indiamen, Cumberland (William Ward Farrer), Warley (Henry Wilson), Hope (James Pendergrass), Dorsetshire (Robert Hunter Brown), and Ganges (Thomas Talbot Harrington). The Governor, Philip Dundas, with his wife Margaret and son, Robert Adam Dundas, and her sister Jane Wedderburn, along with John Hope Oliphant (Second in Council and Warehouse Keeper) and his younger sister Anne Oliphant, sailed

Raffles to W.B. Ramsay, 15 January 1807, 2 September 1809 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/20).

43

Chapter Six.

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in the 1,260-ton Cumberland, together with John James Erskine (Assistant to the Superintendent of Marine and Store Keeper of Marine), William Dick (Head Surgeon), James Finlay (Clerk to the Governor), and Quintin Dick Thompson (Sub-Warehouse Keeper and Deputy Paymaster). The Accountant and Auditor, James Philip Hobson, with his wife and children, and William Robinson (Assistant Accountant), and the Writer, J.T. Le Mesurier Sherwood, all sailed in the Hope, while Colonel Norman Macalister (Fourth in Council and Commander of the Troops), and the Writers James Cousens and William Bennett were assigned to the 1,200-ton Dorsetshire. The Secretary, Henry S. Pearson, took his passage on the Warley. Raffles, with his wife and sister, were in the Ganges, together with Alexander Gray (Third in Council and Superintendant and Paymaster of Marine) and his wife, and the Writers, Arthur Tegart, Robert Ibbetson, John Curson Lawrence, and William Armstrong Clubley. The Ganges was a three-deck ship of 1,502 tons, built by Wells in 1797, and principally owned by William Moffat, who had commanded her on 15 February of the previous year when she was second in line of a fleet of 16 East Indiamen and 11 Country ships under the command of Commodore Nathaniel Dance (1748–1827) which faced down a squadron of five French ships, including the 42-gun frigate La Belle Poule and the 74-gun Marengo, flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand de Linois, off Pulau Aur in the Straits of Melaka.45 Moffat was replaced as commander of the Ganges for the 1805 voyage by Thomas Talbot Harrington, a 26-year-old Wiltshireman, who later became a friend and partner of the Singapore merchant, Alexander Guthrie.46 The ships sailed from Portsmouth on 24/25 April 1805 and enjoyed an uneventful voyage until 22 July, when the Coutts (J. Hay) and Warley lost their fore top-sails in a severe gale and separated from the convoy off the Cape of Good Hope. Two weeks later, on 6 August, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the remaining 11 ships had the misfortune to run into Linois’s Marengo and La Belle Poule, along with the captured 1,200-ton East Indiaman Brunswick. Running under the lee quarter of the Cumberland, the Marengo, with La Belle Poule following, managed to put a shot into her. The heavily armed East Indiamen in the convoy immediately commenced a return of fire when HMS Blenheim C. N. Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas 1793–1815 (London, 1954), pp. 221–35; James Davey, In Nelson’s Wake The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars (New Haven, London, 2015), p. 212.

45

Sjovald Cunyngham-Brown, The Traders A Story of Britain’s South-East Asian Commercial Adventure (London, 1971), passim.

46

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hove into view and at half-past-five began firing her main and quarter-deck guns at the Marengo, the heavy sea preventing the lower-deck guns from operating. The midshipman of the captured Brunswick, Thomas Addison, now a prisoner on board the Marengo, recorded having heard ‘terrific screams between decks’,47 confirming the fact that the ship had been hit by a broadside of HMS Blenheim. The French ships immediately withdrew, but next morning they were still about four nautical miles to the south, and Troubridge placed himself between them and the convoy under easy sail in the hope of inducing Linois to re-engage. The French ships continued to follow the convoy but disappeared during the night. The children’s author, Mary Martha Sherwood (1775– 1851),48 who was in the East Indiaman Devonshire with her husband Captain Henry Sherwood (1777–1849) of the 53rd Regiment of Foot, recorded in her diary: ‘[W]e saw no more of the French, but we afterwards ascertained that we had made Linois suffer so severely that he was glad to get away’.49 The engagement had been relatively short and little damage had been done to the British ships, but a sergeant of the 53rd Regiment in the Dorsetshire lost both legs, and a passenger in HMS Blenheim and a private of the 67th Regiment in the Ganges were killed, giving Raffles direct experience of a naval engagement which, curiously, he never seems to have referred to in any of his later correspondence. Troubridge rued the fact that he had to protect the convoy, hoping for a later encounter with Linois, but in this he was to be disappointed, for the latter’s naval career ended shortly afterwards, on 13 March 1806, when the Marengo was destroyed in the south Atlantic by the 90-gun HMS London, flagship of Rear-Admiral John Borlase Warren (1753–1822), and he was taken prisoner.50 On 23 August, after a passage of 17 weeks, the convoy of East Indiamen arrived off Madras. The Ganges was here redeployed to Calcutta so that Raffles and his party had to join the 1,200-ton Warley, which had arrived at Madras a few days after the main convoy. On 6 September, Rear-Admiral Troubridge in HMS Blenheim escorted the China-bound East Indiamen Cumberland, Hope, Couts, Exeter and Warley to Prince of Wales Island, where they arrived on 18 September to a salute of 15 guns fired from Fort Cornwallis. Troubridge and Governor Dundas, with their Davey, In Nelson’s Wake, p. 214.

47

F.J. Harvey Darton, The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851) from the Diaries of Captain and Mrs. Sherwood (London, 1910); Sophia Kelly, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, (Chiefly Autobiographical) with Extracts from Mr. Sherwood’s Journal during His Imprisonment in France & Residence in India. Edited by Her Daughter (London, 1854).

48

Darton, Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, p. 241; Kelly, Life of Mrs. Sherwood, pp. 277–80.

49

Davey, In Nelson’s Wake, p. 214.

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respective officers and officials, landed at half-past-six the following morning at the new wharf, where they were received by the Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor, William Edward Phillips,51 the officer commanding the troops, Major George Dick,52 and the principal local officials, who conducted them to Government House through a street lined with off-duty troops, the fifes playing ‘Rule Britannia’ in the Admiral’s honour.53 On 20 September, the commission of the Governor, and on the following day that of the Commander of the Troops, Colonel Norman Macalister,54 were read to the general assemblage, and the officials of the new Presidency Government were installed in their respective posts. As Sunday, 22 September, was the anniversary of the coronation of George III, the royal standard was flown on HMS Blenheim at sunrise to the accompanying salutes from the ships and the guns of Fort Cornwallis. Amidst such ceremonial exuberance and excitement, the 24-year-old Raffles began his official career in the East.

Chapter Two, note 130.

51

Major George Dick (1764/65–1844) of the Bengal Army left Penang in December 1805 shortly after the establishment of the Presidency Government (V.C.P. Hodson, List of the Officers of the Bengal Army 1758–1834 (London, 1927), Part II, pp. 55–6).

52

Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, Vol. I, p. 238.

53

Chapter Two, note 91.

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Chapter Two

The Scottish Poet and Orientalist John Leyden ‘[H]e was my dearest friend, and I may truly say that while I looked up to him with all the admiration and respect which his wonderful Talents and glowing virtues were calculated to command from all who knew him, I felt towards him the most brotherly affection –’ Raffles to William Erskine, 10 September 1815

Dr. John Casper Leyden (1775–1811) Print after a portrait by Sir David Wilkie

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A

month after Raffles landed at Penang there arrived in the island from south India a man who was to exert the most important influence on his professional life, initially by directing his scholarly interests to Malay studies, and later by securing for him preferment in office through his own personal connections with the Governor-General Lord Minto. The bond of friendship between Dr. John Casper Leyden and Raffles was quickly formed and it lasted until Leyden’s death in Java six years later. Raffles recorded the following moving tribute to him in the introduction to his The History of Java in 1817: There was one, dear to me in private friendship and esteem, who, had he lived, was of all men best calculated to have supplied those deficiencies which will be apparent in the very imperfect work now presented to the Public. From his profound acquaintance with eastern languages and Indian history, from the unceasing activity of his great talents, his other prodigious acquirements, his extensive views, and his confident hope of illustrating national migrations from the scenes he was approaching, much might have been expected; but just as he reached those shores … he fell a victim to excessive exertion, deeply deplored by all, and by none more truly than myself.

Leyden was born in the picturesque village of Denholm in Roxburghshire, half-way between Hawick and Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, in a small thatched cottage which survives to this day. Across from it, near the centre of The Green, stands an impressive stone monument with a tall angular spire in Gothic style which was erected in 1861 by public subscription to mark the 50th anniversary of his death at Batavia (Jakarta) on 28 August 1811, two days after the British had wrested effective control of Java from the Franco-Dutch forces at the Battle of Cornelis, and two weeks before Raffles was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the island. On the east side of the monument are inscribed lines from Leyden’s poem, Scenes of Infancy: Descriptive of Teviotdale (Edinburgh, 1803), and on the west side the haunting lines from the 4th canto of The Lords of the Isles, which (Sir) Walter Scott (1771–1832) wrote four years after his death: Scenes sung by him who sings no more! His bright and brief career is o’er, And mute his tuneful strains; Quench’d is his lamp of varied lore, That loved the light of song to pour; A distant and a deadly shore Has LEYDEN’S cold remains!

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Leyden was born on 8 September 1775,1 the eldest of four sons and two daughters of John Leyden, a shepherd, and his wife, Isabella (née Scott).2 Within a year of his birth the family moved to nearby Henlawshiel, a cottage at the foot of Ruberslaw on the tenant farm of Nether Tofts held by Andrew Blythe, an uncle of Leyden’s mother.3 It was there that Leyden grew up and learned to read under the direction of his paternal grandmother. From the age of nine he was a pupil at the local parish school at Kirkton where he was taught Arithmetic and the rudiments of Latin by a succession of three different masters. Later, in his 13th year, he became a pupil at the small school at Denholm, conducted by the Cameronian minister, the Reverend James Duncan, where he was taught Latin and Greek.4 In November 1790, This is consistently given as the date of Leyden’s birth, but it is, in fact, his baptismal date as recorded in the Register of Baptisms of Cavers Parish: ‘Anno 1775, September 8th, baptised a child to John Leyden, in Denholm, named John’ (Reverend Charles Rogers, The Scottish Minstrel The Songs and Song Writers of Scotland Subsequent to Burns (London, Edinburgh, 1885), p. 151n.).

1

For details of Leyden’s life, see Sir Walter Scott, ‘Biographical Memoir of John Leyden, M.D.’, The Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1811 (Edinburgh, 1813), vol. IV, no. 2, pp. xli–lxviii; Reverend James Morton, The Poetical Remains of the Late Dr. John Leyden with Memoirs of His Life (London, 1819); ‘Memorials of Dr John Leyden’, ‘Anecdotes of Dr Leyden, &c.’, The New Scots Magazine (Edinburgh, 1828–9), vol. I (January 1829), pp. 73–8, 111–20; vol. II (August 1829), pp. 98–104; Robert Chambers, ‘Leyden, John’, A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (Glasgow, 1835), vol. III, pp. 417–37; Anon., Scenes of Infancy, and Other Poems, by the Late Dr. John Leyden. With a Memoir of the Author (Jedburgh, 1844); Anon., ‘Dr John Leyden’, Chambers’s Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts (Edinburgh, c. 1847), pp. 6–13; Robert White, Poems and Ballads by Dr. John Leyden: With a Memoir of the Author by Sir Walter Scott, Bart., and Supplement by Robert White (Kelso, 1858); Thomas Brown, The Poetical Works of Dr John Leyden. With Memoir by Thomas Brown (London, Edinburgh, 1875); Scenes of Infancy, Descriptive of Teviotdale… With a Biographical Sketch of the Author by the Rev. W.W. Tulloch (Kelso, 1875); Anon., Poems and Ballads by Dr. John Leyden: with A Memoir of the Author by Sir Walter Scott, Bart., and Supplementary Memoir [by the Reverend W.W. Tulloch] (Kelso, 1875); Thomas Constable, Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents (Edinburgh, 1873), 3 vols.; John Reith, Life of Dr John Leyden Poet and Linguist (Galashiels, c.1910); Paul Henderson Scott, ‘John Leyden: Polymath and Border Reiver’, Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 324, nos. 1956–7 (October–November 1978), pp. 285–90, 421–6; reprinted in the same author’s Defoe in Edinburgh and Other Papers (East Linton, 1995), pp. 119–30; Virginia Matheson Hooker and M.B. Hooker, ‘John Leyden: Biography’, introduction to the reprint of John Leyden’s Malay Annals, MBRAS Reprint 20 (2001), pp. 1–72; I.M. Brown, ‘John Leyden (1775–1811) his life and works’, University of Edinburgh, Ph.D. thesis (1955), pp. [ii], 560, xii, and, for Leyden’s relationship with Scott, Edgar Johnson, Sir Walter Scott: The Great Unknown (London, 1970), 2 vols., passim. The best published bibliography of Leyden is appended to James Sinton’s edition of Leyden’s Journal of a Tour in the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland in 1800 (Edinburgh, London, 1903), pp. 285–318, and completed in his article, ‘Leydeniana,’ in the Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society (1911), pp. 52–6.

2

An eye-witness account of the cottage describes it as being ‘a peculiarly rude erection, the cupples of which seemed to rest upon the ground; the space where the walls should have been, seeming to be supplied by turfs filled up under the cupples’, with no stone in the building except, perhaps, in the chimney (James Douglas, ‘Traditions and Recollections of Dr John Leyden’, Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society (1875), reprinted Transactions (1911), p. 45.

3

Of the five or six of Leyden’s classmates at the Denholm school, two, James Purvis and Gavin Turnbull, also went to India, the former being the subject of Leyden’s poem, ‘To Mr. James Purvis’, in which the forlorn hope was expressed that they would both ‘live to dance once more on Denholm’s green’. Turnbull died in India. Purvis was the Purser of the East Indiaman Travers (T. Saunders) in 1804–6, and of the East Indiaman Castle Eden (R. Colnett) in 1806–8. He conveyed ‘a valued dagger’ from Leyden to Scott, the gift being acknowledged by Scott in a letter to Leyden dated 25 August 1811, which was undelivered because of Leyden’s intervening death (H.J.C. Grierson (ed.) The Letters of Sir Walter Scott 1808–1811 (London, 1932), vol. II, pp. 533–5).

4

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at the age of 15, he proceeded to Edinburgh University, then in the most brilliant period of its history, celebrated throughout Europe for its teaching in philosophy and literature.5 As a divinity student Leyden studied Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, Logic, Mathematics, Moral and Natural Philosophy under such luminaries as Andrew Dalzel (1742–1806), Professor of Greek; John Hill (1747–1805), Professor of Humanity; James Finlayson (1758–1808), Professor of Logic; John Playfair (1748– 1819), Professor of Mathematics; and the famous Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), whose lectures on Moral Philosophy were described by one of Leyden’s contemporaries as being ‘like the opening of the heavens’.6 Leyden also studied Hebrew under Professor William Moodie (d.1812), and made progress in Arabic and Persian by his own efforts. From 1793 he attended lectures by Andrew Hunter (1743–1809), Professor of Divinity, and Thomas Hardie (1748–1798), Professor of Church History. After completing his theological studies, Leyden was examined by the Presbyteries of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, and in May 1798 he was admitted as a licentiate of the Church of Scotland. Unable to obtain a living, 7 he turned his attention to literary pursuits, and assisted Sir Walter Scott in collecting ballads and supplying materials for the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (Kelso, Edinburgh, 1802–3).8 He also published A Historical & Philosophical Sketch of the This, with other Malay weapons sent by Leyden to Scott, are on display at Scott’s house, Abbotsford, in the Scottish Borders. Leyden conformed to the description of Scottish students at Edinburgh University by the English visitor, Edward Topham (1751–1820), in 1775: ‘As the University of Edinburgh is celebrated throughout Europe …, the number of young persons that crowd here from different countries is prodigious … In general they are very extravagant … But the students who are natives of this country, present a different picture. The miserable holes which some of them inhabit, their abstemiousness and parsimony, their constant attendance to study, their indefatigable industry, even border on romance. … But, in general, they apply themselves to too many of the Professors, to pay a proper attention to each; and their excessive earnestness to obtain an universal knowledge, hinders them from gaining that proficiency in any one science, which ought to be the object of great minds.’ Topham goes on to remark of the Scots that ‘their greatest talent seems to be in acquiring the knowledge of, and speaking foreign languages; which they do with much greater facility than our countrymen. They read also the Latin after the manner of the French, and other nations on the Continent …’ (Letters from Edinburgh Written in the Years 1774 and 1775 (London, 1776, reprinted Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 78, 83). Leyden lived in Edinburgh at the West Port end of Lady Lawson’s Wynd in the house of his mother’s brother, a cabinet maker named Thomas Scott.

5

Henry Cockburn, Memorials of His Time (Edinburgh, 1856), p. 26.

6

Leyden’s failure to secure a living in the Church of Scotland was attributed to his screech voice and lack of grace in delivering his sermons (‘his voice and gesture [were] more violent than elegant’, as Scott put it); but Professor Duncan, later Professor of Mathematics at St. Andrews University, affirms that in the Theological Society of St. Andrews in 1797–8 Leyden was ‘far superior to any other speaker’, possessing ‘an unlimited command of words’ and an ability to ‘speak for any length of time on almost any subject’ (Reverend Hanna, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers. D.D. LL.D. (Edinburgh, 1852), vol. I, p. 22.

7

The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: consisting of Historical and Romantic Ballads, collected in the Southern Counties of Scotland; with a few of Modern Date, founded upon Local Tradition was printed by James Ballantyne at Kelso in 1802 in two volumes octavo, pp. [iv], cxxxviii [iv], 258 [Errata]; [vi], 392, with a third volume,

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Discoveries & Settlements of the Europeans in Northern & Western Africa, at the Close of the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1799),9 which was inspired by his fellow Borderer, Mungo Park (1771–1806), whose African discoveries ‘haunted his very slumbers’.10 The book was warmly received in Scotland, and especially on the Continent, where a German translation was published at Bremen in 1802.11 He edited for a time the Third Series of The Scots Magazine at the invitation of the publisher, Archibald Constable (1774–1827), and he prepared for publication an edition of the oldest Scottish prose work, The Complaynt of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1801), the accompanying dissertation evincing, in the opinion of Scott, ‘an extent of research, power of arrangement, and facility of recollection, which has never been equalled in this department’.12 His anthology, Scotish Descriptive Poems; with pp. [vi], 420, [Errata], published in a second edition in Edinburgh in 1803. One thousand copies of the first two volumes were printed and 1,500 copies of the third volume, the additional number intended to supply purchasers of the two volumes of the first edition. Leyden’s named contributions to the work consisted in Vol. I of an ‘Ode on Visiting Flodden’, pp. 252–8; in Vol. II, ‘Scottish Music. An Ode’, pp. 1–6, ‘Lord Soulis’, pp. 327–54, ‘The Court of Keeldar’, pp. 355–72; and in Vol. III, ‘The Mermaid’, pp. 297–320, written after a visit to north-west Scotland. He also contributed substantial materials to the ‘Introduction to the Tale of Tamlane: On the Fairies of Popular Superstition’ in Vol. II, pp. 167–227. The ballad of Lord Soulis was composed and written down in a single winter evening while Leyden was visiting his parents’ house in Teviotdale (White, ‘Supplement’ (1858), p. 88n.). The greater part of his poem, Scenes of Infancy, is said to have been written while he was sitting with Scott, tossing off 20 or 30 couplets in as many minutes, and then compressing and amending what he had written. Scott told James Hogg (1770–1835), the Ettrick poet, that of all the men he ever met Leyden had the greatest facility in composition (White, ‘Supplement’ (1858), p. 90n.). Hogg himself was ‘much dissatisfied’ with the imitations of the ancient ballads in the Minstrelsy, and without naming Leyden stated that he ‘immediately set about imitating the ancient ballads myself’ (Memoir of the Author’s Life and Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott (ed.) Douglas S. Mack (Edinburgh, London, 1972), p. 16). For further details on the Minstrelsy, see Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, Part Three, pp. iv–v. The book was printed by J. Moir, Paterson’s Court, Edinburgh, for P. Brown, North Bridge Street, and J. Symington, Parliament Square, Edinburgh, and Vernor & Hood, London, 12mo, pp. [v]–xvi, 442, with misnumbering between pp. 133–62.

9

Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), p. liv; Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa; … (London, 1799). The other great work of African exploration by a Scotsman, James Bruce’s Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile … (Edinburgh, 1790), 5 vols., was also important in directing Leyden’s attention to Africa, which he hoped to explore under the patronage of the Sierra Leone Company. His letter to the bookseller Alexander Manners on the subject of publishing a second edition of Bruce’s book is printed in Alexander Murray, History of the European Languages; or Researches into the Affinities of the Teutonic, Greek, Celtic, Sclavonic, and Indian Nations (Edinburgh, 1823), vol. I, pp. lxxx–lxxxii n. An enlarged second octavo edition of Bruce’s Travels in seven vols., with a life of the author, was subsequently edited by Alexander Murray and published by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh in 1805. When Leyden visited Kinnaird House in July 1800 he was able to make only a cursory examination of the Ethiopic and other Abyssinian manuscripts collected by Bruce (Leyden, Tour in the Highlands …, pp. 3–5). Murray had the opportunity to study them in more detail during his 10 months’ residence with the Bruce family during 1802–3 (Constable and His Literary Correspondents, vol. I, pp. 222 et seq.). In a letter from Penang dated 23 October 1805, Leyden asked Constable to send him a copy of Murray’s edition of Bruce’s Travels when it was published (Brown, ‘Memoir’ (1875), p. lxxiv).

10

Historische und Philosophische Skizzen der Entdeckungen et Niederlassungen der Europaer in Nord und West Africa, um ende der achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Bremen, 1802). See Brown, ‘Memoir’ (1875), pp. xxxv–vi.

11

Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), p. liii. The Complaynt of Scotland … With a Preliminary Dissertation and Glossary was printed by D. Willison, Craig’s Close, Edinburgh, for Archibald Constable and sold by

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some Illustrations of Scotish Literary Antiquities,13 and his popular poem, Scenes of Infancy: Descriptive of Teviotdale, were both published in Edinburgh in 1803,14 the year he sailed to India as an Assistant Surgeon on the Fort St. George (Madras) establishment of the East India Company. The appointment was obtained through the influence of William Dundas (1762–1845), a Commissioner on the India Board of Control, and on the nomination of John Roberts, Chairman of Directors of the East India Company. Leyden was able to take up the post at relatively short notice because while still a divinity student he had attended lectures in Natural History, Chemistry, materia medica, Anatomy, Surgery and Clinical Medicine by John Walker (1731–1803), Professor of Natural History, Alexander Monro, secundus (1733–1817), Professor of Anatomy, and Dr. James Russell (1754–1836), Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, who later held the Chair of Clinical Surgery in the University. Leyden completed the formality of acquiring a medical diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in March 1802, and in the following August he obtained the degrees of A.M. and M.D. from the University of St. Andrews, with which he had connections through his Messrs. T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, London, 8vo., pp. [viii] [5]–292, [ii] [1]–384. The Dedication reads: ‘To Richard Heber, Esq. This Edition of The Complaynt of Scotland, Undertaken at His Suggestion, Is Inscribed, In Testimony of Sincere Esteem and Friendship, By His Very Faithful Humble Servant, J. Leyden.’ Leyden’s introductory dissertation on the text runs to 292 pages, with an additional eight pages of corrections and a Glossary of 81 pages [pp. 303–84]. Though published in 1801, Leyden refers in the introduction (p. 151) to Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, the first volumes of which did not appear until the following year. Scott, who would have known about the printing details of Leyden’s book, says that it was published in 50 copies. There were, however, a number of large [quarto] paper copies printed, and John Smith, Bibliotheca Scotica (1926), records that the book was published in 150 copies. The Complaynt of Scotland was re-edited in 1872 for the Early English Text Society with an Introduction and Glossary by Sir James Murray (1837–1915), who was also a native of Denholm. In 1801 Leyden’s ballad, ‘The Elphin-King’, was published in Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Tales of Wonder (London, 1801), vol. I, pp. 214–25, together with the first published poems of Sir Walter Scott. Leyden’s first poetical compositions appeared in The Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany between 1795 and 1799, the two most notable being, ‘Elegiac Lines on the Death of a Sister’ in Vol. 5 (April 1795), pp. 302–3, and ‘Robertslaw’ [‘Ruberslaw’] in Vol. 6 (September 1795), pp. 219–22. Both poems were subsequently reprinted in the 1858 Kelso edition of Poems and Ballads by Dr. John Leyden, pp. 283–6, 265–73. Leyden’s edition of Scotish Descriptive Poems was drawn from rare texts and manuscripts, including extracts from the unpublished poems of Shakespeare’s contemporary, William Fowler (fl. 1603). The poem, ‘Albania’, and Wilson’s ‘Clyde’, which was printed from a manuscript copy written by the author, were also included. The book was published in Edinburgh in 1803, and printed by and for Mundell & Son, Edinburgh, and Longman & Rees, London, 8vo, pp. [i–v]–vi [vii–viii], 248, advertisements [249]–255 [256].

13

Scenes of Infancy: Descriptive of Teviotdale, replete with explanatory notes, was printed at the Border Press in 1803 by James Ballantyne (1772–1833) for T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster-Row, London, and sold by Manners and Miller, and A. Constable, Edinburgh, 12mo, frontispiece, pp. [iv], [1–3]184. The poem follows the conventions of the 18th century and suffers from being rather disjointed. According to Scott, the manuscript was sent by Leyden to Dr. Thomas Brown (1778–1820) in Edinburgh for editing, but Robert White in the Preface to Poems and Ballads by Dr. John Leyden (Kelso, 1858) states on good authority that Dr. Robert Anderson (1750–1830) (note 25) and Ballantyne superintended the printing. Whoever was responsible, Leyden was critical of the result.

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association with the classical scholar Professor John Turner (1745–1837) in the winter of 1797–8.15 Leyden proceeded to India with the intention of establishing a reputation as an oriental scholar, writing to a friend, ‘I may die in the attempt, but if I die without surpassing Sir William Jones a hundredfold in oriental learning, let never a tear for me prophane the eye of a borderer’.16 In more sober moments, he admitted that the ‘fame of that Orientalist is absolutely discouraging: for who can adventure to rival him in either extent or accuracy of information’, but he kept the ambition before him, believing that Jones ‘has only shown us how much is still to do’.17 Before leaving for India, he spent three months in London and he briefly visited Oxford, seeing ‘every thing and every body whether Grecian or Oriental’, including the ‘three chief Orientals’, the Hebrew scholar, Joseph White (1745–1814), and the Arabists, Thomas Winstanley (1749–1823) and Henry Ford (1753–1813). He sailed aboard the East Indiaman Hugh Inglis (William Fairfax) on 12 April 1803,18 ‘the first British traveller’, according to Scott, ‘that ever sought India, moved Scott (Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), pp. liv–lv) states that upon receiving the nomination of Assistant Surgeon on the Madras medical establishment, Leyden availed himself of ‘the superficial information he had formerly acquired by a casual attendance upon one or two of the medical classes’ at Edinburgh University, and, with the assistance of the Edinburgh surgeon Dr. John Bell (1763–1820), and incredible labour, he was able to obtain within a short period the surgeon’s diploma. In fact, Leyden attended medical lectures at Edinburgh University on a regular basis from at least 1798 to meet the regulations which stipulated that a candidate for the medical degree should study for three years, one at least at Edinburgh University; that he should be examined privately by one of the Professors on his literary attainments and knowledge of Latin and the different branches of medicine; that he should present to one of the Professors a thesis on a medical subject in Latin; and that he should submit himself to a formal examination by two Professors before the Faculty on the different branches of medical knowledge (Sir Alexander Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh during its first Three Hundred Years (London, 1884), vol. I, pp. 331–2). It was Leyden’s awareness of the more flexible regulations of St. Andrews University that led him to apply there for the M.D. degree. The Minutes of the Senatus Academicus of St. Andrew’s University under date of 7 August 1802 state: ‘Dr Flint reported that Mr John Leyden student of Medicine had come to this place for the purpose of being a candidate for the Degree of M.D. – that he had brought certificates of his character & of his having had a regular education, & that he being satisfied with them had laid them before the Rector who had given directions for the candidate undergoing a private examination by him in [the] presence of two members of the University, that he being satisfied with his appearance at this examination had prescribed to him the appointed exercises which he was now ready to deliver – He was called in & read the exercises which he had prepared written with his own hand in the Latin Language. These being given in & approved of by the Senatus Academicus they unanimously agreed to confer on him the degree of M.D. – the Degree of A.M. having been previously conferred –’. Leyden’s name is not recorded in the University’s Register as having received the degree of A.M. (Artium Magister), but because a candidate was unable to obtain the degree of M.D. without already possessing the A.M. degree, it seems likely that the latter degree was also conferred on him on 7 August 1802.

15

Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), p. lxvii.

16

Leyden to Heber, (received) 23 March 1802, in R.H. Cholmondeley (ed.), The Heber Letters 1783–1832 (London, 1950), p. 182.

17

This is commonly given as the date of Leyden’s departure, but the Hugh Inglis sailed from Portsmouth some time earlier, and worked her way along the Channel. The passengers re-embarked at Ryde on 8 April 1803, and the ship finally got under weigh four days later, after catching a breeze off Undercliffe in the Isle of Wight.

18

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neither by the love of wealth or of power …’.19 The ship arrived at Madras on 19 August and he remained there for nearly a year, serving for more than four months as physician in charge of the Madras General Hospital under the general superintendence of the Physician General, Dr. James Anderson (1738–1809). On 14 January 1804 he was appointed by the Governor, Lord William Cavendish Bentinck (1774–1839), as medical assistant and naturalist on the Commission to survey the captured Mysore provinces,20 on a salary of 50 pagodas a month. This, together with his pay and allowances as Assistant Surgeon, gave him an annual income in excess of £1,000, enabling him to purchase Indian manuscripts and employ a number of munshis to work on English translations. The appointment afforded him a unique opportunity to study the languages and literature of south India, a task he confronted with his usual energy despite continuing ill-health. Within two years he was able to assert, in a letter to Archibald Constable, ‘I think I may venture safely to say that no person whatever has outstripped me in the acquisition of country languages’,21 and in a letter to Scott at about the same time, ‘I have acquired a superior knowledge of Indian literature[,] manners[,] mythology[,] religion and laws to any man in the Madras Presidency very decidedly and … have established my reputation as an Orientalist beyond all contradiction’.22 To another friend, he reported that since his arrival in India the languages that had attracted his attention were ‘Arabic, Persic, Hindostani, Mahratta, Tamal, Telinga, Canara, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Malay, and Armenian’,23 and he assured the bibliophile Richard Heber (1773–1833) that if ‘I but live a few years longer … I dare now say boldly that in Orientals I shall be Nemini Secundus’.24 Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), p. lviii.

19

Leyden was appointed to the Mysore Survey on 14 January 1804, [Leyden gives the date as 15 January] in succession to Dr. Benjamin Heyne (1770–1819), ‘to afford medical assistance to the establishment, and to prosecute enquiry into the Natural History and Productions of Mysore’. His salary of 50 pagodas was 25 less than that paid to Heyne. In the following May he suffered a complete breakdown in his health, and for a time the Survey was without a medical attendant. (R.H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India 1800 to 1815 (Dehra Dun, 1945–58), vol. II, pp. 114–15, 416). Leyden writes of his activities in Mysore in a letter to Ballantyne dated 24 October 1805 (Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), pp. lviii–lxiii; Chambers, Biographical Dictionary, vol. III, pp. 430–3).

20

Leyden to Constable, 23 October 1805: NLS:MS.331, fols. 216–17v; Constable and His Literary Correspondents, vol. I, p. 205; Brown, ‘Memoir’ (1875), p. lxxiv.

21

Leyden to Scott, 24 November 1805, Heber Letters, pp. 207–8.

22

Leyden to Ballantyne, 24 October 1805, Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), p. lxii.

23

Leyden to Heber, 24 October 1805, NLS:MS.939, fol. 59; Heber Letters, p. 200. Leyden met Heber in Archibald Constable’s bookshop on the High Street by the Cross, and Heber introduced him to Scott and other literary men in Scotland. Heber also joined Leyden in London prior to his sailing to India and accompanied him to Oxford.

24

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It is difficult to decide on Leyden’s linguistic attainments, partly because his publications are few in number, and partly because his surviving papers and manuscripts provide insufficient information to form a judgement. He also had the unfortunate habit of boasting about his achievements and inevitably exaggerating them. Henry, Lord Cockburn (1779–1854), the Scottish judge and advocate, records in the Memorials of His Time (Edinburgh, 1856) that Leyden once declared that he could easily, in a few months, have been a great physician, or surpassed Sir William Jones in oriental literature, or Milton in poetry. Such pretensions are played down by Leyden’s defenders, and Cockburn himself, while condemning ‘these ridiculous or offensive habits’, believed that, depending on ability, there was no walk of life where Leyden could not have shone.25 Sir Walter Scott, who knew him intimately, noted that Leyden’s ‘own feats, or his own studies’ were more frequently topics of his conversation than was ‘consistent with the order of good society’,26 and Gilbert Elliot, 1st Earl of Minto (1751–1814), a fellow Borderer of Teviotdale, who as Governor-General of India became Leyden’s friend and patron, also confessed that the ‘only little blemish I have sometimes regretted to see in him is a disposition to egotism; not selfishness – but a propensity to bring the conversation from whatever quarter it starts round to himself, and to exalt his own actions, sufferings, or adventures in a manner a little approaching the marvellous’.27 Lord Cockburn, Memorials, pp. 179–80. Leyden’s cousin, the Reverend James Morton, qualified Cockburn’s assessment of Leyden in a letter to Robert White, dated 13 October 1857: ‘His loud talking, and boasting of his ability to do great things was, in truth, his way of laughing at the pretensions of the small aristocracy who affected to treat him in a patronising manner. It is surprising that such a man as Lord Cockburn so misunderstood him as to believe him to have spoken seriously when he pretended to boast “that he could easily, in a few months, have been a great physician, or surpassed Sir William Jones in Oriental Literature, or Milton in Poetry”. Leyden never made any such boasts to his intimate friends –’ (White, ‘Supplement’ (1858), App., p. 394). It is interesting that Henry Brougham (1778–1868), the future Lord Chancellor, in a letter to Francis Horner (1778–1817) dated Edinburgh 6 November 1796, states that Dr. Robert Anderson (note 14), editor of A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain (London,1792–5), placed Leyden ‘wonderfully near to Gray and Milton’. Brougham writes in the same letter, ‘the more I know [of him], the more I admire. He excels in Historical research. His mind is a store house of facts. His fancy is Phantasy, and his knowledge is very extensive … He has long been an acute disputant and always a sublime poet’ (The Horner Papers Selections from the Letters and Miscellaneous Writings of Francis Horner, M.P. 1795–1817 (ed.) Kenneth Bourne and William Banks Taylor (Edinburgh, 1994), Doc. 9, p. 62). Leyden published an ‘Ode to Phantasy’ in The Edinburgh Magazine in 1796 (reprinted Morton, Poetical Remains, pp. 1–11). Brougham’s regard for Leyden was not reciprocated. In a letter to William Erskine dated 15 September 1804, Leyden described Brougham as ‘the most unprincipled & selfish of all my acquaintance[s] (NLS:MS.971, fol. 19).

25

Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), p. xlix.

26

Countess of Minto, Lord Minto in India Life and Letters of Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto from 1807 to 1814 while Governor-General of India (London, 1880), p. 255. Leyden’s manners in society also left a lot to be desired. According to Scott, they ‘revolted the fastidious and alarmed the delicate’, and they were described as ‘extremely rude and unpolished’ by the ophthalmic surgeon James Wardrop (1782–1869), who declared that ‘even after he had mixed in some polite society their natural coarseness was little softened, and finding it incurable he kept them in their original purity’ (Constable and His Literary Correspondents, vol. I, p. 196). Leyden’s rough manners

27

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Sir Gilbert Elliot, first Earl of Minto (1751–1814) Engraving by W.J. Edwards after a painting by George Chinnery

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In 1829 The New Scots Magazine stated, on what was claimed to be credible information, that when Leyden embarked for Madras he had ‘a mastery … over seventeen different languages’, as well as ‘possessing a store of more varied and general intelligence in science and literature than perhaps any other individual ever bore along with him to that rich and extensive portion of the British dominions’.28 Lord Minto also testified that ‘Dr. Leyden’s learning is stupendous, and he is also a very universal scholar. His knowledge, extensive and minute as it is, is always in his pocket, at his fingers’ ends, and on the tip of his tongue. He has made it completely his own, and it is all ready money. All his talent and labour indeed, which are both excessive, could not, however, have accumulated such stores without his extraordinary memory … It must be confessed that Leyden has occasion for all the stores which application and memory can furnish, to supply his tongue, which would dissipate a common stock in a week. I do not believe that so great a reader was ever so great a talker before.’29 Lord Minto also noted a feature of his conversation, which was remarked on by many of his contemporaries, that it was carried on in ‘a shrill, piercing, and at the same time grating voice’.30 His provincial Scottish accent and Border Scotticisms, delivered in what Leyden himself described as his ‘saw-tones’, offended many, including Minto’s Military Secretary, Captain Thomas Taylor (1782–1854) of the 24th Light Dragoons, who, confined on board the frigate HMS Modeste (Hon. George Elliot) on the voyage to Java with the British invasion force in 1811, wrote in his Journal: ‘Fine weather and light winds, nothing particular by the incessant clack kept up by Leyden in the cabin from breakfast till bed time in the shrillest voice that can well be imagined … We fly from Peking to Constantinople[,] from Constantinople to Okotskoi [More] all over the world[.] [T]here certainly [is] a wonderful deal of information displayed and for an hour or two it would be very pleasant[,] but to be confined in the range of it the whole day unable to attend to were in marked contrast to the ‘heaven born ploughman’, Robert Burns, whose composure in the company of his social superiors in Edinburgh during 1786–7, and his general modesty, so impressed the young Walter Scott. Curiously, with all his social disadvantages, Leyden found favour with the female sex, including Miss Graham of Dartmore, and the leaders of Edinburgh fashionable society, Jane, Duchess of Gordon (1749–1812), and Lady Charlotte Campbell (1775–1861), to whom he dedicated his poem, Scenes of Infancy, and also the ballad, ‘The Mermaid’, in the third volume of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Anon., ‘Memorials of Dr John Leyden’, The New Scots Magazine, vol. I (January 1829), p. 76.

28

Minto, Lord Minto in India …, pp. 253–4.

29

Ibid., p. 254.

30

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any occupation of one[’]s own, is a serious evil – … Lord M[into] having born[e] with patience for some time the clack I have complained of[,] spoke out at last. [T]he morning is to be quiet now from dinner to bed time[.] L[eyden] may talk as much as he pleases, which [to] him amounts to as much as he can – ’.31 When Leyden was obliged to transfer to another ship at Melaka, Taylor expressed a corresponding sense of relief. The accuracy of the claim that Leyden had a mastery of 17 languages before he left Scotland for India in 1803, as well as his own claim made in a letter to his father that he had mastered another 10 oriental languages by the time he reached Penang in 1805, can never be decided. Yet, in a letter to Heber dated 11 October 1802, less than six months before he departed for India, he claimed only that he could read most of the oriental languages to which he had access in Edinburgh with the help of a dictionary, and that he had never attempted to speak any of them.32 John Reith examines the subject in his Life of Dr John Leyden Poet and Linguist (Galashiels, c. 1910) by establishing the opportunities Leyden had of learning them. He lists 17 languages in the first group, including Latin, Greek, Italian, Syriac, Arabic and Persian, and concludes that the oriental languages he had acquired by 1805 were Sanscrit, Hindustani, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Canarese, Telagu, Armenian, and Maldivian, the last having been learned during Leyden’s voyage to Penang. To these Reith adds an inexact and somewhat erroneous list of languages under the designation, ‘Indo-Chinese’, including Malay and Batak, to give a final tally of 45 languages.33 This extraordinary number easily surpasses the 28 languages which Sir William Jones claims to have studied, but it does not answer the question of Leyden’s mastery of these languages. His knowledge of Persian and Arabic, for example, points up the problem. By his own statement, in a letter to Heber in 1802, he claims only to have possessed ‘some knowledge’ of the two languages, though he had ‘begun to work at them with vigour’.34 Yet according to his friend and contemporary at Edinburgh University, Alexander Murray (1775–1813), who later became Professor of Oriental Languages in the University, both he and Leyden ‘understood Arabic, Captain Thomas Taylor, ‘Journal’, NLS:MS.11691, entries 25–30 April 1811.

31

Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), p. 294. Leyden informed Heber that he had begun ‘to attend to the Bengalee and Sanscrit’, and that he had ‘no fear of mastering any of the Oriental languages as far as I shall have occasion for them’.

32

Reith, Life of Dr John Leyden, pp. 349–79.

33

Leyden to Heber, (received) 23 March 1802, Heber Letters, p. 182.

34

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Persic & Hebrew &c long before we left college’.35 Certainly a number of his poetical contributions to The Edinburgh Magazine and The Scots Magazine between 1795 and 1802 involved translations from Hebrew, Persian and Arabic.36 In September 1804 he informed his University friend, William Erskine (1773–1852), Secretary to the Bombay Recorder, Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832), of his progress in the study of languages during his first year in India: After making some progress in Tamul, I added Mahratta to my studies & afterwards Hindostani, and the status quo is this. I speak Persic nearly as fluently as English & with the use of my Dictionary can read their most difficult authors & enjoy & relish the beauties of their classics. Hindostani & Tamul I do not speak with fluency but I can read their most difficult authors & am daily making progress in speaking … Arabic has only occupied me at leisure moments [and] as I have no opportunity of speaking I have chiefly attended to pronunciation … In Mahratta I have constructed for myself a set of Grammatical [in]flections & in the course of reading formed a glossary of about 5000 vocables. These may perhaps be the rudiments of a Grammar & Dictionary. I have however little practice in speaking it. I have commenced the same process for Canara & Telinga in the first of which I have read a little & nearly completed a set of Grammatical forms and flections. In Telinga I have made less progress … In Sanscrit I have mastered the grammatical part, read a little and am committing to memory the Versified Vocabulary … & am reckoned an adept in pronunciation of this very difficult language among country gentlemen.37

Writing to Scott in November 1805, he stated that Oriya was ‘the only language in the Madras territories that I have not formed a Grammar and Dictionary of’,38 and in a letter to Heber in the previous month, he reported that he had offered to furnish the Madras Government ‘with a grammar and dictionary in 2 vols. 4to. in the course of a year in any of their 4 languages, viz. Tamul, Malayalam, Talinga or Canara’, specifying particularly the last, ‘of which there are not 3 individuals in the country that have the least knowledge …’.39 In 1807 he offered the Calcutta Corresponding Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society translations of the gospels in Thai, Murray to Scott, 7 February 1812, Grierson, Letters of Sir Walter Scott 1811–1814, vol. III, p. 74 n.1. A more precise estimation of Murray’s early linguistic acquisitions is contained in his letter to Professor George H. Baird (1761–1840) in Murray’s History of the European Languages, vol. I, pp. lxxvii–lxxviii. See also J. Reith, The Life and Writings of Rev. Alex. Murray (Dumfries, 1903).

35

Brown, ‘Memoir’ (1875), p. xxxiii; Leyden, Tour in the Highlands, pp. 288–9.

36

Leyden to Erskine, 15 September 1804, NLS:MS.971, fol. 21.

37

Leyden to Scott, 24 November 1805, Heber Letters, p. 207.

38

Leyden to Heber, 24 October 1805, ibid., p. 201.

39

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Macassarese, Bugis, Afghan, Rakheng, Maldivian and Jaghatai, and a year later it was reported that he had actually delivered to the Secretary translations of St. Mathew and St. Mark in Pushtu or Afghan, all four gospels in Maldivian, St. Mark’s gospel in Baluchi, and St. Mark’s gospel in both Macassarese and Bugis. Not all of them were published, but St. Mark’s gospel in Baluchi was printed at the Baptist Mission Press at Serampur four years after his death.40 All this must suppose a mastery of these languages or an ability to produce translations with the aid of his Asian interpreters, as, for example, A Pushtoo Vocabulary, which was published at Calcutta in 1806, ‘compiled by the assistance of Emvi Mahummed Peishaweri, by John Leyden’.41 He was not, however, always successful in finding such assistance. Writing in September 1804 from south India, he complained of having engaged a Brahmin to teach him Sanscrit, ‘who scarcely knew a syllable of the language’, and of another, who attempted ‘to palm Hindostani on me for Mahratta’.42 His growing fluency in Hindustani, in which language he was appointed Professor and Examiner at the College of Fort William in 1807, is attested by Dr. William Dick, who was Surgeon on the Penang establishment when Leyden visited the island, and who was also acquainted with Sir William Jones. According to him, after spending a dozen years in Bengal, where Hindustani was spoken by every class, Jones was unable to speak a sentence in the language, whereas Leyden was able to speak it well and understood it perfectly in less than two years.43 Lord Minto declared that Leyden’s knowledge of languages ‘resembled more the ancient gift of tongues than the slow acquisitions of ordinary men’,44 an opinion confirmed by the Baptist missionary William Carey (1761–1834), who stated in 1810 that Leyden had ‘a faculty of acquiring languages exceeding that of any person with whom I am acquainted’.45 Given Carey’s standing as Professor of Bengali, Sanscrit and Marathi at the College of Fort William, and as the author of grammars and Brown, ‘Memoir’ (1875), p. lxxxvii; K.S. Diehl, Early Indian Imprints (New York, London, 1964), p. 395, no. 889. C. Buchanan, Christian Researches in Asia: With Notices of the Translation of the Scriptures into the Oriental Languages (London, 1812), p. 5n., records that in March 1810 Leyden offered ‘to superintend the translation of the Scriptures into seven languages, hitherto little cultivated in India’.

40

Diehl, Early Indian Imprints, p. 92, no. 20. G. Browne, The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1859), vol. II, p. 112, refers to Leyden’s ‘Pundits’.

41

Morton, Poetical Remains, p. lxv.

42

Dick to Scott, 23 August 1819, David Douglas (ed.), Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1894), vol. II, p. 55.

43

Brown, ‘Memoir’ (1875), p. xcii.

44

Carey to Sutcliffe, 11 May 1810, D. Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance The Dynamics of Indian Modernization 1773–1835 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1969), p. 79.

45

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dictionaries of a number of Indian languages, the testimony is compelling. Yet perhaps an even better indication of Leyden’s actual linguistic acquirements is contained in the statement of his friend William Erskine, that ‘he seized the grand features of the Oriental languages, and classed them with an accuracy altogether unequalled’, leaving to others ‘the humble, though useful, task of explaining the principles and structure of each separate tongue’.46 Leyden’s interest, in other words, was in comparative philology, and not in the mere mastery of languages as such. Leyden’s cousin, the Reverend James Morton (1783–1865), in his biographical introduction to The Poetical Remains of the late Dr. John Leyden (London, 1819), gives the following account of how he was regarded as an oriental scholar by his contemporaries in India: ‘He had, from the day of his arrival in India, made, to use one of his own terms, “a grasp” at all the principal languages of that vast continent, and as his passion for display (the marked defect of his character) led him to intrude his knowledge, even when in a crude state, upon every class of society with which he mixed, he was naturally enough judged by many … to be more superficial than profound. But though his pretensions often outran his acquirements, the result of his earliest efforts shewed that the latter were surprising; and the justice of that regard and friendship with which his character had inspired some of those most competent to decide upon his merit, in the part of India that he first visited, was confirmed on his arrival at Calcutta, by the opinion of the most distinguished persons of that capital, who, struck with admiration of his talents, extended to him every aid and encouragement that could stimulate him to an ardent perseverance in the path of literary eminence.’47 This testimony to Leyden’s linguistic achievements refers in the main to Indian languages, which were his principal interests of study. In quite another category was his knowledge of Malay, which he began to study assiduously after arriving at Penang on 22 October 1805 aboard an ‘abominable nasty little Parsee brig’ named William Erskine, ‘Eulogium’, White, ‘Supplement’ (1858), p. 111. Lord Minto in his ‘Discourse’ as Visitor of the College of Fort William on 30 September 1812 also referred to Leyden’s ‘methodizing and reducing into system, the classification of the various languages spoken on the continent, intermediate between India and China …’ (Calcutta Gazette Extraordinary, 4 October 1812). On Erskine, see notes 47, 70 and C.E. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography (London, 1906), p. 139.

46

Morton, Poetical Remains, pp. lx–lxi. William Erskine, in a letter to Archibald Constable, gives much the same appraisal of Leyden: ‘His dashing into matters that he had not fully studied exposed him to blunders, which numbers were eager to catch at, and, in consequence, to represent him as a pretender. But with all this, his real talents were so great, his industry so indefatigable, that he soon repaired and covered his mistakes by new accessions of knowledge. He was restless in suggesting topics of research, and in urging those best qualified to undertake them’ (Constable and His Literary Correspondents, vol. I, pp. 210–11).

47

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Dr. John Leyden Lithograph by W. & A. Johnston after a sketch by the Hon. George Elliot taken on board HMS Modeste, 1811

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Louisa Villa. He had embarked at Quilon in south India on 24 September in an attempt to restore his health, and was accompanied by three servants, a Persian, an Arab and, interestingly, a Malay.48 The ship arrived in the harbour of Aceh on 13 October but as there were disturbances ashore he remained on board, contenting himself in learning the peculiarities of Acehnese speech, which he was told differed considerably from that of Melaka, Batavia and Ambon.49 Having narrowly escaped capture by a French privateer – the inspiration for his poem, ‘Address to My Malay Krees’ – he arrived at Penang ‘terribly ill’, and took up accommodation in a naval tavern ‘ringing with the vociferation of tarpaulins, the hoarse bawling of sea-oaths, and the rattling of the dice-box’.50 From there he was rescued by Raffles, who took him home to be nursed by his wife. Why Raffles did this is nowhere explained, but Leyden had friends among the Scottish members of the Presidency Government, and it is possible that Governor Philip Dundas (1762–1807) introduced him to Raffles as the only European in the island who knew Malay. Their kindred tastes and interests, and Olivia Mariamne Raffles’s sympathetic nursing, forged between them bonds of the most intimate friendship and affection. Leyden was six years older than Raffles who regarded him as a literary giant. He enthusiastically accepted Leyden’s advice about engaging more professionally in the study of Malay, which he had begun to study on his voyage to Penang with the aid either of Thomas Bowrey’s A Dictionary, English and Malayo, Malayo and English … (London, 1701),51 or A short Vocabulary, English and Malayo, with Grammar Rules for the attainment of the Malayo language, which had been published at Calcutta in 1798.52 If he had used for his instruction the more recent works, A Grammar of the Malay Leyden to his father, 20 November 1805, NLS:MS.3380, fol. 218.

48

Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), p. 436.

49

Leyden to Ballantyne, 24 October 1805, Scott, Edinburgh Annual Register (1813), p. lx.

50

51

A Dictionary, English and Malayo, Malayo and English. To which is added some short Grammar Rules and Directions for the better observation of the Propriety and Elegancy of this Language. And also several Miscellanies, Dialogues, and Letters, in English and Malayo for the Learners better understanding the Expressions of the Malayo Tongue. Together with a Table of Time, computing the Years and Moons of the Hegira to the Years and Months of the English Stile, which table will serve in the Malayo Country, all the South-Sea Islands, India, Turkey, Arabia, Morocco, and generally in all Mahometan Countries. To which is annex’d, the Malayo Alphabet, with a Specimen of the Character (London, 1701). William Marsden, A Grammar of the Malayan Language (London, 1812), pp. xl–xli states that although Bowrey’s book was ‘the work of an illiterate person, [it] possesses considerable merit … [his] extensive knowledge of the language of the people whose ports he frequented as a trader, he laudably rendered permanent and useful to his countrymen by committing to paper all the words with which his memory furnished him; but he appears to have been entirely ignorant of the written language …’.

This rare work, which even Marsden had not seen when he wrote A Grammar of the Malayan Language, was reprinted at Batavia (Jakarta) in 1812 during Raffles’s period as Lieutenant-Governor of Java.

52

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Tongue, and A Dictionary of the Malay Tongue, published in London by Samuel Rousseau (1763–1820) under the name of James Howison in 1800 and 1801,53 he would have been confounded by the substitution of Persian for jawi characters. That he had begun the task of learning Malay, unlike any other official in the Prince of Wales Island Government, reveals a keen intellect, which Leyden seems to have recognised. Leyden’s own interest in Malay began a year earlier, in 1804, when he had discussions about the language with the former Dutch Governor of Melaka, Abraham Couperus (1752–1843), at the old Dutch settlement of Sadras on the Coromandel coast.54 In the same year he also came into contact with a Malay scholar, the Reverend A.F. Clark, Chaplain to the garrison at Seringapatam, whose papers after his death in March 1805 came into Leyden’s hands through their mutual friend, Lieutenant Thomas Arthur (1779–1817) of the Madras Engineers.55 In the same month, in a letter to his fellow Scottish-Borderer (Sir) John Malcolm (1769–1833), Leyden expressed his determination to proceed to Penang ‘with all deliberate speed’ and ‘study Malay like a dragon’. He also hoped to meet some Macassarese and Bugis who appeared to him to be ‘learned and polished as well

A Grammar of the Malay Tongue, as spoken in the Peninsula of Malacca, the Islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Pulo Pinang, &c. &c. Compiled from Bowrey’s Dictionary, and other authentic Documents, manuscript and printed. Embellished with a Map (London, 1800), published at 7s.6d., and A Dictionary of the Malay Tongue, as spoken in the Peninsula of Malacca, the Islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Pulo Pinang, &c. &c. in two Parts, English and Malay, and Malay and English … To which is prefixed, a Grammar of that Language. Embellished with a Map (London, 1801), published at £1.1s. Marsden in A Grammar of the Malayan Language, pp. xliii–xlv passes severe strictures on the books, and in a letter to Raffles, dated 2 January 1809, he writes: ‘I must also avow that I have been disgusted by the publication of a trumpery attempt to improve old Bowrey’s Dictionary, by pretending to give the words in the original character; whilst it is evident that the compiler could never have read one line of real Malayan. I can scarcely think the imposition was Mr Howitson’s [sic], because I have been told he is a respectable man, & rather suppose that he incautiously lent his name to a literary jobber of the name of Rousseau’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/2). Howison was on the Bengal medical establishment of the East India Company, having been appointed Assistant Surgeon on 11 May 1783. The East India Kalendar; or Asiatic Register…For the Year 1791 (London, 1791), p. 41 records that he was at Prince of Wales Island and it was obviously during his period in Penang that he acquired his knowledge of Malay. Another product of his stay in Penang was his paper, ‘Some Account of the Elastic Gum Vine of Prince of Wales’s Island’, which was published in Asiatick Researches, vol. V (London, 1807), pp.157–65. Samuel Rousseau, who served his apprenticeship in the printing office of John Nichols, set up the Arabic and Persian Press in Wood Street, Spa Fields, London, which issued a number of oriental books. Raffles would certainly have known about Rousseau’s books as both the Grammar of the Malay Tongue and A Dictionary of the Malay Tongue were advertised in The Annual Asiatic Register, a journal with which he was associated while employed as a clerk at the East India House.

53

Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), p. 346.

54

Ibid., p. 394. Lieutenant Thomas Arthur was appointed Assistant to the Mysore Survey in April 1800. He spent some months during the second half of 1802 in Penang, where he probably became interested in Malay. He rejoined the Survey early in 1803, but complaints were made against him and he was dismissed from the Survey in July 1805. Arthur records in his Journal that he met Leyden in October 1804 near Huliyurdurga, where he had been sent to afford him medical assistance during his illness (Phillimore, Survey of India, vol. II, pp. 376–80).

55

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as brave nations’.56 Later, at Quilon, he had encouraged his friend Henry Harris, Head Surgeon on the Madras medical establishment, who was proficient in Persian and Hindustani, to study Malay because ‘even though India should be pre-occupied by another Malayan [himself], England is not’.57 Harris had been discouraged in this task on hearing of a certain John Shaw, who had a good knowledge of the language through his connections with Kedah in the Malay Peninsula. ‘[W]ho the deuce is this Mr John Shaw … [?]’, Leyden asked Harris in December 1804, ‘… You must stand your ground … though a dozen Shaws were to reside in Quida’.58 Shaw, as it turned out, was a mariner and merchant of Penang, who in 1807 arranged for the printing there of a small work entitled, A Rough Sketch of … the Malay Language’.59 During his three months’ stay in Penang, Leyden’s knowledge of Malay increased considerably. In a letter to Sir Walter Scott he declared the language to be ‘childishly easy’,60 and two weeks later, on 5 December 1805, he reported to William Erskine that he had made ‘good progress in Malay and broke[n] ground in the Tai or Siamese to which I hope to add Moan or Pegu and Birman languages before I leave the island’.61 His ability to speak Malay fluently at this time is confirmed by the Head Surgeon, Dr. William Dick, who recalled that while he was in Penang two sons of the Sultan of Kedah had arrived on business from the mainland, and as no interpreter could be found, Governor Dundas called in Leyden, who astonished everyone present by carrying on a long

Leyden to Malcolm, 29 March 1805, Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), p. 394. Malcolm first met Leyden during their service on the Mysore Survey and, having heard that he was ‘a Border man’, he cared for him at Seringapatam when Leyden fell seriously ill (note 20). Malcolm was born on 2 May 1769 on a farm on the bank of the river Esk, near the small town of Langholm in the Scottish Borders. His career in India is detailed in John Malcolm, Malcolm Soldier, Diplomat, Ideologue of British India (Edinburgh, 2014).

56

Leyden to Harris, 3 December 1804, Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), p. 423.

57

Ibid. On Henry Harris’s linguistic attainments, see D.G. Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service 1600–1913 (London, 1914), vol. I, p. 401.

58

59

A Rough Sketch of Part of An Intended Essay towards ascertaining, deducing, elucidating, and Correctly Establishing the Rudiments of the Juh,wee, or Jahwee Language, vulgarly called The Malay Language; designed principally for the use of The Civil Servants of the East India Company, on the Establishment of Prince of Wales Island, and for the other European Gentlemen, and Settlers there (Printed by A.B. Bone, at the Government Gazette Press, at the Expense of the Author, Prince of Wales Island, 1807), Price one Rupee. Shaw is listed among the Madras inhabitants in January 1809 as a ‘Mariner and Merchant [who] arrived at Madras from Penang as Supercargo of the Europa in July 1809’. His place of birth was ‘believed to be within the British Dominions in Europe’, and his former occupation is given as ‘Various, civil and military’ (B.C. Bloomfield, ‘A.B. Bone and the beginning of printing in Malaysia’, India Office Library & Records Report (London, 1979), pp. 18, 20).

Leyden to Scott, 24 November 1805, Heber Letters, p. 208.

60

Leyden to Erskine, 5 December 1805, NLS:MS.971, fol. 35.

61

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conversation with the Malays with as much apparent ease as if he had been speaking in English.62 Leyden’s example in employing munshis and other Asian assistants in his study of Malay encouraged Raffles to do the same, and with Leyden’s advice he began to undertake a translation of the Melaka Laws (Undang-undang Melaka).63 On 26 February 1806 – five weeks after Leyden had left the island – he reported to the Prince of Wales Island Government that he had made considerable progress in Malay and ‘felt himself competent not only to detect any error or misrepresentation made in translating or transcribing letters from English into the Malayee, but, when necessary, to translate or transcribe such letters himself’. He had retained in his service at his own expense ‘several natives whom I have selected as persons whose ability, and perhaps integrity, might be depended upon’ for the purpose of ‘explaining and commenting upon the customs and laws of the adjacent States, which I am endeavouring to collect, in the hope of laying a fair translation’ before the Government. He had been induced to employ the men because the appointment of Translator to the Government had not yet been filled, and he hoped that when consideration was given to the matter, he would be accorded favourable notice, ‘being willing to undertake, if necessary, to write all letters in the Malayee language that may be deemed of a secret nature in my own hand, and in many other respects to prevent, by my personal application, the affairs and interests of Government being intrusted in the hands of a native’.64 The Prince of Wales Island Government undertook to transmit Raffles’s letter to the Directors of the East India Company in London, and in the meantime he was asked to state ‘the expense likely to be incurred by the employment of the

Dick to Scott, 23 August 1819, Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), p. 444.

62

Raffles subsequently published a long paper entitled, ‘On the Maláyu Nation, with a translation of its Maritime Institutions’, in Asiatic Researches, vol. XII (1812), pp. 102–58. Leyden arranged for the paper to be printed at the Hindostanee Press in Calcutta at a cost of 30 Sicca Rupees, the sum being later charged to his Estate after his death. The copy of the paper inscribed by Raffles to Lord Minto is in NLS:MS.IE 623. The paper was also reprinted under the title, ‘The Maritime Code of the Malays’ in JSBRAS, nos. 3–4 (1879–80), pp. 62–84, 1–20, with the two parts printed out of sequence. See Liaw Yock Fang, Undang-Undang Melaka: The Laws of Melaka, KITLV, Bibliotheca Indonesica, 13 (1976).

63

64

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Raffles to Governor in Council, Prince of Wales Island, 26 February 1806, D.C. Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897), p. 42. Raffles wrote to his friend William Brown Ramsay at the East India House in London on 15 January 1807: ‘My Letters respecting being appointed Malay Translator have I trust arrived safe & been attended with success – I am now Acting Malay Translator – but under similar circumstances as I am Acting Secretary – with all the honest labour but no Emolument – I expect Mr Hutton [the Malay Translator] back in about 2 months when I again resign over charge of this my favourite office – I would almost do the duty for nothing, because it is what I have so forcibly set my mind upon – I have good friends at home & must leave it to them.’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/20, fol.7).

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natives alluded to in his letter, as employed by him in explaining and commenting upon the customs and laws of the adjacent States, in order that we may judge how far it will be in our power to render him the assistance he requires in compiling so useful a work’. Raffles replied on 6 March stating that during the two previous months he had employed four Malays, an Arab and a native of the Coromandel coast at a monthly charge of 80 Spanish dollars, but that as they had been principally employed ‘in copying fair, several old and valuable manuscripts from the Malayee, the chief of which are now completed’, he proposed to reduce the establishment to two principal Malays from Kedah, a third to undertake transcriptions, and an Arab to check the Arabic embellishments in the Malay letters at a total charge of 65 Spanish dollars a month. As to his expense in ‘collecting several books containing accounts of the manners, particular customs, and laws of the Malays’, he was unable to give an exact figure, ‘as much must depend upon the facility with which I obtain the books from the natives, and the time I am able to devote for the purpose of translating them’.65 In a letter to the Directors of the East India Company supporting Raffles’s application for financial assistance, the Prince of Wales Island Government praised his ‘wonderful proficiency’ in Malay, and his ‘studious application, united to great natural talent for the acquisition of knowledge in languages’. The Directors, in due course, also expressed their ‘high sense of his laudable exertions’, and agreed to meet the monthly charge of 60 Spanish dollars for his Malay and Arab assistants on the understanding that ‘the establishment will be abolished on the completion of the work’.66 Raffles to H.S. Pearson, Government Secretary Prince of Wales Island, 6 March 1806, Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 43. The fact that Raffles had employed his munshis for only ‘the last two months’ strongly suggests that he had taken them over from Leyden when the latter left Penang on 17 January 1806.

65

Prince of Wales Island to Court of Directors, 20 March 1806; Court of Directors to Prince of Wales Island, 18 February 1807, Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 44. Raffles wrote to William Brown Ramsay on 20 November 1808 from Penang: ‘The very unfortunate state of my health during the last year, to be attributed almost entirely to over application to business, has deprived me of the pleasure of prosecuting my study of the Languages – indeed I have been ordered by the Doctors to drop them altogether and I fear I must do so until I get a lighter office than my present – You will have observed the honorable mention Lord Minto was pleased to make of my name in his last Anniversary discourse to the College at Calcutta – the Asiatic Society have since, unsolicited & unknown to me, elected me a Member of that Society and if I had but health and leisure I verily believe I should venture to appear in print – At present I have put aside all my Manuscripts &c. waiting a more favorable opportunity – I have made a very large Collection of Malay Ms[s]. and I am still going on – however it appears to me that in the present state of affairs political researches are most required & with the view of seeing how such would be received I have thrown off a Report on Malacca which I intended to have submitted to this Government – Colonel Macalister [the Governor] sent it home by the Surat Castle – I should like to hear how it is received – if the Court approve of it & wish to encourage similar Reports, let me know and I think I can give some that may prove beneficial – You know I was always famous for possessing public Spirit – I have not lost one spark of it & in political Reports I should perhaps find a great opening for my personal gratification in this respect – ’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/20, fols. 56–8).

66

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Leyden left Penang on 17 January 1806 on board the Portuguese vessel Santo Antonio and arrived at Calcutta on 8 February. He was still ill and went to recuperate at the former Dutch settlement of Cinsura, 20 miles up the Hugli River. After he returned to the vicinity of Calcutta he wrote to Olivia Raffles describing his illness and explaining that his return had been due to the necessity of producing ‘some papers relative to the Dekkan[,] its languages and tribes as well as some Arabic translations …’.67 He added: ‘Tell Raffles that I am anxious to hear from him though I am so many pages in his debt68 – & to hear of all his proceedings in Malay &c.69 I hope he has wrote Sir James Mackintosh’s desiderata in all the 19 languages of Penang.70 I have mentioned him & read extracts of his letters to my friend H.T. Colebrooke[,] here Prest. of the Asiatic Society.71 Tell him also that after a good deal of battling here in Bengal where I had to encounter a good deal of both jealousy & ill nature at first when I was almost too ill to contend against it, I have finally trampled all my enemies under my feet.72 The most learned have declared for me completely & as the Govr. is very favourable it will now depend on myself to be settled in Bengal,73 but I dread the climate terribly & have suffered greatly from first to last – … Pray make my Compliments to Mrs Dundas,74 Miss Oliphant & Leyden to Olivia Raffles, October [1806], NLS:MS.971, fols. 47–8. The following letters of Leyden to Olivia Mariamne Raffles are in the National Library of Scotland: Leyden to Olivia Mariamne Raffles, n.d. [1805] (NLS:MS.971, fol. 36); 7 January 1806 (Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 19–21); 6 March 1806 (NLS:MS.971, fols. 40–42v); October [1806] (NLS:MS.971, fols. 47–48); 10 May 1808 (NLS:MS.971, fols. 53–54v); [September/October 1808] (NLS:MS.971, fol. 87); [22] August 1810 (NLS:MS.971, fols. 73–74); 22 October 1810 (NLS:MS.971, fols.75–76). Many of the letters are printed in John Bastin, Olivia Mariamne Raffles (Singapore, 2002), pp. 36–70.

67

It would seem from this statement that a number of Raffles’s letters to Leyden have not survived.

68

Note 63.

69

Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832), Recorder and Judge in the Vice-Admiralty Court at Bombay during 1806–11. He was educated at Aberdeen University, studied medicine at Edinburgh, and, before his appointment to Bombay, was a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in London. In 1791 he published Vindiciæ Gallicæ in answer to Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, but he later came round to the latter’s point of view. After his return from India, he entered Parliament and was appointed Professor of Law and General Politics at the East India Company’s College at Haileybury. He was well known to Leyden because his friend William Erskine was Mackintosh’s Secretary, and son-in-law, having married his second daughter, Maitland, at Madras on 27 September 1809. Mackintosh founded the Literary Society of Bombay, with Erskine as Secretary, and in 1806 he published a Plan of a Comparative Vocabulary of Indian Languages, which would have interested Leyden. See Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh by his Son (London, 1836), 2 vols., and Patrick O’Leary, Sir James Mackintosh The Whig Cicero (Aberdeen, 1989).

70

On Henry Thomas Colebrooke, see note 144.

71

Leyden’s enemies are not specified, but they presumably included members of the Bengal Asiatic Society.

72

Leyden was uncertain at this time if he should settle at Madras or Calcutta, but the arrival of Lord Minto as Governor-General decided the matter in favour of Calcutta.

73

Margaret Dundas was the second wife of Philip Dundas (1762–1807), Governor of Prince of Wales Island. He was the fourth son of Jean Grant (daughter of Lord Prestongrange) and Robert Dundas of Arniston (1713– 1787), Solicitor-General of Scotland and Lord Advocate, and also a nephew of Henry Dundas, Viscount

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Mrs Oliphant75 & though last not least the pretty Mrs Thomson,76 … I have some more books to send Raffles but have not been able to get them ready.’ The papers on the Deccan languages and its tribes, to which Leyden made reference in his letter, comprised a dissertation of nearly 200 pages which he completed early in 1807. It was well received by members of the Council of the College of Fort William, who recommended to the Governor-General, Sir George Barlow (1762–1846), that he be placed on the establishment of the College. The appointment was made conditional and was shortly afterwards cancelled on the orders of the Directors of the East India Company demanding financial retrenchment. The Governor of Fort St. George, Lord William Cavendish Bentinck (1774–1839), appointed him as Superintendent of an ‘Academical Institution’ he proposed to establish at Madras for the study and teaching of oriental languages,77 and Leyden made an unsuccessful attempt to return to Madras Melville (1742–1811), President of the India Board of Control (1793–1801). Before his appointment to Penang, Philip Dundas had commanded the East Indiaman Melville Castle on three voyages to India and China between 1787 and 1793, and from 1794 to 1801 he was Superintendent of the Bombay Marine and Master Attendant at Bombay, where he is said to have earned £10,000 a year, and accumulated a fortune of between £70,000 and £80,000. His first wife, Charlotta Penelope (née Scriven), was aboard the ill-fated East Indiaman Earl Talbot (John Hamilton Dempster), which was lost in the China Sea in 1801, and on his return to England he married on 5 May 1803 Margaret Wedderburn (1772–1806), eldest daughter of Sir John Wedderburn (1729–1803). From 1803 Dundas sat briefly as a Member of Parliament for Gatton in Surrey before being appointed Governor of Prince of Wales Island. He sailed to Penang aboard the East Indiaman Cumberland with his wife and son Robert Adam Dundas (b. 9 February 1804) and she gave birth to a second son, Philip Dundas, at Penang on 5 September 1806. In order to recover her health she sailed to Calcutta but she died there on 7 November 1806 shortly after her arrival and was buried in the South Park Street Burial Ground (Bengal Obituary, p. 91). Her younger sister, Jane Wedderburn (1773–1861), who accompanied her to Penang, married John Hope Oliphant, second in Council of Prince of Wales Island, on 30 November 1805 (note 104), and after his death on 22 March 1807 took her sister’s two children back to Scotland. Philip Dundas died at sea on 8 April 1807 and was buried two days later, the inscription on the combined memorial with John Hope Oliphant in the old Christian Cemetery in Penang recording the fact that he died ‘a few weeks after the decease of his wife Margaret Wedderburn a lady of the sweetest Temper and the softest Manners’. Leyden seems to have received a warm welcome in Penang from Dundas and his wife, to whom he was in a sense obligated because Dundas’s older brother, William Dundas (1762–1845), Secretary of War between 1804 and 1806, was responsible for his nomination as an Assistant Surgeon on the medical establishment of the East India Company. Philip Dundas was regarded by Raffles as ‘a most valuable friend’, and he expressed his deep regret at his death in a letter to his cousin Elton Hamond, dated 9 September 1808 (Dr. Williams’s Library, London). For an account of Dundas as Governor of Prince of Wales Island, see M. Langdon, Penang The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830 (Penang, 2013), vol. I, passim; and M. Langdon, Epitaph The Northam Road Protestant Cemetery George Town, Penang (Penang, 2017), pp. 370–2. Anne Oliphant was the younger sister of John Hope Oliphant (note 104). In June 1807 at Penang she married Lieutenant J. Veitch of the 15th Bengal Native Infantry.

75

Raffles’s sister Mary Anne Thomson (1789–1837) was married to Quintin Dick Thompson, the SubWarehouse Keeper and Paymaster on the civil establishment of Prince of Wales Island, who died on 29 June 1809, aged 26, leaving her with two sons and a daughter. Mary Anne was something of a beauty and she soon attracted the attention of Captain William Flint R.N. (1781–1828) to whom she was married at Melaka on 2 May 1811. See John Bastin and Julie Weizenegger, The Family of Sir Stamford Raffles (Singapore, 2016), pp. 172–3 n.5.

76

Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), pp. 474–80; John Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck The Making of a Liberal Imperialist 1774–1839 (London, 1974), pp. 216–17.

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in June 1807. In the following month, however, his prospects appeared brighter in Calcutta with the arrival of the Governor-General, Lord Minto, whose family seat in Roxburghshire was only a short distance across the Teviot from his birthplace of Denholm. Leyden had been strongly recommended to Minto by Scott, and he appears to have met the Governor-General shortly after his arrival at Calcutta when, as Minto declared, ‘Sentiments of warm regard were awakened at an early period of our acquaintance, and confirmed by a near and intimate observation of his extraordinary character and endowments’.78 On 9 August Leyden addressed a long letter to Minto in which he wrote of the importance of cultivating the native languages of India, and of his intention ‘to devote to the attainment of this object as much time and application as might be in my power to give it’. He sent the Governor-General a revised and enlarged version of his ‘Sketches’ of the Deccan and Indo-Persian languages, and indicated that he had written a similar ‘Sketch of the Arabic languages and their mutual relations’, and had nearly completed an investigation into the dialects of Hindustan and the languages of the mountainous regions. He expected that these investigations would make up two quarto volumes of philological dissertations, which it would give him ‘peculiar satisfaction to be

Lord Minto, ‘Discourse’ as Visitor of the College of Fort William, 30 September 1812, Calcutta Gazette Extraordinary, 4 October 1812. Minto and Leyden shared a love of Teviotdale which the latter celebrated in his poem, Scenes of Infancy. Minto had also read Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, including Leyden’s named contributions to the volumes (note 8), which had ‘amused and interested [him] extremely’ (Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot (London, 1874), vol. III, p. 244). Moreover, they had many friends in common because Minto had spent the winter of 1801–2 at Edinburgh, where his eldest son Gilbert had been admitted to the University. Minto himself attended on the occasion a number of lectures at the University, including those by Dugald Stewart, with whom he formed a close friendship. Stewart and his family were invited to Minto House, and Stewart’s son, Lieutenant-Colonel Mathew Stewart, was later appointed by Minto as one of his aides-de-camp in India. Minto had also met in Edinburgh John Playfair (1748–1819), Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850), Francis Horner (1778–1817) and Walter Scott, all friends of Leyden, whose name must have been mentioned because in the Autumn of 1802 he was invited, through Scott, to visit Minto House, an invitation he was unable to accept because of ‘the hurry’ attending his departure for India (Leyden to Minto, 9 August 1807, NLS:MS.11320, fol. 3v). Leyden described Minto House, situated to the north of Denholm below the Minto Hills, in the second part of his Scenes of Infancy, p. 52: ‘the green slopes of Minto’s sunbright hills,/ Whose castled crags, in hoary pomp sublime, /Ascend, the ruins of primæval time’. This reference in the poem must have given pleasure to Lord Minto, who was much attached to his ancestral seat, referring in a letter to his wife in May 1793 to the ‘green and beauty of Minto’. Minto House, incorporating the older house, was built during Lord Minto’s period in India and was completed in 1814. It was demolished in recent years to make way for a golf course. In a letter to Scott in 1809, Minto wrote: ‘I am particularly happy in having fixed Leyden by my side, and am enjoying with equal admiration, though of different kinds, his extraordinary talents and his spirited, independent, and estimable character. I have taken the best care I can of his fortunes, and hope one day to see his wandering staff planted in some Teviot haugh, and the wanderer himself under its shade resting in his age amongst the “Scenes of Infancy”. Those scenes are the object of both our longings, I may safely say at least of mine, though it is not wise to strain either eyes or wishes at distant prospects’ (Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1894), vol. I, pp. 157–8).

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able to inscribe to your Lordship, should they be deemed proper for publication’. His poor health had prevented him from completing ‘many transactions and compositions’, but he hoped that when Minto had leisure to consider what he had submitted he would receive his approbation. ‘The chief object which I have proposed to myself in India’, he wrote, ‘is to attain reputation by labour & exertion, and the chief value which I shall ever attach to any situation is that of being able to promote the public utility’.79 Minto later affirmed that Leyden had ‘never in any instance, solicited an object of personal interest’,80 but this submission, clothed in terms of public service, was an appeal for a position which would enable him to pursue his literary activities. Minto responded by first appointing him Magistrate of the Twenty-four Parganas of Calcutta, and in 1808 Commissioner of the Court of Requests at Calcutta. Two years later, he was appointed Assay Master of the Calcutta Mint. In these various positions, except possibly the first, Leyden found sufficient time to continue his philological researches. He informed his parents that in the Court of Requests, which he attended three days a week, he had often to speak seven languages in a day, including Persian, Hindustani, Bengali and Arabic, ‘and very often Malay and Portugueze’.81 In September 1807, he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the College of Fort William under Dr. William Hunter (1755–1812), and also Examiner in Hindustani. He also served under Hunter as Deputy-Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In the following year he was made Professor of Hindustani, with the additional duty of teaching Persian. He also continued his Malay studies, informing Erskine in June 1807 that he had composed ‘a Comparative Grammar of Malay, Birman, Siamese and Cochin-Chinese in 200 pages, a Siamese Birman & Malay Vocabulary of about 5000 vocables, besides translating the English & Malay part of Howison’s Dictionary into Birman & Siamese’.82 His paper, ‘On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations’, was printed at the Hindoostanee Press in 1807 and published in volume X of the Asiatic Researches in the following year.83 A copy of the separately paginated 1807 edition was sent to the Governor-General Leyden to Minto, 9 August 1807, NLS:MS.11320, fols. 2–3.

79

Lord Minto, ‘Discourse’, Calcutta Gazette Extraordinary, 4 October 1812.

80

Leyden to his father and mother, 20 August 1809, NLS:MS.3380, fol. 220.

81

Leyden to Erskine, 1 June 1807, NLS:MS.971, fol. 50v. On Howison, see note 53.

82

Asiatic Researches; or, Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal, vol. X (1808), pp. 158–289.

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inscribed, ‘To The Right Hon’ble Gilbert Ld. Minto. With the author’s profoundest respect & esteem’.84 In 1809 his book, A Comparative Vocabulary of the Barma Maláyu, and Thái Languages, was printed in 600 copies at the Serampur Mission Press utilising a new fount of Burmese characters.85 During this time, Leyden maintained a somewhat desultory correspondence with Raffles, his first letter dated 7 March 1806 containing news of Napoleon’s victory over the Austrians at Ulm and Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar:86 Calcutta March 7, 1805 [=1806] My Dear Raffles I have this minute received your letter just as I was in the act of stamping and railing at all the first born not of Egypt but of Austria. For you are to learn if you have not learned it already that 80,000 Austrians are totally demolished & that Bonaparte has entered Vienna.87 I do not image this can have more than a temporary effect as the Russians will probably pour in like an inundation on the French. Nelson too has died as every brave man would wish to do, rocked asleep in the arms of his greatest victory. I hope we may say with Chevy Chase88 “I trust we have – five hundred good as he[”]. The destruction of 20 ships of the line is a great stroke, and will tend to revive the drooping Volunteers of Leadenhall Street &c. Lot 6094 in the sale of books by Butterfields, San Francisco, 26 June 2002.

84

The cost of printing the book was 2,400 Sicca Rupees which was met by the Supreme Government, Calcutta. Of the 600 copies printed, 400 were retained in the Library of the College of Fort William, Calcutta, and ten copies were sent to each of the East India Company’s establishments of Prince of Wales Island, Bombay and Madras, as well as to the Resident at Ambon and the Supra Cargoes in China (Brown, ‘John Leyden’ (1955), p. 515). Leyden employed a Burmese in the preparation of the book and the orientalist, Thomas Manning (note 115), having arrived at Calcutta from Canton in 1810, wrote to Leyden, preparatory to his departure for Rangpur and Lhasa, enquiring if the man was still with him as ‘I want to try a servant if he can speak Burman’ (NLS:MS.1809, fol. 131). Manning set out for Lhasa in October of that year disguised as a Tartar doctor but with a single Chinese servant.

85

Leyden to Raffles, 7 March 1805 [1806], NLS:MS.971, fols. 43–44v.

86

The Austrian forces under General Karl Freiherr von Leiberich Mack (1752–1828) surrendered to the French at Ulm on 20 October 1805, after the loss of some 50,000 Austrian lives.

87

Leyden’s ‘Verses on the Death of Nelson’ (Morton, Poetical Remains, pp. 177–9) were written at this time. The old ballad of Chevy Chase had a particular interest for Leyden as it described the defeat of the English army under Henry Percy (Hotspur), son of the Earl of Northumberland, by a Scottish army under the 3rd Earl of Douglas at the Battle of Otterburn in 1388. The battle was fought in the Cheviot Hills, and resulted in the capture of Percy and the death of Douglas. The two ballads of Otterburn and Chevy Chase were recorded in Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (London, 1765), and the ‘Battle of Otterbourne’ was included in Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. I, pp. 25–34. The Douglasses were among the most powerful of the Border families and were known to Leyden through the Douglases of Cavers. In his Scenes of Infancy, Part 2, p. 50, he writes of ‘Green Cavers, hallowed by the Douglas name!/ Tower from thy woods! Assert thy former fame!/ Hoist the broad standard of thy peerless line,/ Till Percy’s Norman banner bow to thine!/ … Lords of the border! Where their pennons flew,/ Mere mortal might could ne’er their arms subdue:/ …’. Leyden would have seen the pennon and the gauntlets taken from Percy at the Battle of Otterburn on display at Cavers House, where he was permitted to study in the Library during his vacations at the University of Edinburgh.

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I reached Bengal almost in time to hear the guns fired in honour of the conclusion of the Mahratta peace.89 We have lost no territory by the death of Cornwallis and his successor has steered exactly in the midway between his plans and those of Wellesley.90 Now that both Wellesley & Cornwallis are off the field the people begin to regret their first head and to declare that the equal of Wellesley never was in India – some go so far as to say never will be. The general outline of Bengal politics is peace! peace! all over! In order to recover their disordered finances – the temporary government in every branch of it may therefore be expected to be a system of save-alls and candle-ends. Amid all which it is curious to observe the singular provisions that are made for a new rupture with Holkar at the end of the truce of two years. On your new government they look with a very parsimonious eye, I can tell you, and I have good reason to believe that the Supreme Government here has represented home their decided disapprobation of the measure[.] You will learn that Col. Macalister[’]s triumph has been compleat.91 The Persian ambassador is expected round very soon and people are very anxious to know what airs he will give himself; he has been extremely insolent at Bombay. Col. Malcolm92 is not yet arrived and from indisposition I have not yet attended [a] levee but mean to do so in two days – hence I am not so ripe in intelligence as may be expected. The forces of Jeswunt Rao Holkar were defeated at Dig during the Second Mahratta War of 1803, with the conclusion of a treaty on 24 December 1805 and a declaratory article dated 2 February 1806.

89

Charles, 1st Marquis Cornwallis (1738–1805) succeeded Richard Colley, Marquis Wellesley (1760–1842), as Governor-General on 30 July 1805. On his death at Ghazipur on 5 October of that year, Sir George Barlow (1762–1846), as first member of Council, became acting Governor-General until Lord Minto assumed power on 31 July 1807.

90

Colonel Norman Macalister was born on the Isle of Skye on 20 February 1760, the eighth son of Ranald Macalister of Skerrinish and Anne Macdonald of Kingsburgh. He was appointed a Cadet in the Bengal Army in 1783, Ensign in 1785, and, after transferring from the Infantry to the Artillery in that year, Lieutenant in 1794, Captain Lieutenant in 1802, Captain in 1805, Major in 1810, and local Colonel in 1806. He arrived in Penang in 1792 as Commissary of Stores and in the following year he was appointed to command the Artillery. He was on furlough from April 1802 and in the following year he arranged to have privately printed in London a small quarto work entitled, Historical Memoir Relative to Prince of Wales Island, in the Straits of Malacca: and its Importance Political and Commercial. Copies of the book were submitted to the East India Company and the British Government leading to Macalister being consulted as an authority on the island when the Directors were discussing the elevation of Penang to Presidency status. He was appointed fourth member of Council in the new Government in 1805 and Commandant of the troops, his local brevet rank of Colonel causing some ill-feeling among the military in the island. On the death of Philip Dundas on 8 April 1807 (note 74), he should have succeeded him as Governor, but a dispute about seniority with H.S. Pearson (note 99) was only resolved after reference to Calcutta and London, and he was sworn in as Governor and military commandant on 16 October 1807. On 16 August he sailed on the homeward voyage from Penang with his wife and children aboard the 1,200 ton East Indiaman Ocean (J.J. Williamson) but the ship with nearly 200 passengers was lost in a typhoon in the China Sea. Macalister was on friendly terms with Raffles, who supported him in his seniority dispute with Pearson. The statement in Leyden’s letter about Macalister’s triumph is puzzling as it is too early to have reference to this dispute. See Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, pp. 258–68; Hodson, List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, Part III, pp. 105–6.

91

Malcolm (note 56) had been appointed by Wellesley as envoy to Persia in 1799–1801, and he was sent on further missions to Tehran in 1808–9 and 1810 by Lord Minto, the materials collected during these missions being later utilised in the writing of his monumental History of Persia (London, 1815). See Malcolm, Malcolm Soldier, Diplomat, passim.

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I have been however at the public examination of [the] College [of Fort William] and have been very much gratified. The facility of Oriental study is much greater than I would have imagined in this Oriental capital and I am endeavouring to avail myself of it – in the study of Sanscrit[,] Bengala and Wudya. From which you will easily collect that Malay and even Siamese and Birman have not attracted as much of my attention as possible. Not having been much out, I have not yet arranged for the different works to be sent to you periodically nor have I been able to attend to all your Commissions: but I have picked up in Auctions and elsewhere as many books as possible for you which you will receive very soon, some of them I have not had time to examine very accurately and in one or two instances there are sheets defective which I must first have supplied before sending [them to] you. They will amount to a little more than 300 rupees[.] You delight me with what you tell me relative to the Laws of the Malays – I certainly did not conceive that they possessed any thing relative to the subject except for Addât Malayu and to the best of my recollection there is not a fragment written on the subject except by Marsden in his Sumatra.93 Go on and prosper[,] my dear fellow, the work will not only be very desirable in a literary point of view, but will I should conceive do every thing possible for your reputation at home. I imagine the mode of arranging the subject will be to give a Critical account of the different systems in your preface[,] stating their connection with the Arabic & Hindu systems. I have quite forgot whether you possess Jones & Colebrooke on the Hindus,94 or Hamilton[’]s Kedaya95 – write instantly if you want either of them. Then, select the most ancient for your text or if there are great variations the two most ancient & important[,] say the Laws of Kiddah [Kedah] and the Bugguese – by the bye[,] what is the history of the last & how come they to be in Malaya – at the end of every chapter state essential corrections from your other Mss and when there are topics discussed in the other Mss. which don[’]t occur in the principal one, you must add them by way of appending at the end of the section – But your first object will [be to] make a complete index of all the Mss[,] and this it will be proper to pr[int]. You do not surprize me in the slightest degree by what you tell me of tuan Dickens[.]96 I hope you marked down his precise words on the spot & have them attested William Marsden, The History of Sumatra (London, 1783), pp. 184–98.

93

W. Jones and H.T. Colebrooke, A Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions (Calcutta, 1797–8), 3 vols., London edition, 1801. The work was left unfinished on the death of Sir William Jones and was completed by Colebrooke (note 144).

94

The Heydaya, or Guide A Comment on the Mussulman Laws, 4 vols., was published in London in 1791, with a translation from the Persian by Charles Hamilton (1753–92).

95

John Dickens, a barrister in Bengal, was appointed Judge and Magistrate of Prince of Wales Island and assumed his judicial office in August 1801. His legal powers were limited by the existing laws and regulations, and it was only in May 1808 with the arrival of the first Recorder, Sir Edmond Stanley, that a new Charter of Justice with a Court of Judicature was established (note 111). Dickens was a rather pompous man and made

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by witnesses  – but what say Government to such an unexampled declaration [?] I am obliged not only to write a very hurried letter to you, but to come to a close while I have many things to state in order that I may not miss the opportunity of sending it by De Campos – not having been able to see Douglass & I have not sent your watch but shall, with Col. Macalister, when I shall write more fully. I shall remain here for some time longer but cannot positively say how long. – Direct to me to the care of Messrs Fairlie & Gilmour &c.97 and when you send any parcel – send [it] to the same direction. Yours Ever very Truly John C. Leyden

The letter was received by Raffles on 13 April 1806 and was followed soon afterwards by a number of books sent by Leyden to assist him in his researches. Raffles replied on 24 May:98 Pinang 24 May 1806 My dear Leyden I have not had an opportunity of thanking you for the Arabic & Persian dictionary since the arrival of Captain Brown – Allow me now to do it with all my heart – When I have the Sanscrit Vocabulary you allude to, I shall be able to get on – I am afraid however I make but a sorry figure at present and from my time being so much taken up for our honorable Masters, I have no reason to expect that I shall mend my literary paces – Pearson[,]99 heartily sick & tired of his Office[,] has obtained permission to proceed to Bombay [at] many enemies in the island, including Raffles, whose wife Olivia Mariamne Raffles, in a letter to Leyden dated 3 August 1808, refers to him as Raffles’s ‘old enemy’, who was going to Calcutta ‘with his heart full of rancour and his mouth full of scurrility against him – for what Olivia? [be]cause he has proved himself almost as learned in the Law as himself…’ (NLS:MS.971, fol. 55v). He died at Calcutta on 22 September 1810, aged about 50 years, his tombstone in the North Park Street Burial Ground being inscribed: ‘Advocate in the Supreme Court, whose exalted virtues will be respected while his name is remembered …’ (Bengal Obituary, p. 183). The Calcutta Agency House of Fairlie, Gilmore & Co.

97

Raffles to Leyden, 24 May 1806, BL:MSS.Eur.D.29, fols. 113–22.

98

Henry Shepherd Pearson was appointed Secretary to the Presidency Government of Prince of Wales Island in 1805 and was Raffles’s immediate superior. He was born on 20 October 1776, the second son of Sir Richard Pearson (1731–1806) and Margaret Harrison, and was appointed a Writer on the Bombay establishment of the East India Company in 1792. In Penang he did not get on well with the Governor, Philip Dundas (note 74), and on 28 August  1806, because of ill-health, he departed the island on six months’ furlough, leaving Raffles to act as Secretary. After his return on 16 February 1807 he succeeded as provisional member, and subsequently as full member of the Council in place of Alexander Gray, third in Council and Superintendent of Marine, who was lost at sea (note 105). Raffles was appointed to succeed Pearson as Secretary on 22 March 1807, ‘with all the honest labour but no Emolument’, as he complained to William Brown Ramsay at the East India House. Pearson subsequently returned to Bombay and on 11 July 1820 he married Caroline Lyons, 23 years his junior. Thereafter he lived in retirement in Kent before proceeding to France, where he died in July 1840. See Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, pp. 254–8; Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 45–51.

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the first opportunity & remain 6 months – this, of course, is to my advantage altho’ I don’t expect to derive much pecuniary benefit, as I can only be Acting Sec[retary] – thus terminates the disagreement I mentioned to you in a former Letter, not I assure you, to my mortification in the least [?] – I promised you in my last a great deal about the Bugguese Govt. [?] but I must wait a little longer before I submit my observations to so high an authority – Were you aware that the Malays ever used a Cycle, in conformity to that of the Indians & Chinese in general? On [?] this, I made such rapid discoveries that I expected to have been enabled to send you their whole Chronology – but it was like the Mountains in labour & produced little or nothing[.] I have not however observed in their Ms[s]. that the Cycle is ever used – the Mahomedan Hegira being universally substituted – the first I saw of it was at the end of an old Ms. half Bugguese half Malayu, showing the Kitîka or lucky or unlucky terms – with a Note upon each day[,] month & year of the Cycle of 12 – The Siamese have I believe a Cycle of 60 years containing five lesser Cycles of 12 years each, and it is evidently from this that the Malays have borrowed their Cycle, if such it may be called, when they only use the Names of the years without knowing their meaning or why they were established – their Correspondence will be seen in (No 1) [of] my Enclosures [not present] – but you shall hear more on this subject hereafter if I think it worth communicating – I find in my Enquiries into the interior of the Peninsula that there is a very extensive Malay Country inland of Malacca called Rumbaù100 – the Raja is considered by the Malays very powerful – have you ever heard of this place being of consequence? – I have set some enquiries on foot & will let you know the result as soon as possible – the Mînancabaù Nation I fear does not exist on the Peninsula – the rough translation of the Account given of the Mînancabaùs from Sumatra, accompanies this (No 2) [not present]. I have been as literal in the translation as possible, & as there is nothing very implausible in the Story, I am inclined to give it credit – On all the Hills in the interior of the Peninsular [sic] there are Caffries [Kafirs], which [?] in pretty general [?] in all their large Woods – The Mountain Jeré101 opposite Pinang is said to abound with them[.] They are called at Keddah Semain [Semang]. At Perak & the several Countries to the N.W. of Keddah Bila & to the Southward of Perak & through the Straits to the Eastwd. – Dáyak

This is also written in jawi as are the words Semang, Bila and Dáyak, showing Raffles’s mastery of Malay by this time.

100

Gunung Jerai, better known as Kedah Peak.

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46  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

The men wear a small piece of Bark of Trees to cover their privates tied above the hips– The Women a few leaves sowed together tied in the same manner & reaching the middle of the Thighs in the form of a Short Petticoat – Those inhabiting the Skirts of the Woods have considerable intercourse with the Malays, who find them very useful when in want of medicinal herbs, woods, Game &c &c – their language however is wholly different – & by the Malays considered a mere Jargon & compared to the chattering of large Birds – The method used by the Malays in their intercourse with them is as follows – on entering the Woods, they separate, not more than two going the same path – when pretty far on they blow a kind of horn, when the Caffries at a distance answer, & if he knows them or is not fearful of their numbers he approaches, [&] barters with them – they are very fearful however in approaching more than one Person & are never found twice in the same part of the Woods – The Malays give them a small quantity of cocoanut, pieces of cloth &c. in exchange for what they want from the Woods – but it is curious that they will not take Rice or (with the exception of cocoanut) any of the Eatables usually wanted by the Malays, as Rice – &c. – in short the Malays think that they live entirely upon Roots, & the smaller Animals with which the Woods abound & sleep in Trees like Monkeys – Many have been taken as Slaves – & if I have ever have [sic] the luck to fall in with one you shall have a Sîmain Vocabulary – Marsden in his Sumatra Page 259 alludes to a similar Race of People on the Phillipines [sic], called by the Spaniards Negritos del Monte102 – My Paper is so bad & my time so short I fear you will scarce be able to make out what I have written – & verily it will be no great loss if you don[’]t – I likewise however send you herewith per favor of Mr Patton, the remaining sheets of the Jaran Tamássa103 – I have several other Books to send you, but wait to hear whither you are bound – I regret to hear your health is so bad, & that to second all your afflictions you are troubled with sore eyes – this however tho’ annoying, may be productive of Good, few men have made so much use of one pair of Eyes of [sic] yourself – & the human Intellect will not bear too much light – tho[’] your active Mind will never be at rest, still it will be without so many new objects for thoughts as it would be obliged to receive otherwise – I however hope in God, you are in every respect better by this time – It is rumoured on the authority of your Letter to Oliphant that you are returning here – As I know the only cause that can induce you to take such a measure I must regret it, altho’ I need not I am

Marsden, History of Sumatra, pp. 259–60n.

102

The copy of the Malay manuscript of Shair Jaran Tamasa in the British Library is dated A.H. 1219 [= A.D. 1804] and is presumably the copy referred to by Raffles as it formed part of the Leyden Collection (M.C. Ricklefs and P. Voorhoeve, Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Indonesian Languages in British Public Collections (Oxford, 1977), p. 124).

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The Scottish Poet and Orientalist John Leyden   47

sure tell you how my dear Olivia & myself will be gratified by the Society of a friend we so dearly esteem – Pray tell me what are your Views – I have never said any thing about your coming here, as I think I am correct in saying that if we urged it we could be the means of your coming perhaps against your better Interests – Oliphant I am sorry to say has on the whole behaved shabily to Woodford or rather to you104 – & I have taken him into our Office where he will be more comfortable – however as he told me that he had himself written to you on the subject I shall not trouble you with particulars – You know that you are not without [some?] one friend here, to take care of those belonging to you – but you may as well not say any thing to Oliphant on the subject, unless I make a further communication. My dear Olivia I regret to say is far from well – a desperate attack of the liver has reduced her to a mere Skeleton – in consequence of a fall in dancing she ruptured some of the Blood Vessels near or in the Liver which occasioned a violent hemorrage [sic] & [?] for many days – She is however recovering – no thanks to the Medical Establishment here notwithstanding – a good & worthy friend[,] Surgeon of the Blenheim,105 is here & stands Doctor – I have several lists & Memorand[a] to send you which I shall defer till I receive your promised Communication by Colonel Macalister – Pray if you have Interest, or ability to procure a good Consummah [house-steward] at Bengal at any rate, engage him & send him here – We are likely to starve if you don[’]t have mercy upon us in this respect. We are losing all the Buffaloes & Cows – Out of 4,000 of the former on the Island two months back, it is calculated two thirds have since died of a distemper, or rather plague, which I suppose will not end till it carries some of us off & makes room for promotion – Mrs Raffles writes – God bless you my dear friend – the style of this will sufficiently shew you the haste I am in – God bless you again & may you be as happy & Great as a true & sincere friend like Thos Raffles can wish you. Can I say more? No – my heart would, but my Pen won[’]t. T.R. John Hope Oliphant was born at Edinburgh on 8 March 1773, the son of Robert Oliphant, Post Master General of Scotland. He entered the service of the East India Company in 1793 as a Writer and served at Bombay before being appointed second member of Council of Prince of Wales Island and Warehouse-Keeper in 1805. He married Jane Wedderburn, sister of Margaret Dundas (note 74), on 30 November 1805 and by her had a daughter, Jane, born in November 1806. He died at Government House Penang on 23 March 1807, aged 34, having returned the previous month from Calcutta where he had gone to recover his health. See Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, passim and Langdon, Epitaph, pp. 370–72.

104

HMS Blenheim (Austen Bissell) was an unseaworthy ship built in 1761. She sank in a storm off Madagascar in February 1807 with the loss of 650 passengers and crew, including Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge, Alexander Gray, third member of Council of Prince of Wales Island, and his wife. The surgeon of HMS Blenheim, to whom Olivia owed her recovery, must also have gone down with the ship.

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48  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

This is the first extant letter which Raffles wrote on Malay subjects, and he redrafted it slightly in July 1806 to serve as a reply to queries addressed to the Prince of Wales Island Government by William Marsden (1754–1836), which opened the prospect for him to establish a close friendship with the historian of Sumatra.106 Raffles subsequently sent a preliminary draft of his paper ‘On the Maláyu Nation’ to Leyden,107 who laid it before Lord Minto with a sufficiently strong recommendation for the Governor-General to express publicly his approbation of Raffles’s Malay studies in his Address to the College of Fort William in February 1808: ‘The Malay language has been successfully cultivated by Mr. Raffles, Secretary to the Government of Prince of Wales’s Island, who, much to his honour, has long been employed in compiling a code of Addat Malaya or Malay Laws from the best authorities in the Malay and Bugguese languages’.108 This official recognition by the Governor-General of Raffles’s literary attainments attracted a good deal of notice in Penang and, according to Olivia Raffles, not a little jealously.109 Increasingly, however, Raffles had to lay his Malay studies aside as he shouldered more of the burdens of the Penang administration,110 including the role of Secretary and Registrar of the newly established court under Sir Edmond Stanley (1760–1843).111 His health suffered as a result, and in August 1808 he applied for sick-leave to visit Melaka, where he compiled his influential Report opposing the proposal of the Directors of the East India Company to abandon the settlement and destroy its fortifications.112 The Report was well received in Leadenhall Street and led to the countermanding of the Directors’ orders, but the key to his advancement came through the Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 76–8. On Raffles’s friendship with Marsden, see John Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009), p. 209 n.138. His correspondence with Marsden is detailed in note 138 below.

106

Note 63.

107

Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 76.

108

‘The little paltry wretches here’, she wrote to Leyden on 3 August 1808, ‘were astonished and nearly maddened by envy…’ (NLS:MS.971, fol. 55v.; Bastin, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, p. 48).

109

Raffles to Elton Hamond, 9 September 1808, Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

110

Sir Edmond Stanley, the first Recorder, arrived at Penang in May 1808 with a Charter of Justice establishing a Court of Judicature and the introduction of English law among the Asian population. Raffles served as Secretary to the Court and as one of three Commissioners of the Court of Requests. He had a high opinion of Stanley, describing him in a letter to William Brown Ramsay on 20 November 1808 as ‘a Gentleman in every sense of the word, an upright, well informed impartial Judge’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/20). In an earlier letter dated 2 November 1808 Raffles stated that the Court ‘perhaps could not have been established had I not come forward and voluntarily acted as Registrar, Clerk of the Crown &c &c – ’. See Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, pp. 363, 461 and C.E. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), pp. 63, 82.

111

Raffles’s Report on Melaka, 31 October 1808, is printed in Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 64–75. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles, pp. 81, 85, wrongly connects the Report with the statement in Leyden’s letter.

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recommendation made to Lord Minto by Vice-Admiral William O’Bryen Drury (d. 6 March 1811), Commander-in-Chief on the East Indies Station, that he should be placed in charge of the captured Dutch colonial possessions in eastern Indonesia. Raffles had stepped in at short notice to assume the duties of Naval Agent at Prince of Wales Island following the death of his brother-in-law, Quintin Dick Thompson, and he gained the gratitude of Drury who conveyed him and his wife on HMS Repulse to Melaka on sick-leave in August 1808. Raffles explained in a letter to his friend, William Brown Ramsay, the remarkable change in his fortunes following his visit to Calcutta to advance Drury’s recommendation and was instead appointed by Lord Minto to act as his agent to prepare the way for a British invasion of Java:113 Naturally led by that insatiable ambition of which you accuse me to be very intimate with Men of Rank[,] and rather to be last of the highest Rank than the first of the lowest, my friend Admiral Drury our late Naval Commander in Chief with whom few men could agree[,] myself excepted, informed me by Letter in June last year that he had exerted all his Interest with Lord Minto the Governor General to obtain for me the situation of Governor of the Moluccas – that his Lordship was most favourably disposed to me & that as far as it rested with Sir George Barlow or the [succeeding] Governor General I might be satisfied they wished to avail themselves of my services – The Governor General was then on his way to Bengal [from Madras],114 and my object was to meet before he had made other arrangements – in this however I failed, quick as my motions were – Mr Martin was previously appointed – the expedition against the Ile of France was about to sail, I found that on its success depended a still greater expedition – the attack [on] Java – to the latter therefore I attached myself – was admitted into the fullest and most unreserved Confidence of the Supreme Government and in due time proceeded on a political Mission to the Eastern Isles, as Avant Courier of the Expedition –

It had long been Lord Minto’s ambition to capture the French-controlled islands of Mauritius, Bourbon and Java, and he had discussions on the subject with Raffles to William Brown Ramsay, n.d. (c. July/August 1810), BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/20.

113

Lord Minto visited Madras in connection with the mutiny of officers of the Madras Army caused by the high handed manner of the Governor of Madras, Sir George Barlow, in abolishing the monthly allowance of the ‘tent contract’. The mutiny was regarded in so serious a light that Lord Minto left Calcutta for Madras on 5 August to deal with the matter himself (Lord Minto in India, pp. 205–27). Leyden’s friend, John Malcolm, was also sent to Madras and reported that Barlow, by ‘his repellent manners … began by turning every one against him, and then quarrelled with the leading men, both of the army and civil service’ (Observations on the Disturbances in the Madras Army in 1809 (London, 1812). See also ‘Indus’, A View of the Policy of Sir George Barlow, as Exhibited in the Acts of the Madras Government, in the Late Unhappy Occurrences on the Coast of Coromandel. In a Series of Letters (London, 1810).

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50  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

British ministers before he left England for India in 1807. However, the fragility of the Indian finances after Marquis Wellesley’s extravagant administration left insufficient resources to mount naval and military expeditions, and the attention of the Indian authorities became increasingly focussed on threats of French expansion through Persia. Even after the removal of this threat by British diplomacy in Tehran, and an increasingly favourable financial position in India, the British Government was reluctant to support active measures against the French possessions. It was only after the heavy losses sustained by Calcutta merchants from the activities of French privateers and armed cruisers operating from bases in Mauritius and Bourbon, and the capture by the French in 1809 of no fewer than six East Indiamen, that Minto felt obliged to act on his own initiative and direct an expedition against the islands. Their capture in December 1810 received subsequent approval by the British Government, but in Minto’s mind there still remained the equally potent danger of Java and the other Dutch colonial possessions under French influence and control. The arrival of Raffles at Calcutta in June 1810 was timely in providing the Governor-General and his officials with local knowledge useful for the British invasion of Java, but it was not Raffles, as is commonly supposed, who was responsible for direct action being taken against the island and its dependencies. Even before news had reached Calcutta of the successful operations against Mauritius, the Supreme Government had issued orders for a ‘combined application’ of the King’s and Company’s naval and military forces for an expedition against Java, so that Raffles’s appointment as Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States, with responsibility for establishing cordial relations with the Indonesian rulers prior to the British invasion, was subsequent to this decision. During his four months’ stay at Calcutta, Raffles lived with Leyden who introduced him to the Baptist missionary, Dr. Joshua Marshman (1768–1837), and the orientalist Thomas Manning (1772–1840), the four of them often dining together at Leyden’s house and discussing into the early hours philological and theological subjects.115 Leyden wrote to Olivia Raffles on 22 August giving her an account of her husband’s reception by the Governor-General: J.C. Marshman, The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward embracing the History of the Serampore Mission (London, 1859), vol. I, pp. 437–8; Asiatic Journal, vol. XXXIII n.s. (1840), p. 183. In an undated letter at this time, Leyden wrote to Manning: ‘To be assured I’ll be at home[.] Come over whenever you like but your Chum T. Raffles has just fled in despair & is gone up the river on this horrid night’ (NLS:MS.1809, fol. 45). This reference to the friendship between Manning and Raffles at Calcutta in 1810 is not without interest considering that Manning was a close friend of Charles Lamb, who was a clerk in the Accountant-General’s

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Well, … with respect to the Gudeman, as we Scotch folks have it, he is looking quite famously & the ladies one and all have done nothing but take him for a batchelor since his star first rose in our quarter of the world. In short he is at least a foot higher than he used to be in consequence of being puffed up by their flattery & it would not be possible for a homely fellow like me to endure it, if I had not the conscious satisfaction of being able to rival him in a pair of jaws & grinders that would do credit to an Ourang utang … I have the pleasure of informing you that he has received the most cordial attentions from Ld Minto and that it is my opinion every thing will tend to the best possible issue – … As Lord Minto has chosen to detain him till his own time comes, you must not be impatient as he will certainly not budge in my opinion for these six weeks …116

In another letter dated 22 October, when Raffles was about to leave Calcutta, Leyden wrote to her: ‘I take the opportunity of sending you a few lines by R[affles] just as he is going off therefore you are not to expect a letter. But it is impossible not to congratulate you on his success here which I regard as in every respect compleat. If he succeeds in his present objects he will have a much finer game to play than he has hitherto had & one to which Amboina is not in the least to be compared’.117 Raffles sailed for Penang aboard HEIC Ariel (Lieutenant David Macdonald),118 a brig of 12 guns which had been placed at his disposal by the Supreme Government. office during Raffles’s period at the East India House. Manning was born on 8 November 1772, the second son of the Reverend William Manning, Rector of Broome and Diss in Norfolk. He was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, where he became interested in Chinese and visited Paris to study the language. In 1806 he set out for Canton, but after failing in his efforts to gain entry to the interior of China, he proceeded to Calcutta from where, entirely unaided, except for a Chinese servant, he travelled to Lhasa. In 1816 he joined Lord Amherst’s mission to Peking (Beijing) as an interpreter, and in the following year returned to England, where he lived in seclusion at Puckeridge and Redbourn in Hertfordshire. He visited Italy during 1827–9 and afterwards lived at Dartford in Kent and at Bath, where he died on 2 May 1840 and was buried in the Abbey Church. His immense collection of Chinese books was left to the Royal Asiatic Society, London. Leyden to Olivia Mariamne Raffles, 22 August 1810, NLS:MS.971, fol. 73; Bastin, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, pp. 65–6.

116

Leyden to Olivia Mariamne Raffles, 22 October 1810, NLS:MS.971, fol. 75; Bastin, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, p. 68.

117

Lieutenant David Macdonald entered the Indian Navy on 17 December 1809 and rose to the rank of Captain. He wrote an account of his naval career, including his experiences with Raffles, in A Narrative of the Early Life and Services of Captn. D. Macdonald, I.N. Extracted from His Journal and other Official Documents. The first edition of the book was published in 1830 but no copy appears to have survived. Second and third editions were published at Weymouth in 1840 and 1842[?], the latter edition with a slightly variant titlepage. The book contains a lithograph illustration of the brig HEIC Ariel in which Raffles sailed from Calcutta to Penang in 1810. Macdonald returned to England in the summer of 1818 in command of the 500-ton ship Downton and settled at Bromham in Wiltshire, where he was a neighbour of Raffles’s friend, the Irish poet, Thomas Moore. Moore’s Journal contains numerous references to him, though the editor of that work, W.S. Dowden, occasionally confuses him with Sir James Macdonald (1784–1832), who married in August 1819 Lady Sophia Keppel, eldest daughter of the 4th Earl of Albemarle (Moore’s Journal, vol. I, p. 212). Macdonald obviously discussed with Moore their mutual friend Raffles, and he told the story against him of an ignorant fellow who wrote to Raffles when he took his wife Olivia to the beach of Penang for her health: ‘I hope you lik the bich (ibid., vol. I, p. 87). Macdonald invited Moore to dinner on 30 October 1818

118

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He was accompanied by the Malay scribe Ibrahim, son of Kandu, who had been assisting Leyden in Calcutta with his translation of the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), and who was now engaged by Raffles to take charge of his Malay secretariat at Melaka.119 The Ariel arrived at George Town on 17 November when Raffles made immediate arrangements to sell his house, ‘Runnymede’, and to move his wife and sisters to Melaka. He had been instructed by Lord Minto to keep his appointment secret and to reveal it to no one except the Governor of Prince of Wales Island, Charles Andrew Bruce (1768–1810),120 but the object of his mission soon became generally known and was actually alluded to publicly in the Prince of Wales Island Gazette on 19 January 1811.

to meet Raffles’s sister Mary Anne, and her husband Captain William Flint, but Moore found the evening ‘very dull’ (ibid., vol. I, p. 77). Macdonald re-embarked for India in 1820 but became ill on the voyage and was landed at the Cape of Good Hope from where he returned to England in a colonial trader. He continued to live at Bromham in Wiltshire until as late as 1839 and it was there that he prepared his reminiscences for publication at Weymouth. C. Skinner, ‘The Author of the “Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala”’, BKI, vol. 132 (1976), pp. 195–206; C. Skinner (ed. and transl.), Ahmad Rijaluddin’s Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala, KITLV Bibliotheca Indonesica, 22 (1982). A fellow passenger aboard the Ariel with Raffles was John Scott (note 125).

119

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Lord Minto had written confidentially to Bruce on 19 October 1810 informing him of Raffles’s appointment as ‘Agent to the Governor General’ and advising him that as the real objects of the appointment required ‘from their political importance, the utmost secrecy, I have taken the responsibility of making all the necessary communications relative thereto, in my own name, and shall not for the present place them on the records of the Supreme Government, [so] you will of course see the necessity of this caution at Prince of Wales Island and consider this communication as strictly confidential’ (NLS:MS.11690). Bruce was the fourth son of Charles Bruce, 9th Earl of Kincardine and 5th Earl of Elgin, and Anna Maria Blunt, and was born on 18 January 1768. He was appointed a Writer on the Bengal establishment of the East India Company on 7 August 1783 and served in the Bengal secretariat and in provincial law courts of northern India until he was appointed to succeed Norman Macalister (note 91) as Governor of Prince of Wales Island. He arrived at Penang on 21 March 1810 with his wife and two children but died on 27 December 1810, aged 42. The inscription on his memorial in St. George’s Church, Penang, reads: ‘With a Virtuous Uncorrupted Heart, Delighting in Justice, Mild, Benevolent, Pious, and Sincere, He was Permitted to Rule for Ten Months Only When Death Deprived the Settlement of His Valuable Services’. He was succeeded by Archibald Seton (1755–1818), who arrived at Penang with Lord Minto on 8 May 1811 aboard HMS Modeste and was immediately sworn in as Governor. Seton was a member of an old-established Scottish family in Sterlingshire, his forebears being the hereditary armour-bearers to the Scottish kings. He held numerous important posts in India before being appointed Governor of Prince of Wales Island. He accompanied Minto to Java in the role of adviser, and after the conquest of the island he returned to Penang on 27 January 1812, the administration of Prince of Wales Island in the meantime being left in the hands of W.E. Phillips (note 130). Seton left Penang on 29 July 1812 following his appointment as a member of the Supreme Council of Fort William and he served under both Lord Minto and his successor, the Marquess of Hastings. He was petitioned by Raffles, because of his ‘attachment and Friendship’, for support in connection with the charges of corruption levelled against his administration in Java by Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie (1766–1814). Seton sailed from Calcutta for England aboard the East Indiaman William Pitt (Captain Graham) in 1817, after 37 years residence in India, but he died on 30 March 1818 after leaving St. Helena, aged 62. In India, after Leyden’s death, Seton had employed the latter’s Afghan translator, Ameer Mahommud, and on 18 August 1817 he presented to the Asiatic Society of Bengal ‘a vocabulary of the Pooshtoo language, explained in Persian, and a translation into Pooshtoo of the Goolistan of Sadi, both the labours of Ameer Mahommud…’. (On Bruce and Seton, see Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, passim).

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On 25 November he wrote to Leyden outlining his plans involving the delivery of military stores to the Indonesian rulers:121 Penang 25 Nov 1810 My dear Leyden I have just written a private Letter to Lord Minto informing his Lordship that I shall quit this in two days – I should not have been delayed here so many days had it not been necessary to make some alterations both in the accommodation and equipment of the Ariel, and our Storekeepers here do not move too fast – What they would do were an expedition to touch here I know not, they have made more fuss and trouble about my little Brig than they ought to do with 12 sail of Ships[.] What I foretold respecting Palembang has been verified – [Governor-General H.W.] Daendels has fitted out an expedition against the Sultan consisting of two Brigs and about fifty prows and Carracoes122 – the Sultan however has turned off the Blow intended for him by uniting his forces with the Dutch against Lingen – Accounts received here yesterday state that the expedition had arrived there, but I only look upon it as a plundering business – Daendels is much distressed for money & if he gains enough at Lingen the expedition has long ago returned to Batavia – The King’s ships have been playing the very devil to the Eastward123 and the Bugguese who have this year lost 53 Prows large and small, have come to the determination to come on next year and repay themselves when and wherever they can – Creeses[,] Pindings[,] Badjus &c &c – are constantly put up to public Auction – The Crews landed from several China Junks captured by our Ships now in a Body at Malacca, & it became necessary to order out the Military – Palembang has been twice unsuccessfully attempted by our Ships and the Rivers are plundered – all the Bali people taken in Bugguese Prows, if women kept

Raffles to Leyden, 25 November 1810, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/3, fols. 169–74.

121

Caracoa (Malay kura-kura), generally referring to a Bugis war perahu. Raffles received more detailed information on the Dutch naval force sent to Palembang in a letter from Captain James Bowen written in the Straits of Bangka on 23 January 1810 [= 1811]: ‘The Dutch Vessels … left Palembang 13 Days ago. They did not succeed in obtaining their object for the Sultan would not supply them with tin unless they paid for it in hard cash … The Sultan has got your Letter, at least it is on its way to him’ (BL:MSS.Eur.E106, fols. 65–8). In his letter to Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin, Raffles wrote: ‘Since my arrival at Malacca I have heard with much concern of the approach of a Dutch force to the Mouth of the Palembang River … I would therefore recommend to your Majesty to drive them out from your Country at once…’. (ibid., fols. 69–72). This, and other letters to the Sultan urging him to drive the Dutch out of Palembang by force, led to the massacre of 24 European and 63 Indonesian members of the Dutch factory and garrison on 14 September 1811 (John Bastin, ‘Palembang in 1811 and 1812’, BKI, vol. 109 (1953), pp. 300–20; vol. 110 (1954), pp. 64–88).

122

For an account of British naval operations in Indonesian waters and the Indian Ocean at this time, see C. Northcote Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas 1793–1815 (London, 1954); Stephen Taylor, Storm and Conquest The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1809 (London, 2007); James Davey, In Nelson’s Wake The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars (New Haven, London, 2015).

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on board or given away for concubinage – and the Boys made presents of as Slaves – never were we in such a State – On my arrival here I found out that there was authority from the Admiralty for taking off the Blockade & tho’ it had been here since the 3d of Novr. With the Knowledge of Govt. it had never been promulgated – Mr Bruce at my request has obtained the order & I shall act upon it – This is a most fortunate circumstance as it will afford me the opportunity of appearing to the Eastward in the very best light possible – I have found a good deal of trouble in getting what little things I wanted here from the Government and tho’ Mr Bruce has personally behaved most kind, I cannot calculate upon him as a political Character – the first and only point for a long time that seemed to create any interest was how to distribute my Salary away – this as item the first – next he will not give me a single Military Store because the Order does not desire this positively – I shall say no more on this subject at present as I shall have but little to do with this Govt. provided Lord Minto will send me Stores to Malacca as I have requested of him – pray see and get this done if you value the success of my operations – here they think of nothing but themselves & Mr B[ruce], who I alone have communicated with as more important matters certainly does not extend his views much further than the rest – I give you the above Hints that you may act upon them hereafter when necessary – but in perfect confidence – for I really like & have a sincere regard for Mr B – and if he were free to act I think these hints would be unnecessary – I shall write you fully from Malacca – here I am full of confusion – the Company’s Brig belonging to this Port was just on the point of sailing for Malacca so that I have detained her & the Ladies go down in her – Mrs R and two Sisters – one of them I have got rid of as you may see in the Papers124 – you’ll judge I have not been idle – Olivia is too full of trouble and confusion to write you from hence – you will hear from her often enough from Malacca – Mrs. J. Scott goes to Bengal soon – but beware of her – I am most heartily glad she moves north instead of South – John gets on with the Malays –125 Raffles’s sisters, Harriot Raffles (1783–1818) and Leonora Raffles (1785–1855), accompanied Olivia Raffles to Melaka, Leonora having married the Madras surgeon John Billington Loftie (1772–1812) on 22 November 1810.

124

John Scott, son of a well-known ‘Country’ trader, Captain William Scott, had recently arrived at Calcutta from London with a provisional nomination to the post of Master Attendant at Penang. On Leyden’s recommendation, Raffles asked Lord Minto to have him appointed as his assistant in his role as Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States on a monthly salary of 500 Sicca Rupees. Raffles found Scott unsatisfactory for the task intended and described him in a letter to Leyden dated 15 December 1810 as ‘a lump of fat stupidity and sullenness’. After the British conquest of Java, Scott was appointed Master Attendant and Marine Storekeeper at Semarang, a post he held until 1814, when he commanded the Country ship Isabella. Raffles’s aide-de-camp, Captain Thomas Otho Travers, who sailed in the ship from Java to England

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It is most fortunate I brought the Presents as I would have got nothing here – for god’s sake don’t forget the Military Stores and to write me fully & explicitly by every opportunity – writing your Letters as new matters occur & send them to Alexander to forward – Excuse this hasty scrawl as hard as my hand can run over the Paper & Believe me ever Yours Most affectionately Tho Raffles

I leave Pinang with very little regret – the only friend I leave behind is William Robinson126 of whom I so often spoke to you – if ever we establish our Eastern Empire he must not be left out – he possesses every local qualification with the best heart and the [sic] not the worst head in the World – If you should by any accident have anything to do at Pinang I have the egotism to say that now I am gone he is the only Man left to be depended on or who would sacrifice pecuniary views for private friendship or public benefit – Adieu

I have requested Captain Tait of the Thainstone who takes this to see you – he is a very clever man and would bring down the Stores quicker than any Man – he is just from Minto [Muntok] and will give you all information you may require – I fancy if he does not call he is to be heard of at [John] Palmers – Write at all events by [him] – He expects to be back the middle of January – You may place confidence in him –.127 during that year, noted in his Journal that Scott’s wife was ‘very ill and naturally always complaining’, but he referred to Scott as ‘a gentleman’. See note 140. William Robinson was appointed Assistant to the Accountant and Auditor of the Presidency Government of Prince of Wales Island in 1805, and he later held other posts, including that of Secretary to the Recorder of the Court, Sir Edmond Stanley (note 111). He was described by Raffles in a letter to Lord Minto in February 1811 as his ‘most intimate friend’, and earlier, in January 1807, to William Brown Ramsay as ‘a very fine fellow… [and] one of the kindest, & best hearted fellows on the Island –’. Robinson sailed with the British invasion force for Java and after the conquest of the island was placed in charge of the Customs and Revenue Department at Batavia. To these duties were added on 28 November 1811 those of Acting Sub-Treasurer and Civil Paymaster on a combined salary of Sp.$1,500 a month. He was later appointed to other posts in Java, including that of Acting Secretary to Raffles. In January 1813 he stood as joint god-father with Raffles at the christening of Stamford Raffles Charles Flint, the first child of Raffles’s sister Mary Anne and Captain William Flint, R.N. Robinson died at Batavia on 23 June 1815, aged 36 years, and was buried next to Olivia Mariamne Raffles in the Tanah Abang (Taman Prasasti) burial ground. In Penang he fathered three children out of wedlock by an Asian woman, and they were baptised with his name at Batavia in March 1816. It is curious (judging by Raffles’s letter) that he was not introduced to Leyden when he was in Penang.

126

Captain Charles Tait, commander of the Country ship Thainstone, was a free merchant connected with the Agency House of John Palmer & Co., Calcutta (A. Webster, The Richest East India Merchant The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta 1767–1836 (Woodbridge, 2007)).

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Raffles wrote again to Leyden on the following day:128 Pinang 26 Nov 1810 My dear Leyden I wrote you a long Letter tho a hasty one yesterday by the Thainstone, therefore there is neither much matter or time left to add more to day by the Modeste, further than to say that I shall be off this Evening for Malacca, having arranged all affairs here – particularly attend to the Military Stores I have written for – they may be necessary for my personal safety – I shall write you most fully & I hope send a tolerable satisfactory report to Lord Minto from Malacca previous to my starting from thence – The object of my Mission is not even dreamt of here and this has arisen from a most extraordinary circumstance[,] namely the previous knowledge that had been obtained here of intended Political operations against the great Island – the information was sent here by R.T. Farquhar129 – & Phillips130 was aware of it in June last – I imagine Ld Minto

Raffles to Leyden, 26 November 1810, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/3, fols. 167–8.

128

(Sir) Robert Townsend Farquhar (1776–1830), son of Sir Walter Farquhar, Physician in Ordinary to the Prince of Wales, served as Assistant Resident of Banda and Resident of Ambon after the islands were captured by the British. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Prince of Wales Island in October 1803 and arrived in Penang on 2 January of the following year, his administration to July 1804 and, subsequently, from March to September 1805, being characterised by his critics as the ‘Age of Humbug’. After the capture of Mauritius by the British in 1810, he was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief. Between 1825 and 1830 he was a Member of Parliament for Newton and afterwards for Hythe. He was a man of original ideas about the nature and scope of British power in South-East Asia, and his reports in the Secretariat at Penang were read by Raffles and strongly influenced him. See W.G. Miller, ‘Robert Farquhar in the Malay World’, JMBRAS, vol. LI, no. 2 (1978), pp. 123–38; Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, pp. 229–34.

129

William Edward Phillips, son of Major-General William Phillips, was born in 1769 and arrived in India in 1787 as a Cadet in the military service of the East India Company. He attained the rank of Captain in the H.M.’s 74th Regiment of Foot and was appointed (‘under the auspices of my revered Patron and Guardian the … Marquis of Cornwallis’) Fort Adjutant of Bangalore and Assistant in the Military Auditor-General’s office at Fort William before being invalided out of the army. In 1800 he arrived in Penang, where he served as Secretary to the Government under Sir George Leith (1766–1842) and R.T. Farquhar (note 129). On the latter’s departure from the island, he acted as Governor until he was replaced in 1805 by Philip Dundas as head of the Presidency Government. Phillips was reduced to the rank of Collector of Customs and Land Revenue on Sp.$ 6,000 per annum, the same salary as Raffles, who, as Assistant Secretary, was twelve years his junior. On the death of Bruce on 27 December 1810 (note 120), Phillips again became Acting Governor and, in that capacity, he was informed by Raffles of the secret nature of his appointment as Agent to the GovernorGeneral with the Malay States, when he expressed annoyance that he had not shared the confidence earlier. He served as Acting Governor of Prince of Wales Island on six separate occasions before eventually succeeding to the substantive post on 4 June 1820, effectively ending Raffles’s hopes of replacing him (John Bastin, The Founding of Singapore (Singapore, 2012), pp. 98–105, 174–5 n.192). On 30 July 1818, Phillips married Janet, eldest daughter of the Governor, Colonel John Alexander Bannerman (1759–1819), in a double wedding ceremony with Bannerman’s other daughter, Jane, and Adjutant Henry Burney (1792–1845) of the 20th Bengal Native Infantry. At a dinner given by Bannerman in Penang on 31 December 1818, Raffles, with remarkable insensitivity, referred to Phillips, his son-in-law, as ‘a worthy good fellow’, but lacking the ‘capacities sufficient to set the Thames on fire’. Raffles’s feelings towards Phillips were clearly expressed by his Secretary, William Jack (Chapter Nine), who characterised him as being ‘an artful designing character, utterly devoid of principle’, and ‘the prime mover of all the iniquity and mischief of the place’ (JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 158, 170).

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must have had some conversation with Farquhar on the subject & you see how prettily he has kept the Secret – indeed some of my friends here who only look after a man’s pecuniary interest, have said “What a pity I had not tried to get something at Java in the expedition that is going there – ” [T]he source from whence this information sprang I suspected at first to be Farquhar, & M Bruce confirmed it yesterday – it is not for me to mention this to Lord Minto, but if r

you can give him a hint to be more careful in that quarter it may be better – as all advantages, except such as may apply to me or my operations personally, from the secrecy of the point is now done away by his premature communications to this Island & the conduct of the Navy who appear to have acted upon it – ever yours Most truly & affectly. Tho Raffles From Malacca I shall not put my name to Letters except by King’s Ships –

In another letter to Leyden written in the following month, Raffles outlined matters concerned with his mission since taking up residence at Melaka:131 Malacca 15th Decr. 1810 My dear Leyden I have just finished a long but hasty letter to Lord Minto in which I have endeavored tho I am aware but faintly, to give his Lordship some idea of my proceedings – the fact is I have done a great deal and feel my ground secure but I have done so much and have such extensive plans in operation that it is impossible in an hour or two, at a moment’s warning[,] to touch upon them all even generally – The Ships only anchored at 10 o’clock this morning and they are now under weigh – if possible I shall enclose a Copy of my Letter to Lord Minto in this – it will give you some idea of what I am about – I do not move further at present for many reasons but more particularly that of keeping my Secret – from

Contrary to this estimation, Henry Ridley (1855–1957) later affirmed that Phillips was an able man, who ‘gave special attention to the land question [in Penang], which he seems thoroughly to have understood’ (JSBRAS, no. 25 (1894), pp. 165–6). His popularity in the island is attested by the Farewell Address presented to him by the European residents on his retirement in 1824, and also by a similar Address to him by the Sultan of Kedah (Asiatic Journal, vol. XX, nos. 113, 115 (May, July 1825), pp. 708, 93–5). Phillips’s greatest achievement in Penang was building Suffolk House, the magnificent mansion which was considered by some to be the finest house in India (note 163). He enjoyed a long retirement in England, witnessing during this period the gradual eclipse of Penang by Raffles’s new settlement of Singapore. He died in London on 13 April 1850, aged 80, his wife following him to the grave in August 1865. See Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, pp. 224–6, 301–13. Raffles to Leyden, 15 December 1810, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/3, fols. 176–82v.

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Rhio and Lingen it would be impossible – therefore until I am decided as to the actual moment for operations it is necessary I should be cautious and if seen – only dimly so –132 By the bye I must report to you & I wish it to you alone at present, that I fear I shall never get any thing out of [John] Scott – in truth but in confidence he is not worth his Salt – I have as yet got nothing from him but trouble and I have my doubts how far he may be capable even in the business from [guarding the?] Secret [.] I believe he is studying Malays – I say believe because I gave him my assistance on the Passage [from Calcutta] and have provided him with a Man here – for I see nothing of him – and in point of use he is not worth a straw to me – indeed and indeed Leyden you have saddled me with a very bad bargain here – but as I pledged myself for him I shall do all I can & send him off to Lingin – if he don’t stand his own ground he must fall – for I cannot be troubled with the care of such a lump of fat stupidity and Sullenness – this of course to yourself – and I assure you to no other person living for I want to serve Scott and will do it if I can – all and every thing is not only on my individual shoulders but in my own hand[,] for the devil an Assistant have I [not] worth a Groat133 – For god’s sake urge the necessity of sending me the Military Stores by Ta[it] or any other Vessel they can get – from Pinang I can get nothing[,] their narrow minded jealousy and envy has so disgusted [me,] and indeed as far as its power went, so far annoyed me that I can expect no assistance from thence – between ourselves Mr B[ruce] did not act to me as he ought – and I lay the whole to the account of Phillips who has I believe a most rancorous hatred for your humble servant on many accounts –134 but let Pinang go to the devil – enough of it – I am only desirous that I should be hampered with their assistance – it is almost wholly in words, tho it may appear a great deal in the way their words would represent it – It is of the utmost importance that I should hear by a certain opportunity of the period when operations can commence – all my intelligence confirms what I said in Bengal and I have the best and most intelligent native Agents that ever Man had – so far I am lucky – It would seem from this statement that as Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States Raffles had intended to proceed southwards to the Riau-Lingga archipelago in order to gain more direct information on the state of the Dutch military forces in Java. Indeed, while he was in Calcutta he had urged Minto to allow him to proceed to Palembang to gain such information. The reason given here for his remaining at Melaka seems particularly lame, and it must be supposed that he had decided that it was safer to remain where he was than venture to the more hazardous southern regions.

132

Note 125.

133

Phillips’s feelings towards Raffles were clearly reflected in the request he made in a ‘Memorial’ addressed to the Directors of the East India Company on 24 March 1820 (when he thought that Raffles might be appointed Governor of Prince of Wales Island) that he be allowed ‘to retire to my Native Land’ (Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p. 174 n.192).

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I have but little time to write you particularly – I work Ten Hours every day and tho’ I have not made much progress in writing I feel myself so far Master of the general outlines of the object I have in view that I know I have but no time – The Becharas [discussions with Malay informants] take time and good information is not to be got in a day – I must request you particularly to ascertain & let me know as soon as you can – what part of the Play I am to act hereafter – All my Agents and all that I deal with are people who look not for, neither will they take immediate profit – they look to my being the highest Authority and of course to my ability for rewarding them in greater things than payments of money – … [?] I must be all or nothing – at present I am every thing and Gov. will have my very best Services but if other men, who know nothing of the subject, are to carry into effect my Plans or reward my Servants – adieu to my subsequent services for I would establish a new Empire in the Center of Borneo rather than appear in the eyes of the Natives a mere Cat’s paw – excuse the vulgarity of the phrase – à propos of Borneo[,] I enclose you a Representation I have received from the Rajah of Banjar Massin – 135 I have not time to translate it – do it for me and give it to Lord Minto – The Ambassadors had been here and at Pinang with all their Credentials under the great Seal of the Empire – for two months but could not obtain audience or get their Representations received by the Pinang Govt – I shall write the Sultan & do what is necessary – 135

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These overtures by the Banjar envoys led to Alexander Hare (c.1781–1835), an English merchant at Melaka, with trading connections in southern Borneo, being appointed British Resident at Banjarmasin in April 1812 when Raffles was Lieutenant-Governor of Java. On 1 October of that year Hare was granted by Sultan Soleiman Almah Jamat (r.1808–25) and the other Banjar rulers some 1,400 square miles of territory, extending southwards from the mouth of the Barito River to Tanjong Selatan, and the country inland, which enabled him to establish a large estate and a notorious harem. The original Treaty in English and jawi, signed by Hare as ‘Commissioner’, with the signatures and seals of the Sultan and the Banjar rulers, is in the British Library (MSS.Eur.F.148). In order to work his estate, Hare was supplied by Raffles with ‘convicts’ from Java, leading to his being criticised later by the Dutch Colonial Minister, J. C. Baud, in an article entitled, ‘De Bandjermasinsche afschuwelijkheid’ (The Banjermassin atrocity) (BKI, vol. VII (1860), pp. 1–25). Contemporary estimates of the number of ‘convicts’ sent to Banjarmasin from Java were a little more than 1,000, but Hare, in a letter to Raffles written on 20 May 1818, when he was coming under pressure from the Netherlands authorities to leave Banjarmasin, and was attempting to interest the British Government in acquiring his lands, declared that he had ‘a well regulated thriving little settlement of upwards of five hundred people … unconnected with those of the Country, but their labour having been withheld from Agriculture, they yet require some support’ (BL:Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 47 and Hare’s related correspondence with Raffles dated 31 December 1819, 20 April 1820 &c. in Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 50). Raffles had become friendly with Hare at Melaka while he was serving as Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States, and he derived some assistance from him, including information for his report on Banjarmasin for Lord Minto dated 21 January 1811 (BL:MSS.Eur.E.104, fols.  121–8). The personal relationship between Raffles and Hare is difficult to determine, not least from the address and content of Raffles’s letters to him. Two of these letters dated 22 August 1813 and 7 April 1814 are printed in The Straits Times of 24 October 1932, and another describing Raffles’s meeting with Napoleon on St. Helena in May 1816 is in the Bodleian Library Oxford (MS.Curzon b.36), having been printed in the Daily Mail on 18 June 1904, and in Malaya (November 1952), pp. 39–40. For an account of Hare’s activities in Banjarmasin, see C.A. Gibson-Hill, ‘Documents relating to John Clunies Ross, Alexander Hare and the establishment of the Colony on the Cocos-Keeling Islands’, JMBRAS, vol. XXV, pt. 4 (1952), pp. 1–306; C.A. Gibson-Hill, ‘Raffles, Alexander Hare & Johanna van Hare’, JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 1 (1955), pp. 184–91; F. De Haan, ‘Personalia’, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 562–5. It is interesting that Raffles’s uncle John Raffles was married to a certain Elizabeth Hare.

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Did not Lord Minto send from Madras a Letter and Presents to the Rajah of Boni about the affair of the Piedemontaise or Bugguese Trade in general –136 Report says here that the Letter and Presents are now at Amboyna – somebody there has taken upon himself to say that they are not addressed to the proper Rajah &c – and so they have never been delivered – I shall however speak to Mr. Martin on the subject when he arrives –137 I shall open Communications with Boni & Warjoo – With respect to Bali I fear the [D]utch influence is such that Daendels would easily secure any European sent there unless he had a good Vessel to trust to – and as I have not one to give him – this point lies over – The King of Bantam is not at Palembang – it was once intended to send him there and preparations were made accordingly – this gave rise to the Report – and I was deceived – I however hope to have him yet – Do not, I entreat you[,] neglect to write me all you hear and all you know – I am completely in the mist here, and yet what will turn out, [we] must have Java – if the English deceive me – I shall request you to come & the devil’s in it if we won[’]t do the business for them – our grand points are all right – Madura must be the first place taken – for many reasons, but most particularly as Daendels has latterly ruled Java by the people of Madura – from thence he draws his Soldiers, and Tummunggungs and Princes to supersede the legal Native Authorities in Java – Madura once in our hands – the Javanese themselves would tremble at our power at the same time that they would defy that of the [D]utch – however more of this hereafter – Do you mean to come to me if I play first fiddle or not – ascertain this point – I enclose Copies of two Letters I found on my arrival from Mr Marsden138 which as they relate to our operations in a literary point of view may be interesting – I have but just had The French frigate Piémontaise, 38 guns, was taken by the English frigate San Fiorenzo off Cape Comorin in 1808, and two years later was one of a squadron of three British ships under Captain Christopher Cole (1770– 1837) engaged in the capture of the Dutch posts in Banda and Ambon. The ship remained in Indonesian waters enforcing a blockade of Dutch shipping which had an adverse effect on Bugis trade with Melaka.

136

William Byam Martin succeeded to the post of Resident of Ambon after its capture by the British in 1810. He entered the service of the East India Company in 1797 and shortly afterwards was appointed Assistant to the Resident of Fort Marlborough (Bengkulu) in west Sumatra. He became Acting Resident in 1807, following the murder of the Resident Thomas Parr, and on his return to Calcutta he was appointed Judge of the Twenty-four Parganas, a post previously held by Leyden. Martin was one of William Carey’s most brilliant students at the College of Fort William. He was a devoted Christian, and in response to his appeal to send a Christian missionary to Ambon, Carey sent his son, Jabez Carey. Martin remained in Ambon during most of the British period in Indonesia, and he later held appointments in Calcutta before becoming a junior member of the Board of Revenue in Hyderabad and Delhi. He retired from the service of the East India Company in 1836.

137

The two letters of William Marsden (1754–1836), author of The History of Sumatra (London, 1783), dated February [?] 1810 and 11 April 1810, are in the British Library (MSS.Eur.D.742/2), the first letter lacking the initial leaf. In an earlier letter to Marsden dated 30 March 1809, Raffles referred to his preparation of a Malay dictionary and grammar: ‘I have by me a sketch of a grammar which I have drawn out, and which I will send you as soon as I get time to correct and copy it; and I am gradually compiling a dictionary, which you shall be welcome to, if it can be of any service to you’ (Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), p. 14; Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 78). Raffles first corresponded with Marsden in July 1806 through the Governor of Prince of Wales Island,

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time to read them – the Grammar & Dictionary that he mentions is what I said I had some thoughts of compiling if they would be of use to him, & like many other of my plans have fallen to the Ground – With respect to the Undang Undang139 I will tell you candidly that I have not done above 20 sheets since I left you – for I was very ill on board Ship and since I came here in truth I have not had time – I shall however do something between this and the time of my Report and Believe me my dear Leyden that nothing but ill health, that is to say, health that won[’]t allow me to work beyond Ten hours a day will prevent my doing all you wish – the Spirit is good but the flesh is weak – Adieu my dear friend, & rely on the exertions of Your devoted & affectionate Tho Raffles Toonkoo Pangeran140 who now sits by me sends the enclosed to Lord Minto – translate it if it is worth it – when I arrived at Pinang I found he had been obliged to fly from Siac [Siak]

Philip Dundas, to whom Marsden had addressed queries concerning the chronology of the Malays. Raffles’s letter (Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 9–12; Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 76–8) is worded in similar terms to the one he wrote to Leyden on 24 May 1806 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.29, fols. 113–22). Marsden’s letters dated 18 June and 15 November 1808, referred to in Raffles’s letter of 30 March 1809 (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 14), are not extant, but the letter of 30 March 1809 overlapped two further letters from Marsden dated 2 January 1809 and 7 January 1809, which are in the British Library (MSS.Eur.D.742/2). As already indicated, Marsden wrote to Raffles again in [February?] 1810 and on 11 April 1810 in acknowledgement of his letter of 30 March 1809, and also of another missing letter dated 19 August 1809 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/2). In his letter of 11 April 1810, Marsden urged Raffles to make enquiries about the ‘puhan upas’, or poison tree, which was becoming a subject of interest in Europe. This he eventually did after he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Java by encouraging the natural history researches of the American naturalist, Dr. Thomas Horsfield (Chapter Three). Extracts from Raffles’s letters to Marsden between 1809 and 1824 are printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 14, 98, 106, 205–7, 235–9, 239–41, 250–1, 261–5, 289–90, 293–4, 295, 299–300, 339–40, 341–2, 364–5, 369–70, 371, 373–4, 374, 376, 383–4, 421–2, 428–9, 431–6, 439–41, 446–7, 449–50, 452–3, 469–70, 477, 483–5, 495–6, 499, 501–2, 510–11, 519–20, 526–9, 529–30, 533–5, 579, 582–3. They contain references (pp. 239–41, 453, 499, 501, 519) to non-extant letters of Marsden to Raffles dated 21 August 1814; December 1819; 21 November and 28 December 1820; 11, 19, 23 March and 19 August 1821; and 7 March 1822. There are six holograph letters of Marsden to Raffles in the British Library (MSS.Eur.D.742/2), including two dated 26 October 1824 and 18 March 1826, and there is (or was) an undated letter of Raffles to Marsden in the National Museum, Singapore. Note 63. Raffles read a paper on the subject to a meeting convened at Melaka when the British forces were assembling there for the invasion of Java.

139

Tengku Pengiran Sukma Dilaga of Siak, the most important (and most devious) of the emissaries employed by Raffles in carrying letters to the Indonesian rulers during his period at Melaka. Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir in his Hikayat (JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), pp. 78–81, 90–5) gives a colourful account of how the Tenku Pengiran, entrusted by Raffles to deliver a letter to the Susuhunan at Surakarta, returned with a reply which seemed authentic, but which Raffles soon recognised to be a fake. (Annabel Gallop, The Legacy of the Malay Letter (London, 1994), pp. 143–55, qualifies some elements in this account). The letter of Tengku Pengiran Siak to Lord Minto, referred to by Raffles in his letter to Leyden, was translated for Lord Minto by Leyden, who noted: ‘I am glad personally that Tengku Pangeran is secured for he is a very high desperado character but his word has never been broken and there is scarcely his equal in the east for desperate service’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/1, fol. 130). John Scott (note 125), who took the Tengku in his ship on the first part of his mission, expressed a similar high opinion of him in a letter to Raffles: ‘It is impossible you could have got a man more fitted for the business he is now engaged in’ (BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/4, fol. 108v cited Gallop, Legacy of the Malay Letter, p. 189 n.66).

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in consequence of the Conduct of the Govt of Pinang – never was man used worse by the English Govt. and never was a man who deserved better treatment – he is mine, yours and Lord Minto’s till death – but he would die sooner than set his foot in Pinang – Pray send me a Dozen pair of good Spectacles that all my people may see their way clear – I have had at least half a Dozen broad hints for them – and so don[’]t think I am punning – Olivia writes you – but she is in very bad health and has not left her room these 5 days past – You have of course heard that Colonel Macalister is lost in the Ocean141 – so much for the last remnant of the original Pinang Govt – this accident makes me provisional Member of Council at Pinang, that is to say first to succeed on any Vacancy by my provisional appointment from the Court of Di[rector]s – This is of no importance except so far as it may give me more Rank in the eyes of the World –

In February 1811, when the Bengal elements of the Java invasion force were preparing to sail from Calcutta, Leyden informed Raffles of Lord Minto’s surprise decision to take a personal part in the expedition and of his having obtained from the Governor-General permission to accompany him to Madras, where they were to join HMS Modeste, commanded by Minto’s son,142 the Hon. George Elliot (1784–1863):143 The military queries which I send you enclosed, I regret any delay in your receiving, but the letter itself was only to say that his Lordship was exceedingly well-disposed towards you, desirous of giving you every opportunity of distinguishing yourself, and rewarding you as highly as the imperious nature of the circumstances would permit. This you knew very well before, and I am very glad that his Lordship thought it unnecessary to cause me to write you a formal letter on the subject. Indeed, Raffles, he has always talked of you to me, with a kindness very uncommon in a Governor-General, and says, that he is pleased with thinking he will be able to arrange matters very much to your satisfaction, when he arrives [at Malacca]. I am glad that I have been able to keep

Note 91.

141

The Hon. George Elliot, Lord Minto’s second son, was no friend of Raffles, as he later revealed in his privately printed Memoir of Admiral The Honble Sir George Elliot Written for his Children (London, 1863), p. 103: ‘Raffles, though a clever man, was neither born nor bred a gentleman – and we all know that the nicer feelings and habits of a gentleman are not to be acquired – he was full of trick, and not so full of truth as was desirable, and he was the most nervous man I ever knew … Raffles looked to me as a friend,…[but] I really never could have any real feeling of friendship for the man, and he had a low set of people about him [in Java], all of some talent, but unfit for advisers, particularly as to gentlemanlike conduct.’

142

Leyden to Raffles, February 1811, Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 25–6.

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him tight up to this point. He is still fluctuating between the two old plans of keeping the country or rendering it independent. The orders which he has received from home are entirely and positively in favor of the last. He is required to expel the French and Dutch, and leave the country entirely to itself. This his own good sense directly saw to be impossible, from the shoals of half-castes at Batavia. Colebrook[e]144 and Lumsden145 have succeeded in making some impression on him by talking of accustoming the Malays to independence, and all that; but may I never be a second Draco, nor write my laws in blood, if they succeed. Succeed they shall not, that is flat, for the Malays must neither be independent, nor yet very dependent, but we must have a general Malay league, in which all the Rajahs must be united like the old Ban of Burgundy, or the latter one of Germany, and these must all be represented in a general parliament of the Malay States, like the Amphictyonic council of the Greeks, and this council should meet in the Island of Madura, or some celebrated ancient place, and under the protection of the Governor of Java.146 We ought to retain in some shape or other, all the Dutch possessions at first, while we make ourselves known; and you should write all the Rajahs of the Malays, however far, or wherever situated, to come in person, to meet the Good Maha Rajah of Bengal: and

Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765–1837) was Lord Minto’s colleague on the Supreme Council of Fort William, to which he had been appointed in 1807 and served until 1812. He was the son of Sir George Colebrooke, Chairman of the Court of Directors in 1769, and went to India in 1782–3 when he served as Assistant Collector in Tirhut and Purnea. He was Chief Judge of the Sudar Diwani Adalat and, as such, was an ex officio member of the Board of Governors of the College of Fort William. He was an Honorary Professor of Sanscrit and Hindu law at the College, and also President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He was a profound scholar of Sanscrit and Hindu law (note 94), mathematics and philosophy, on which subjects he contributed numerous papers to the Asiatic Researches. He published a Sanscrit grammar in 1805 and a Lexicon three years later. Leyden said that ‘it would require ten years reading to make him equal to Colebrooke in his knowledge of Sanscrit Books’. After he returned to England in 1814 Colebrooke became President of the Royal Asiatic Society, which he helped to found in 1823, and he presented his Sanscrit manuscripts to the Library of the East India Company. He died on 10 March 1837. In a letter to Olivia Raffles dated October 1806, Leyden refers to him as his friend, and Lord Minto describes him as ‘a man of extraordinary talents and extremely agreeable manners’ (Lord Minto in India, p. 23). According to White, ‘Supplement’(1858), pp. 101–2, Colebrooke induced Leyden ‘to draw up a useful grammar of the Malay language, and another of the Pracrit, which he executed to his friend’s entire satisfaction’. However, Dr. James Hare Jr., in a letter to Erskine dated 31 May 1823, accused Colebrooke of ‘mean jealousy’ in not supporting the publication of the Pracrit Grammar, ‘which I heard from Leyden himself, was the only work he had prepared for the press. It was put to him [Colebrooke] distinctly. Is this fit for publication[;] the reply was with a few alterations it is[,] & thus he strangled what he had long before confessed to Leyden he was incapable of judging of.’ Hare says that he was with Leyden ‘when a number of Coolies with Baskets full of Books came to him which he assured me were from Colebrooke with the principal part of his Pracrit collection in token that he would not attempt the study of that dialect any longer, seeing there was one who had gotten so far before him & therefore he had sent them to one who would make a better use of them – ’ (NLS:MS.971, fol. 166).

144

John Lumsden, third member of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and President of the Board of Trade. He was subsequently a Director of the East India Company in the ‘Indian’ interest, and died in December 1818.

145

Leyden’s grandiose proposal to unite the Malay states into some sort of union was taken up by Raffles in a despatch to Lord Minto from Melaka (BL:MSS.Eur.E.104, fols. 25–9; Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 71). Virginia and M.B. Hooker suggest that Leyden’s proposal prefigures ‘the concept of “Melayu Rayu” (Greater Malaysia) which was the compelling vision of the nationalists in the Archipelago between the 1930s and 1960s’ (MBRAS Reprint 20 (2001), p. 10). However, Leyden’s contemporary John Crawfurd (1783–1868), in A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries (London, 1856), p. 216, describes his ideas more accurately as being ‘wild, speculative, and scholastic’.

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state in your letters, that the Malay States are expressly invited to send their most ancient and sagacious men, to assist at a general meeting or congress, to take into consideration all their laws, institutions, government, religion, and policy. Publish broad and wide the coming of the good Maha Rajah like another Secunder Zulkaram,147 to reign in Malacca, and conquer Java, and drive out all the cruel Dutch, and treacherous French, and take away all embargos and restrictions on trade, abolish piracy, and bring peace and happiness to all the anak Malayas. In short, make a great and mighty noise, for we will compel his Lordship to be a greater man than he would wish to be, if left alone. All are utterly confounded by his Lordship’s resolution [to accompany the Java invasion force], of which nobody had the slightest suspicion; and so completely were they all taken aback, that nobody volunteered for service, till the whole arrangements were settled. Indeed, more than the half are as yet thunder-struck; and are very far from believing that he has any real intention of visiting Java. ‘No’, say they, ‘to go and take such a little paltry place would not be decorous, no, no; there must be an insurrection breaking out again at Madras’. The selection of your humble servant [to accompany Lord Minto] is another very ominous circumstance; and I dare say has deterred a great many smart bucks from coming forward. The civilians of the [M]int [C]ommittee have already discovered me to be a very devil incarnate, and the greatest mischief-maker in the land.148 They will be very glad to see the back-seams of my hose at all events. I volunteered of course, as soon as his Lordship signified his desire of having me with him, to come off directly to join you; but he told me that he should prefer having me at his elbow. You may be sure no possible delay but will be avoided when I am of the party. We go first to Madras, to see the whole force off from that quarter. The Bengal force will be shipped directly. In the Modeste go with his Lordship from Madras to Malacca, Mr. Seton, the

Raja Iskandar Dzu’l-Karnain, referred to in Leyden’s translation of the Malay Annals, and otherwise known as Sultan Iskandar Shah, who is said to have reigned in Singapore for 32 years and in Melaka for three years.

147

Leyden was appointed Assay Master of the Calcutta Mint on 5 October 1810 (Phillimore, Survey of India, vol. II, p. 416). In a letter to his father dated 2 January 1811, he stated that Lord Minto had given him ‘a much better appointment than I have yet had, and which is by no means so laborious as those which I have always been in hitherto. It is necessary that I be confirmed in it from England, and [it is] barely possible that some other person may be appointed at home before they receive notice of this, so that I do not count myself fixed for half a year. If however I am confirmed in it I will probably have no more changes while I remain in this country. This I daresay will be very delightful to you as it will effectually keep me out of harms way. To me who take very pleasantly whatever comes to pass, all this is of very little importance, except that it enables me to apply more of my time to study in order to see if I can rival that famous Solomon whom we have heard so much of. My appointment is that of Assay Master at the Calcutta Mint and my office [is] to try the quality of all the gold and silver taken in to be coined, or sent out as money. In short my obligations to Lord Minto will never have an end. But I must now be confined to Calcutta, and there is an end of all my fine voyages, and seafaring adventures that were likely to rival those of Sinbad the Sailor in the Arabian nights Entertainments, and there is an end of all my fights and battles that rivalled the belted Will the King of the Border. Moreover I have laid aside the scales of Justice for those of Mammon, and instead of trying men and their causes I have only to try the baser but much less refractory metals of gold and silver’ (NLS:MS.3380, fol. 222).

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present Resident at Delhi, who goes to be Governor of Penang.149 He is an excellent character: Mr. Elliot,150 Captain Taylor,151 Mr. Gordon, surgeon to the body-guard,152 Mr. Hope,153 whom you saw when he came from the Mauritius when you were here, and your humble servant. Pray be most particular in your military queries against the time of our arrival, and be able to tell where the disposable force is stationed, for that will be of main utility. I have secured Greigh [Greig] to be under your command, and that is giving you a fine fellow in every sense of the word, active and alert, and brother-in-law of Lord Rollo besides, and you owe not me, but a good many, for the circumstance.154 Note 120.

149

The Hon. William Elliot, the youngest of Lord Minto’s sons, joined the Navy as a Midshipman in 1803. He accompanied his father from Calcutta aboard HMS Phoenix as his Secretary, but he had to be left behind at Madras because of illness. In a letter to Raffles dated [9 May] 1811, Leyden states that he ‘was as nearly as possible given up by the physicians, who pronounced him in the last stage of decline’. Lord Minto, on hearing of his death, declared that ‘it was the first and only grievance which either this son or any of his children had ever inflicted on their parents’ (Lord Minto in India, p. 317). Earlier, in April 1803, when his son joined HMS Ardent (Captain Winthrop) as a Midshipman at Sheerness, Minto had written proudly to his wife: ‘It is impossible to see a finer boy in disposition and spirit; and I have no doubt of his turning out well, barring misfortunes which must be barred in every line of life’ (Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, vol. III, p. 281).

150

Captain Thomas W. Taylor of the 25th Light Dragoons was Military Secretary to the Governor-General. He was appointed to a cornetcy in the 6th Dragoon Guards in 1804 and served under General Sir James Henry Craig (1748–1812) in Italy and Sicily during 1805–6. In 1807 he was promoted Captain in the 24th Light Dragoons and on General Craig’s recommendation he was appointed Military Secretary to Lord Minto. On 14 January 1810 he married at Calcutta Ann Petrie, niece of the Governor of Madras, William Petrie (1747–1816). Taylor accompanied Lord Minto on HMS Modeste to Java and returned with him to Calcutta in October 1811. His Journal (MS.11691) in the Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland, contains numerous references to Leyden, and is an invaluable source on the British conquest of Java. Taylor later fought with the 10th Hussars under Wellington at Waterloo, and rose to the rank of Major-General. In 1837 he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Military College, Sandhurst. See Peter Carew, ‘Facing the Music’, Blackwoods Magazine, vol. 266, no. 1698 (October 1949), pp. 301–11.

151

No one named Gordon was on the Bengal Medical establishment at this time, and no reference to a suitable person of that name is given in D.G. Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service 1600–1913 (London, 1914). It is possible that he was a surgeon in one of the King’s regiments.

152

Hugh Hope (1782–1822) was the fourth son of Sir Archibald Hope (1735–94), 9th Bart. of Craighall, by his second wife, Elizabeth Patoun (d.1818) of Inveresk, and the brother of Sir John Hope (1781–1853), 11th Bart., Member of Parliament. (cf. De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 571, and Asiatic Journal, vol. XV, no. 88 (April 1823), p. 424). He was appointed to the civil service of the East India Company in 1802 and eight years later he was listed as Export Warehouse Keeper and Deputy Appraiser of Piece Goods at the Calcutta Customs House. He took part in the British expedition against Mauritius in that year, and accompanied Lord Minto to Java aboard HMS Modeste in 1811, acting as his Deputy Secretary. He was described by Minto as ‘a tolerable Dutchman, with excellent talents and habits of business’ (Lord Minto in India, p. 251), though it was later alleged that he knew little or nothing of the Dutch language. After the conquest of Java he held a number of important posts in the island, including those of Landdrost (subsequently Resident) of Semarang, Civil Commissioner of the Eastern Districts, British Resident at Surakarta, President of the Revenue Committee at Batavia, and a member of Council. Because of ill-health, he undertook a voyage to China in 1816 which resulted in his ‘house and extensive premises … situated next to the Government-house’ at Batavia being put up for sale. Hope lived for a time with Raffles at Government House, Buitenzorg [Bogor], and was described by him in a letter dated 1 January 1816 as ‘a perfect gentleman & much my friend’. After his return to India, Hope married in 1819 Isabella Gray (d.1858), and he served in a number of posts including that of Collector of Government Customs at Nagpur, where he died on 7 October 1822.

153

Captain William Greig was the son of William Greig of Gayfield Place and the brother-in-law of the 8th Lord Rollo (1773–1846) through the marriage of his sister Agnes (d.1855) on 12 June 1806. Greig commanded the 200-ton Country brig Lord Minto, registered at Calcutta where she was built. The ship was placed under

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Leyden’s casual statement about accompanying the Java invasion force hides the fact that he had to work hard to obtain permission to do so. He had confided to Olivia Raffles in October 1810 his ‘greatness of desire’ to take part in the expedition, 155 but it was only after reminding the Governor-General of his usefulness as a Malay translator that he achieved his purpose. ‘[I]t does not appear to me that your Lordship will be able to depend on a single person except Raffles, [he wrote in February 1811] … Raffles is now working ten hours a day but when your Lordship reaches the scene of action you will have more need of ten Raffles … The quantity of translation will also be very great in which you will hardly be able to trust to chance interpreters[,] and the miserable sort of interpreters at Penang or any other place which I have seen defies all statement … I feel my own strength in Malay and consider myself without fear of contradiction as inferior to no British subject in the knowledge of whatever regards the [matter?]. – I know that your Lordship fully appreciates my motives in this eagerness to accompany you …’.156 His wish was granted and he joined Lord Minto’s entourage on board HMS Phoenix when she sailed from Calcutta on 9 March 1811. He wrote to his father on board ship:157 ‘I accompany Lord Minto on this occasion to assist in settling the country when conquered, and as interpreter for the Malay language which I learned when I was among the eastern Isles, four years ago, and I hold myself highly honoured on the occasion as his Lordship has taken very few persons to Raffles’s orders in accordance with Lord Minto’s letter dated 11 March 1811: ‘You will be glad to find my friend Greig in this affair. He is placed at your disposal, and is peculiarly suited, as well as his ship, to many useful purposes’ (BL:MSS.Eur.C.34, fol. 136; Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 27). In a letter to his family dated 3 August 1811, Lord Minto describes Greig as ‘a plain, modest, unassuming Fife-man, with excellent natural parts and character’, and as ‘a remarkably intelligent country ship-master, who is perfectly at home in the eastern sea[s]’ (Lord Minto in India, pp. 278–9). Greig was responsible for determining the route to Java between the Caramata Passage and the coast of Borneo for the ships of the British invasion force. This was in opposition to the views of Commodore William Robert Broughton (1762–1821), who wanted to take the fleet round the northern coasts of Borneo (C.E. Wurtzburg, ‘Who Planned the Sea Route of the Java Expedition in 1811?’, The Mariner’s Mirror, vol. 37, no. 2 (April 1951), pp. 104–8). Leyden wrote to Dr. James Hare Jr. from Melaka on 13 June 1811: ‘Greig has greatly distinguished himself by his zeal and activity[,] already having gone once to Bali[,] returned to Malacca, then returned to Pontiana[k] & sounded our passage & again returned here[,] but he has had a very narrow escape from a pirate who killed several of his men & had almost carried him by boarding’ (NLS:MS.971, fol. 85v). Some letters exchanged between Leyden and Greig during 1810–11 are in the Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland. Leyden sailed with Greig aboard the Lord Minto from Melaka to Java, together with the other Malay and Dutch interpreters. Leyden to Olivia Mariamne Raffles, 22 October 1810, NLS:MS.971, fol. 75v; Bastin, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, p. 69.

155

Leyden to Minto, 12 February [1811], NLS:MS.11320, fol. 48. A week earlier, on 6 February 1811, Raffles wrote to Lord Minto from Melaka entreating him to send Leyden (BL:MSS.Eur.C.35, fols. 85–6).

156

Leyden to his father, 20 March 1811, NLS:MS.3380, fol. 224v.

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accompany him[,] and those who have volunteered and been refused are very numerous.’ He reassured his father that it was not his intention ‘to take up my residence in Java but to return with his Lordship to Bengal. I therefore do not resign my appointment of Assay Master[,] but my assistant is appointed to supply my place till my return[,] which I expect to be in eight or ten months from the present. I am highly delighted at the prospect for I shall have the opportunity of seeing a very curious and very fine country with which the English are very little acquainted.’ HMS Phoenix arrived at Madras on 8 April after a voyage of nearly a month during which time Leyden ‘did little but read Dutch & Malay’.158 Sixteen days later, Lord Minto and his party embarked on HMS Modeste and arrived at Penang on 8 May. The following day Leyden wrote to Raffles:159 Penang, [9 May] 1811. My dear Raffles, Here we are safe at Penang. We anchored here last night about nine o’clock. Phil[l]ips160 came on board with Erskine161 and Clubley162 at six this morning, and we

Leyden to Hare, 23 April 1811, NLS:MS.971, fol. 80.

158

Leyden to Raffles, [9 May] 1811, Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 28.

159

Note 130.

160

John James Erskine, formerly a Mate of an East Indiaman, was born on 3 July 1771, the second son of the Reverend William Erskine of Muthill, Scotland. He was appointed in 1805 as Assistant to the Superintendent and Store Keeper of Marine in the Prince of Wales Island Government and granted a commission of 2 per cent on goods handled, with the guarantee that his income would never be less than Sp.$ 6,000 p.a., which was the same as Raffles’s salary as Assistant Secretary. In 1811 he was Warehouse Keeper and in the previous year he was sworn in as the third member of Council following the death of Governor Bruce in 1810 (note 120), becoming the second member in 1816. Mt. Erskine, on which a signal and telegraph station was built in 1812, was named after him. When he left Penang on 8 July 1822 because of ill-health aboard HCS General Harris he was presented with farewell Addresses by the Chinese inhabitants (Asiatic Journal, vol. XVI, no. 92 (August 1823), pp. 201–2), by whom he was known as ‘The second King of Penang’. He retired officially on 26 July 1826 and on 6 July 1830 he married Isabella Boyd. He died in 1833 and was buried in the Muthill chapel graveyard (Langdon, Penang Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, p. 425, n.69). Erskine was a good friend of Raffles and supported the settlement of Singapore in opposition to Governor John Alexander Bannerman and W.E. Phillips. He was named as an Honorary member of the Agricultural Society of Sumatra when Raffles founded the Society at Bengkulu in 1820.

161

William Armstrong Clubley was appointed a Writer in the service of the East India Company in 1804 and in the following year he became a member of the Presidency Government of Prince of Wales Island. He succeeded to Raffles’s post as Assistant Secretary in March 1807, but his departure a year later for Madras on four months’ sick-leave placed a heavy extra burden on Raffles. When Raffles left Penang for Melaka in 1810 to take up his duties as Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States, Clubley became Acting Secretary in his place. In November of the previous year, together with his friend, John Lyon Phipps, Assistant Accountant and Auditor, Clubley gave ‘a most elegant fete’ at his house on the North Beach when he accompanied Olivia Raffles in the first dance to the tune, ‘Off She Goes’. He signed the Register at the marriage of Raffles’s sister Leonora to Billington Loftie on 22 November 1810 (note 124), at which time he was still Acting Secretary to the Government. He later succeeded to the substantive post, and became a temporary

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have just had time to get ashore, proceed to his house at Suffolk,163 and finish breakfast. Lord Minto has just retired to write to you; and Mr. Seton, [Resident] of Delhi, your new Governor [of Prince of Wales Island],164 requests me to send you a very Scotch shake of the fist, which he is eager to give you. You will find him a man of the right sort, I promise you. We had a very tedious passage to Madras of thirty days, during which nothing befel[l], except one very unlucky incident. Mr. William Elliot, his Lordship’s youngest son, was very ill all the passage to Madras; and when he reached the latter place he was as nearly as possible given up by the physicians, who pronounced him in the last stage of a decline. This has distressed his Lordship exceedingly. He has been obliged to send him back to Bengal, and to send his brother, J[ohn] Elliott [sic], his secretary, to accompany him.165 The first division of Madras troops had sailed a week before us, and we have been just sixteen days on our passage. The last division was to sail on the 2nd of May.

Two days after arriving at Melaka on 18 May, Lord Minto with his aides, and probably Leyden, breakfasted with Raffles at his house at Bandar Hilir. The Governor-General described Raffles’s family in a letter written shortly afterwards:166 ‘Mrs Raffles, Olivia Mariamne, is a tall & rather showy person, with dark eyes … Her countenance is lively & spirituelle, & her conversation deserves the same member of Council in 1819 and a permanent member in 1822. He married Margaret, eldest daughter of the merchant James Carnegy, on 19 July 1817. He died at his house ‘Ayer Etam’ on 13 July 1826, aged 38, and was buried in the old Protestant Cemetery in Northam Road. See Langdon, Epitaphs, pp. 511–12. The disputed origins of Suffolk House go back to the time of the founder of the British settlement of Penang, Francis Light, but it was built, essentially as it has survived, by W.E. Phillips (note 130) from about 1809 on land he had acquired near the junction of Ayer Itam Road and Green Lane. James Wathen, who visited the house in 1811, described it as ‘a very splendid mansion, built in a mixed style of English and Indian architecture’ ( Journal of a Voyage, in 1811 and 1812, to Madras and China (London, 1814), p. 139). The principal feature of the house was a large hall on the first floor, extending from one of the colonnaded verandahs to the other. On either side of the hall were apartments, and on the ground floor were bedrooms, baths, and other offices, as well as the main dining room. Minto described his visit to the house in a letter dated 12 May 1811: ‘Mr. Bruce, Lord Elgin’s brother, [note 120] was the last Governor of Prince of Wales’ Island; and his death, which is much and justly lamented, placed the senior member of Council, Mr. Phillips, provisionally in the chair. We were received therefore by him, and carried immediately to his house about two miles from George Town, the only place to be called a town in the island. Mr. Phillips is magnificently lodged; and his house, which he built himself, is one of the handsomest I have seen in India …This mansion is not quite proportioned to the island, and looks like the great lady in the little parlour. The situation is beautiful – on the bank of a running stream fresh from mountain springs. Beyond the stream the plain extends perhaps a quarter of a mile to the foot of a sublime mountain…’ (Lord Minto in India, p. 256). Captain Thomas Taylor in his ‘Journal’, June 1811 (NLS:MS.11691), describes Suffolk as ‘one of the prettiest [houses] I have seen in India’. For a detailed account of the house, see Langdon, Penang the Fourth Presidency of India, vol. I, pp. 393–452.

163

Note 120.

164

Note 150. Minto’s son, John Elliot, was described by William Hickey as ‘one of the most pert, assuming, and forward young coxcombs I ever saw’ (Memoirs of William Hickey (ed.) Alfred Spencer (London 1925), vol. IV, p. 363).

165

Minto to Miss Casamajor, 24 May 1811, in private hands. See also Lord Minto in India, pp. 264–5.

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epithets. Upon the whole, my expectations are more than answered, & I am very glad to see Raffles, who really is a very amiable as well as clever man[,] so happy in his interior … They have no children – Raffles has three sisters here, all very fair, one extremely well-looking, & the other two not the contrary. Their manners are also sensible & gentlemanlike. The beauty is married to Capt. Flint, a Post Captain in the Navy.167 Another sister is Mrs Loftie, lately married to a surgeon of that name. The third [Harriot] has not yet made her choice.’ A few days later, Leyden seized the opportunity to make a hasty tour of the Naning districts inland of Melaka, which he described in a letter to Raffles:168 Gappam, May 31, 1811 My Dear Raffles, I take the opportunity of Mr. Kock’s169 return to inform you that I have safely reached Gappam, and to-morrow I shall proceed to the Ayer Panas. We made, on the whole, a very pleasant journey, considering my expectations on the subject; and I had the mortification not to be once compelled to have recourse to any of my old moss-trooping habits. To compensate this, however, we had a very severe rain for a great part of the way; and the roads, which pass down some very pretty declivities, were so plaguy slippery, that they gave me no opportunity of admiring them, excepting once, that my courser-wight pitched head-foremost over one of them, and I head-foremost over him: when, thanks to my thick skull and stiff neck, I sprung to my feet as alert as a rope-dancer, and had a very pretty peep at the landscape before the horse was able to rise. The country, as far as I have yet seen it, is most excellent; and it would grieve Mr. Seton to observe the devastation and dilapidations visible every where. I believe, however, I should have said, delignifications, instead of dilapidations, for never a stone is used in the construction of a Malay house. I am very much pleased with the inhabitants of the Campong, or vale of Gappam. They are Note 76.

167

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 28–9.

168

Adrian Koek, a leading Dutch burgher and merchant of Melaka, was brother-in-law of the former Dutch Governor, Abraham Couperus, with whom he participated in negotiating the surrender of Melaka to the British forces in 1795. During the British administration he served as a member, and later as the President of the Court of Justice. A squadron of cavalry of the Java invasion force was housed on his estate at Bandar Hilir in 1811, and his land between Limbongan and Tanjong Kling became something of an armed camp. Koek was one of the principals involved in the negotiations with the British leading to the restitution of Melaka to the Dutch in 1818, and he became the first member of Council in the reconstituted Dutch administration, later acting as Governor (Brian Harrison, Holding the Fort: Melaka under Two Flags 1795–1845, MBRAS Monograph 14 (1985), pp. 1–93). Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir mentions him in his Hikayat as the employer of his father Abdul Kadir, and states that he was ‘very friendly with the Kedah rajas’. Koek, in fact, was highly regarded in the Malay world, and his relations with the Malay rulers of the Riau-Lingga archipelago counter-acted attempts made by the British to gain influence there during the period leading to the founding of Singapore in 1819.

169

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a clean, healthy, stout-looking race; and appear to me to be as excellent peasants as I have ever seen. They seem, from the great superabundance of fruit, to be pretty well provided in the article of food; but how they procure their clothing is not quite so obvious. The soil of the ridges is a light marl, and of the bottoms a deep black mould; and I am sure there is not a more fertile country in all Malabar. As far as I can learn, the Pangulu of Naning is as nearly as possible in a state of open rebellion;170 and the people here say that he has got a signet from Menangkabu, with which he flourishes away famously. If I were Mr. Seton, I would give him an opportunity of contemplating a company of Sepoys for a couple of days. The supineness of the former government of Malacca is only equalled by the wickedness of the maxims under which it acted. Tell Mr. Seton that I earnestly entreat him to give me a grant of a couple of hundred of ruined villages, for here there is nothing else to be met with. If any thing occurs which any way requires my presence [at Melaka], let me be summoned without delay, and let me hear of your arrangements when they are formed. I find myself here completely at my ease; and that Mr. Kock has made only a great deal too many preparations. I have walked about all day, and done nothing but look at the country. I meant to have put Mrs. R[affles] into a postscript, but have desisted on considering that this is generally the most valuable part of a lady’s letter, and have reserved that honor for Miss R.; apropos of ladies, I have already become an immense favourite of that goodly old damsel, the Pungulu of Gappam’s wife, from having dined entirely on curries, &c. of her own dressing; the lady has not yet ventured to shew herself; but I have been informed of the fact, which I hold for Gospel. The only thing in which I have been disappointed is in the non-arrival of the fatong whom we summoned. But such a place as Gappam for musquitos certainly never was seen; in spite of my thick boots I find it quite impossible to keep my ground, or indeed to write a single word more than that I always am, Your’s very truly, J. Leyden

Leyden returned to Melaka on 4 June in time to attend the King’s Birthday celebrations. During the morning, at a levee held at the Stadhuis, Lord Minto set free some 20 Government slaves and ceremoniously burned the Dutch instruments of torture. This was followed in the afternoon by ‘a great dinner’, and in the evening by a Ball hosted by the Governor-General which was attended The Pengulu of Naning, Abdul Said, ruler of 200 square miles of territory and a Malay population of some 4,000, had been in conflict with the Dutch Government of Melaka which claimed sovereignty of his state. The British authorities became similarly involved in matters of jurisdiction over his territory, leading to the Naning War of 1831–2 (L.A. Mills, ‘British Malaya 1824–1867’, JMBRAS, vol. III, pt. 2 (1925), pp. 115–27, Appendix, pp. 294–338).

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by some 150 army and naval officers and by the principal Dutch and British residents of Melaka.171 During the following days, Leyden became immersed in the arduous work of corresponding with the Indonesian rulers, a task which soon overwhelmed him, as he confided to his friend, Dr. James Hare Jr., in Calcutta: ‘I have had a very heavy affair of the Malay[,] Javanese & Bali letters[,] translating those which have arrived, dictating proclamations to send forward in all these lingos & so on.’172 His statement that the ‘whole of this department whether Malay[,] Javanese[,] Bugis or Bali has been quite given up to me’, qualifies the hitherto accepted view that these duties were solely the responsibility of Raffles. On 6 June, the first elements of the British invasion force sailed from Melaka, the whole expedition consisting of four battleships of the line, 14 frigates, seven sloops, eight HEIC cruisers, gun boats, and 57 transports carrying some 11,000 troops, half European and half Asian.173 The military commander, Sir Samuel Auchmuty (1756–1822), sailed on 15 June aboard HMS Akbar (Captain Drury), followed by HMS Illustrious (Captain Festing), carrying the flag of Commodore William Robert Broughton (1762–1821), who was in charge of the naval forces until he was superseded at Batavia by Rear-Admiral Robert Stopford (1768–1847). Raffles joined Lord Minto aboard HMS Modeste on 18 June in place of Leyden, who accompanied the other interpreters and writers on the schooner Lord Minto, commanded by Captain William Greig.174 The ships sailed through the Straits of Singapore, giving Leyden the opportunity of seeing ‘Tamasak,’ or ‘Singhapura’, referred to in his translation of the Malay Annals, and Raffles his first sighting of the island with which his name would ever be associated. After gathering in the Straits of Singapore, the British fleet sailed for Pulau Penembangan, south of Pontianak, and then on to Tanjung Sambar off the southern coast of Borneo. On 4 August 1811 the troops landed at Cilincing, eight miles east of Batavia, and four days later an advance column captured the Dutch capital. Lord Lord Minto in India, p. 265. Captain Taylor in his Journal (NLS:MS.11691, 4 June 1811) writes: ‘About 9 o’clock the ball began[,] I fry to think of the heat, and I was obliged to [do] the honors – A Dutch doctor danced a minuet with his demi Malay wife, a great treat. [T]he Damsels seem’d to think balls did not come every day, and not a lady stirred till ½ past 3 [in the morning] – ’.

171

Leyden to Hare, 13 June 1811, NLS:MS.971, fol. 85v.

172

William Thorn, Memoir of the Conquest of Java; with the Subsequent Operations of the British Forces, in The Oriental Archipelago (London, 1815), pp. 1–16; C. Skinner, ‘An Eye-Witness Account of the Invasion of Java in 1811 – The Diary of Lt. W.G.A. Fielding’, JMBRAS, vol. XLIV, pt. 1 (1971), pp. 1–51.

173

Note 154.

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Minto, Raffles, and the other civilians remained on board the ships, but Leyden, dressed as a pirate in a red-tasselled cap, with a cutlass and pistol in his belt, was quickly ashore, and, according to Captain Taylor, ‘bore the brunt of the attack which came from a flock of barn-door fowls headed by an aggressive rooster’.175 When Batavia had been secured by the British forces, the Governor-General moved his staff to a country house near Weltevreden, and remained there until after the defeat of the Franco-Dutch forces at Meester Cornelis on 26 August. Leyden, in his haste to examine Dutch records and documents, entered a closed library building at Batavia and was brought down by a fever. He died at a house in Molenvliet belonging to Lieve Willem Meijer, Secretaris-Generaal of the Netherlands Indies Government, then being occupied by Raffles, who later recorded the details of his death: ‘He breathed his last on the 28th August 1811 two days subsequent to the memorable fall of Cornelis – but when on the morning of that eventful day I endeavoured to communicate to him the result, he was already too insensible to comprehend it – I attended him from the first to the last and he frequently expressed his apprehension that he would not survive the attack – but as he had no death bed accounts to settle, he pursued the same firm and unbending course which had characterised him through life – perfectly resigned, his pure spirit fled to the regions of immortality without one anxious ling’ring wish to retain it longer within the mortal coil – .’176 He was buried at the Tanah Abang (Taman Prasasti) burial ground on the day of his death in the presence of Lord Minto, Raffles, and other mourners. The Registry of the burial ground states: ‘On the 28th August, 1811, John Leyden, English Dr of medicine, was buried at the expense of Mr Thomas Raffles, from the house in the Molenvliet Road where he breathed his last.’ Raffles arranged for a tombstone to be sent from India inscribed with the following words: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN CASPER LEYDEN. M.D. WHO WAS BORN AT TEVIOTDALE IN SCOTLAND AND WHO DIED IN THE PRIME OF LIFE Carew, Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 266, no. 1698 (October 1949), p. 307.

175

Raffles to Erskine, 10 September 1815, NLS:MS.971, fols. 147v–148.

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AT MOLENVLIET NEAR BATAVIA ON THE 28TH AUGUST 1811 TWO DAYS AFTER THE FALL OF CORNELIS THE POETICAL TALENTS AND SUPERIOR LITERARY ATTAINMENTS OF DR LEYDEN RENDERED HIM AN ORNAMENT OF THE AGE IN WHICH HE LIVED – HIS ARDENT SPIRIT AND INSATIABLE THIRST AFTER KNOWLEDGE WAS PERHAPS UNEQUALLED AND THE FRIENDS OF SCIENCE MUST EVER DEPLORE HIS UNTIMELY FATE – HIS PRINCIPLES AS A MAN WERE PURE AND SPOTLESS – AND AS A FRIEND HE WAS FIRM AND SINCERE FEW HAVE PASSED THROUGH THIS LIFE WITH FEWER VICES OR WITH A GREATER PROSPECT OF HAPPINESS IN THE NEXT

Ten days after the burial, Raffles wrote to William Erskine in Bombay informing him of Leyden’s death:177 Batavia 7 Septr. 1811 My Dear Sir I have so melancholy a subject to write upon, and so little time to do it in that I must at once inform you of the death of our dear and ever to be lamented friend Leyden – he died of the cursed Batavian fever on the 28 Augt. in my house, and I may say in my arms. This melancholy and unlooked for event has so seriously affected me, that at present I take but little interest in the glorious success which has attended our arms in this quarter. I must refer you to Government, and to the public papers for any thing of a public nature. As Leyden[’]s dearest friend, I request you to take and keep proper charge of his Manuscripts, Library, and property – what is here shall be duly taken care of and administered by me. I have consulted with Lord Minto on the propriety of his Library being bought by Government and I think this may easily be arranged[,] therefore keep this in view. As one of the last attentions to a deceased friend[,] take the pains I beg it of you[,] to announce in appropriate terms the loss which the world has sustained – do this in the public prints[,] I need not tell you the words to use.

Raffles to Erskine, 7 September 1811, NLS:MS.3380, fol. 296.

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I further request of you to order and send down a handsome, and appropriate Tombstone or slab engraven on it what you please – But the earth that covers the remains of so highly valuable a man, must not stand unmarked. I have not time to write to Fairlie’s House178 a copy of his account current[;] indeed there has not been time to look over his papers that are here. Therefore take the trouble of doing any thing in Bengal and of advising me without delay how you find matters – Neither my spirits or time admit of my writing to Mr Ricket[t]s179 so tell him from me that I intended to write him very fully [by] the next ship he shall hear from me. I must cast away any melancholy if possible so no more of it to you. Your recommendation to poor Leyden of Kincaird has been attended to by me and he is provided for –180 if Jackson181 likes to remain here I can do for him, I think, all he can desire. [I]t is his Lordship[’]s intention in a few days to invest me with chief authority here, and you may easily conceive that if I do not want inclination I can’t want ability to serve. You will hear from me more fully & I hope satisfactorily by the next conveyance[.] Yours very sincerely Thos Raffles

Shortly after being appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Java and its dependencies, Raffles gave orders for Leyden’s baggage to be unloaded from the ship Lord Minto when his books and manuscripts were examined in his presence by Archibald Seton (1755–1818), Governor of Prince of Wales Island, Dr. William Hunter, Superintending Surgeon and Leyden’s former colleague in the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and Colonel Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821), Chief Engineer of the British The Agency House of Fairlie, Fergusson and Co., Calcutta.

178

The reference is not to Leyden’s friend, Charles Milner Ricketts (1776–1867), Secretary in the Public Department and later Chief Secretary and member of the Supreme Council (Bastin, The Founding of Singapore, p. 158 n.71), but to his brother, Mordaunt Ricketts, who travelled out to India with Leyden aboard the ship Hugh Inglis in 1803. He served successively as Assistant to the Commercial Resident at Patna, Deputy Collector of Government Customs at Mirzapur, Collector at Shahjanhanpur, and Agent to the GovernorGeneral at Murshidabad. He was a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and at the time of Leyden’s death he was in possession of some of his manuscript poetry.

179

Unidentified.

180

Isaac Jackson was the brother-in-law of Leyden’s friend, Dr James Hare Jr., and, like him, was an Assistant Surgeon on the Bengal medical establishment, attached to the 7th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry. He volunteered for service with the Java invasion force, and is referred to in the postscript of a letter Leyden wrote to Hare from Melaka dated 13 June 1811: ‘I forgot to say that Jackson is arrived terribly disgusted with the voyage[,] want of management &c. He got ashore for two days only at Tanjong Keling seven miles from Malacca … called for me on the third[,] found I was up the country[,] returned & was sent on board. On the ninth he contrived to get ashore in the morning & walked up to Malacca where we formed [?], and I kept him to dinner at Raffles who likes him very much. Indeed Raffles had tried before I returned to find where he was[,] learning he was Mrs Hare’s brother but we could not get hold of him nor find any trace of him.’ (NLS:MS.971, fol. 86). Jackson’s name does not appear in The Java Annual Directory and Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1814 (Batavia, 1814), so he must have returned to Calcutta sometime before that date.

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expeditionary force. Mackenzie, who had a keen interest in Indian history and antiquities, and had been a friend and correspondent of Leyden from the time they had served together on the Mysore Survey, wrote to Erskine on 16 October 1811, a few days after the examination had taken place:182 ‘We could find no Will & we thought it right after investigating & classing the Papers, MSS, & Books, under their different heads, to propose that they should be sent to Calcutta which no doubt will be done at an early period – As the greater part of his MSS. & Books are there already, we conceived it best that the whole should be together at the disposal of his Executors. – His private Writings & letters are sealed up. – His Translations also & the Original Pieces of which there are several here of a mixed nature are put up separately – & his Philological Collections, MSS, Dictionaries & other valuable pieces of that kind, by themselves – … there is also a Small & valuable Collection of Printed Books in the different languages of Europe, & indeed of the whole world; but at Calcutta I know his Collection to be extensive – Among his papers here is a Complete Translation of the Arabic Geographer Ibn al Wurdi; & of the Malay Annals; and at Calcutta I suppose will be found his Translation of the Commentaries of Baber, a work which he frequently mentioned to me –’. Nothing came of Raffles’s proposal that Leyden’s books should be purchased by the Government, and they were despatched, together with his papers, in three small boxes to Calcutta, where they arrived in February 1813. They were consigned to Anthony Mactier, Commissioner of the Court of Requests, who was one of the three executors of Leyden’s will, which had been drawn up in Calcutta on 6 March 1811, shortly before his departure for Java. The other two executors, also resident at Calcutta, were John Angus, Commissioner of the Court of Requests, and Leyden’s particular friend, Dr. James Hare Jr. (d.1831), Assistant Surgeon on the Bengal medical establishment, and a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, with whom he had left the bulk of his books and manuscripts before setting out for Java. By the terms of Leyden’s will,183 after the payment of debts, his property was bequeathed to his father, and in the event of his prior death, to his three brothers and sister, Margaret. The will further directed that the whole of his oriental manuscripts, and such part of his books as his executors thought proper, should in the first place be offered to Richard Heber, ‘at a fair and reasonable price’, and

Mackenzie to Erskine, 16 October 1811, NLS:MS.971, fol. 121v. On Mackenzie, see Chapter Three, note 162.

182

John Leyden, Last Will and Testament, 6 March 1811, NLS:MS.971, fol. 77.

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that in the event of his refusing them they were to be offered to Sir John Malcolm. On his refusal, they were to be next offered to William Erskine, and on his declining the offer they were to be sold ‘for the best price that can be procured for them’. His ‘personal Manuscripts’ were bequeathed to Heber and Erskine, ‘to be printed or published as they shall think and deem proper and the originals at all events to be deposited in the library of the said Richard Heber Esqr. in the event of his surviving me otherwise to be and belong to the said William Erskine Esqr. of Bombay.’ On 27 June 1813, Mactier wrote to Mackenzie at Batavia expressing concern that Leyden’s books and papers which had arrived at Calcutta from Java so ill accorded with the description of them given in Mackenzie’s letter to Erskine of 16 October 1811 ‘that I cannot help thinking some mistake has occurred with regard to the papers of our late friend – private writings and letters there were none nor a word concerning the Arabic Geographer or the Malay Annals and of the Poems…’.184 Mackenzie’s reply is not recorded, probably because the letter arrived after his departure from Java on 18 July 1813, but, interestingly, he took with him to Calcutta another ‘very large collection’ of Leyden’s papers, which had arrived at Batavia in tin cases on an unnamed ship at the time of the conquest of the island. As they lacked proper directions they had been put up for sale by auction, and the purchaser, being only interested in the tin cases, took no particular notice of the papers and they were later found by the Roman Catholic Minister at Batavia, Phil. Wedding (d.1825), who passed them on to Mackenzie.185 That Mackenzie, who was an avid collector of oriental and other manuscripts in his own right, was guilty of retaining a number of Leyden’s manuscripts, as suspected by Mactier, was subsequently confirmed by Hare in 1815, who found that Mackenzie had in his possession at Calcutta manuscripts belonging to Leyden that ‘he had secured in Java’, including the translation of Abu al-Wardi, the Arab geographer, which he wished to annotate. Hare considered that this would be to the advantage of Leyden’s reputation, but, as he correctly surmised, Mackenzie was ‘more zealous than rapid in his labours’, and so he arranged for the manuscripts to be left in Mactier’s hands.186 Mackenzie was not the only one who helped himself to Leyden’s manuscripts in Java; Raffles, with perhaps more justification, was also guilty. In despatching the

Mactier to Mackenzie, 27 June 1813, NLS:MS.971, fol. 140.

184

Raffles to Erskine, 12 December 1815, NLS:MS.971, fol. 154.

185

Hare to Erskine, 28 June 1815, NLS:MS.971, fol. 144.

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original three boxes of Leyden’s papers and books to Calcutta in 1813, he had declared that they contained ‘the whole of the Books and papers with the exception of a few half finished Vocabularies and Malay Memoranda’.187 However, he had not answered subsequent requests for information by Mactier, who wrote to Erskine in June 1813, ‘I would rather decline writing again to Raffles. I have done so repeatedly & with little satisfaction to myself’.188 Erskine had more success when he wrote to Raffles in March 1815 enquiring about the papers of Leyden that were deserving of publication. Raffles replied six months later:189 Batavia 10th. September 1815 My dear Sir, I had the honor to receive your Letter of the 9th. of March while on a tour through the Eastern Districts of Java, and it was not until some time after my return that I could give the subject the attention it deserved – even now I am forced, rather than delay an immediate reply to your letter, to write amid a thousand distractions and with so many calls upon my time, that I fear what I have to say will be very incomplete and unsatisfactory; the more so, as I cannot reflect upon the death of our ever to be lamented friend without awakening sorrows still more recent, and too heartrending to be borne with any degree of calmness – You must be aware of what I allude to – and how sincerely poor Leyden was attached to one who was most dear to me – but whose Ashes now repose by the side of his, in the all devouring tomb of this baneful Spot – 190 My friendship with Leyden commenced about the close of the year 1805 when he was driven to Penang on account of ill health – & among the Letters I now send you, will be found his first and last to my Olivia191 – his Letters to me were chiefly on business & I regret to say they have not been preserved – there is one dated the 6th March 1806, giving an Account of his Voyage to Bengal, quite in his own Style and very illustrative of his Character, and the last he wrote from Calcutta, will be interesting in shewing the interest he took in the acquisition of these Possessions – I can have no objection to the whole being published – The circumstances attending Leyden’s coming to these Austral Regions deserve record by a far abler Pen than mine – He saw an Empire which embraced in extent nearly one fourth of our Globe, and which for two centuries had been degraded by the narrowest Quoted in Mactier to Mackenzie, 27 June 1813, NLS:MS.971, fol. 140.

187

Mactier to Erskine, 28 June 1813, NLS:MS.971, fol. 140v.

188

Raffles to Erskine, 10 September 1815, NLS:MS.971, fols. 146–153v.

189

A reference to the death on 26 November 1814 of his wife, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, who was buried beside Leyden’s grave in the Tanah Abang burial ground at Batavia.

190

Printed in Bastin, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, pp. 36 et seq.

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if not the vilest policy that ever disgraced civilized Nations, suddenly to be called forth into life – into action and liberty – and all that he panted for was to be foremost in the field – Tell me, he would say, where there is danger, where there is difficulty, and John Leyden is your Man – Never perhaps could a greater occasion have offered for the exercise of his extensive powers, and I am warranted in saying that the whole force of his mind was bent upon it – You will not therefore be surprized in perceiving the Situation he chalked out for himself – he was to have been my private Secretary, and in this Capacity what would he not have done, with the latitude I should have given him? – … He accompanied Lord Minto in His Majesty’s Ship Modeste as far as Malacca, but from thence to Java he gave up his Berth to me and proceeded in a small Vessel commanded by Captain Greig – from this Vessel his Baggage had not been landed when the fatal event occurred – but as soon as my feelings and the dreadful confusion of the times admitted I caused it to be carefully examined by his most intimate friends[,] Dr. Hunter and Colonel Mackenzie – after which the whole of his Books and Papers were carefully forwarded to the Executors in Calcutta – the only Papers retained being a few unfinished Vocabularies of the East Insular Languages, in the hands of his Writer, and the Account of Borneo, which he had prepared on the Voyage at my Request – and which I subsequently published in the 7th Volume of the Batavian Transactions –192 This Memoir was one of a Series intended to have been completed by him in his capacity of Confidential Secretary.193 I had already taken measures for collecting the Materials, and a similar Memoir was contemplated for each of the principal Islands of the Archipelago, so as to exhibit the progress of the Dutch Establishments and the actual State of the Country at the period of its falling under the Sovereignty of Great Britain – At Malacca as well as on the Voyage to Batavia and even during the few days he survived after landing he was actively engaged in the translation of Native and [D]utch Correspondence, qualifying himself as he used to say for his new office – I should however mention that I have in my possession his Translation of the Malay Annals – a Work which occupied a considerable portion of his time in Calcutta and which it was intended to complete and improve in Java – Connected with the ulterior objects which he had in view this Translation has a high interest, but in its present form and considered with reference to the new lights which the Conquest of Java has afforded, it does not appear to me calculated for publication except perhaps partially in the Transactions of some Literary Society – I have secured a place for it in those of the Batavian Society, should such

J. Leyden, ‘Sketch of Borneo’, VBG, vol. VII, no. XI (1814), pp. 1–64.

192

In a letter to his father dated 20 March 1811, Leyden stated that he would not resign his post as Assay Master of the Calcutta Mint as he intended to return to Calcutta after the British conquest of Java (NLS:MS.3380, fol. 224v). This must have been written to give reassurance to his father because Raffles had already asked him in December 1810 if he intended ‘to come to me if I play first fiddle’ in the British Government in Java, and he appears to have agreed that he would serve as his Confidential Secretary.

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an arrangement be approved – I shall however do nothing with it, but in communication with yourself and Mr Heber, to either of whom it shall readily be delivered – Mr. Ricketts194 wrote me some time since on the subject of a Volume of Poetical Pieces which was not to be found among his Papers – this Volume I perfectly recollect seeing in Calcutta, but not subsequently, and I have reason to believe he did not bring it with him – [D]uring the period I remained in Calcutta he had a Native Writer constantly employed in copying his fugitive Pieces from newspapers and other periodical Works as well as from rough Manuscripts – his object being as he frequently informed me, to republish his Scenes of Infancy, with an additional Volume of the Poems he was thus collecting – I particularly enquired for this Collection after his death – but it was not among the Papers brought with him to Java – Had he brought it with him, I think he would doubtless have shewn the Volume to Mrs. Raffles, on whose taste and judgment he placed his entire confidence – but she never recollected to have seen it – and it would seem that in equipping from Calcutta he was anxious to come as light as possible and to bring with him only what had immediate reference to the objects in view – I enclose you such of his Poetical Pieces as I have found among the Papers of my Olivia,195 they are but few and these probably are already in your possession – I do not however recollect to have seen his Odes on the Battles of Assaye and Corruna196 in print, and possibly they may be new to you – the latter is certainly a Master Piece – and will live for ever – you will observe it is the original MS. with several corrections in his own hand – these Papers with the original of his defence of the attack made upon him in Calcutta by Sir William Burroughs, on which he piqued himself not a little, are all that I possess likely in any way to assist the undertakings on foot – and from the Memoranda upon them in his own hand writing, you will perceive they formed no part of the Papers required to be sent to his Executors – When I mentioned to Captain Basil Hall197 that there were many particulars connected with the close of poor Leyden’s life unknown to few but myself, it was Note 179.

194

These manuscript ‘Poetical Pieces’ are now in the National Library of Scotland.

195

‘The Battle of Assaye’ was written by Leyden in 1803 and his ‘Ode on the Battle of Corunna’ in 1809 (Morton, Poetical Remains, pp. 156–8, 183–7).

196

Raffles had this conversation with Captain Basil Hall R.N. (1788–1844) in July 1814 when Hall visited Java aboard HMS Illustrious, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood (1762–1814), Commanding the East Indies squadron. Hall was the second son of James Hall, Bart. (1761–1832) of Dunglass, Haddingtonshire, and was educated at the High School in Edinburgh. His interest in Leyden was possibly one of the reasons why he formed such a close bond of friendship with Raffles, becoming in later years an ardent defender of his reputation in both private conversation (Lady Guendolen Ramsden, Correspondence of Two Brothers: Edward Adolphus, Eleventh Duke of Somerset, and His Brother, Lord Webb Seymour, 1800 to 1819 and After (London, 1906), pp. 227–8) and in his published writings. He was almost certainly the author of the favourable review of Raffles’s The History of Java in The Edinburgh Monthly Review, vol. II, no. xii (July–December 1819), pp. 633–54, and after Raffles’s death he assisted Lady Raffles in the publication of the Memoir of her husband. He wrote a fulsome review of the book in The Edinburgh Review, where he lauded Raffles’s administration in Java, and praised his private qualities: ‘His matchless temper, also, his fertility in resource, and the extent of

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certainly my intention to have reduced them to writing as likely to throw some additional light on his Character – but the melancholy affliction which in a few weeks after deprived me of almost all that I held dear on earth, has at any rate, until the present period, entirely unfitted me for the task – and if ever I undertake it, it must be at a moment when my mind is relieved from many of the heavy burthens which now oppress it – the unexpected event of the restoration of these Colonies to the Dutch, and the misconception which the Plans and Views of those engaged in the Conquest have suffered, seem to call for some public Appeal in justification of what may have been prematurely condemned, and it is not impossible I may undertake such a Work on my return to Europe – should this be the case – my first object will be to do justice to Leyden’s Memory – who may fairly be considered to have been the Soul of the whole – this perhaps it may be impossible to explain in the Compass of a Letter, and to say all that might be said would require that I gave you a detail of every principal measure of my Administration – for most of them were suggested by his all powerful genius, and all were concurred in, at least in principle, by the Views which in concert with Leyden and myself, the Earl of Minto was induced to adopt – I am sure that it is quite unnecessary for me to say how anxious I am to do every thing in my power to raise an everlasting Monument to the memory of our departed friend – No one can be more interested in his character and fame – he was my dearest friend, and I may truly say that while I looked up to him with all the admiration and respect which his wonderful Talents and glowing virtues were calculated to command from all who knew him, I felt towards him the most brotherly affection – his character is so well illustrated in a Sketch which I have lately seen in the Edinburgh Magazine that it would be vain in me to add one word on this point198– and all that it may be in my power to say may be some few particulars of his latter days to prove how nearly in coming to Java, he had attained the highest object of his ambition, and that he fell a Sacrifice to a Cause which occupied and was not unworthy of occupying every feeling of his Soul –

his knowledge of the rest of the world, enabled him, when occasions of difficulty occurred, to meet and to surmount obstacles which ordinary minds would have shrunk from altogether’ (vol. LI, no. cii (1830), art. IV, p. 400). Hall travelled extensively in Java during his visit to the island in 1814 and therefore spoke with some authority on Raffles’s administration. He commanded the brig Lyra on Lord Amherst’s mission to China in 1816, and his Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island was published by John Murray in 1818. The work was reprinted by Archibald Constable in his Miscellany series in 1826, and Hall generously offered the copyright to Constable when the publisher faced bankruptcy in that year. Hall retired from the Navy in 1823 and continued his prolific output as an author during his retirement. He died of insanity at Haslar Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, in 1844. There is a letter from Hall to Raffles, dated Dunglass, Dunbar, 29 August 1825, in the British Library (MSS.Eur.D.742/3). Scott’s ‘Biographical Memoir of John Leyden, M.D.’, The Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1811 (Edinburgh, 1813), vol. IV, no. 2, pp. xli–lxviii was reprinted in five issues of The Java Government Gazette, 25 November, 16 December 1815, 6 January, 13 January, 20 January 1816.

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You must have read with much interest the tribute of respect to his memory paid by the late Earl of Minto in his Anniversary discourse to the College of Calcutta199– in forwarding a Copy of this discourse to me, his Lordship’s words were as follows – “I send you a printed Copy of my discourse as Visitor of the College of Fort William at the last disputations – I took that opportunity of doing justice, not to our common and lamented friend, Dr Leyden himself, for that would have required a Book, written by a Panegyrist better qualified than me, but justice to my own general Sentiments towards him, and it is this Passage alone which can make that Paper interesting to you, or repay you for the fatigue of reading it – ” I shall be happy to receive your acknowledgement of the receipt of the Papers which I now send, and hereafter when relieved in some degree from the anxious cares which now weigh heavily upon me, and restored to that calmness of mind, in which I can reason upon my sorrows, I shall be most happy to contribute my humble stock of information in any shape which may appear to your better judgment best calculated to be in the least instrumental in attaining the objects in view [.] I have the honor to remain, My dear Sir, Your faithful Servant Tho. S. Raffles

After Erskine received Leyden’s papers from Raffles, he forwarded them to Richard Heber in London in August 1816, noting that some of the manuscript poems had already been given to him by Leyden before his departure for Java.200 As there is no indication in the following six months that Raffles surrendered Leyden’s translation of the Malay Annals, it must be assumed that he took the manuscript with him when he sailed from Java aboard the ship Ganges (P. Falconer) in March 1816. In London, he met Leyden’s cousin, the Reverend James Morton,201 and he probably handed the translation to him, though by then a second manuscript

Calcutta Gazette Extraordinary, 4 October 1812.

199

Erskine to Heber, July/August 1816, NLS:MS.939, fol. 88.

200

In a letter to the Reverend James Morton in 1817, Raffles indicated that he had read the manuscript of Morton’s Memoir of Leyden’s life, and would contribute to it: ‘Having been unexpectedly called out of Town since I had the pleasure of seeing you[,] I have been prevented from sending you Leyden’s life – I now return you the Ms. & will in the course of a day or two send you such further notices as occur to me as likely to be interesting –’ (NLS:MS.3381, fol. 230). Morton was born at Kelso, Roxburghshire, and began life as a weaver. After first attending lectures at Edinburgh University, he graduated Bachelor of Divinity from Cambridge University. He was appointed Vicar of Holbeach, and between 1831 and 1865 he served as Prebendary of Lincoln. He was the author of The Monastic Annals of Teviotdale or, The History of the Abbeys of Jedburgh, Kelso, Melrose and Dryburgh (Edinburgh, 1832).

201

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copy may have been among the 15 chests of Leyden’s books and manuscripts brought to London aboard the ship General Stuart (J. Jameson) in July 1814.202 Morton had transcribed Leyden’s poems for publication under Heber’s editorial direction,203 and was collecting materials for an account of his life. He appears to have obtained some information from Raffles, together with a promise that he would write an Introduction to the Malay Annals. Raffles completed this Introduction in 1817, probably after the publication of his own book, The History of Java, in which he paid a moving tribute to his late friend.204 In September 1816, four months after its publication, Morton’s book, The Poetical Remains of the Late Dr. John Leyden, was announced for publication, and the Malay Annals, with Raffles’s Introduction, was stated to be preparing for publication. In the event, Morton’s Poetical Remains was not published until June 1819 at 12s. in boards, and the Malay Annals not until October or November 1821 at 10s.6d. in boards. In the Introduction to the Malay Annals, Raffles wrote:205 From the period at which Dr. Leyden first visited the Eastern Islands, in 1805, he may be said to have espoused the cause of the Malayan race with all the ardour and enthusiasm which so peculiarly distinguished his character. In the feudal notions and habits of this people, he found so much in accordance with his own feelings of honour and independence, that he was at once alive to their true character and interests; and, while his powerful and intelligent mind was engaged in deeper researches into their languages and literature, he neglected no opportunity of becoming acquainted with their more popular tales and traditions. He was aware, that, in these islands, as well as on the continent of India, the commencement of authentic history was only to be dated from the

Mactier to Erskine, 15 August 1821, NLS:MS.971, fols. 163–4. The books and manuscripts were consigned to John Carstairs, Abechurch Lane, London, the agent of Dr. James Hare Jr.

202

White, ‘Supplement’ (1858), Preface, pp. v–vi.

203

T.S. Raffles, The History of Java (London, 1817), vol. I, p. x. Raffles had already expressed similar sentiments in his ‘Discourse’ to the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences on 24 April 1813: ‘… my departed friend Dr. Leyden, who, although not actually initiated as a Member of this Society, came from the other India panting after knowledge and busy in the pursuit of Science. Had Providence ordained that he should have remained a few months on this Island in the exercise of the wonderful powers of his ever active mind, I am convinced, that from his extraordinary acquirements in all the languages of the East, his deep erudition, and his zeal in the cause, he would have found it no difficult task to have traced the connection which formerly subsisted between the Eastern Islands, and Western India, from a comparison of their languages and dialects only. His views were the most extended and comprehensive that a philosophic mind can conceive. Ardent in the pursuit of knowledge in every direction, and rising with difficulties, his uncommon mind and rare talents must naturally have overcome every obstacle.’ (VBG, vol. VII (1814), p. 12).

204

Malay Annals (London, 1821), pp. v–vii.

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introduction of Mahometanism; but, in the wild traditions of the Malays, he thought he sometimes discovered a glimmering of light, which might, perhaps, serve to illustrate an earlier period. These glimmerings, he was accustomed to say, were very faint, but, in the absence of all other lights, they were worth pursuing; they would, at all events, account for and explain many of the peculiar institutions and customs of the people, and serve to make his countrymen better acquainted with a race who appeared to him to possess the greatest claims on their consideration and attention. Under this impression, he was induced to undertake the translation of the work now published, being a compilation of the most popular traditions existing among the Malays themselves. It was intended that the text should have been illustrated by notes and references, explanatory of the more interesting parts, and that the late Annals of the different states of the Archipelago, since the establishment of Mahometanism, should have been annexed; but the premature and lamented death of Dr. Leyden will account for its appearing in its present imperfect state.

The reason for the delay in publishing Leyden’s translation of the Malay Annals is not stated, nor are we given any explanation for the even longer delay of nine years in publishing the translation of Baber’s Memoirs206 (an amalgamation of Leyden’s translation from the original Turki with Erskine’s translation from a Persian text), apart from Erskine’s bald statement in the Advertisement leaf to the book that it was ‘in consequence of circumstances which it is unnecessary to mention’. Erskine had initially offered to complete the translation, but after Dr. James Hare Jr. had taken Leyden’s personal papers and manuscripts to England in 1814, he accepted the fact that someone in England, such as the orientalist, Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824), should finish the work. ‘At all events’, he wrote to Heber, ‘what remains to be done ought to be done in England.’207 It was only after Hare’s failure to find someone in England capable of doing the work that duplicate copies of Leyden’s translation were returned to him in Bombay enabling him to complete the task. On 8 September 1816 he wrote to Heber: ‘The Memoirs of Baber though concluded are undergoing a revisal, principally of their geography to make the Map as correct as possible. By an early opportunity I hope to consign them into

Memoirs of Zehir-Ed-Din Muhammed Baber, Emperor of Hindustan, written by Himself, in the Jaghatai Turki, and Translated, Partly by the Late John Leyden, Esq. M.D. Partly by William Erskine, Esq. with Notes and a Geographical and Historical Introduction (London, 1826). For a critical evaluation of the work, see Annette Susannah Beveridge’s translation of the Turki text of Babur-Nama (Memoirs of Babur) (New Delhi, 1990, 3rd ed.), Preface, pp. xliii–xliv, xlix–l, lvii–lx.

206

Erskine to Heber, 16 January 1812, NLS:MS.939, fol. 81. It is possible that Erskine intended to refer the papers to Leyden’s friend, the Reverend Alexander Murray, and not Alexander Hamilton.

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your hands, with some preliminary remarks of far more dubious value. If you think that they can be printed advantageously for Leyden’s parents, it will give me great pleasure.’208 Erskine sent the completed manuscript to Heber in London in 1817, the year which was apparently chosen for its publication, together with Leyden’s Poetical Remains and his translation of the Malay Annals. In 1814, Hare had also handed over Leyden’s personal and literary papers to Richard Heber, who ‘promised to look over a copy of his later poems that were … intended for publication, & proposed sending them, with his own remarks, to [Sir] Walter Scott, to publish, together with so much of the author’s life, as he was intimately acquainted…’.209 It was also Heber’s stated intention to send the other manuscripts to the orientalist, Alexander Murray, for revision. The original proposal was that Scott would edit Leyden’s literary remains to fulfil, as he declared, ‘an old engagement … unless I learn that he has made some final arrangement’.210 This had been confirmed by Leyden’s brother, Robert, who wrote to Scott in January 1812: ‘On parting with my Brother at the Turf Coffee House he told me that in case he might die in India he would leave directions that you should publish his literary remains, this was the last conversation I had with him…’.211 Robert Leyden informed Murray shortly afterwards that Scott had agreed to collect and publish his brother’s posthumous papers,212 and Scott himself wrote to Murray stating his willingness ‘to do everything in my power to do honour to his remains, and to serve if possible his distressed parents’.213 In March 1813, Robert Leyden wrote to Heber confirming his understanding that Scott intended to publish the papers, and at the same time expressing his family’s ‘warmest thanks for the very friendly charge you have taken of my late brother’s affairs’.214 This arrangement still held in 1814 after the arrival in London of Leyden’s books and manuscripts, but in January 1815, when Hare visited Scott,

Erskine to Heber, 8 September 1816, NLS:MS.939, fol. 92.

208

Hare to Erskine, 28 June 1815, NLS:MS.971, fol. 142.

209

Scott to Heber, 11 June [1812], Grierson, Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vol. XII, pp. 333–4.

210

Robert Leyden to Scott, 1 January [1812], ibid., vol. XII, p. 334. Scott wrote to Robert Leyden in May 1812 asking him for information for his ‘Biographical Memoir’ of his brother (NLS:MS.Acc. 12194).

211

Murray to Constable, 7 February 1812, Constable’s Literary Correspondents, vol. I, p. 312; Reith, Life and Writings of Rev. Alex. Murray, p. 100.

212

Scott to Murray, 10 February 1812, Constable’s Literary Correspondents, vol. I, 312–3n; Grierson, Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vol. III, p. 74.

213

Robert Leyden to Heber, 16 March 1813, NLS:MS.939, fols. 85–6.

214

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the manuscripts had not been forwarded to him by Heber, and Scott ‘seemed as much disappointed as I was at his not having done so’.215 By this time, Heber had come into contact with Leyden’s kinsman, the Reverend James Morton, and after consultation with him, he called on the publishers Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown of Paternoster-Row, London, who had published Leyden’s Scenes of Infancy in 1803, to discuss the possibility of their undertaking the publication of his literary remains. Heber’s discussions were with the partner, Owen Rees (1770– 1837), who had corresponded with Leyden before his departure for India, and who now, according to Heber, seemed impressed ‘with a proper feeling for poor L[eyden]’s memory’. Heber informed Morton that Rees wished ‘not to make the usual bargain of guaranteeing the expense, & dividing the profit, which he said might very probably answer our purpose best … but I told him, Leyden’s father was declining fast, & [it was] wished to provide for the old man … by selling the poems out & out – the other publications might be published on his plan. I added the family expected £600 to £800. He begged time to consider his position & said he shd wish to see the poems before he gave a final answer.’ Heber concluded: ‘My wish is that the poems shd be printed in 2 vols 8vo & all his other works when any appear hereafter in an uniform size. The Malay Annals, the Cashmire [?] Do may be sent to press forthwith – & the Commentaries of Baber as soon as they arrive, but the Life & Poems ought to make their appearance first…’.216 The letter is undated, but it relates to 1815 or 1816, and may indicate that a copy of Leyden’s translation of the Malay Annals had reached London with his other papers before Raffles arrived with his copy in July 1816. In a succeeding letter, Heber informed Morton that Longman’s had finally offered ‘to give £300 down for Leyden’s Poems, including the Scenes of Infancy, & the Memoirs [of his life] – and £200 now on 3,000 copies being sold’. This, he thought, was their final offer, and he enquired if they should accept it or make an approach to the publisher John Murray (1778–1843). Longman’s, he continued, agreed to publish the Malay Annals, the Cashmir [?] Annals and Baber’s Memoirs on the usual terms of indemnity of expense of publication, and a division of the profits from sales.217 Hare to Erskine, 28 June 1815, NLS:MS.971, fol. 143v.

215

Heber to Morton, n.d., NLS:MS.3383, fols. 251–3.

216

Heber to Morton, n.d., NLS:MS.3383, fol. 250.

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What transpired subsequently in the publication of Leyden’s works is not entirely clear, but it is possible that Longman’s terms were deemed unsatisfactory by Leyden’s family, or, more specifically, by Robert Leyden, who may have advised his parents to hold out for a better arrangement. He had followed his brother to Edinburgh University to study medicine, but after three unsuccessful years of study he had left without taking his degree. Scott found him a difficult person to deal with, and described him, after he arrived uninvited at his house in an intoxicated state, as being ‘a dissipated and worthless blackguard’.218 There is another possible unfavourable reference to him in a letter Hare wrote to Erskine in May 1823 in which he states that ‘Morton and his [Leyden’s] stupid brother plagued Heber, I suspect till he was sick of the MSS. & offered to let them do what they pleased’.219 Whether or not this meant approaching another publisher like John Murray, as Heber originally suggested, is not clear, but there is a tantalising statement in a letter from Murray late in 1817 to Anne, Marchioness of Abercorn (1763–1827), whose husband was a great admirer of Leyden,220 in which he informs her that Lord Abercorn ‘will be glad to hear that the “Life and Posthumous Writings” [of Leyden] will be ready soon’.221 Murray may here have been simply reporting rumour that his rival, Longman’s, was about to publish the book, but if, in fact, negotiations had been opened with Murray about publishing Leyden’s works, then it would provide some explanation for the delay. In the event, it was Longman’s who published all three of Leyden’s works, his Poetical Remains in association with Archibald Constable & Co., Edinburgh, the Malay Annals (with Raffles’s Introduction), solely under Longman’s imprint, and Baber’s Memoirs in association with Cadell & Co., Edinburgh. In the case of Baber’s Memoirs, it seems that it was only after Sir John Malcolm’s return to Britain from India in April 1822, and his taking an active part in settling Leyden’s affairs, that the publication of the book was materially advanced. Erskine had left India in 1823 under a cloud, after accusations of defalcation as Master in Equity of the Recorder’s Court in Bombay, and his hounding by the Chief Justice,

Scott to Southey, 10 April [1811], Grierson, Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vol. II, p. 473. See also vol. II, p. 370.

218

Hare to Erskine, 31 May 1823, NLS:MS.971, fol. 166.

219

John, 1st Marquess of Abercorn (1756–1818), had promised Leyden the living in the parish of Duddingstone, but its pastor remained in the post longer than expected, and Leyden had to give up hopes of obtaining a church appointment (Brown, ‘Memoir’ (1875), pp. xxxiv–v).

220

Murray to Marchioness of Abercorn, 1817, S. Smiles, Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray (London, 1891), vol. II, p. 64.

221

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Sir Edward West (1782–1828).222 In Scotland, he apparently revised the original manuscript of Baber’s Memoirs, since Malcolm wrote to Gilbert Elliot, 2nd Earl of Minto (1782–1859), in April 1825 informing him that Erskine had ‘completed Baber in admirable stile & sent the MSS to me to be applied in the way I deem most beneficial for the family. After taking the best advice I have determined to publish a Quarto Edition to the Extent of our subscription[,] & then sell the copyright to Longman & Rees for what they will give – & let them thereafter print an Octavo [edition].’223 Malcolm had a Prospectus printed, and when the book was published in 1826 it was specifically stated that it was ‘for subscription for the sole benefit of Dr. Leyden’s aged parents’. Malcolm considered that the subscription might raise £300 or £400, but what precise sum was actually obtained from this or the other books is unknown. Leyden’s parents certainly got relatively little from his estate in India which, though amounting to 30,610 Sicca Rupees (about £3,825), was reduced to 2,300 Sicca Rupees (about £285), even before the settlement of all his debts, one of which, interestingly, was to Raffles for 600 Sicca Rupees ‘being the balance due [to] the Deceased Moonshee [employed by Leyden] for wages and Translations and paid to him by Mr. Raffles at Java’.224 Interestingly, too, was Leyden’s bequest of the payment of interest on 2,000 Sicca Rupees to an Asian woman named Radah Moni, who seems to have enjoyed the benefit of the bequest until as late as 1825, when Mactier decided to pay the capital sum directly to Leyden’s father. Leyden’s family also faced a long drawn-out affair in trying to sell his books and manuscripts. Those contained in the 15 chests which had reached London in July 1814 (and in another two chests which were subsequently added) had been sent to the East India House for safe keeping, as duty had not been paid on them. When Hare visited Leadenhall Street soon afterwards, he was disconcerted to find that the chests had been opened without authorisation and the contents ‘tumbled … upon the floor’, and then ‘muddled’ when put back again.225 He remonstrated with the Librarian of the East India Company, [Sir] Charles Wilkins (1749–1836), who professed ignorance of the matter, but who considered that in any case the F. Dawtrey Drewitt, Bombay in the Days of George IV Memoirs of Sir Edward West (London, 1907), pp. 55–6, 62–5, 72–7; O’Leary, Sir James Mackintosh, p. 156.

222

Malcolm to Minto, 8 April 1825, NLS:MS.12120, fols. 196–8.

223

‘The Estate of J. Leyden late of Calcutta deceased …’, May 1817, NLS:MS.971, fols. 161–2. Also charged against Leyden’s estate was the sum of 30 Sicca Rupees to ‘the Hindostanee Press … for printing Mr. Raffles[’]s memoir [‘On the Malayu Nation’], intended to be inserted in the 12th vol of the Asiatic Researches’ (note 63).

224

Hare to Erskine, 28 June 1815, NLS:MS.971, fol. 143.

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manuscripts and books, many of which were on the Deccan languages, were of little worth as they contained nothing of Sanscrit. This was, of course, Wilkins’s own particular interest, having been the first Englishman to study and understand Sanscrit, and the first to publish outside India a grammar of the language. The books and manuscripts were retained in the Library with no decision being taken about them until 9 October 1823, when there appeared in the Edinburgh press a short article, written from Kelso, entitled, ‘The Late Dr. John Leyden’s Manuscripts, &c’.226 This drew attention to the plight of Leyden’s parents, and noted that while few of his most valuable manuscripts had been published, ‘excepting the translation of a dull work called Malay Annals’, his books and manuscripts, which had been intended to provide for them, had ‘remained in the India House since their arrival in England, eight or nine years ago’. The article named Sir Walter Scott, Sir John Malcolm, the 2nd Earl of Minto, Richard Heber (now Member of Parliament for Oxford), and ‘other distinguished men’ as being ‘anxious to obtain from the [East India C]ompany a fair price for those valuable papers’, for which William Erskine had already unsuccessfully bid 10,000 Rupees. The article may have been written by Robert Leyden, with the encouragement of Sir John Malcolm, who was now anxious, as he said, ‘to bring Leyden[’]s Business to a conclusion’.227 In February 1824, he visited the East India House Library and saw Wilkins, who estimated the value of the books and the whole of the English manuscripts at £600. Malcolm also persuaded Lord Minto to write a letter to the Chairman of the Directors of the East India Company urging a settlement of the matter, but he received only a negative reply from the Deputy Chairman, Campbell Majoribanks (1765–1840), expressing his doubt that the matter could be concluded so late in the Direction, and at the same time pointing out that no more than £500 could be expected for the manuscripts and the books, ‘as a great part are duplicates to what [is] already in India House’.228 Wilkins confirmed in a letter to Malcolm on 15 March that he had spoken with the Chairman of the Directors, but indicated that Heber’s retention of Leyden’s private manuscripts was complicating the matter. It seems that this had been a long standing problem, judging by Robert Leyden’s warning to Lord Minto, in a letter dated 6 April 1824, that if the sale of the books NLS:MS.971, fol. 183.

226

Malcolm to Minto, 5 February 1824, NLS:MS.12120, fols. 157–8. Leyden’s friend, the Reverend Henry Duncan (1774–1846), also assisted in the cause: Reverend George John C. Duncan, Memoir of the Rev. Henry Duncan, D.D. Minister of Ruthwell (Edinburgh, 1848), pp. 147–8.

227

Majoribanks to Minto, 29 March 1824, NLS:MS.12120, fols. 166–167v.

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and manuscripts ‘was marred again by Mr Heber retaining the English MSS. because the offer was too little[,] my Father would consider him responsible for the sum offered … [M]y Father desires me to state … that he being now at a very advanced stage of life, is extremely anxious that this long delayed business may be settled before his death.’229 As a result of these various pressures, the Directors of the East India Company finally discharged their obligation in 1824 by paying £500 for the whole of Leyden’s collection of manuscripts and books.230 The manuscripts are today in the British Library, where, happily, also reside the principal documents and manuscripts relating to his friend, Sir Stamford Raffles.

Robert Leyden to Minto, 6 April 1824, NLS:MS.12120, fol. 176.

229

Leyden’s manuscripts are described in Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society (1911), pp. 55–6. Various other manuscripts belonging to Leyden are included in the ‘List of the late Dr Leyden’s M.S.S. in the Possession of Dr James Hare’ (NLS:MS.971, fols. 172–175v).

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Chapter Three

The American Naturalist Thomas Horsfield in Java ‘I pray … that this address … may be accepted from one who has enjoyed the friendship of Sir Stamford, and whose attachment and gratitude to him, have been and … will ever remain sincere’ Dr. Thomas Horsfield to William Hull, 11 July 1826

Dr. Thomas Horsfield (1773 –1859) Lithograph by Day & Haghe after T. Erxleben, 1842

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O

n 19 October 1811, seven weeks after Leyden’s death, Lord Minto and his entourage boarded HMS Modeste at Batavia for the return voyage to Calcutta. The Governor-General had secured the agreement of the British Government ‘to expel the Enemy from their Settlement in the Island of Java, and from every other place which they may occupy in the Eastern Seas’, but on the strict understanding that after the conquest and the destruction of the enemy’s military installations he was to withdraw all British forces from the island and ‘leave the possession of these Settlements to the occupation of the Natives’. Believing that the abandonment of the Dutch colony ‘unarmed, to the vengeance and cupidity’ of the Indonesians to be ‘morally, impossible’,1 he left behind him a large British army of occupation and an interim British administration under the charge of Raffles as Lieutenant-Governor and a Council consisting of the Commander of the British forces, Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie (1766–1814), and two prominent Dutch officials, Harman Warner Muntinghe (1773–1827), President of the Supreme Court of Justice, and Willem Jacob Cranssen (1762–1821), former Governor of Ambon and President of the College of Magistrates at Batavia. During the intervening weeks following Leyden’s death, Lord Minto discussed with Raffles the principles on which the administration of the island should be conducted, including the liberalisation of trade and cultivation, and these principles Raffles now attempted to pursue in his administration. On 28 November, six weeks after Minto’s departure, Raffles began an official journey as Lieutenant-Governor along the coastal districts of Java to Semarang and Surabaya, and thereafter to central Java in an attempt to settle affairs at Yogyakarta, following the unauthorised seizure of power by Hamengkubuwana II (r.1792–1810, 1811­–12). On 23 and 28 December, he concluded treaties with the Javanese courts, the latter treaty initially recognising Hamengkubuwana II as Sultan.2 At the ceremonies connected with the conclusion of the treaty with Sunan Pakubuwana IV (r.1788–1820) at Surakarta on 23 December, Raffles left his seat and conversed with a number of the people present, including the 38-year-old American naturalist, Dr. Thomas Horsfield, who had spent the previous 10 years engaged in scientific Secret Committee to Lord Minto, 31 August 1810; Lord Minto to the Secret Committee, 6 December 1811, M.L. van Deventer, Het Nederlandsch Gezag over Java en Onderhoorigheden sedert 1811 (The Hague, 1891), vol. I, pp. 4 n.1, 5–6.

1

For a definitive account of events in the Javanese courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta following the British conquest of Java in 1811, see Peter Carey, The Power of Prophecy Prince Dipanagara and the end of an old order in Java, 1785–1855, VKI, 249 (2007), pp. 275 et seq.

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research in west Java, the north-eastern coastal districts, and the eastern and southern regions of the island.3 Horsfield was the first American naturalist to study the flora, fauna, entomology, and geology of Java, and his large and heterogeneous natural history collections were later to be the first comprehensive collections of Indonesian material brought to the United Kingdom. His initial interests in Indonesia were in the fields of botany and geology, but in the first of these fields his discoveries were pre-empted by the magnificent publications of Carl Ludwig Blume (1796–1862), and in the second they were eclipsed by the scientific investigations of Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (1809­–1864). Both recognised his pioneering contributions, Junghuhn in particular according him the first place in the investigation and description of Java from a geographical-geological point of view,4 but the result has been that he is remembered less today as a botanist or geologist than as a zoologist, partly because of his book, Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4), and partly because of his later work as Keeper of the Museum of the East India Company and author of the Museum’s catalogues of mammals, birds, and lepidopterous insects. Horsfield arrived in Indonesia in April 1800 as a physician aboard the American merchantman China, out of Philadelphia. During the ship’s stay of two months at Batavia (Jakarta), he was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the scenery, the grandeur and abundance of the vegetation, and the richness of productions in all fields of natural history that he resolved to investigate them. On his return to Philadelphia he procured instruments and materials for preserving natural history specimens, as well as books on natural history, and in the following year he undertook a second voyage to Batavia, where he arrived in 1801.5 It was in particular his great interest in plant poisons and materia medica that led him to return to Java, then little known to the outside world, largely unexplored, Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), p. 603.

3

F.W. Junghuhn, Java, deszelfs gedaante bekleeding en inwendige structuur (Amsterdam, 1850–3), vol. I, pp. 98–9. For Junghuhn’s travels and scientific achievements in Indonesia, see M.J. van Steenis-Kruseman, ‘Malaysian Plant Collectors and Collections being a Cyclopaedia of Botanical Exploration in Malaysia …’, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis, (Jakarta, 1950), ser. I, vol. 1, pp. 267–9; Gedenkboek Franz Junghuhn 1809–1909 (The Hague, 1910), and R. Nieuwenhuys and F. Jaquet, Java’s Onuitputtelijke Natuur (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1980).

4

T. Horsfield, ‘An Account of a Voyage to Batavia, in the Year 1800’, Philadelphia Medical Museum, vol. I (1805), pp. 75–85; T. Horsfield, J.J. Bennett, R. Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Descriptæ Iconibusque Illustratæ, Quas in Insula Java, Annis 1802–1818, Legit et Investigavit Thomas Horsfield, M.D. ... (London, 1838–52), Postscript, p. i; F. De Haan, ‘Personalia der Periode van het Engelsch Bestuur over Java 1811–1816’, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 582.

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and ruled by a European power whose language he did not speak.6 Altogether he spent some 17 years in the island, travelling on horseback for months on end in the company of his Indonesian servants and European draughtsmen from the Semarang Marine School, whom he trained in the difficult task of transferring on to paper the exact details of his botanical discoveries. The full extent of his travels will never be known because his manuscript journals and notebooks were destroyed on his death in 1859 in accordance with instructions in his will,7 but his published writings and manuscript reports in the British Library furnish sufficient data to trace the course of his journeys as represented in outline on the map in Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores (London, 1838–52),8 a work containing descriptions of plants in his Herbarium by John Joseph Bennett (1801–1876) and Robert Brown (1773–1858). There can be little doubt that compared with the travels of other early Western naturalists in Java, such as the Swede, Claës Frederic Hornstedt (1758–1809), between 1783 and 1784, the Spaniard, Francisco Noroña (d.1787/8), between 1786 and 1787, the Frenchman, Louis Auguste Deschamps (1765–1842), between 1793 Judging by references in his University of Philadelphia dissertation of 1798, Horsfield already had some knowledge of French and German before he arrived in Indonesia, and the latter language would have been of some advantage to him in learning Dutch. In an incomplete letter dated 1806 in the Library of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (Coll. 152) to Lewis Cist, son of the publisher of his dissertation, Charles Cist (note 16), and brother of the naturalist, Jacob Cist (1782–1825), he states that he had already ‘acquired the Dutch and Malay languages, both of which are indipensibly necessary at that place [Batavia]’. Jan Izaak van Sevenhoven, former Secretary of the Netherlands Indies Government, who examined Horsfield’s natural history reports in October 1812 for publication by the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, expressed his astonishment that he had ‘already improved so much on this Island in the Dutch language’, and stated that although his reports contained some errors of expression he thought that these could be corrected before publication (BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), 1, no. 3, fol. 23). Evidence that Horsfield had acquired a knowledge of Javanese by this time is also provided by Van Sevenhoven who visited him at Surakarta in 1812 and declared that he was perfectly conversant with the language (De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 584). His constant use of foreign languages in Java during a period of more than ten years obviously made him rusty in English, as he explained to Raffles in a letter dated 30 January 1812: ‘The acquirement of the Dutch [language] has been the occasion of my neglect of the English style and language; I hope by practice to mend or to recover them’ (BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 8r).

6

‘… I give to my said Executors all my Manuscripts and Written Memoranda of every description … which at my decease may be found and direct that my said Executors do destroy the same it being my particular wish that the same should not be preserved beyond my life …’. (Last Will and Testament of Thomas Horsfield, 23 November 1857).

7

Map of the Island of Java, to Illustrate the Researches of Thomas Horsfield, M.D. Respectively dedicated to the Honourable Court of Directors of the East India Company By their grateful and obedient Servant Thomas Horsfield. The map was published by William H. Allen & Co., Leadenhall Street, London, 9 April 1852, and issued separately with Part 4 of T. Horsfield, J.J. Bennett, and R. Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores (London, 1852), at 6s. A large hand-coloured pen-and-ink map, measuring some 180cm. by 90cm., prepared by Horsfield to record his travels in Java in detail was sold at Sotheby’s, London, on 29 June 1971. It is inscribed, ‘A Map of the Island of Java, The Eastern portion from Blambangan to Tagal Constructed by Thomas Horsfield, M.D. Chiefly from personal Surveys during various journies[.] The Western portion from Cheribon to Bantam from the Map Engraved by John Walker Esqre., in illustration of the History of Java by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’. The map was formerly in possession of the present writer and has been used to describe Horsfield’s travels in Java.

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and 1802, and his compatriot, J.B.L.C. Th. Leschenault de la Tour (1773–1826) between 1803 and 1806, and even Blume between 1818 and 1826, those undertaken by Horsfield were far more extensive and were not matched until after the arrival of Junghuhn in Indonesia in 1835. He was not perhaps so accomplished a botanist as some of his predecessors, but his interests in other fields of natural history, particularly zoology, were wider, or at least became so, because when he arrived in Java in October 1801 his principal concern was with botany and materia medica, a knowledge of which he had gained during his early years at the Moravian schools in Bethlehem and Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and later when he was a medical student in the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas Horsfield was born at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and baptised on 12 May 1773, the third son of Timothy Horsfield Jr. (d.1789) and Juliana Sarah Horsfield (née Parsons, 1738–1808). His paternal grandfather, Timothy Horsfield Sr. (1708–73), was born in Liverpool, England, and in 1725 emigrated to New York and settled on Long Island where, with his brother Isaac, he entered the butchering trade. In 1731 he married Mary, daughter of John Doughty, another prominent Long Island butcher, and at about the same time came under the influence of Moravian doctrines through the activities of David Nitschmann (1696–1772) and Peter Böhler (1712–1775), to whom John Wesley owed his conversion. He became a member of the newly-organised Moravian congregation of New York, and his involvement in church affairs was such that when in 1748 he applied to the Moravian authorities at Bethlehem for permission to reside there he was asked to postpone his removal. His children, however, were entered at the Bethlehem schools, and he himself moved there in the following year. He was appointed Justice of the Peace of Northampton County in 1752 and in this capacity was actively involved in the defence of the town during the Seven Years War. In 1763 he was commissioned Colonel of the forces for the defence of the frontiers of Northampton County against Indian raids, but the appointment excited some jealousy and he was obliged to resign his commission and cease to be a Justice of the Peace. Some time afterwards he returned to Long Island where he and his wife both died in 1773.9 Horsfield’s father, Timothy Horsfield Jr., must have stayed on at Bethlehem after the return of his parents to New York for he married at Philadelphia on 14 October 1766 Juliana Sarah Parsons, daughter of William Parsons (d.1757),

J.B. McNair, ‘Thomas Horsfield – American Naturalist and Explorer’, Torreya, vol. 42 (1942), pp. 1–2.

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Surveyor-General and founder of Easton, Philadelphia.10 She gave birth to three sons: Timothy, who died in infancy, William, who was born in 1770 and died in 1845, and in May 1773, at a house in Market Street, Bethlehem, Thomas, the future naturalist of Indonesia. Timothy Horsfield Jr. died on 11 April 1789 and his wife on 17 January 1808, nearly 19 years later.11 Thomas Horsfield attended the Moravian schools at Bethlehem and Nazareth and showed an early interest in botany and the biological sciences. At Bethlehem he studied pharmacy under Dr. Otto,12 and served as a medical apprentice at the Pennsylvania Hospital between 1794 and 1799. During his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania he came into contact with a remarkable group of men, including Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton (1766–1815), who stimulated his interest in botany and materia medica;13 Dr. James Woodhouse (1770–1809), Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania and founder of the Chemical Society of Philadelphia, who was responsible for directing his attention to the importance of chemical analysis as applied to botanical and mineralogical subjects;14 and the Juliana Sarah Parsons was born at Philadelphia on 19 November 1738. McNair, Torreya, vol. 42 (1942), p. 2 wrongly gives this year as the date of her marriage.

10

J.W. Jordan, ‘William Parsons, Surveyor-General, and Founder of Easton, Pennsylvania’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 33 (1909), pp. 340–6; McNair, Torreya, vol. 42 (1942), p. 2.

11

McNair, Torreya, vol. 42 (1942), p. 2 tentatively identifies him as Dr. John Frederik Otto of Halle, who arrived in America from Europe in 1750, but as he died at Nazareth in 1779, when Horsfield was only six years old, this identification cannot be correct. It is equally unlikely that he was Dr. Bodo Otto (1711–87), who trained as a physician and surgeon in Germany and served in various medical capacities during the American War of Independence. His son, Dr. John Conrad Otto (1774–1844), graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1796, two years before Horsfield, and it may be to him that Horsfield refers in his thesis: An Experimental Dissertation on the Rhus Vernix, Rhus Radicans and Rhus Glabrum; Commonly Known in Pennsylvania by the Names of Poison-Ash, Poison-Vine and Common Sumach (Philadelphia, 1798), p. 47n.

12

Benjamin Smith Barton studied medicine in Edinburgh and London, where he became acquainted with Sir Joseph Banks. He graduated in medicine from the University of Göttingen in 1789, and after his return to Philadelphia he was appointed Professor of Natural History and Botany in the College of Philadelphia, which in 1791 was joined with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to form the University of Pennsylvania. Barton was later transferred to the chair in materia medica and in that capacity was an important influence on Horsfield, being almost certainly the one who suggested to him the topic of research for his dissertation arising from his own poisoning by Rhus vernix in 1785. He succeeded to the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania on the death of Benjamin Rush (note 15) in 1813 (DAB, vol. I (1927), pp. 17–18).

13

James Woodhouse was only three years older than Horsfield and was another major influence in directing his interest to materia medica. He graduated B.A. from the University of the State of Pennsylvania in 1787 and M.A. in 1790. He trained under Benjamin Rush and graduated M.D. in 1792 with an inaugural thesis entitled, On the Chemical and Medicinal Properties of the Persimmon Tree and the Analysis of Astringent Vegetables. The reception of this dissertation appears to have turned his interest more towards chemistry because in the same year he founded the Chemical Society of Philadelphia of which Horsfield became an early member. He was appointed to the chair of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania in 1795 and began an active programme of research. The chemical experiments he conducted to test the astringency of the Persimmon Tree formed the model of those adopted by Horsfield in investigating Rhus vernix and Rhus glabrum, and it is clear from the numerous references to him in his dissertation that Horsfield held him in the highest regard (DAB, vol. X (1936), pp. 491–2; H.S. Klickstein, ‘A Short History of the Professorship of Chemistry of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’, Bulletin History of Medicine, vol. 27 (1953), pp. 43–68).

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celebrated Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), Professor of Medicine and Clinical Practice in the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine.15 On 22 May 1798 Horsfield submitted for examination by the Trustees and Medical Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine an inaugural thesis entitled, An Experimental Dissertation on the Rhus Vernix, Rhus Radicans and Rhus Glabrum; Commonly Known in Pennsylvania by the Names of Poison-Ash, Poison-Vine and Common Sumach (Philadelphia, 1798).16 This presented a detailed clinical description of the toxic symptoms of poisoning by sumac and poison ivy and recorded the pharmacological action of the poisons in experiments conducted upon himself and various animals. The dissertation has been hailed as a ‘pioneer contribution in the history of experimental pharmacology in America’,17 but in it Horsfield disclaims all originality and states that his experiments are to be regarded only as an introduction to the subject.18 He writes that one of his principal objects in investigating the properties of the indigenous Rhus vernix was to determine if it contained the same juice as the Varnish Tree of Japan, described by the German physician and naturalist, Engelbrecht Kaempfer (1651–1716), in his Amoenitatum Exoticarum PoliticoPhysico-Medicarum (Lemgo, 1712).19 This, and other such books as J.B. Du Halde’s A Description of the Empire of China and Chinese Tartary (London, 1738–41), and C.P. Thunberg’s Travels (London, 1794–5), which are cited in the dissertation, show that even as a medical student Horsfield’s attention was focused on Asia and its botanical productions. Moreover, his experiments with American plant poisons would certainly have attracted him to the Upas Tree of Java (Antiaris toxicaria Benjamin Rush graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1768 and received further training at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. He served briefly as Surgeon-General of the Armies of the Middle Department during the American War of Independence and became a member of staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1783. In 1792, on the merging of the College of Philadelphia with the University of the State of Pennsylvania, he was appointed Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Practice. His influence on the development of the Medical Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania was considerable, but it is less easy to determine what precise influence he had on Horsfield (DAB, vol. VIII (1935), pp. 227–31).

15

Pages [viii], 88. Reprinted C. Caldwell, Medical Theses (Philadelphia, 1805), pp. 113–63. The thesis was printed by Charles Cist (1738–1805), who emigrated from Russia to America in 1769 and established a printing works at Philadelphia six years later in partnership with Melchior Styner (Steiner). Their publications included William Brown’s Pharmacopoeia Simplicorium (1778), the first pharmacopoeia published in America. The partnership was dissolved in 1781, after which Cist continued the printing firm on his own. Horsfield probably knew him at Bethlehem before he published his dissertation, and he corresponded with Cist’s son, Lewis, from Java in 1806 (note 6).

16

DAB, vol. V (1932–3), p. 236.

17

Horsfield, An Experimental Dissertation, pp. v–vi.

18

Pages 791–4. Horsfield reproduces Kaempfer’s description in his dissertation, pp. 85–6.

19

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Leschenault), which had been made popular by J.N. Foersch’s sensational account in The London Magazine of 1783, and by Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) in his poem, The Botanic Garden (London, 1789–91).20 The latter work, indeed, is actually cited by Horsfield in his dissertation. After he arrived in Java from Philadelphia in October 1801, Horsfield was given permission by the Dutch authorities to remain in the island and practise as a physician. By Government Resolution of 12 January 1802, he was appointed Chief Surgeon (Opperchirurgijn) in the colonial army under orders to render service in a medical capacity and to investigate the indigenous herbs and plants of Buitenzorg (Bogor) and the highlands, and to submit to the Government periodic reports of his discoveries. He had requested such employment because of his experience in natural history, especially botany. 21 Shortly after his arrival, he contracted some kind of climatic fever and in order to recover his health he went into the country south of Batavia. It was there, in the districts of Bogor and Cianjur, that he commenced his scientific researches in Indonesia. He was instructed by the Government to direct his attention primarily to the useful products of the vegetable kingdom, and especially to the substances used by the Indonesians in the cure of diseases.22 After his return to Batavia he handed to his superior, J.G.D. Paschen, Head of Surgery and Town Apothecary,23 a report dated 6 March 1802 containing a list of trees and plants of the Bogor region based on the Linnean system of classification, together with their Malay names. The report also contained observations on a number of plants whose efficacy and use he had noted and which he considered merited further investigation. He concluded his report with the wish, transmitted by Paschen to the Governor-General Johannes Siberg (1740– 1817) on 15 March 1802, to undertake at the beginning of April an exploratory journey beyond Cisarua and Cipanas to Cianjur and to survey Gunung Pangrango and Gunung J.N. Foersch, ‘Description of the Poison-tree, in the Island of Java’, The London Magazine: or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, vol. LII (1783), pp. 512–17; John Bastin, ‘New Light on J. N. Foersch and the Celebrated Poison Tree of Java’, JMBRAS, vol. LVIII, pt. 2 (1985), pp. 25–44.

20

F. De Haan, Priangan: De Preanger-Regentschappen onder het Nederlandsch Bestuur tot 1811 (Batavia, 1910–12), vol. IV, p. 561.

21

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. i.

22

Jacob George Diederik Paschen was a Mecklenberger from Schwerin in Germany. He held the post of StadsApotheker from 1788 until 1807, and was Head of Surgery from 29 May 1795 (Sian Nio Tan, Zur Geschichte der Pharmazie in Niederländisch-Indien (Indonesien) 1602–1945 (Würzburg, 1976), p. 37). He appears to have remained on friendly terms with Horsfield during the British period in Java, and on 14 October 1812 made his house at Batavia available for a meeting of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen at which Horsfield presented some of his reports on natural history. He died at Batavia on 10 March 1814.

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Salak.24 The Government had already indicated its approval of Horsfield’s activities in the Bogor region by granting him an additional allowance of 30 Rijksdaalders per month,25 and the unusual degree of freedom accorded to him, contrasting so markedly with official policy,26 is a further indication of the great importance which the Dutch authorities attached to the study of materia medica in Java. During the remainder of 1802 he made several excursions through the Priangan regions of west Java, and visited Lengkong, though not Teluk Pelabuhanratu. In the Postscript to Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores (London, 1838–52), he states that at this time he travelled as far as the southern coast of the island, but on the map in the book illustrating his travels the place is not shown. It would appear from the course of his journey that he visited Sukabumi, but De Haan has suggested that this visit may have occurred much later, presumably towards the end of 1818 when he was again in the region.27 It is certainly true that he visited Cianjur and Gunung Gede on this later occasion, but there is no evidence to suggest that he proceeded further south.28 This being so, the line on the map in Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, which branches at Gekorong and forms a kind of circle, represents his journey during 1802, when he visited Sukabumi and also climbed Gunung Gede (2958m). His report of April 1802 on his activities was submitted by Paschen to Governor-General Siberg on 17 May 1802,29 and at the end of that year, after his return to Batavia, he communicated to the Government his further observations relating to the botany and materia medica of the districts south of Batavia.30 Besides the descriptions of new plants, the report contained an examination of their pharmacological effects, a discussion about the methods of therapy employed by the Indonesians, and an index of Latin and Indonesian names.31 H.A.C. Boelman, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskruidcultuur in Nederlandsch Oost-Indië (Leiden, 1936), p. 58.

24

De Haan, Priangan, vol. IV, p. 561.

25

A policy characterised as one of secrecy by De Haan, who cites the testimony of the Dutch Resident at Pekalongan in 1812 to the effect that although he had been domiciled for a long period at the capital of the Residency, he had rarely been further inland than 10 paal (about 15 kilometres) as this ‘was seldom permitted under the former Government’ (Priangan, vol. IV, p. 562). De Haan affirms that the ignorance of the interior of Java at the beginning of the nineteenth century when Horsfield commenced his travels was probably great and universal. See note 149.

26

De Haan, Priangan, vol. IV, p. 561 See Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xv.

27

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 629.

28

Boelman, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskruidcultuur, p. 58.

29

T. Horsfield, ‘Narrative of a Journey thro’ the Island of Java, Addressed to the Honble Thomas Raffles Lieutenant Governor of the Island of Java and its dependencies’, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 12v–12r.

30

Boelman, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskruidcultuur, p. 58.

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The report was submitted for the inspection of the recently reorganised Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences), which had been founded in 1778 and was at this time under the general charge of the Braband pastor, Dr. Johan Theodoor Ross (1755–1824).32 The report, together with Horsfield’s programme of future research, was handed for consideration to a committee of the Batavian Society consisting of two of its Directing Members (Dirigerende Leden), the physician Dr. Willem Michael Dockers, and the merchant, Jan Kloprogge. The plan proposed by Horsfield, according to a modern authority, might even today serve as the basis for a complete investigation of Indonesian medicinal herbs.33 It proposed, among other things, determining their chemical analysis, and their application to the human body to establish by exact experimentation the correct dosages, the gradual preparation of a special pharmacopoeia for the region, the planting and utilisation of European medicinal plants, the propagation of useful indigenous plants, and, eventually, the establishment of a Hortus Medicus, the cost of which was to be met from the sale of the produce.34 On 15 February 1803 Dockers and Kloprogge reported favourably to the Bataviaasch Genoootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen on Horsfield’s plan and report. After emphasising the desirability of recording the places and the nature of the ground where the plants were discovered, they proposed that the Society should recommend him and his plan to the Government so that the promised benefits could be made more speedily available for the public good. They also urged that he should be paid a monthly salary, with a premium for every authenticated discovery of worth, and be provided with free accommodation in which to carry out his researches. These proposals were accepted by the Society, which in turn recommended him to the Government as a man who was in all probability qualified to make botanical discoveries in Java, conduct the necessary experiments, and indicate the medical use of his discoveries. The Society also pointed to the tragic fact that although the island was full of wholesome herbs and plants, little knowledge of them was possessed by Europeans and little medical use made of them. The hope was therefore expressed that the opportunity of employing him would not be lost. De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 633–4.

32

Boelman, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskruidcultuur, p. 59.

33

There was a short-lived Hortus Medicus at Batavia during the 1760s south of the old Rijswijk fort, and another ‘new’ garden was established by F. Schouwman further to the south during the 1780s. Sir George Staunton (1737–1801) visited it early in 1793 when members of Lord Macartney’s embassy to China called at Batavia (An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (Dublin, 1798), vol. I, pp. 203–6.

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The recommendation of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen was accepted by the Government, and on 3 March 1803 it was resolved that during the period of his employment in carrying out botanical investigations, conducting experiments, and determining the medicinal use of his discoveries, he would be paid a monthly salary of 200 Rijksdaalders commencing on 1 March of that year, that he would be entitled to the payment of a bonus for every proven discovery of worth, and that he would be provided with ancilliary accommodation in the Buitenhospitaal at Batavia.35 This decision by the Government to support the study of materia medica in Indonesia was important, though a modern critic, writing from the viewpoint of pharmacological botany, considers that the results were disproportionate to the opportunities offered because Horsfield exceeded his instructions, as laid down by Government Resolution, by broadening his investigations to include other fields of natural history.36 In the Postscript to Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Horsfield states that his appointment at this time permitted him to extend the scope of his enquiries to include zoology and geology, although materia medica was the chief object of his attention. In his unpublished, ‘Narrative of a Journey thro’ the Island of Java’, which he wrote for Raffles in 1812, he states that he was engaged ‘particularly to collect and examine the various objects employed by the natives in the cure of their diseases’, but he then goes on to state that although his principal object when he commenced his journeys eastward of Batavia in 1804 had been ‘the collection and examination of plants, as well in a Botanical as in a Medical and Œconomical point of view’, he had made use of the opportunity afforded by his travels ‘to take a general view of the Mineralogical state of the Island, of the Mountains, Volcanoes, and Mineral-Wells, and as far as the opportunity allowed, of the Quadrupeds and Birds’.37 While there is nothing to suggest that he was permitted at this time to

Notulen … Bataviaasche Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Batavia, 1892), vol. XXX, Bijl. IV, pp. xviii–xxii; J.A. van der Chijs, Nederlandsch-Indische Plakaatboek 1602–1811 (Batavia, The Hague, 1885– 1900), vol. XIII, pp. 597–600; Boelman, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskruidcultuur, pp. 60–62. The Buitenhospitaal was founded in 1743 during the administration of Governor-General Gustaaf Willem van Imhoff (1705–50) some three paal (about 4.5 kilometres) from Batavia near the small fort of Noordwijk (F. De Haan, Oud Batavia Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919 (Batavia, 1922), vol. I, pp. 337–42). The hospital would have been in Horsfield’s time much as it was depicted by Johannes Rach (1720–83) some 25 years earlier (J. de Loos-Haaxman, Johannes Rach en Zijn Werk (Batavia, 1928), p. 35). It was demolished in 1834.

35

Boelman, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Geneeskruidcultuur, pp. 62–3.

36

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 12v, 13v–14r.

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pursue zoological research, there is evidence that he applied for and obtained permission of the Government to extend his interests to volcanology and geology, in particular to make a chemical analysis of the volcanic ash which was showered on Batavia and its neighbourhood on 6–7 April 1803 by the eruption of Gunung Guntur (Donderberg).38 In a series of experiments, he demonstrated that the constituent parts of this ash, or ‘sand’, corresponded with the usual volcanic emission, and that it was of the same composition as powdered lava.39 Horsfield stayed in or near Batavia during most of 1803. A Government Resolution of 9 September of that year refers to his having been engaged during previous months in botanical investigations in the neighbourhood of the city, and to his having been involved in the examination of Cipanas water.40 In the same period, and during the early months of the following year, he submitted to the Government a general account of the vegetable productions in the immediate environs of Batavia, and a medical account and chemical analysis of a number of plants.41 In addition to these reports, three of which were subsequently published in the Verhandelingen of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in 1814,42 he also submitted to the Government a number of smaller unspecified tracts on natural history subjects.43 Having been so long confined to Batavia and its environs during these investigations, he requested permission of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van De Haan, Priangan, vol. IV, p. 561 refers to two Government Resolutions of 8 and 22 April 1803 which relate to Horsfield’s activities at this time, the dates appearing to bear some relationship to the eruption of Gunung Guntur.

38

T. Horsfield, ‘Scheikundige Ontleding van een Vulkaansch Zand en een Yzer-erts’, VBG, vol. VII, no. III (1814), pp. 1–8. Although printed in 1814, the report was undoubtedly written in 1803. An English translation, with a flow-diagram illustrating Horsfield’s analytical scheme for volcanic ash, and an appreciation of its scientific importance, is to be found in John Bastin and D.T. Moore, ‘The geological researches of Dr Thomas Horsfield in Indonesia in 1801–1819’, Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (hist. Ser.), vol. 10, no. 3 (1982), pp. 97–101. Horsfield found that 200 grains of volcanic ash from Gunung Guntur consisted of 5 grains of magnesia, 12 grains of calcareous earth (lime), 10 grains of iron (iron oxides), 13 grains of alum earth (alumina), and 158 grains of siliceous earth (silica). An analysis of the volcanic ash from the same mountain made by P.J. Maier and J.C.A. Diederichs at Batavia in 1843 produced very different results (Junghuhn, Java, vol. II, pp. 97–102), Diederichs attributing the difference to the improvement in chemical analysis since Horsfield’s time. Junghuhn, however, rightly emphasised the fact that the same volcano would throw out different products during different eruptions.

39

De Haan, Priangan, vol. IV, p. 561.

40

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 12v–13r.

41

T. Horsfield, ‘Beknopte Beschryving, van het Crinum Asiaticum’, VBG, vol. VII, no. V (1814), pp. 1–6; T. Horsfield, ‘Beschryving van den Gatip-Boom’, VBG, vol. VII, no. VI (1814), pp. 1–13; T. Horsfield, ‘Scheikundige Ontleding der Vruchten van den Rarak-Boom, Sapindus Saponaria, van Linnaeus’, VBG, vol. VII, no. VII (1814), pp. 1–14.

42

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 13r.

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Kunsten en Wetenschappen early in 1804 to undertake a journey to Cirebon to collect plants, and afterwards to proceed along the whole length of the north-eastern coast of Java. This request was considered by the Directing Members of the Society on 27 February 1804, and a resolution favouring the plan was forwarded to the Government which approved the proposal on 30 March, and agreed to advise the Resident at Cirebon and the Governor of the North-East Coast at Semarang of Horsfield’s investigations and request them to afford him every assistance. The latter official was also to be asked to provide him with a capable pupil from the Semarang Marine School to assist in the preparation of the necessary drawings.44 In addition, the Government agreed to advance him 1,500 Rijksdaalders in lieu of his monthly salary.45 Horsfield left Batavia by sea for Cirebon in May 1804 with the intention of making an excursion through the eastern districts of the Priangan as far as Bandung, and then proceeding along the north-eastern coast of Java. The first part of this journey occupied nearly six months and was commenced in the regions south of the capital of Cirebon.46 He then traversed the south-eastern ridges of Gunung Ciremay (3078m),47 visiting the village of Ragawajana on its eastern slope, and two hot wells south of the village, near the main road.48 The whole of the surrounding district, and the slopes of Gunung Ciremay, particularly engaged his attention because of the abundance of regular-shaped basalt rocks.49 He next proceeded in a south-westerly direction to Panumbangan, where the River Tandu formed the boundary between Cirebon and the Priangan, and he visited Gunung Telagabodas

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. ii states that he obtained the assistance of a draughtsman at Semarang in 1804 (cf. VBG, vol. VII (1814), Voorberigt, p. iv). A note concerning the Semarang Marine School in 1805 states that in May of that year two pupils named C. Coolen and Jan van Stralendorff had left with Horsfield for Surakarta and the eastern corner of Java to sketch plants, herbs, and ‘Bramin antiquities’. In the following year, two pupils of the school, possibly the same two, were also placed at his disposal (De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 583), and he made certain proposals to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in that year about their financial support (note 98). From 1808 a certain M.L. Doppert, presumably J.G. Doppert (note 145), is recorded as his principal artist, and he appears to have stayed with him during his remaining period in Indonesia.

44

Notulen, vol. XXX (1892), Bijl. V, pp. xxiii–xxiv.

45

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 14v.

46

Horsfield gives a description of Gunung Ciremay in his essay, ‘On the Mineralogy of Java. Essay I. Account of the Island from its Western Extremity to the Mountain of Sumbing, Situated near the Longitude of Samarang. In a Communication to the Honorable the Lieutenant Governor, Thomas Stamford Raffles, Esq. Dated April 1812’, VBG, vol. VIII, no. V (1816), pp. 41–2, where he notes that eruptions of the mountain in 1772 and 1805 had been followed by severe pestilence in the lower districts of the Regency.

47

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 14v; Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. V (1816), p. 42.

48

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. V (1816), p. 43.

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(2201m) before proceeding to Gunung Galunggung (2168m), where he first noted the prevalence of limestone covering lava and basalt in the vicinity of the central mountains of Java.50 In the limestone region, forming part of the Regency of Parakanmuntjang, he discovered a well whose water, after chemical analysis, he demonstrated to possess many of the properties of European seltzer-water. His report on this subject was later published in the Verhandelingen of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen,51 but his report on Gunung Galunggung, which he wrote at this time, is no longer extant,52 although some information from it is incorporated in his essay, ‘On the Mineralogy of Java’, which was published in the same journal in 1816. In the southern part of Timbanganten, near the village of Taragong, he explored the countryside and climbed the eastern slopes of Gunung Guntur (2249m), the most active volcano of Java, whose volcanic ash, thrown out as far as Batavia in the previous year, he had subjected to chemical analysis. He spent a considerable part of June 1804 examining the various lava flows on the eastern side of the mountain, the most recent of which, he learned from the Dutch Overseer of the coffee plantations of Bandung, were four years old, and not completely cool at the base of the mountain.53 He also made a detailed examination of its crater from which he observed a prospect ‘in extent of space & in quantity of subjects can be

Ibid., pp. 35–6; Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 15r. There is no specific reference to Horsfield having visited Gunung Telagabodas at this time but he later recorded a description of it (Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. V (1816), p. 34) and it is fairly certain that he visited the mountain in 1804.

50

T. Horsfield, ‘Berigt, van eene met Vaste-Lucht Bezwangerde Bronwel. in het Regentsc[h]ap Parakan-Moentjan’, VBG, vol. VII, no. VIII (1814), pp. 1–12; R.J.L. Kussendrager, Natuur- en Aardrijkskundige Beschrijving van het Eiland Java (Amsterdam, 1861), pp. 123–5.

51

A reference to this report is contained in Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 15v.

52

Although Gunung Guntur gave out some ash in April 1803 there was apparently no lava flow. Horsfield (VBG, vol. VIII no. V (1816), p. 29) states that the most recent lava flow he examined in 1804 ‘was thrown out in 1800’. This information was derived from the Opziener of the coffee plantation of Bandung, who had lived in the region for eight years (T. Horsfield, ‘Remarks on some Hills in the Jacatra Preanger Lands’, BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. I, no. 6, fol. 63). He does not mention him by name but he was Sergeant Pieter Louis, who took up his post in 1797 and occupied it until 1807 (De Haan, Priangan, vol. IV, p. 969). As Horsfield’s observations were limited to the eastern side of Gunung Guntur, it is possible that the lava flows occurred on the western slopes during the eruption of 1800, although he excluded this possibility: ‘It is remarkable that all Eruptions of late years, run down along the East side; it happens chiefly during the rainy Season: Can the violent Western winds of this Season have any effect thereon in giving the Lava Streams this direction?’ (Horsfield, BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. I, no. 6, fol. 63). Andries de Wilde (Chapter Five, note 54), who between 1809 and 1811 resided at Tarogong from where Horsfield made his ascent, makes some interesting observations on Gunung Guntur in his book, De Preanger Regentschappen op Java Gelegen (Amsterdam, 1830), pp. 3–5, the uncoloured lithograph plate facing p. 3 being the first printed pictorial depiction of the mountain, probably after a drawing by his younger brother, Christoffel Steitz de Wilde.

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surpassed by few in this Island’.54 His account of Gunung Guntur, written during 1804 for the Directing Members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, is extant in English translation,55 as is his chemical analysis of the water from the hot mineral springs at the base of the mountain.56 From Gunung Guntur he travelled to Majalaya and then on to Bandung.57 In July 1804 he proceeded northwards to the village of Ciratung, following the road through the forest which marked the gradual ascent to one of the largest and best known mountains of Java, Gunung Tangkubanprau (2076m). An active volcano, it had not erupted for a considerable time prior to his visit, though it omitted sulphureous fumes from the fissures inside the crater. He descended the southern wall of the crater by means of ropes tied to shrubs at the rim, the circumference of which he estimated to be nearly one-and-a-half miles. The oval lake towards the western side of the crater was about 100 yards across and contained hot bubbling white-coloured water, which he later analysed. A full account of his activities on Gunung Tangkubanprau, including a detailed description of its crater, is recorded in his paper, ‘On the Mineralogy of Java’, which he wrote in 1812.58 It is clear that the crater which Horsfield examined, but did not name, was Kawah Ratu. He does not mention the second large crater, Kawah Upas, the so-called Poisonous crater,59 which seemingly gives substance to the suspicion voiced by Johannes Olivier Jz. (c. 1780–1858) in his book, Land- en Zeetogten in Nederland’s

Horsfield, BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. I, no. 6, fol. 65.

54

Ibid., fols. 53–68. A second copy of this report is in BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 36, no. 8, fols. 85–92.

55

Horsfield, BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. I, no. 6, fols. 67–8: Appendix: ‘Short Account of the Chemical Analysis of the Mineral Springs at the foot of the Thunder Mountain’.

56

This route is represented on the map in Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, and appears to be the only route he could possibly have taken. In Horsfield, BM:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 16r–16v, he simply states that during his journey ‘from Parakkan-Moontjang to Bandong I made an excursion to another mountain the Tankooban Prow …’.

57

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. V (1816), pp. 19–25.

58

Ibid.; Cf. Raffles, The History of Java (London, 1817), vol. I, pp. 13–15n. The earliest extant drawings of Gunung Tangkubanprau are by Dr. Joseph Arnold executed late in 1815, including one drawing of the bottom of the crater taken from the north-western side of Kawu Ratu (Chapter Five, note 55). The first accurate depictions of Kawah Ratu and Kawah Upas, based on a survey made in 1832 by Dr. S. Müller and P. van Oort, are those represented in the topographical Plates 74–6 in C.J. Temminck, Verhandelingen over de Natuurlijke Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche overzeesche bezittingen . . . Land en Volkenkunde (Leiden, 1839– 47). The first graphic depiction of Kawah Ratu is an uncoloured lithographic plate in De Wilde, De Preanger Regentschappen of Java Gelegen, facing p. 10, after a drawing by Christoffel Steitz de Wilde (Chapter Five, note 55), who ascended Gunung Tangkubanprau in the company of his brother, Andries de Wilde, and a party of Indonesians in about 1812. On this occasion a sample of water was taken from Kawah Upas and given to Raffles for analysis in England, but nothing more was heard of it. The ascents of Gunung Tangkubanprau by the De Wilde brothers and by Dr. Arnold in 1815 (note 65) are not recorded by Junghuhn, Java, vol. II, pp. 49–50.

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Indië (Amsterdam, 1827–30), that he did not climb the mountain at all, the charge resting on the testimony of local Indonesians.60 The Dutch Resident of the Priangan adduced similar evidence in 1821 to allege that he had not climbed Gunung Papandayan (2622m) either, or, indeed, Gunung Guntur, whereas the Belgian painter, Antoine Auguste Joseph Payen (1792–1853), ‘from a love of art’, had climbed all the mountains in the Residency, including, in 1821, Gunung Papandayan.61 The fact is, however, that Horsfield never claimed to have climbed Gunung Papandayan, and in his essay ‘On the Mineralogy of Java’, written as late as 1812, he defers giving a description of the mountain until, as he states, he has had an opportunity of making ‘a more minute examination’ of it,62 an opportunity which never occurred. Indonesian testimony with regard to Gunung Guntur probably relates to the year 1818 when he was making his last hurried journey through west Java and had no time to climb the mountain, but it ignores his two earlier visits in 1804 and 1812, on the first of which he made his ascent. In the case of Gunung Tangkubanprau, which he explicitly states he ascended in July 1804,63 it has always remained a mystery why he made no reference to the second of the large craters, the more so as Junghuhn, who climbed the mountain in July 1837 in the company of Dr. E.A. Fritze (d.1839), considered that it was impossible not to see Kawah Upas from the southern rim of the first crater where Horsfield made his ascent. He never doubted Horsfield’s account, however, and suggested, mistakenly, that there may have been changes in the crater formation between the time of Horsfield’s visit in 1804 and his own 33 years later.64 Junghuhn was also mistaken in his other conclusion as it was, in fact, quite possible to miss seeing Kawah Upas from Kawah Ratu as the British naval surgeon and naturalist Dr. Joseph Arnold (1782–1818) found when he climbed Gunung Tangkubanprau in November 1815, carrying Horsfield’s manuscript account with him as a guide: ‘Indeed it is very possible for a person to examine the hot crater and not see the cold one; — which would have been my Vol. I, p. 327.

60

De Haan, Priangan, vol. II, p. 410, n.1 (1), § 167). On the artist A.A.J. Payen, whose magnificent paintings of Indonesia are in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, see E. Key, Opdragt aan de Schilder A.A.J. Payen in de Oost (Doctoraalscriptie Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1976) [stencil]; John Bastin and Bea Brommer, Nineteenth Century Prints and Illustrated Books of Indonesia (Utrecht, Antwerp, 1979), pp. 12–13, 324–5, and P.B.R. Carey, Journal de mon Voyage a Jocja Karta en 1825. The Outbreak of the Java War (1825–30) As Seen by a Painter [A.A.J. Payen] (Paris, 1988). Horsfield met Payen in Java in 1818, evidence of their meeting being a drawing of a Javanese sculpture by the Belgian artist inscribed, Souvenir de A. Payen au docteur Horsfield, in the British Library: MSS.Eur.F.54: fol. 28.

61

Horsfield, VBG, VIII, no. V (1816), p. 28.

62

Ibid., p. 19.

63

Junghuhn, Java, vol. II, pp. 60–1.

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case if I had not heard of it before going up the mountain; for the guides seemed to be very anxious to leave the place as soon as possible’.65 After surveying Gunung Tangkubanprau, and completing his botanical collections in the districts round Bandung, Horsfield set out on the return journey to Cirebon, this time along the road via Sumedang.66 There he made a detour to explore the region of Gunung Tampomas (1684m),67 and he again left the road to investigate the northern foothills of Gunung Ciremay, which he had skirted a few months earlier. On this occasion he was able to explore a number of limestone caves in the region, and he also examined several hot springs which he later described.68 He arrived back at Cirebon in November 1804, having spent some six months on the journey. Later, he travelled from Cirebon along the north-eastern coast of Java through Brebes, Tegal, Pemalang, Pekalongan, Batang and Kendal to Semarang, observing during his journey Gunung Slamet (3432m), south of Tegal, Gunung Sundoro (3151m), Gunung Sumbing (3371m), and Gunung Prau (2565m), south-east of Pekalongan,69 all of which, with the exception of Gunung Sumbing, he was later to climb. At Semarang he obtained the services of a pupil-draughtsman from the Semarang Marine School70 and other necessities for the next part of his journey, which was to be directed southwards through territories controlled by the Netherlands authorities to those constituting the Principalities of central Java. He left Semarang in December for Srondol and Ungaran, making a detour at the latter place to climb Gunung Ungaran (2050m). Near its summit he examined the remains of an extinguished crater in which he found traces of a sulphureous lake and other features similar to those of Gunung Tangkubanprau. He also investigated on its slopes and in its immediate vicinity a number of mineral wells. Gunung Ungaran, he noted, ‘is almost entirely covered with vegetation, which on the fertile descents,

J. Arnold, ‘Description of a Volcanic Mountain on the Island of Java, called Tankuban-praw’, Batavia, 1 December 1815. The ‘Description’ was submitted by Arnold to the Linnean Society of London, and is partly reproduced in The New Monthly Magazine, vol. VII, no. 39 (1 April 1817), p. 241. Accompanying the ‘Description’ are three watercolour drawings by Arnold of Gunung Tangkubanprau which are now preserved in the Library of the Linnean Society of London (John Bastin, ‘A Further Note on Dr Joseph Arnold’, JMBRAS, vol. XLVII, pt. 2 (1974), p. 149.

65

Horsfield, BM:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 17v.

66

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. V (1816), pp. 34–5.

67

A reference to this account, which is not extant, is contained in Horsfield, BM:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 18r.

68

Ibid.; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. ii.

69

Note 44.

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is extremely luxurious’. Few parts of the island, he added, ‘furnish a more copious field for examination and collection’.71 He proceeded next to Salatiga and then on to Ampel and Boyolali, where he headed westwards to explore Gunung Merbabu (3142m). He closely examined the environs of the mountain and climbed part of the way to the summit which he found covered with profuse vegetation.72 At Kopeng and Sala he found growing the common culinary vegetables of Europe as well as peaches, raspberries, and wild strawberries, and at the latter place he collected many specimens of mountain flora, including Parochetus maculatus (Parochetus communis Buchanan-Hamilton ex D. Don), which was later described by Bennett in Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores (Tab. XXXIV, pp. 162–4). Sala is situated on an elevated ridge between Gunung Merbabu and Gunung Merapi (2911m), the principal mountain of central Java, which had erupted with such violence in 1803 that a large part of its peak had collapsed, considerably altering its shape.73 He climbed to the summit where he found the remains of a large extinguished crater, but it was not until 1810 that he was able to carry out a detailed investigation.74 He appears to have returned to Salatiga before proceeding in July 1805 to Yogyakarta, the capital of the most powerful of the Javanese Principalities, where he arrived the same month. He travelled via Klaten and visited the ancient Javanese monuments of Prambanan, which were then being surveyed by Lieutenant-Engineer Hermanus Christiaan Cornelius (1774–1833) under the direction of the Governor of the North-East Coast, Nicolaus Engelhard (1761–1831).75 These and other Horsfield, BM:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 19r–19v. For Horsfield’s botanical discoveries on Gunung Ungaran, see Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, pp. 43–6, 202–4.

71

Horsfield, BM:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 19v.

72

Horsfield’s statement about a ‘severe eruption’ of Gunung Merapi in 1803 has apparently gone unrecorded.

73

Horsfield in Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. ii mistakenly gives the year 1804, instead of 1805, as the date of his ascent of Gunung Merapi. Junghuhn (Java, vol. II, pp. 417–18) does not mention Horsfield’s ascent of the mountain in either 1805 or 1810, which is understandable as the Postscript was not published until 1852, by which time Volumes I–II of Junghuhn’s book were in print. Indeed, it is possible that Horsfield wrote the Postscript in response to the book. Certainly he had already indicated on his ‘Mineralogical Sketch [Map] of the Island of Java’ (1812), which was printed as an insert on the large map of Java engraved by John Walker for Raffles’s The History of Java (London, 1817), that he had examined the crater of Gunung Merapi in 1810, and this was overlooked, or ignored by Junghuhn. It was near the summit of the mountain that Horsfield first noticed the grass which the Indonesians collected to feed their horses and which J.J. Bennett later named after him, Ataxia horsfieldii [Hierochloe horsfieldii (Kunth) Maxim] in Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Tab. III, pp. 8–14.

74

On Nicolaus Engelhard, see notes 91, 94. H.C. Cornelius was born in Amsterdam and arrived in Indonesia in 1791 as a 17-year-old naval cadet and later trained as an engineer. He was promoted to Ensign Engineer in 1798, Lieutenant in 1803, Captain in 1807, and Major in 1809. Between 1805 and 1807 he helped survey the antiquities at Prambanan (N.J. Krom, Inleiding tot de Hindoe-Javaansche Kunst (The Hague, 1923), vol. I, p. 5), and he probably met Horsfield during his visit there. Indeed, he may have been one of the important

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complexes which Horsfield visited during his stay in the island made a powerful impression on him, as is evidenced by the numerous drawings he made and collected of Javanese antiquities.76 In directing his path to Yogyakarta, it was his intention to explore the range of hills which stretch along the southern coast of the island,77 and in the Postscript to Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores he states that he actually visited the southern coast, presumably south of Kretek. From there he returned to Bantul before setting off in a north-easternly direction to Surakarta, which he reached in August. He then made an excursion of some 30 miles eastwards to Gunung Lawu (3265m), which he climbed, discovering two craters, one extinct and the other active. Having approached close to the summit on the eastern side of the mountain, he entered a valley formed by earlier eruptions and his further course was stopped by the heat and fumes.78 After this excursion he undertook another in a south-easterly direction from Surakarta as far as the boundary of Kedawang, where his attention was chiefly engaged in collecting and examining the vegetable productions of these forest districts and in further exploring the range of southern hills which take their rise near Gunung Lawu.79 In October 1805 he proceeded northwards from Surakarta influences in stimulating Horsfield’s interest in Javanese antiquities. A drawing showing Cornelius and other Dutch officers at work on Candi Sewu at Prambanan in 1807 is in the Horsfield collection of drawings in the British Museum (note 76). During the British period in Java, Cornelius acted as Civil Surveyor and Superintendent of Buildings at Semarang, and during 1812–13 he was again engaged in survey work at Prambanan. In 1814 he helped in the restoration of Borobodur, and later that year he surveyed the antiquities on the Dieng Plateau (N.J. Krom, ‘De Eerste Opname van het Diëng-Plateau. Handschrift van H.C. Cornelius’, BKI, vol. 75 (1919), pp. 384–437). He was appointed Director of the Military School at Semarang in 1818 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He left Indonesia for the Netherlands in 1823 and died at Amsterdam 10 years later. A number of his drawings of Javanese antiquities are in the Raffles Collection, British Museum, and some of these served as models for the plates in Raffles’s The History of Java. The main body of his drawings is in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden (J.F. Stutterheim, De Teekeningen van Javaansche Oudheden in het Rijksmuseum van Ethnografie (Leiden, 1933)). See also De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 517–22; J. Terwen-De Loos, Nederlandse schilders en tekenaars in de Oost 17de–20ste eeuw (Amsterdam, 1972), pp 26–7; Bastin and Brommer, Nineteenth Century Prints and Illustrated Books of Indonesia, p. 315. Horsfield’s large collection of drawings of Javanese antiquities is preserved in the British Library (M. Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1969), vol. II, pp. 446–65). He was among the first Europeans to appreciate these antiquities and he visited virtually all the important complexes during his travels in the island, including Candi Panataran (Raffles, The History of Java, vol. II, pp. 38–40) of which he is credited as being the ‘re-discoverer’ (Krom, Inleiding tot de Hindoe-Javaansche Kunst, vol. I, p. 6; vol. II, pp. 244–84). He wrote informatively on the antiquities of eastern Java, and his report on the subject is printed in Raffles’s The History of Java, vol. II, pp. 33 et seq. Due to careless reading, his report has often been attributed to Raffles, who has been wrongly credited with having written the first account of the antiquities of Singasari (note 91). See also J.E. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, ‘Which European First Recorded the Unique Dvārapāla of Barabudur?’, BKI, vol. 138 (1982), pp. 285–94.

76

Horsfield, BM:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 21r.

77

Ibid., fols. 22v–23r. He states that his remarks on Gunung Lawu would be collected ‘in a separate paper’, which does not appear to have been written.

78

Ibid., fol. 23r–23v.

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to Grobogan to investigate the numerous salt wells near the village of Kuwu, which extend for several miles in circumference and which, like the one he described in the Gunung Gulunggung region of west Java,80 furnish mineral and saline waters for medicinal use. A number of drawings of the drying and manufacture of salt made by Horsfield at this time are extant in the collections of the British Library.81 But the chief object of his journey was to see the mud wells near Kuwu which shot mud into the air at regular intervals, a phenomenon he rightly connected with volcanic activity in the region.82 On his return to Surakarta, he considered that his investigations in central Java were sufficiently completed to take advantage of the flooding of the Solo River by early rains to travel by boat to Gresik on the north-eastern coast, and he accordingly left Surakarta with his two young draughtsmen from the Semarang Marine School on 9 November 1805.83 At this season of the year, a large number of boats from Surakarta carried rice, coffee, pepper, and other local produce to Gresik and Surabaya to exchange for salt and other commodities, the journey taking from three to eight days.84 His journey took nine days during which he passed through the districts of Sokawati, Jogorogo, Madiun and Blora, and on through the Dutch-controlled coastal Regencies of Tuban, Sedayu and Gresik, collecting botanical specimens on the way. In his report of the journey to the Directing Members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, written at Surabaya on 31 March 1806, he mentions particularly the jati forests in the districts of Jogorogo and Blora, and states that he made a catalogue with a number of dried specimens for presentation to the Society.85 These specimens can no longer be traced due to the fact that most of his plant specimens in the Natural History Museum, London, the Herbarium at Bogor, and other places lack locality identifications.86 Even so, he is regarded as one of the pioneer investigators of the flora of the jati forests in Java.87 Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. VIII (1814), pp. 1–12.

80

Archer, British Drawings, vol. II, pp. 448–9.

81

Horsfield, BM:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 23v–26r.

82

T. Horsfield, ‘Over de Rivier van Solo in een brief aan de Dirigerende Leden van het Bataviasche Genootschap’, VBG, vol. VII, no. IV (1814), pp. 1–2.

83

Ibid., pp. 4–5; Raffles, The History of Java, vol. I, p. 18. Raffles’s account is taken from Horsfield, BM:MSS. Eur.F.148/46, fols. 29r–30r.

84

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IV (1814), p. 4.

85

Cf. Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana, ser. I, vol. 1, p. 244.

86

J.G.B. Beumée, Floristisch-Analytische Onderzoekingen van de Korte Flora in Kunstmatig Aangelegde Djatiplantsoenen op Java, in Verband met de Ontwikkeling van den Djati-opstand (Wageningen, 1922), pp. 13–15.

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He reached Gresik on 18 November 1805 and immediately proceeded to Surabaya, where he spent three weeks carefully attending to the plants and medicinal herbs he had collected on the journey to prevent them from being spoiled by insects and humidity. It was accordingly not until 12 December that he left Surabaya for Pasuruan by way of Gedangan and Bangil with the object of visiting the Tengger highlands.88 This mountain complex is one of the most interesting in Java, and after examining the vast central crater of sand (segara wedi), he undertook the arduous ascent of Gunung Bromo (2392m), which was facilitated by steps cut out by Indonesians on one of its sides.89 The surrounding regions proved interesting from a botanical point of view, affording larger specimens of plants than he had found elsewhere in the island. He despatched duplicates of medicinal plants to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen,90 and despite continual rain he managed to put together a considerable collection of plants, shrubs and trees before returning to Pasuruan where he remained for some time arranging them and having drawings made of them. On his journey to Pasuruan, he made a brief visit, via Porong, to Malang, where he was impressed by the fertility and beauty of the country and by the antiquities of Singasari.91 He also got close enough to ascertain the volcanic condition of Gunung Arjuna (3339m).92 He left Pasuruan on 20 January 1806 for Surabaya where he remained for nearly three months, the last three weeks being spent in the company of the French naturalist, Louis Théodore Leschenault de la Tour (1773–1826), who had recently completed botanical, zoological, and geological investigations in eastern Java.93 A Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IV (1814), p. 5. For accounts of visits to the Tengger highlands during the British period in Indonesia, see BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 86, 1, no. 4, fols. 75–80; Java Government Gazette, 18 September and 23 October 1813.

88

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. iii.

89

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IV (1814), pp. 10–11.

90

Nicolaus Engelhard (note 94) was the first recorded European to visit the antiquities of Singasari, and was responsible for removing six important images to his house at Semarang. This was two years before Horsfield’s visit in 1805, a point emphasised by Engelhard in a letter written to C.J.C. Reuvens in February 1827 (J. Blom, The Antiquities of Singasari (Leiden, 1939), p. 11). Both Blom and Krom (Inleiding, vol. II (1823), pp. 68–9) fail to mention Horsfield’s visit in 1805, or his second visit in 1815, wrongly attributing to Raffles the account of the antiquities in The History of Java, vol. II, pp. 41–3). This account, as Krom has noted, is the earliest description of the Singasari complex, and forms part of Horsfield’s general survey of the antiquities of eastern Java which Raffles cites in The History of Java. In his ‘Narrative’ of 1812 (BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 33v–34r) Horsfield writes only in general terms of his 1805 visit, describing the antiquities as ‘truly astonishing’.

91

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 34v.

92

By the terms of his contract with Engelhard, Leschenault de la Tour was obliged to hand over part of his collections before he left Java, but what remained in his possession was substantial. He sailed from Java in 1806 by way of America, and arrived in France in the following year, bringing with him ‘many specimens of

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pupil of A.L. de Jussieu (1748–1836), Leschenault de la Tour had been one of the botanists on Nicolas Baudin’s voyages of exploration to Australia, but having been left behind at Kupang in Timor in June 1803 because of ill health, he had made his way to Java and for three years had carried out various scientific investigations in the island and in Madura under the patronage of the Governor of the North-East Coast, Nicolaus Engelhard.94 Little is known of his travels in Indonesia, but he zoology, and a considerable herbarium’ (M. Deleuze, History and Description of the Royal Museum of Natural History (Paris, 1823), p. 595). These were mostly deposited in the Museum Royal d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, and many of his zoological discoveries were published by E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, F. Cuvier, and M.A.G. Desmarest. Some 900 species of his Java plants are in the Herbarium, Paris, and there are duplicates in the Rijksherbarium, Leiden, and in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In 1814, in recognition of his services to natural science and botany, he was given permission by George III to proceed to India, and he reported to Sir Joseph Banks in March 1817 that he had made considerable zoological and mineralogical collections in the Madras Presidency and that he had also explored the district of Pondicherry which, though not so good a field for natural history collecting as Java, had nevertheless yielded birds, mammals, reptiles, and minerals for his collections (W.R. Dawson, The Banks Letters (London, 1958), p. 530). He sent three collections ‘in every branch of natural history’ to the Museum Royal d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, in 1818, 1819, and 1820, the first containing the richest collection of fish and crustacea every received, and the second and third containing many new subjects in botany and zoology, including several living animals (Deleuze, History, pp. 595–6). He later travelled extensively in Bengal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Guiana, and Surinam. His travels in Indonesia are recorded in Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana, ser. I, vol. 1, pp. 321–2, to which may be added the detail that he was at Sumenap in Madura between 26 June and 1 July 1805. Documentary evidence of his stay in Java is extremely scanty. Engelhard is known to have had in his possession in 1816 original reports by Leschenault de la Tour, but they are not to be located in the Engelhard Collection in the National Archives, The Hague. That they were for a time in the possession of Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mackenzie during the British period in Java is indicated by a contemporary annotation on the inside cover of Volume 37 of the Mackenzie Collection (Private) in the British Library, which contains English translations of a number of them, including a report on the Tengger highlands addressed to Engelhard and dated Surabaya, 15 February 1806 (no. 4, fols. 169–76), and another on Gunung Ijen (no. 5, fols. 185–94), with duplicates in the Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 1, nos. 13–14, fols. 235–52, 255–69). The substance of these reports was already in print by the time the translations were made (M. Malte-Brun, Annales des Voyages, vol. 14 (1811), pp. 314–34; Annales du Muséum D’Histoire Naturelle, vol. 18 (1811), pp. 425–46). Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 37 also contains English translations of Leschenault de la Tour’s ‘List of the Viviparous Quadruped Animals which are found in the Island of Java’ (no. 2, fols. 93–115), and ‘Catalogue of Birds of the Island of Java’ (no. 3, fols. 131–55), both of which are addressed to Engelhard and dated Semarang, 26 August 1806. Also in the same volume is a ‘List of plants of the Island of Java observed by Mr. Leschenault de la Tour’, dated 5 January 1806, containing descriptions of some 693 species. This would appear to be an English version of a French MS. entitled, ‘Liste des Plantes de l’Isle de Java observées par M. Leschenault de Latour’, dated ‘Samarang, 5. 7bre, 1806’, in the Library of the Rijksherbarium, Leiden, the latter being a copy of the original French MS. made by a pupil of the Semarang Marine School (Van Steenis, vol. I, 81, XL (1973) [60]). It is uncertain if any of these reports were in Horsfield’s hands during the British period in Java. Nicolaus Engelhard (1761–1831) was Commissioner for Native Affairs in the Priangan during 1791–8 and was appointed Governor of Java’s North-East Coast at Semarang in 1801. He later fell out with GovernorGeneral Herman Willem Daendels (1762–1818) against whose administration he wrote a highly critical account in 1816. After the British conquest of Java, he was offered a place on the Java Council by Lord Minto but he preferred to live in retirement, offering his advice behind the scenes. He was a member of the Commission appointed to advise the Netherlands Commissioners-General in 1816, and at the end of that year he was in charge of the Commission for the resumption of control of Maluku. After the death in 1822 of his wife, Maria W. Senn van Basel, the step-daughter of Governor-General Willem Arnold Alting (1724– 1800), he left Indonesia for the Netherlands where the King conferred on him the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He returned to Java in 1827 and died four years later at Bogor. His interest in Javanese antiquities when he was Governor of the North-East Coast was unusual for that time, and his patronage of Leschenault de la Tour’s scientific researches was equally commendable. Although there is no evidence of the fact, there is little

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visited Gunung Ijen between 20 and 21 September 1805, and the Tengger highlands between 4 and 7 November 1805, thus anticipating Horsfield’s visit by little more than a month. The American’s meeting with the French naturalist must have afforded him much gratification as it was the first occasion since his arrival in Java that he had been able to converse with someone familiar with the most recent scientific developments in Europe. Unfortunately, all that is known of their meeting is a brief reference in Horsfield’s report to the Directing Members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen dated Surabaya 31 March 1806:95 … I have been employed during some of the last weeks of my stay at Soerabaija, in conjunction with Mr. L’Eschenault de la Tour, who has made a collection in the Eastern parts of the Island for the Honourable the Gov[ernor] of Java, in investigating the new plants discovered by us both in different places, determining their place in the System, and in making drawings of their distinguishing botanical characters.

What is almost certainly a surviving drawing of this collaborative effort between the two naturalists at Surabaya in 1806 is that of the Engelhardia spicata (Leschenault ex Blume) in the Library of the Botanical Department, Natural History Museum, London. It is curious, however, given Horsfield’s interest in plant poisons, that Leschenault de la Tour did not confide to him his discovery of the Upas Tree (Antiaris toxicaria Leschenault) until after Horsfield’s departure from Surabaya in April 1806. This, at any rate, seems to be the clear inference to be drawn from the generous statement made by Horsfield at the beginning of his ‘An Essay on the Oopas or Poison Tree of Java’, published in 1814:96 At the time I was prosecuting my enquiries into the Botany and Natural History of the Island on behalf of the Dutch Government, Mr. Leschenault de La Tour, a French Naturalist, was making a private collection of objects of Natural History for the Governor of the North East Coast of Java. He shortly preceded me in my visit to the Eastern Districts of the Island, and while I was on my route from Sourabaya in that direction, I received from him a communication containing an account of the Poison Tree as he found it in doubt that Horsfield met Engelhard on a number of occasions. Certainly Raffles made his early acquaintance since he was initiated as a Freemason at a ceremony in October 1811 at the Lodge ‘Virtutis et Artis Amici’ which had been established by Engelhard as the Worshipful Master at his estate Pondok-Gedeh, near Bogor (R. Jordaan, ‘Nicolaus Engelhard and Thomas Stamford Raffles: Brethren in Javanese Antiquities’, Indonesia, vol. 101 (2016), pp. 39–66). Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IV (1814), pp. 13–14. Cf. Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 630.

95

T. Horsfield, ‘An Essay on the Oopas or Poison Tree of Java: Addressed to the Honorable Thomas Stamford Raffles Lieutenant Governor’, VBG, vol. VII, no. X (1814), pp. 4–6.

96

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the province of Blambangan. I am induced to make this statement, in order to concede, as far as regards myself, to Mr. Leschenault de La Tour, in the fullest manner, the priority in observing the Oopas of Java. I do this to prevent any reflection, in case a claim to the discovery should be made at a future period: but I must be permitted to add in justice to the series of enquiries which engaged me and the manner in which they were carried on, that the knowledge of the existence of this tree was by no means uncommon or secret in the District of Blambangan, in the environs of Banyoo-wangee; that the Commandant of the place, a man of some curiosity and enquiry, was acquainted with it, and that it could not (in all probability) have escaped the notice of a person, who made the vegetable productions an object of particular enquiry, and noted with minute attention every thing that related to their history and operation.

Later, in 1810, when Leschenault de la Tour published his ‘Mémoire’ on plant poisons in Java, he named a new species of Andira, which he had found in the Tengger highlands, Harsfieldii, after ‘Mr. Harsfield [sic], an American physician and botanist, who is principally engaged, at Java, in investigating all the vegetable productions of this island which may be of service in the art of medicine …’.97 On 31 March 1806, shortly before departing from Surabaya, Horsfield addressed a report to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in which he summarised his achievements during the previous five months since his last report: he had been occupied during his travels along the Solo River and to the Tengger highlands in investigating the medicinal plants used by Indonesians and in extending his collection; he had delineated the less known or new plants and had prepared a fairly large collection of dried plants between paper; he had collaborated with Leschenault de la Tour as already indicated; he had engaged in his leisure hours in making enquiries and writing short reports on other subjects of interest to the Society, including birds and insects, Javanese quadrupeds, the mineralogical history of the island, the language of the inhabitants, and Javanese antiquities; and he had directed the two pupils from the Semarang Marine School98 to prepare drawings of more than 200 plants, mostly unpublished, which, with the dried plants prepared by himself, would enable artists in Europe to make accurate J.B.L.C. Th. Leschenault de la Tour, ‘Mémoire sur le Strychnos tieute et l’Antiaris toxicaria, plantes vénéneuses de l’île de Java, avec le suc desquelles les indigènes empoisonnent leurs fléches; et sur l’Andira harsfieldii, plante médicinale du même pays’, Annales du Muséum D’Histoire Naturelle, vol. 16 (1810), pp. 481–2.

97

Horsfield stated in his report that he had granted the elder of the students (Jan van Stralendorff or C. Coolen(?), note 44) a small gratuity (toelage) of five Rijksdaalders per month, as he was not yet a Cadet, and without the money he would have no means of subsistence. The younger student, on the other hand, was still provided for by his relatives at Semarang.

98

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plates for engraving. He concluded his report by stating his intention to resume his journey on 10 April, as soon as the rains stopped, and travel through the Regencies of Java’s Oosthoek to Banyuwangi and return to Semarang around September, after which he would proceed to Batavia.99 The reference to insects in this report affords contemporary evidence in support of Horsfield’s later assertion in the Introduction to his A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company (London, 1828–9) that his interest in this subject commenced at Surabaya, a place which would ‘always be memorable to me in an entomological point of view’. Some of the ‘rare and solitary’ specimens he collected there later found their way into the collection of the East India Company Museum in London.100 He does not state if this new interest in entomology was in any way stimulated by his meeting with Leschenault de la Tour, but it may not be too much to suppose that the latter drew his attention to the works of the French naturalist and traveller, François Le Vaillant (1753–1824),101 since he states in his Catalogue that he became acquainted with Le Vaillant’s method of preserving entomological collections during the early part of his residence in Java.102 He left Surabaya towards mid-April 1806 for Pasuruan and Probolinggo and halted for a time at the village of Buntidan, south of Surabaya, to examine some mud wells near the seashore. He had to carry on beyond Probolinggo to Bessu, the residence of the Overseers of the teak forests of Banger, in order to obtain information about his proposed journey to Lumajang, and he visited parts of the forests in the company of the Superintendent. He also visited the shipyard at Budulan from where the timber was conveyed for future use.103 In May he set out on the road from Probolinggo to Lumajang along which the rice fields soon gave way to extensive forests. Except in the immediate area of Lumajang, and around a few of the scattered villages, the lands were uncultivated. To the west lay Gunung Semeru (3676m), one of the highest mountains in Java. He made two botanical excursions along the eastern side of the mountain, and although he did not climb Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IV (1814), pp. 13–16.

99

T. Horsfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company, Illustrated by Coloured Figures of New Species and of the Metamorphosis of Indian Lepidoptera, with Introductory Observations on a General Arrangement of this Order of Insects (London, 1828–9), p. 5.

100

F. La Vaillant, Travels into the Interior Parts of Africa, by the Way of the Cape of Good Hope … (London, 1790–6).

101

Horsfield, Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects, p. 9.

102

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. iv.

103

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to the summit he managed to work his way along one of the ridges far enough to obtain a view of the external rim of the crater and examine its mineralogical character.104 During his stay at Lumajang he was able to observe in the distance Gunung Lamongan (1651m), which after an interval of nearly seven years was again active, emitting volumes of smoke and ash.105 He devoted some time to investigating the numerous antiquities in the region106 before proceeding to Teluk Dampar on the southern coast.107 He spent the whole of May 1806 at Lumajang and at the beginning of June he set out for Puger through the extensive plain that runs south-eastwards to the sea. The district of Puger he found largely depopulated and its low-lying capital so unhealthy that many of its inhabitants suffered from a bilious fever.108 He made an excursion further eastwards to the village of Sabrang, near the border of Blambangan, and from there he travelled to the southern coast. It was in the forests of Puger that he captured his first Javan Leopard Cat, Felis javanensis (Felis bengalensis javanensis Desmarest), and the beautiful Bay Owl, Strix badia (Phodilus badius badius Horsfield), which are described in his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4), as well as making his first acquaintance with the Upas Tree (Antiaris toxicaria Leschenault).109 From Puger he set off on a northerly course through the extensive forests to Jember, situated in an elevated and fertile plain bounded on the north-east by Gunung Ijen (3088m) and by Gunung Raung (3332m). In some of the more elevated parts of this fertile district, whose climate he considered to be among the most moderate and agreeable in the whole island, he found the people, especially the women, subject to goitre, which he had already observed among the inhabitants of the Tengger regions.110 From Jember he proceeded northwards to Bondowoso. Twenty years earlier it had been largely depopulated but due to the immigration and settlement of large numbers of Madurese the country had been brought under cultivation with the Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 37r–37v.

104

Junghuhn, Java, vol. III, p. 1127 cites Horsfield but gives the date of the eruption as May instead of April. To further confuse matters, Horsfield in his ‘Narrative’ of 1812 (fol. 38r) states that the eruptions began in March 1806 and that during his stay at Lumajang the mountain ‘sent forth, by intervals of 15 seconds to half a minute immense volumes of smoke …’. See T. Horsfield, ‘Reis naar de Ooster-Streken van Java’, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), p. 19.

105

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 38v.

106

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. iv.

107

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), p. 20; Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 39r–39v.

108

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. X (1814), p. 13.

109

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 40v–41r; Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), p. 21.

110

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planting of rice, maize, and tobacco. On the road from Bondowoso to Panarunkan, via Prajekan, he travelled over the eastern base of Gunung Ringgit (1250m), which he identified as the volcano which had erupted with such violence in 1586 that it had caused considerable loss of life.111 Early in July 1806 he set out from Panarukan for Banyuwangi at the eastern end of Java opposite to the island of Bali. East of Panarukan his route was through cultivated rice fields parallel to the sea shore, but beyond the Kali Tikus, which formed the boundary between the districts of Panarukan and eastern Blambangan, it led through forests as far as the small village of Samberwaru, where there was a rest house for travellers. A few miles west of Samberwaru he crossed the Kali Banjuputih, with its high concentration of limestone,112 and after passing through a barren and uninhabited stretch of country, he arrived on the eastern coast at Bajulmati, another village providing facilities for travellers. A further journey through almost uninterrupted wilderness brought him to Banyuwangi, the capital of the Regency of Blambangan, and the residence of the Commandant and other Dutch officials.113 Here he was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful position of the town at the foothills of Gunung Ijen, with its seaward view across the Straits of Bali. The scenery and the fertility of the land around Banyuwangi he considered equal, if not superior, to any in the island, though the unhealthiness of the region, from which he himself was to suffer, was notorious.114 Except for the country in the immediate vicinity of the capital, which was cleared for the cultivation of rice and other crops, and around a small number of villages, the province of Banyuwangi was covered with primeval forest and profuse Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), p. 22; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. iv. Cf. Junghuhn, Java, vol. III, pp. 945–64; R.D.M. Verbeek, ‘De Vulkanische Euruptie’s in Oost-Java in het Laatst der 16de Eeuw’, Verh. Geol. Mijnb. Gen. (1925), pp. 149–200.

111

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), pp. 23–4 and Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 44r–45v devotes some attention to the Kali Banjuputih and the reason for its colour. The river was visited by Leschenault de la Tour in September 1805 and he was equally fascinated by it, giving a considered explanation for its colour to Nicolaus Engelhard in an undated ‘Report & Description of a Journey to the Sulphur Mountain & Volcano Idienne near Banyoewangie also a Description of the White River or Songie Pootie In the year [1805]’, BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 37, no. 5, fols. 185–94.

112

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), pp. 24–5. The Commandant of Banyuwangi at the time of Horsfield’s visit was Johan Cezar van Wikkerman. The Dutch kept a fairly large military establishment there, comprising a military Commandant, who combined the function of civil chief of the district, two lieutenants, three sergeants, five corporals, 34 European soldiers, 200 Malay and Madurese auxiliaries, and others. The civil side was represented by a bookkeeper, two assistants, and a surgeon. The establishment was substantially reduced during the British period in Java, when it was estimated that only some 20 houses at Banyuwangi were occupied by Europeans or their descendants.

113

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 49v; Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), p. 29.

114

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vegetation, making it one of the most interesting and productive in the whole island for the study of natural history.115 He spent July and August of 1806 travelling in the region, and made an excursion by way of Matjang Putih to the former capital, Kuta Blambangan, which had been destroyed in the war between the Dutch East India Company and the Balinese in 1767. From there he went to Ulu Pangpang, with its nearby ruins of the first Dutch settlement in the province, and then on to the region opposite Tg. Sembulungan.116 He visited a number of the smaller villages in the districts round Banyuwangi, and along the roads he found many subjects for investigation and an abundance of plants that were new to him, furnishing him with a richer botanical harvest than elsewhere in Java.117 In the forests of Banyuwangi and Blambangan he also found many rare species of mammals and birds, including the Javan Tree Shrew, Tupaia javanica (Tupaia javanica Horsfield), the Linsang, Felis gracilis (Prionodon linsang Hardwicke), the Three-Striped Ground Squirrel, Sciurus insignis (Lariscus insignis Cuvier), the Whiskered Flying Squirrel, Pteromys genibarbis (Pteromys genibarbis Horsfield), the Brown-breasted Partridge, Perdix personata (Arborophila brunneopectus orientalis Horsfield), and, near the Straits of Bali, the Banded Broadbill, Eurylaimus javanicus (Eurylaimus javanicus Horsfield).118 During his excursions in Banyuwangi he also became better acquainted with the Upas Tree about which he had been given information by Leschenault de la Tour in the previous month. Until the latter’s investigations in Banyuwangi, the authenticity of the effects of its poison was much in dispute, following the publication of Foersch’s exaggerated account in The London Magazine of 1783. The desire to investigate the Upas Tree at first hand was one of the principal reasons why Horsfield visited Banyuwangi, and he was directed by the local people to a large specimen nearly 100 feet in height growing near the village of Kedayunan, some 10 miles from Banyuwangi. Here he was able to watch an old man prepare the poison and see it tested on a dog, and he was also able to carry out other experiments and learn something of the true nature of the poison.119 Later he wrote Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript p. v; Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), pp. 26–7.

115

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 47v.

116

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), pp. 26–7.

117

Described in Horsfield, Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4).

118

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), pp. 27–8; Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 48r–48v; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. v.

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a comprehensive report on the subject for Raffles,120 but by then his own discoveries had been largely superseded by experiments carried out in Europe. Shortly after leaving Banyuwangi, he climbed Gunung Merapi (2800m) in the Ijen mountain range which had shown signs of recent volcanic activity, examined its crater, and observed the whole of the surrounding mountain chain.121 He also made a quick crossing of the Straits and spent a day in Bali. At the beginning of September 1806, when he was preparing to depart from Banyuwangi, he was afflicted by a bilious fever and confined to his bed for the remainder of the month. By early October he was sufficiently recovered to undertake the return journey to Pasuruan via Panarukan, Besuki, and Probolinggo, but the effects of the illness remained with him until mid-November. In early December he again visited the Tengger regions to collect medicinal plants for experimentation at Batavia, and he made a similar collection of plants in the vicinity of Pasuruan.122 He left Pasuruan early in January 1807 when he visited Malang and its surrounding districts, including the antiquities of Singasari. This excursion must have taken about two weeks, after which he proceeded by the coastal road to Bangil, where he came into the vicinity of Gunung Arjuna (3339m) and its neighbour Gunung Penanggungan (1653m), and took profiles of them. He arrived at Surabaya on 3 February and spent the remainder of the rainy season there examining the plants and animals he had collected during his journey, making preparations for their preservation, and drawing in ink the rough pencil sketches of plants which, since his departure from Surabaya a year earlier, had increased by more than a hundred. Reporting on these various achievements to the Directing Members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, he stated his intention to leave Surabaya at the end of the monsoon, in about April or May, and to travel back to Batavia by sea or land as the opportunity occurred.123 It is uncertain when he set out from Surabaya but it was probably not until late May 1807. Before then, he made a short visit to the island of Madura, travelling to Bangkalan and on to Arosbaja, and then eastwards from Bangkalan to Blega and back. It was on Madura that he first observed several of the Papilionidæ family of Lepidoptera.124 He had hoped to arrange a sea passage from Surabaya to Semarang

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. X (1814), pp. 1–59.

120

Horsfield, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. v; Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 48v–49v.

121

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. IVa (1814), pp. 29–30.

122

Ibid., pp. 30–1.

123

Horsfield, Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects, p. 5.

124

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for his large natural history collections but he was unable to find a suitable means of conveyance and so continued his journey by land along the northern coast. All that is known of this journey is the brief statement in the Postscript to his Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores that he returned along the northern coast through the districts of Gresik, Sedayu, Tuban, Rembang, Juwono and Jepara to Semarang.125 In his ‘Narrative’ of 1812 he is even less explicit about the journey, except that he records the date of his arrival at Semarang as August 1807.126 At that time of the year, there were no ships to convey him and his collections to Batavia so he decided to continue his researches in the neighbourhood of Semarang and in the adjoining districts. During these excursions, which included a return to Gunung Ungaran at the end of 1807 and beginning of 1808, he was able to add considerably to his botanical and zoological collections and increase the number of his drawings.127 He delayed his departure for Batavia so that he could meet the new GovernorGeneral, Herman Willem Daendels (1762–1818), who arrived at Semarang in May 1808. It seems that Daendels inspected his natural history collections, although there is no reference to the fact in the Daendels papers in the National Archives in The Hague. Horsfield in his ‘Narrative’ of 1812 conveys the clear impression that he personally met the Governor-General, and some years later Raffles affirmed that he ‘had been taken by the hand by Marshall Daendels’.128 From Daendels he received instructions to prepare ‘a concise account of the principal Medical and Œconomical plants of the Island’,129 materia medica still clearly being regarded as his principal field of interest, and one which would have been of particular importance to the Governor-General himself. He was also ordered to submit to the Government copies of all memoranda and reports he had submitted to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, as well as Registers of his botanical drawings and dried plants, and to preserve the collections in his possession as the property of the Government. On these conditions his appointment was continued on 26 September 1808 on an increased monthly salary of 300 silver Rijksdaalders.130 There is no doubt that Horsfield was considerably encouraged by the recognition and support he received from the Netherlands Indies Government at According to the map in Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, he made a detour at Kudus in order to visit Jepara before returning to Kudus and proceeding onwards to Demak and Semarang.

125

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 51r.

126

Ibid., fols. 51r–51v.

127

Raffles to the Court of Directors, 12 August 1818, BL: Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 47.

128

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 51v.

129

J.I. van Sevenhoven, ‘Memoir on the Proceedings of the Batavian Society … October 1812’, BL: Mackenzie Collections (Private), vol. 36, no. 9, fol. 96.

130

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this period, as he realised that it would now be possible for him to bring his botanical researches to a definitive conclusion:131 The progress I had hitherto been able to make encouraged me to extend my first essays, and gave a new direction to my enquiries. The materials relating to the different objects of my research had accumulated beyond what I had expected; my first views, by a more particular acquaintance with the subjects I had proposed for investigation, had become more defined; and the prospect of becoming superficially acquainted with the vegetable productions of the Island, had matured into the plan of making a general description of them in a Botanical, Medical and Œconomical point of view.

This decision was made additionally possible by the fact that his two assistants from the Semarang Marine School had acquired some proficiency in delineating botanical specimens and were able to complete drawings of the remaining plants of Java. Also, he had been able to make considerable progress with a new method of making impressions of dried plants, to which he attached considerable importance:132 The process of making Impressions from Dried plants, which I acquired about this time, furnished a new object of employment and practice; as it serves to perpetuate the Specimens of a Herbarium, which are often liable to destruction, I considered it of first importance in the progress of the work, and it directed my attention to the subjects for preserving and drying, as far as the ornamental part of the Specimens had become of more importance than heretofore; and during my latter excursions a considerable portion of my time [was] devoted to the preparation of the Herbarium.

He appears to have spent the second half of 1808 at Semarang writing reports for the Government and compiling registers of his plants and botanical drawings.133 In January 1809 he travelled some 20 miles south-eastwards to Pruwoto in Demak, Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 52r–52v.

131

Ibid., fols. 53r–53v.

132

J.I. van Sevenhoven (BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. I, no. 3, fol. 19) mentions a report by Horsfield for Daendels containing ‘an indication of some species of Medicinal Plants, of Woods & a local description of some Hills & Districts of the Island of Java’. Horsfield sent progressive sections of his Register of botanical drawings to Daendels during late 1808 and early 1809, as well as sections of ‘a newly commenced Catalogue’ (Naamlijst) of his collection of dried plants (Horsfield to Daendels, 31 January 1809, NA:Archief Binnenlandse Zaken, Afd. Onderwijs exh. 8 March 1837, no. 114). Horsfield later sent a General Catalogue (Algemeene Naamlijst) of the plants of Java to Governor-General J.W. Janssens in June 1811 which was probably a duplicate of the Catalogue he had sent to Daendels.

133

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where he made considerable additions to his collections,134 including the Wrinkledlipped Bat, Nyctinomus tenuis (Chaerephon plicatus tenuis Horsfield), a pair of the Larger Fishing Eagles, Falco ichthyaetus (Icthyophaga ichthyaetus Horsfield), and a single Banded Kingfisher, Dacelo pulchella (Lacedo pulchella Horsfield), all of which he described in his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4). He returned to Semarang but, instead of proceeding to Batavia as he intended, he set off along the Salatiga road for Surakarta, having evidently obtained permission of the Governor-General for this change of plan. He intended to stay temporarily at Surakarta but it became the centre of his scientific activities during most of his remaining stay in Indonesia. It was, as he wrote later, ‘the most important station’ for his researches into the natural history of Java as it provided him with ‘the necessary facilities for visiting, from time to time, the various districts in the middle of Java, belonging to the native Princes, many of which were still almost entirely in a state of nature, and highly interesting in regard to their natural history’.135 Where he exactly resided at Surakarta is uncertain, but by 1811 he was settled in a large two-storey house with spacious upstairs apartments, a gallery, and various outhouses, situated in or beyond the bazaar area. The house, filled with curiosities of nature, became a favourite place of call for European visitors to Surakarta, especially during the British period. Here he was able to continue his researches in botany, zoology, ornithology, and mineralogy, and to begin the study of Indonesian Lepidoptera for which the locality was especially well suited.136 These latter investigations did not properly commence until 1815, when he became increasingly aware of the importance of establishing a natural arrangement of the island’s Lepidoptera,137 and they bore fruit many years later with the publication of William Sharp Macleay’s Annulosa Javanica (London, 1825),138 and his own A Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vi; Horsfield, Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects, p. 5. In his letter to Governor-General Daendels, dated Pruwoto 31 January 1809 (note 133), Horsfield states that he has been in the Pruwoto hills since 10 January 1809 and that he has been devoting his time to the continuation of his description of the plants of the island and to the collection of natural history subjects, a description of which he proposes to send to Daendels, together with an account of his researches, after he returns to Semarang. In his ‘Narrative’ of 1812 (fol. 54r), he states that he submitted to the Government at this time ‘An account of the constitution and direction of the series of hills which compose this mountain [Pruwoto], with a notice of my remarks on its vegetables and animals …’. This would appear to be the report mentioned by Van Sevenhoven in note 133.

134

Horsfield, Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects, p. 6.

135

Ibid., pp. 6–7; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vi.

136

Horsfield, Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects, pp. 6–7.

137

Chapter Eight.

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Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company (London, 1828–9). Soon after his arrival at Surakarta he set out on a journey to examine the range of hills extending along the southern coast of Java from Panggul in the east to Sembuyung in the west.139 The direction of this journey was apparently by way of Punung to Teluk Pacitan, where in 1809 he first discovered the White-crowned Forktail, Motacilla speciosa (Enicurus leschenaulti Vieillot). He next proceeded in a westerly direction as far as Kalak, and eastwards to Kerbon, Sili, and Nyimbong. From there he travelled to Nyoro and Lorok on the coast, returning to Surakarta by a northern route. The journey occupied some months and was particularly interesting to him from a botanical and zoological point of view, but more so because it provided him with a considerable number of Coleoptera and Lepidoptera for his collections.140 He submitted to the Government a report of this journey after he returned to Surakarta but its contents are unknown. In 1810 he travelled by way of Boyolali and Sala to revisit Gunung Merapi and then proceeded via Cepego and Kopeng to Gunung Merbabu, which he had partly surveyed five years earlier on his way from Semarang to Yogyakarta. On this occasion he climbed to the summit of Gunung Merapi and spent a considerable time making a survey of its crater and environs.141 The southern ridges of Gunung Merbabu were also examined, and the region which five years earlier had been so productive of interesting plants now furnished him with additions to his medical and botanical registers, and to his ornithological collection with the discovery of the beautiful Chestnut-backed Scimitar-Babbler, Pomatorhinus montanus (Pomatorhinus montanus Horsfield).142 During the following year, the extensive tracts of country lying between the western ridges of Gunung Lawu and the eastern boundary of the Surakarta territories attracted his attention, and he undertook a number of excursions in that region. The exact course of these journeys cannot be stated with certainty but it seems likely that he again followed the same path as in 1805 and proceeded by way of Pringombo to Gondosuli on the south-western ridges of Gunung Lawu. Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F148/46, fol. 54r; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vi.

139

Horsfield, Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects, p. 6.

140

Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fol. 54v.

141

Described in Horsfield, Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4).

142

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On 28 May 1811 he wrote to the Government outlining the progress he had made in his medical and natural history investigations and requested the continuation of its patronage and support. The reason for his writing this letter was because of the supersession of Governor-General Daendels by Jan Willem Janssens (1762–1838), who had arrived in Java on 25 April 1811 and assumed responsibility for the administration on 16 May. After seeking the opinion of the Directing Members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen on how best to utilise Horsfield’s talents, the Government decided on 17 July 1811 to continue the payment of his salary as determined on 26 September 1808, namely 300 silver Rijksdaalders per month, and to grant him support and protection in his natural history researches. He was directed to continue his researches into the botany of the island, with the object of producing a general ‘Flora Javana’, and to continue his investigations into the minerals and nature of the soil in order to determine its suitability for the different cultures which should be considered beneficial. He was to supervise and complete the collection of dried plants and botanical drawings, and he was instructed to submit within two months to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen and the Government his observations on, and registers of, the plants and herbs he had discovered. He was also reminded that the knowledge of the medicinal power of the various plants was still to be considered of the first importance, and that his reports on his experiments and discoveries in this field were to be placed in the hands of the Chief Surgeon and the results made known to the Directing Members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen.143 Horsfield himself had written directly to Janssens on 14 June 1811 requesting, as a matter of priority, the continuation of the services of the cadet draughtsmen J.G. Doppert of the Semarang Marine School in order for him to complete the collection of the botanical drawings, already 475 in number, as illustrations for his ‘General Description’ (Algemeene Beschrijving) of the plants of the island.144 He calculated that these drawings would require only a few months to complete. This request was granted and Doppert continued to be associated with Horsfield in the immediate years ahead.145 A copy of what appears to be this list of plants was sent

Notulen, vol. XXXI, Bijl. 1 (1893), pp. i–iii.

143

Horsfield to Janssens, 14 June 1811, NA:Archief Binnenlandse Zaken, Afd. Onderwijs exh. 8 March 1837, no. 114.

144

De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 583. Doppert (note 44) seems to have been employed by Horsfield during the whole of the British period in Indonesia, his name appearing on Plates VII and VIII of Horsfield’s Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects.

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by Horsfield to Janssens under the title of a ‘General Catalogue of the Plants of Java’ (Algemeene Naamlijst der Planten van Java), listed and described in accordance with the Diaries of his journeys. These five Diaries, which are not extant, are recorded as follows: Diarium de Semarang, embracing journeys made in the neighbourhood of Semarang, Ungaran, and Pekalongan; Diar[ium] Javanse, relating to journeys made south of Semarang in the central regions of Java, and along the Solo River to Surabaya; [Diarium] Plantæ Orientales, relating to journeys made in the eastern Regencies of Java to Blambangan, those on the island of Madura, and along the northern coast of Java from Sedayu to Jepara; and Diarium de Oenarang, relating to the journeys made in the neighbourhood of Ungaran in 1808. The plants in the ‘General Catalogue’ are listed in alphabetical order with their locations indicated under one or more of the five above categories.146 Horsfield had scarcely been confirmed in his post by Janssens before Dutch rule in Java came to an abrupt end with the British conquest of the island and the appointment of an interim administration with Raffles at its head.147 What exactly Horsfield’s scientific career would have been if the British conquest had not occurred is interesting to consider. He had been in the island for 10 years, mostly spent in active travel. He had produced a number of interesting if not very original scientific reports, the most important of which related to mineralogy.148 He had compiled a comprehensive list of the plants of the island, with related drawings, and he had assembled sizeable collections of botanical and zoological subjects. All this had been achieved in the face of great difficulties, especially in travelling about the island. No one before him had visited so many places, and as the Dutch authorities discouraged travel,149 the facilities available to him were exceptionally primitive. One must assume that the Diaries were destroyed in accordance with the terms of Horsfield’s will (note 7).

146

H.D. Levyssohn Norman, De Britsche Heerschappij over Java en Onderhoorigheden (1811–1816) (The Hague, 1857).

147

Bastin and Moore, Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (hist. Ser.), vol. 10, no. 3 (1982), pp. 75–115.

148

149

See note 26. The British period in Java witnessed more travelling throughout the island than had occurred when the Dutch were in control, though Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie, the Commander of the British Forces, was doubtless guilty of exaggeration when he declared in December 1811 that the ‘high roads are at present covered with travellers of all descriptions’. The British Government was as much opposed to freedom of movement as the Dutch authorities had been, Raffles stating in May 1813 that it was ‘not advisable to assist or even admit individuals to travel about the country, if even the post-charges received on that account were considerable … which is not the case’. There were many abuses in the use of post-horses, despite the imposition of heavy fines in February 1812, with the result that post-carriages were abolished in August of that year and persons with official permission to travel were instructed to provide their own travel. Payment in advance for the use of horses was also ordered, and it was stipulated that unless travellers received a certificate of payment in advance from the chief civil authority, horses would not be supplied along the way. Even this arrangement did not work very well, and many abuses

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That this aspect of his activities was the most arduous he confirmed in a letter to the Netherlands Minister of the Colonies, A.R. Falck (1777–1843) in 1822,150 when, after noting the extraordinary development of scientific research in Indonesia with the establishment of the Natural Sciences Commission under Professor C.G.C. Reinwardt (1773–1854) in 1816,151 and the resources accorded its members, he recalled that for him the lack of literary and scientific discussion and books on natural history were the least of the difficulties that he had to contend with. There is no doubt that if the British had not intervened in Java in 1811 he would have become a member of the Natural Sciences Commision,152 and his future career would have been pursued in the Netherlands. It was, therefore, the British conquest of Java in 1811, and the extreme good fortune that the new administration was headed by a man of such scientific vision as Raffles, that enabled him to continue his researches on a larger scale than hitherto, and eventually to find a distinguished place among the scientific community in London after he left Indonesia for England in 1819. The period of armed conflict between the Dutch and British forces in Java was a worrying time for Horsfield, who waited anxiously to learn what effects the outcome would have on the future of his natural history researches. His first contact with the new administration occurred on 22 or 23 September 1811, when the acting British Commissioner to the Javanese Principalities, Captain William Robison of HM’s 24th Regiment, examined his collections and ordered him provisionally to continue his work pending a final decision on his activities by the British authorities.153 Three months later, on 23 December 1811, after the conclusion of an official reception at Surakarta given by Susuhunan Pakubuwana IV, Raffles approached him and, as he recalled later, ‘with an affability and suavity of manner peculiar to himself, offered me his acquaintance without the formality of an

continued to the disadvantage of the local Indonesians who had to provide for the upkeep of the horses and the post-stations. Horsfield to Falck, 6 May 1822, NA:Falck Collectie, no. 34.

150

On Reinwardt’s scientific career and the work of the Natural Sciences Commission in Indonesia, see M.J. Sirks, Indisch Natuuronderzoek. Een Beknopte Geschiedenis van de Beoefening der Natuurwetenschappen in de Nederlandsche Koloniën (Amsterdam, 1915), pp. 86–140; H.J. Veth, Overzicht van Hetgeen, in het bijzonder door Nederland, Gedaan is voor de Kennis der Fauna van Nederlandsch Indië (Leiden, 1879), pp. 14 et seq., and note 264 below. Horsfield and Reinwardt met in west Java in 1818.

151

According to Raffles, Horsfield was in fact invited by the Netherlands authorities to become a member of the Natural Sciences Commission in 1818 (note 266).

152

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vi.

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introduction’.154 On the following day he spent several hours showing Raffles his natural history collections, drawings, and maps, after which the latter expressed his satisfaction and continued his appointment on a monthly allowance of 500 Spanish dollars.155 Horsfield also received permission to extend his enquiries ‘to all divisions of natural history, without limitation or restriction’.156 He had several more meetings at Surakarta with Raffles, who encouraged him to continue his enquiries with ‘unwearied diligence’, promised him any assistance that he might require, and approved a plan he proposed for devoting several months to a detailed investigation of the Priangan Regencies in west Java.157 In an official letter dated 24 December 1811, Raffles directed his attention to a number of subjects of ‘general curiosity and utility’.158 Horsfield replied on 25 December 1811:159 The information I have hitherto collected concerning the enquiries Your Honble has been pleased to propose concerning the climate, soil, mountains, rivers and productions of Java, shall with all possible expedition be arranged and transmitted to Your Honble. The materials necessary for framing a general account of the climate, mountains, volcanoes, minerals and some of the chief rivers of the Island being in earlier readiness, I shall commence with them and make the other enquiries the subject of a future communication, while I shall premise a very concise account of the range I have taken thro’ the Island and of the progress I have made in the investigation of the objects of my immediate research.

This latter report, embracing a general account of Horsfield’s travels and researches in Java during the previous decade, was communicated on 30 January 1812 under the title, ‘Narrative of a Journey thro’ the Island of Java, Addressed to the Honble Thomas Raffles Lieutenant Governor of the Island of Java and its dependencies’.160 Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 603.

154

Horsfield’s salary was notified by Proclamation on 4 January 1812 (De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 582). Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vii records 21 December 1811 as the date on which Raffles determined his salary, but this must be an error for 24 December 1811 because the two men did not meet until 23 December. Horsfield’s monthly emoluments were increased to 1,100 Java Rupees in the following year, but for this he had to meet the expenses of his own assistants.

155

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 603.

156

Ibid., pp. 603–4; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vii.

157

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 603. The date is inferred.

158

De Haan, Priangan, vol. IV, p. 562; De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 582.

159

BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46, fols. 12r–56v. Another copy is in the Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 1, no. 7, fols. 81–158. The ‘Narrative’ was sent to Raffles under a covering letter from Horsfield dated 30 January

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The ‘Narrative’ contains references to a number of appended papers on botanical, zoological, and geological subjects, as well as to reports already submitted to the former Netherlands Government, and to papers in preparation. In a private letter to Raffles covering the despatch of the ‘Narrative’,161 Horsfield stated that he would forward shortly ‘the Systematic Catalogues’ and the account of the medicinal plants of Java. He informed him that he still corresponded with the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen and if an opportunity occurred he would prepare for publication some of the papers mentioned in the ‘Narrative’. He expressed his delight with his recent conversations with the Chief Engineer of the British expedition to Java, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821), who had been appointed head of a commission of enquiry into the state of the island,162 and with Dr. William Hunter (1755–1812), the Superintending Surgeon, who was well informed on the materia medica of India.163 Having been so long deprived of contact with scientific knowledge, he looked forward to collaborating with Hunter: ‘I have the assurance that my acquaintance and future correspondence with Doctor Hunter will contribute both to my private information and to the benefit of the work in which I am employed – In the determination of the qualities and uses of the Medicines which I have discovered on the Island I depend so much on his 1812, together with a private letter of the same date. Raffles forwarded a copy of all three documents to the Governor-General Lord Minto in Calcutta on 7 March 1812. Horsfield to Raffles, 30 January 1812, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46.

161

Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mackenzie of the Madras Engineers conducted a number of surveys in southern India during the 1780s and 1790s and took a great interest in Indian history and antiquities. He was appointed to the Madras contingent for the invasion of Java on 12 March 1811 and on joining the Bengal troops at Melaka he was appointed to command all the Engineers of the British expeditionary force. After the conquest of Java, he was ordered to collect all the maps, charts, and plans of the Dutch Government and to prepare a geographical and statistical report on the island for the authorities in India. He was also appointed by Raffles to take charge of the Commission investigating the land tenures of the island (Bastin, VKI, vol. XIV (1954), pp. 1–193). He collected a mass of materials on Java, including important records on the history of the island, many of which are now in the British Library. He left Java for India on 18 July 1813 in the company of his Dutch wife, whom he had married at Batavia eight months earlier. He was the first Surveyor-General of Madras between 1810 and 1815, and the first Surveyor-General of India between 1815 and 1821. He died at Calcutta on 8 May 1821. See R.H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 1950–4), vols. II, pp. 419–28, III, pp. 474–83; W.C. Mackenzie, Colonel Colin Mackenzie First Surveyor-General of India (Edinburgh, London, 1952); De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 599–604.

162

William Hunter graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1777, and after an apprenticeship of four years he sailed to India in 1781 as Surgeon aboard an East Indiaman. He transferred to the East India Company’s service, acting as Surgeon to the Marines between 1794 and 1806. On the foundation of the College of Fort William in 1801, he was appointed an examiner in Persian and Hindustani, and in 1805 he became Secretary of the College. In 1808 he published at Calcutta his Hindustani and English Dictionary, and earlier, in 1785, his A Concise Account of the Kingdom of Pegu. After the British conquest of Java he was appointed Superintending Surgeon with responsibility for reorganising the medical service in the island. He died at Batavia on 16 December 1812. His important Library, in which Horsfield expressed an interest, was sold by auction at Batavia when some volumes were acquired by Raffles and also by the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 587; ODNB, vol. XXVIII, p. 305).

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cooperation and experience’. He subsequently expressed his hope of joining Hunter in a botanical excursion in the Bogor region of west Java.164 On 21 March 1812 he sent to Raffles the first of his natural history reports specifically written for the British administration: an essay on the Upas or Poison Tree of Java.165 After recounting what Foersch and Rumphius had to say on the subject, and giving details of the discovery of the tree by Leschenault de la Tour and himself in the eastern districts of Java during 1805–6, he described the methods used by the Indonesians in the preparation of the poison and reported on his own experiments with it, including those recently carried out at Surakarta from samples of the poison he had collected at Banyuwangi six years earlier.166 When Horsfield wrote his essay on the Upas Tree in 1812, he was ignorant of the fact that Leschenault de la Tour had already published two years earlier his ‘Mémoire sur le Strychnos tieute et l’Antiaris toxicaria, plantes vénéneuses de l’île de Java’, based on his own observations of the plants in Banyuwangi and on experiments he had made with the poisons.167 He also did not know that François Magendie (1783–1855) and Alire Raffeneau-Delile (1778–1850), physician and botanist respectively on Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, had reported in a series of papers read before the Faculty of Medicine in Paris in 1809 on their exhaustive experiments with the poisons which Leschenault de la Tour had brought back to France in 1807.168 An English translation of the latter’s ‘Mémoire’ had appeared in J.J. Stockdale’s Sketches, Civil and Military, of the Island of Java … ; Comprising Interesting Details of Batavia, and Authentic Particulars of the Celebrated Poison-Tree (London, 1811),169 and the book also contained part of a paper by (Sir) Benjamin Collins Brodie (1783–1862) on ‘Experiments with the Upas Antiar’, which he had read to the Royal Society in London on 21 February 1811 detailing his experiments with a quantity of the poison supplied to him by the orientalist, William Marsden (1754–1836), from material brought to England in 1806 by Dr. William Roxburgh (1751–1815), Superintendent of the Botanic Garden, The excursion in west Java never materialised because of Hunter’s death in December 1812.

164

Enclosed in Horsfield to Raffles, 21 March 1812, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46. Citations from the essay are from the printed account: Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. X (1814), pp. 1–59.

165

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. X (1814), pp. 36 et seq.

166

Leschenault de la Tour, Annales du Muséum D’Histoire Naturelle, vol. 16 (1810), pp. 459–82. The ‘Mémoire’ contained botanical descriptions, but as the specimens of the Strychnos tieute were without fruit or flowers the genus remained undetermined (Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, p. 58, and note x‡).

167

A. Raffeneau-Delile, Dissertation sur les effets d’un Poison de Java, appelé Upas tieuté … (Paris, 1809).

168

Pages 323–44. See John Bastin, ‘Stockdale’s Sketches, Civil and Military, of the Island of Java: A Bibliographical Note’, JMBRAS, vol. LVIII, pt. 1 (1985), pp. 91–4.

169

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Calcutta.170 Copies of the book, however, did not reach Java until some months after Horsfield had written his essay. It was, in fact, Marsden who first raised the subject of the Upas Tree with Raffles, asking him in a letter dated 11 April 1810 to ascertain, in the light of Leschenault de la Tour’s recently published ‘Mémoire’, ‘whether upas, as he says, signifies vegetable poisons in general & not any particular tree’.171 This enquiry was made before the conquest of Java but it undoubtedly prompted Raffles to solicit from Horsfield an early report on the subject without, apparently, informing him of the details of Leschenault de la Tour’s paper mentioned in Marsden’s letter.172 On 22 October 1812 Raffles sent Marsden a copy of Horsfield’s essay on the Upas Tree in the belief that it was a highly original work, and Marsden had the delicate task of pointing out that recent discoveries in France and England had destroyed much of the importance and novelty of Horsfield’s account:173 Dr Horsfield’s able Paper on the Upas I have perused with much interest, and if I should ever publish another edition of the Sumatra,174 I shall avail myself of the information it contains and make due acknowledgements to the learned Author. I am not quite clear whether it was your intention that I should lay it before the Royal Society, for whose Transactions the subject is appropriate – That I have not done so has been determined by various considerations – the first is the probability of [its] making [its] appearance, (as naturally it should) in the Batavian Transactions in which case I should get into a scrape – the next is, that it assumes, throughout, the fact that nothing in a scientific way has been published in Europe on the subject of the Upas and that the World continues to be the dupe of Foersch’s nonsense; but this is only a misapprehension arising from Dr Horsfield’s being situated at such a distance from the grand marts of

B.C. Brodie, ‘Experiments and Observations on the Different Modes in which Death is Produced by Certain Vegetable Poisons’, Philosophical Transactions, vol. CI, no. 1 (1811), pp. 196–207; W. Marsden, The History of Sumatra (London, 1811), pp. 110–11n.

170

Marsden to Raffles, 11 April 1810, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/2.

171

That Raffles discussed the Upas Tree with Horsfield at Surakarta at the end of December 1811 and asked him to write a report on the subject seems to be indicated by the following passage in Horsfield’s letter to him dated 30 January1812: ‘While I am going on with the preparation and transcription of the Catalogues &ca. I shall at the same time arrange my experiments and description of the Oopas in order to offer you, if possible, [a report] in the course of the ensuing month’ (BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46).

172

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 106. Marsden’s letter is cited in Raffles to Horsfield, 11 September 1814, BL:MSS. Eur.D. 742/21.

173

The third edition of Marsden’s The History of Sumatra was published in London in 1811. This comprised a quarto text volume and a folio of plates. Copies of the book were also issued in 1814 with the 28 plates reduced, when necessary, to quarto size and bound up with the text. No further editions of the book were issued during Marsden’s life-time.

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scientific information. Both in France & in England there have been regular series of experiments instituted to ascertain the nature, potency, comparative effects &ca of the poison; and altho’ these do not render his experiments less curious & important, the taking it for granted that they were the first set on foot and given to the public, could not fail of being injurious to the reception of his essay – Foersch’s romance was not, as he supposes, published originally in Holland and translated from the Dutch into English, but prepared in London175 … Under these circumstances, you will perceive that a serious refutation of so gross an imposture, might be looked upon, at this day, as superfluous – All this however might be corrected in a general degree by curtailing the Paper and omitting the parts to which the foregoing objects might be made – but it was a liberty that I could not venture to make.

Marsden’s letter did not reach Java until September 1814 by which time Horsfield’s essay on the Upas Tree had been published in Volume VII of the Verhandelingen of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen.176 In Volume VIII (1816) of the same publication there also appeared his pioneering work, ‘On the Mineralogy of Java. Essay I’, and a ‘Short Account of the Medicinal Plants of Java’.177 The latter paper, constituting a distillation of much of his research into the materia medica of the island, is undated, though it was sent on 5 March 1812 to Raffles, who forwarded a copy to the Governor-General Lord Minto in Calcutta on 25 April 1812, together with a copy of Horsfield’s essay on the Upas Tree. The dating of Part I of the essay on the mineralogy of Java, the first account of the island written from a geographical-geological point of view, presents some difficulty. The printed version is dated April 1812, yet Horsfield did not send a copy of the original manuscript to Raffles until 28 June 1812, presumably because of the additional time necessary to complete the mineralogical map of the island which accompanied it. Due to the technical deficiencies of the Government Press at Batavia, this map was not published until 1817, when it appeared as a coloured inset on the large map of Java engraved by John Walker Bastin, JMBRAS, vol. LVIII, pt. 2 (1985), pp. 25–44.

175

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VII, no. X (1814), pp. 1–59. The essay was reprinted in whole or part in a number of contemporary journals, including The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, vol. I, no. vi (June 1816), pp. 542–7; vol. II, no. vii (July 1816), pp. 17–27; The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register, vol. VII, no. 40 (May 1817), pp. 328–32; The Annual Register for 1816 (London, 1817), pp. 577–85; The Monthly Magazine, vol. 43, pt. 3, no. 296 (1817), pp. 239–42.

176

Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. V (1816), pp. 1–47, without Part II, which was never printed. Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. IV (1816), pp. 1–59. This paper was reprinted in The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, vol. VII, no. 38 (February 1819), pp. 146–50; no. 39 (March 1819), pp. 261–6; no. 40 (April 1819), pp. 361–3; no. 41 (May 1819), pp. 491–4; no. 42 (June 1819), pp. 597–8.

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in Raffles’s The History of Java, and later, in 1824, as a coloured lithograph map, lettered in French, in Fr. J.F. Marchal’s Description Géographique, Historique et Commerciale de Java et des Autres Iles L'Archipel Indien (Brussels, 1824–5). It was the first mineralogical map of Java, and held its place for more than 30 years until Junghuhn began his important series of publications in the 1840s.178 In a letter to Raffles dated 28 June 1812, covering the despatch of his account of the mineralogy of Java, Horsfield wrote:179 I take the liberty to offer to your Honor the commencement of a concise mineralogical account of the Island which I propose to prosecute in different Sections according to the remaining districts and the extent of my annotations on them. The first section comprizing that portion between Bantam and the longitude of Samarang is perhaps more general and superficial than my materials will enable me to make [compared with?] the following and I request your indulgence to the attempt of a work which was only a secondary object of my investigations. I have added a plan of the Island exhibiting very generally the most obvious mineralogical appearances laid down in the manner which I had the honor to suggest to you shortly in my last letter – It would be presumptuous to pretend to absolute accuracy in an essay of this kind on a territory of such extent as this Island. My object is more to lay before you the plan for a proposed investigation than the result – but imperfect as the present sketch is in regard to proportion and often in regard to situation the appearances laid down and the

178

The original watercolour map by Horsfield is in the British Library, drawn, as was his practice, upside down, with the southern coast of Java at the top (MSS.Eur.F.54/4). The map was contemporaneous with the first maps being prepared elsewhere, for example, the geological map of the United States of America by William Maclure (1767–1840) appeared in 1809 and that of England by William Smith (1769–1839) in 1815. Horsfield’s map held its own until Junghuhn commenced publishing his researches in the 1840s and 1850s, notably in his Topographische und naturwissenschaftliche Reisen durch Java (Magdeburg, 1845) and Java, deszelfs gedaante bekleeding en inwendige structuur (Amsterdam, 1850–3). In the latter work Junghuhn explicitly states that his principal aim was to draft, on the basis of the labours of Horsfield and Raffles, an improved location map of the volcanoes of Java. He noted one or two inaccuracies in Horsfield’s mineralogical map and then expressed his admiration of the American’s tenacity, at a time when travelling in Java presented so many difficulties, in assembling such complete materials for a comprehensive work on the mineralogy of the island. He concluded by stating that Horsfield was ‘the first naturalist, who made his way through the age-old forests of Java and at the same time the first, who has investigated and described the island from a geographical-geological point of view’ (Junghuhn, Java, vol. I, pp. 98–9). Horsfield paid his own tribute to the German naturalist in 1852, after the publication of Volume I of Junghuhn’s Java, in his Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Geographical Preface, pp. ii–iii. He went on to amplify Junghuhn’s corrections of his mineralogical map and to explain the circumstances of its compilation (Postscript, p. ii, n.*): ‘In the paper referred to [Essay on the Mineralogy of Java] it was my object to give a general, though necessarily imperfect enumeration of the series of volcanoes, extending from west to east, through the whole island. At the same time I had compiled hastily a geological sketch, which was not sufficiently correct for publication. It may therefore be useful on this occasion to explain several mistakes and omissions which have been noticed, especially in the eastern division: namely the name of the Mountain Raön [G. Raung] has been omitted, and the name of Mount Ijen has been incorrectly engraved Tashem’.

Horsfield to Raffles, 28 June 1812, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46.

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mineralogical data rest in most instances on observations made by myself and it will appear from the annexed account which of the Districts have been examined with more minute attention – I make use of this occasion to recommend the continuance of this Essay to your Honors protection and assistance in case it meets your approbation. As the delineation of the Mineralogical features of the country is a sufficiently extensive enterprize I take the liberty to solicit your Honors assistance in regard to the topographical part of it – Such charts of the districts which may be the subject of my future investigations as may be found in the Archives of Government (on which the mineralogical appearances may at once be laid down) would greatly facilitate a labour of this kind, would render it more accurate and spare a great portion of time in the execution – Under these impressions I entreat your favourable opinion which I remain with Sentiments of profound esteem and Gratitude ….

Raffles sent a copy of Horsfield’s account of the mineralogy of Java to Lord Minto in a letter dated 15 July 1812:180 I have now the satisfaction to forward to your Lordship the commencement of Dr Horsfield’s Account of the Mineralogical State of the Island of Java, accompanied by a general Chart in which are delineated the most obvious Mineralogical appearances. Copies of the following Sections will be forwarded to your Lordship as they may be received – I cannot express in adequate terms the high opinion which I have entertained of Dr Horsfield’s genuine Ability and unwearied application – it is therefore unnecessary for me to observe that every encouragement within the reach of this Government is on all occasions afforded in aid of his exertions – but it would be very satisfactory to me and certainly highly flattering to him, were I enabled to communicate to him at a subsequent period, your Lordship’s approbation and favourable opinion of the endeavours he has made in the illustration of this Island – I have led him to expect that his pursuits will be fully supported and encouraged by your Lordship –

This request for support of Horsfield’s scientific endeavours in Java was answered directly by Lord Minto in a public Discourse to the College of Fort William, Calcutta, on 30 September 1812:181 Raffles to Minto, 15 July 1812, BL:MSS.Eur.F.148/46.

180

Java Government Gazette Extraordinary, 15 December 1812 citing the Calcutta Gazette Extraordinary, 4 October 1812.

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Mr. Horsfield, a native of the United States of America, deeply conversant in Natural Knowledge, has already collected great stores of information, during a residence of several years, in Java, under the patronage, and, indeed, in the service of the late Dutch Government of the Island. This able observer and respectable gentleman, has transferred to the British Government, the stores of knowledge already collected, and has engaged his future labours in the same philosophical pursuits, under our protection. Much has been already obtained, and much is to be hoped with confidence, from the talents and industry of this gentleman, as well as from the acquaintance with his subject, and the peculiar habits of research he has already formed in Java. …

In sending Raffles a printed copy of his Discourse on 8 December 1812, Lord Minto stated that he had conceived ‘a very high esteem’ for Horsfield.182 In addition to the reports and papers already mentioned, Horsfield also wrote about the insect, Endolendol (Meloe cichorii Linneaus), which he had found to possess superior properties to the Spanish Fly (Lytta vesicatoria Linneaus) from which cantharidin was obtained for raising blisters. He communicated his finding, which had been anticipated to some extent by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Hardwicke (1756–1835) in Bengal,183 to the Assistant Surgeon at Semarang, C. Ramsay, together with information on the habitat and method of collection. Ramsay confirmed Horsfield’s observation on the efficacy of the insect, and reported the matter to the Superintending Surgeon in Java, Dr. William Hunter. Raffles, in turn, gave public notice of the discovery in the Java Government Gazette of 8 August 1812: A Report having been made to the Honorable the Lieutenant Governor by Dr. Horsfield, whose extensive literary researches & acquirements entitle him to the peculiar attention of the British Government, of the discovery of an insect possessing the properties of the Spanish Fly, and its value having been subsequently confirmed by the observations of Mr. Ramsay, Assistant Surgeon at Semarang, and communicated to Government by Dr. Hunter, Superintending Surgeon, the Lieutenant Governor deems it important, that this discovery should be generally known, and that exertions

Minto to Raffles, 8 December 1812, BL:MSS.Eur.C. 34, no. 18.

182

T. Hardwicke, ‘Description of a Species of Meloe, an insect of the First or Coleopterous Order in the Linnean System: found in all Parts of Bengal, Behar, and Oude; and possessing all the Properties of the Spanish blistering-Fly, or Meloe Vesicatorius’, Asiatic Researches, vol. V (1799), pp. 213–17, 423–4. Major-General Thomas Hardwicke later became a close friend of Raffles, and supported his endeavours in founding the Zoological Society of London. See Chapter Ten, note 179.

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should be made to secure the supply of a Medicine, which is considered to be so generally useful.

He stated that orders would be issued for ‘a search after this insect on the public account’ and information invited from individuals on the best collecting localities in the island. After completing his various natural history reports, Horsfield formally proposed to Raffles in July 1812 that he should assemble a collection of natural history subjects, mainly mammals and birds, for the East India Company Museum in London. The proposal was warmly welcomed by Raffles, who stated that he would recommend to the favourable notice of the Court of Directors of the Company ‘the zeal, knowledge, and ability’ which he had shown in his researches, and advised him that in order to enhance the value of the collection he should supply a description of ‘the peculiarities and habits of such animals as are of new species’.184 The idea of despatching such a collection to London almost certainly originated in discussions between Horsfield and Raffles at the end of the previous year and reflected the latter’s wish to secure the American’s valuable collections while the British remained in occupation of the island. Already in March 1812 he had informed the Secretary of the Company, William Ramsay, of the imminent despatch of such a collection.185 By the next opportunity I shall have the satisfaction of forwarding to the authorities in England several reports, from Dr. Horsfield and other scientific gentlemen, on the natural history of this island … A very extensive collection has been made by Dr. Horsfield, on account of government, of objects in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, which are peculiar to this place; and the [M]useum at the India-house will not be forgotten, as soon as occupations of a more pressing nature afford adequate leisure for an arrangement of our collections.

The collection did not reach Batavia until September 1812, as the Java Government Gazette of 3 October 1812 reported: ‘We hear that a large collection of specimens, illustrative of the Natural History of Java, has been transmitted to this place, by Mr. Horsfield, Botanist in the employment of Government, and will be forwarded to the Museum of the Court of Directors in Leadenhall Street’. In a Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vii; Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 605.

184

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 105–6.

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despatch to the Directors of the East India Company explaining the scope of the collection, and of Horsfield’s scientific researches generally, Raffles attempted to gain support for the American’s activities by skilfully alluding to the generous assistance he had already received from the previous Dutch and French administrations:186 On the establishment of this Government, I found that an American Gentleman Dr Thomas Horsfield, had been employed by the late Government, for the purpose of making a Botanical Survey of this Island, in the course of which, he had collected a variety of Specimens of it’s [sic] natural history and Productions. Aware of the desire of your Honble Court to encourage such pursuits, & conceiving that the completion of the Survey and Report on which he had been for some years engaged, would prove highly beneficial & useful to the interests of this Colony and to Science in general, I did not hesitate to afford even further assistance and encouragement than he received under the Dutch and French Governments. I have now the pleasure of offering to your Honorable Court, a collection of prepared Quadrupeds, Birds, and Insects, contained in two Boxes, addressed to the Secretary at the India House, and sent by the ship Juliana – I have also by the same opportunity transmitted to the address of Mr Ramsay, a collection of Impressions of dried Plants, made from Plants in the Herbary of Dr Horsfield.

He also sent to the Directors copies of Horsfield’s ‘Narrative’ of his journeys through the island of Java, his account of the medicinal plants of Java, and his essay on the mineralogy of the island, and concluded his letter by stating: ‘The Talents and Abilities of Dr. Horsfield will be evident from the Papers now transmitted, and without doubt entitle him to the peculiar and favourable consideration of your Hon’ble Court’.187 In approving Horsfield’s proposal to send a collection of natural history subjects to England, Raffles had emphasised the importance of giving a full description of any new species of animals. What, in fact, Horsfield supplied were brief lists of the birds and quadrupeds, together with some cursory observations on the collection

Raffles to Court of Directors, 30 October 1812, BL:Java Factory Records, vol. 68. Citation from a contemporary copy in the possession of the National Library of Singapore.

186

Raffles informed Marsden of the despatch of the collection in a letter dated 22 October 1812: ‘Interested as you are in every thing which concerns the further East, it will be satisfactory to you to know, that by the present opportunity I have forwarded to the Court of Directors specimens of many of the plants of Java, as well as of many new animals. I have also forwarded to them a short account of the medical plants of Java, as well as a general mineralogical account of the island by Dr. Horsfield’ (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 106).

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of animals.188 He explained to Raffles, in a letter dated 22 August 1812, that these descriptions were of necessity superficial because the collection and description of animals in Java had been for him a matter of secondary consideration compared with his botanical researches:189 Having addressed to you a collection of quadrupeds, birds and insects for the Museum of the Honble Court of Directors, I now have the honor of forwarding a nomenclatural Index of the quadrupeds and birds which I have hitherto noticed on this Island, with some concise observations on the manners and habits of the former, added according to your Honble’s desire. The number of the prepared animals is added to these observations for the purpose of pointing to the specimen sent – The observations are as yet superficial: my object is to continue them on the quadrupeds and to extend them more than I have hitherto been able to do to the birds, and to multiply specimens of the different animals found on Java – I request your Hon. very humbly in offering this collection to express to the Honble Secretary of the [East India] Company and to the Director of the Museum the following remarks and queries, on which it will be highly satisfactory and useful to me, and to the prosecution of the subject, to receive an early answer – 1st. I must observe that the collection, preparation and description of animals has hitherto been a Secondary object of my attention – My travels for the purpose of collecting and describing the Vegetables of the Island having given me frequent occasions of meeting and obtaining animals, I have endeavoured to make use of this excellent opportunity for remarking and collecting, all that was possible, in the animal Kingdom – If the preparation of the animals has not been made in the manner of a professed Zoologist I humbly desire such directions and instructions as may enable me to collect in future with more advantage – 2nd. As to the subject of Birds I remark that the present collection, after the subjects have been carefully prepared, has been put in the posture most convenient for transportation. I desire to know in how far these subjects are calculated to be mounted

Enclosures in Horsfield to Raffles, 22 August 1812, BL:Java Factory Records, vol. 68: Catalogue of Birds found in the Island of Java; List of Quadrupeds of the Island of Java; Observations on the procuring of Animals; and Catalogue of a Collection of Animals. Among the mammals sent were the Javan Tree Shrew, Tupaia javanica (Tupaia javanica Horsfield), which Horsfield obtained in the forests of Blambangan in 1806, and the Teledu, Mydaus meliceps (Mydaus javanensis javanensis Leschenault), which he had found in the same year, and subsequently in all his visits to the mountainous regions of Java. Both are described in his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4) as are the Plantain Squirrel, Sciurus plantani (Callosciurus notatus Boddaert), and the Linsang, Felis gracilis (Prionodon linsang Hardwicke), which he included in his Catalogue.

188

Horsfield to Raffles, 22 August 1812, BL:Java Factory Records, vol. 68. Citations from a duplicate copy in KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562.

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or put into their natural situations and attitudes after arrival in Europe, what has been neglected or omitted in the present instance and what are the best methods of treating birds, prepared in a distant Country in such a manner as to be most useful (and manageable) for placing in a Museum – I have formed the intention, as far as my opportunities shall allow, of having Drawings made of the birds of the Island in order to assist the Artist in Europe in placing them in their natural attitudes – 3d. Such remarks and directions as apply to the collection, preservation and transportation of Insects will likewise be very desirable – 4th. It will be very interesting to me to be informed what are the objects most desirable for the collections and the Museum established by the Honble Court of Directors, in order to contribute, as far as I am able, a small share to its enlargement – 5th. The Collection of 424 Impressions of Dried plants,190 has been made from subjects of my Herbary – The Index is simply nomenclatural and is intended only to direct to the Impressions – Having discovered a number of plants which I have not yet been able to find described in those books on Botany that are in my possession, they appear under the head of Doubtful ones both in regard to Genus and Species – I must remark that the deficiency of the latest publications on Indian plants, has hitherto much retarded the final determination regarding the objects being or not being described – I have added three samples of the Drawings which are prepared to illustrate the general description of the plants of the Island in which I am at present engaged and in which the investigation of the Medical and Economical uses is a principal object of attention –

Horsfield concluded his letter by requesting Raffles’s permission to make a tour of Cianjur and the Batavia districts with Dr. William Hunter in the following month for the purpose of investigating the medicinal and other plants of the region, as well as the botanical collections of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in Batavia. He also requested Raffles to supply him with an official letter so that he could recruit the necessary Indonesian labour and obtain horses for himself and his assistants. These requests were immediately complied with and Horsfield set out from Surakarta in September 1812 along the northern coast road to Cirebon and then on to Sumedang, Bandung, Cianjur, and Bogor, where he stayed briefly before proceeding to Batavia. Here he was asked by Raffles to join a commission of enquiry into the ‘Index to the Impressions of Dried Plants’, listing 424 specimens, signed by Horsfield, BL:MSS.Eur.D.562/27.

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affairs and resources of the island of Bangka, following its cession to the British Government by Sultan Najmu’d-din of Palembang earlier that year.191 He was disappointed at having to abandon his plan of touring the Priangan regions with Hunter but ‘cheerfully acceded’ to Raffles’s request.192 In retrospect his botanical reputation suffered by this change of plan, as Hunter’s death on 16 December 1812, during his absence in Bangka, deprived him of the opportunity of making a detailed investigation of the flora of west Java as was made by C.L. Blume between 1821 and 1825.193 Horsfield’s presence at Batavia in October 1812 coincided with endeavours being made to resuscitate the moribund Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen and provided a suitable occasion for members of the Society to learn something about his scientific researches.194 A meeting was arranged for the evening of 14 October at the house of Horsfield’s former chief, the Town Chemist J.G.D. Paschen, who presided. According to a brief account of the meeting in the Java Government Gazette, 24 October 1812, Horsfield presented ‘several interesting Memoirs on the Natural History of Java’, which, it was stated, would shortly be published in the Society’s Verhandelingen. The titles of these memoirs, or papers, are included in a report by one of the Directing Members of the Society, Jan Izaak van Sevenhoven, who was a member of the Committee appointed to recommend which of them should be printed.195 The Committee met at the house of Dr. William

M.H. Court, An Exposition of the Relations of the British Government with the Sultaun and State of Palembang, and the Designs of the Netherlands’ Government upon that Country; With Descriptive Accounts and Maps of Palembang and the Island of Banca (London, 1821); John Bastin, ‘Palembang in 1811 and 1812’, BKI, vol. CIX (1953), pp. 300–20, vol. CX (1954), pp. 64–88.

191

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. vii; Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 605.

192

Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana, ser. I, vol. 1, pp. 64–6.

193

The Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen was founded in 1778, the oldest learned society in Asia. Its original membership was 180, of whom 103 were resident at Batavia. Volume I of the Society’s Verhandelingen, or Transactions, was published in 1779, with Volumes II and III following in quick succession in 1780 and 1781. There was a delay in the issue of Volume IV until 1786, and Volumes V and VI did not appear until 1790 and 1792. By then interest in the Society had declined and it was only during the British period in Java that the Society was ‘revived’. Members of the Society met on 28 September 1812 at the house of Brigadier B.F.W. Baron von Lutzow at Batavia, when Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mackenzie (note 162) was elected a member and probably gave some account of his researches into the antiquities of Java (Java Government Gazette, 3 October 1812). Volumes VII and VIII of the Society’s Verhandelingen were issued during the British period, in 1814 and 1816, both containing papers by Horsfield.

194

The members of the Committee of Publications (over de Papieren) of the reconstituted Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen were J. Schill (President), B.F.W. Baron von Lutzow, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mackenzie, J.I. van Sevenhoven and P.L. Wedding. On Mackenzie’s departure from Java for India in July 1813 his place was taken by P. van Saanen. Apart from Van Sevenhoven, it is not known who specifically vetted Horsfield’s reports for publication.

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Hunter on 11 or 17 October 1812 when it was decided to circulate them among the members and receive their opinions at the next meeting.196 At this meeting on the evening of 23 October, Raffles entertained at dinner the 30-odd members of the Society resident at Batavia. Van Sevenhoven, ‘in a concise memoir’ drawn up by order of the Directing Members, outlined the principal objects of the Society, traced its early history, and gave a particular account of the support it had given to Horsfield’s early researches in Indonesia.197 Some discussion occurred about amending the existing regulations of the Society and the Directing Members were asked to circulate proposed amendments. For his part, Raffles pledged the Government’s support for the activities of the Society by providing a more commodious place for its meetings and facilitating its publications on the Government Press.198 As the liquid assets of the Society were held in depreciated Batavian paper currency, the hope was expressed that the Government would undertake this publication at its own expense.199 When the first of the two Britishsponsored volumes of the Verhandelingen appeared in 1814, it included a Foreword in Dutch and a revised set of regulations in English and Dutch, the Foreword being a slightly modified version of Van Sevenhoven’s Memoir presented to the meeting of the Society on 23 October 1812. A large part of this Foreword was given over to comments on Horsfield’s scientific researches in Java. ‘Minute by Mr Sevenhoven on the Memoirs of Dr Horsfield To the Council & Directors of the Batavian Society of Java’, October 1812, BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 1, no. 3, fols. 19–24.

196

J.I. van Sevenhoven, ‘Memoir on the Proceedings of the Batavian Society … October 1812’, BL: Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 36, no. 9, fols. 93–6.

197

Java Government Gazette, 31 October 1812. A week earlier Raffles had announced the decision of the Government to proceed with the construction of the social club ‘Harmonie’ at Rijswijk, which had commenced in 1810 by order of Governor-General Daendels. When the building was completed in 1814, part of it was allocated for the use of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen for its meetings, and to accommodate its library. A contemporary pen-and-ink drawing of the building is reproduced in Mildred Archer and John Bastin, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1978), no. 16: pp. 46–7. See also F.R.J. Verhoeven, De Jonge Jaren van de Harmonie (Batavia, 1939), pp. 1–48, and A. Heuken, Historical Sites of Jakarta (Jakarta, 1982), pp. 169–74. The Government Press was formed during the administration of GovernorGeneral Daendels by the amalgamation of two earlier printing establishments (H.J. de Graaf, The Spread of Printing, Eastern Hemisphere. Indonesia. (Amsterdam, 1969), pp. 29–30), and to this was added by Government purchase in 1814 a third printing press, which had been brought to Java from Bengal by Dr. William Hunter, the Superintending Surgeon, under whom the Press operated. Its principal publication during the British period was the Java Government Gazette, which commenced publication on 29 February 1812. The printing was done by a young American, A.H. Hubbard, who arrived in Java two months earlier from Calcutta with five Asian printers. A listing of the items printed by the press during 1811–16, including Volumes VII (1814) and VIII (1816) of the Verhandelingen of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, is given in J.A. van der Chijs, ‘Proeve eener Ned. Indische Bibliographie (1659–1870)’, VBG, vol. XXXVII (1875), pp. 1–325; vol. XXXIX (1880), pp. 1–93; vol. LV (1903), pp. 1–64. Volume VIII of the Verhandelingen was reprinted at Batavia in 1826.

198

Van Sevenhoven, ‘Minute’, BL:Mackenzie Collection (Private), vol. 1, no. 3, fol. 24.

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After what must have been a pleasant interlude at Batavia, Horsfield, together with his draughtsman, assistant, and Indonesian collectors,200 sailed on 1 November 1812 for Bangka aboard the brig Minerva (M. Holmes), carrying troops and the two other Commissioners, Colonel John Eales (1760–1819) of the Bengal European Regiment, who was to act as British Resident and Commandant of the island, and Lieutenant James Hanson (1786–1841) of the Madras Native Infantry. The Commissioners were under instruction to discover the manner in which the island was governed before it had been ceded to the British by the Sultan of Palembang in 1812, and to obtain details of its trade and commercial advantages, as well as its climate and population. Before making a final decision to annex the island to the British dominions, Raffles wished to know if its revenues from the export of tin would cover the civil and military charges of a British establishment and yield a profit beyond what was likely to be produced by a treaty with either the Sultan or the local people. Accordingly, the attention of the Commissioners was particularly directed to the subject of the trade and production of tin in the island. After calling briefly at Bangka, the Commissioners set out for Palembang to commence their enquiries and were conveyed in a flotilla of light craft along the Musi River.201 Having ascertained the relationship between Palembang and Bangka in former times, the Commissioners returned to Fort Nugent at Mentok in Bangka.202 In accordance with their instructions, they considered moving the British garrison to a more salubrious and sheltered part of the island, and a site was chosen at the There is no indication of the identity of Horsfield’s draughtsman, or how he later died on Bangka. One of the Indonesians who accompanied the Commission to Bangka was the Regent of Semarang, Kiai Adipati Sura Adimanggala, said by John Crawfurd to be superior to all his countrymen ‘for vigour of understanding, for sagacity and intelligence’ (History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), vol. I, p. 48). He was obviously attached to the Commission in a political capacity, his name being included in the list of passengers who returned on the Minerva to Batavia from Bangka on 30 July 1813 (Java Government Gazette, 31 July 1813). Also included in this list, but not named, were ‘three other Chiefs with their followers’, probably Raden Muhammad and Sayyid Abu Bakar, who were employed by Raffles as emissaries to Palembang before the British invasion of Java, and who are referred to in his instructions to the Bangka Commissioners in October 1812 as ‘persons who were in the first instance employed as agents, who naturally look forward for advantageous employment under the British Government, and whose interest it is the wish of this Government to promote, unless they are found disqualified or unfit to be trusted’ (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 608).

200

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 606–8; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, pp. vii–viii.

201

After the cession of Bangka to the British Government by Sultan Najmu’d-din in 1812, the island was officially named Duke of York’s Island, and its capital Mentok was re-named Minto in honour of the Governor-General. A detailed ground-plan of the town, much as it was in Horsfield’s time, is contained in H.M. Lange, Het Eiland Banka en Zijne Aangelegenheden (‘s Hertogenbosch, 1850), facing p. 72. For Horsfield’s map of Bangka, see note 208.

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village of Rangam, a few miles east of Mentok, where a temporary hospital was erected. Here Horsfield also established his base and for several months enjoyed good health, which was not the case with the other Commissioners. Eales became seriously ill and returned to Batavia, and Hanson soon afterwards contracted a local fever which also necessitated his return to Java in January 1813. In the following month Eales was replaced as Resident by Major William Robison from whom Horsfield learned that his exertions in the island had met with the approbation of the British Government in Java. Until then his attention had been largely devoted to the medical requirements of the British garrison and the hospital, but he was now informed by Robison that he was free to return to Batavia or prosecute those enquiries connected with his appointment as a Commissioner. He resolved unhesitatingly not to lose so favourable an opportunity to make a mineralogical survey of the island and to carry out botanical and zoological research. From information obtained from Indonesians at Mentok, he had already formulated a route to enable him to visit every important tin mine in the island, and he followed this path and carried out extensive scientific enquiries between March and June 1813.203 When he returned to Rangam he was disappointed to find that the small hospital he had spent so much time in establishing was without a single patient; and he experienced greater disappointment when, on the eve of his embarkation from Kota Waringen for Rangam, many of his geological and botanical specimens were destroyed as a result of his draughtsman being killed in an affray with the local people.204 According to Raffles, who gave a positive appraisal of Horsfield’s botanical achievements in Bangka in his ‘Discourse’ to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in September 1815, there remained a collection of ‘upward of 500 plants’, of which 16 were of ‘doubtful genera’. 205 Horsfield’s Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 609; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. viii.

203

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 611; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. ix.

204

Horsfield stated that of the 2,196 species which comprised the Herbarium he brought to England in 1819, most were collected in Java, and only ‘a smaller number’ in Bangka and Sumatra (Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. i). Before the altercation between his draughtsman and the Indonesians, he claimed that his Bangka Herbarium was ‘extensive’, and that many new and interesting plants had been hastily sketched (ibid., Postscript, ix). Possibly some of these drawings of Bangka plants are contained in a volume in the Botanical Library, Natural History Museum, London, lettered ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’. There is in the British Library (MSS.Eur.D.562/28) a manuscript in Horsfield’s hand listing 214 plants from Bangka, but whether or not this is an index of the surviving or lost plants in his Herbarium is impossible to say. After the completion of the publication of Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores (London, 1838–52), the Dutch botanist Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel (1811–71) examined and revised his Herbarium, and the plants collected in Bangka, Sumatra and Java are included in his Flora van Nederlandsch Indië (Amsterdam,

205

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geological specimens from Bangka, which were either sent to England in 1814 or taken by him to London in 1819, were lost during the final dispersal of materials of the India Museum in 1879.206 In the British Library there are three versions of his catalogue of geological specimens from Bangka, one in his own hand, and two in that of his assistant.207 Some 200 localities which he visited in the northern districts of Bangka are marked on his maps which were subsequently engraved.208 On 12 March 1813 he submitted to Robison at Rangam a report on the general state of the island, the administration of the mines, and the relations of the Chinese tin miners to the former Government at Palembang.209 On 30 July he returned to Batavia, where he remained for a time completing his reports.210 He then proceeded to Bogor and, after a brief stay with Raffles at Government House, set out for Surakarta by way of Cirebon, where he gained a favourable impression of the operation of the land rent system then being introduced into Java.211 After his return to Surakarta in September 1813, he began working on his Bangka materials and devoted much of his time to preparing topographical and mineralogical accounts of the island. When Raffles visited Surakarta early in 1814 he was able to show him the materials he had collected and shortly afterwards he sent to him at Semarang a large section of his general report on the island, together with accompanying illustrations.212 He also had the satisfaction of receiving from the Government an

Leipzig, 1855–9) and in the supplementary volume, Sumatra, Zijne Plantenwereld en Hare Voortbrengselen (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leipzig, 1860–1). Bastin and Moore, Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (hist. Ser.), vol. 10, no. 3 (1982), p. 108.

206

BL:MSS. Eur. F.53. Among the mammals Horsfield collected in Bangka was the Tarsier, Tarsius bancanus (Tarsius tarsier bancanus Horsfield), which he found near Jebus, one of the mining districts in the island, and the Barking Deer, Cervus muntjak (Muntiacus muntjak muntjak Zimmermann), both of which are described in his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4).

207

Topographical and mineralogical maps of Bangka were prepared by Horsfield at Surakarta in 1814 to accompany his report on the island (note 213), and were later engraved by John Walker. The manuscript and engraved maps are in the British Library: X/3359/1–2; X/3360/1–2. Also in the British Library are 12 original drawings of Bangka by Horsfield: WD 526.

208

Horsfield to Robison 12 March 1813, encl. in Raffles to Secret Committee, 30 June 1813 (BL:Java Factory Records, vol. 60. Prior to leaving Bangka, Horsfield received a private letter from Raffles dated 10 June 1813, which formed the commencement of a correspondence between them. This and other letters from Raffles to Horsfield are printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 610 et seq., the original letters being preserved in the Library of the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden: Westerse Handschriften H 562.

209

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, pp. viii–ix.

210

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 610–11. See Bastin, VKI, vol. XIV (1954), pp. 1–193; ‘The Working of the Early Land Rent System in West Java’, BKI, vol. 116 (1960), pp. 301–12.

211

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 611–12; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, pp. ix–x. Horsfield states that he ‘handed’ this report to Raffles at Semarang but he was writing 15 years later and was probably mistaken.

212

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addition to his monthly salary of 250 Spanish dollars covering the whole of his period in Bangka. During the following months he sent further reports on Bangka to Raffles, but on 1 June 1814 he wrote asking him for permission to postpone submitting the final part of his report in order to undertake a journey through the western regions of the Javanese Principalities during the dry season. Raffles agreed to this in a letter dated 18 June 1814 in which he informed him that part of his report on Bangka, together with the minerals sent to him at Semarang, had already been forwarded to England, but that he had retained the drawings fearing their loss at the hands of American cruisers. His chart of Bangka, however, had been entrusted to his aide-de-camp, Captain Thomas Otho Travers (1785–1844), who had sailed to England in April with instructions to have it engraved: I am naturally deeply interested in the publication of your Merits and in obtaining for you a just and appropriate acknowledgement for your labours – and if such an event should happen as the restoration of this Colony to the Dutch, I shall be still more interested in making known the attention which has been paid to Science during the short period of the British Dominion – 213

Horsfield set out on his journey through the western regions of the Javanese Principalities on 1 August 1814, travelling directly along the road from Surakarta to Yogyakarta.214 Beyond Yogyakarta he proceeded south to Bantul and Brosot, and then westwards along the southern coast to Kadilangu, where there were Raffles to Horsfield, 18 June 1814 (KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562). Raffles had encouraged Horsfield to prepare his report on Bangka for publication (Raffles to Banks, 18 September 1814, NHM:Botanical Library:D.T.C. 19: fols. 68–74) and later had taken it upon himself to announce the projected work in an advertisement leaf in his The History of Java (London, 1817) under the title, An Account of the Island of Banca, in the East Indies. He also referred to the projected work in his book, vol. I, p. 205n: ‘An interesting account of the natural productions of Banka, and of the tin in particular, with the method of working the mines and preparing the metal, has been drawn up by Dr. Horsfield, and will shortly be published’. Horsfield’s charts of Bangka were engraved for the work (note 208) but the report was not published until 1848 in JIA, vol. II, pp. 299–336, 373–427, 705–25, 779–824. A Dutch translation of the report was published in TNI, vol. 12 (1850), pp. 192–226, 358–82; vol. 13 (1851), pp. 50–62, 273–91, 388–405; vol. 14 (1852), pp. 321–45. Part of the report was also published under the title, ‘Mineralogical Descriptions of the Island of Banka’ in the American Journal of Science, vol. 7 (1849), pp. 86–101, and information from the report was published under Raffles’s name in a short paper, ‘On the Tin of the Island of Banka’, in the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, vol. 3 (1827), pp. 247–55.

213

The details of Horsfield’s journey through the western territories of the Javanese Principalities between 1 August and 4 November 1814 are taken from Horsfield, ‘Essay on the Geography, Mineralogy and Botany of the Western portion of the Territory of the Native Princes of Java. Addressed to the Honorable Thomas Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant Governor of Java’, VBG, vol. VIII, no. VI (1816), pp. 1–48. A large manuscript map recording in detail the main course of his journey, and inscribed in his own hand, ‘Map of Dr. Horsfield’s Route from Surokerto to Banymas in 1814 …’, is in the British Library.

214

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Chinese toll-collectors stationed. At Bantul he was accommodated by a Peranakan Chinese toll-collector, whose house was tastefully arranged in imitation of the European mode, and at Brosot he stayed at a rest-house; but at Kadilangu he found himself sharing the discomforts of a bamboo hut with a number of Chinese. He diverted here from the usual route along the southern coast and headed in a north-westerly direction across the Bogowonto River to Jenar and Jono, where he arrived on 5 August. This place, belonging to Yogyakarta, was a principal market for the sale of locally produced cloth. Cotton was grown there and was also supplied by the neighbouring district of Banyumas, the trade and manufacture being largely in the hands of the Chinese. On 6 August he travelled on to Wedi, a village on the western boundary of Bagelan also noted as a large market for the sale of cloth, and on the following day he set off in the direction of Karangbolong on the southern coast. After crossing the Lereng River and passing through the small village of Ambal, he reached Bedati around noon. Next day he proceeded along the road to Petanahan and at midday arrived at the Cincingguling River which discharged itself into the ocean a few hundred yards south of the road. The river here was very deep and Horsfield and his party had to be assisted across in small boats attached to each other by means of a raft of plaited bamboo. On the opposite side of the river the ascent was precipitous, leading along a high ridge to Karangbolong. He spent 9 August 1814 examining the geological features of the neighbouring hills and the famous birds’ nest caves of Karangbolong. He then pursued a westerly course across successive ranges of hills to the south-western point of the peninsula where the well-known cavern of Gua Nagasari is situated. He descended on the western side into the district of Ayah and then journeyed on to Jetis before returning to Karangbolong, where he spent some time visiting the nearby villages. The journey was continued on 14 August northwards into the district of Rangka, and on the following day to the village of Jatinegara. He then travelled westwards to Selondoko, where the nearby hills were given over to the cultivation of dry rice, and then on to the capital, Banyumas, which was reached at noon on 16 August. Four days later he followed a south-westerly path towards Maos and reached Penggalen on 21 August. On the following day he travelled further south to Bunton near where he crossed the Serayu River by raft and proceeded to Cilacap. This place had been largely depopulated because of attacks by pirates, but these depredations had been checked by the establishment of a British fort on the north-eastern point of

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Nusakambangan and the population was again increasing. During the following days he visited the Danan River near Jeruklegi and travelled further westwards. Although he found the vegetation of the districts around Cilacap diversified and interesting, and was able to add to his botanical collections,215 it had the reputation of being unhealthy and he was pleased to return to Adipala on 24 August, and thence directly to Banyumas. Here, in the forests on the hills surrounding the town, he came across the Hill Blue Flycatcher, Muscicapa banyumas (Cyornis banyumas Horsfield), and the rare Fairy Bluebird, Irena puella (Irena puella Latham), both of which are described in his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4). After spending some time at Banyumas arranging his plants and completing his botanical drawings, he crossed the Serayu River and travelled northwards to Sukaraja, where he found evidence of extensive cultivation. He then headed westwards to Purwokerto and on 8 September arrived at Ajibarang on the Tadjum River, the most westerly point of the Javanese Principalities. Here the widespread system of slash-and-burn cultivation had destroyed anything of botanical interest and he returned to Purwokerto on 11 September. The following day he set out for the village of Purbolinggo and decided to inspect Gunung Slamet (3432m) by returning to Sukaraja and Purwokerto and then travelling northwards. He climbed as high as the Kemutug district on the southern ridge of the mountain and spent several days making additions to his botanical collection. After returning to Banyumas, he revisited the ridges of Kaliwedi, collecting botanical specimens over a period of some days,216 and afterwards, at the invitation of the Temenggong, who gave every assistance to his scientific pursuits, he attended the Ramadan festivities at Banyumas. It was while he was at Banyumas that Horsfield received from Raffles a letter dated 11 September 1814 containing news of the safe arrival in London of the natural history collections which had been shipped from Java in January 1813.217 These,

It was at this time that Horsfield discovered the tree which Bennett named after him, Saccopetalum horsfieldii (Miliusa horsfieldi (Bennett) Baillon ex Pierre), ‘growing on a low range of hills at no great distance from the southern shore’ (Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantaæ Javanicæ Rariores, Tab. XXXV, pp. 165–9).

215

Horsfield discovered here the plant, Horsfieldia aculeata (Harmsiopanax aculeatus (Blume ex D.C. Harms), which C.L. Blume named in his honour (Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Tab. XXVI, pp. 123–6.

216

Raffles to Horsfield, 11 September 1814, BL:MSS.Eur. D.742/21. A brief extract from the letter is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 614 and Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. x.

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especially the birds and dried impressions of plants, had been favourably received, and Raffles enclosed a letter from Sir Joseph Banks asking him for additional items. This letter afforded Horsfield ‘inexpressible delight’ because, as he wrote later, it presented him with the means of opening a correspondence which had a considerable influence on his scientific pursuits.218 Banks’s letter to Raffles dated 14 December 1814 is not extant, but what undoubtedly prompted him to write was the arrival in London of the impressions of 424 dried plants from Java and the prospect this held out of acquiring a similar collection for his own Herbarium. In the pleasing knowledge that his researches in Java were now known in England, Horsfield set out on the return journey from Banyumas to Surakarta along the main road via Purwareja and Gumuru. At Kutawaringin he left the Surakarta road and, having crossed the Serayu River, travelled northwards where he was able to determine the relative positions of Gunung Sundoro, Gunung Sumbing, and Gunung Slamet. On 18 October he proceeded through Banjarnegara and on the following day continued northwards where the going proved difficult because of the bad condition of the roads. His next stop was at the village of Karangkobar in the surrounding hills. On 21 October he continued on to Kalilunyah and during the next two days he went on to Panusupan and Batur, where he found a large Chinese population subsisting on Indian corn and vegetables because the high elevation precluded the cultivation of rice. The region proved of great interest to him because of the mountain flora and the geology of the adjacent range. Leaving Batur on 27 October he proceeded in a north-easterly direction to the small village of Komang where the Dieng Plateau begins to rise. He climbed Gunung Prau219 and during the descent he was able to add substantially to his collection of mountain flora,220 as well as many mammals and birds, including the Sunda Island Blue Flycatcher, Muscicapa indigo (Stoporala indigo Horsfield), the White-crowned

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 614; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. x.

218

Horsfield is not explicit in the account of his travels in 1814 about climbing Gunung Prau (Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. VI (1816), pp. 41–3), but there is no doubt that he climbed to the summit, or near to it. See his letter to Robert Brown, 30 March 1830, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 118–19.

219

Among the plants collected by him on Gunung Prau were Sonerila tenuifolia Blume, which was found at ‘about three or four thousand feet above the level of the Ocean, on the declivities of the Mountain Prahu …’ (Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Tab. XLIV, pp. 211–18), Polyosma ilicifolia Blume, which he records as having found in only one situation, ‘in 1814, on the Mountain Prahu, about 4,000 feet above the level of the ocean, in the dense forests which cover this mountain’ (ibid., Tab. XL, pp. 193–6), and the fern which Brown named after him, Polypodium (Dipteris) horsfieldii (Dipteris conjugata Reinwardt), which was found by him on Gunung Prau, and in three other localities in Java (ibid., Tab. I, pp. 1–5).

220

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Forktail, Motacilla speciosa (Enicurus leschenaulti Vieillot), the Greater Short-wing, Brachypteryx montana (Brachypteryx montana montana Horsfield), the Chestnutbacked Scimitar-Babbler, Pomatorhinus montanus (Pomatorhinus montanus Horsfield), which he had found earlier on Gunung Merbabu, Horsfield’s Woodcock, Scolopax saturata (Scolopax saturata saturata Horsfield), the Teledu, Mydaus meliceps (Mydaus javanensis javanensis Leschenault), which he had already discovered in the Tengger highlands and, south of Gunung Prau, the Ferret-Badger, Gulo orientalis (Helictis orientalis orientalis Horsfield), which was obtained by one of his assistants.221 After a short stay at Kayurangkang, he travelled to Kalibeber and then on to Jawa, a small Chinese farm where he halted for several days to put his botanical collections in order and catch up with his drawings. He then headed south and on 31 October reached Kertek, where he found another large Chinese resident population attached to the local farmer of customs. From here he was able to determine the relative situations of Gunung Sundoro and Gunung Sumbing before proceeding eastwards along the road to Tegalreja, on the boundary of the Javanese Principalities. Between Jittis and Pakiswiring, which he reached on 2 November, the travelling became easier, and he proceeded to Kopeng on the northern slopes of Gunung Merbabu. Here he did not follow the usual route to Salatiga but headed directly eastwards to join the main road from Semarang to Surakarta at Kaligandu. He arrived at his residence at Surakarta during the afternoon of 4 November 1814, after an absence of more than three months. Soon after his return to Surakarta he received a letter from Raffles dated 22 November 1814 informing him of the safe arrival in London of a box containing one of his collections, together with various enquiries from England concerning the natural history of Java.222 He replied on 3 December and received another letter in return from Raffles dated 15 December 1814 asking him for specific information on the edible birds’ nests and the inhabitants of Karongbolong.223 During the following months he completed an account of his travels in the western districts of the Javanese Principalities and he also prepared a catalogue of the plants he had discovered during his journey as well as a list of the geological specimens he had The birds are described by Horsfield in his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821–4).

221

Raffles to Horsfield, 22 November 1814, reproduced in facsimile as a frontispiece to the second edition of Lady Raffles’s Memoir (London, 1835).

222

Raffles to Horsfield, 15 December 1814, Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 614–15. Horsfield’s letter to Raffles dated 3 December 1814 is not extant.

223

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collected.224 This paper was printed in 1816 in Volume VIII of the Verhandelingen of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen.225 He also prepared a geographical and geological map of the whole of the western districts of the Javanese Principalities as far as the Priangan, 226 and this, together with the information contained in the geographical notices of his journey, was later incorporated by Raffles into the large map of the island in his The History of Java (London, 1817).227 At this time Horsfield also began putting together a collection of dried plants for Sir Joseph Banks to whom he wrote on 24 December 1814.228 Encouraged by the contents of a letter which was lately received from you by the Honourable Governor Mr Raffles, I take the liberty to address to you a Collection of Driedplants of this Island, consisting of 237 Specimens lately gathered during an excursion through the interior districts situated west of Souracarta. I shall be very happy to contribute a few subjects to your Herbary, at the same time that my object is to profit by the kind offer made by Mr Raffles to examine any Specimens that may be sent to you, and to return the botanic names of such as may be already described, and I hope you will liberally pardon this interestedness arising from a desire of information. I have added a systematic list of the subjects with very few general observations and request very earnestly your remarks on them individually, and especially the indication of such as may be new. It will appear to you that as to many of these subjects the Genus is, to me, undetermined; on these therefore I desire more particularly your advice, in order if necessary to contribute on a future occasion their characters and delineation of the parts of fructification. The Ferns are very numerous on the Island: I shall be much favoured as well by the specific names of the present Subjects as by the correction regarding those Genera to which I may have erroneously referred them. Many other objects of this class remain for research, and these will particularly receive my attention in future excursions. Your compliance with these various requests will in the greatest degree assist and facilitate those investigations into the vegetable

Bastin and Moore, Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (hist. Ser.), vol. 10, no. 3 (1982), pp. 84–97; Horsfield, VBG, vol. VIII, no. VI (1816), pp. 1–183.

224

The Catalogue of geological specimens is given at pp. 156–63, and the Catalogue of plants at pp. 164–83.

225

Note 214.

226

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 615.

227

Horsfield to Banks, 24 December 1814, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 1–2.

228

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productions of this Island, which have received the most generous encouragement of the Lieutenant Governor; and if it appears to you that the subjects of this Island, promise to add to the general stock of Botany, I shall be greatly encouraged to offer you more extensive Collections. I hope you will pardon my importunity, if I solicit your reply as early as may be convenient. I likewise take the liberty to recommend our endeavours in cultivating the Natural History of Java to your notice and protection and remain with sentiments of the greatest esteem and reverence.

After the arrival of the collection in England, Robert Brown (1773–1858), Keeper of Banks’s Herbarium and Library,229 prepared a catalogue of the plants which Horsfield found invaluable.230 In June 1815 he sent to Banks a second collection of 112 dried plants which Brown again listed and described after it reached England in January 1816. 231 This had been preceded by a second On Brown, see Chapter Seven, note 5.

229

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. x; R. Brown, ‘Dr Horsfield’s First Java Collection of Dried Plants dated Decr. 24. 1814’, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 10–13.

230

R. Brown, ‘Dr. Horsfield’s Second Collection of Dried Plants (received Jany. 1816) dated June 1815’, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 16–17, with a second, more detailed list, fols. 18–22. The two collections of dried plants sent by Horsfield to Banks from Java totalled 349 specimens and it is difficult to establish whether or not they are related to the 353 impressions of dried plants from Java which are contained in a box in the Botanical Department of the Natural History Museum, London. The latter collection is accompanied by a catalogue in Horsfield’s hand entitled, ‘Index to the Impressions of Dried Plants Corresponding to the Index Floræ-Javanensis’, which does not correspond with the lists of dried plants sent to Banks in the bound volume, ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’. This collection certainly bears no direct relationship to the 964 dried Java plants which the Court of Directors of the East India Company presented to the British Museum on 31 July 1858, the list of specimens in the Botanical Library of the Natural History Museum being signed by Horsfield under that date. The present location of this collection has not been determined (see Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana, ser. I, vol. 1, p. 244 for a general statement on the location of Horsfield’s collections). There are in the British Library two manuscript volumes, the first being an ‘Index to the Impressions of [424] Dried Plants’ signed by Horsfield (MSS.Eur.D.562/27), which obviously relates to the collection he despatched to the East India Company Museum in August 1812, and the second bearing a title on the upper cover, ‘Catalogues of Dried Plants from Java by Dr Horsfield No 1 to 988 Dupl. 1 to 809 Dupl. Index Herbarii ex Ins: Banka. Dupl: 1819’, and inside the volume, ‘Catalogue of Dried plants marked from No 1 to 988’ (MSS.Eur.D.562/28). The Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has a number of original drawings of plants sent by Horsfield to Banks, as well as drawings of plant dissections (MSS 254). Yet another collection of impressions of about 400 dried plants sent by Horsfield from Java, formerly in the possession of Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761–1842), was offered for sale by Henry G. Bohn, London, in 1847, the catalogue description being: ‘JAVA PLANTS (about 400) impressed from the Plants themselves on a very fine silk paper, with a Manuscript Index of 12 pages, in 24 Classes, with a 25th Class of ‘Doubtful Plants, of which the fructification has not been examined’. At the end of the following notice occurs:- ‘The numbers correspond with the impressions. The objects that are not numbered were contained in the collection sent to the Honourable House [sic] of Directors’. – Signed, T. Horsfield. – bound in 1 volume, folio, half calf, £5.5s. From the library of A.B. Lambert, Esq.’ This volume is now in the possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (Coll. 625), the printed Guide to the Manuscript Collections (Philadelphia, 1963), p. 334 stating that 368 species are bound in a volume of 759 leaves with an accompanying notebook of 12 pages. The volume was purchased by the Academy but the date of acquisition is unknown. Horsfield made a collection of dried plants in the Minangkabau regions of central Sumatra in 1818, and after he took up residence in England in the following year he made similar collections of the plants of Great Britain and later of the Alps and Italy, these latter collections

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collection of 203 plants for the East India Company Museum which he had despatched from Surakarta on 16 July 1814, before commencing his travels in the western districts of the Javanese Principalities. For some reason it was handed over to Banks in December 1815, and Brown successfully identified 182 of the specimens.232 On 15 March 1816, at Raffles’s request, Horsfield put together the seeds of 52 plants for Banks, and these were taken by Raffles himself to England when he left Java during that month.233 A similar collection of seeds and living plants was sent to Mauritius at the request of the Governor, Robert Townsend Farquhar (1776–1830), and other plants were sent by Horsfield to the Botanic Garden in Calcutta.234 The natural history and other queries contained in Raffles’s letters of 11 September and 22 November 1814 were answered by Horsfield on 3 February 1815, and Raffles replied in turn on 7 March 1815 giving an account of his recent ascent of Gunung Gede, obviously in ignorance of the fact that Horsfield had climbed the mountain himself.235 In April Horsfield learned of Raffles’s proposed visit to Surakarta,236 and in the following month he was able to show him the natural history collections, drawings, and maps which had been assembled since his previous visit. He had the satisfaction to notice that Raffles’s interest in his activities was undiminished and he secured his approval to make a journey through the eastern provinces of the Javanese Principalities.237 This journey was commenced in late May or early June 1815 when he proceeded in a north-easterly direction by way of Sragen, Kebonromo, and Sambong before heading eastwards through Jogorogo to Ngawi, Caruban, Berbek, Pace, and Kediri.238 At Kediri he was able to capture a number of the Larger Fishing Eagles, being in the possession of the Botanical Library of the Natural History Museum, London. After he handed over his natural history collections to the East India Company Museum in 1819, he continued to work on his dried plants from Indonesia, the Day Book of the East India Company Library (BL:MSS.Eur.E293/3) recording loans to him of his Sumatran collection on 27 September 1820 and his Java collection on 31 July 1821, ‘for the purpose of examining & arranging’. R. Brown, ‘Dr Horsfield’s Third Collection of Dried Plants of Java vizt that sent by him to the E. India Company from whose Museum it was received Decr 1815’, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 28–30, with a second, more detailed list, fols. 31–8.

232

‘Catalogue of Seeds for Sir Joseph Banks’, signed by Horsfield and dated, Surakarta 15 March 1816, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 39–40.

233

De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), p. 583.

234

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 616–17; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, p. xi.

235

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 617–18.

236

Ibid., pp. 618–20; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xi.

237

The course of Horsfield’s journey in 1815 is shown on the map in Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores.

238

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Falco ichthyaetus (Icthyophago ichthyaetus Horsfield), having until then collected only a single pair at Pruwoto in Demak in 1809. He spent several days at Kediri working on his drawings and arranging his collections and then set off southwards to Srengat, where he visited the Javanese antiquities in the region, including Candi Penataran.239 After calling at Blitar, he appears to have travelled in a south-easterly direction to Klampok, Keppok, and Ngekkul, before proceeding northwards to Gebugangin and on to Legok, where he attempted to climb Gunung Kelud (1731m) from the southern side. This attempt proved unsuccessful and he was forced to return to Srengat. Here he learned that the inhabitants of the village of Pandantoyo on the western side of the mountain suffered from goitre, and he travelled there as he wished to investigate the matter. During the course of his journey he learned from one of the Indonesian rulers that it was possible to climb the mountain from this side and he succeeded in the attempt in the company of a party of Indonesians.240 He found that the summit consisted of a large sandy plain extending several hundred feet in all directions and that the crater was in the form of an irregular inverted cone, the sides of which descended vertically to a green-coloured lake. After returning to Srengat, he set out in a westerly direction to Mayangan and Ujong, and then went southwards to Rowo, Pakkis, Kampak and Teluk Prigi (Segara Wedi) on the southern coast. He next headed northwards to Trenggalek and Ponorogo,241 where he diverted to Sumoroto and Kunthi, before retracing his steps and travelling northwards along the western ridges of Gunung Wilis (2169m) to Madiun. From there he continued his journey in a westerly direction to Maospati, Magetan and Sarangan, and then went north to Brubu, skirting the northern boundaries of Gunung Lawu, which he had climbed in 1805. From Gamping he travelled to Trenguli and Suku, where he spent a few days examining the extensive Javanese antiquities in the area. From there he journeyed to Gedangan, Pringombo, and on to Surakarta, where he arrived on 2 November 1815 after an absence of some five months. Shortly after his return, he received a letter from Raffles informing him of the expected restitution of Java and its dependencies to the Netherlands Government and offering him the opportunity of accompanying him to England in the following year.242 In January 1816 he received an unexpected flying visit from Raffles, who had hurried Note 76.

239

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xii.

240

It was at Ponorogo, ‘in a low dry tract near one of the teak-forests’, that Horsfield discovered the only specimen of Mecopus nidulans, described by Bennett, ibid., Tab. XXXII, pp. 154–8.

241

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 620–1.

242

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to Surakarta following the discovery of a conspiracy between elements of the Javanese court and members of the Sepoy Light Infantry Battalion to overthrow European rule in the island.243 The conspiracy had been fanned by rumours that the Dutch were about to return to Java and in the same expectation Horsfield arranged with Raffles ‘several preparatory dispositions’ about the despatch of his natural history collections to England.244 He received from Raffles early in March a letter informing him of his imminent supersession in the Government of Java by John Fendall (1760–1825) and of his indecision about going to England or proceeding directly to west Sumatra to take up his new post as Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough.245 This was quickly followed by another letter in which Raffles informed him of his intention of leaving Java during March for England and suggesting the advantage of his taking with him any of Horsfield’s natural history collections that were ready for transportation, including possibly rare seeds or anything else likely to be acceptable to Sir Joseph Banks.246 Under this virtual barrage of requests Horsfield managed to pack 12 chests of natural history subjects and three small packages containing seeds of Indonesian plants for Banks, specimens of the Upas poison, and drawings of various plants and Javanese antiquities. The 12 chests did not reach Batavia until after Raffles’s departure for England, and they had to be transported on a later ship;247 but Raffles received the packages for Banks and he acknowledged receipt of them in a farewell letter to Horsfield written on board the ship Ganges (P. Falconer) off Anyer on 26 March 1816.248 Horsfield was deeply saddened to receive this letter as it closed for a time a correspondence which had afforded him much encouragement and delight.249 It is rather puzzling why he did not accept the invitation to accompany Raffles to England, but he probably wanted to complete his researches, especially into the metamorphosis

P.B.R. Carey, ‘The Sepoy Conspiracy of 1815 in Java’, BKI, vol. 133 (1977), pp. 294–322.

243

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xiii.

244

Raffles to Horsfield, 28 February 1816, Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 621–3.

245

Raffles to Horsfield, 2 March 1816, ibid., pp. 623–4.

246

The chests do not appear to have been sent by Horsfield from Surakarta until mid-1816, judging by the dates of the catalogues accompanying them. According to these, 158 birds and 41 mammals were despatched (BL:MSS.Eur.D.562/26). They were apparently transported to England aboard the Surrey (S. Beadle). Raffles acknowledged their safe arrival in London in a letter to Horsfield dated 6 February 1817 (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 627).

247

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 624–5.

248

Ibid., p. 625.

249

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of Indonesian Lepidoptera.250 Raffles’s recommendation to his successor, John Fendall, assured him of continued British support for his scientific endeavours,251 and if he gave any thought to the impending change of Government it could not have given him much concern considering the generous support he had received from the Netherlands authorities over a long period of years. All the same, he must have realised that the restitution of Dutch rule in Indonesia would create problems about the ownership of his natural history collections, and it was with this in mind that on 6 October 1816, after returning to Surakarta from a second visit to Gunung Prau,252 and a short stay at Yogyakarta, including another journey to the southern coast,253 he formally submitted to the British Government a proposal guaranteeing the delivery of all his collections to the East India Company in London on condition that he was paid a proportion of his annual salary in advance.254 He addressed the proposal by way of John Crawfurd (1783–1868), British Commissioner at Semarang, who wrote to him on 10 October stating that he would forward it to Batavia and that he had no doubt that it would be approved: ‘It is in my opinion almost too moderate and too modest! I will recommend that you get your whole salary! I will recommend that your contingent bill be also passed and whenever you get it send it here and I will make the disbursement on my own authority’.255 Horsfield’s proposal was immediately approved by Fendall and the Java Council and Crawfurd was authorised to pay him 3,000 Spanish dollars in lieu of salary. In a letter to the Government Secretary, Charles Assey (1779–1821), acknowledging the decision, Horsfield expressed his appreciation of the patronage he had received during the British administration of Java:256 Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xiii.

250

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 625.

251

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xiv: ‘My former visit had been very hasty, and had rather awakened than satisfied my attention in regard to its high interest, both in a geological and botanical point of view. … I proceeded thither, and spent several days in those elevated regions, adding largely to my former observations and collections’. The manuscript Journal of Captain Godfrey P. Baker of the Bengal Light Infantry Volunteer Battalion (Chapter Six, note 54) in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, contains the following entry regarding Horsfield’s visit to Gunung Prau at this time: ‘This Gentleman made a tour de recherche thro’ Gunung Prao [Prau] the year after my antiquarian visit, & assured me that nearly if not all the vegetable productions of that Mountain were Alpine – that it furnished hardly anything indigenous to the plains of Java; that in mosses and Epidendrons it was peculiarly rich – He occupied the hut which I had constructed on the plain of Dieng …’.

252

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xiv.

253

Horsfield’s letter of 6 October 1816 is not extant. Its contents are inferred from his letter to Charles Assey dated 25 October 1816, BL:MSS.Eur.F.31, fols. 322–4.

254

Crawfurd to Horsfield, 10 October 1816, NHM:Zoological Library: 89 QH.

255

Horsfield to Assey, 25 October 1816, BL:MSS.Eur.F.31, fols. 322–4.

256

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I take the liberty to request you to be pleased to inform the Honorable the Lieutenant Governor in Council of my respectful acknowledgement of this communication, and at the same time to assure His Honorable of my very grateful sentiments of the liberality with which he has been pleased to grant a provision for the completion of my researches which will enable me to do this in a manner conformable to the outlines of my plan. I further request to be permitted to make use on this occasion to acknowledge to you and to the Honorable the Lieutt. Governor the devotedness and obligation that this additional favour demands from me in receiving the reception I have met with during the period that the British Government was established on Java. I have every possible reason to declare that I have experienced that particular encouragement and support which is characteristic of the liberal views of the English Nation, and I am therefore in a high degree gratified by the continuation of this patronage and sincerely appreciate the favourable intention of the Honorable the Lieutt. Governor to point out to the authorities in Europe the nature of my researches: this will greatly encourage me to continue with assiduity my endeavours to acquire their approbation at the termination of my pursuits. – In conformity to the declaration contained in my letter [of 6 October] I shall have the honor to offer to the Honorable the Lieutt. Govr. in Council without delay a correct and faithful Statement of the collections &ca. still remaining in my charge –

Horsfield also obtained through Assey permission from the Netherlands authorities to continue his activities in the island, and with adequate finance at his disposal, he was able to plan his researches under the following heads:257 First, the examination of various localities in the territory of the native Princes, more particularly interesting in a botanical and geological point of view; secondly, the extension of my observations on the metamorphosis of Javanese Lepidopterous insects, and of the series of drawings in progress for their illustration;258 thirdly, the flora of the immediate neighbourhood of the capital of Surokerto, and the description of the agriculture of this district; fourthly, the completion of various miscellaneous notices of the native courts, the statistics of their territories, the manners and domestic arrangements of the Princes, their amusements, and public spectacles; fifthly, the working up of an extensive series of drawings in all departments of natural history, as well as of views, maps and plans.259 Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xiv; Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 626.

257

Some 237 pencil, ink and watercolour drawings of Indonesian Lepidoptera are in the Horsfield Collection in the British Library:NHD 9, nos. 1401–1637 (Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962), pp. 46–8, 81). Some of the plates in his A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company (London, 1828–9) are after drawings executed by his artists in Java.

258

His surviving natural history drawings are in the Horsfield Collection in the British Library:NHD 1, nos. 76–172, and NHD 9, nos. 1401–1642. These include 97 pencil, ink, and watercolour drawings of birds,

259

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In accordance with these objectives, Horsfield again visited Gunung Merapi and carried out a detailed exploration of its summit. Late in 1816 he revisited the districts of Pacitan and Kalak in order to examine the geological constitution of the ridges along the southern coast of Java and to study the metamorphosis of Indonesian Lepidoptera.260 After his return to Surakarta early in 1817, he devoted several months to the study of the flora and agriculture of the immediate neighbourhood of the capital, and to completing notices and collecting statistics and other information on the Javanese Principalities. While he was bringing his researches to a close and packing his collections ready for transportation to Europe, he received from Raffles several mountain barometers and a variety of books and literary notices of great interest. They were accompanied by a letter reporting the safe arrival of the 12 chests of natural history subjects he had despatched to London in 1816, as well as news of their favourable reception and the assurance that he would receive the warmest welcome from Sir Joseph Banks on his arrival in England.261 It is understandable why the reference to Sir Joseph Banks in Raffles’s letter would have pleased Horsfield, and his pleasure must have been unbounded when he received at the same time not only Brown’s lists identifying the dried plants he had sent to Banks in 1815 and the previous year, but also a highly flattering letter from the President of the Royal Society himself:262 The collections are interesting in the extreme, and will, when published, make very valuable additions to the science of botany. Your industry, Sir, in collecting them is praise-worthy in the extreme; and the talent you have shewn in arranging them encourages a well-founded hope of much advantage to science being derived from your arrangement and observations on them …. I beg, Sir, that you will be assured that I shall always be ready and happy to give you every assistance in my power, and that you will have no scruple in addressing questions to me. Gentlemen who, like you, cultivate science in the wilderness of nature, where books are not to be found, have a right to call upon us inhabitants of libraries for every assistance you stand in need of, which we have the power of affording ….

mammals, and reptiles from Java, and pencil drawings by William Daniell for the plates in his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands (London, 1821-4). See Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library, pp. 46–8, 80–2. Also in the British Library are Horsfield’s topographical and other drawings of Indonesia, including plans, maps, and profiles of mountains. They are listed in Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library, vol. II, pp. 446–65. Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 626; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xiv.

260

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 627.

261

Ibid., p. 449.

262

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Having gained from these letters the necessary encouragement to put every effort into the safe packing of the remaining major portion of his collections, Horsfield despatched them to Semarang, ready for shipment to England. He then brought his investigations in the Javanese Principalities to a close by visiting the principal Javanese antiquities of Borobodur, Prambanan, and Candi Sewu, after which he traversed the provinces of Sokawati and Grobogan, and surveyed the mud wells of Kuwu, which he had first visited in 1805. He next travelled westwards via Purwodadi to Demak, and then proceeded to Semarang, where he arrived on New Year’s Day 1818.263 After nearly a month’s stay there, during which he checked the numerous boxes containing his collections, he travelled along the coastal road to Cirebon, and on to Sumedang, Cianjur and Bogor, where he was politely received by the Governor-General G.A.G.P. Baron van der Capellen (1778–1848) and the Commissioner-General C. Th. Elout (1767–1841). He was also welcomed by Professor C.G.C. Reinwardt, to whom he had already addressed a letter from Semarang soliciting support for his plan to travel through the Priangan,264 and he met some of the other luminaries of the Natural Sciences Commission which had been established by King Willem I in 1816 to investigate the natural history of Indonesia.265 He was made offers of the most generous kind to transfer his collections and services to the Netherlands Indies Government, but he refused, considering himself pledged to the English East India Company.266 He received from the Netherlands authorities permission to travel in the Priangan and he spent several profitable weeks in the region where he had Ibid., p. 626; Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, p. xiv.

263

Horsfield to Reinwardt, 25 January 1818, KB:121 DC. Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (1773–1854) was born in Germany and settled in Amsterdam when he was 14 years old. He was appointed Professor of Natural History at Harderwijk in 1800 and Professor of Chemistry, Pharmacy, and Natural History at Amsterdam in 1810. Five years later he proceeded to Indonesia in charge of the Natural Sciences Commission and he became the founder and first Director of the Botanic Gardens at Bogor. He left Indonesia in 1822 to take up a chair in the University of Leiden. For his scientific activities in Indonesia, see Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana, ser. I, vol. 1, pp. 429–31. His book, Reis naar het Oostelijk Gedeelte van den Indischen Archipel, in het Jaar 1821, was edited by W.H. de Vriese and published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1858. His own scientific tour of the Priangan was reported in the Bataviasche Courant, 5 June 1819.

264

Sirks, Indisch Natuuronderzoek, pp. 86–140.

265

The only evidence that offers of re-employment were made to Horsfield by the Netherlands Indies Government rests on Raffles’s letter to the Court of Directors of the East India Company dated 12 August 1822 (BL:Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 47): ‘On the re-establishment of the Dutch Government [in Java] offers of the most liberal nature were made to him to transfer his Collections and Services to the Netherlands Government but these he steadily refused, considering himself pledged to the Honble Company – Had Dr Horsfield accepted this offer, he would have been allowed a very liberal Salary, at least equal to which he had received from the Company, and his works would have been published in Holland free of all expense to himself – he would further have been relieved from a great personal loss which he has sustained in the disposal of his House and effects on Java’.

266

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The American Naturalist Thomas Horsfield in Java   157

commenced his natural history researches so many years earlier. He intended to make an excursion into Banten, but at Batavia he unexpectedly met Raffles’s aidede-camp, Captain Thomas Otho Travers, who had arrived in the ship Lady Raffles (H. Auber) bearing ‘a cordial and pressing’ invitation for him to bring his collections and join Raffles in west Sumatra, where he was now established as LieutenantGovernor of Fort Marlborough.267 Horsfield decided to accept the invitation and, after storing his natural history collections aboard the Lady Raffles at Semarang, sailed with Travers from Batavia on 16 June 1818 for Bengkulu.

Horsfield, Bennett, Brown, Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Postscript, pp. xiv–xv; Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 628. For Horsfield’s researches in Sumatra, see Chapter Eight.

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Chapter Four

Raffles’s Secretary and Aides-De-Camp ‘The enthusiasm of this little band of friends, in all that concerned his honour and happiness, tended to soften the troubles in which he was involved’ Lady Raffles, 1830

Captain Thomas Otho Travers (1785–1844) Miniature portrait, 1817

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Raffles’s Secretary and Aides-De-Camp   159

I

n the Introduction to her Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), Lady Raffles stated that she felt it to be her duty ‘publicly to record the sense which Sir Stamford always entertained of the attachment of his private Secretary, the late Mr. Assey, and of his personal staff, Captains Travers, Garnham, Dalgairns, Watson, and Methven, during his Government of Java. The enthusiasm of this little band of friends, in all that concerned his honour and happiness, tended to soften the troubles in which he was involved.’ The reference is to Raffles’s aides-de-camp, Lieutenants Thomas Otho Travers (1785–1844), Robert Clement Garnham (1782–1827), James Dalgairns (1787–1875), Thomas Colclough Watson (1787–1834) and Cathcart Methven (1787–1823), all young men, only slightly younger than Raffles, with whom they lived on intimate terms as members of his official ‘family’ at Buitenzorg (Bogor) and Batavia (Jakarta) at different periods during the British occupation of the island.1 Raffles’s Secretary, Charles Chaston Assey, arrived in Java with the British invasion forces as Surgeon in the 3rd Bengal Volunteer Battalion. He was born at Beccles in Suffolk on 19 September 1779, the son of a local surgeon, John Assey, and his wife Rachel, and was educated at St. John Leman’s Free School in Beccles. He was apprenticed to a local surgeon, probably his father, and on 19 September 1799 he was nominated as Assistant Surgeon in the medical service of the East India Company. After the conquest of Java, he was appointed Assistant to the Civil Commissioner at Semarang and later Deputy Civil Commissioner at Surabaya. In July 1812 he became Assistant Secretary to Government and Secretary to Raffles, rising to the full rank of Secretary on 12 March of the following year. He was an extremely able man, described by one of his contemporaries in Java as ‘uncommonly clever, quick, and well-informed’. He was in charge of the secretariat at Government House, Buitenzorg, and was Raffles’s right hand man during virtually the whole course of the British administration in Java. Portraits of three of Raffles’s aides-de-camp are extant. The first is a miniature of Watson by George Chinnery (1774–1852), which was offered for sale by the Martyn Gregory Gallery, London, in 1989 (Catalogue 53, no. 3), and the other two are, respectively, an oil painting of Garnham by Samuel Lane (1780–1859), which was executed in 1817 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in the following year, and a miniature of Travers, with his wedding date of ‘October 4th 1817’ inscribed on the back, suggesting that it was a gift to his wife, Mary Peacock Leslie. Biographical material in this Chapter is drawn from a variety of sources, including V. C. P. Hodson, List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758–1834 (London, 1927–47), 4 parts; R. H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 1945–58), 4 vols.; F. De Haan, ‘Personalia der Periode van het Engelsch Bestuur over Java 1811–1816’, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 477–681; Java Government Gazette (Batavia, 1812–16); The Java Annual Directory and Almanack, for 1814 (Batavia, 1814) and The Java Annual Directory and Almanack, for 1815 (Batavia, 1815).

1

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He was also one of Raffles’s closest personal friends and a strong supporter of his reforms, writing under his direction a small work entitled, Review of the Administration, Value, and State of the Colony of Java with its Dependencies, As it was, - As it is, - and As it may be (London, 1816). Three years later, in support of Raffles’s founding of Singapore, he published an influential tract, On the Trade to China, and the Indian Archipelago; with Observations on the Insecurity of the British Interests in that Quarter (London, 1819). He returned to India from Java in August 1817, and on 21 January 1818 he left Calcutta (Kolkata) for England, arriving at Gravesend on 6 June. He intended to enter the Church, but in order to support his two sisters he was obliged to return to India, where he died from cholera shortly after his arrival at the village of Kidderpore (Kidderpur), a village adjoining Calcutta in Bengal. Thomas Otho Travers was the most intimate of all Raffles’s friends, not only in Java but during the whole of his service in the East, having first met him at Penang in 1806 when his battalion was stationed on the island. 2 He later accompanied him to England in March 1816 and spent long periods with him in London and Cheltenham before again joining him in October 1817 on board the Lady Raffles for the voyage to west Sumatra, where Raffles was to take up his appointment as Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough. Travers served him conscientiously during his second administration as he had done in Java, but in retrospect, his greatest service to Raffles, or at least to his historical reputation, was that he recorded in his Journal details of Raffles’s life in England and Indonesia.3 Travers was born in Patrick Street, Cork, on 25 September 1785, the third son of Robert Travers, a banker of Ballymoney, and Barbara Travers (née Delamain). In 1803 he was appointed a Cadet in the Bengal army of the East India Company Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 6. The portrait of Travers reproduced in C.E. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), facing p. 65, and in The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960), is probably that of Thomas Clode of the 25th Battalion Madras Native Infantry whose personal effects after his death on 28 June 1812 seem to have come into Travers’s possession. Clode was born in 1786, the son of George and Sarah Clode of Berkshire, and was educated at Eton College between 1799 and 1802. He was appointed a Cadet in the military service of the East India Company in 1804 and promoted Lieutenant on 10 September in the following year. After the British conquest of Java, he was appointed Assistant Secretary to Government and an aide-de-camp to Raffles. He died of fever contracted on the island of Bangka on 28 June 1812 while serving as acting-Engineer of the British expedition to Palembang (note 6).

2

The manuscript Journal of Travers consists of seven volumes dated 1813–14, 1815–16, 1817–21, 1821–28, 1829–31, 1832–35, and 1836–43, with the first volume on Penang missing, Travers having commenced writing his Journal in 1805 shortly after his arrival in India. The published annotated edition of Journal of Thomas Otho Travers reproduces the first three extant volumes up to Travers’s departure from Singapore in December 1820, excluding the sections on his stay in England and Ireland during 1816–17. The missing first volume was lent to a member of the Flint family in January 1891 but was not returned when it was asked for in April of the following year. In the Introduction to her Memoir, p. vii, Lady Raffles thanks Travers for having permitted her ‘to make use of his Journal’, but what she saw were simply extracts from the Journal re-written by Travers. These extracts are printed in the Memoir, pp. 6, 7–8, 101–2, 123–4, 209–11, 274–9 and 281–3.

3

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and sailed to India from Portsmouth on 20 March 1804. Eight days after his arrival at Calcutta on 2 September, he was posted as Ensign to the Bengal Native Infantry at Cawnpore (Kanpur) and promoted Lieutenant on the 21st of that month. In December 1804 he joined the Grand Army under General Viscount Lake (1744– 1808) before Bharatpur, and in August 1805 he was appointed permanently to the 1st Battalion of the 20th (Marine) Regiment Bengal Native Infantry stationed at Benares and Barakpur. The Battalion was transferred to Penang in the following year and remained there until 1808, when it returned to Barakpur. During this time, Travers became friendly with Raffles when he was Assistant-Secretary to the Prince of Wales Island Government, and he later wrote a flattering account of him for publication in Lady Raffles’s Memoir based on the first volume of his Journal.4 During the military operations connected with the British invasion of Java in 1811, Travers served as Quartermaster to his Battalion and was subsequently appointed Assistant Commissary-General and attached to the Brigade under Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie (1766–1814).5 He was mentioned in despatches for his service in the capture of Meester Cornelis from the Dutch on 26 August 1811 and he was afterwards assigned to the permanent military staff as Sub-Assistant Commissary-General. On 13 February 1812 he was appointed Assistant Secretary to Government in the Military Department, and during the British operations against Palembang in 18126 he was in charge of the Commissariat Department, where his exposure to the unhealthy climate of Batavia in the shipment of stores led to his contracting malaria. On his return to Batavia from Palembang, he resumed his former duties and became aide-de-camp to Raffles and Town-Major and Commandant of Batavia. In March 1814, he volunteered to take to London Raffles’s despatches relating to the charges of corruption made against his administration by Gillespie,7 but he met with little success at the East India House and returned

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 6.

4

W. Thorn, Memoir of the Conquest of Java: with the Subsequent Operations of the British Forces in the Oriental Archipelago (London, 1815); E. Wakeham, The Bravest Soldier Sir Rollo Gillespie 1766–1814 A Historical Military Sketch (Edinburgh, London, 1937), pp. 140–80.

5

The punitive expedition under the command of Gillespie was sent to Palembang in March 1812 to remove Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin following the murder of the members of the Dutch garrison and factory in the previous year. He was replaced by Sultan Ahmad Najmu’d-din, who ceded the island of Bangka to the British in May 1812.

6

The papers relating to Gillespie’s charges against Raffles’s administration were printed in a few copies at the Government Press, Batavia, in 1814. They were printed without a general title, but Raffles’s own copy, now in the National Library of Singapore, has the following title in his own hand: ‘The Charges of Major General Gillespie, against The Honourable T.S. Raffles Lieutenant Governor of the Island of Java, with various papers and documents in refutation of them relating to the administration of The British Government in that Island and its Dependencies’.

7

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to Java in July 1815. Having resumed his former appointments, he accompanied Raffles as his aide-de-camp to the Javanese Principalities of central Java in January 1816 in the aftermath of the Sepoy Conspiracy,8 and in March, on a plea of suffering from ‘periodical attacks of Batavian fever’, he joined him aboard the Ganges (Peter Falconer) on the voyage to England, recording Raffles’s meeting with Napoleon at St. Helena.9 After arriving in London, he arranged lodgings for Raffles at No. 23 Berners Street and rented a room for himself at nearby No. 27. He accompanied Raffles shortly afterwards to the spa town of Cheltenham, where he stayed with him and his sister, Mary Anne Flint, and friend, William Brown Ramsay, at No. 3 The Crescent. In September he travelled to Ireland to visit his family but he returned to England and was in Raffles’s company for intermittent periods until he left for Ireland for his marriage to Mary Peacock, second daughter of Charles Henry Leslie of Wilton, County Cork, on 4 October. After a brief stay in London, he and his wife travelled to Portsmouth to join Raffles and Lady Raffles aboard the Lady Raffles (Harry Auber) for the voyage to west Sumatra. At Bengkulu, Travers was appointed Second Assistant to the Fort Marlborough Government, having been promoted to the military rank of Captain on 27 May 1816. In April 1818, he was employed in carrying to the Dutch authorities at Batavia Raffles’s despatches relating to the boundary dispute in the Lampung region of southern Sumatra,10 and on his return to Bengkulu in July 1818 he was placed in charge of the Treasury where he discovered a serious shortfall in the accounts.11 He later acted as Secretary and First Assistant to the Fort Marlborough Government and in 1820 he P. B. R. Carey, ‘The Sepoy Conspiracy of 1815 in Java’, BKI, vol. 133 (1977), pp. 294–322; P. B. R. Carey (ed.), The British in Java 1811–1816 A Javanese Account (Oxford, 1992), pp. 21–2, 29, 45, 439 n.201, 503 n.498, 523 n.615.

8

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 276–8. Raffles described his meeting with Napoleon in a letter to Alexander Hare (Chapter Two, note 135) dated St. Helena, 20 May 1816 which is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Curzon MS b.36). Extracts from the letter are printed in C.W. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), pp. 404–08, and John Bastin, ‘Stamford Raffles and Napoleon (Raffles describes their meeting)’, Malaya (1952), pp. 39–41: ‘Believe me Hare, this man is a monster, … he has none of those feelings of the heart which constitute the real man.’ The surgeon, William Warden, in his Letters written on Board His Majesty’s Ship The Northumberland, and at Saint Helena … (London, 1816), p. 177 records Raffles’s acute desire to see Napoleon: ‘I happened to be at Longwood, when Mr. Raffles, the late Governor of Java and his suite, obtained permission to visit the grounds at Longwood. The anxiety of that gentleman to see Buonaparte was extreme: his curiosity was a perfect rage, and the utmost was done to accomplish its gratification. In short, though indisposition might have been pleaded, an hour was appointed by the Ex-emperor to receive the Ex-governor; and the latter had not the words to express his delight at the manner in which he had been received’.

9

Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), pp. 83–94.

10

Ibid., 98.

11

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became Superintendent of Convicts and Military Commander of the garrison. In March 1820, he was appointed by Raffles to succeed Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar as Resident and Commandant of Singapore,12 and he arrived at Singapore with his wife and child on 8 April. After waiting in vain for several months for Farquhar to resign his post, Travers applied for sick-leave and sailed for England on 2 December on the Minerva (J. Bell), arriving at Deal on 7 May 1821. Ill-health led him to resign from the East India Company’s service on 16 January 1822, but soon afterwards he was appointed Recruiting Officer for the Company in the Cork district of Ireland and in 1830 as Paymaster of the Company’s Pensioners in Ireland. He held these two lucrative posts until his death at ‘Leemount’ in County Cork on 8 July 1844. As he had amassed a considerable fortune during his period in Java and Sumatra, he enjoyed a comfortable retirement, inviting Lady Raffles’s censure in a letter to her sister-in-law Mary Anne Flint on 10 October 1824: ‘I am told they live in great style as to plate &c &c. Their table spoons are compared to fire shovels ... they appear to have given themselves great airs and of course given offence – ’.13 This was written when Travers was expected in England to heal a breach in his relationship with Raffles, possibly because of his unauthorised departure from Singapore in 1820. Cordial relations were soon restored, as Raffles informed his sister Mary Anne Flint in a letter from Cheltenham on 6 October 1824: ‘Tot & I have burnt the Papers as the saying is, and I expect him here in a few days from Ireland’. In the following month he wrote to her again: ‘You will be glad to hear that Travers has been here & that all that had passed bet[ween] our last & present meeting has been forgotten’.14 Lady Raffles also commented on the subject in a letter to her dated 26 December 1824: ‘[D]id I tell you that Tot came over to Cheltenham for the purpose of shaking hands – staid a week & returned to his dear Cork – he is looking just the same’.15 Travers, on the other hand, found Raffles much altered: ‘He seemed a complete Skeleton with scarcely skin enough to cover his bones[,] his head tormenting to a sad degree’.16 Travers and Raffles met again in April of the following year, when there was a gathering in London of creditors of the failed agency house of Macquoid & Co. John Bastin, The Founding of Singapore 1819 (Singapore, 2012), pp. 111–14.

12

BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/15.

13

BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/17.

14

BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/15.

15

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, October 1824.

16

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at Batavia which resulted in Raffles losing £16,000 and Travers a somewhat smaller sum. Travers noted in his Journal that although Raffles’s ‘spirit and animation was great, his articulation was ‘heavy’ and ‘thick’. He spent a number of days with him and visited his country house, ‘Highwood’, in Middlesex. News of Raffles’s death on 5 July 1826 reached him in Ireland too late for him to attend the funeral, but he recorded in his Journal his deep feelings at the loss of his ‘earliest’ and ‘best’ friend: ‘Never in my life did I receive a greater shock than at perusing this letter describing the sudden and [un]expected manner in which this melancholy occurrence took place ... Few men perhaps were better acquainted than Sir Stamford and myself. Our acquaintance was of twenty years standing and during that period we had met with various and singular occurrences to attach us to each other. To me he had evinced the strongest friendship and had rendered me most essential service whilst I hope I proved myself not ungrateful of his kindness. We were for many years without a secret from each other and had his life[,] poor dear Fellow[,] been spared we should have yet passed some happy days together ...’.17 To Lady Raffles’s brother, William Hull, who informed him of Raffles’s death, Travers wrote on 11 July 1826: ‘Under affliction such as I never recollect to have experienced do I now take up my pen to thank you for your considerate kindness in communicating the sad intelligence of the loss of my last, my dearest of Friends … Had I got your letter one day sooner I should have had time by going night and day to be there for the funeral which I regret extremely not being able to accomplish … The loss of him … to whom I was bound by many tie[s] of gratitude and friendship is the severest blow I have felt. My love for him exceeded all I ever felt for any relative …’.18 Second to Travers among Raffles’s aides-de-camp in Java was Lieutenant James Dalgairns of the 21st Regiment Madras Native Infantry, who had been attached to the Quarter-Master-General’s Department during the British conquest of the island. He was the son of Andrew and Charlotte Dalgairns of County Forfar in Scotland and was baptised on 3 January 1787. He was appointed a Cadet in the military service of the East India Company in 1803 and promoted Lieutenant on 21 September 1804. In December of the following year, he was attached to the Travancore Survey, except for a short period between November 1808 and April

Ibid., April–May, July 1826.

17

Travers to William Hull, 11 July 1826, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/9.

18

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1809 when he was at Bombay. He joined the British invasion force to Java in 1811 and took part in the military operations at Meester Cornelis on 26 August. He was appointed Commandant of the Amboynese Corps at Batavia in 1813, and during Travers’s absence in London between March 1814 and July 1815 he assumed his appointments as Town-Major, Commandant of the Burgher Corps, and aide-decamp to Raffles. On Travers’s resumption of these posts on 10 August 1815, Dalgairns was made an Honorary aide-de-camp by Raffles and appointed Sub-Treasurer to the Government, becoming a member of the Revenue Committee on 3 November 1815. He and Travers shared a house at Batavia with 20 servants and it was there, at a farewell dinner for Raffles on the eve of his departure for England in the ship Ganges, that the inspired toast was proposed: ‘May the Ganges run into the Thames’. Dalgairns remained in Java as aide-de-camp to Raffles’s successor as LieutenantGovernor, John Fendall (1760–1825), and he accompanied him on his return to Calcutta on 3 September 1817. Three months later, he proceeded on furlough to England. In 1823 he became aide-de-camp to the Governor-General Lord Amherst (1773–1857), who in November 1825 placed him in charge of the Brigade in the service of the Rajah of Nagpur. He apparently lost this command in 1830 and returned to England in the following year. He was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel on 15 May 1834 and retired from the service on 29 February 1840. Unlike some other members of his personal staff in Java, Dalgairns remained faithful to Raffles and kept him informed of the attempts made to discredit his reputation at Calcutta by Captains Watson and Methven during 1822 and 1823. In a letter to Thomas Macquoid dated 8 January 1824, Raffles wrote: ‘... my last from our friend Dal informs me that Watson & Methven are stirring all the powers of their evil spirits to injure my reputation there ... Methven takes the lead and the other blows the fire & circulates the Stories agreed upon between them – They indeed outherod Herod, and this last business seems to fill the measure of perfidy & ingratitude to the brim – Dal, thank god, remains as he always was – honest upright – kind & warm hearted.’19 Travers also had a high opinion of Dalgairns, recording in his Journal in August 1831, after he learned of his arrival in England from India, ‘few men stand higher in my estimation and perhaps there is none with whom I am so intimately acquainted or of whom I have so perfect a knowledge’. He named his fourth son, Wurtzburg Collection, Cambridge University Library.

19

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James Dalgairns Travers (1832–1872),20 and in June 1842 he visited Dalgairns at Ingleston, near Dumfries, in Scotland, ‘where we were to find Col. Dalgairns’ carriage waiting to receive us ... and arrived at Ingleston to dinner and found Dal the same good kind & affectionate [man] as he ever was ... I was quite surprized at the little change to be perceived in Dalgairns[,] he really looked as fresh and well as he did Twenty years ago and was in high health and Spirits.’21 He died on 5 November 1875 in his 89th year. Robert Clement Garnham was appointed an Honorary aide-de-camp to Raffles in 1813,22 and three years later he sailed with him to England aboard the Ganges. He was born at Thetford in Norfolk on 13 June 1782, the son of John Garnham, and was appointed a Cadet on the Bengal military establishment of the East India Company in 1797. On 8 June 1798, he sailed to India aboard the Extra Ship Sellicherry in a large convoy protected by the frigate HMS Arethusa and arrived at Calcutta on 22 December. He was gazetted Ensign on 7 October 1798 and posted as Lieutenant to the 14th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry on 1 November 1798. Little is known of his early years in India, but he proceeded to England on furlough aboard the East Indiaman Lord Nelson on 7 March 1803, only to be captured in the Bay of Biscay by the French privateer La Bellone (Perroud) and imprisoned at Verdun for three years. He was released on parole in August 1806 and three months later he was exchanged for three French officers. He was promoted Captain on 28 August 1806, having transferred to the newly raised 24th Regiment Bengal Native Artillery in the previous year. He returned to India aboard the Admiral Gardner in February 1807, arriving at Calcutta on 17 July. He served with the 3rd Bengal Volunteer Battalion during the British invasion of Java before transferring to the 5th Battalion and, in 1815, to the 2nd Battalion 29th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry. He was in the Reserve Division during the capture of Meester Cornelis on 26 August 1811 but saw action against Dutch forces at Semarang early in September.

He was called ‘Dalgairns’ in the family. Travers had five children by his wife, Mary Peacock: Lucia Travers, who was born on 3 July 1818 at Bengkulu in west Sumatra but died there on 2 November 1818; Robert Otho Travers, who was born on 14 August 1819 at Bengkulu and died at Torquay on 29 June 1893; Charles Henry Travers, who was born on 1 March 1821 aboard the Minerva (J. Bell) on the homeward voyage to England from Singapore and died at Inglefield in 1884; Thomas Francis Travers, who was born at ‘Leemount’, County Cork, on 10 March 1830 but died in infancy on 31 January of the following year; and James Dalgairns Travers, who was also born at ‘Leemount’ in 1832 and died in 1872 in Guernsey. Travers’s wife died on 2 April 1882, aged 92.

20

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers (Private Collection), June 1842.

21

L.A. Garrard, Aide-De-Camp to Sir Stamford Raffles: Lieutenant-Colonel R.C. Garnham (Privately printed, 1985).

22

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Captain Robert Clement Garnham (1782–1827) Portrait by Samuel Lane, 1817

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Between 23 January and 23 November 1812, Garnham was stationed on the island of Madura where he exercised civil and military power, his civil duties being officially confined to Sumenep. He was appointed Resident at Semarang on 10 October 1812 and took up his duties on 23 November, having earlier in the month been made President of the commission charged with the sale of lands at Semarang. On 31 July 1813, he handed over his duties as Resident to his successor and proceeded to Batavia, where Raffles appointed him Political Agent with the states of Borneo for the purpose of concluding anti-piratical treaties with the local rulers. He was also appointed an Honorary aide-de-camp to Raffles, possibly to enhance his status on the mission. He left Java for western Borneo on 21 August aboard HMS Malacca (D. Mackay) and accomplished a measure of success in his mission before returning to Batavia in November.23 He briefly resumed his former position at Semarang, but early in 1814 he took up the post of Resident of Besuki and Prabalingga. In July 1814 he accompanied Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood (1762–1814) on his tour of Java,24 and on 20 September he succeeded John Crawfurd (1783–1868) as Resident of Yogyakarta,25 a post he held until 31 August 1815. He was popular at the Yogya court, Sultan Hamengkubuwana IV (r. 1814–22) presenting him on his departure with a jewel-encrusted keris which is depicted on the right hand side of his portrait by Lane.26 He returned to Batavia on 23 September 1815 and left Java for Bengal on 8 October, taking with him Raffles’s despatches to the Governor-General Marquess of Hastings relating to his supersession in the Government of Java. On his arrival at Calcutta on 30 November, Garnham found that, because of the cessation of hostilities against Nepal, there was no prospect of active service in India so he applied for special leave and returned to Java on 13 March 1816. He had already been appointed by Raffles to his former post of Resident of Semarang, but on learning of the latter’s imminent departure for England he decided to accompany him to London aboard the Ganges, a decision welcomed by Travers, who described him on the ship’s departure from Batavia on 25 March ‘as pleasant, lively[,] good tempered a companion as ever lived’.27 During the voyage Garnham’s 35th birthday was celebrated, when ‘many large bumpers were drunk John Bastin, ‘Raffles and British Policy in the Indian Archipelago, 1811–1816’, JMBRAS, vol. XXVII, pt. 1 (1954), pp. 95–9.

23

De Haan, BKI, vol. 92, p. 571.

24

Carey, British in Java 1811–1816, passim.

25

Ibid., pp. 511–12, n.542.

26

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, March 1816.

27

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and innumerable speeches made’, and at St. Helena on 19 May he accompanied Raffles, Travers and Thomas Sevestre to meet Napoleon, who asked him about his Regiment and enquired if he had been wounded. When he arrived in London in July, he attained, according to Travers, ‘the summit of his wishes being the hand of a young Lady to whom he had been for many years attached’.28 She was his cousin, Isabella Mingay Syder, and the marriage took place at Hackney Church on 3 September 1816. The couple lived at Ashfield Lodge in Suffolk, but Garnham was present in the City of London at the grand reunion dinner given to Raffles at the Albion on 23 September, when he acted with Travers as one of his supporters.29 He was promoted Major on 14 January 1819, and a year later, on 8 January 1820, he sailed for India on the Asia with his wife and daughter, Rosa Clementina, his wife subsequently giving birth on board ship on 4 May to a second daughter, who was named Mary Asia after the name of the ship. Nothing is known of his life in India during the next two years, but he left for England on furlough with his family aboard the chartered ship Florentia on 25 January 1822, his wife again giving birth on board ship on 1 March to a third daughter, Harriet Florentia. The ship reached England on 10 October after a long voyage of more than eight months, and Garnham and his family took up residence at No. 20 Somerset Place, Bath. Travers met him there on 20 May 1824 and dined with him and his wife the following night, when they ‘passed a very pleasant Evening’.30 In the same month, Garnham was gazetted Lieutenant-Colonel in the 27th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry. Leaving his children behind, he and his wife sailed for India in June 1825 on the Marquis of Wellington, and on 1 September she again gave birth to a son named Robert Edward Wellington. The ship arrived at Calcutta on 4 October and Garnham was immediately posted to the 67th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry for service in Burma. He reached Amherst Island on 2 January 1826 and was briefly engaged in hostilities before the peace treaty was concluded on 24 February. He returned to India in August 1826 and on 4 November he transferred to the 36th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry. Early in the following year, having been granted sick-leave, he embarked for the Cape with his wife and son on the HCS Fairlie, but he died at sea on 24 February 1827 in his 45th year. Ibid., July 1816.

28

Ibid., September 1816.

29

Ibid., May 1824.

30

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The youngest of Raffles’s aides-de-camp in Java was Cathcart Methven, son of Euphemia Meldrum and Robert Methven, a magistrate at St. Andrews in Scotland, where he was born on 26 November 1787. He matriculated at St. Andrews University on 19 February 1801 but left the University without taking a degree in 1804 on his appointment as a Cadet on the Bengal military establishment of the East India Company. On 18 August 1805, eight days after arriving in India, he was posted as Ensign, and on the following day promoted Lieutenant in the 20th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry. He joined the British military expedition against Java in 1811, and after the conquest of the island he was appointed on 13 May 1812 to a committee of enquiry investigating the sultanate of Banten in west Java. A year later, he became Assistant to the Resident of Banten and Malay Translator to Government. On 14 September 1813, he was nominated provisionally to be Assistant to the Resident at Palembang and Minto (Muntok), but he left for Bengal in November and did not return to Java until August 1814. He resumed his former post as Malay Translator to Government on 31 August, and on 14 October he was appointed Assistant to the Resident of Buitenzorg (Bogor). On 14 January 1815 he was given temporary charge of the Batavian Ommelanden, and he accompanied Raffles as his Acting Secretary during his journey through Java between 26 April and 1 August 1815.31 On 10 August he was appointed Assistant Secretary to Government in the Judicial and Revenue Departments, and on the departure of Raffles from Java in March 1816 he was instructed to take Travers’s place in charge of the Military Department. Later that year, he was a member of the British mission to Banjarmasin, where he gained sufficient information on the local people to essay one of the earliest accounts of the Dayaks of Borneo.32 He also brought back with him to Java a live orang utan which he presented to the British naturalist, Clarke Abel (1780–1826), a member of Lord Amherst’s mission to China, who managed to get it back safely to England and have it illustrated in his book, Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China (London, 1818).33

Note 37.

31

‘An Account of some of the Customs peculiar to the Dayaks who inhabit the Country to the Westward of the Banjermassin river in Borneo’, Malayan Miscellanies (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1822), vol. II, no. IX, pp. 1–6, reprinted in The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, vol. XV, no. 86 (February 1823), pp. 138–9.

32

Plate facing p. 323, after a drawing by Sydenham Teak Edwards (1768–1819). This was apparently the first live orang utan to arrive in the United Kingdom from Borneo and was kept at Exeter Change in the Strand. It lived only a few months and was stuffed and placed in the Hunterian Museum in London (Chapter Seven, notes 22 and 25).

33

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Methven returned to India from Java with Raffles’s successor, John Fendall, and arrived with him and his family at Calcutta on 3 September 1817. He joined Raffles at Bengkulu in west Sumatra in 1819, but in August of that year charges were preferred against him by the Registrar of the Pengerans Court. As an act of friendship, Raffles managed to have these set aside,34 but a couple of months later, he was again caught out in irregularities of office and in October Raffles sent him to Penang, Travers stating in his Journal that he had been led astray by too great a love of money.35 Methven remained in Penang until March 1820, when he left for Singapore, claiming that he had been in Penang on sick-leave and that he was trying to return to Bengkulu. A few weeks later, he announced that he intended to leave the army and become a merchant. He obtained from the Resident a grant of land on the north side of the Singapore River, near Ferry Point, and built on it an imposing godown, partly constructed of bricks. This was completed in September 1820, but shortly afterwards Methven received orders to rejoin his Regiment in India. He stated that he would do so when he had liquidated his business interests in Singapore, but he continued to trade and his stock continued to grow. Rumours began to circulate that he was engaged in money lending and that he was cheating Asian traders. A commission of enquiry was set up and the evidence sent to India but Methven hurried to Calcutta and, with the sympathetic support of the Governor-General Marquess of Hastings, managed to extricate himself from the charges. He returned to Singapore early in 1822 but it was not long before reports of his shady dealings again began to circulate and complaints about him were made directly to Raffles after he arrived in Singapore in October of that year. When Methven attempted to exert pressure on Raffles to purchase his godown for use as a court house at a greatly inflated price, and shown him various instances of ‘great personal disrespect’, he was ordered to quit the settlement. A further set of charges followed him to India, but he managed to postpone an enquiry into his conduct until, on 27 November 1823, he was thrown from his horse while on parade and died a few hours later. ‘Methven’s violent death’, Raffles wrote, ‘has probably saved him from a shameful exposure & public disgrace –’.36

Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), pp. 131–2.

34

Ibid., p. 136. Raffles wrote to his sister Mary Anne Flint on 23 June 1821: ‘This business of Methven’s looks very ugly – I regret it but fear his abominable love of Money has destroyed all better feeling – ’. (BL:MSS. Eur.D.742/17).

35

Raffles to Thomas Macquoid, 17 January l824 (BL:MSS.Eur.B.322).

36

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Captain Thomas Colclough Watson (1787–1834) Miniature portrait by George Chinnery, 1811

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As with Methven, another falling out occurred between Raffles and the last of his aides-de-camp in Java, Thomas Colclough Watson, who also served under him in west Sumatra. He was born on 20 June 1787, probably in Canada, the eldest son of Colonel Jonas Watson of HM 13th (formerly 65th Regiment) and Harriett, second daughter of the Reverend Thomas Colclough, Rector of Cleenish, Enniskillen. He was appointed a Cadet on the Bengal military establishment in 1801 and arrived in India on 17 July the following year, being posted Ensign on 10 August 1802 and Lieutenant on 30 June 1804 to the Honorable Company’s Bengal European Regiment. He took part in the second Mahratta War and participated in the assault on Bharatpur in January 1805. He joined the expedition to Macau in 1808–9, when the Indian Government decided to garrison it against a possible French attack, and in 1810, on his return to India, he was made aidede-camp to his uncle, Major-General Samuel Watson (1748–1814), commanding the Dinapur Division. After the conquest of Java, he was appointed Assistant in the Lieutenant-Governor’s office on 22 January 1813, and First Assistant on 9 April. Three days later, he was made an ‘Extra’ aide-de-camp to Raffles, and on 3 February 1814 he succeeded to the official appointment. He accompanied Raffles during his tour of Java between 26 April and 1 August 1815, and published an account of the journey in The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register.37 On 3 November 1815 he was appointed Superintendent of Public Buildings and Works at Batavia, and he remained in Java after Raffles’s departure from the island in March 1816 as honorary aide-de-camp to his successor, John Fendall. Following the restitution of Dutch rule in Java, he sailed for England, apparently in the hope of joining Raffles aboard the Lady Raffles on the voyage to west Sumatra. His marriage to Sarah James of Ballycrystal, County Wexford, on 7 October 1817 altered these plans, and he sailed instead on the Providence, arriving at Bengkulu with his wife on 25 November 1818, only to find Raffles absent in Calcutta. As he was in possession of testimonials from the Duke of Kent, to whom his father had been an aide-de-camp, Watson immediately proceeded to Bengal aboard the Marquis of Hastings, leaving his wife behind at Bengkulu. In Calcutta, he found his testimonials of little use in securing preferment, and he returned to west Sumatra

[T.C. Watson], ‘A Journal of a Tour in the Island of Java. (By a Gentleman resident at Batavia)’, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, vol. I, nos. 2–3 (February–March 1816), pp. 124–9, 233–5. The journey is only partly described as Watson apparently failed to supply the remaining part for publication.

37

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on 30 July 1819. Three months later, he accompanied Raffles to Calcutta, when the latter tried unsuccessfully to secure the succession as Governor of Prince of Wales Island.38 This time, Watson was more fortunate in his endeavours as he obtained the appointment of Commander of the Local Corps raised for service at Fort Marlborough. He remained at Calcutta recruiting volunteers who arrived at Bengkulu in two ships in March 1820. From about this time Watson’s relations with Raffles became strained, partly because of a conflict over his military authority and doubtless also because of the confined nature of life at Fort Marlborough where quarrels were frequent.39 He took the lead in the local opposition to Raffles and commenced a persecution of the latter’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant Lawrence Nilson Hull (1799–1845). Finally, after various acts of disobedience, Raffles had his name struck from the strength of the Fort Marlborough garrison and in June 1822 sent him to Calcutta under arrest. No proceedings were taken against him, and he was released from arrest in September 1822 and resigned his command of the Bencoolen Local Corps on 23 December of that year. He was placed in command of the Cawnpore Infantry Levy on 4 October 1822 and transferred to the newly raised 2nd Bengal European Regiment in May 1824. In March 1825, he was appointed to assist in the negotiations relating to the transfer of Fort Marlborough to the Netherlands, but he arrived too late to take part in the proceedings. He was promoted Major on 21 June 1826, and between 21 November 1827 and 11 October 1830 he was on furlough. He visited Travers at ‘Leemount’ in County Cork in March 1829 ‘looking very pale and much reduced in strength and flesh’. Travers noted that he was ‘now much to be pitied, his health being much impaired and his circumstances such as will not allow him to think of retiring from the Service’.40 After his return to India, he was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel on 3 November 1831, and on 11 June 1832 he was posted to the 53rd Regiment Bengal Native Infantry. He died of cholera at Dacca on 30 April 1834. Travers wrote of him: ‘My friend Tom Watson possesses one of the very best hearts with a head well stored but not abounding in sound judgment; a more honorable or high principled man

Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p. 102.

38

According to Travers, Fort Marlborough was ‘without exception, … the most unpleasantly circumstanced place with respect to society I ever knew. In limited circles such as here, petty feuds generally exist but here we have greater annoyances. The younger part of the society [is] in one continued state of warfare with Government …’ (Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), p. 122).

39

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, March 1829.

40

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I never knew and although it had been unfortunately his fate to get into scrapes and difficulties through life his character always stood high.’41 An interesting fact about Raffles’s ‘little band of friends’ – his aides-de-camp and his Secretary, Charles Assey – is that they were all, like him, Freemasons. This obviously points to the importance Raffles attached to being a member of the Craft42 into which he had been initiated and passed to the Second Degree at a ceremony in Java in October 1811 at the Lodge of ‘Virtutis et Artis Amici’ on the estate of Pondok-Gedeh, near Bogor, owned by the former Governor of the North-East Coast, Nicolaus Engelhard (1761–1831).43 Among the other Masonic brethren present on this occasion was the Governor-General Lord Minto, the Commander of the Forces in Java, Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie, and the newly appointed Dutch member of Council, Harman Warner Muntinghe, who was initiated along with Raffles. Nearly two years later, at an emergency meeting of the Lodge ‘De Vriendschap’ at Surabaya, Raffles took the Third Degree of Freemasonry to become Worshipful Brother Raffles, and shortly before departing from Java in March 1816, he received Perfection in the Eighteenth Degree in the Rose Croix Chapter ‘La Vertueuse’ at Batavia.44 Later, at Bengkulu, Raffles continued his masonic duties at the Lodge of ‘The Rising Sun’, as recorded in the Journal of his fellow mason and aide-de-camp, Captain Thomas Otho Travers.45

Ibid.

41

Victoria Glendinning’s statement that freemasonry ‘did not mean much to Raffles’ (Raffles and the Golden Opportunity (London, 2013), p. 130) is based on no existing evidence.

42

Chapter Three, note 94.

43

H. Banner, These Men were Masons (London, 1934), pp. 117–36; Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p. 153, n.30. See Roy Jordaan and Peter Carey, ‘Thomas Stamford Raffles’ Masonic Career in Java: A New Perspective on the British Interregnum (1811–1816)’, JMBRAS, vol. 90, pt. 2 (2017), pp. 1–34.

44

Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), passim.

45

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Chapter Five

The British Naval Surgeon Joseph Arnold in Java ‘The Governor speaks Javanese very well; and is collecting facts for a publication of the History of the Island. So that there are generally three or four learned natives about him. These gentlemen are always dressed in the native manner …’ Dr. Joseph Arnold, 18 September 1815

Dr. Joseph Arnold (1782–1818) Miniature portrait, 1817

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O

ne of the late visitors to Java during Raffles’s period as LieutenantGovernor was a 32-year-old British naval surgeon who was destined to have an important bearing on his life, partly by providing medical assistance at the birth of his first-born child, and subsequently by making the remarkable discovery of the gigantic flower Rafflesia arnoldi (Brown), which led to their names being directly connected in botanical nomenclature. Yet their meeting in Java occurred under somewhat unusual circumstances and gave little indication of their future close personal relationship and friendship. Arnold arrived at Batavia (Jakarta) on 3 September 1815 on board the convict transport ship Indefatigable (Mathew Bowles) from Sydney. Seven weeks later the ship caught fire in the harbour with the resultant loss of all Arnold’s possessions, including his books, papers, and collections of South American and Australian insects. He eventually secured another passage to London in the country ship Hope (H. Elliott), which sailed on 12–13 December 1815, so that altogether he spent a little more than three months in the island. He was fortunate in finding among the local British officials his old school friend from Beccles, Charles Assey, then serving as Secretary to the British colonial Government,1 and it was through Assey’s introduction that he received an invitation from Raffles to stay at Government House, Buitenzorg (Bogor), and at his country retreat at Cisarua, where he was able to pursue his botanical and natural history researches. During his stay in the island, Arnold kept a detailed Journal which contains unique information on Raffles and on those associated with him during the latter part of his administration in Java.2 Joseph Arnold was born at Beccles in Suffolk on 28 December 1782, the fourth son of Edward Arnold (d.14 October 1805), a prosperous tanner of the town. His mother, Hannah Arnold, died on 23 October 1786, before he was four years old, which may have contributed to the shyness, seriousness, and coldness of manner which were said to be the distinguishing features of his character. He was educated at Sir John Leman’s Free School at Beccles, a 17th century foundation which was then under one of its best known headmasters, Robert Davey (1744–97). Arnold so distinguished himself at school that it was decided that he should pursue a career in medicine and Chapter Four.

1

This chapter is based on the Java section of Dr. Joseph Arnold’s manuscript Journal (27 August 1810–17 December 1815), fols. 449–546, in the Mitchell Library, Sydney: C720. It has been published in JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), pp. 1–92.

2

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at the age of 16 he was apprenticed to a local surgeon and apothecary named Dr. William Crowfoot (1751–1820), second in a long line of men of that name who practised medicine in and around Beccles.3 He was also placed under the Reverend John Lang Girdlestone (1763–1825), Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, and a master at Sir John Leman’s Free School, for instruction in classical languages. In 1802 he proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.D. five years later with a thesis entitled De Hydrothorace, describing the disease characterised by an effusion of fluid into the plural cavities, more commonly known as dropsy of the chest.4 Arnold developed an early interest in botany, and during his stay in Scotland he zealously applied himself to its study. Failing to settle as a local physician, he joined the Navy as the means of advancing his medical career and his interest in botany and natural history. Arnold’s initial posting on 24 April 1808 was as Assistant Surgeon aboard Nelson’s old flagship HMS Victory. The ship operated in the Baltic with the British and Swedish squadrons and later helped in the evacuation of the Peninsular army after the battle of Coruña (16 January 1809), carrying off the shattered remnants of the 81st Regiment. Arnold served aboard the Victory until 19 February 1809 when, after a brief period of convalescence from typhus at Haslar Hospital in Portsmouth, he was appointed Surgeon on HMS Hindostan, commanded by Nelson’s former signals officer at Trafalgar, Captain John Pasco (1774–1853). The Hindostan was under orders to convey to Sydney the store-ship Dromedary (Captain Pritchard), carrying Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie (1762–1824) 5 and his 73rd Regiment to replace Governor William Bligh (1754–1817) and the rebellious New South Wales Corps.6 The ships sailed from Portsmouth on 22 May 1809 and, after calling at Madeira, St. Jago, Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope, reached Port Jackson on 28 December 1809. On the return voyage from Sydney via Cape Horn and Rio de Janeiro, the Hindostan was under the command of Bligh, who promised Arnold that if he would call on him in London he would introduce him

Son of William Crowfoot, who died in 1783, aged 58. S.W. Rix, Beccles and Bungay Weekly News, 17 December 1861, states that he was a surgeon in the service of the East India Company, but his name is not listed by D.G. Crawford in A History of the Indian Medical Service 1600–1913 (London, 1914). He died at Beccles on 27 March 1820 shortly after contributing an anonymous obituary notice on Arnold to the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XC, no. I (1820), pp. 182–4.

3

Dissertatio Medica Inauguralis, De Hydrothorace … Pro Gradu Doctorali … Josephus Arnold (Edinburgh, 1807), pp. i–iv, 1–37.

4

M.H. Ellis, Lachlan Macquarie His Life, Adventures, and Times (Sydney, second revised edition, 1952).

5

H.V. Evatt, Rum Rebellion: A Study of the Overthrow of Governor Bligh by John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps (Sydney, reset edition, 1955).

6

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to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, an offer which was apparently never taken up. The ship’s company was paid off in October when the Hindostan reached England, enabling Arnold to enjoy Christmas with his family at Beccles, where his arrival was heralded by the bells of the Parish Church.7 The homecoming was brief, for in January 1811 he was ordered to Portsmouth to assist at Haslar Hospital crowded with patients suffering from a malignant fever. A month later he joined the frigate HMS Alcmene (Edwards Graham), and he subsequently served aboard the 110-gun HMS Hibernia (Edward Brace) and the 74-gun HMS America (Josias Rowley) at various stations in the Mediterranean and Adriatic in the latter period of the Napoleonic Wars. During these years he was able to examine the crater of Vesuvius, the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the rock and cavern at Gibraltar, as well as visit several museums and collect an assortment of natural curiosities. In 1814 his ship was paid off, but later that year he was placed in medical charge of the female convict ship Northampton (J.O. Tween), as the first Surgeon-Superintendent of an Australian convict transport ship.8 The Northampton sailed from Portsmouth on New Year’s Day 1815 carrying 110 female convicts, only four of whom died during the voyage due to his dedicated medical supervision. He also ministered to their spiritual needs by reading to them between decks after Sunday service his own translations of the sermons of the French theologian and mystic, Jean de Gerson (1363–1429), and the writings of St. Augustine and Jacques Saurin (1677–1780), the French Protestant Minister at The Hague. Arnold owed his appointment to his friendship with Alexander McLeay (1767–1848), Secretary of the Transport Board and later Colonial Secretary of New South Wales, who was said to have possessed one of the finest collection of insects in England.9 Arnold took the opportunity when the Northampton called at Rio de Janeiro between 26 February and 17 March to make his own collection of insects, and this was added to when he arrived at Sydney on 18 June 1815, after an uncomfortable voyage of 169 days. Here he received an unexpectedly hostile Dawson Turner, Memoir of Joseph Arnold, M.D. (Ipswich, 1849), p. iv; Rix, Beccles and Bungay Weekly News, 17 December 1861.

7

C. Bateson, The Convict Ships 1787–1868 (Glasgow, 1969), p. 49.

8

Alexander McLeay was one of the early members of the Linnean Society of London and its Secretary from 1798 to 1825. He proposed Arnold as a Fellow of the Society on 17 January 1815. See A.T. Gage, A History of The Linnean Society of London (London, 1938), p. 15; A.T. Gage and W.T. Stearn, A Bicentenary History of The Linnean Society of London (London, 1988), pp. 15, 16, 19, 30, 33.

9

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reception from his old acquaintance, Governor Macquarie, who, in the absence of official instructions, refused to provide him with accommodation or a return passage to England.10 He received hospitality from others in the colony and for a time he contemplated setting up as a medical practitioner at Sydney. The plan was soon abandoned because of the high cost of living, and within a month of his arrival he embarked as a passenger aboard the Whitby merchantman and convict transport Indefatigable bound for London. After a hazardous voyage through Torres Strait and the seas of eastern Indonesia, the ship arrived at Batavia on 3 September in the expectation of being loaded with pepper and coffee for the English market. Arnold immediately went ashore and found the city ‘much deserted’: ‘The walls are thrown down, many of the canals filled up, and all much out of repair. The streets are, in many places, covered with weeds, and many of the houses [are] without inhabitants’.11 A week after his arrival he received a note from Charles Assey asking him to call at Government House, where he was introduced to Raffles at breakfast on the morning of 12 September,12 and invited to stay at Government House, Buitenzorg.13 At one o’clock the following day, they set off in an official carriage and arrived at their destination at about five o’clock, a distance of some 40 miles. He described Government House as comprising a body and two wings: ‘The body is for the Governor; the left wing, which is nearly as large as the body, for the offices; and the right wing is for visitors’.14 In the evening, Raffles showed him ‘some beautiful drawings of temples and idols that he had visited on the Island’;15 and also lent him Dr. Horsfield’s botanical manuscripts ‘to facilitate [his] researches’.16 Bateson, Convict Ships, pp. 53–4. Arnold had been introduced to Macquarie on 13 July 1809 aboard the Dromedary during his earlier passage to New South Wales and accordingly expressed his surprise at Macquarie’s attitude towards him in a letter dated 22 June 1815 (Mitchell Library, Sydney: C.S. 12). He was not an enthusiastic supporter of Macquarie’s liberal policy towards the emancipated convicts in the colony, and was critical of his lack of hospitality: ‘Governor McQuarrie & his lady are both Scotch & consequently close fisted … he keeps a shabby table, and very seldom has company, altho’ former Governors had an open table daily’ (Arnold to Edward Arnold, Sydney Cove, 25 January 1810, MLS: A 1849-2

10

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 7 September 1815.

11

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 12 September 1815.

12

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 13 September 1815.

13

The two wings of Government House were connected to the central part of the building by a covered passageway or gallery. Extensive repairs were carried out to the building after June 1812 when it was given something of a classic façade. See Mildred Archer and John Bastin, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library London (Kuala Lumpur, 1978), pp. 70, 80.

14

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 13 September 1815.

15

16

On Horsfield’s botanical manuscripts, see Chapter Three. Two days prior to Arnold being handed these manuscripts, Raffles had praised Horsfield’s scientific endeavours in ‘A Discourse Delivered on the

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Next day Arnold travelled with Raffles, his aides-de-camp Lieutenant Thomas Watson and Lieutenant Cathcart Methven,17 and a number of Javanese, including Raden Saleh, son of the Regent of Semarang,18 to the ‘small, but comfortable’ country house at Cisarua, some 14 miles distant,19 where Raffles passed ‘the greater part of every morning and evening in reading and translating … the different legends … particularly the Brata Yudha’.20 Arnold occupied himself by taking long walks and collecting insects, but with some apprehension about the proximity of tigers. Raffles, he noted, kept two young tiger cubs, ‘quite tame and playful at present, which he feeds upon vegetable food and milk only’.21 On Sunday 17 September, before breakfast, he rode out with Raffles and his escort through an extensive coffee plantation, and he again accompanied him before breakfast on the following day when the party consisted of ‘the Governor, an aidede-camp, … a footman in a scarlet hunting dress, and two Javanese guards to lead the way.’22 Later, he went off by himself in search of plants and insects, but he joined Raffles and one of the aides-de-camp after dinner walking ‘among some rice grounds, and through a village’.23 Life at Cisarua, he noted, ‘is free and easy enough. I sleep in a small wooden house, apart from the main building. There is a bed, one sheet, and two pillows. I have no servant to assist me, & never make my bed. I roll myself up in my sheet, and, if cold in the night, in my bed. … Our party at dinner is from eight to ten. 11th September 1815 to the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences at Batavia,’ VBG, vol. VIII (1816), pp. 1–62. Chapter Four.

17

The Regent of Semarang, Kiai Adipati Suro Adimonggolo, was said by John Crawfurd to have been superior to all his countrymen ‘for vigour of understanding, for sagacity and intelligence’ (History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), vol. I, p. 48). His 14-year-old son Raden Saleh, when Arnold met him, had only recently returned from Calcutta where he and his younger brother Sukur had been studying English, mathematics, Greek, Roman and modern European history under the patronage of the Governor-General Lord Minto. There is a letter of Raden Saleh dated 22 March 1816 in the National Library of Scotland addressed to the second Earl of Minto expressing ‘the deep sorrow and regret which I and all my family feel for the death of our great and worthy friend and protector the late Lord Minto’. It was Raffles’s intention to take Raden Saleh with him to England in 1816 but circumstances in Raden Saleh’s family prevented him from doing so. See Bastin, JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), pp. 18–19, n.93.

18

The house at Cisarua (‘beautifully situated’, in the words of one contemporary description) was newly built during the period of Governor-General H.W. Daendels, who had sold the house with part of the Pondok Gedeh and Buitenzorg lands to Nicolaus Engelhard and others in 1810 (Bastin, JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), pp. 17–18, n.90).

19

Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), pp. 234–5; T.S. Raffles, The History of Java (London, 1817), vol. I, pp. 415–68.

20

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 15 September 1815.

21

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 17–18 September 1815.

22

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 18 September 1815.

23

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The Governor; Captain Travers, Town Major; Capt. Watson, aide-de-camp; Mr Methven, a subaltern; Mr Assey, Secretary; Mr Saleh, interpreter of Javanese; and generally three or four Javanese. The Governor speaks Javanese very well; and is collecting facts for a publication of the History of the Island. So that there are generally three or four learned natives about him. These gentlemen are always dressed in the native manner …’. Arnold accompanied Raffles and Captain Watson in another evening walk ‘of six or eight miles, over brooks and ravines, and through jungles, often up to our knees in mud and water, so that the guards could scarcely keep up with us. Night came on when we were two or three miles from the house, and there was some danger of tigers. But we soon arrived at a village and procured flambeau.’24 On 20 September he noted in his Journal:25 We have a set of Javanese music called I believe the Gumelong [Gamelan], which plays almost the whole day, beginning before daylight, and playing till ten at night. Eight or ten persons are employed in it. It sounds at a distance something like bells. There are gongs in it, and a flute and violin, both of native make. It is said that a good Gumelong requires nearly a hundred men to play the various instruments. Mr. Raffles told me he had two complete sets, one of which he intends to send to England and which will require the freight of 10 tons. Each set, he says, is worth 4000 dollars.26

Arnold rode with Raffles along a different route on 21 September to some ‘Hindoo ruins, about eight miles from Ciceroa’, these being the famous Artja Domas, or eight hundred statues, at Pondok Gede, consisting of roughly-hewn stone figures resembling human and animal shapes.27 ‘In the middle of one group is a square upright stone, with a small one at the top being about three feet high. The Governor MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 18 September 1815.

24

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 20 September 1815.

25

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 20 September 1815. This figure seems high, especially in the light of Raffles’s own estimate in The History of Java, vol. I, p. 471 that complete sets of gamelan pèlog sold in the island at this time for between 1,000 and 1,600 Spanish dollars (£250 to £400). Raffles took both sets of gamelan with him to England in 1816, and later placed them in the main hall at ‘High Wood’ in Hendon, where they must have made a colourful display. After the death of Lady Raffles in 1858, one set was presented by her nephew to the British Museum and the other set was sold to Sir Henry Verney of Claydon House, Bletchley. See John Sturgus [Bastin], ‘The Raffles Gamelan’, Straits Times Annual for 1972, pp. 69–72; W. Fagg (ed.), The Raffles Gamelan A Historical Note (The British Museum, 1970).

26

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 21 September 1815. Arca [Artja] Domas, the megalithic complex at Pondok Gede where some of the stone-hewn figures vaguely resemble human and animal shapes. The main series described by Arnold is depicted in a large coloured lithograph by C.W. Mieling after a drawing by A.J. Bik in Javasche Oudheden (The Hague, 1852–6).

27

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told me that barren women resorted to this, and endeavoured to lift it from the ground by turning their backs to it and grasping it with their hands; and they suppose that, being able to lift it from the ground, they will become fruitful. … The Governor told me that he supposed these remains were brought here by some party from the Eastward who may have travelled over these mountains … At night, walking with the Governor, we killed another [snake]. The Regent of Buitenzorg, who was with us, said it was poisonous, and that a man a week or two ago was bitten by one and died in fourteen hours’.28 On 23 September Arnold heard that they were to leave Cisarua the following morning, but he learned this only from overhearing the conversation of others: ‘I seem to be lost. I live here, sit down to a magnificent dinner and breakfast, and appear to be considered as one of the party, [b]ut yet there is I cannot tell what that makes me appear strange’.29 Next morning before daylight he packed his books and luggage ready to leave: ‘The carriage was at the door. … The Governor, Mr Assey, and an aide-de-camp got in, and so did I. And we arrived at the palace of Buitenzorg to breakfast. … The palace at Buitenzorg is very large. There are three principal buildings, magnificently furnished and well lighted at night by upwards of a hundred lamps and wax tapers. There are fine grounds, gardens, baths, offices, houses for the dependents, &c. &c. – and a fine stud of horses’.30 After spending a fortnight with Raffles – ‘a circumstance as unforeseen as unexpected’ – Arnold left Buitenzorg on 27 September with Assey for Batavia, noting in his Journal that in ‘the Governor’s family, outwardly, there is not the least notice taken of the Sabbath; and there is no English place of worship at Batavia, and only one Dutch clergyman.’31 He now became a guest at the Government House, Batavia, but having become ‘rather tired of this kind of life’, he returned to his

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 21 September 1815.

28

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 23 September 1815.

29

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 24 September 1815.

30

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 25 September 1815. There were, in fact, a number of Protestant clergymen in the island, including two who were English, but, in Arnold’s sense, not Anglican. The Dutch Reformed minister, to whom Arnold refers, was Dr. Johannes Theodorus Ross (1755–1824), who had the honorary distinction of Professor conferred upon him in 1808, a rank confirmed by Raffles four years later. The Lutheran community at Batavia was in charge of Jeremias Schill, who had arrived in Java a year later than Ross and who died on 27 October 1814. Despite being a substantial landowner he was also provided by Raffles with a monthly rent allowance of 75 Spanish dollars in addition to his monthly salary of 150 Spanish dollars. In March 1814 there arrived at Batavia representatives of the London Missionary Society, a Flemish and two German protestant ministers. See Bastin, JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), pp. 27–8, n.138, and note 49 below.

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cabin in the Indefatigable where he was dismayed to find that the insects he had collected at Cisarua had been largely destroyed by ants.32 Having heard that Raffles was in town, he went ashore on 9 October and called on him and Assey. Afterwards he dined and breakfasted with Captain Travers, whose lavish style of living invited his severe criticism:33 ‘It is truly disgusting to see the expensive manner the Government officers live in here. In the Town Major’s [Travers’s] front room are about 30 lamps, each of which I suppose costing 40 dollars. Their table is as good, or indeed superior to a Commander in Chief’s. Claret, Madeira and Hock in abundance. And who are these that can afford this magnificence? A captain in the army, three subalterns, an assistant surgeon, and an officer of the Bengal Marine. What have three young men done that they deserve 2000 dollars a month?’34 Apart from Travers, the persons criticised by Arnold were Lieutenant James Dalgairns and Lieutenant Cathcart Methven of the 21st Madras and 20th Bengal Regiments of Native Infantry.35 Arnold remained on board ship during the following days, visiting various people and places ashore, while the Indefatigable was made ready for sea. But when all the passengers were on board it was found that Captain Bowles had not prepared a correct manifest and the necessary papers for the clearance of the ship. While these were being prepared, the ship caught fire on the afternoon of 22 October as a result of spirits being carelessly drawn off below decks: ‘Thus, perhaps the most dreadful accident that can befall a sailor had befallen me. I have lost three trunks containing valuable books and other curiosities; a fine collection of Insects from South America, New Holland, and this place; the public dispatches of the Supreme Judge of New South Wales [Jeffery Hart Bent] that he entrusted me with; and also some very fine drawings of different parts of the Colony [of New South Wales]. What I am to do? – I have but little money. Perhaps Mr Assey or Mr Raffles may be willing to assist me. I have taken all I could save to a not very respectable inn, and must, I suppose, remain there some time’.36 MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 30 September, 3 October 1815.

32

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 9 October 1815.

33

Possibly 2,000 Java rupees would be more accurate.

34

Chapter Four.

35

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 22 October 1815. Jeffrey Hart Bent (1781–1852) was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature in New South Wales on 7 February 1814. He was probably introduced to Arnold by his younger brother, Ellis Bent (1783–1815), who had sailed to Australia in the same fleet as Arnold in 1809. Both Bent brothers were drawn into conflict with Governor Macquarie (note 10), and the despatches entrusted to Arnold by Jeffrey Bent probably related to this matter, or specifically to the powers of the Judge in the new Supreme Court vis-à-vis the two lay members appointed by the governor. The

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Two days after the fire, he breakfasted with Captain Travers who invited him to stay with him, but as he also received ‘a polite note from Mr Assey’, inviting him to take up ‘residence with the Governor at Ciceroa’, he accepted that invitation instead.37 He recorded in his Journal on 29 October that he was now living with Raffles, ‘who has paid me great attention. So that although my purse is low, I live sumptuously’.38 The statement seems to refer not to Cisarua but to his having been allocated accommodation in a bungalow in the grounds of Government House at Batavia where Raffles was now residing. On 31 October he declined a dinner invitation from the Commander of the Forces, Sir Miles Nightingall,39 and his wife Lady Florentia Nightingall,40 choosing instead to dine with Sir Thomas Sevestre, Superintendent of Vaccination at Batavia, and Raffles’s private physician.41 He joined dispute was a bitter and protracted one and was finally resolved in Macquarie’s favour by the Colonial Office at the end of 1816. MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 24 October 1815.

37

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 29 October 1815.

38

Sir Miles Nightingall was Commander-in-Chief in Java, having replaced Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie in October 1813. He arrived at Batavia with his wife from Calcutta on the 14th of that month and on the following day took his seat as a member of the Java Council. He was the natural son of Lord Cornwallis (1738–1805), and was born on 25 December 1768. He gained an impressive military reputation in the Peninsular Wars at the sieges of Roleia and Vimiera while commanding a Highland brigade, and also later with the 1st Division at Fuentes d’Oñoro (3,5 May 1811). Nightingall was strongly recommended to Raffles by Lord Minto as ‘a man of honour, and a gentleman in the highest degree; his manners, in all respects, as amiable as … his conduct’. He and his wife became close friends of Raffles, and were his staunch supporters during 1814 when the integrity of his administration was challenged by Gillespie in Bengal. He also initiated measures to reduce the size of the military establishment in Java, which had been the main point of contention between Raffles and Gillespie, and he was therefore able to assist in reducing the demands on the hard pressed colonial exchequer. He was promoted Major-General in 1809 and Lieutenant-General in 1814, in which year, between April and May, he conducted successful military campaigns against Bali and Macassar. He was created K.C.B. in 1815 and, despite opposition from the Directors of the East India Company, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief at Bombay. He sailed from Java with his wife on 19 November 1815 aboard H.C. Survey Ship Nearchus (Lieutenant Griddle), leaving Raffles, in his own words, with ‘a heavy heart’. Nightingall retired in 1819 and was elected a Member of Parliament for the borough of Eye in the following year. He died at Redgrave Hall in Gloucestershire on 17 September 1829 and was buried in the Crypt of Gloucester Cathedral.

39

Lady Florentia Elizabeth Nightingall was born on 12 August 1777, the daughter of Sir Lionel Darell (1742– 1803), Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis (1780–4) and Hendon (1784–1802), and an influential Director of the East India Company. Her mother, Isabella Tullie, died on 6 May 1800, her marriage to Nightingall following on 13 August of that year. She was an extremely likeable person, Travers describing her as an ‘affectionate, pleasing, affable woman, with a fine flow of spirits entirely free from affectation, with a very proper notion of right and wrong, high minded, easily led but not to be dictated to’, in fact, ‘one of the most charming women I had seen in the country’. She became on the death of Olivia Mariamne Raffles on 26 November 1814 the first lady in Java, and during her stay in the island she gave great emotional support to Raffles, who enjoyed her company. Her feelings for him were later poignantly expressed in a letter she wrote on 18 September 1826 to Lady Raffles on learning of his death: ‘… I wished to sympathise with you, the loss of a being I so sincerely loved, & respected, there were very few for whom I had so great a regard & I have truly wept his loss ……’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/7). She died at her residence, No. 29 York Place, Portman Square, London, on 20 December 1863, her will being proved under £120,000.

40

Sir Thomas Sevestre was appointed Assistant Surgeon on the Madras medical establishment on 16 July 1809. Seven months earlier, during December and January 1808–9, while serving as surgeon aboard HMS Constance,

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the Nightingalls as a guest at a large party at Travers’s house on 1 November,42 and three days later he was a guest with Raffles and many others at a farewell ball and supper given by Travers to the Nightingalls, who were about to leave Java for India.43 Arnold accompanied Raffles to Buitenzorg on 7 November where the company at Government House included General and Lady Nightingall, the General’s aidesde-camp, Captain John Nixon of HM’s 17th Regiment of Foot and his wife,44 and Lieutenant Charlton Tucker of HM’s 24th Light Dragoons, Major Jeremiah Martin Johnson of the 21st Bengal Native Infantry,45 Lieutenant Cathcart Methven, Assey, his ‘unremitted attention’ to the sick and wounded of the Portuguese forces employed in the reduction of Cayenne in French Guiana earned him a Knighthood of the Royal Portuguese Order of the Tower and Sword, the rank being allowed to him in Great Britain by royal licence at the request of the Prince Regent of Portugal. In Java he was appointed, with effect from 1 December 1811, to perform the medical duties of the district of Buitenzorg, and in the following year, between 21 July and 1 September, he was in charge of the field hospital during the military operations against Yogyakarta. On 26 November 1812 he was appointed to act as garrison surgeon at Semarang and to take charge of the Hospital for Diseased Native Women where he seems to have adopted enlightened measures in the treatment of syphilis. He returned to Buitenzorg in April 1814 and was shortly afterwards employed as Assistant in the secretariat at Government House, a post which was probably contrived by Raffles to secure private medical attention. A month after his meeting with Arnold, Sevestre was appointed Superintendent of Vaccination in the town and suburbs of Batavia, and shortly afterwards Civil Surgeon of Batavia. In the latter capacity he wrote a critical report on the state of the Chinese Hospital, which had been built between 1799 and 1801 south of Pasar Bambu near the Chinese quarter. In March 1816 Sevestre accompanied Raffles to England aboard the Ganges (P. Falconer) as his personal physician, and he lived with him at Cheltenham and in London before Raffles’s marriage on 22 February 1817 to Sophia Hull. She did not have a high opinion of him, referring to him as ‘the good Baboon’. One of Raffles’s secretaries in Java described him as ‘an original’, so he was obviously something of a character. Travers, who was a close friend of Sevestre, stated that he was in constant search of a wife, and he appears to have tracked one down in England in April or May 1818. He returned to India about the same time as Raffles, but not in the same ship with him, as stated by C.E. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), p. 424. He was for a time Assistant Surgeon at the Residency Tanjore, and was promoted Surgeon on 1 January 1824 and Head Surgeon in 1837, retiring from service on 5 December of that year. MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 1 November 1815.

42

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 4 November 1815.

43

Captain John Nixon was aide-de-camp and Military Secretary to Sir Miles Nightingall (note 39). He was appointed Major of Brigade and Acting Military Secretary to the Commander of the Forces in October 1813, at which time Travers described him as ‘a very pleasant, gentlemanlike, worthy fellow’. His wife, whom he had recently married, was a Miss Emerson, niece of Major E.W. Butler, commanding the Detachment of Bengal Foot Artillery at Weltevreden. On 16 March 1815 he succeeded to the post of acting Deputy Quarter Master General on the death at Semarang on 7 March 1815 of Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Butler of the 89th Foot, having previously held the appointment temporarily from November 1813. Nixon remained in Java until the end of the British occupation, his wife giving birth to a daughter at Weltevreden on 31 July 1816.

44

Major Jeremiah Johnson served as Deputy Paymaster General on the staff of Lieutenant-General Sir Samuel Auchmuty during the invasion of Java. His long military career in India began with his appointment as Cadet in 1783, Ensign on 28 May 1785, Lieutenant on 14 October 1793, and Captain on 21 September 1804. He was Fort Adjutant at Fort William from January 1804 and Acting Garrison Storekeeper from 30 January 1806 until he was granted furlough from 24 February 1807 to 27 October 1809. His wife, Mary Ann Breeze, gave birth to their son, William Thompson Johnson, in Bengal on 20 September 1807. He was appointed Deputy Paymaster General to the troops proceeding to Java on 22 February 1811 and Paymaster General at Weltevreden in November 1811. He took part in the military operations against Yogyakarta in 1812 and was promoted Major on 1 June 1813. In December of that year he was appointed British Resident at the Court of Surakarta. Raffles described him in 1818 as his ‘very particular friend’ who had long enjoyed his ‘entire confidence’ and was one of his ‘right hands in Java’. Indeed, he was ‘quite a member of my family and is

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and Raden Saleh. As usual, he found his situation uncomfortable: ‘I pass … an unpleasant time, and except at breakfast and dinner, speak to no one. I am indeed a solitary animal, and seem to live here without being perceived by any one. The Governor is hypochondriac; Lady Nightingall talkative’.46 After dinner two nights later, when two princes of Cheribon were among Raffles’s guests,47 he retired to his room to read and write until bed-time: ‘There is a card party, however, in the Governor’s apartments, and an excellent band of music, which I hear only at a distance’.48 ‘Sunday’, he noted in his Journal on 13 November, ‘is no more noticed here than if there had been no Sabbath at all. Whence can arise this want of attention? The Governor seems to be a good man. He never swears, or drinks, and seems to be anxious that he should be perfect in all his dealings. Why then does he neglect entirely this important [Christian] duty? Sir Miles Nightingall and Lady, also, and indeed every person here, seems to possess the same forgetfulness of the Sabbath. Why also does the General and most others present ridicule the [Java] Bible Society? – I cannot see why it should be ridiculed. Surely money given for the

well acquainted with all my views and prospects’. Johnson’s chief claim to fame was his ‘discovery’ of the temple ruins of Suku, some 26 miles east of Surakarta, which were subsequently described and illustrated by Raffles in his The History of Java, vol. II, pp. 45 et seq. Crawfurd also reproduced in his History of the Indian Archipelago, vol. II, opp. p. 195 an engraving after a drawing by Johnson of one of the Suku reliefs. Johnson took a large collection of Javanese antiquities with him when he left Java for India and these were brought to England when he left Calcutta on furlough in November 1818. He was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel on 1 February of that year, after transferring to the 15th Bengal Native Infantry, and in May 1824 he was gazetted Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant in the 30th Bengal Native Infantry (formerly the 15th). He was promoted Colonel on 5 June 1829. His health was broken during the latter period of his service and he was on furlough from 31 August 1825 until his death at St. Honore in France on 10 January 1833. When Arnold met him at Buitenzorg he was on his way back to Sela, some 45 kilometres from Surakarta, where he was stationed. He had left his post to attend to some private business at Batavia and was staying with Raffles at Buitenzorg when the Sepoy rebellion at Surakarta occurred. MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 7 November 1815. Arnold’s statement about Raffles being a hypochondriac is, in a sense, correct. Certainly the subject of his own health formed a constant refrain in his letters, and from 1815 he was never far from the services of a physician: Sevestre (note 41) during 1816–17, Arnold during 1817–18, William Jack (Chapter Nine) during 1819–22, and Dr. B. Bell of the Bengal medical service when he sailed to England aboard the Mariner in 1824. It must be said in fairness to him that his health was never good, particularly during the later years of his life, when an undiagnosed tumour on the brain caused him excruciatingly painful headaches. This was unknown until an autopsy was carried out by Sir Everard Home on his death on 5 July 1826, and in the meantime he was treated with calomel, a mercurious chloride which was commonly used as a purgative. This may or may not have given him some relief from his headaches but the purgative effects over a long period of time would have become increasingly severe on his constitution. See Bastin, JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), p. 45, n.243.

46

Sultan Sepuh and Sultan Anom of Ceribon with their numerous retainers had first visited Raffles at Buitenzorg during March 1812 when they were lavishly entertained and taken on a fishing party. Their political powers had been curtailed by a decree of Governor-General Daendels on 2 February 1809 and these powers were further reduced by Raffles when he introduced his land rent system in 1814.

47

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 9 November 1815.

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promulgation of the Bible cannot be ill spent.49 I pass my time agreeably, but solitarily. I am like a monk. I walk by myself, – sit alone all day in my small room, – read, – draw, – paint, – botanise. I go to breakfast and dinner when the bell rings, where there is company of about 20 or 24. I bathe every morning in a magnificent bath, where the water is as clear as crystal at 80 degrees of heat. I go to bed about ten, get up at daylight, and the days do not seem long enough for me.’50 On 14 November he joined a fishing party, which included Raffles, Sir Miles and Lady Nightingall, Captains Watson, Tucker, Nixon, Mrs. Nixon and Mrs. Bell, wife of William Bell of the Bengal Regiment of Artillery.51 The following day, after the wedding of the son of the Regent of Cianjur, Tumenggung Wiradiredja, to the daughter of the Regent of Buitenzorg, Adipati Wiranata, he witnessed the wedding procession making a courtesy visit to Raffles at Government House.52 The Java Auxiliary Bible Society was founded as an adjunct to the British and Foreign Bible Society on 4 June 1814 at a levee at Government House, Batavia, on the occasion of the King’s Birthday. The news had just reached Java of the independence of the Netherlands and Raffles addressed the assembly to the effect ‘that the present must be deemed a proper occasion for the inhabitants of Batavia to express their gratitude to heaven for the late happy turn of affairs, as well as their inclination to promote the welfare of mankind, by forming an institution among themselves, the object of which would be to diffuse the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures among the inhabitants of the Eastern Islands in general’. The plan of the Society, which had been drawn up at a meeting on 12 May, was then read and approved, and within a few minutes many thousands of Java Rupees were subscribed for the purpose of distributing the Scriptures ‘without note or comment’ throughout eastern Asia. Why the Society came in for ridicule by Nightingall and others was due to the obvious futility of its objects in Java, but possibly more specifically because of the activities of the Society’s Secretary, the Reverend J.C. Supper, who was a rather stupid man or at best an uncomplicated innocent. He was of German extraction and had received his theological training in Berlin and Rotterdam before proceeding in October 1812 to England, where he was enlisted by the London Missionary Society for service in Java. He received a warm welcome from Raffles on the strength of his being acquainted with his cousin, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, but was described by him as ‘a good Simple Creature rather silly – but amiable’. He married on 9 July 1815 a widow named S.C. van der Plaats, who was born in Ternate and moved to Batavia in 1803. They lived in the poor quarter of Koestraat, where the Reverend Supper in his capacity as Secretary of the Java Auxiliary Bible Society dispensed with zeal and enthusiasm an endless stream of bibles in various languages which had been supplied to him by the British and Foreign Bible Society. He died at Batavia towards the end of 1816.

49

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 13 November 1815.

50

William Bell (1792–1836), son of a wine merchant of Leith in Scotland, was a Fireworker in the Bengal Regiment of Artillery. He arrived in India on 19 July 1809 and was appointed a Fireworker on 7 November of that year. He served as Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion of the Bengal Regiment of Artillery during the British conquest of Java, and took part in the military action against Yogyakarta in 1812. He served as Assistant Deputy Military Paymaster General, having been promoted provisionally to the post on 1 January 1814. His rank in the Regiment dated from 7 November 1809 and he was officially appointed Lieutenant on 25 September 1817 and Captain on 1 May 1824. He died at Calcutta on 21 December 1836, his wife having predeceased him on 3 September 1826. He married three times thereafter, his fourth wife, Mary Stewart, whom he married at Calcutta on 22 June 1835, surviving him.

51

Tumenggung Wiradiredja (later Adipati Prawiradiredja) succeeded to the Regency on 18 April 1813, after the death of the 57-year-old Adipati Wiratanudatar (r.1776–1813). The latter’s three sons were excluded from the succession for the reasons, succinctly given by Raffles, that the first was an idiot, the second a hadji, and the third an infant. The marriage between the son of the Regent of Cianjur and the daughter of the Regent of Buitenzorg, Adipati Wiranata, whose title had been conferred on him on 1 September 1815, was significant for both rulers, but especially for the latter, who had been considered in 1813 as a possible successor to the Regency of Cianjur, instead of Wiradiredja.

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On 16 November, Raffles and Sir Miles and Lady Nightingall set out for Batavia, leaving Arnold feeling increasingly that he was outstaying his welcome: ‘I know nothing more unpleasant than staying at a place where a person thinks himself not perfectly welcome. At Buitenzorg I am certain the Governor is fully satisfied with my making his palace my home. But I cannot say that of the rest. For besides my not being able to speak a word of Malay, I certainly am of a very taciturn, morose, reserved, and proud disposition’.53 Assey came to the rescue by arranging for him to visit Andries de Wilde, the Dutch owner of the Sukabumi estate, some 20 miles from Buitenzorg. He was received ‘tolerably well’ by De Wilde,54 who suggested that he should visit Tangkuban Prahu, which he himself had climbed some time earlier.55 Accordingly, MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 18 November 1815.

53

54

Andries de Wilde, a friend of Raffles and of many of the British officials in Java, was born in Amsterdam on 21 November 1781, the eldest son of Cornelis de Wilde and Marretja Harsnis. At the time of Arnold’s visit he was Government Superintendent of vaccination in the Priangan to which post he had been appointed six months earlier, on 13 May 1815. He had shown a zealous interest in the subject of vaccination from virtually the first moment he arrived in Java on 19 May 1803 as surgeon of the private ship Maria (J. Muntingh), and had undertaken vaccination tours in the Priangan during 1805–7 when he was regimental surgeon (Chirugijn-Majoor) with the artillery at Batavia. He was ahead of his time in enlisting the support of local and religious leaders in forwarding his campaign. He was appointed Overseer at Buitenzorg on 2 February 1808 and a year later he was moved to Trogong (Bandung) where he was residing at the time of the British conquest of the island. He was confirmed in his post by Raffles on 2 April 1812, and in August of the same year he was referred to as Assistant (to the Resident) at Bandung. The Resident, Thomas Macquoid (Chapter Six, note 57), spoke of him in March 1814 as his ‘Assistant and coffee overseer of Bandong’, and when he resigned shortly afterwards in order to manage the Sukabumi estate, which had been sold at public auction on 25 January 1813 by the Government to a consortium, including Raffles (JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), p. 57, n.303), Macquoid paid tribute to his ‘knowledge of the Sunda language and the great confidence which the natives of these Districts have in him in consequence of his long residence among them’. A year later Raffles attested to his ‘extensive local knowledge’ of the Priangan, a product of which was his book, De Preanger Regentschappen op Java Gelegen (Amsterdam, 1830). Some years later his lexicographical notes on the Sundanese language were edited by Taco Roorda and published in Amsterdam in 1841 by J. Müller under the title, Nederduitsch-Maleisch en Soendasch Woordenboek, a work described as very defective by Jonathan Rigg, who published his own Dictionary of Sundanese in 1862. De Wilde sailed for the Netherlands in December 1819 to enlist support in his conflict with the restored colonial Government concerning the Sukabumi estate, and during his stay in Europe he acquired a wife. Her ill-health after their arrival back in Java in July 1822, and his losing battle with the colonial authorities, obliged him to sell the estate to the Government in the following year for 800,000 florins. On his return to the Netherlands he purchased the property of Pijnenburg, near Zoestdijk, where he lived with his growing family. He addressed from there a letter dated 26 October 1824 to Raffles, recently returned to England, inviting him to stay with him at Pijnenburg, which, as he wrote, ‘I make no doubt but will please you very well, and though it be no Sookaboomee, you may be sure, we will find it a pleasure, to make your stay with your family here, as agreeable and as comfortable [as] possible’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/3). De Wilde later operated a commission house in Amsterdam with Hendrik Doeff, the former Dutch Resident in Japan, and he had other business interests there. He died at Utrecht on 27 April 1865. His portrait is reproduced in F. De Haan, Priangan: De Preanger-Regentschappen onder het Nederlandsche Bestuur tot 1811 (Batavia, 1910–12), vol. I, opp. p. 384*, and a full account of his career is given in the same volume, pp. 284–309.

De Wilde later published an account of his ascent of Gunung Tangkuban Prahu in the company of his brother, Christoffel Steitz de Wilde (1784–1860), and a party of Indonesians, in which he refers to Kawah Ratu and Kawah Upas: De Preanger Regentschappen, pp. 6–14. The account is accompanied by an uncoloured lithograph (opp. p. 10) depicting two Europeans (presumably the De Wilde brothers) examining Kawah

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on 22 November, in the company of a small party of Indonesians, Arnold ascended this famous mountain and later recorded one of the earliest descriptions of its physical features.56 At Bandung, he was surprised to find Major Jeremiah Johnson and the Assistant Surgeon John Hodgson, a fellow student of his at Edinburgh University.57 Arnold remained at Buitenzorg until 28 November, when he received a letter from Captain H. Elliott informing him that the ship Hope, on which he had obtained a passage to London, would be ready to sail on 2 December. He immediately proceeded to Batavia, where he dined with Travers on the evening of 30 November and was a guest at a large party given by Willem Jacob Cranssen, second Dutch member of the Java Council.58 As the ship was further delayed, Ratu, and this must be regarded as the first printed illustration, albeit a highly romanticised one, of the eastern crater of Gunung Tangkuban Prahu, preceding by more than 10 years the drawings and detailed plan of the craters based on the surveys made by P. van Oort and Dr. S. Müller in 1832 (C.J. Temminck (ed.), Verhandelingen over de Natuurlijke Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Overzeesche Bezittingen (Leiden, 1839–45), Land en Volkenkunde, plates 74–6). ‘Description of a Volcanic Mountain on the Island of Java, called Tankuban-praw’, Batavia, 1 December 1815 (Bastin, JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), Appendix II, pp. 78–83).

56

John Hodgson was born in August 1786, and, on Arnold’s evidence, studied at the University of Edinburgh during the early years of the 19th century. His name does not appear in the list of graduates of the University but there is a record of a John Hodgson from Carlisle taking medical classes between 1805 and 1808, which appears to be him, as his appointment as Assistant-Surgeon in the East India Company is dated 20 March 1808. He served on the Bengal medical establishment until 1811 when he accompanied the British military expedition to Java. Two years later, in June 1813, in consequence of the departure of Dr. Daniel Ainslie as commissioner to Japan, ‘and there being no Surgeon disposeable to take charge of the office of Superintending Surgeon’, Hodgson was given the provisional appointment on a salary of 800 Sonat rupees a month. In the following year he was Medical Storekeeper and was presumably in possession of that post when he died on 22 November 1815 at Bandung.

57

Willem Jacob Cranssen, President of the College of Magistrates at Batavia, to which post he was re-appointed in January 1812 when the Bench of Magistrates was constituted. He was Superintendent of the Court of Requests during 1812–13 and President of the Commercial Committee in 1813 and President of the Revenue Committee in the following year. He has been characterised as a narrow minded man of limited ability, better suited to his place in the Commercial Committee than in Council, and it is true that he was not the equal of his compatriot on the Council, Harman Warner Muntinghe (1773–1827). Yet it is hard to believe that a man of mediocre talents would have incurred such extreme hostility from the Netherlands colonial Government in and after 1816 on account of his overzealous collaboration with the British regime. There is little doubt that Cranssen was guilty of a bad error in applying in 1813 for British naturalization, but then so did Muntinghe, who played an even more prominent, if possibly discreet, part in the deliberations of the British colonial administration. Crassen paid the penalty for being considered too British and, even worse, an insincere Orangist. Raffles’s intercession on his behalf with the Netherlands Colonial Minister and the King in Brussels in July 1817 (‘there does not exist a more true Hollander than Mr Cranssen, nor one who glories more in his Prince and the maintenance of his present dignity and authority’) probably did more harm than good. When Travers visited Java from Bengkulu in May 1818 he found Cranssen ‘from his known partiality to the English, very much out of favour with the present [members of the] Government whom he considers as Jacobins’. Travers described him at that time as ‘a perfect gentleman in manners, about 47 [in fact, 55] years of age with an exhausted constitution … possessed of much property’. He was part owner of the estates of Tegalwaru and Sumedangan, and, with Nicolaus Engelhard (Chapter Three, note 94) and others, part owner of Pondok Gedeh, Cilembar, Ciawi, and Cisarua. He was owner of the lands Krokot, Marujung and Cinere, where Raffles spent a few days in January 1815 recovering from the death of his first wife, Olivia

58

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he was able to dine with Raffles on 6 December at Government House, where he learned of the disturbances among the Sepoys stationed at Surakarta: ‘There is some commotion in the island which, however, is known to very few. It arises from the dissatisfaction the native princes have at the island being given up to the Dutch. And it appears that they have been treating with the Sepoy regiments and have rendered them dissatisfied, telling them that they were to be given up also to the Dutch. It is even said that a conspiracy has been discovered among the Sepoys, and that they intended to murder their officers and take part with the native princes’.59 This unrest in the Sepoy Light Infantry Battalion was a consequence of it being stationed at Surakarta for more than four years, resulting in close ties being formed between some Sepoy officers and elements of the Surakarta nobility wishing to throw off European rule and change the succession at both the Surakarta and Yogyakarta courts.60 News that the island was shortly to be returned to the Netherlands Government, and ill-founded rumours that the Sepoy Light Infantry Battalion was to be retained in Java, provided the actual seed-ground for the mutiny, but the battalion was seriously understaffed by British officers and there was discontent in the ranks because of difficulties in making remittances to India. The news of the conspiracy among the Sepoy officers was obviously known to Raffles before he dined with Arnold, and he set out for central Java shortly afterwards, subsequently relaying in a despatch to Lord Minto in Calcutta on 8 February 1816 his assessment of the causes of the conspiracy and the measures he had adopted to deal with it.61 Arnold sailed from Batavia in ‘foul’ weather at daylight on 12 December, having before his departure sent a farewell note to Captain Travers and a thermometer and a blue topaz to his friend Assey.62 Little could he have realised that within a very short time he would be again meeting Raffles and Travers in England, and accompanying them on a voyage to west Sumatra. Mariamne Devenish, and where Travers said that Cranssen, ‘though much of an Englishman lives entirely in the Dutch style’. Cranssen’s ‘very magnificent house’ at Batavia, as Arnold describes it in his Journal, was in the Jakatraweg. He died at Pondok Gede on 17 August 1821, aged 58, leaving a widow, Maria Eleonore Hartman, whom Arnold would have met at Cranssen’s party. MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 6 December 1815.

59

P.B.R. Carey, ‘The Sepoy Conspiracy of 1815 in Java’, BKI, vol. 133 (1977), pp. 294–322.

60

M.L. van Deventer, Het Nederlandsch Gezag over Java en Onderhoorigheden sedert 1811 (The Hague, 1891), vol. I, pp. 61–3.

61

MLS:C720:MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold, 12 December 1813.

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Chapter Six

Raffles’s Cousins and the Publication of The History of Java ‘The chief topic upon which my cousin has consulted me is a history of Java, which he is about to publish in two quarto volumes and one volume of splendid plates … ’ The Reverend Thomas Raffles to his wife, 5 August 1815

The Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles (1788 –1863) Engraving by J. Thomson after a portrait by A. Mosses, 1822

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L

ess than four months after Arnold’s departure from Java, Raffles also sailed for England, having been removed from his post as Lieutenant-Governor of the island and its dependencies by a decision of the Court of Directors, strongly influenced by charges of maladministration made by Major-General Gillespie, and by ‘numerous errors’ which had ‘rendered the occupation of Java a source of financial embarrassment to the British Government’. The position of Resident at Bengkulu (Fort Marlborough) in west Sumatra was left open to him, but he decided on a plea of ill-health to proceed directly to England to prove his innocence of the charges and show how unjustly he had been treated.1 Raffles arrived in London on 16 July 1816 and, after reporting a few days later to the Directors of the East India Company at the East India House, spent the next three weeks settling into rented accommodation at No. 23 Berners Street and arranging for the delivery and unpacking of the 30 tons of ‘Eastern curiosities and treasures’ he had brought back with him in the Ganges (P. Falconer).2 Towards the end of the month he was joined in London by his first cousin, the Reverend Thomas Raffles, the only son of William Raffles, a dissenting solicitor in the firm of Parnell & Raffles and brother of Raffles’s father, Captain Benjamin Raffles.3 His mother, Rachel Dunsby, daughter of Richard Dunsby, a Wesleyan Methodist of Wells, was a favourite aunt of Raffles, who in his boyhood and early manhood years often called on her at No. 14 Princes (now Princelet) Street, Spitalfields, London, renewing the visits shortly after his return from Java in 1816.4 The Reverend Thomas Raffles had studied at the Old College for Congregational Dissenters at Homerton, and after his ordination in 1809 he began his ministry at the Great George Street Chapel, Liverpool, when it was opened for divine worship in May 1812. He described his reunion with his cousin in London in July 1816 in his Reminiscences, written shortly before his death:5 I saw the announcement of his return from Java, in the public papers, when on a visit preaching for some public Institution at Bradford, & resolved immediately to go up to C.E. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), pp. 385–8.

1 2

Reverend Thomas Raffles to his wife, 2 August 1816: ‘He has brought over Eastern curiosities and treasures to the amount of thirty tons weight, in upwards of two hundred immense packages’ (T.S. Raffles (ed.), Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Rev. Thomas Raffles, D.D., LL.D. (London, 1864), p. 146). John Bastin and Julie Weizenegger, The Family of Sir Stamford Raffles (Singapore, 2016), pp. 25, 54, 55, 153, 158, 175–6, 181.

3

John Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009), p. 228.

4

Ibid., pp. 228–9.

5

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London to meet him. More than twelve years had elapsed since we had seen each other. I was then but a boy but had now become a man – married & settled in life, the Minister of a large Church & occupying a laborious & influential position – He had a large house in Berners St. [off] Oxford St. taken for him & to that immediately on my arrival in town I repaired. He was aware of my coming – but was not at home on my arrival, having been obliged to go to the India House on business. I found the house full of oriental matters, a perfect Museum – many things curious & magnificent: & multitudes of people waiting to see him – together with Servants & others in partially oriental costumes, presenting to my eyes a somewhat novel & amusing spectacle. I had not long to wait his return – I stood at the top of the stairs ready to receive him – As he approached the top he fixed his eyes upon me, & by the instinct of affection, rather than any cherished remembrance, he almost instantly recognized me & embraced me. We were immediately at home together & I remained as his guest during my brief stay at that time in London.

The Reverend Thomas Raffles was the author of the highly popular Memoirs (1813) of his predecessor at Liverpool, the Reverend Thomas Spencer, and was the translator of Klopstock’s The Messiah in three duodecimo volumes,6 his literary attainments being later recognised by the Senatus Academicus of Marischal College, University of Aberdeen, with the award of the degrees of Master of Arts and LL.D.7 As an experienced author, Raffles was anxious to discuss with him his projected book on Java, and also to engage him into producing a rhymed version of the Javanese epic Sĕrat Bratayuda, a English translation of which he had been working on with his Indonesian assistants in Java.8 The Reverend Raffles reported on these matters in a letter to his wife at the end of July: ‘He intends to publish an account of Java, and is very busy in getting maps, &c., prepared for the work. He has very extensive collections of Javanese literature of his own collecting. I am amazed at his industry. In one day he wrote two hundred letters with his own hand, and dictated to two secretaries besides’.9 A week later he again informed her: ‘The chief Reverend Thomas Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Late Reverend Thomas Spencer of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1813); Reverend Thomas Raffles (transl.), The Messiah, by Klopstock, Translated from the German (London, 1814), 3 vols.

6

Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 80–1. The degree of LL.D. was awarded in December 1820 on the recommendation of Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset, and H.R.H. Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, to whom he had been introduced five years earlier (T.S. Raffles, Memoirs, pp. 196–7).

7

Chapter Five. Raffles showed the Reverend Thomas Raffles’s version of the Bratayuda to the orientalist Charles Wilkins and ‘some other of our Eastern Literati’, and they were ‘unanimous’ in their praise (Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 103).

8

Reverend Thomas Raffles to his wife, 31 July 1816, T.S. Raffles, Memoirs, p. 145.

9

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topic upon which my cousin has consulted me is a history of Java, which he is about to publish in two quarto volumes and one volume of splendid plates, which promises to be a very popular work. The materials which he has for it are, as you may well suppose from his high station there, most abundant, and the drawings of temples, gods, plants, &c., will be most splendid and interesting’.10 Raffles left London early in August to join his mother and other members of his family at Cheltenham. He stayed there until early the following month, when he returned to London for a few days in order to supervise the clearance of his baggage through the Customs House and arrange for its removal to Berners Street. He was thus able to sort out drafts of the Bratayuda and despatch them to Liverpool for his cousin to set in poetic form: ‘Having consigned this part of the Work to you I shall proceed on gradually with the more bulky chapters and hope in about six weeks to be ready for the Press – the Map & Engravings are in hand and I shall see the progress made before I leave Town’.11 The engravings, when he received them from John Walker, did not please him, as he informed his cousin on 11 September 1816 after he returned to Cheltenham: ‘I purpose remaining here until Tuesday next when I proceed to Town & shall diligently apply myself to the completion of the Work I have undertaken. I am in some confusion respecting the Engravings as I find Mr Walker not equal to the task he undertook; my presence in Town is therefore essential at this moment –’.12 Other difficulties faced Raffles on his return to London in mid-September, not least in clearing through the Customs House the remainder of his possessions, including some Javanese objects he wished to illustrate in his book. It was not until the third week of October that he secured the release of the whole of his baggage and was able to have it unpacked. During this time he suffered from a succession of severe colds which confined him to his room and even to his bed, and he was also treated with mercury for a pain in his side. ‘I have had my leisure so much broken in upon’, he wrote to his cousin on 25 October 1816, ‘that I have not done so much with the Work on Java as I ought to have done, and I am still in difficulty regarding the Engravings the principal of which cannot be compleated under twelve months and are not yet in hand – With the MS. however I shall be ready for the Reverend Thomas Raffles to his wife, 5 August 1816, ibid., p. 147.

10

Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 4 September 1816, Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 94.

11

Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 11 September 1816, ibid., p. 95.

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Press in a week or two and hope e’re the Month of November is over to make a beginning – I think that on account of the delay in the Engravings it will be necessary to delay the second Volume until they are ready & in the first instance to publish one Volume only with sufficient matter to keep the Public interest alive until the remainder can appear –’.13 Raffles continued to be dogged by ill-health during November and early December when he was again largely confined to his room, and he was further physically reduced by an overdose of mercury. Somehow he managed to continue to work, and only his extraordinary facility in being able to write without correction explains how he was able in so short a time to put the text of so large a book together. In early December he secured agreement with the London booksellers to the Honourable East India Company, Messrs. Black, Parbury & Allen of Leadenhall Street, and with John Murray of Albemarle Street, to publish the work in two volumes, the first ‘complete in itself’, and the second as ‘a subsidiary publication’. ‘By these means’, he wrote to his cousin on 12 December 1816, ‘I shall be able to keep the public interest alive until the larger plates are finished – The first division of the Work will be announced on the 1st. of January & in the course of February I hope to publish – Several of the plates are already finished and the first sheet of the MS. went this day to the Press – It contains 1st. a general account of the geographical position & Mineralogical Constitution of the Country with a general description of its appearance, Seasons, Climate, Productions &c – 2dly. a Statistic Account of the Population with an Account of their domestic economy &c – 3dly. An Account of the Agriculture, Manufactures & Commerce – 4th. Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 25 October 1816, ibid., p. 99. At this time, Raffles was using materials in the Library of his friend Thomas Murdoch (1758–1845/6) of Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, and later of 8 Portland Square, London. In the Preface to his The History of Java, vol. I, p. xi, he expresses his indebtedness to him ‘not only for access to his valuable library, but for illustrations from Portuguese authors, … in the Introduction and Appendix’ of the book. Murdoch was a Fellow of the Royal Society, his nomination certificate in the Library of the Royal Society describing him in July 1805 as ‘late of the Island of Madeira’. His connection with that island is unknown, but he was almost certainly engaged in the wine trade. His wife Charlotte Leacock came from Madeira and his fluency in Portuguese enabled him to supply information directly to Raffles from Barros, Pinto and other sources on the early Portuguese connection with Java. Raffles met Murdoch some time after he returned to England in July 1816, the meeting possibly being effected by their mutual friend William Marsden, who was the principal sponsor of both men’s nominations to the Royal Society. Raffles corresponded with Murdoch from Bengkulu (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/22) and he asked him to be god-father of his eldest son, Leopold. Murdoch also rendered various services to Raffles’s brother-in-law, Captain William Flint R.N., who acknowledged them by sending to him from Singapore in 1823 the skeleton of a large Borneo orang-utan. He was obviously a man of some importance as Raffles asked him in October 1825 to use his influence with the Chairman of the East India Company to have his claim for a pension expedited. Murdoch was an original member of the Athenaeum Club in London (1824) and he may have been responsible as a committee member for Raffles’s election to the Club in the following year. He was one of those who encouraged Lady Raffles to write the Memoir of her husband, and in acknowledging receiving a copy of the book in February 1830 he declared that he would ‘preserve it for the sake of him whose Memory will ever be dear to all those who had the happiness of knowing him’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/10).

13

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Institutions – Government – Laws & Character of the People – 5th. peculiar Ceremonies, Customs & usages – 6th. Languages & Literature – 7[th] Native History – I have not yet determined to what extent I can carry the Account of the Literature or whether I shall not leave this in a great Measure for a Subsidiary Volume – at all events I think it would be of advantage to give a Specimen of the Brata Yudha if we can prepare it in time – Will you therefore, at your leisure let me know how many Pages Quarto, it is likely to take that I may make my calculations accordingly –’.14 The printing of the book by Cox and Baylis, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, proceeded at a rapid pace, with upwards of 100 pages being set by 16 January 1817 and 350 pages by 23 Feburary.15 A large part of the written text was actually produced simultaneously with the printing, Raffles writing a few sheets for the printer every morning and correcting the proofs in the evening on his return from dinner engagements.16 He had contracted with the publishers to have the manuscript completed within a specified period and this did not allow time for the proofs of the Bratayuda to be sent to his cousin in Liverpool for correction.17 Even so, he found time to marry Sophia Hull and spend two or three days with her at Henley-onThames.18 It was still intended to adhere to the original plan for the book and, pending the completion of the engravings, to put everything of interest into a single volume, after which a second volume mainly containing illustrations would be published. By April this plan had to be abandoned as more text had been printed than could easily fit into a single volume, and it was therefore decided to issue the book in two volumes.19 Some 900 copies were printed, 650 on ordinary paper, quarto, at £6. 6s. in boards, and 250 on better paper, royal quarto, at £8. 8s.20 All copies were printed Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 12 December 1816, Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 103.

14

Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 16 January 1817, 23 February 1817, ibid., pp. 106, 108.

15

Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), p. 286.

16

The Reverend Thomas Raffles finished his versification of the text on 24 January 1817 as he recorded in his Diary: ‘To-day I completed the Brata Yudha, and it will go to-morrow by the mail. There is a double version of nearly the whole poem, one in the style of McPherson’s “Ossian”, and the other in blank verse’ (T.S. Raffles, Memoirs, p. 156). The manuscript is in the British Library (MSS.Eur.D.132). Raffles acknowledged receipt of the manuscript on 3 February 1817 (Straits Times, 24 October 1932) but he was only able to include 14 stanzas of the poem in The History of Java, vol. I, pp. 463–6. On the use made of Javanese sources in the book, see D.E. Weatherbee, ‘Raffles’ Sources for Traditional Javanese Historiography and the Mackenzie Collections’, Indonesia, vol. 26 (October 1978), pp. 63–93.

17

The marriage was solemnised on 22 February 1817 at the New Church, Marylebone, and Raffles and his wife returned to London or its vicinity on 24–25 February.

18

Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 27 April 1817, Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 110.

19

John Bastin and Bea Brommer, Nineteenth Century Prints and Illustrated Books of Indonesia (Utrecht, Antwerp, 1979), pp. 5–7, 118–20.

20

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with half-titles, the advertisement leaves seemingly restricted to the ordinary copies of the book. The whole work was to be published on 10 May, when Raffles proposed to leave London on a tour of the Continent.21 However, these arrangements had to be changed when the Prince Regent, to whom the book had been dedicated,22 commanded his attendance at a levee at Carlton House on 29 May, with the publication delayed until then. Raffles’s cousin described the scene when Raffles was formally presented to the Prince Regent: ‘[A]fter the presentation the Prince took occasion in the most public and handsome manner to express his approbation of the work and also of those public acts of his administration of which it was in fact the record. When my cousin’s turn to be presented came, he caused the whole process to be suspended – His attendants formed a circle round him – and in the presence of them all the Regent said he was happy to embrace that opportunity of thanking him for the entertainment and information he had received from the perusal of the greater part of the volume – and also of expressing the high sense he entertained of the eminent services he had rendered to his Country by his conduct in the government of Java. What he said occupied nearly twenty minutes. He then conferred on him the honour of Knighthood’.23

Reviewers of The History of Java inevitably compared the book to William Marsden’s The History of Sumatra, which had only recently been published in a third enlarged edition.24 Raffles himself had written to Marsden from Java in September 1815 outlining his ideas on how his own book would be organised:25 My plan in such a work would be, after giving a sketch of the natural history and geography of Java, to enter on an abstracted statistical account of its present population Reverend Thomas Raffles, Letters, during a Tour through some parts of France, Savoy, Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands in the Summer of 1817 (Liverpool, 1818).

21

A copy of The History of Java is in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle but as it has no distinguishing marks it is uncertain if this is the Dedication copy of the book.

22

Note in the hand of the Reverend Thomas Raffles inscribed on Raffles’s letter to him dated 13 May 1817 (Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 114–5).

23

The first edition of William Marsden’s The History of Sumatra was published in London in 1783 and a second edition appeared in the following year. The third edition, substantially revised and enlarged, was published in London in 1811, with an Atlas of 19 uncoloured plates. A fourth edition, with the plates reduced to quarto size and bound with the text volume, was published in 1814. See the Introduction by John Bastin to the facsimile of the book published by Oxford University Press (Kuala Lumpur, 1966), and Bastin and Brommer, Nineteenth Century Prints and Illustrated Books of Indonesia, pp. 2–3, 108–10.

24

Raffles to Marsden, 18 September 1815, Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 264–5.

25

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and produce; then to give the native history down to the date of the establishment of the British Government, introducing between each grand division a supplementary chapter on the other Islands, and the inferences to be drawn during each period; an account of the European establishments would necessarily follow; and here the ground on which I should rest would principally be the collection which I have made of the treaties entered into by the Dutch with the different Eastern States, and deductions regarding the progress made in civilization; a few chapters would then be required on the language – the literature – the agriculture – the commerce – the character of the people, &c. with a general concluding view of the whole subject embraced. Considering the intimate connection which appears at all times to have existed between Java and the Eastern Islands, it will not be possible to enter into the history of the one without continual reference to the other; but while the narrative is exclusively relating to Java, and the commentary only adverts occasionally to the other Islands, it will not I hope be thought that I extend my views too far … An accurate map, principally from actual survey, would of course accompany the work, and a supplementary volume might contain engravings of the remains of antiquity, and Hindu worship, with the inscriptions, alphabets, &c.

In the first long review of the book in The Asiatic Journal of August 1817, a periodical which was consistently generous in its notices of Raffles’s activities in Java, a comparison with The History of Sumatra was narrowly but discerningly decided in Marsden’s favour: Sir Thomas Raffles must expect his work to be received comparatively with that of the historian of a sister island. Nor need he shrink from the comparison. It is no small praise to justly claim the second place among topographical historians. While we shall assign the first to the elegant author of the History of Sumatra, his contemporary of Java has vastly greater scope in respect to subjects of varied instruction and entertainment. Of this scope Sir T. Raffles has well availed himself. Giving him every commendation for industry of no common sort; talents highly respectable and appropriate, and that degree of zeal tinted a little with enthusiasm in favour of his subject, without which local history, if ever undertaken, is tamely executed, it is evident that his co-historian, as we may call him, had many advantages, of which he has made the most. The History of Sumatra is so highly finished a performance, as to evince much elaboration. Mr. Marsden allowed himself as much time, … and took as much pains in revising and polishing his work, as are ascribed to our fastidious Gray. But the author before us has evidently lacked these advantages; he has, at the same time, manifested a degree of skill commensurate with the necessary rapidity of composition and arrangement. To have made the best use of every advantage is

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the just claim of the one – to have surmounted the difficulties of their absence is no light encomium on the other.26

The Quarterly Review also gave Raffles’s book a favourable notice though it detected evidence of it having been ‘thrown somewhat hastily together’. The reviewer considered that with a better arrangement of materials it would have escaped ‘the necessity of many repetitions’ and might accordingly have been reduced in size.27 Similar criticisms were made in The Edinburgh Review by John Crawfurd, who had served under Raffles in Java as British Resident at the court of Yogyakarta and had supplied him with some materials for the work.28 ‘The book’, he stated, ‘is hastily written, and not very well arranged. It is a great deal too bulky, and too expensive, to be popular; and has, consequently, not been nearly so much read as its intrinsic merits entitle it to be. The style is fluent, but diffuse, and frequently careless. We should guess that Sir Stamford Raffles composes with too much facility, and blots too little. The sixth and seventh chapters, which describe the character, habits, manners, customs, and amusements of the people, are the best of the whole work, and indeed excellent. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh, which give an account of the Religion and History, are by far the worst. In determining the Chronology, great errors have been committed. There is a propensity to magnify the importance of the early story of the Javanese; and, in calculating and adapting the Native, to Christian time, the principle has been wholly mistaken, and an error of several years throughout the whole is the consequence. The map is the best ever compiled; and the plates equally correct and beautiful, such as might be expected from the long established reputation of Mr Daniel[l]’.29 The contemporary criticism of the style of Raffles’s text is not easy to understand, though there is undoubtedly justness in the charge that the book was made unnecessarily bulky by the inclusion of a mass of extraneous matter in the second volume. What in purely technical terms makes the book exceptional is its typographical lay-out and its beautiful illustrations, especially the coloured aquatints of ethnography and topography by William Daniell, who was engaged The Asiatic Journal, vol. IV, no. 20 (August 1817), pp. 141–2.

26

The Quarterly Review, vol. XVII, art. III (April and July 1817), pp. 74, 96. The book was also favourably reviewed by Captain Basil Hall R.N. in The Edinburgh Monthly Review, vol. II, no. xii (July–December 1819), pp. 633–54 (Chapter Two, note 197).

27

Raffles, The History of Java, vol. II, pp. 127, 251–3, App. K, p. ccxxxix. On John Crawfurd, see Chapter Ten, note 136.

28

The Edinburgh Review, vol. XXXI, no. LXII, art. VIII (1819), p. 413.

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by Raffles in September 1816 when it was discovered that John Walker was unequal to the task of producing the engravings.30 Daniell was an obvious choice as the illustrator of the book not only because of his pre-eminence as a coloured aquatint engraver but also because he had actually visited Java and published, with his uncle Thomas Daniell, ten topographical views of the island in A Picturesque Voyage to India; by the Way of China in 1810.31 The aquatints of Javanese costume and scenery which Daniell executed for Raffles’s book are minor masterpieces in themselves and represent a revolutionary advance in the depiction of the people of Java. Those in the royal quarto copies are especially fine and are matched only by some of the hand-coloured lithographs that appeared in illustrated books of Indonesia later in the 19th century.32 Yet the manner in which these aquatints were produced by Daniell after small wooden figures brought back from Java is something of an epic in itself.33 Although the retail cost of the 900 copies of the book was relatively high, it sold remarkably well. By the time Raffles was due to leave England for west Sumatra in October 1817 only 200 copies remained unsold, and the publishers called for a second edition. ‘I am advised to allow a second edition to be published in octavo’, he wrote to Edward Adolphus Seymour, Duke of Somerset, from Portsmouth on 20 October, ‘and to this I have partly agreed – if decided upon before I go I will inform your Grace or the Duchess of it and in whose hand I leave the Work –’.34 The person to whom he entrusted this second edition was his 33-year-old cousin, Elton Hamond, second son of that name of Charles Hamond, tea merchant of No. 21 Milk Street, Cheapside, and Elizabeth Lyde, sister of Raffles’s mother, Ann Lyde.35 Elton Hamond was born on 28 May 1786 and baptised on 28 June in St. Lawrence’s Church Old Jewry, London, but his parents afterwards separated, as indicated in the will of Charles Hamond, who died on 14 October 1807. The reason for this marital separation is not stated, but given Elton Hamond’s irrational behaviour, and the fact that one of his sisters was confined to an asylum, the mental health problems in the family seem evident. What relationship Raffles had Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 11 September 1816, Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 95.

30

On William Daniell, see T. Sutton, The Daniells: Artists and Travellers (London, 1954).

31

Bastin and Brommer, Nineteenth Century Prints and Illustrated Books of Indonesia, passim.

32

A. Forge, ‘Raffles and Daniell: Making the Image Fit’, Recovering the Orient: Artists, scholars, appropriations (ed.) A. Gerstle, A. Milner (Switzerland, 1994), pp. 109–50.

33

Raffles to Edward Adolphus Seymour, Duke of Somerset, 20 October 1817, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/25.

34

Bastin and Weizenegger, Family of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 164–5, n.27.

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with his cousin during their childhood years in London is unknown, but one must assume on the basis of their later correspondence that it was fairly intimate. Elton Hamond’s father helped support Raffles’s family financially, and he was a joint guarantor of Raffles’s bond with the East India Company. He also lent Raffles separate sums of money, and in 1805 paid for his passage-money to Penang, after he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Government of Prince of Wales Island.36 Elton Hamond was said to be ‘a man of imposing and ingratiating manners’, and his literary ambitions led to his becoming acquainted with Wordsworth, Southey, James Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Maria Edgeworth, and others.37 Raffles obviously looked to him as a suitable person to prepare a second edition of The History of Java for publication, particularly as he had been one of the first to suggest the idea of the book. In a letter from Java in October 1813 Raffles wrote to him: ‘I observe what you mention respecting the advantages attending a literary work, such as a statistical account of Java; – and, although I am fully sensible of my incapacity to appear before the public as an author, I feel some inclination to the undertaking. In my present situation, the demands on my time are so heavy, that any attempt of the kind would be fruitless. The most that I can do, is to collect materials; and, in this respect, I feel myself tolerably well prepared for an essai, whenever I may have sufficient leisure to devote to the subject. Should a change take place in this government, which is more than probable, I shall have plenty of time on my hands. I believe there is no one possessed of more information respecting Java than myself: – but how far I may be able to put it together, and to bring it before the public, I know not’.38 In a subsequent letter to Raffles dated 2 January 1815, Hamond recommended that the proposed work should be confined to a single volume, which Raffles agreed to: ‘I shall profit by your advice respecting the Book –’, he wrote on 22 October 1815. ‘[I]f I proceed to Bencoolen I shall have abundance of leisure – and will adopt your recommendation in favour of a single Volume – By the present opportunity a forerunner to such a Work is sent for publication from the Pen of my Secretary Mr Assey – who has hastily thrown off under my inspection, such a Sketch as may A Bond in the name of Charles Hamond for £50 dated 15 October 1804 for redemption on 18 April 1805 and signed by Raffles is preserved in Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

36

Thomas Sadler (ed.), Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, F.S.A. (London, 1869), vol. II, Chapter V (‘On Elton Hamond’), pp. 141–57.

37

Raffles to Hamond, October 1813, Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 195.

38

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perhaps attract attention – it will be printed by Black & Parry [Black, Parbury & Allen] and six copies will be sent to you gratis –’.39 In making arrangements in England for the publication of a second edition of The History of Java in 1817, Raffles reserved author’s rights to the book but granted Hamond the proceeds from the sale of the edition, possibly in recognition of his earlier expressed grievances about Raffles’s financial dealings with his father. According to the barrister and diarist, Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867), when Hamond ‘was satisfied that he was right, he had such an overweening sense of his own judgment, that he expected every one to submit to his decision; and when this did not take place, he was apt to consider the disobedience as criminal. On this account he broke off acquaintance with his family and nearly all his friends’.40 This happened with Raffles, who showed great forbearance after receiving an abusive letter from Hamond at Gosport in 1805, when he was about to sail for Penang, in which Hamond accused him of being a ‘Thief or Bastard’.41 Later, after Hamond had come into sole possession of the tea business in Milk Street, and learned from his father’s papers that Raffles still owed the substantial sum of £1,284. 11s. 3d, he addressed another abusive letter to him dated 26 January 1808 in which he referred to the financial support given to Raffles’s family and to the latter’s own extravagance in borrowing money to meet his wedding expenses and equipping himself, his wife, and sister for the voyage to Penang, including the hire of two post-chaises to take them and their baggage to Portsmouth. These actions Hamond designated as ‘foolery’ or ‘madness,’ and wrote of ‘the absurdity of a man without sixpence more than enough to pay for two postchaises – who has borrowed that & a great deal more – whose family destitute – who … depends [on] having a postchaise to carry his baggage – but you felt consequence I daresay – some of the people took you for a Lord or member of parliament at least & you enjoyed their flattering mistake –’.42 Raffles received the letter when he was on sick-leave at Government House, Melaka, and, fearful of being exposed as a debtor in his position as Secretary of the

Raffles to Hamond, 22 October 1815, Dr. Williams’s Library, London. Assey’s book, which was published anonymously, was entitled: Review of the Administration, Value, and State of the Colony of Java with its Dependencies As it was, - As it is, - and As it may be (Printed for Black, Parbury, and Allen, Booksellers to the Honourable East-India Company Leadenhall Street, London, 1816).

39

Sadler, Diary … of Henry Crabb Robinson, vol. II, p. 142.

40

Raffles to Hamond, 9 September 1808, Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

41

Hamond to Raffles, 26 January 1808, Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

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Prince of Wales Island Government, he was obliged to answer Hamond cautiously on 9 September 1808:43 My account enclosed in your Letter amounting to £1284. 11. 3 was duly received and I acknowledge myself your debtor for that sum – I observe what you say respecting Insurance on my Life and am sorry that it is not in my power to forward by this opportunity the Certificate you require; I am absent from my duty and resident at this place on Sick Certificate for the benefit of a change of air – On this subject I need not at present add any further remark than that I feel myself bound to secure you from loss by every possible manner within my reach & that as soon as I am fortunate enough to be entitled to a Certificate of health that will answer the purpose, I shall forward it and acknowledge myself your debtor for the whole expense of insuring £1200 or £1300 or whatever the debt will be. … It is however encumbent upon me here, to observe that some parts of your last Letter are by no means pleasing, and but for the style of the remainder would have caused me to return it unanswered – I am your Debtor and you my Creditor, as such, you have a power over my purse and Effects and eventually over my Body, but you have none over my mind – and feeling this independence I hesitate not to say that it is ungenerous and unjust to insult when an injury cannot be resented – With an encrease of years my mind has encreased in Strength but I value its peace too highly to expose it to unnecessary attacks – I have therefore to request that in your future communications you will be pleased to avoid insulting insinuations upon my Conduct or Character, which I thank God, is satisfactory to myself and those friends who know my every action and motive. You treat of family matters in your last Letter and it cannot be considered as merely a letter of business – You will perceive that I forget not our Relationship, or our former connection, and it is with you to take your choice whether our future correspondence is to be between Cousin and Cousin or between Debtor and Creditor – You see my Choice – Respecting my Parents I am not anxious to enter into particulars – I can only regret their impropriety of Conduct – Convinced as I am that upbraidings on my part can be of no avail, I am unwilling that they should go with Sorrow to the Grave – It is not only my duty but my inclination and perhaps my interest to make them as handsome an allowance as my Circumstances will admit of – this I have fixed at £200 pr annum and Mary Ann adds £100 pr annum – 44 With this Sum I have every reason to believe they can enjoy every

Raffles to Hamond, 9 September 1808, Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

43

Mary Anne Raffles’s contribution of £100 towards the upkeep of her family in England came from the annual salary of £1,500 of her husband, Quintin Dick Thomson, Sub-Warehouse Keeper and Auditor of Prince of Wales Island Government (Chapter Two, note 76). This sum apparently ceased to be paid on his death on 29 June 1809, as Raffles shortly afterwards increased his own contribution to £300 per annum.

44

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comfort they can look for and my Mother writes me that it is fully sufficient; if they can make any saving from this it may be laid out for the benefit of my Sisters – Situated as I am here partaking of course in every Comfort & perhaps Luxury that the place affords I cannot allow my family to be in want – You know my feelings towards them & it will be unnecessary to repeat them here – As I have said it would be not only against my inclinations, but my interest that they should be without a handsome allowance, it may be necessary that I should explain to you that being a public Character here, or kind of Secretary of State for the affairs of our little Commonwealth, the world would be happy in the opportunity of magnifying my parsimony in this respect, and as a fair and moral character is the first requisite for most appointments, so the contrary is generally the means of their being reduced or taken away. The World judging but by halves & only from what they know, would condemn me when it might be impossible for me to defend myself – It is also of the greatest importance that my family should move respectably at home – the contrary may be the means of preventing my obtaining a Seat in Council should those appointments be continued here – To you who are in a great measure independent of the World this cannot apply – To me holding a Government Situation, and high local Rank it must ever be of much importance – Too great an attention hitherto to the Welfare of others who were always welcome to my best efforts and abilities, has I am sorry to say, been the source of misfortune to me – Naturally delicate with an arduous and responsible office of my own, it might have been a wiser part in me to concentrate those exertions in my own department – Over zeal in obtaining friends and establishing my public Character urged me on – the result has been two very severe fits of illness – from the last of which I am now slowly recovering – Jaundice with an affected Liver was said to be the Complaint – Anxiety on the state of my Affairs at home must also be included in the causes of this affliction – … In concluding the observations I have made on myself, I should add that the real state of my affairs at home is not known here and that if it was it might be the means of doing me a most serious injury. I cannot consider my expences as less than from £800 to £1000 pr annum including every charge – You may judge what my savings may be – I have been fortunate in obtaining the confidence of our different Governors and lost a most valuable friend in Mr Dundas –

45

his death I consider as the greatest misfortunate that

could have happened to me here, and this, not only on account of the eventual benefit I expected & was promised from his friendship, but as the cause of a Loss I have sustained on the resale of a House I purchased on his recommendation & by which I have been a considerable loser – had he lived it would have been a source of profit – Chapter Two, note 74.

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I have no reason to expect any encreased advantages from my interest here and look only to my friends at home – I have the Character that I feel I merit, of being an indefatigable and honest Servant to my Honble Employers – Presuming on your probable choice I know that the effect of your Letter, (as far as regarded the connection between us) effectually effaced from my heart those sentiments of gratitude and affection that previously had taken root there, but in a desire expressed in your past I am confident they may be again planted & reared with success – the seeds being of a later Season – I thank you for advancing the £100 to my family – I could however have wished that you had made it £200 and I should have had no reason to complain – but you should conceive that in saying this I return the “common reward of gratuitous kindness, instead of thanks for what you do, complaints for what you omit to do”[.] I must refer you to what I have said a few lines above where I have frankly acknowledged my feelings with regard to the previous kindness that I had received from you & call to your mind that situated as you are, an additional £100 could not have been injurious to you – Before I conclude this Letter which may be the last on such subjects, I am anxious that we should perfectly understand each other – I am desirous of a reconciliation if it can be effected on honorable terms – by honour I mean that portion of esteem which Man has in Society, and I should prefer the worst action you could commit towards me to the loss of one particle of it, earnest as it has been in adversity and misery – You will therefore understand that If you are to consider me in the light your last Letters depict – I wish for no renewal of our Correspondence – as my Creditor I must hear from you and as such I shall solicit your indulgence perhaps longer than you may be inclined to grant – I shall request you not to send out Proceedings against me for the recovery of the Money as it would most probably end in my total ruin – every Dollar that I scrape together I send home to Mr Taylor46 & the punishment of such a demand as yours in this Country would at an unprepared moment be the means of destroying my future prospects – As my Creditor I shall willingly consent to be at any expense in insuring my Life to secure you from loss – but as my Cousin and friend I should be apt to request you to pause before you put me to so great an expense – As a Cousin and friend I should request you to assist my friend Mr Taylor in buying up the Annuities for which I now pay the enormous Sum of 20 pr Cent (at least I so believe so) by which means I might be saved some heavy expense while you would not be a loser – Situated as you are I am induced to request your assistance in this respect – You have not asked me when I think my situation will put in my power to discharge the debt to your father’s Estate – and I thank you much for forbearance in this respect – I cannot and will not make promises that I cannot fulfil – I will discharge it as soon as I Richard S. Taylor of Field Court, Gray’s Inn, London. See Chapter One and Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 28–9.

46

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am able and my Friend Mr Taylor is more likely to tell when that will be than I probably can – You have it in your power to do me an essential Service, I trust, without inconvenience to yourself, and I therefore hope you will give me as much time as may be necessary & essential to my Interests –

He signed the letter, ‘I remain, dear Elton, your’s with regard’, but whether it was the firmness shown in the letter, or the prospect of the debt being paid after Raffles’s meteoric rise to be Lieutenant-Governor of Java, some sort of reconciliation was effected which allowed Raffles to revert to his using the word ‘affectionately’ in subsequent letters to his cousin. Hamond’s resentment nevertheless remained, and on their meeting in England in 1816 he contended that as Raffles ‘owed everything to his father’, he ‘was morally bound to give [him] one-half of what he acquired in his office as Governor’. Raffles offered him an order on his banker for £1,000, but this Hamond refused to take,47 even though by then his wayward and uncertain actions had brought about the collapse of the tea business in Cheapside.48 Amiable relations were fully restored while Raffles was in England and a cordial relationship even developed between Hamond and Lady Raffles.49 Before he sailed for west Sumatra in October 1817, Raffles had discussions with Hamond about The History of Java, and he wrote to him on the subject on 30 October from Falmouth, where his ship had been forced to shelter from gales in the English Channel. The delay, he said,50 affords me an opportunity of communicating more fully with you on the subject of the new edition of the Book than I had time to do in the hurried departure from Portsmouth. By tonight’s mail I send you a parcel directed to the care of Mr. Taylor, Grays Inn, containing two papers by Mr. Crawfurd, the one on the temples of Brambanan,51 the other on that of Boro Bodo, or Budor as he calls it.52 One of these papers he sent to the Literary Society of Bombay – the other to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta – the copies he allowed me to take for information – Sadler, Diary … of Henry Crabb Robinson, vol. II, p. 143.

47

Ibid., vol. II, p. 142.

48

A letter from Lady Raffles to Hamond dated Fort Marlborough 15 April 1818 is preserved in Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

49

Raffles to Hamond, 30 October 1817, Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London: Notes by Elton Hamond, Baker MSS.

50

J. Crawfurd, ‘The Ruins of Prambanan in Java’, Asiatic Researches, vol. XIII, no. ix (1820), pp. 337–68.

51

J. Crawfurd, ‘On the Ruins of Boro Budor in Java’, Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, vol. II (1821), pp. 154–66.

52

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Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset (1775–1855) Contemporary portrait

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As the details of the Boro Bodo temple in the first edition are very scanty, I could wish you to supply the deficiency from the information given by Crawfurd which may be relied upon – There is no occasion to adopt his theory as to the Buddaic worship of Siva, but the particulars as far as they tend to describe the temple more accurately may be useful – You may also gather some details regarding Brambanan from the other paper. You may borrow freely – but if you adopt any opinion state the authority in a complimentary manner to Crawfurd. In the same parcel I enclose some hasty memo. put down on board respecting the revision of the Book – the Duke’s strictures you already have –53 As it is very uncertain when Capt. Baker may furnish other materials,54 I am much inclined to the insertion of two plates of the Boro Bodo Temple in the second edition – they will be ready & may give an additional interest to the work – The Costume [plates] may be added to by including the Javan on horse back, and the Dramatic character – I enclose in the Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset, was born on 24 February 1775. He was an accomplished mathematician and a Fellow of the Royal Society, to which he had been elected in 1797 at the early age of 22. A number of his criticisms relating to statistical and linguistic points in The History of Java are preserved in the Baker MSS, Royal Asiatic Society, London. Raffles first met him soon after his own election to the Royal Society on 20 March 1817 and attended the Society’s Dining Club (Chapter Twelve, note 23). They seemed to have quickly formed a bond of friendship, the Duke later becoming strongly supportive in the founding of the Zoological Society of London (Chapter Twelve). His opinions of Raffles, largely formed in conversations he had with Captain Basil Hall R.N. (Chapter Two, note 197), are recorded in two letters he wrote to his brother Lord Webb on 9 and 19 April 1818 (Lady Guendolen Ramsden, Correspondence of Two Brothers ... (London, 1906), pp. 227–31), and also in a letter of 14 February 1830 to Lady Raffles in which he thanked her for sending him a copy of the Memoir of her husband, which, he said, was ‘interesting to him for so many reasons, not only as it shows by what steps the political and commercial interests of Great Britain were maintained and extended in the Indian Seas, and, unfortunately, with what sacrifices; but as it brings to his recollection many scenes of private life, to which he now reverts with a kind of melancholy pleasure’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/10). The reference in the letter is not only to Raffles’s death but also to that of his wife, Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, three years earlier, on 10 June 1827 (Chapter Twelve, note 13). The Duke remarried on 28 July 1836 Margaret Shaw-Stewart, daughter of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, 5th Bart., and Catherine Maxwell, and died on 15 August 1855, aged 80. A number of Raffles’s letters to him are in the British Library: MSS.Eur.D.742/25.

53

54

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Captain Godfrey Phipps Baker (1786–1850) of the 7th Bengal Light Infantry Battalion supplied a number of drawings for the engravings in The History of Java. Four of his drawings, including one of Taman Sari, are in the British Library (Mildred Archer and John Bastin, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library (Kuala Lumpur, 1978), nos. 11–14). He served with his Sepoy regiment at Klathen and Yogyakarta between 1812 and 1816 and was appointed by Raffles in June 1814 as Superintendent of forts and public buildings in the central provinces of Java. He completed surveys of Prambanan and Borobodur and accompanied Raffles on his visit to these sites during May 1815. Raffles praised his activities in recording the antiquities of Java in his ‘Discourse’ to the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences on 11 September 1815: ‘I am indebted to Captain Baker, who is now actively engaged in these pursuits, for the most accurate sketches of the present appearance of the most important of these ruins, as well as for ground plans and elevations of the principal Temples, with notices of much valuable information which is to be collected of their origin, object and history’ (VBG, vol. VIII (1816), p. 28). When it was known that Java was to be restored to the Netherlands, Raffles ordered Baker to survey the southern coast of the Island (instruction dated Sello 20 May 1815 in Baker’s ‘Memoir of a Survey in the Native Princes Dominions of Java 1815–1816’: BL:Maps, Mss.24). Baker was extremely helpful to Lady Raffles in 1827 in sorting materials for the second edition of The History of Java (Preface, p. xii) and in providing her with information for her Memoir (Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 310). On 22 April of that year he was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel and he retired in India on 21 January 1831. See R.H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 1945–54), vol. II, pp. 137–8, 216–17, 323, 380; vol. III, p. 368; V.C.P. Hodson, List of the

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packet two or three more sketches for Daniell’s observation – I could wish the likeness of the Bali Rajah to be given –55 Daniell has this – On the subject of Costume consult Watson if in town56 or Mc Quoid (after he is married).57 The latter may always be heard of with Mr. John Tayler.58 Lady R[affles] is delighted to hear you have undertaken the 2d. edition – I am afraid the dimensions of the Boro Bodo Temple are inaccurately given in the first edition, instead of 620 feet I find it should be only 450. The mistake has arisen from including the surrounding terrace …’. Officers of the Bengal Army 1758–1834 (London, 1926–46), Part 1, pp. 77–8; F. de Haan, ‘Personalia der Periode van het Engelsch Bestuur over Java 1811–1816’, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 491–2. The ‘dramatic character’, was never published, but Daniell’s original painting survives in the British Museum and is illustrated in Gerstle and Milner, Recovering the Orient, under the caption ‘A Soldier Exercising in the Presence of his Chieftain’. The plate of the Bali Rajah was published in the Atlas accompanying the second edition of The History of Java (London, 1830), and also as Plate 92 in the Bohn Atlas of plates published in 1844.

55

Lieutenant Thomas C. Watson of the Hon. Company’s Bengal European Regiment. See Chapter IV.

56

Thomas Macquoid or McQuoid was one of Raffles’s most intimate friends. He was born in Ireland on 26 January 1779 and arrived at Penang from Macau and Canton in November 1806, shortly after the establishment of the Presidency Government. He was appointed Police Magistrate and between 1808 and 1809 he served as Sheriff in the Court of Judicature. He then proceeded to Ambon and to Java, where in June 1812 he was appointed by Raffles as Malay Translator to the Government on a monthly salary of Sp.$300. In the following month he was appointed Superintendent of the coffee culture and Landdrost [Resident] of Buitenzorg [Bogor] on a salary of Sp.$500, and in November 1812 he was made Chairman of the Commission for the sale of lands in the Priangan districts of west Java and in Krawang. In the subsequent sales he purchased a landed estate in Krawang, inviting Colonel Robert Rollo Gillespie’s charge that the purchase was in ‘violation of the regulations of the island and the principles of policy by the union in the person of Mr McQuoid of the office of Landdrost and Resident of several Regencies’, a charge which Raffles found difficult to refute (De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 605–8). Macquoid returned to England in 1817 and on 24 November of that year he married Elizabeth Frances Kirwan (1791–1859) of an Anglo-Irish family from County Galway, arriving with her at Bengkulu on 25 November 1818 in the ship Providence (Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum No. 4 (Singapore, 1960), pp. 108 et seq.). At Batavia he became a partner in the firm of Skelton & Co., with J. Davidson and D.A. Fraser, and on the death of Philip Skelton in 1821 he founded the firm of Macquoid, Davidson & Co. to which Raffles entrusted a large part of his savings. Raffles hoped that Macquoid would establish himself at Singapore and he accordingly allocated a plot of land for him next to that of his brother-in-law Captain William Flint, but Macquoid remained at Batavia where he provided hospitality for Lady Raffles when the ship Hero of Malown called there on 25 June 1823 and Raffles was prevented by the Dutch authorities from landing (Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 551–4). Macquoid returned to England with his wife and two children (a third child having earlier died at Batavia) in July 1825, when the commercial and financial crisis of that year led to the collapse of his firm. He had been asked by Raffles to consign his funds to his London agents Fairlie, Bonham & Co., but he was unable to do this before the firm became insolvent, leaving Raffles with a loss of £16,000. Macquoid’s fortunes changed in 1828 when he was appointed Sheriff of the Supreme Court of New South Wales through the influence of the Secretary of War, Viscount Goderich (1782–1859), and he sailed from Cork with his wife and children on 21 September 1828 aboard the convict ship Governor Ready (John Young). He arrived at Port Jackson on 16 January 1829 and took his oath of office on 2 February. He subsequently acquired land in what is now designated the Australian Capital Territory and named it ‘Wanniassa’ after his estate in Java, but he became involved in numerous disputes and again fell on hard times, leading to his suicide in Sydney in October 1841. His son, Thomas Hyacinth Macquoid (d.1857), who had worked in his father’s office, applied to the Government for relief of his father’s financial liabilities. Macquoid’s wife, Elizabeth Frances Macquoid, returned to England and lived at No. 7 Rodney Terrace, Cheltenham, where she died on 30 September 1859, leaving effects under £2,000. There are substantial holdings of material relating to Thomas Macquoid as Sheriff of New South Wales in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, including a silhouette of him (Portraits MS Room: A617), and there are nine letters of Raffles to him in the Cambridge University Library (Add. Ms. 7386). His paper, ‘Notes of Dutch History in the Archipelago. Extracted from the Records at Batavia under the Administration of Sir Stamford Raffles’, was later printed in JIA, vol. I, no. 2, n.s. (1856), pp. 141–93.

57

Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 71, n.24.

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Raffles wrote again from Falmouth on 7 November 1817:59 If the publication of a second edition is to be delayed till the time you mention I cannot see how there can be any fair objection to making it as complete as possible – Marsden’s 3d. edition of Sumatra is a very different thing to the first – it was almost rewritten and had the plates which the former had not. You however are a far better judge of this than I am – and all I would say is that the Bookseller’s wish must not influence you contrary to your own judgment – The public always expect something new in a second edition, and there will be a great deal left out in Vocabularies &c.60 th[eir] place will I think be well supplied by some additional plates – I have mislaid the other notes of the Duke of Somerset, but they shall be sent whenever I put my hands on them – & his Grace will probably forward to you some others as he proceeds in the perusal of the Book – There is no occasion to mention Crawfurd’s name unless opinions are quoted or unless you make extracts from the papers in which case you may notice that they are papers sent to the Asiatic & Bombay Society by him – If you make use however of these papers it perhaps would be right to notice in a note that they have been consulted – He gave them to me for my information & I would willingly do what is right – As the Architectural Supplement61 is uncertain as to its publication, I think it should hardly stand in the way of accession or improvement in the second edition – & I really think the Boro Bodo Temple ought to come in, even if the plates are all given to the purchasers of the 1st edition – I am not aware that Sir Everard [Home] has published any thing yet about Dick,62 but if you call upon him or write him a note he will tell you – I have requested that he would afford you every information – He is the most active fellow in the Ship … Raffles to Hamond, 7 November 1817, Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London: Notes by Elton Hamond, Baker MSS.

59

Part of the Comparative Vocabulary in Appendix E in the first edition of The History of Java was not included in the second edition when it was published in 1830.

60

Advertised in the first edition of The History of Java as: An Account of the Antiquities of Java, Illustrated by Drawings of the principal Architectural and Sculptural Remains, &c. …

61

The Papuan boy, named Papua or, more to his liking Dick, entered Raffles’s service in Bali and accompanied him to England in 1816. He is depicted in the coloured aquatint by Daniell in Volume II of The History of Java and in the plagiarised plate in John Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), vol. I, facing p. 17. His arrival in England caused something of a stir and he was examined by the leading surgeon of the day, Sir Everard Home (Chapter Seven, note 23), whose preliminary statement about him is recorded in The History of Java, vol. II, App. K, p. ccxxxv. William Marsden, Miscellaneous Works (London, 1834), pp. 64–5, 70 states that he was only able to converse in Malay, having forgotten his mother tongue. Dick travelled back to Indonesia with Raffles aboard the Lady Raffles in 1817–18, and, to the details about him contained in M.S. Smithies, ‘A New Guinean and the Royal Society – 1816–1817’, Hemisphere, vol. 27, no. 6 (1983), pp. 365–71, may be added the fact that he remained with Raffles in west Sumatra until 1823. In a letter to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, dated 3 November 1820, Raffles wrote, ‘Master Dick has grown very tall and very stupid & the only thing which he seems to delight in is reading his Bible’, and in another letter to her dated

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With respect to the engravings from the Landscapes I must leave this to your judgment. I am not aware that they are essential, but if you should think they would be adviseable, put one or more into Daniell’s hands – The Duchess has them in her especial charge63 & will deliver what you may require – She may indeed be consulted if you please, & the Duke himself will be happy to give you his advice freely on this & other points –

On 20 November, when the ship was about to leave Falmouth, Raffles wrote a hurried reply in answer to a letter he received from Hamond:64 Dr. Horsfield’s two papers are published in the 8th. vol. of the Batavian transactions65 & may be referred to or quoted as such. The remainder of the Geographical [sic] I have not, but will endeavour to send you from India – My idea was to have both plates of the Boro Bodo in the 2d. edition –66 one would not do without the other, at least I so think, & why not such of the details as may be done? The Ronggeng I decidedly think ought to be left out –67 The others may I think stand as you suggest – Tell Mr. Daniell not to mind the [?] now. I see no objection to the Landscapes in the 2d. edition if you approve – By the Dramatic character I meant the single figure in fine attitude with a Cris in his hand, already painted by Daniell. The minerals & Birds are already I fancy at the Duke’s. If not, only do sufficient to the Birds to preserve them – they are only few in number – I wish no notice to be taken of them in the Book, as Dr. Horsfield writes the Natural History – I write these hurried lines for the pilot who is now waiting on the Gangway – Your letter has only been with me an instant & we are once more off – 6 November 1823 he stated: ‘I have lately sent him to sea in the ship which is to take this letter home & it is most probable he will pay you a Visit – I have tried in vain to improve his intellectual faculties but he has hardly advanced since we left England, except in size and strength. He says it is too hard to learn and upon the whole it has been considered that a sailor’s life will suit him better than any other – ’ (BL:MSS. Eur.D.742/24, 27). The ship which appears to have taken him on his second voyage to England was the Borneo, commanded by John Clunies Ross, in which Raffles himself intended to sail before the arrival at Bengkulu of the ill-fated Fame. The Borneo arrived at Gravesend on 29 May 1824. Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset (Chapter Twelve, note 13) kept the drawings at her husband’s house, No. 1 Park Lane, London, where most of Raffles’s possessions were stored when he left England for west Sumatra in October 1817, including his two sets of gamelan (Chapter Five, note 26).

63

Raffles to Hamond, n.d. but postmarked St. Mawes, 14 November 1817, Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London: Notes by Elton Hamond, Baker MSS.

64

There are three papers by Horsfield in VBG, vol. VIII (1816) but the two intended were probably, ‘On the Mineralogy of Java’, (no. 5, pp. 47), and ‘Essay on the Geography, Mineralogy and Botany of the Western portion of the Territory of the Native Princes of Java’ (no. 6, pp. 183).

65

The two plates of Borobodur in the Atlas of uncoloured plates accompanying the text volumes of the second edition of The History of Java in 1830 were presumably those entitled, ‘Elevation of the Grate [sic] Pyramidal Temple of Boro Bodor in the Kedu District near Magelan in Java. Restored’, and ‘Section of the Grate [sic] Pyramidal Temple of Boro Bodor in the Kedu District near Magelan in Java. On the lines. a.a.’. A copy of the 1830 Atlas with these two unrecorded plates is in the Singapore National Library.

66

It is curious that the coloured aquatint, ‘A Ronǵgeng or Dancing Girl’, which was published in the first edition of The History of Java and as Plate no. 20 in the Bohn Atlas of 1844, should have found such little favour with Raffles when it is now the most commonly reproduced of all the plates in the book.

67

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After his arrival at Bengkulu on 21 March 1818, Raffles addressed two personal letters to Hamond on 14 April and 13 August 1818,68 and in a third dated 14 August 1818 he returned to the subject of the second edition of The History of Java by drawing his attention to the departure of Dr. Horsfield for England and his willingness to allow his drawings of Javanese antiquities to be used in the book:69 The principal object of this Letter is to make you acquainted with Dr Horsfield who goes home in the Lady Raffles & who will be anxious to see you as soon as possible – He is a perfect stranger in England and of course in need of the best advice and attention you can afford him – Besides his extensive Collections and drawings in Natural history he takes with him about a hundred Drawings of Antiquities, Costumes &c, the former viz. the Antiquities he has kindly offered to transfer to Mr. Daniell in order that they may be included in my publication – he has some idea of publishing the fourteen and other eight Drawings in a preliminary Work of his own – Some of the antiquities are most beautifully executed and the drawings have the advantage of some scenery in the back ground – Two or three of the Temples in particular are exquisitely finished and I could wish them engraved in the very best style and on no account reduced – Dr Horsfield’s Antiquities you are aware are principally from the Eastern part of Java – those of Captain Baker from the Central Provinces – he has detailed descriptions &c which will furnish the text – I find on comparing my Map with that of Dr Horsfield that I am many miles out in the position of several of the Mountains in the Eastern part of Java – Horsfield must be correct as he took the observations himself – Will you, if not too late get Mr Walker to correct this, in any subsequent edition – I should think he might erase them as they now stand & easily make the alteration – I have requested Dr Horsfield to make his Remarks on the history on the Passage home and to give you any memd or hints that occur to him –

The publishers Black, Parbury & Allen initially proposed that 1,500 copies of the second edition of The History of Java should be printed in three volumes octavo at £1. 16s., including the map, but without the plates. These were presumably excluded because of Raffles’s plan to issue a quarto volume of illustrations which was advertised in the first edition of the book: An Account of the Antiquities of Java, Illustrated by Drawings of the principal Architectural and Sculptural Remains, &c. as Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

68

Raffles to Hamond, 14 August 1818, Dr. Williams’s Library, London.

69

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surveyed by Capt. R. [sic] Baker, of the Bengal Military Establishment, in the Years 1815 and 1816. The advertisement stated that the plates for the work would be executed by Daniell and were ‘in a state of forwardness’. But drawings for the additional illustrations were soon required and these did not reach England until after Raffles’s departure, having been entrusted by Baker to Raffles’s brother-in-law, Captain William Flint R.N., in Calcutta in July 1817.70 Raffles wrote to his sister Mary Anne Flint on 6 July 1818, soon after arriving at Bengkulu: ‘I hope Flint delivered all my Drawings &c. from Captain Baker safe into the hands of Mr. Daniell & Elton Hamond – if this has not yet been done, tell him to do so now – they will be of no use lying in the hands of John Tayler & Elton has my directions respecting them –.’71 It was still Raffles’s intention to publish An Account of the Antiquities of Java, but as all the materials were in London, nothing could be done until after Hamond had completed his work on the second edition of the History. Hamond had discussions with Daniell about the availability of the plates for the new edition, and in January 1818 he wrote to the publishers proposing a revision of the text and the addition of two, or possibly four, unpublished coloured plates, two uncoloured plates similar to the frontispiece to Volume I of the first edition, and two plates of Candi Borobodur, as well as others of the same subject if the publishers wished. These plates, he was careful to point out, ‘shall not affect the Contract which I understand you to have made with Sir Stamford respecting the publication of “An Account of the Antiquities of Java”’.72 The reaction of the publishers to these and other proposals made by Hamond is unknown, and in any case does not much matter, for his part in the venture came to an abrupt end with his suicide at his cottage at Norwood in Surrey on the night of 31 December 1819.73 His literary papers were rescued by Henry Crabb Robinson, but those relating to The History of Java probably passed to Raffles’s mother at Margate and were not recovered until after Raffles’s return to England in 1824. Following his own death two years later, these and other materials were arranged by Lieutenant-Colonel G.P. Baker to assist Lady Raffles in writing her Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, and in the preparation Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London: Notes by Elton Hamond, Baker MSS.

70

Raffles to Mary Anne Flint, 6 July 1818, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/17.

71

Hamond to Black, Parbury & Allen, n.d. but c. January 1818, Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London: Notes by Elton Hamond, Baker MSS.

72

Sadler, Diary … of Henry Crabb Robinson, vol. II, pp. 141–7.

73

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of the second edition of The History of Java. Both works were published in 1830, the first as a substantial quarto volume and the other in two octavo volumes accompanied by a quarto volume of plates, including a map. In the preface to the second edition of the History she acknowledged Baker’s assistance: ‘For the drawings from which the engravings of the antiquities are made, Sir Stamford was indebted to Lieut.-Colonel Baker, … and the present Editor is happy to have this opportunity of acknowledging the obligation, as well as her thanks, for many kind intentions to aid her in reprinting this history’.74 Both books were printed at Lady Raffles’s expense by Gilbert & Rivington of St. John’s Square, London, and published by John Murray of No. 50 Albemarle Street, London, the so-called ‘Prince of Publishers’, who had shared in the publication of the first edition of the History in 1817.75 Altogether 1,500 copies of the Memoir were printed, and apparently a similar number of the History, at a total cost of £1,700, a sum which may have included about £100 for advertising.76 The books were offered on commission at Murray’s trade sale on 4 February 1830, the Memoir at £2. 12s. 6d. and the two octavo volumes of the History at £1. 8s., with the map at 6s. and the 96 architectural, sculptural and costume plates at £2. 2s. The volume of plates, all uncoloured, was issued without a separate title-page so that when Henry G. Bohn of York Street, Covent Garden, London, remaindered them, together with the map, in 1844, he was obliged to have a new title-page printed (Antiquarian, Architectural, and Landscape Illustrations of the History of Java), whereas the two octavo text volumes of the History were remaindered with the Murray imprint of 1830 unchanged. Bohn’s price for these two volumes and the Atlas of Illustrations, together with the two octavo volumes of the second edition of Lady Raffles’s Memoir (London, 1835), all bound uniformly in extra turkey cloth, was £2. 8s., compared with the original published price of £4. 14s.77 Of the 96 unnumbered plates in the 1830 Atlas, 92 were the same as in the Bohn Atlas of 1844, except that the 10 costume plates and the map were all

T.S. Raffles, The History of Java (London, 1830, second edition), vol. I, Preface, p. xii.

74

S. Smiles, A Publisher and His Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768–1843 (London, 1891), 2 vols.

75

Lady Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 17 March 1831, Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 356–7. At this time fewer than 500 copies of the second edition of The History of Java had been sold.

76

New, Valuable, and Most Important Books, offered at Very Reduced Prices, p. 82, being a separately paginated supplement to Bohn’s General Catalogue of 1847.

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Title-page of The History of Java (London, 1817)

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uncoloured. Of the four missing plates, two are accounted for by the four small line engravings, or vignettes, by John Walker and James Mitan of the temples of Suku and Lara Jonggrang, which are printed as separate plates in the 1830 Atlas but appear as pairs on Plates 31 and 37 in the Bohn Atlas of 1844. The other two plates in the 1830 Atlas, as already indicated,78 are of particular interest in being no less than two large fold-out plates of sections of Borobodur, which have never been formally recorded until now, and add significantly to the early literature on Borobodur. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Raffles’s The History of Java in the development of Indonesian studies. Not only did it offer highly original matter on such wide-ranging subjects as geography, ethnology, archaeology, agriculture, natural history, religion, custom, history, language, and literature, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it presented this material as an integrated whole. The systematic and scientific treatment of this material was so advanced that even where its originality was superseded by later 19th century works it still remained the touch-stone for many of these studies. Indeed, it remains today among the most important and influential books published on Indonesia. Raffles always down-played the importance of the book because he recognised that its shortcomings could have been overcome if it had not been written under such pressure of time. He described it as ‘a hasty performance’, and stated, with exaggerated modesty, that he had ‘often been ashamed of it’.79 Whatever his true feelings were about the book, there is no doubt that it would always be associated in his mind with his cousins, the Reverend Thomas Raffles and Elton Hamond.

Note 66.

78

Raffles to Nathaniel Wallich, 17 April 1823, Chapter Ten, Letter No. 18.

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Chapter Seven

Raff les and Joseph Arnold in Sumatra ‘I will only now add how deeply we deplore his loss. He had endeared himself to Lady Raffles and myself, by his most amiable disposition and unassuming manners. He formed part of our family, and I regret his loss as that of a sincere friend.’ Raffles to George Bohm, 15 August 1818

Lady Raffles (1786 –1858) Replica of a miniature portrait by A. E. Chalon, 1817

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H

aving left his misfortunes in Java behind him, Dr. Arnold arrived safely at Gravesend aboard the country ship Hope (H. Elliott) on 12 May 1816, after an uneventful voyage of exactly five months. He brought with him three boxes of living plants for presentation in Raffles’s name to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society.1 In a private letter to Banks, Raffles hoped that because the ship was expected to round the Cape at a favourable season of the year, there was every expectation that the plants would reach England ‘in tolerable preservation’,2 but, as Arnold explained to Banks,3 fate had decreed otherwise: I am extremely sorry to have occasion to report that three boxes of exotic plants, which the Lieut Governor of Java trusted to me for you, & which I myself selected, have died during the voyage to England. Most of them, in spite of all my precautions, were destroyed by rats with which the ship abounds, and those which I saved from their ravages were effectually overcome by a gale of wind during which a sea broke over the poop, where I had placed the boxes, and which, I fear, has entirely destroyed the whole, as I see no mark of vegetation above ground. Whether any of them be still alive at the root is hard to say; if you should be willing to try, what effect placing the boxes in a warm conservatory would have upon them, they are now on board the Hope, Country Ship, this day arrived in the river, & perhaps by the time you receive this near the East India docks.

By way of compensation, Arnold sent Banks the folliculus of a tree from the interior of New South Wales, which had been given to him in Australia by George William Evans (1780–1852) who, between November 1813 and January 1814, explored beyond the Blue Mountains as far as the Bathurst Plains. It is uncertain what happened to the Java plants but in the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum in London there is a plant designated as having been collected by Arnold on 30 October 1815.4 The plants from Java at least enabled Arnold to make himself known to Banks and especially to his librarian, Robert Brown,5 whose influence as a botanist would have a bearing on his subsequent career and reputation. Collections of dried plants from Java had already been sent to Sir Joseph Banks by Dr. Thomas Horsfield, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 1–40.

1

Raffles to Banks, 3 December 1815, John Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009), p. 423.

2

Arnold to Banks, 12 May 1816, NHM:Botanical Library: D.T.C., Banks Letters, vol. 19, fols. 263–4. On receiving Arnold’s letter, Banks may have been reminded of his own experience with Newfoundland plants aboard the Niger in 1766 (J.C. Beaglehole, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 (Sydney, 1962), vol. I, p. 14).

3

C.G.G.J. van Steenis, Flora Malesiana (Jakarta, 1950), vol. I, 1, p. 598.

4

Robert Brown was naturalist on Mathew Flinders’s voyage to Australia during 1801–05 when he listed and described 4,200 distinct species of Australian flora. He was appointed Clerk, Librarian and Housekeeeper of the

5

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Following his return to England, Arnold stayed with his eldest brother at Beccles, from where in the following year he made frequent visits to the house of the banker, Dawson Turner (1775–1858) at Yarmouth.6 Famous alike for his interest in cryptogamic botany, his renowned collection of autographs, and his six talented daughters, Turner did more than any other person to perpetuate Arnold’s memory, first in arranging on his death to have a memorial erected to him in Beccles Parish Church,7 and later by having printed a brief Memoir of his life.8 Turner’s house, which Elton Hamond’s friend Henry Crabb Robinson declared to be the most agreeable he ever visited,9 proved an irresistible attraction for Arnold who, though of the most reserved and taciturn disposition, clearly delighted in the company of Turner’s lively daughters, the eldest of whom, Maria, was then recently married to the botanist, (Sir) William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865).10 Arnold became closely acquainted with Hooker during his visits to Yarmouth, and also with another of Charles Darwin’s future friends, (Sir) Charles Lyell (1797–1875), still an undergraduate at Oxford but engaged in studying the geological features of the Norfolk coastline. In a letter to his father written from Yarmouth on 20 July 1817,11 the young Lyell recorded his impressions of his new acquaintance: Dr. Arnold, the Javanese traveller, is indeed impenetrable, but you soon see he has much in him. The only subject on which he launches out is on Fossil Remains, and then only if Linnean Society of London in 1805, and he succeeded Jonas Dryander (1748–1810) as Librarian to Sir Joseph Banks. He was held in the highest esteem by all naturalists, including von Humboldt, who described him as ‘facile botanicorum princeps, Britannia gloria et ornamentum’. See D.J. Mabberley, Jupiter Botanicus Robert Brown of the British Museum (Braunschweig, 1985). W.R. Dawson, ‘Dawson Turner, F.R.S. (1775–1858)’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. hist., vol. 3, pt. 6 (1958), pp. 303–10; A.N.L. Munby, The Cult of the Autograph Letter in England (London, 1962), pp. 33–60.

6

Note 103.

7

Memoir of Joseph Arnold, M.D. (J.M.Burton, Ipswich, 1849), pp. [i–iii], iv–xiv, two wood engravings. W.R. Dawson, in his preliminary and revised bibliography of the printed works of Dawson Turner (Norfolk Archaeology, vol. XXVI (1938), p.72; Transactions Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vol. III, no. 3 (1961), pp. 254–5), states that Arnold’s journals and manuscripts came into the possession of Dawson Turner in 1848, which induced him to write the Memoir for distribution to the few friends who knew and remembered Arnold. Only 20 copies were printed, five copies making up lot 1355 in the sale of Dawson Turner’s printed books in 1859. A presentation copy from Dawson Turner to Robert Brown is in the Library of the Linnean Society of London.

8

T. Sadler (ed.), Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, F.S.A. (London, 1869), vol. II, p. 369.

9

William Jackson Hooker married Maria Sarah Dawson (1797–1872) on 12 June 1815, their first child, William Dawson Hooker, being born the following year. Hooker was appointed Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow University in 1820, and Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew in 1841. He was succeeded in the latter post by his second son, Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911), who was born at Halesworth on 30 June 1817 at the time when his father became acquainted with Arnold.

10

Mrs. Lyell, Life Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. (London, 1881), vol. I, p. 41. The reference in the letter is to the Reverend William Buckland (1784–1856), Fellow of Corpus Christi and Reader in Mineralogy (1813) and Geology (1819) in the University of Oxford. He was elected President of the Geological Society in 1824 and in 1845 he became Dean of Westminster.

11

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you get him quite alone. He has a large collection here, obtained from Norfolk and Suffolk, of Echini, Ammonites, and mostly Alcyonia found in flints. He has had the good nature to go over them all with me. I have copied for [William] Buckland part of his paper, being a list of those which are described, and shall copy the rest. A very large part are nondescripts, which he thinks of publishing.

Eight days later,12 Lyell again wrote to his father: Dr. Arnold returned on Saturday, after being away four days. I was very glad of it, for as Mr. Turner has been much employed in the bank, I have had time to examine and consider the geological wonders of this country. The Doctor says my conclusions are exactly like his, which nobody ever knew he had made, and has become in consequence very communicative, and quite another person. … Dr. Arnold and I examined yesterday the pit which is dug out for the foundation of the Nelson monument, and found that the first bed of shingle is eight feet down … Dr. Arnold surprised me by telling me that he thought that the Straits of Dover were formerly joined, and that the great current and tides of the North Sea being held back, the sea flowed higher over these parts than now. If he had thought a little more, he would have found no necessity for all this, for all those towns on the eastern coast which have no river god to stand their friend, have necessarily been losing in the same proportion as Yarmouth gains. … The Doctor told me that he has always thought that it was the meeting of the great north current with that of the English Channel that burst open the Straits of Dover. With this I was delighted, for he did not know that to the very same cause Werner, Humboldt, Buckland, and others, as well as myself, have been attributing the existence of Great Britain as to its insular and probably political situation …

It might be expected that with such friends and acquaintances as Turner, Hooker, Lyell, McLeay, Brown and, by his election to the Linnean Society of London in January 1815, other members of the scientific community in the metropolis, Arnold would now have been content to settle in England and bring an end to his global wanderings. But though he was the most timid and unadventurous of travellers, he was possessed of a restless energy and curiosity so that when in the middle of 1817 he learned of the post of naturalist on Raffles’s staff at Bengkulu he jumped at the chance of accompanying him to west Sumatra. It is not at all clear how he heard of the post or the means by which he obtained it. The statement has been made that he was

Ibid., vol. I, pp. 42–4.

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recommended to Raffles by Sir Joseph Banks,13 but this makes little sense as he was already intimately acquainted with Raffles through his experiences in Java. The statement seems to be a careless rendering of a sentence in an obituary notice of Arnold drafted by Raffles to the effect that he had ‘proceeded to India on the express recommendation of the Rt. Honble Sir Joseph Banks’.14 Even this conveys the wrong impression of Banks’s role in the appointment for we have it on Arnold’s own authority that while Raffles affirmed that Banks would be consulted ‘as to the fitness of the person to be sent out’, Banks told him that ‘he would do everything that Sir Thos. R[affles] should advise to forward the business’.15 What, in fact, appears to have happened was simply that Raffles asked Banks to use his influence with the Directors of the East India Company to have a naturalist appointed to Sumatra and that in the ensuing discussions Arnold’s name was suggested, possibly by Brown or his earlier patron, Alexander McLeay (1767–1848). Judging by a later remark by Raffles in a letter to Horsfield,16 it would seem that the Directors were unwilling to accept Banks’s recommendation for the appointment of a naturalist to Bengkulu, possibly because there already existed the post of Botanist and Superintendent of the East India Company’s spice plantations in west Sumatra which was filled by Dr. John Lumsdaine.17 Certainly Arnold’s name does not appear in any official list of the Fort Marlborough establishment in 1818 and he seems to have accompanied Raffles under the designation of naturalist but more in the role of his personal physician, with particular duties towards Lady Raffles, who was pregnant. Captain Travers, in detailing the passengers sailing to Bengkulu, described Arnold as accompanying Raffles on the assurance that he was ‘to be provided for at Bencoolen’. C.E. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1957), p. 422; D.C. Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897), p. 283.

13

Memorandum, enclos. Raffles to George Bohm, 15 August 1818, Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

14

Arnold to Dawson Turner, 22 July 1817, Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

15

Raffles to Horsfield, 14 February 1820, KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H562: ‘From their unhandsome Conduct to Sir Joseph Banks in refusing to send a Naturalist to Sumatra, I know not what to think …’.

16

Dr. John Lumsdaine, a Eurasian, was possibly the first so-called ‘native’ to be appointed to the East India Company’s medical service (D.G. Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service 1600–1913 (London, 1914), vol. I, pp. 502–3). He was officiating Assistant Surgeon in November 1797 and was confirmed in the post in September 1799. He became Surgeon in December 1812 and was appointed Botanist and Superintendent of the East India Company’s spice plantations at Fort Marlborough in October 1815. He was, according to William Jack (Chapter Nine), ‘a peculiar character, … suspicious and tenacious, but not difficult to be managed by a little skill’. Jack wrote amusingly to Nathaniel Wallich of Lumsdaine’s botanical descriptions but implied that he had a good local knowledge of Sumatran flora (I.H.Burkill, ‘William Jack’s Letters to Nathaniel Wallich, 1819–1821’, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 184, 228; John Bastin, The British in West Sumatra (1685–1825) (Kuala Lumpur, 1965), p. 163, n.405).

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In anticipation of securing the appointment of naturalist, Arnold left Beccles for London in August 1817 in order to prepare himself for the task by a diligent, if necessarily hasty perusal, of the scientific materials in Sir Joseph Banks’s library at No. 58 Frith Street in Soho Square. His letters to Dawson Turner between July and November 1817 give some account of his activities in London, including a letter written from Banks’s Library on 23 August:18 I have taken up my residence at a quiet house wh Mr Browne [sic] introduced me to, & in wh I believe Mr Hooker himself once lived; it is also very convenient for me, being so near Sir Jos. Banks’s. – I have neither seen nor heard any thing of Sir Stamford Raffles since I have been in London, some say he is gone to Liverpool others to Ireland, he is expected however home in the beginning of next month. – You may readily suppose I am anxious to see him, as I do not think it quite prudent to lay out much money in preparation for the voyage, before every thing is so certain, as that nothing can prevent my going out with him. – I however fully employ myself in Sir Jos. B[ank]’s library, indeed Mr Brown is good enough to point out to me what will be most likely to benefit my researches; particularly I have Dr Roxburgh’s collection to take notes from.19 I have seen Mr Upcot several times,20 & given him a list of what Books I shall want which he promises to look out for; I shall pay all due attention to the requisition in your kind note brought up by Mr C. Lyell, viz. the permitting some portrait painter to delineate my ugliness; which I shall think much honoured by being placed among your other portraits in the library; – I cannot think however of sending this down till I am certain of going to the East with Sir S. R[affles]; for in case of my being disappointed, the portrait could only recall to your mind a poor disappointed fellow with nothing before him; whereas; if I should be fortunate enough to depart these realms, the portrait will put you in mind of a fellow who trusts his all to look after natural productions … I was rejoiced beyond measure at seeing Mr Chs Lyell burst into my room, indeed I could not conceive who was coming, for I knew that no one on Earth but Mr Browne [sic] knew of my place of concealment; You may readily believe that we talked over all the Yarmouth news; …

Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

18

Note 27.

19

William Upcott (1779–1845) served his apprenticeship as a bookseller under John Wright of No. 169 Piccadilly, and later under R.H. Evans of Pall Mall. He was appointed a library assistant at the London Institution in 1806 and continued there until 1834. He was a fanatical collector of books and manuscripts (Munby, Cult of the Autograph Letter in England, pp. 13–32).

20

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Mr Hooker was so obliging as to call here this morning with Mr Abel,21 who, tho’ I had seen him before, yet had not been introduced to me; indeed I am extremely backward in gaining new acquaintances; I have heard very little of the China Embassy. I believe all that Mr Abel brought home is an Oran Utang22 which he has given to Sir E. Home,23 & wh[ich] now forms a part of the Exhibition at Exeter Change;24 It was brought to Sir Jos. Clarke Abel (1780–1826) was trained for the medical profession and in 1813 received the certificate of the Corporation of Surgeons. He was appointed surgeon and, on Banks’s recommendation, naturalist on Lord Amherst’s mission to China, sailing aboard HMS Alceste (Murray Maxwell) from Spithead on 9 February 1816. The whole of his collections went down in the ship when it struck a reef off Pulau Liat, near Bangka, on 18 February 1817. A small collection of China plants which he had earlier given to Sir George Staunton (1781–1859) in Canton was returned to him and these were described by Robert Brown in Appendix B to Abel’s Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China (London, 1818), where the genus Abelia is named after him. In 1819 Abel was appointed M.R.C.S. and graduated M.D. from the University of St. Andrews. He died at Cawnpur in India on 24 November 1826, having taken an active part in the affairs of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta of which he became joint Secretary eight months before his death. He visited Java during both the outward and homeward voyages of the China mission of Lord Amherst in 1816 and 1817, and it may have been the pretensions of another ‘Javanese traveller’ that aroused Arnold’s antipathy towards him. On the other hand, the curious episode related by Mevr. M.J. van Steenis-Kruseman (Martinus van Marum Life and Work (ed.) R.J. Forbes (Haarlem, 1971), vol. III, pp. 161–2) concerning the seeds, Javanese plants, and fruit trees which C.G.C. Reinwardt (Chapter Three, note 264) entrusted to him to take to Europe suggests that Arnold may have got the correct measure of Abel’s character.

21

The orang utan from southern Borneo which Abel brought to England, was given to him by Raffles’s aidede-camp, Lieutenant Cathcart Methven (Chapter Four), who was a member of the British commission to Banjarmasin in 1816. Methven brought it back to Java where he presented it to Abel ‘in the hope of aiding the cause of science’ (Abel, Narrative, p. 319). The unfortunate animal managed to survive the voyage to England (‘he commonly slept at the mast-head, after wrapping himself in a sail’) and gained a sort of immortality by being illustrated in a splendid coloured aquatint after a drawing by Sydenham Teak Edwards (1769?–1819) in Abel’s book, facing p. 323. According to the Rough Minute Book: Donations to the Hunterian Museum, no. 944, it lived for some months after its arrival in England at the Exeter Change and was then stuffed for the Hunterian Museum.

22

Sir Everard Home (1756–1832) was the pupil and brother-in-law of the famous surgeon and anatomist, John Hunter (1728–93). He was Assistant Surgeon and later Surgeon at St. George’s Hospital from 1793 to 1827 and the first President of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1821. He lectured on comparative anatomy and published his Lectures in two volumes, Lectures on Comparative Anatomy; in which are Explained the Preparations in the Hunterian Collection, Illustrated by Engravings (London, 1814), his portrait forming the frontispiece to Volume I. He was an intimate friend of Sir Joseph Banks and spoke movingly of him in his Hunterian oration in 1822. It was possibly through Banks that Raffles got to know Home in 1816 because he and Travers accompanied Home’s two daughters to the Queen’s Drawing Room on 20 February 1817. In the following month, on 20 March, Home stood as one of Raffles’s supporters on his election to the Royal Society. He made numerous requests to Raffles in Sumatra for zoological specimens, and one such request led Arnold to retort: ‘[W]hy should I labour and toil, and expose myself to danger for Sir E. Home, whom I never saw?’ (Arnold to Dawson Turner, 9 November 1817). Raffles wrote to Home informing him of Arnold’s death and asking him as ‘a friend’ to see that Arnold’s name was associated with the discovery and naming of the gigantic flower (Rafflesia arnoldi). Raffles sent Home many animals for dissection, including a seemingly inexhaustible supply of dugongs (Dugon dugon). Home was unquestionably the leading surgeon of the day, being Surgeon to Chelsea Hospital from 1821 to 1832, and he was called in to conduct the autopsy on Raffles’s body to determine the cause of his death on 5 July 1826 (The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XCVI, no. ii (1826), p. 275), having earlier been a witness to the signing of his will. Home died six years after Raffles, on 31 August 1832.

23

24

Exeter Change was situated in the Strand near the present-day Burleigh Street. It comprised a series of shops and stalls on both the ground and top floors, the latter, during the 18th century being given over to a variety of purposes, including auctions and the place where the body of the poet John Gay (1685–1732) was laid on his death. Sometime towards the end of the century Polito’s menagerie was established there, and in Arnold’s day the menagerie occupied the entire top floor. Its proprietor was then Edward Cross, who owned a number of large animals, including the famous elephant, Chunee, which was shot in March 1826. The menagerie was a popular place in London, Lord Byron recording a visit to see the tigers fed: ‘Such a

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Sir Everard Home (1756–1832) Portrait by Thomas Phillips, 1829

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B[ank]’s library, and compared with some drawings, which were found exactly to answer to it. – 25 Among the books wh it is advisable to take out is the Hortus Malabaricus,26 Mr Upcot is looking out for it, but if I recollect right you told me Mr Hooker wished to part with his, I shall therefore be glad to give him the price it cost him, if he be willing so to part with it … I must wait however till I see Sir Stamford Raffles before I determine as to the propriety of purchasing these books, for if he has them already in his library it would be idle in me to purchase other copies … If you should have occasion to write to Sir Joseph Banks, I should think it very kind if you would mention me to him in such a way as to ensure his good opinion, for altho’ I have been introduced to him by Mr Browne [sic] & Mr McLeay, yet all that they would say of me, is that they know I am partial to natural history & have taken every opportunity of promoting the knowledge of it. – ‘Tis true I am of a taciturn disposition, more ready to hide myself than appear in the foreground, – yet I resemble the male in this, – that I do much more than could be expected from so inconsiderable an animal, & I am more likely to do much and talk little about it, – than do little and make a bruit of it. –

Arnold wrote again to Dawson Turner on 7 September 1817 from Sir Joseph Banks’s Library: I spend my time in a very solitary manner indeed I am a very solitary animal; I take myself to Sir Jos: Banks’ library at 11 o’clock, sit myself down at one of the little tables at the

conversazione! There was a hippopotamus like Lord Liverpool in the face; and the ursine sloth had the very voice and manner of my valet’. In April 1826 Cross offered his lamas, birds and other animals to Raffles’s newly formed Zoological Society of London, and shortly afterwards he offered to sell all his animals to the Society on condition of being employed as manager of the Society’s menageries. Both offers were declined. Exeter Change was demolished in 1829 when improvements were made in the Strand and the menageries were removed to King’s Mews, the present site of the National Gallery. The collection was acquired in 1831 by the Surrey Zoological and Botanical Society to which Queen Adelaide granted her patronage for the establishment of a zoological garden south of the Thames, provided it was ‘not in opposition, but only in a true spirit of rivalry to the establishment in Regent’s Park’ (H. Sherren, The Zoological Society of London (London, 1905), p. 1, n.). The Clouded Tiger, which Raffles brought back with him from Sumatra in 1824, was exhibited at Exeter Change (ibid., p. 33). Abel acknowledged in his Narrative, p. 366 his indebtedness to Banks ‘for the opportunity of examining a manuscript notice respecting an Orang-Outang which he saw at Batavia, in the year 1770’, a reference presumably to an account written by Banks or someone associated with him when the Endeavour (James Cook) was at Batavia in November and December of that year. Banks himself makes no mention in his Endeavour Journal of having seen an orang utan on that occasion. The first detailed account of the animal to appear in print at Batavia was Frederick Baron von Wurmb’s description of the great Borneo orang utan (‘the East-India Pongo’) in VBG, vol. II (1780), pp. 245–61, but this was written subsequent to Banks’s visit. The drawings of the orang utan referred to by Arnold may simply have been those of the dissections and skeletal remains of the animal in P. Camper’s Natuurkundige Verhandelingen … over den Orang Outang; en Eenige Andere Aap-Sorten (Amsterdam, 1782), pp. 1–120, tabs. I, II, III, IV2.

25

H. van Rheede tot Draakestein, Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (Amsterdam, 1678–1703), 12 vols.

26

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window; carry paper in my pocket; take down a portfolio containing coloured drawings of Dr Roxburgh’s Coromandel plants,27 make such cursory remarks and outlines of each as strike me at the time, and remain there till about three or half past three, by which time I am the last person in the room except a big fat young man whose name I am unacquainted with, but who seems to be an under librarian; at any rate whatever he is,28 he gives me frequent warnings that my absence is much desired, which he does by opening his watch frequently and shutting it with an audible noise; this signal of course I think it proper to take notice of by taking myself off. – I am very anxious however to get thro’ all these drawings before I go, but I fear I shall not be able, as I find I can not comment satisfactorily upon more than 50 a day, and I think there must be more than 2000 of them. I received a letter today from Sir Stamford Raffles who has been on a tour of Scotland & Ireland, but expects to be in London by the 12th instant,29 he says that he thinks we Arnold’s estimate of there being 2,000 drawings of Roxburgh’s Coromandel plants in Banks’s Library is not correct but was intended to refer generally to Indian flora of which Roxburgh described some 2,600 species and had drawings made of more than 2,500 of them. Roxburgh apparently began making drawings and descriptions of the flora of the Coromandel coast from the time he was placed in charge of the experimental botanical garden at Samalkot in the Madras Presidency in 1781, and particularly between 1789 and 1793 when he was the East India Company’s Botanist in the Carnatic. Duplicates of his descriptions and drawings were sent to the Company in London after 1791 and by 1793 some 500 had been received. J.R. Sealy, ‘The Roxburgh Flora Indica Drawings at Kew’, Kew Bulletin, nos. 2 & 3 (1956), p. 300 n. provides some data on the despatch of the early drawings based on inscriptions on the plates at Kew, and further information on the subject is afforded by Roxburgh’s letters to Banks, summarised by W.R. Dawson, The Banks Letters (London, 1958), pp. 713–20. The Directors of the East India Company placed all the drawings in the hands of Banks under whose direction the publication of Roxburgh’s Plants of the Coast of Coromandel proceeded from 1795 (Van Steenis, Flora Malesiana, Series I, 45: CCX). Following Roxburgh’s retirement in 1813, he and Banks conferred together in London in September 1814 about the plants to be included in the last half of the third (and final) volume of that work, and after Roxburgh’s death in 1815 Banks was further consulted about the book ‘with respect to the prospect of its termination’. This happy event did not occur until February 1820 (not March, as conjected by Van Steenis, Flora Malesiana, Series I, 45: CCX), and in the meantime the whole of Roxburgh’s duplicate drawings (not only of Coromandel but also of Indian plants) must have resided in Banks’s Library, if we are to assume the correctness of Arnold’s estimate in 1817. It is difficult to establish the precise number, but it would appear that Roxburgh left about 2,533 original drawings with William Carey in India, so that we must suppose that a roughly similar number of duplicates was sent to London. There are, in fact, 2,512 drawings extant at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, having been transferred there in 1859 on the dissolution of the East India Company. Five miscellaneous drawings were in the India Office Library, now the British Library. The drawings at Kew have been listed by Sealy, Kew Bulletin, nos. 2 & 3 (1956), pp. 297–348, 349–99, and Mildred Archer (Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962), pp. 20–3) makes some interesting observations on the drawings themselves and on the receipt of the duplicates in London. Roxburgh’s original drawings preserved at the Botanic Garden at Calcutta are reproduced in Icones Roxburghianæ or Drawings of Indian Plants (Calcutta, 1964 – ).

27

A certain Mr. Durham, who is described by Robert Brown in a letter to Martinus van Marum (1750–1837) at Haarlem dated London 7 September 1814, as ‘though not actually a Bookseller [he] has all the necessary knowledge and having also the privileges of the trade: will I have no doubt carefully attend to execute on reasonable terms all your commissions respecting Books’ (see Forbes, Martinus van Marum Life and Work, vol. III, p. 169). He was presumably the same person to whom Banks addressed a letter on 10 June 1818 regarding financial matters connected with the fund for the memorial to the Duke of Bedford (Dawson, Banks Letters, p. 288).

28

Raffles and Lady Raffles returned to London on 12 September 1817, having visited the Reverend Thomas Raffles and his wife in Liverpool and, near Lancaster, Archibald, 9th Duke of Hamilton and 6th Duke of Brandon (1740–1819), father of his friend, Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset. They then travelled to Ireland

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shall be off certainly by the end of the month; I much wish it were longer, on account of the many things I want to study at Sir Joseph’s, and I am also offered the examination of all the plates, drawings & observations of Dr Horsfield at the India house,30 but it will be impossible to get thro’ all. – … Mr Upcott has busied himself very much in helping me to the books that I may require, … As yet I have heard of but one copy of the Hortus Malabaricus31 & that is down in the sale catalogue at 30£, but whether the man wd bear to be beaten down I cannot tell. – I shall however be glad to have Mr Hooker’s if he be disposed to part with it at the price he gave for it … Sir Stamford Raffles has Rumphius, therefore I shall make use of that;32 there are five or six sets of him in different shops, & they have the impudence to ask 12 guineas a set for them. – The following are most of the Books Mr Browne [sic] has recommended me to buy – 33

to visit members of Lady Raffles’s family and returned to Bristol on 5 September, proceeding from there to Maiden Bradley, near Bath, to stay with the Duke and Duchess of Somerset. Although Horsfield sent a considerable body of materials to London during Raffles’s period in Java, including plant descriptions, drawings, and dried plants, the bulk of his natural history collections was brought by himself to London aboard the Lady Raffles in July 1819 (Chapters Three and Eight).

30

It can be inferred from what follows in Arnold’s letter that Raffles did not possess a copy of Van Rheede tot Draakestein’s Hortus Malabaricus (note 26) though he cited the work in his The History of Java (London, 1817), vol. I, pp. 36, 39.

31

Georg Ever(h)ard Rumphius [Rumpf], Het Amboinsche Kruidboek [Herbarium Amboinense] (Amsterdam, 1741–55). Raffles became acquainted with the work of Rumphius when he was in Java, though it is uncertain if he actually possessed a copy of the Herbarium Amboinense at that time. In his ‘Discourse’ to the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in 1813 he paid tribute to Rumphius and made reference to a manuscript copy of his work in the Society’s Library (VBG, vol. VII (1814), pp. 31–2). Raffles’s own ‘valuable and extensive library’ in Java contained books which were acquired from the estate of Dr. William Hunter, Superintending Surgeon (Chapter Three, Note 163), and it is possible that if Raffles had a copy of Rumphius in Java it would have come from that source. Raffles referred to the work in his The History of Java (London, 1817), vol. I, pp. 36, 39, and again in his anonymous review of John Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820) where he took the author to task for lifting, without acknowledgement, whole sections of the Herbarium Amoinense for his account of the vegetable productions of Indonesia (Quarterly Review, vol. XXVIII, no. LV, art. V (October 1822), pp. 125–6). Interestingly, C.G.C. Reinwardt levelled the same charge against Crawfurd in his Reis naar het Oostelijke Gedeelte van den Indische Archipel, in het Jaar 1821 (Amsterdam, 1858), p. 469, and he also asserted that the plagiarism was effected without much accuracy. Crawfurd brought back with him from Java a manuscript copy of Rumphius Ambonsche Historie which he presented to the Library of Advocates in Edinburgh, a brief description of the manuscript being given by J.E. Heeres in Rumphius Gedenkboek 1702–1902 (Haarlem, 1902), p. 221. Crawfurd himself referred to this presentation in the entry under ‘Rumpf’ in his A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries (London, 1856), p. 370. What Crawfurd states about Rumphius in that book, as G.P. Rouffaer and W.C. Muller have observed (Rumphius Gedenkboek, p. 183) is, factual inaccuracies and all, not to be found elsewhere. The copy of the manuscript of Rumphius which Crawfurd presented to the Advocates Library was not the same copy referred to by Raffles in Java as residing in the Library of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in 1813. Raffles’s copy of Rumphius’s Herbarium Amboinense, to which Arnold referred, (and to which William Jack also made reference as forming part of his ‘large and very scientific library’), was destroyed in the fire on the ship Fame in 1824.

32

J. Gaertner, De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum (Stuttgart, Tubingen, Leipzig, 1788–1807), 2 vols.; C.P. Thunberg, Flora Japonica (Leipzig, 1784); C. Linnaeus, Mantissa Plantarum and Mantissa Plantarum Altera (Stockholm, 1761–71); C. Linnaeus, Species Plantarum, third edition by J. Th. de Trattner (Vienna, 1764), 2 vols.; L.A.G. Bosc, Histoire Naturelle des Coquilles (Paris, 1801), 5 vols.; A.L. de Jussieu, Genera Plantarum

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In a further letter to Dawson Turner dated 24 September he wrote:34 [Y]ou may readily suppose I have a vast deal to do, for what with collecting books and a thousand other things I really have not time scarcely to perform ye necessary duties of life; and when it is considered yt all Dr Roxburgh’s drawings, are if possible to be copied, & a great number of Dr Horsfield’s, it will not appear strange yt I am so hurried: I generally set out as soon as it is day light, copy as many of Dr Horsfield’s drawings as I am able before 8 o’clock, then go out & collect what I may want in the streets; come home to breakfast at nine, in a quarter of an hour out again, Sir Joseph’s at ½ past eleven till three; dinner half an hour; collecting books; instruments & other things till seven or eight, – some tea, Dr Horsfield till 12; Bed, thus it has been for ye last week, but there really is too much of it to be born long; indeed I am in hopes I have got over ye most essential things. I am told ye Ship, called the Lady Raffles35 will not leave ye River till next Thursday, & then go to Portsmouth where she will remain till about the 15[th] of next month, by wh time Sir Stamford proposes to go on board, so yt I have plenty of time to do much before that period, I can only say I wish we were safely out of ye Channel, for I assure you I have ever so much of ye uncertainty of things, that I shall hardly think of myself sure of Sumatra till then, & indeed even then, the dangers of ye sea & ye ship might prevent me. – Sir Stamford however appears to think there is no doubt of it; he has packed up every thing & seems ready. – 36 … Secundum Ordines Naturales Disposita (Paris, 1789); C.F. Mirbel [Brisseau], Traité d’anatomie et de Physiologie Végétales (Paris, 1801–2), 2 vols.; R. Jameson, A System of Mineralogy (Edinburgh, 1804–8 [second edition, 1816], 3 vols.; Encyclopédie Méthodique (Paris, Liége, 1782 + [edited by Panckoucke, text for first two volumes and part of the third series Botanique by Lamarck, completed by Poiret between 1792 and 1817]; A.J. Retzius, Observationes Botanicae (Leipzig, 1779–91), 6 fasc.; N.L. Burman, Flora Indica (Amsterdam, Leiden, 1768); J. Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus (Amsterdam, 1737); C. Linnaeus, Flora Zeylanica (Stockholm, Amsterdam, 1747–8); W. Roxburgh, Plants of the Coast of Coromandel (London, 1795–1820), 3 vols. [see note 27]; O. Swartz, Methodus Muscorum Illustrata (Upsala, 1781); A.M.F.J., Palisot de Beauvois, Essai d’une Nouvelle Agrostographie (Paris, 1812); H. van Rheede tot Draakestein, Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (Amsterdam, 1678– 1703), 12 vols.; G.L.C.F.D. Cuvier, Mémoires pour servir á l’Histoire et á l’Anatomie de Mollusques (Paris, 1817); G.L.C.F.D. Cuvier, Le Règne Animal Distribué d’après son Organisation (Paris, 1817), 4 vols.; L.W. Dillwyn, A Descriptive Catalogue of Recent Shells (London, 1817), 2 vols.; J.V.F. Lamouroux, Histoire des Polypiers Coralligènes Flexibles, Vulgairement Nommés Zoophytes (Caen, 1816). Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

34

This newly built iron-fastened ship whose size is variously recorded as between 458 and 610 tons was named in honour of Lady Raffles and was commanded on her maiden voyage to Sumatra in 1817–18 by Captain Harry Auber, who had a part interest in the ship (note 41).

35

The only extant letter of Raffles to Arnold is dated a week later, 1 October 1817: ‘My dear Sir/ You must ship your Baggage today or tomorrow as the Ship will sail from the River on Friday – I enclose a shipping order – /Let me see you tomorrow morning at 9 – /Sincerely Yrs/ Tho S Raffles’ (Bodleian Library, Oxford: MS Montague d.9). Raffles sent the following message to Arnold via Robert Brown a few days later: ‘Will you do me the favour to inform Dr Arnold should he not yet have left London, that I shall be at Portsmouth on Saturday & put up at the George Inn – therefore the sooner he goes the better – I leave London tomorrow & take the order with me for his being received on board’ (NHM:Botanical Library: Brown Correspondence, 2, letter 163, undated but 16 October 1817). Arnold had seen Raffles two days earlier, on 14 October, and he

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I received Mr Hooker’s Hortus Malabaricus three days ago, but I have not had time to open ye parcel, as soon as I can spare half an hour I will write to him, to thank him for his goodness in parting with it to me in so handsome a manner. – … I begin to be most alarmed at the expense all my necessaries cost me, especially as it seems so uncertain whether they will ever turn out to my advantage, for a voyage of discovery, to Sumatra & Borneo, even under the best circumstances must be full of dangers. I am trusting a great deal in a very fragile bark: Who knows however what may happen? It may all turn out well. – I am obliged to you for your kind offer of assisting me, but I assure you that I could not sleep a wink if I was indebted to any one, indeed that is one of my prima, from wh I have never swerved & when it is considered that I am alone in ye world & of rather niggardly than expensive habits, you may readily conceive that I am able to make shift without running in debt; for unlike most men of similar standing in the world, I am able to be my own servant, I am ashamed of doing nothing but what is morally vicious, I can carry my own parcels, make my own bed; clean my own shoes & do a thousand other menial offices, which others require a servant for. & indeed I have been [so] accustomed to wait on myself, that I even find it less burdensome than having others in constant attendance.

On 5 October Arnold wrote to Dawson Turner:37 How easy it is to make books in Sir Joseph Banks’ library! a man may travel all over the world, make no observations upon anything that he sees, understand nothing that he falls in with; and when he comes home he will be able to give as learned an account of the animals[,] vegetables, minerals, inhabitants; their habits, customs, languages, governments, antiquities, arts; utensils &c as if he had made the most intimate observations upon them, when in fact a person that had never been out of London might do the very same thing with just as much approach to the truth; and with as great a claim to the credit of his readers. – Thus I fear many of our books of travels are written. … It appears to me that the Chinese expedition38 was a very badly arranged one; the parties concerned seem to have been very unfit subjects for collecting observations such as might be worthy of imparting to the public on their return or at any rate if not unfit subjects individually, they certainly acted in such a way as to take the least possible means of making just observations upon what passed before them on their journey; each seems

appears to have left London on Friday, 17 October, arriving at Portsmouth on the following day. Raffles did not arrive there until Sunday 19 October. Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

37

The Embassy of Lord Amherst (1773–1857) to China in 1816–17.

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to have been determined to write a book on his return … We have however I hear three works now in the course of publication viz. Mr Ellis’s, Mr Abels’ & Dr Lind’s.39 … I am still uncertain when we shall sail, indeed the whole party to me appears to be delaying their departure without any sufficient reason; it is said the ship will go round to Portsmouth next week, & it is probable that I shall leave London about next Sunday for the same place 40…

Nine days later, on 14 October, Arnold finally met up with Raffles, who told him that he thought of going to Portsmouth on the 18th. Accordingly, Arnold made arrangements to be there on the same day, but it was not until Sunday 19th that Raffles and his family arrived. It was then learned that the Lady Raffles, commanded by Harry J. Auber, brother-in-law of Lady Raffles,41 had been driven back to the Nore in bad weather and had lost her anchor. The ship eventually sailed from Portsmouth on the evening of 23 October in a fair wind, which soon turned into a strong south-westerly gale and forced Auber to take refuge in Falmouth harbour. ‘I hope when we sail again’, Arnold wrote to Dawson Turner,42 ‘we shall have better weather, for it is really distressing to see the formidable effects only three days tossing about has had upon Lady Raffles; from being a fine; healthy; florid faced woman, she is become so feeble that she cannot even sit upright without fainting; and is as pale as ashes, – I am the more sorry for this, as she is one of the most gentle amiable creatures I ever met with’. ‘Sir Stamford’, he continued,

In addition to Clarke Abel’s Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China (London, 1818, second edition 1819), books on the China mission, or on its peripheral activities, were written by the Third Commissioner of the Embassy, Henry Ellis (Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China (London, 1817), second edition 1818); by the Surgeon of HMS Alceste, John M’Leod (Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Alceste (London, 1817), second edition 1818, third edition 1819, and fourth edition 1820); by the chief of the Canton factory, and Second Commissioner of the Embassy, Sir George Thomas Staunton (Notes of Proceedings and Occurrences, during the British Embassy to Pekin, in 1816 (London, 1824)); by one of the Chinese secretaries and interpreters, the Reverend Robert Morrison (A Memoir of the Principal Occurrences during an Embassy from the British Government to the Court of China in the Year 1816 (London, 1820), which first appeared in The Pamphleteer, vol. XXIX (1819); and by the commander of HMS Lyra, Basil Hall (Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, 1818), second edition 1820, and subsequent editions, 1826, 1840, &c.). Arnold’s reference is to Dr. James Lind (1736–1812), a Surgeon on an East Indiaman who visited China, but who died four years prior to the despatch of the Amherst Embassy.

39

Note 36.

40

Captain Henry (‘Harry’) Auber was Lady Raffles’s brother-in-law through the marriage of his eldest brother, Peter Auber, Secretary of the East India Company, to her fourth younger (third living) sister, Mary Jane Hull. Captain Auber entered the East India Company’s marine service as a Midshipman but quitted the service shortly before his death to take command of the Robarts engaged in the private trade. He died at Bengkulu on 11 July 1821 shortly after ascending, in the company of Dr. William Jack and others, Sugar Loaf Mountain (G. Bengko), some 18 miles north-east of Bengkulu.

41

Arnold to Dawson Turner, 24 October 1817, Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

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seems to be as active as ever, & promises to do great things in Sumatra. It is a settlement which has been much neglected, – badly governed & little understood. The E: I: company have principally kept it as an Emporium for Pepper, which it appears has for some years been a losing concern to them, – it produces however many valuable articles of commerce, which have hitherto been neglected, particularly, Camphor, – Benjamin & Nutmegs; gold is also found in considerable quantities – Governor Raffles has most unlimited powers not only over Bencoolen but also has instructions to watch over the interests of government in all the East Indian Archipelago, and act as he may think best for the advantages of Government, particularly being attentive to the proceedings of the Dutch and Americans there.–43 How much these Islands have been neglected must appear from this, – that within these few years the Chinese have been permitted to settle on a Part of Borneo & have bought a tract of land belonging to one of the native sovereigns, where they work gold mines, and export Gold to the amount of half a million sterling annually.–44 By the Bye, I did not know till yesterday the true cause of our giving up every thing in the East to the Dutch so readily, not only returning to them what they had before, but also some places gained by the English since they were expelled; Banca for instance, –45 they were

Although Fort Marlborough and its dependencies were designated a Residency under the jurisdiction of the Government of Bengal, Raffles had been allowed by the Directors of the East India Company to retain his Java title of Lieutenant-Governor as a mark of courtesy. His commission under that title dated 14 October 1817 (BL:Home Miscellaneous, 24 (2), fols. 538–41) was the normal one under such circumstances, the only exception being that, unlike those issued to the governors of Prince of Wales Island (Penang), Madras and Bombay, the clause relating to a Council was deleted. In addition to his commission, Raffles also received instructions on 5 November 1817 to furnish the Court of Directors with ‘early and constant information of the proceedings of the Dutch and other European nations, as well as of the Americans in the Eastern Archipelago’ (T.S. Raffles, Statement of the Services of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1824), p. 41). These instructions were interpreted by Raffles in the widest sense, and used by him to justify his attempts to confront the Dutch at Palembang in south-eastern Sumatra and deny them access to Padang. It was never intended that he should have these powers, and his later justification of his actions (Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), pp. 454–8), based on a distinction between his commission as Lieutenant-Governor having reference only to Bengkulu, and his instructions as agent with wider political powers, was denied by the Court of Directors when the matter was raised in 1819 by George Canning, President of the India Board of Control (BL:Letters from the Court to the Board, vol. 6: Letters dated 21 and 23 January 1819), who stated in the House of Commons on 17 June 1824 that Raffles’s position of Lieutenant-Governor ‘implied nothing more than a superintendent of pepper’. See ‘Raffles as a Political Agent in the Malay Archipelago’ in John Bastin, The Founding of Singapore 1819 (Singapore, 2012), pp. 93–7. The reference to the Americans in the Eastern Archipelago in Raffles’s instructions of 5 November 1817, and in Arnold’s letter to Dawson Turner, relates to the rapid expansion of American trade with the pepper ports of west Sumatra from the end of the 18th century (J.W. Gould, ‘Sumatra – America’s Pepper Pot, 1784–1873’, Essex Institute Historical Collections, vol. XCII (1956), pp. 83–152, 203–51, 295–348).

43

Arnold’s estimate of gold production in the Sambas and Pontianak regions of west Borneo was derived from Raffles and is probably too high. John Crawfurd in his Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries, p. 144, stated: ‘The produce of the western side of Borneo … I have seen estimated as low as 52,000 ounces, and this by parties reckoning the Chinese population of the same country, most of it engaged in gold washing, as high as 125,000. On the other hand Sir Stamford Raffles estimated the total annual produce of the western part of Borneo as high as 225,335 ounces, which at the value of 3£.17s. the ounce, would give a total value of 867,539£.’. See Raffles, The History of Java, vol. I, pp. 236–7n.

44

The cession of the tin-producing island of Bangka off the south-eastern coast of Sumatra had been obtained by Raffles from Sultan Ahmad Najm’ud-din of Palembang when he was elevated to power by the British in

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given up as a Dower for the Princess Charlotte,46 when it was intended that she should marry the Prince of Orange; and Lord Castlereagh very improperly neglected to specify in the treaty, that it was on condition of such future marriage that they were given up. – It appears however that the government now see their error; – the Princess Charlotte often mentioned her regret at it to Sir Stamford, – & the Queen47 told him that it was now seen that the government had acted most unwisely. – I am told by Sir S. that the Prince of Saxe Coburg is very fond of natural history;48 but whether he will ever do any thing to promote it, it is hard to say; – Sir Stamford says that in many conversations he had with him (and he was often staying at Claremont) he seemed to possess a fund of general information, and even was acquainted with the writings of Thunberg, Rumphius & Van Rheede respecting the productions of the East49 … 1812. A comprehensive report on the island, dated March 1813, by the American naturalist, Dr. Thomas Horsfield, was later published in 1848 (Chapter Three, note 213). Princess Charlotte Caroline Augustus (1796–1817), daughter of the Prince Regent and Princess Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick. Raffles enjoyed her friendship, and her sudden death on 6 November 1817, five hours after giving birth to a still-born male child, came as a great shock to him and to the whole nation, Byron writing in Venice: ‘It was shock even here, and must have been an earthquake at home’. Proposals had been made that she should marry the Prince of Orange in order to cement Anglo-Dutch relations but she married instead Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg. Contrary to what Arnold reports, the Dutch colonial possessions in South-East Asia were returned to the Netherlands by Great Britain in 1814 in the expectation that they would bolster Dutch power and, accordingly, strengthen the balance of power in Europe.

46

47

Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, consort of George III. She was envious of the Java ponies, Amboina wood furniture, and other presents Raffles gave to her grand-daughter, Princess Charlotte, with consequences amusingly related by Raffles’s cousin, the Reverend Thomas Raffles, in his ‘Reminiscences’ (Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 230–1).

Prince Leopold George Frederick of Saxe-Coburg, third son of Francis Anthony Frederick Duke of SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld by his wife Princess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorff, was born on 16 December 1790. He married on 2 May 1816 Princess Charlotte Caroline Augusta (note 46). Raffles received decided marks of attention from the royal couple during his stay in England in 1816–17, and was invited on a number of occasions to Claremont Park in Surrey, the beautiful house built on older foundations by Lord Clive (1725– 1774), with gardens designed by ‘Capability Brown’. The dining and drawing rooms were furnished with furniture made of Amboina wood presented in 1816 by Raffles, who received in return a valuable diamond ring as a token of the ‘united regard’ of both the Prince and Princess when he left to take up his appointment as Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough. The news of the death of Princess Charlotte in the early hours of 6 November 1817 reached Raffles three days later at Falmouth, where his ship had been forced to take shelter against adverse gales. It caused him much distress and one of his first acts after arriving at Bengkulu was to arrange for a letter of condolence to be sent to Prince Leopold by the British inhabitants of Fort Marlborough (letter dated 27 March 1818, BL:Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 47). He named his eldest son, Leopold Stamford Raffles (1819–21), after Prince Leopold, who wrote him a ‘beautiful letter’ on the occasion of the child’s birth. Prince Leopold was interested in natural history and had some knowledge of Asian botany. Raffles sent him a small parcel of Sumatran plants in the care of Dr. Horsfield in 1819, and he also requested Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden, to send him seeds from India (Chapter Ten). In 1820 he also consigned to him at Claremont a stuffed Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus Desmarest) (Raffles to Dart, 29 March 1820, BL:Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 48). Prince Leopold had a high opinion of Raffles, referring to him in a letter to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset in 1824 as ‘that excellent Sir Stamford Raffles’ and as ‘this truly good man’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/27, cited in Duchess of Somerset to Raffles, n.d., but 1824). When Lady Raffles presented him with a copy of the Memoir of her husband in 1830, he acknowledged the gift ‘with the sincerest pleasure and as a proof, ... [of] the regard he always entertained for Sir Stamford Raffles, excited under reciprocal feelings of friendship on his part’ (Prince Leopold’s aide-de-camp, Sir Robert Gardiner, to Lady Raffles, 15 March 1830 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/10).

48

Notes 26, 32.

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I am not certain whether I informed you of the safe arrival of your copy of Roxburgh, it arrived the very day I left London; – a thousand thanks for the Etchings which I found at the beginning of book.50 – I however see no one of you. – The next Edinburgh [R]eview will contain a critique on Sir Stamford Raffles’s Java, it is written by Mr Crawford [sic] who now lives on the Isles of Skye or one of the neighbouring Islands.51

The Lady Raffles sailed from Falmouth on 6 November with what seemed a fair wind but after clearing the harbour the ship encountered a strong gale which forced her to return to her former safe anchorage. Earlier, Dr. Arnold had accompanied Raffles and Lady Raffles on a visit to a tin mine in Cornwall which they descended and examined its workings. ‘The Governor’, Arnold wrote to Dawson Turner,52 is much interested in this subject, from the Dutch having received Banka from us, where they can work tin at less than half the expense, and where the tin is much better, and will sell for a higher price. At Banka they find it near the surface in immense quantities, while in Cornwall they dig from 100 to 200 fathoms for it. The Cornish tin merchants are much alarmed on the subject, they find that the Americans and the Chinese now buy no tin of them; but go to Banka for it. A Mr Fox53 (a quaker, who went with us to the mine, a large mine proprietor …) said, they have some idea of petitioning government on the subject. It was the most improvident thing in the world to give up Banka to the Dutch, who never had possession of it. It was conceded to the English long after their capture of Batavia, by the Sultan of Palembang, in consideration of a valuable sum; and this sultan & his ancestors had for many ages worked its mines. – Sir Stamford says, that in three years, when it Possibly etchings by the daughters of Dawson Turner. This copy of Roxburgh, together with other treasures, was lost in the fire on the Fame in February 1824.

50

The highly critical review of Raffles’s The History of Java (London, 1817) by John Crawfurd appeared in The Edinburgh Review, vol. XXXI, no. LXII, art. VIII (March 1819), pp. 395–413. Raffles returned some of the same medicine in his review of Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820) in The Quarterly Review, vol. XXVIII, no. LV, art. V (October 1822), pp. 111–38. See Chapter Six.

51

Arnold to Dawson Turner, 7 November 1817, Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

52

One might suppose that this was the young Charles Fox (1797–1878), who was later manager of the Perran Foundry Company (1824–47), founder of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (1833), and President of the Cornwall Geological Society (1864–67), but Arnold says he was married to a daughter of a ‘Mr Barcley’ (one of the powerful Quaker clans of Barclays dotted round Falmouth), which seems to point instead to the scientific writer, Robert Were Fox, F.R.S. (1789–1877), who was married to Maria Barclay, or George Crocker Fox (1784–1850), who were married to Lucy Barclay, daughters of Robert Barclay (1751–1830) of Bury Hill, near Dorking, Surrey. But Travers also says he was ‘a large mine proprietor’, a description which does not exactly fit either of them. Whoever he was, he may have been the ‘gentleman at Truro, who was well acquainted with mining business’ with whom Raffles became acquainted in July of the previous year when he arrived at Falmouth from Java aboard the Ganges (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 282).

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Princess Charlotte (1796–1817) and Prince Leopold (1790–1865) Contemporary print

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was but imperfectly worked, after paying all its expenses, he had 100,000£. clear profit from it, and that it might be worked to ten times that extent. – He had an audience with Lord Castlereagh on the subject, and represented to him the matter in ye strongest terms; Lord C. however said it was not given up to the Dutch by his suggestion, but by Mr Canning & others of the cabinet council; – on referring to them, they said, they had nothing to do with it. – that it was given up at the Congress of Vienna. Hence it appears that both parties are ashamed of the business & are willing to escape from the odium of it. –.54

After further delays and false starts the Lady Raffles finally sailed from Falmouth on 20 November, and three weeks later her passengers began to experience warmer temperatures as the ship entered southern waters. Arnold employed a good deal of his time instructing Raffles and Lady Raffles in botany and other subjects of natural history, for though Raffles had long been a keen amateur naturalist, and had encouraged and supported Horsfield in Java, he had not the time, as he explained in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, to engage in natural history research himself.55 In Sumatra it was to be different, and there is little doubt that during his second administration he was a better informed naturalist, due to the instruction he received from Arnold. ‘[T]he leisure of the outward-bound voyage’, he wrote to his cousin, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, ‘and the society of my friend Dr. Arnold, who accompanied me as a naturalist, have contributed essentially to quicken my zeal and to give an additional stimulus in my pursuits of natural history and general knowledge’.56 Despite Lady Raffles’s advanced pregnancy, it was decided not to call at the Cape but continue the voyage directly to Bengkulu, relying on Dr. Arnold and a nurse named Mary Grimes57 to deal with her confinement on board ship. On 15 February 1818 she gave birth to a girl who was christened Charlotte, after the Duchess of Somerset, Sophia, after her mother, and Tunjung Segara (‘Lotus of the Lord Castlereagh rightly declared in 1814 that the island of Bangka was a source of embarrassment to the British Government because its possession would have allowed the East India Company to supply tin for the China market directly from that source instead of from the Cornish mines which it was bound to do by regulation.

54

Raffles to Banks, Buitenzorg 18 September 1814, NHM:Botanical Library:D.T.C., Banks Letters, vol. 19, fol. 68–74.

55

Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 14 October 1819, SNL, cited Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 31.

56

Nurse Mary Grimes remained with Lady Raffles all her life, first as a nurse for her children, and afterwards as her personal companion, receiving an annuity of £30 in Lady Raffles’s will on her death in 1858. In March 1822 she had accompanied Raffles’s surviving daughter, Ella Sophia Raffles, to England from Bengkulu aboard the Borneo (John Clunies Ross).

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Sea’) at the suggestion of Raden Rana Dipura, who said that the child of a great man of Java should have a name appropriate to the peculiar circumstances of its birth.58 Writing to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, who had recommended Nurse Grimes, Raffles expressed their good fortune in having Dr. Arnold to attend Sophia, and also the nurse, who had been ‘invaluable, every thing we could wish, active intelligent careful & affectionate –’.59 The Lady Raffles arrived off Bengkulu during the afternoon of 19 March 1818 and Raffles and his party went ashore at about eleven o’clock the following morning to a salute of 19 guns, with the troops of the garrison drawn up under the command of Captain Nicholas Manley (1784–1823) of the 20th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry.60 Raffles’s commission as Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough was then read, and after the conclusion of the official ceremonies he and Lady Raffles retired to the house of the Acting-Resident, William Robert Jennings (1786–1837),61 The child was born when the Lady Raffles was in Lat. 370 45’S and Long. 570 43’E, according to the precise details given by Raffles in a letter to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, dated 8 April 1818: ‘She has been christen’d Charlotte Sophia Toonjong Segára, the latter designation at the suggestion of the Raden in compliment to my Javan friends and with reference to her having been born at Sea – in English it would be “Lotus of the Sea”’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24). The child was christened on board ship by Captain Auber but received her official christening shortly after Raffles’s arrival at Bengkulu by the Chaplain, the Reverend Christopher Winter, at the small St. George’s Chapel in the presence of Malay and Bugis officers.

58

Raffles to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 8 April 1818, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24.

59

Captain Nicholas Manley became a particular friend of Raffles and Lady Raffles at Fort Marlborough and he later played an important role in providing for the military defence of the early settlement of Singapore. He was born at Cullompton, Devon, on 3 March 1784, the son of the Reverend Henry Chorley Manley, and was appointed a Cadet in the military service of the East India Company in 1798. He was gazetted Ensign on 19 December 1799, Lieutenant on 29 May 1800 and Captain on 12 April 1814. He served in the Nepal War (1814–16) and was then posted to Fort Marlborough, where he was Commandant of the Local Corps. When the three Companies of the 1st Battalion 20th Regiment of Native Infantry were relieved of duty and ordered to return to Bengal early in 1819, Manley followed Raffles’s instructions to direct the troop transports Cornwall, James Scott, and Marchioness Wellesley via the Straits of Sunda and Melaka in case the Sepoys were needed to garrison a new British settlement, and he was subsequently ordered explicitly on 3 March 1819 ‘to proceed without delay to the Port of Singapore where a British Station has been established, & where you will be pleased to consider yourself under the general orders of the Resident Major Farquhar …’ (NSA:L10, fol.93). The troops formed part of the garrison at Singapore after the refusal of the Prince of Wales Island Government to provide military support for the infant settlement (NSA:L10, fols. 25–28, 33, 35), but they eventually proceeded to Calcutta in June 1819 when other reinforcements arrived (NSA:L10, fols. 62–3). Manley raised an additional company of the Fort Marlborough Local Corps in Calcutta in January 1821, and was promoted Major on 26 August 1822. He died at Penang on 23 May 1822 (A. Harfield, Christian Cemeteries of Penang & Perak (London, 1987), p. 154). He was held in such esteem that when news of his death reached India a General Order was issued to the commanding officer at the cantonment at Barakpur for the Battalion to go into mourning. Raffles had a high opinion of him, as did his friend Captain Thomas Otho Travers, who shared a bungalow with him at Barakpur on his first appointment in India when Manley was Adjutant to the Regiment. Travers later succeeded him as Commandant of the troops at Fort Marlborough (Travers, T.O., The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820, (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960), pp. 118–19).

60

William Robert Jennings was provisional chief authority at Fort Marlborough acting in the absence of the Resident George John Siddons, who was on sick-leave. Jennings was hard pressed to give accommodation to Raffles and his family because his wife, Mary Anne, daughter of Edward Malone of Hampton, Middlesex, whom he had married four years earlier at Calcutta, was suffering from an ‘affliction of the most distressing

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where they were to be accommodated as both Government Houses had been damaged by earthquakes during the previous two days. The shocks continued at regular intervals until 22 March, leading Lady Raffles to complain to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, that the settlement was ‘in a miserable state of ruin & desolation’,62 and for Raffles to state in a letter to William Marsden, who had himself served in the local secretariat, that Bengkulu was, ‘without exception, the most wretched place’ he had ever beheld.63 The unfortunate circumstances attending his arrival did not deter Raffles from immediately undertaking a thorough reform of the administration, including the abolition of the East India Company’s Out-residencies and the forced cultivation of pepper.64 Arnold described these reforms in a letter to Dawson Turner dated 7 July 1818: Sir Stamford has been very active here, and has indeed overturned the entire old corrupt administration of the Country, entered into new agreements with the chiefs, thrown open trade, removed all monopolies, put out of place all persons against whom charges of dishonesty have been proved, done away with all useless places, put the native chiefs on a more respectable footing; and entirely taken into his own hands the administration of Justice, presiding in the Court himself accompanied with the sovereigns of the country; and from his perfect knowledge of the Malay language he is able to hear every complaint himself and redress every wrong: the place certainly begins to improve and a spirit of industry begins to show itself[.]

Arnold then referred to the extraordinary journey he had made earlier in the year with Raffles and Lady Raffles to the Pasemah Highlands in the Barisan Mountain range in southern Sumatra: There is a people South East of Bencoolen about 150 miles, called the Pasummahs, their country was reported to be very fertile in rice and all other necessaries of life but they

nature’, with ‘the symptoms of her approaching dissolution … particularly apparent’. She died a month later, on 22 April 1818 (Asiatic Journal, vol. VII, no. 37 (January 1819), p. 117), the burial service being attended by Raffles, Lady Raffles, and ‘the ladies of the settlement, together with several Native Chiefs’. Lady Raffles to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 9 April 1818 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24).

62

Raffles to Marsden, 7 April 1818, Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 293.

63

John Bastin, The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra (Oxford, 1957), pp. 72–134. Commenting after Arnold’s death on his account of the reforms introduced at Bengkulu, Raffles wrote to Dawson Turner on 12 April 1820: ‘The Kindness and warmth of our lamented friend have perhaps led him to speak too forcibly in favour of my humble endeavours to improve the interests of this Settlement …’.

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were said to be a nest of Robbers, that they came down sometimes from the mountains into the plains, and carried off the Buffaloes, and men, women and children, that they were treacherous, and cruel, and numerous were the murders they committed among the people of the low country in their predatory Excursions[.] – An attempt had been to enter into a treaty with them, but they were said to have immediately broken thro’ it and repeated their murders and violence; so that the late Governor here in a letter to the Court of Directors had been induced to say the Pasummahs are a people with whom we must expect to be continually at war, they can be bound by no treaty, and all that we can do is to seize upon every one we can find and bring him down to the coast and there keep him as a slave. – Sir Stamford about two months ago determined to visit these people and see whether the reported fruitfulness of their country was true or false.65

The party, consisting principally of Raffles, Lady Raffles and Arnold, left Bengkulu on 9 May on horseback, travelling along the southern coast until they reached Manna, a distance of about 80 miles. Arnold had expressed some apprehension about Lady Raffles accompanying them because of the alarming reports that the Passemahers were a ‘treacherous & murderous’ people, but he recognised that she ‘would follow Sir Stamford to the world’s end’, and that Raffles himself ‘thought that by taking his wife, the people of Pasummah would be more certain of his coming with a peaceable intention’.66 After resting at Manna for two days, they set off into the hinterland on 18 May, accompanied by the Resident, Edward Presgrave (1795–1830),67 the Pangeran of Manna, a few Bugis officers who formed the guard, and some 40 slaves and 60 porters to carry the luggage. At about 20 miles distance they arrived at the village of Tanjung Agung on the Manna river, and ten miles further on the village of Merambung, where they spent the night.68 Arnold to Dawson Turner, 7 July 1818, Dawson Turner MSS, Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

65

Arnold to Dawson Turner, 9 July 1818, Dawson Turner MSS, Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Lady Raffles confided to her sister-in-law Mary Anne Flint in a letter dated 13 August 1818: ‘I wd not be separated from him merely for my own personal convenience’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/15).

66

Edward Presgrave was appointed a Writer on the Fort Marlborough establishment in 1812 but he did not arrive at Bengkulu until three years later. He was appointed Assistant Resident at Manna, and shortly afterwards he exercised the duties of Resident until May 1817. When Raffles abolished the Residency in August 1818, he was given 1,000 Spanish dollars in compensation and appointed Judge and Magistrate at Fort Marlborough. He later served as Secretary to the Resident, and for a brief period as Resident following Raffles’s departure from Bengkulu in 1824. He transferred to Penang in the following year and was appointed Acting Secretary to the Government. He served on several occasions as Resident Councillor at Melaka and Singapore until his death on 12 March 1830. Presgrave recorded an account of his journey to Pasemah ulu Manna with Raffles and Arnold in Malayan Miscellanies, (Bencoolen, 1822), vol. II, no. II. See Bastin, British in West Sumatra, p. 177, n.424.

67

A full account of the journey is given in Arnold’s letter to Dawson Turner, 9 July 1818 (Bastin, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 6, pt. 5 (1973), pp. 327–32).

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They set off again next morning but were soon confronted by difficult country and were forced to dismount and proceed on foot. After resting at the deserted village of Lubu Tapi, they headed for Pulau Lebar, where they arrived late in the afternoon after walking more than eight hours. This place was also deserted and Raffles and Lady Raffles had their sleep disturbed by the near approach of elephants. But it was here, at Pulau Lebar, that Arnold discovered what he described as ‘the greatest prodigy of the vegetable world’ – the gigantic flower which was to astonish botanists the world over.69 The circumstances surrounding the discovery he described to Dawson Turner: I had ventured some way from the party, picking specimens of plants, when one of the Malay servants came running to me with wonderment in his eyes, and said, … “[C]ome with me, Sir, come, a flower very large, beautiful, wonderful”[.] I immediately went with the man about an hundred yards in the Jungle, and he pointed to a flower growing close to the ground under the bushes, which was truly astonishing. My first impulse was to cut it up and carry it to our hut, I therefore seized the Malay’s prang (a sort of instrument like a woodman’s chopping hook) & began to chop away. I then found that it sprang from a small root (perhaps as large as two fingers or a little more) which ran horizontally [.] I therefore soon detached it & removed it to our hut. – To tell you the truth, had I been alone, and had there been no witnesses, I should I think have been fearful of mentioning the dimensions of this flower, so much does it exceed every flower I have ever seen or heard of, but I had Sir Stamford & Lady Raffles with me, and a Mr Presgrave a respectable man resident at Manna, who tho’ equally astonished with myself, yet are able to testify as to the truth. – The whole flower was of a very thick substance, the petals & nectary being in but few places less than a quarter of an inch thick, and in some places three quarters of an inch, the substance of it was very succulent; when I first saw it a swarm of flies were hovering over the mouth of the nectary, and apparently laying their eggs in the substance of it, it had precisely the smell of tainted beef. The calyx consisted of several roundish dark brown conclave leaves, which seemed to be indefinite in number, & were unequal in size. There were five petals attached to the nectary, which were thick and covered with protuberances of a yellowish white, varying in size, the interstices being of a brick-red colour; the nectarium was cyathiform, becoming narrower towards the top[,] the centre of the nectarium gave rise to a large pistil which I can hardly describe, … Now for the dimensions, which are the most astonishing part of the flower. It measured a full yard across; the petals (which were sub-rotund being In the account of the journey to Pasemah ulu Manna in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 314–21, the date of the discovery of the flower is given as 20 May 1818 whereas Arnold implies that it was discovered on the previous day.

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twelve inches from the base to the apex, and it being about a foot from the insertion of the one petal to the opposite one. Sir Stamford, Lady Raffles & myself taking immediate measures to be accurate in this respect, by pinning four large sheets of paper together, and cutting them the precise size of the flower. The Nectarium in the opinion of all of us would hold twelve pints, and the weight of this prodigy we calculated to be fifteen pounds70…

The specimen was packed in a box with moist grass and taken back to Manna by two porters, but the petals were later found to have turned dark brown, with the flower full of maggots, like a rotten mushroom. Other specimens were soon found and sent in spirits to England, where, in honour of its discoverers, it was named Rafflesia arnoldi by Robert Brown.71 From Pulau Lebar the party set out early next morning, arriving at Barong Rasam late in the afternoon after an arduous journey of more than 30 miles. They were joined next morning by a local chief and Raffles hurried on, leaving Arnold and Lady Raffles behind. On descending from a high ridge the following day, they were met by 100 porters to carry their baggage and a number of Pasemah rulers, who, according to Arnold, ‘were delighted to see Lady Raffles, as none of them had ever seen a white woman before, and when they found that Sir Stamford could converse with them (for they spoke a dialect of the Malay) they seemed rejoiced beyond measure’.72 After climbing another formidable mountain, they entered open country dotted with villages and spent the night at Negri Kayu, being urged next morning to press on to the next village for fear of smallpox. Walking for six hours through largely flat country, with Gunung Dempo (3159m.) rising before them, they finally arrived at the principal village of Pagaralam, where they were received warmly by the Pasemah people, a few of whom were inoculated by Arnold against smallpox. On 23 May a formal treaty was concluded placing the country under the protection of the East India Company and permitting the people freedom of cultivation with the right to settle in the coastal districts and representation in the Kalipa’s Court at Manna.73 Arnold to Dawson Turner, 9 July 1818, Dawson Turner MSS, Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

70

R. Brown, ‘An Account of a New Genus of Plants, named Rafflesia’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), pp. 201–34.

71

Arnold to Dawson Turner, 9 July 1818, Dawson Turner MSS, Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

72

H. Visser, ‘Iets over het Landschap de Pasemah Oeloe Manna en zijne tijdelijke onderwerping door Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’, TBG, vol. XXVIII (1833), pp. 314–36. The treaty stated that in return for financial compensation granted by the East India Company for past wrongs, the people of Pasemah ulu Manna would accept the Company’s protection, with the option of planting pepper on the same terms applying in the

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After returning to Manna by a different route, Raffles and his party obtained fresh horses and proceeded along the seashore to Kaur, where Arnold fell ill from a fever he had contracted during the journey. On 3 June, after an absence of 17 days, they reached Bengkulu, to the general astonishment of the local residents, who considered that such a journey was impossible. And, indeed, during the whole period of the East India Company’s connection with west Sumatra, dating back to the end of the 17th century, few British officials had ventured so far inland from the coast, and certainly no woman.74 At the end of June Arnold was still suffering from fever and was described by Captain Travers as being ‘very much reduced’.75 Even so, he insisted on delivering Travers’s first-born child on 3 July76 and five days later in joining Raffles, Lady Raffles, and Dr. Horsfield (who had arrived from Java ten days earlier), on a voyage to Padang aboard the Lady Raffles prior to undertaking an exploratory journey into the Menangkabau highlands of central Sumatra.77 The ship sailed from Bengkulu on 8 July, Travers observing in his Journal that Arnold was ‘a different man from what he landed at Bencoolen and felt his situation keenly’.78 Raffles, however, seems to have detected some improvement in his condition, as he informed his sister Mary Anne Flint two days earlier: ‘Dr Arnold has had a violent fever but is getting better’.79 He recovered sufficiently to take an interest in ‘the immense collections’ of plants which Horsfield brought with him from Java aboard the Lady Raffles,

coastal districts of west Sumatra. They were also given permission to settle on the coast without the need of official passes, and two of their agents were also given seats in the Pangeran’s Court at Manna. See Bastin, British in West Sumatra, pp. 92–3, n.289. Bastin, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 6, pt. 5 (1973), n.302.

74

Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), p. 96: ‘The only disagreeable intelligence I had to receive [on returning to Bengkulu from Java on 29 June 1818] was the indisposition of my friend Arnold, who had suffered severely from a most violent attack of fever which had very much reduced him’.

75

Ibid., pp. 96–7: ‘At daylight [on 3 July 1818] I insisted on going for the doctor, and here I was at a loss. Poor Arnold’s inclination I well knew, but had no idea that he had strength enough to undertake such an attendance. I went, however, fortunately to him in the first instance and he insisted on accompanying me. We reached the house about six, when my dearest love began to suffer, and Arnold soon came out to say that she was certainly in labour and going on well …. My little precious Lucia was born a few minutes before eight. After a short time I went to Sir Stamford to share my joy with him … Shortly after my return, Arnold came out to tell me that my child and my beloved Mary were doing as well as my heart could wish …’.

76

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 340–64.

77

Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), p. 97.

78

Raffles to Mary Anne Flint, 6 July 1818 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/17). Raffles stated in a letter to Dawson Turner dated 15 August 1818: ‘The violence of the fever had … considerably abated before he proceeded to Padang, and we then considered him out of danger, but it was otherwise decreed’ (Dawson Turner MSS, Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

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preparatory to taking them to London in the following year,80 but apart from a bud of another species of Rafflesia,81 Arnold made no specific comment on the collections or recorded his impression of the American naturalist, though he promised Dawson Turner that he would do so: ‘Dr H. is now on board, of him I shall speak afterward’.82 For his part, Horsfield was equally reticent in referring to Arnold, and only mentioned him many years later, appropriately in connection with the Rafflesia arnoldi: ‘[O]ne of the first objects of curiosity I observed, on my arrival in his [Raffles’s] hospitable residence, [at Bencoolen] was a drawing of this plant in the hands of Dr. Arnold’.83 Thus the disappointing surviving evidence of the meeting between the two pioneering naturalists of Indonesia. That Arnold’s health had improved is indicated by his being able to write to Dawson Turner, including two letters written during the voyage to Padang, but the abrupt ending of the last of these letters, before the Lady Raffles had reached her destination on 13 July, appeared ominous. He was clearly too weak to join Raffles and his party when they set out three days later on the journey into the central highlands of Menangkabau, though on the previous day he seems to have been well enough to vaccinate some Indonesian children at Padang against smallpox.84 A recurrence of his illness occurred shortly afterwards, and he died on 26 July, four days before Raffles and his party returned to Padang. He was buried at Padang, though his tombstone has never been recorded. Certainly C.J. Brooks was a long way from it when he conducted his search at Bengkulu in 1918.85 When Raffles returned to Bengkulu on 3 August he found a letter addressed to him in Arnold’s writing desk:86

Chapter Eight.

80

Robert Brown in his paper on the Rafflesia (Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), pp. 224–5) referred to Horsfield’s discovery in Java, ‘several years before the discovery of Rafflesia Arnoldi’, and declared it to be ‘unquestionably a second species of the same genus’ to which he gave the name Rafflesia Horsfieldi [synonym of Rafflesia patma Bl.] after ‘the very meritorious naturalist by whom it was discovered’. S.H. Koorders recalled (Botanisch Overzicht der Rafflesiaceæ van Nederlandsch-Indië (Batavia, 1918) pp. 54–5) Horsfield’s claims to be discoverer of the genus Rafflesia, but it has since been determined that the first European to examine a specimen of Rafflesia patma Bl. in Java was Louis Auguste Deschamps in 1797 (Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), Hist. Ser., vol. I, pp. 51–68).

81

Arnold to Dawson Turner, 9 July 1818, Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

82

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 628.

83

Rix (Beccles and Bungay Weekly News, 17 December 1861) refers to a list in Arnold’s papers headed ‘Names of children vaccinated at Padang, 15th July’. It is to be regretted that this list is no longer extant as it would stand as a worthy epitaph to Arnold as a medical practitioner.

84

C.J. Brooks, ‘English Tombs and Monuments in Bencoolen’, JSBRAS, no. 78 (1918), p. 51.

85

MLS:A 1845–A 1846.

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Fort Marlborough 19 April 1818 My dear Sir, As I shall be, while in Sumatra pursuing objects of Natural History, often exposed to dangers, and as in all cases life is uncertain, I venture to leave this letter in my writingdesk, that, in case of my death you may know where my friends live. I have left a will in my attorney’s hands – George Bohm Esq. Beccles, Suffolk – My books, apparatus, clothes, &c. cost me almost £800; and, in case of my death, I request you will make as much of them as possible, and transmit the amount to my attorney Mr Bohm above mentioned. I hope also that you and Lady Raffles will each retain something in remembrance of one who has always had the greatest regard for you – and who is no more. Wishing you, my dear Sir, all the happiness this world can afford …

In conformity with Arnold’s instructions, Raffles wrote to George Bohm, on 15 August 1818:87

Sir, It is with extreme concern that I announce to you the melancholy event of the death of Dr Joseph Arnold, who accompanied me to Sumatra as a Naturalist. This event happened on the 26th ulto at Padang, whither he had proceeded for change of air. The occasion of his death was a fever, with which he was violently attacked after an excursion into the interior, and of which he never recovered. The violence of the fever had, however, considerably abated before he proceeded to Padang; and we then considered him out of danger. But it was otherwise decreed. I enclose you the copy of a letter found in his writing-desk; which enables me to administer to his effects in this country; and by the next opportunity I hope to be able to report the progress I have made in that respect. I will now only add how deeply we deplore his loss. He had endeared himself to Lady Raffles and myself, by his most amiable disposition and unassuming manners. He formed part of our family; and I regret his loss as that of a sincere friend. To the best disposition he added a most cultivated mind; and in a public point of view his loss will be severely felt.

Ibid. (but without the enclosed memorandum). Another copy of the letter, with its enclosure, is in the Dawson MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

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I request to suggest that justice may be done to his memory in announcing his death in the London papers. The enclosed Memo you can alter as you think proper, and apply it for that purpose …

The memorandum read: At Padang in the Island of Sumatra died on the 26th July 1818. Dr. Joseph Arnold aged 37. Dr. Arnold had accompanied the Honble T. Stamford Raffles to Sumatra as a Naturalist and had made extensive arrangements at the Period of his decease for collecting Materials for the natural History of that immense Island hitherto so little known – He fell a sacrifice to his exertions in the pursuit of knowledge having been attacked with a violent fever immediately on his return from a tour into the interior on which he had accompanied the Governor – The fatigues which the whole party underwent on this occasion were excessive – for several nights they had no shelter but the leaves of the Forest and had the highest mountains to cross – Dr. Arnold was an eminent naturalist and he proceeded to India on the express recommendation of the Rt. Honble Sir Joseph Banks – his loss will be severely felt by the public as well as by a numerous circle of friends –

Raffles informed Banks of Arnold’s death and of his discovery of the giant flower on 13 August 1818: ‘It is impossible I can do justice to his memory by any feeble encomiums I may pass on his character; he was every thing what he should have been, devoted to science and the acquisition of knowledge, and aiming only at usefulness’.88 On the same day he wrote to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset: ‘You will lament to hear that poor Dr. Arnold our Naturalist fell a sacrifice to the fatigues of the Passumah Journey … Sir Joseph Banks will be very much hurt to hear of our loss in Dr. Arnold – I hope he will be able to supply his place and to send me out some active enterprizing character – I have a most extensive field and grieve to think it should be neglected’.89 His public tribute to Arnold was published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London in 1822: I esteemed myself fortunate in obtaining the assistance of Dr. Joseph Arnold, a gentleman already advantageously known to the scientific world. Unhappily he fell an early sacrifice Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), p. 202.

88

Raffles to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 13 August 1818 (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24).

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to his zeal in the cause, and his loss cannot be more regretted in a public view, than it is lamented by those who were best able to appreciate his amiable disposition and private virtues. He lived, however, long enough to lay the foundation of an extensive plan of research.90

A warmer and more personal tribute to Arnold is to be found in the Journal of Captain Travers, who first met him in Java in 1815 and became more intimately acquainted with him during the voyage to Bengkulu on the Lady Raffles: ‘This loss I sincerely mourned, not alone for his private worth which I much respected, but having such implicit confidence in his medical qualifications, I considered his loss irreparable. Poor fellow! With a deep and well grounded store of information, he was one of the most modest unobtrusive men I ever met. Sumatra he looked upon as the field on which he had full scope to display his botanical knowledge, and [he] came out with a determination to prosecute his researches with unremitting zeal …’. 91 Travers went on to remark, significantly in the context of Arnold’s premonition of death, that from the first attack of the fever he had abandoned all hope of recovery. Arnold lived constantly in fear of death which is curious given the life he chose for himself. Dawson Turner believed that the commission he left to have a monument erected in Beccles Parish Church proved him to have been ‘trembling alive to the awful warning that, “in the midst of life we are in death”’, but he contradicted Arnold’s description of himself as being of a morose disposition. Can a man, Turner asked, ‘be justly branded as morose, who, on his last visit …, after passing some time at his garden with his family and with the present Sir Charles Lyell, and cutting his name for a momento upon the wall, picked up a key of the garden that had been lost, and holding it up to the party, said, “This shall be my companion in Sumatra, and this shall be buried with me in my grave”?’92 The answer to that question, alas, can only be in the affirmative. And yet it has to be said that those who knew him intimately, including Raffles, declared him to be an amiable man, and they were, after all, in a better position T.S. Raffles, ‘Descriptive Catalogue of a Zoological Collection, made on account of the Honourable East India Company, in the Island of Sumatra and its Vicinity, under the Direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough; with additional Notices illustrative of the Natural History of those Countries’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1821–3), p. 239.

90

Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), p. 100.

91

Dawson Turner, Memoir of Joseph Arnold M.D., p. xiv.

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to judge than those writing later. His Beccles contemporary, Dr. William Crowfoot, recorded what is obviously an accurate character of his friend and former pupil,93 when he declared that Arnold’s ‘meekness of temper and great shyness of behaviour,’ when added to his taciturnity, ‘gave an unfavourable coldness to his manner, which he never conquered by his intercourse with the world’, but that those who shared his confidence would attest ‘he was a warm-hearted man, and was neither deficient in feeling or benevolence’. His silence in company was to be explained by ‘his great modesty in forbearing to impart intelligence which he supposed his hearers might already possess’, and while he ‘might be said to want the amenities of polished life; … let it be remembered … he was free from any moral stain, that he never disgraced himself by unmanly compliances, and deserved the noblest appellation to which we can aspire, the title of a good and honest man.’ It remains only to be said that Arnold was a conscientious medical physician who inspired confidence, 94 and that whatever may have been his personal shortcomings, he was a man possessed of a genuinely enquiring mind. It was perhaps typical of him that on his last night in Beccles, when he was expressing his usual forebodings of death and was asked why then he proposed leaving the safety of his home, he is reported to have said: ‘Ah, but Sumatra is a field which no European naturalist has ever trod, – I must go.’95 The factual content of the retort is not strictly accurate as a number of botanists, including Archibald Menzies (1754–1842),96 Charles Campbell (c.1765–1808),97 and William Roxburgh Jr.,98 preceded him in Sumatra, but it is true in the general sense that little was known of the natural history of the island, apart from what was recorded in William Marsden’s The History of Sumatra (London, 1811). Unfortunately, in the absence of his scientific notes and papers, it is impossible to assess Arnold’s abilities as a naturalist. The Journal he kept in Java in 1815 gives

[W. Crowfoot], ‘Dr. Joseph Arnold’, The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XC, no. I (1820), p. 184.

93

The testimony of Raffles and Captain Travers on this point is unanimous. There is also the fact that on the voyage of the Northampton to Australia in 1815 Arnold was in medical charge of 110 female convicts and only four of them died during the passage, a lower mortality rate than on some of the other convict transports to Australia. See C. Bateson, The Convict Ships 1787–1868 (Glasgow, 1985), p. 382.

94

Rix, Beccles and Bungay Weekly News, 17 December 1861.

95

J.M. Cowan, ‘Some Information on the Menzies and Jack Collections in the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh’, Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, vol. XXI, 4 (1954), pp. 219–27.

96

On Charles Campbell, see Bastin, British in West Sumatra, n.290, n.341, n.345.

97

On William Roxburgh Jr., see Bastin, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 6, pt. 5 (1973), n.245.

98

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little indication of his botanical investigations, and his Sumatran collections, according to Raffles, ‘were altogether unimportant’: ‘The few plants were examined by Dr Horsfield who did not think them of much interest and they have been forwarded with the rest of our Collections to Mr Brown’.99 The only botanical description of his that has survived is that of the Rafflesia arnoldi recorded in his letter to Dawson Turner. The collection of fossils which he made in Norfolk and Suffolk in 1817, and which he presented to the Linnean Society of London, has disappeared since it was sold by the Society in 1863, though fortunately a transcript of his description of the collection has survived.100 Robert Brown described him as ‘a naturalist of great zeal and acquirements’,101 but that statement was intended as a public tribute to a dead colleague and must to that extent be treated with caution. Dawson Turner, who was himself no mean botanist, clearly held Arnold in esteem, and the fact that he also enjoyed the friendship of William Jackson Hooker says a good deal. Raffles described him as ‘an eminent naturalist’,102 but that was pitching it a bit high. The inscription on his memorial tablet in Beccles Parish Church can stand as a final word:103 IN MEMORY OF JOSEPH ARNOLD M.D. SURGEON IN THE ROYAL NAVY AND FELLOW OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON, AND OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH, WHO, AFTER HAVING, IN THE PURSUIT OF SCIENCE AND HIS PROFESSION, CIRCUMNAVIGATED THE GLOBE, AND SUFFERED NUMEROUS PRIVATIONS AND BEEN EXPOSED TO MANY DANGERS BY SEA AND LAND, FELL A VICTIM TO THE PESTILENTIAL CLIMATE OF SUMATRA, AT THE MOMENT OF ENTERING UPON

Raffles to Dawson Turner, 12 April 1820, Dawson Turner MSS., Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

99

Arnold’s original manuscript, ‘Catalogue of the Extraneous Fossils of Norfolk and Suffolk, with Drawings’, dated July–August 1817, came into the possession of Dawson Turner and formed part of Lot 341 at the auction of his manuscripts in June 1859. Its present location is unknown, but a transcript of the document made by S.W. Rix in April 1862 is in MLS:A 1849–1.

100

Brown, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), p. 201. Blume named a plant genus Arnoldia after him in 1826: ‘Nomen dedi in memoriam Doctissimi Joseph:Arnold in investigatione Floræ Sumatrensis praematura morte scientiæ abrepti’ (C.L. Blume, Bijdrage tot de Flora Ned.-Indië (Batavia, 1826), pp. 868–9). The name has disappeared into synonymy, the oldest published name being Weinmannia, Linn.

101

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 400.

102

The wording on Arnold’s memorial tablet is similar to that in the newspaper announcement of his death in The Globe, London, 23 January 1819 and was undoubtedly written by Dawson Turner.

103

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THE CAREER MOST CONGENIAL TO HIS WISHES, HAVING BEEN APPOINTED NATURALIST IN THAT ISLAND TO THE HONOURABLE EAST INDIA COMPANY. HE WAS BORN AT BECCLES A.D. 1784 AND DIED IN SUMATRA JULY 19TH 1818.104 READER! IF ENTIRE DEVOTION TO THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE, UNBIASSED BY INTEREST, UNCHECKED BY PERILS, UNAPPALLED BY DISEASE, IF GENUINE SIMPLICITY OF CHARACTER, AND IF THE KINDEST DISPOSITION, JOINED TO THE MOST STEADY ATTACHMENT, CAN EXCITE THY RESPECT, THY ADMIRATON, AND THY REGRET, THOSE FEELINGS ARE DUE TO HIM FOR WHOSE NAME THIS MARBLE STRIVES TO ENSURE A SHORT EXISTENCE: HIS VIRTUES ARE HAPPILY RECORDED IN THE EVERLASTING TABLETS OF GOD.

There are two errors recorded in this line of the inscription. The date of Arnold’s birth, by all accounts, was 28 December 1782, not 1784, and the date of his death was 26 July 1818.

104

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Chapter Eight

Thomas Horsfield in Sumatra and London ‘I have now the pleasure to introduce to your personal acquaintance my valuable friend, Dr Horsfield, who has taken his passage for England in the Lady Raffles, and is now on the eve of embarking’ Raffles to Sir Joseph Banks 14 August 1818

Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) Engraving by W. Holt after a portrait by Sir Thomas Phillips

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R

affles, Lady Raffles and Dr. Horsfield arrived back at Bengkulu on 3 August 1818, having performed, in the estimation of Captain Travers, ‘one of the most laborious journeys ever yet undertaken by any European – that of visiting the ancient … capital of Minangkabau’.1 Raffles’s calculation was that they had actually walked between 120 and 150 miles, and his subsequent account of the journey gained wide publicity in the newspapers in both England and Scotland, which also reported on the political treaties he had concluded with the Minangkabau rulers to exclude the Dutch from central Sumatra.2 In terms of natural history, the journey was less spectacular, although Raffles claimed that 41 new species of plants were discovered as well as rock specimens which enabled them ‘to estimate the mineral resources of the country’.3 A colourful description of the departure of the party from Padang was given by Raffles in a letter to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, dated 10 September 1818:4 Our first object was to send the baggage and provisions a-head. This party, which consisted of about two hundred Coolies, or porters, each man carrying his separate load; fifty military as an escort, and all our personal servants, left Padang on the afternoon of the 14th of July, by beat of drum, forming a most ridiculous cavalcade, 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 in preceding us he might gain time for botanizing.

Horsfield met up with Raffles, Lady Raffles, and the main party on 17 July at the toll post beyond Limaumanis, the river-bed there affording a good opportunity for collecting geological specimens, principally of volcanic origin.5 On the following day, further specimens were collected between there and P. Campeda, and on 21 July at Sindangbakar. On 22 July the party reached Danau Singkarak and Simawang, where Raffles found nearby ‘feltspar, granite, quartz, and other minerals of a The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960), p. 99.

1

The political and commercial motives behind Raffles’s journey led to the conclusion of treaties with the Indonesian rulers of Padang and Minangkabau dated 20 and 24 July 1818 and to his stationing a small Bugis contingent in the central highlands to maintain British power and influence. The authorities in England disavowed the treaties and censured him for exceeding his authority. See ‘Raffles’ Attempts to Extend British Power in Sumatra’, in John Bastin, Essays on Indonesian and Malayan History (Singapore, 1961), pp. 169–71.

2

Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c., p. 363.

3

Ibid., p. 342.

4

Ibid., p. 345.

5

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primitive formation’. Horsfield gathered similar specimens which he gave in charge to the Indonesians who attended him, but when after the day’s journey he asked to see them, they produced their baskets full of other stones which they had gathered locally, observing that ‘they thought he only wanted stones, and they preferred carrying their baskets empty, so they threw away what he gave them, and filled them up at the end of the day’s journey, and they were sure they gave him more than he collected’.6 Further rock specimens were collected at Suruaso and Pagarruyung on 23–24 July, and on the return journey at Peninggahan on the western side of Danau Singkarak, as well as in other localities between Peninggahan and Pinang. Unfortunately, all that remains of this rock collection is a small subcollection of 71 specimens in the Natural History Museum, London.7 Horsfield was suffering from dysentery when he arrived back at Bengkulu from Padang but he joined the Lady Raffles when she sailed for Java on 19 August. The ship was to convey him and his natural history collections to London, but as part of her main cargo was to be collected at Surabaya, it gave him the opportunity to spend a further four months exploring Banten and other regions of west Java. He visited Gunung Karang (1778m) and made a return visit to Gunung Gede before proceeding by way of Cirebon and the northern coastal road to Semarang, where he again boarded the Lady Raffles. After nearly 18 years, during which time he travelled more extensively in Java than any person before him, he finally sailed for England in January 1819, arriving at Portsmouth on 12 July. Raffles’s letters of introduction to his friends in England, including Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, Sir Charles Wilkins (1749–1836), Keeper of the Company’s Library and Museum, and Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, ensured that Horsfield received a friendly reception in London. In the letter to Banks, Raffles gave a concise description of Horsfield’s collections and an indication of his proposed publications:8 Ibid., p. 357.

6

These 71 rock specimens formed part of a small collection which Horsfield sent in 1818 to Charles Milner Ricketts (1776–1867), Secretary of the Public and Commercial Department in the Bengal Government at Calcutta and Fellow of the Geological Society of London. Horsfield’s manuscript catalogue of the collection is in the British Library, and the collection itself is in the Natural History Museum, London, having been presented to the Museum by the Geological Society in 1911. It appears that the Geological Society came into possession of the collection during the 1820s, probably before Ricketts was appointed Consul-General in Lima in 1827. The collection is listed in John Bastin and D.T. Moore, ‘The Geological Researches of Dr Thomas Horsfield in Indonesia 1801–1819’, Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (hist. Ser.), vol. 10, no. 3 (1982), pp. 75–115.

7

Raffles to Banks, 14 August 1818, NHM:Banks Letters, D.T.C., vol. 20, fols. 105–7.

8

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I have now the pleasure to introduce to your personal acquaintance my valuable friend, Dr Horsfield, who has taken his passage for England in the Lady Raffles, and is now on the eve of embarking. To you who can so well appreciate his merits and discoveries, it would be presumptuous in me to offer any opinion on his valuable collections; they are immense, and, I have no doubt, will be found to contain ample materials for publishing a Natural history of Java, including Quadrupeds, Birds, the L[e]pidopterous and Coleopterous insects, and the geology of the Island. From the extensive collection of Drawings and Manuscripts, which he has shewn me and which have been collected during a residence of sixteen [sic] years in Java, it would appear that he has the Materials for the following publications. 1. A general description of the plants of Java, or Flora Javana. The Materials for this work consist in various Diaries, containing Methodical descriptions made on the spot; in an Hebarium containing nearly 2000 Specimens; in parts of fructification preserved in Spirits of Wine; and in a Series of drawings, comprizing above 600 Individuals. 2. Zoological Essays; to comprize a Catalogue of the Quadrupeds of Java with the description of several new species, a general description of the Birds of Java, & a description of the Coleopterous and L[e]pidopterous Insects. [3.] Outlines of the Mineralogy of Java, or a Mineralogical and geographical description of the Island. The Materials for this consist in mineralogical Maps, Physical Sections, profiles of Mountains, Barometrical Observations, &c, and in an extensive collection of Geological Specimens. 4. An essay on the geography of the Plants of Java, comprizing also remarks on the Climate with meteorological Journals; – Calendar of Flora, with a comparative table, exhibiting the appearance of vegetation in different parts of the year; Sketches of Agriculture; Materia Medica of the Natives &c; and, 5.

Essays descriptive and picturesque with various journals of excursions through the Island. The above will give you some idea of the extent and nature of his collections. I

have set them down in the order he seems to have arranged them in his own mind for publication; but, of course, this will entirely depend upon the value his collections are found to possess on his arrival in England, and the degree of patronage and support which he is fortunate to obtain. The principal object of the last work which I have mentioned would be, to bring before the public as early as possible an historial account of the researches of the Writer; the encouragement and support he may have received, and a

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concise Statement of his Collections in Natural History. It would be addressed to the East India Company, and of course be the first in the order of publication. I shall not, however, detain you with further particulars, as you will obtain them so much more correctly from himself. I will only add that he will require all the aid of the most powerful patronage. I knew it was the opinion of Dr Arnold, who had some experience on the subject, that the publication of all the works contemplated would, on account of the number of plates, cost from £20 to 30,000; and it would be melancholy that, after all his exertions, the world would not be benefited by them. I have written to the Court of Directors in the strongest terms, and I think Mr Wilkins will exert himself. Having, however, said so much of the labours of Dr Horsfield, I cannot conclude without a few words on his private character, which is most estimable; he has deservedly acquired the esteem of every one, and is universally respected in this part of the world – his modesty is conspicuous and his expectations moderate – his life has been devoted to scientific pursuits; and, if he can succeed in publishing his Javan Collections within a reasonable time, he has still energy enough to return to Sumatra and once more to join me; but on this point I am not very sanguine. You are aware that he is an American by birth, and are also informed of the circumstances under which I took charge of him. Since the transfer of Java, the Dutch have offered to him every possible inducement, as far as money and fame would go, to join their party and send his Collections to Holland. These offers he has steadily rejected; and I have the satisfaction to add that his collections are securely manifested for the Port of London: he has never yet been in Europe, and consequently will be a perfect stranger in London: for any personal attentions therefore which it may be in your power to afford him, I shall feel myself infinitely indebted.

Raffles also wrote to James Cobb, Secretary of the East India Company, on 12 August 1818 about Horsfield, as a result of which the Directors agreed to accommodate his natural history collections in the East India Company Museum in Leadenhall Street.9 Horsfield began unpacking the collections on 29 July 1819, and on 12 October he wrote to the new Company Secretary, Peter Auber (1770– 1860), appealing for regular financial support:10 Nearly three months have elapsed since I had the honor to report my arrival in this country on board the ship Lady Raffles from Java, in charge of Collections of Natural History, made during a residence of nearly 18 years on that Island.

Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 629.

9

BL:Miscellaneous Letters Received: Committee of the Library:E/1/140, 48.

10

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The circumstances under which I was originally employed by the Dutch, my subsequent engagement with the British government, at the capture of Java, and the detail of my quitting that Island, for the purpose of laying before the Honorable East-India Company, the result of my labors, will I presume be found in the despatches from the authorities under whom I acted. My object is now in addressing you Sir! is, to entreat the attention of the Honorable the Committee of Correspondence (to whom I understand the subject has been referred) to a consideration of my case, with a view to an extension of their favor towards me, in order that I may be enabled, to pursue the design of arranging the Collection, for its present as well as future preservation: and likewise to prepare a detail of my researches in a country so rich in interesting and rare objects of Natural History as that of Java. The nature of the Collection (which is in part detailed in the accompanying Catalogues)11 is such, as to have required great personal labor and expense. I cheerfully devoted the whole of my time and means to its accomplishment, and I could wish the Honorable Committee personally to inspect the results of these labors. The allowances granted to me during my residence in Java, were not more than sufficient to meet my personal expenses (very limited in themselves) and to pay the charge of Draftsmen and of persons employed in collecting objects, in furtherance of my researches. Were I in other circumstances I would willingly offer my gratuitous services in arranging and classing the different subjects, and in preparing a detail of my researches; but as I am now situated (Java being restored to the Dutch) I am constrained to look to the Honorable Company for that support which will enable me to arrange my materials in such a manner, as will be best calculated to mark the liberal and enlightened Patronage of the East-India Company, at the same time that it will enable me to reflect with much personal satisfaction and gratitude upon the result of 18 years labor in amassing a Collection of Natural History, which the peculiar connexion of this country with the Eastern Islands so highly favored.

In response to this appeal, the Committee of Correspondence granted him on 29 October 1819 a guinea a day ‘until further orders’.12 He agreed shortly afterwards to hand his botanical collections to Robert Brown for description The Catalogues have become detached from the letter.

11

Endorsed 29 October 1819 on Horsfield’s letter to Auber dated 12 October 1819. Sir Charles Wilkins had written to the Committee of the Library on 6 October 1819 reporting that the whole of Horsfield’s collections had been deposited either in the East India Company’s Baggage Warehouse or the Library, and that the contents corresponded exactly with his lists and were ‘in the highest State of Preservation’. As it was important that the collections should be secured from accident and displayed to advantage, he requested permission to use the sum of between £300 and £400 from the sale of useless Oriental printed books from India to purchase two mahogany cabinets ‘which, in the opinion of Dr. Horsfield and myself, will fully answer these purposes’. This request was approved by the Committee of Correspondence on 8 October 1819 (BL:Miscellaneous Letters Received: Committee of the Library: E/1/140, 17–18.

12

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and publication, an arrangement which undoubtedly pleased him as it left him free to concentrate his attention on his zoological materials. These were soon enhanced by the arrival of a large zoological collection from Sumatra, which Raffles had seized from the French naturalists Pierre Diard and Alfred Duvaucel in March 1820 and consigned to Banks and Marsden in trust for the East India Company. 13 The collection reached England in two parts in October and December 1820, together with Raffles’s ‘Descriptive Catalogue’, Part I of which was read as a paper to meetings of the Linnean Society of London on 19 December 1820 and 16 January 1821 by the surgeon, Sir Everard Home.14 There is no doubt that the arrival of so large a zoological collection in London at this time, together with Raffles’s urgent admonitions to publish before the French had time to do so, acted as a great stimulus to Horsfield to write his book, Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands.15 Raffles’s collection was housed in the East India Company’s Museum and was arranged by Horsfield in relation to his own collections from Java. He acknowledged in the Preface to the book the use he had made of Raffles’s collection and there are numerous references in the Day Book of the East India Company Library to loans made to him from the collection. He had also available to him for his book 129 watercolour drawings of birds in the collection which Raffles’s artists had made in Sumatra and which were accessioned by the East India Company Library on 24 April 1821.16 No similar collection of drawings of mammals is recorded, which is puzzling as Horsfield refers to such drawings as being in the East India Company Museum many years

Chapter Nine. See Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 702–23.

13

T.S. Raffles, ‘Descriptive Catalogue of a Zoological Collection, made on account of the Honourable East India Company, in the Island of Sumatra and its Vicinity, under the Direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough; with additional Notices illustrative of the Natural History of those Countries’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1821–3), pp. 239–74, 277–340. Part I of the ‘Descriptive Catalogue’ was published in May 1821, and Part II (which was read on 20 March 1821) in September 1823. Though published under Raffles’s name, and containing some additions by him, the Catalogue was essentially the work of the young Scottish naturalist, Dr. William Jack (Chapter Nine). On Sir Everard Home, see Chapter Seven, note 23.

14

Raffles informed Horsfield of the circumstances connected with his acquisition of the collection from the French naturalists (Chapter Nine) and of its despatch to London in a letter dated 18 March 1820. In this he also expressed his anxiety ‘that not a moment should be lost’ in publishing an account of the collection so as to ‘secure to our Country the Credit it deserves’, and he wrote again on 14 April and 8 July 1820 about details of the collection. In a further letter dated 17 July 1820 he again urged him to publish without delay – ‘We may otherwise be certain of anticipation in France’ (KITLV: Westerse Handschriften H 562).

15

BL:MSS.Eur.E.239/3 recording the receipt of 128 drawings of birds. There are, in fact, 129 drawings in the collection (BL:NHD 4, 537–665).

16

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later.17 It might be supposed that these drawings would have been useful to him in illustrating his book, or that he would have made use of his own natural history drawings executed by his own artists in Java,18 but this was not the case. The illustrations in the book are, in fact, based on actual subjects in the East India Company Museum and the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, to which Raffles had consigned additional zoological materials from Sumatra in 1820.19 The principal artist engaged by Horsfield to illustrate his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands was William Daniell, a choice undoubtedly influenced by the fact that he had illustrated Raffles’s The History of Java in 1817.20 However, there is evidence to show that Horsfield first experimented with the relatively new medium of lithography to illustrate the quadrupeds because his own copy of the book contains a hand-coloured lithograph plate of the Malayan Tapir (Tapirus malayanus [Tapirus indicus Desmarest]).21 The plate is of poor quality and justifies his critical remarks in the Preface to the book concerning the limitations of lithography in representing the minuteness of detail required in illustrating the new genera of birds, which were produced as both coloured line engravings and aquatints. Twenty-five pencil drawings made for the book by Daniell of subjects in the East India Company Museum and the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons are now preserved in the British Library, London,22 and 20 of these are actual models for the plates in the book.23 Apart from the two coloured aquatint plates of the Tapirus malayanus and Ursus malayanus (Helarctos malayanus Raffles), which were drawn and engraved by Daniell himself, his drawings were engraved for the book by William Taylor (1794–1857), who also engraved some of the drawings for the bird plates. Of the 32 of these, representing 20 new species, 25 were lithographed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789–1850), at his newly established lithographic press at No. 51 Great Marlborough Street, London, after drawings by Auguste Pelletier (fl.1816–1847), who supervised the colouring. The remainder are handcoloured engravings after drawings by John Curtis (1791–1862), T. Horsfield, A Catalogue of the Mammalia in The Museum of The Hon. East-India Company (London, 1851), p. iv.

17

Chapter Three.

18

Royal College of Surgeons, London: Donations Book, 25 October 1820.

19

Chapter Six.

20

The book is now in possession of the National Library of Singapore.

21

BL:NHD 1.

22

Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962), pp. 80–1.

23

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the Norwich entomologist who was a specialist engraver of natural history subjects.24 The fact that Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands contains within its covers a combination of coloured aquatint, lithograph, and line engraved plates makes it exceptional among early 19th century illustrated books, being the first book to contain coloured lithographs of any Indonesian subject, and the second English book to contain handcoloured lithograph plates of birds.25 The book was published in eight parts with 64 coloured and eight uncoloured plates between July 1821 and September 1824 and established Horsfield’s scientific reputation. 26 He had earlier, in April 1820, read a paper on the ‘Systematic Arrangement and Description of Birds from the Island of Java’ to the Linnean Society of London,27 and he was elected a Fellow of the Society in the same year. In 1822, following the resignation of Dr. William Elford Leach (1790–1836), he applied for the post of Assistant Keeper in the Zoological Department of the British Museum, but his application was unsuccessful against stronger competition.28 He devoted his time increasingly to zoological matters both inside and outside the East India Company Museum, taking a prominent part in the activities of the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society of London and contributing several papers John Curtis was a friend of Horsfield and a member of the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society and of the Zoological Society of London. Later, in 1855, he became President of the Entomological Society. He was an accomplished engraver of natural history subjects, especially entomological plates, and those in his British Entomology; being Illustrations and Descriptions of the Genera of Insects found in Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1824–39) have never been surpassed for accuracy or beauty of presentation. The work is referred to in passing by Horsfield in his A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company (London, 1828–9), p. 11n*. For some reason Curtis was not engaged to illustrate this particular book, although his brother, Charles M. Curtis (1795–1839), was responsible for the drawings of three of the plates. John Curtis later engraved a number of the botanical plates for Horsfield’s Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores (London, 1838–52).

24

The first English natural history book to contain handcoloured lithograph plates of birds was William Swainson’s Zoological Illustrations (London, 1820–33). The second was almost certainly Horsfield’s book because Part I, containing four bird plates, was issued in July 1821, thus preceding Plate 55, a handcoloured lithograph in John Latham’s A General History of Birds (London, 1821–8), which is generally considered to be the second appearance of a lithograph in a British bird book.

25

The publication dates of each of the eight parts are: Part 1, July 1821; Part 2, November 1821; Part 3, April 1822; Part 4, July 1822; Part 5, January 1823; Part 6, June 1823; Part 7, January 1824; Part 8, September 1824. These differ from the dates given by G.M. Mathews, ‘Dates of Ornithological Works’, The Austral Record, vol. IV, pt. 1 (1920), pp. 1–27, which are simply the dates printed on the plates and bear only an approximate relationship to the dates of issue.

26

Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1820), pp. 133–200.

27

A.E. Gunther, The Founders of Science at the British Museum 1753–1900 (Halesworth Suffolk, 1980), pp. 49–52. There is a letter in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, supporting Horsfield’s candidature for the post at the British Museum from the anatomist, Dr. Joshua Brookes (1761–1833), in which he states that Horsfield was ‘a Gentleman, who from my personal knowledge of him, and as far as my information extends in Natural History[,] is fully entitled to your support on this occasion’.

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to The Zoological Journal.29 Together with other members of the Club he also participated in the deliberations which led to the formation of the Zoological Society of London in 1826 after Raffles returned to England,30 serving as its first Assistant Secretary until 1828, when he was obliged to resign because his time was ‘too fully occupied at the India House and [with] other duties’.31 He served on the Council of the Geological Society of London from 1823 to 1826 during the period when the Charter was under negotiation, and he was a founder member of the (Royal) Entomological Society of London in 1833. He was also a member of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Imperial Academy Naturæ Curiosorum, and a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia32 and the Historical Society of Philadelphia. In 1828 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He continued to serve as Curator of the East India Company Museum on a guinea a day until the death of Sir Charles Wilkins on 13 May 1836, when he applied to succeed him as Librarian. The Committee of Finance and Home, however, recommended on 15 June 1836 that the Librarian’s post should be left vacant, that the Library should be placed under the control of the Secretary, and that Horsfield’s salary should be increased to £500 per annum. The recommendation was rejected by the Court of Directors and on 13 July 1836 it was resolved instead that Horace Hayman Wilson (1786–1860), Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford University, should be appointed Librarian on the same salary as Horsfield, and that the East India Company Museum ‘be placed under the charge & Superintendence of Dr Horsfield who has established a high character as a Naturalist, and who has for several years been employed in the Library & Museum … and that during the occasional absence of Professor Wilson, Dr Horsfield be required to take charge of the Library as well as the Museum’.33

Papers published in The Zoological Journal, vol. I (1825), pp. 542–54; vol. II (1826), pp. 221–34; vol. III (1828), pp. 236–40; Horsfield and Vigors, vol. III (1828), pp. 246–9; Horsfield and Vigors, vol. III (1828–9), pp. 449–51; vol. IV (1828–9), pp. 105–13, 380–4; vol. IV (1829), pp. 238–40.

29

Chapter Twelve.

30

P.C. Mitchell, Centenary History of the Zoological Society of London (London, 1929), p. 37.

31

In a letter to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia dated 31 July 1827, Horsfield acknowledged receiving his Diploma as a Correspondent of the Academy and expressed ‘the highest sense of the honour conferred on me by this election’. The Diploma was dated May 1826. This and three other letters dated 22 June 1848, 2 November 1848, and 8 March 1849 from Horsfield to the Corresponding or Recording Secretary are in the Academy’s Manuscript Collections: Coll. 567.

32

R. Desmond, The India Museum 1801–1879 (London, 1982), p. 33.

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Horsfield and Wilson occupied separate rooms, with a larger third room serving for the reception of visitors to the Museum. In 1837, however, a room formerly occupied by the East India Company’s Surveyor was taken over as a natural history gallery for the Museum, and in 1839 three more small rooms belonging to the Surveyor’s Office were added to the Library and Museum. During the 1820s and early 1830s Horsfield was not much troubled by visitors to the Museum and he was able to devote most of his time to his own work; but the number increased considerably during the 1840s, rising to more than 20,000 by 1845.34 Among those who visited the Museum in 1848 were Henry Walter Bates (1825–1892) and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), the future author of The Malay Archipelago (London, 1869), 35 who were about to depart for the Amazon. Wallace records in his autobiography that Horsfield showed them the stout oblong boxes, measuring some three feet long, two feet wide, and two feet deep, in which he had brought back his large collections of butterflies from Java.36 An earlier visitor to the Museum was more critical of what he found, particularly the absence of any catalogue apart from some ‘tattered loose leaves, in manuscript’.37 Obviously Horsfield had not regarded it as part of his duty to compile a list of the Museum’s contents during the period he was in charge, but in 1848, with the appointment of Frederic Moore (1830–1907) as his Assistant,38 the

Ibid., pp. 36, 38.

34

Publication details of A.R. Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago (London, 1869) are given in the Introduction to the facsimile reprint of the American edition published by Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, in 1986.

35

A.R. Wallace, My Life A Record of Events and Opinions (London, 1905), vol. I, pp. 265–6. Wallace described the inside of the boxes as having vertical grooves, about two inches apart, ‘to hold the boards, corked on both sides, on which the insects were pinned’, the advantages being that a large number of specimens could be packed in a smaller space than in the older-style store boxes, ‘while any insects which should accidentally get loose would fall to the bottom, where a small vacant space was left, and do no injury to other specimens’. It seemed to Wallace and Bates such an excellent design that they had a case made like it and sent home in it their first collections from South America. However, they found that it was very inconvenient and quite unsuited to travelling collectors and therefore returned to their former store boxes. It is extraordinary to reflect on this meeting between the 75-year-old American naturalist of Indonesia, and the 25-year-old Wallace, the later proponent, with Darwin, of the Theory of Natural Selection. The 50 years in age which separated them at the time then grew to the enormous span of 140 years between the date of Horsfield’s birth and that of Wallace’s death in November 1913, dividing the fundamentally ‘stagnant’ world (to use Wallace’s phrase) of 18th-century science, in which Horsfield was grounded, from the wonders of 20th-century science which Wallace witnessed before his death.

36

A.J. Arberry, The India Office Library. A Historical Sketch (London, 1967), p. 50.

37

Frederic Moore was appointed Assistant in the East India Company Museum on 31 May 1848 ‘on a disestablished basis’, and later became Temporary Writer and Assistant Curator before retiring on 31 December 1879, when the Museum was abolished. He was 18 years old when he joined Horsfield as his Assistant, and probably contributed little to the first catalogue on mammals, but his contribution to their last catalogue on Lepidoptera was substantial, as he wrote all the ‘descriptive part’. After his retirement he published a three-volume work on The Lepidoptera of Ceylon (London, 1880–7).

38

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mammals were put in order and he recommended that a catalogue should be printed giving the ‘locality, habits and most interesting features, particularly of such subjects as have more recently been discovered and described by gentlemen in the Company’s service’.39 In 1851 appeared A Catalogue of the Mammalia in The Museum of The Hon. East-India Company, and in 1854 and 1858 the two-volume A Catalogue of the Birds in The Museum of The Hon. East-India Company, written in collaboration with Moore.40 Both titles were printed in 500 copies, but with variant title pages.41 A further collaborative effort between Horsfield and Moore resulted in the publication of another two-volume work in 1858 and 1860, A Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects in The Museum of The Hon. East-India Company, 100 copies of which were issued with coloured plates.42 These catalogues included subjects from his own and Raffles’s natural history collections from Indonesia. This was Horsfield’s last work and was largely compiled during 1857, his 85th year. Its compilation must have afforded him great satisfaction as it completed the premature attempts made by himself and William Sharp Macleay (1792–1865) in the 1820s to describe the numerous species of Indonesian Lepidoptera and Coleoptera he had collected and arranged as part of the entomological collection of the East India Company Museum. In 1825 Macleay issued Part I of his Annulosa Javanica, or An Attempt to Illustrate the Natural Affinities and Analogies of the Insects Collected in Java by Thomas Horsfield, M.D. F.L. & G.S. and Deposited by Him in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company, which commenced a description of the Coleopterous insects in the Museum in an arrangement based on his Horæ Entomologicæ (London, 1819–21).43 It was only partly issued because Macleay was shortly afterwards appointed British Commissioner at Havana and the work had to be abandoned.44 Desmond, India Museum, p. 65.

39

C.F. Cowan, ‘Horsfield, Moore, and the Catalogues of the East India Company Museum’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 7, pt. 3 (1975), pp. 273–84; Desmond, India Museum, p. 65.

40

Cowan, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 7, pt. 3 (1975), pp. 273–84.

41

Desmond, India Museum, p. 65.

42

The work was published in June 1825 in royal quarto format, with the single plate coloured at 12s., or plain at 10s.6d. The plate was engraved by H. Weddell after a drawing by John Curtis (note 24). The work was published without a title-page, the title appearing on the printed wrappers. An abridged French translation, containing five plates (two uncoloured), was published in Paris in 1833: Annulosa Javanica ou Description des Insects de Java … Précédés d’un extrait des Horæ Entomologicæ du néme auteur.

43

William Sharp Macleay, Horsfield’s ‘highly respected friend’, was the eldest son of the entomologist, Alexander McLeay (Chapter Five, note 9) His Horæ Entomologicæ, published in two volumes between 1819 and 1821, propounded the circular or quinary system of classification. He was appointed Commissioner of Arbitration in the British and Spanish court for the abolition of the slave trade at Havana in 1825, and five years later a Commissary Judge. He was appointed Judge in 1836, and in the same year he returned to the United Kingdom. In 1839 he left for New South Wales and died there in 1865. In the Library of the Linnean Society

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This was a great disappointment to Horsfield who, though lacking Macleay’s expertise, decided to undertake the task of bringing his ‘entomological labours in Java’ to the notice of the British public. With the assistance of the zoologist William Swainson (1789–1855), and the entomologist George Samouelle (d. 1846) of the British Museum, he commenced the publication of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company, Part I of which was issued in March 1828.45 It was not intended to be a continuation of Macleay’s Annulosa Javanica, but a description of Indonesian (and Indian) Lepidoptera based on the principles of the metamorphosis of the insects by an arrangement of the larvae and chrysalides in natural groups.46 Part II was issued in June 1829, after which publication ceased because, as Horsfield stated later, the work had been ‘undertaken on a plan which could not insure public support’.47 He experienced an even greater disappointment in the delay in publishing the descriptions of his Herbarium of Indonesian plants. Robert Brown had undertaken this task in 1821 and, after sorting out the duplicates, had concluded that the Herbarium contained a total of 2,196 species.48 The drawings of the plants prepared by Horsfield’s artists in Indonesia proved to be defective in floristic detail and Brown began to make the necessary dissections to enable new drawings to be made. The Directors of the East India Company advanced 125 guineas as a contribution towards the cost of preparing the plates, but this sum was expended by the end of 1825 in payments for drawings and engravings made by John and Charles Curtis, M. Hart, and H. Wedell.49 Brown failed to complete any of the descriptions and Horsfield wrote to him in 1824 requesting him to announce in the final part of his Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands, ‘the of London there is a letter from Horsfield to Macleay dated 30 August 1831 in which he raised the possibility of continuing the publication of Annulosa Javanica, but obviously to no avail. The work was published in royal quarto at £1.11s. 6d., or with proof impressions, and all eight plates coloured, at £2.2s. The plates were engraved by John Swaine (1775–1860) and Charles Fox (1794–1849) after drawings by Charles M. Curtis (note 24), J.H. Newton, and J.G. Doppert in Java (Chapter Three). The work was intended to be completed in six parts. No title-page was issued, the title appearing on the printed wrappers. Part I of the work was reviewed in The Zoological Journal, vol. IV (1828), pp. 115–25.

45

Horsfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable EastIndia Company, p. 11. He states (p. 2) that while his work was not a continuation of Macleay’s Annulosa Javanica, ‘yet it will be conducted with a steady reference to that work and to the Horæ Entomologicæ’.

46

Horsfield, A Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects in The Museum of the Hon. East-India Company (London, 1858–60), p. 3.

47

For the location of Horsfield’s botanical collections, see M.J. van Steenis-Kruseman, ‘Malaysian Plant Collectors and Collections being a Cyclopaedia of Botanical Exploration in Malaysia …’, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis (Jakarta, 1950), ser. I, vol. 1, p. 244.

48

D.J. Mabberley, Jupiter Botanicus Robert Brown of the British Museum (Braunschweig, 1985), p. 304.

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outline or prospectus of your intentions &c. with the Botanical materials from Java, and, if possible, such a notion of the Genera &c. as will prevent their anticipation’.50 Brown produced something, but apparently only a general statement of the kind that appeared on the back of the printed wrapper of Part I of Macleay’s Annulosa Javanica in 1825.51 Despite constant pressure from Horsfield,52 it was another 13 years before Brown produced sufficient material to enable Part 1 of the work to be issued. It had originally been intended that it would be published in eight parts, but because of the delay Horsfield decided in 1831 to reduce this number to four, each of which was to contain ‘from forty to fifty pages of letter-press, closely printed, and twenty uncoloured plates’.53 This arrangement was again changed in April 1838 before the issue of Part 1, when in another printed Prospectus he stated that the work would consist of only two parts, each containing 25 plates and 100 pages of letterpress, and that Brown’s assistant in the Botanical Department of the British Museum, John Joseph Bennett, had agreed to prepare for the press ‘such articles as were left unfinished by Mr. Brown, and likewise to cooperate generally in the preparation of the work’.54 In the event, when Part 1 was published in July 1838, it contained 104 pages of letterpress and 25 plates. No letterpress accompanied plate XXV, and in a printed slip dated 30 June 1838 subscribers to the work were informed that this would be supplied in Part 2, ‘the Printing of which will be continued without interruption, agreeably to the conditions in the Prospectus’. However, although all the other descriptions by Bennett were ready for printing, the descriptive matter relating to plate XXV, which was Brown’s responsibility, failed to materialise. In an angry letter dated 12 March 1839 Horsfield set out the sorry story of Brown’s continued procrastination going back some 18 years:55 Horsfield to Brown, n.d., NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 107r–107v.

50

‘In this Work will be given Figures and Descriptions of the more remarkable new or imperfectly known Plants, contained in a Herbarium of Two Thousand Species, collected in the Island of Java, by Dr. Horsfield, and deposited by him in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company. The size of the Work will be a large Quarto. Each Plant will be figured on a separate Plate; the subjects selected will not exceed One Hundred; and the Work will appear in Numbers, containing Eight Plates. Both the Engravings and Descriptions are in a state of forwardness, and it is proposed to publish the first Number early in the course of the present season’.

51

Letters from Horsfield to Brown, 1824–51, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 107r–169v.

52

Printed Prospectus by Dr. Horsfield, n.d. but 1831, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’.

53

Printed Prospectus by Dr. Horsfield, 2 April 1838, Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Letters to John Lindley A/K.

54

NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, vols. 152r–153v.

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Pardon me if I again address you on the subject of the Pl. Jav. Rariores and state that since I called on you at the Museum a month ago, I ordered an Impression of such MS as might be set up by the Printer,56 when I received the Quarto Sheet of which I enclose a copy and which has been standing in type since August last year. Should the work be carried on with so much delay it cannot be published for many years, if at all. I therefore once more request you respectfully but earnestly, to be pleased to bring to a close the 25th Article (in expectation of which the first part was circulated in an imperfect state) and to send it to the Printer. I shall not now repeat the reasons I have often urged to you, but I beg you to consider that the work has been in hand Eighteen years – the original selection was begun in 1821 and the engraving commenced in 1822 – and that now Four years (within a month) have elapsed since I proposed and pressed the Coöperation of Mr Bennett to expedite it. Sensible as I may be of the importance of your time and labour, I beg you to allow me to say distinctly that when the Work was agreed on and commenced I could not possibly apprehend or contemplate the delay which has taken place. Already in 1824 the Title of the Work was prepared by yourself and circulated, as in course of preparation, on the last number of my Zoological Researches. In 1825 you allowed it to be announced as in a state of progress with the first part of the Annulosa Javanica. Subsequently several years passed without any progress being made. In 1831 a new Prospectus was printed and circulated, but still the Work did not advance. In 1835 I urged the plan of associating Mr Bennett with you and it was distinctly understood that the work should be carried on regularly and with all convenient expedition; and, as far as I remember about 18 months or two years were considered sufficient for its completion. But Four years have now elapsed; and if you think yourself conscientiously authorized to devote 10 to 12 months to investigations connected with One article – for No 25 should have been ready in April last when the prospectus was prepared – you will allow me to request you to consider the inconvenience which this creates in various points of view. I do not allude to pecuniary considerations only (but even these are of importance in case of any accident to myself) but, independently of these, the interest of the subjects passes away, the public is disappointed and our neighbours in Holland express their dissatisfaction respecting the uncertainty to which they are left about our subjects. I cannot conceal from you that I am extremely unpleasantly situated in this state of things. I feel myself loaded and oppressed by a burden and by an intolerable responsibility – which cramps all other efforts I might make with my Materials.

Richard Taylor, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, London.

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I therefore repeat the prayer that you would complete the 25th article, and also second my views respecting a more speedy progress of the Work; and to learn your sentiments on this head I will take the liberty of waiting on you, if my health permits in the course of the present week.

Horsfield was obliged to apologise to Brown for this outburst,57 which in any case had little effect because it was not until May 1840 that Part 2 of the work, containing pages 105–96 and plates XXVI–XL, was published, by which time it had been decided to revert to the former plan of issuing the work in four parts. Part 3, containing pages 197–238 and plates XLI–XLV, was issued in November 1844, and Part 4, containing pages 239–58, the title-page, dedication leaf, geographical preface, postscript, summary of the Herbarium, map, and plates XLVI–L, in May 1852. The parts were sold either with coloured or uncoloured plates, except for plates IV, V, and XVII, which were issued uncoloured.58 The colouring of the plates was not always satisfactory, as it was determined by a combination of Horsfield’s memory, his notes, and by dried specimens of the plants in his Herbarium. Only 100 coloured sets of Part 1 were issued, of which 40 were for subscribers and 40 for sale in Berlin, and it is unlikely that this number was exceeded for the other parts. The East India Company authorised the purchase of 40 copies of the work,59 presumably most of them uncoloured. Exactly how many uncoloured copies were published is unknown. The book was described by Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) as ‘one of the most profound and accurate botanical works of the day’,60 and more recently by H.C.D. de Wit (b.1909) as ‘phytographically as well as historically a classic’,61 but it did little for Horsfield’s reputation as a collector of Indonesian flora. The long delay in publication, due to Brown’s procrastination and unwillingness to deal with complete floristic regions,62 meant that his botanical discoveries were pre-empted by C.L. Blume’s works, notably his Bijdragen tot de Flora van Nederlandsch Indië (Batavia, 1825–6), and his splendid Flora Javæ (Brussels, Horsfield to Brown, 14 March 1839, NHM:Botanical Library: ‘Horsfield Papers on the Flora of Java’, fols. 154r–155r.

57

The prices of the various parts were Part 1: £2.10s. plain, £3.10s. coloured; Part 2: £1.10s. plain, £2.10s. coloured; Part 3: 15s. plain, £1.1s. coloured, and Part 4: £1.1s. plain, £1.10s. coloured.

58

Desmond, India Museum, p. 62.

59

J.D. Hooker and T. Thomson, Flora Indica (London, 1855), p. 54.

60

Van Steenis, Flora Malesiana, ser. I, vol. 42, C.

61

Mabberley, Jupiter Botanicus, p. 401.

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Leiden, 1828–51) and Rumphia, Sive Commentationes Botanicæ Imprimus de Plantis Indiæ Orientalis (Leiden, Amsterdam, 1835–49). John Lindley (1799–1865), 63 writing anonymously in The Gardeners’ Chronicle of 26 June 1852, when reviewing Part 4 of the work, put the matter bluntly, but correctly: It was the misfortune of Dr. Horsfield to place the very important collections of plants which he formed in Java in the early part of this century, in the hands of a gentleman, who to an extensive acquaintance with the details of systematical botany adds habits of procrastination, concerning which we shall only say that they are fortunately unparalleled in the annals of natural history. One consequence has been that a work commenced about the year 1820, could not find its way into light till 1838, and has only arrived at an abortive end in 1852, with an account of just 50 species of plants out of 2196, which Dr. Horsfield had placed in the editor’s hands. The fatigue of describing these 50 in the course of 30 years was moreover found to be so excessive that a second editor had to be added to the first, in order that the Herculean labour might be accomplished. Another consequence has been, that the honour to which Dr. Horsfield had a most unquestionable claim, has passed away into the hands of the Dutch and other continental botanists, and that he now stands before the world as the poor collector, in Java, of about 50 plants, (several of which had been known before), during the long period which elapsed between the year 1800, when he first visited Batavia, and 1819, when he quitted the island. A greater wrong could not have been done him than has been thus inflicted, and we at least feel bound to protest against the treatment which he has received, and which few other men would have borne.

The last part of Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores was published in May 1852, and in the same month Horsfield entered his 80th year. He continued working energetically with Frederic Moore in the preparation of the catalogues of the East India Company Museum and he remained in charge of the Museum until 1858, when, as a result of reorganisation, he was left with responsibility for what was now designated the ‘Old’ Museum of Natural History, while the ‘New’ Museum, concerned with the products, manufactures, and arts and crafts of India, was placed under the control of John Forbes Watson (1827–1892). With the establishment of the India Office in 1858 the fate of the India Museum became uncertain, and after being temporarily accommodated at Fife House in Whitehall during the 1860s, and then on the third There are two letters from Horsfield to John Lindley dated 18 August 1829 [?] and 9 March 1839 in the Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Letters to John Lindley A/K fols. 492r–495r.

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floor of the newly built India Office in Whitehall, its collections were despatched in 1874 to the Museum in South Kensington. Five years later the main zoological collections, including those of Raffles and Horsfield, were transferred to the British Museum and the botanical collections to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Before that, duplicates from both Horsfield’s botanical and zoological collections were given to the Linnean Society of London, the Zoological Society of London, the Muséum de Genève, and other institutions.64 Horsfield died on 24 July 1859 at his house, No. 29 Chalcot Villas, Adelaide Road, Camden Town, London, in his 87th year, leaving a wife and two children. During the 1820s and early 1830s he had lived a rather itinerant life in London with addresses at Norfolk Street; No. 6 Castle Street, Holborn; No. 2 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn; and from at least 1835 until 1849, at No. 20 Stonefield Street, Islington, not far from where Raffles had lived when he worked as a young clerk in the Secretary’s office in East India House. Horsfield was interred in the Moravian Church burial ground at Chelsea on 29 July 1859, and his grave in the western plot of the cemetery still survives. He was a lifelong member of the Moravian Church and had been admitted to the London Moravian Congregation in Fetter Lane in December 1820. His obituary notice in the Proceedings of the Royal Society described him as a man of ‘retired habits, but of amiable character and unblemished integrity’.65 His natural history notes, diaries, and other papers were all destroyed by the executors of his will, and they also removed his personal library of natural history books from the India Museum. The sum of £53 was sanctioned by the India Office to buy back from Messrs. Bernard Quaritch, the London booksellers, such essential works as G.R. Gray’s The Genera of Birds (London, 1844–9), Linnaeus’s Systema Naturæ (Vienna, 1767–70), and T.C. Jerdon’s Illustrations of Indian Ornithology (Madras, 1847).66 His other books were dispersed and these have found their way into public and private collections – the tangible relics of a pioneer naturalist of Indonesia and one of Raffles’s earliest scientific friends.

Desmond, India Museum, pp. 52, 62; C. Weber. ‘Oiseaux et mammifères de la collection Horsfield au Muséum de Genève’, Musées de Genève, no. 258 (1985), pp. 2–6.

64

Vol. X (1860), p. xii.

65

Desmond, India Museum, p. 66.

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Chapter Nine

The Scottish Naturalist William Jack in Penang, Singapore and Sumatra ‘The warmth of his heart and enthusiasm in whatever his head and heart approved, united us in the bonds of the closest friendship, and his loss has been to me as severe as that of a brother’ Raffles to Principal Jack, Singapore, 1 January 1823

Monument to Dr. William Jack Calcutta Botanic Garden Courtesy of James Simpson and Henry Noltie

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T

he death of Dr. Arnold at Padang on 26 July 1818 left Raffles without an experienced naturalist and in a letter to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, dated 13 August 1818, he expressed the hope that Sir Joseph Banks would supply Arnold’s place by sending out from England ‘some active enterprizing character’ to assist him in his natural history researches.1 It was, however, Raffles himself who found his own replacement for Arnold after he arrived at Calcutta on 29 September of that year in the company of Lady Raffles and her brother, William Hollamby Hull (1790–1862), to gain support from the Governor-General Marquess of Hastings for his expansionist policies in Sumatra, including his actions against the Dutch at Palembang. These policies, which aimed at containing Dutch political influence in the island, were disavowed by Hastings and his colleagues in the Supreme Council, who considered that British interests were better served by adopting an alternative policy of establishing a new trading station at the southern entrance to the Melaka Straits.2 Raffles and his wife were guests of the Governor-General at his residence at Barakpur, but while he was in Calcutta Raffles was also able to visit the Botanic Garden at Sibpur and show the Superintendent, Dr. Nathaniel Wallich (1785–1854),3 drawings of the Rafflesia arnoldi and discuss with him his plans for future botanical research in Sumatra. Wallich introduced him to a guest he had staying with him, a young Scottish surgeon named Dr. William Jack, on sick-leave from the Regiment of Artillery, and Raffles immediately engaged him as a botanist to replace Dr. Arnold under the guise of ‘Surgeon to his family’.4 Jack was 23 years old when he met Raffles, and he lived only another four years, but he was by far the most gifted of all the naturalists directly associated with him, being described as ‘unquestionably one of the most able botanists ever to become associated with the tremendously rich and then very little known flora of the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago’, and as one who accomplished more of lasting value than any other botanist in such a limited time. Though few in number, Jack’s publications are of a very high order, and his skill in diagnostic description was such that later botanists were able to reduce a number of his identifications Raffles to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 13 August 1818, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24.

1

John Bastin, The Founding of Singapore 1819 (Singapore, 2012), pp. 10–23.

2

Chapter Ten.

3

Jack also acted unofficially as Raffles’s Private Secretary. See Chapter Ten, note 56.

4

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even in the absence of Jack types.5 His great contemporary Robert Brown praised him as an ‘accurate botanist’,6 and Wallich described him after his death as ‘an eminent Botanist’, whose merits had been ‘equalled by few, [and] exceeded by none’,7 and as a man possessing ‘first rate talents, with the utmost suavity of temper and urbanity of manners’.8 Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), the early friend of Dr. Joseph Arnold,9 who later made a close study of Jack’s botanical writings, and reprinted them in some of his own publications, affirmed that his ‘botanical talents were of the first order’. To Raffles, with whom he lived on intimate terms for nearly four years, Jack provided one of the most intellectually satisfying personal relationships of his adult life, affording him not only the scientific expertise he required, but also the youthful energy and enthusiasm for conducting his natural history enquiries. He was Raffles’s essential aide during most of the time he spent in west Sumatra, acting not only as his scientific mentor, but also as his secretary, physician and friend, whose company was ‘a never-failing resource of pleasure’. His death from pulmonary tuberculosis10 on 15 September 1822 was to Raffles ‘as severe as that of a brother’.11 ‘[W]e had become so intimate, and our future plans had become so interwoven with each other’s views in life’, he explained to William Marsden, ‘that I could not have felt the loss of a brother more than I did his’.12 E.D. Merrill, ‘William Jack’s Genera and Species of Malaysian Plants’, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, vol. XXXIII, no. 3 (1952), p. 200.

5

R. Brown, ‘An Account of a new Genus of Plants, named Rafflesia’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), p. 229. Brown refers to him on the same page as ‘my friend Mr. Jack’, having met him when Jack was in London 1811, a fact seemingly confirmed in Raffles’s letter to Banks dated 4 March 1819: ‘I believe he is not unknown to Mr. [Brown] …’ (The Straits Times, 24 October 1932).

6

Wallich to Supreme Government of India, n.d., cited W. J. Hooker, ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants. By William Jack. With a brief Memoir of the Author, and Extracts from his Correspondence’, Companion to the Botanical Magazine; being a Journal … (London, 1835–6), vol. 1, p. 147.

7

Wallich to Raffles, 2 November 1822, cited R. Hanitch, ‘Letters of Nathaniel Wallich relating to the Establishment of Botanical Gardens in Singapore’, JSBRAS, no. 65 (1913), p. 44; reprinted JMBRAS, vol. 42, pt. 1 (1969), p. 161. Wallich uses the same words in a note in W. Roxburgh, Flora Indica; or Descriptions of Indian Plants, … to which are added Descriptions of Plants more recently discovered by Nathaniel Wallich, edited by William Carey (Mission Press, Serampore, 1820–4), vol. II, p.203, n. +.

8

Chapter Seven.

9

Merrill, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, vol. XXXIII, no. 3 (1952), p. 200, gives pulmonary tuberculosis as the cause of his death, whereas M.J. van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis (Jakarta, 1950) ser. I, vol. I, p. 256, citing Raffles, affirms that it was acute malaria. See below Raffles’s letter to Jack’s father dated 1 January 1823.

10

Raffles to Principal Jack, 1 January 1823, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 146.

11

Raffles to Marsden, 30 November 1822, Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), p. 526.

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On the day of his death, Raffles wrote to Peter Auber at the East India House:13 We were to have embarked this morning for Singapore, but the wind has proved foul, and it was ordained that we should remain another day, to bury our dear and invaluable friend, William Jack. Poor fellow! a finer head or heart there never was, and whether as a bosomfriend or a scientific assistant, he was invaluable to me. He had been long ill, and returned from Java about a fortnight ago, after an unsuccessful visit for a change of air. We embarked him yesterday morning in the Layton for the Cape, and he died this morning before the ship weighed her anchor. I am so depressed in spirits, and altogether so incompetent to the task of writing to his father, at this hurried moment, when all is confusion for my embarkation, that I must postpone doing it, till I arrive at Singapore, where I hope to meet Robert Jack, his brother, but as bad news flies apace, I beg you will satisfy him of the fact, should a reference be made to you, and at the same time assure him that the loss is as deeply deplored by his friends here, as it is possible it can be by his family at home; and that for myself, I am so overwhelmed by the misfortune, that I cannot command myself to enter into particulars. His character and talents stood deservedly high with all who knew him, and if any thing can afford relief to a parent’s distress, on the loss of such a son, it ought to be the reflection, that he has performed the course he was destined to run with honour and integrity, and that his sphere of usefulness was as extended as his talents and ability, themselves of no common order, would command.

William Jack was born on 29 January 1795 at King’s College, Aberdeen, where his father, William Jack Sr. (1768–1854), was Regent.14 He was the eldest of a family of six boys and four girls,15 and the favourite of his mother, Grace Raffles to Auber, 15 September 1822, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 146. The letter, with numerous textual changes, is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 521.

13

William Jack Sr. was born on 12 May 1768, the son of the Reverend William Jack of Northmavine, Scotland, and educated at King’s College, Aberdeen, where he graduated M.A. in 1785. He studied Medicine at Edinburgh and was admitted M.D. at King’s College, Aberdeen, in 1788. He was appointed Regent of the College on 11 April 1794 and 18 days later he married Grace Bolt (b. 10 January 1773), sixth child of Andrew Bolt of Berry (1737–1806) and his wife, Elizabeth Sinclair. William Jack Sr. was appointed Professor of Mathematics in 1800 and in the same year sub-Principal of King’s College. In 1811 he exchanged this chair for that of Moral Philosophy and four years later he was appointed Principal of King’s College, a post he held until his death on 9 February 1854. His failing eyesight made it necessary for others to act for him from 1847, but counting the period when he was Regent, he held office in the College for a total of 60 years. His wife Grace died on 27 April 1850, aged 76 (Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ (ed.) H. Scott (Edinburgh, 1928), vol. VII, p. 367; P.J. Anderson, Officers and Graduates of University & King’s College, Aberdeen, 1495–1860 (Aberdeen, 1893), pp. 28, 42–3, 64–5, 137, 259. Additional information kindly supplied by Dr. D.M. Johnston, Assistant Archivist, Aberdeen University Library, King’s College, Aberdeen, and I.F. Maciver, formerly Keeper in the Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland).

14

The names of the Jack children with their birth dates are given in Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, vol. VII, p. 367, and biographies of two of the brothers, Alexander Jack (1805–1857) and Andrew T.W. Jack (1822–1857),

15

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Bolt,16 having been born exactly nine months after her marriage. He gave early indications of intelligence by reading fluently with total comprehension when he was three years old, and by publicly reciting, with suitable actions, Pitt’s celebrated reply to Horace Walpole.17 He possessed a quick retentive memory and learned the rudiments of Latin before he entered the Grammar School in Old Aberdeen at the age of six. The school was in charge of Ewen MacLachlan (1775–1822) and Jack was invariably top of his class, even though it contained boys several years his senior. At the age of nine he was able to read Virgil fluently and translate passages of the Eclogues into English verse, and when he was twelve his master declared him qualified to enter the Greek class at King’s College, where he attended lectures in Greek and Mathematics during the following two sessions. He commenced the study of Botany and French shortly afterwards, being assisted in his botanical studies by the Professor of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen, William Duncan (c.1750–1815), who recommended his pupil to study James Lee’s Introduction to Botany,18 and compare the specimens he collected with the descriptions in Linnaeus’s Genera Plantarum19 and the Reverend John Lightfoot’s Flora Scotica (London, 1777).20 Jack’s remarkable memory, and his love of beauty of form and colour in nature, meant that he never forgot a plant once he had both of whom were killed at Cawnpur in June 1857, are recorded in ODNB. Alexander Jack, the fifth son, then a Captain in the 30th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry, was among the original contributors to the first volume of the Calcutta Journal of Natural History (Calcutta, 1841), and in the same volume (pp. 553–7) there is an extract from one of his letters in which it is stated that he was very busy in collecting birds, spiders and fishes for his correspondent, as well as Vespertilionidæ for Dr. Horsfield. It is likely that it was at his suggestion that M’Clelland reprinted his brother William’s papers on ‘Malayan Plants’ in Volume IV (1844), pp. xviii, [1]–62, 159–231, 305–74 + Tabs. See Benjamin C. Stone, ‘A Note on the Repaged Reprint by William Griffiths of Jack’s “Descriptions of Malayan Plants” (Calcutta, 1843)’, Bartonia, no. 57 (1991), pp. 32–5. F.J.G[rant], ‘The Family of Bolt’, Shetland News, 14 December 1896.

16

The reply of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708–78) was made in 1741 during a debate in Parliament on Walpole’s bill calling for an increase in the number of seamen. It was addressed to Horace Walpole (1678– 1757), brother of the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), first Earl of Orford, who claimed that Pitt ‘may have contracted his habits of oratory by conversing more with those of his own age than with such as have had more opportunities of acquiring knowledge.’ Pitt’s famous reply began: ‘The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has … charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience’. The words, or something like them, were those of Pitt but his speech as it appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine for November 1741 was the work of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

17

James Lee, An Introduction to Botany … extracted from the works of Dr. Linnaeus, with an Appendix containing upwards of two thousand English names of plants, referred to their proper titles in the Linnean System (London, 1760). The work is said to be the first introduction to the Linnean system of botany published in England.

18

The early English translations of the works of Linnaeus are listed in David M. Knight, Natural Science Books in English 1600–1900 (London, 1972), pp. 92–3.

19

The Reverend John Lightfoot, Flora Scotica: or, a Systematic Arrangement in the Linnean method of the native plants of Scotland and the Hebrides (London, 1777), 2 vols. The first volume contains Thomas Pennant’s ‘Caledonian Zoology’, which was presumably Jack’s introduction to zoology.

20

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seen it, and even a single leaf was sufficient for him to be able to recall the whole characteristics of the plant. In 1809 he commenced the study of Medicine and was admitted by examination as a member of the Juvenile Medical Society. During his third session he began the study of natural philosophy and made drawings of models of machinery to illustrate mechanical principles. After graduating Master of Arts from St. Andrews University in 1811 at the age of 16, he was prevented from proceeding to Edinburgh to continue his medical studies because of an attack of scarlet fever, but he made good use of his time by taking over Professor Duncan’s classes in natural philosophy when his former master was struck down with paralysis. He also attended classes in Chemistry as well as lectures in Divinity by the well-known theological writer, Gilbert Gerard (1760–1815), and he continued his language studies, becoming fluent in French, Italian and Spanish. His mother later recalled that when he left Scotland for London in October 1811 to attend hospital training and lectures in medicine and surgery he was said by qualified judges to be among the best botanists, chemists, and classical scholars in Scotland.21 In London he became acquainted with a number of scientists and botanists, including Robert Brown,22 and possibly Sir Joseph Banks,23 and he also established an intimate acquaintance with the Attorney-General and later Chief Justice of Common Pleas, Sir Vicary Gibbs (1751–1820), who stated that he had never met a youth with such solid and varied acquirements. Jack’s intention was to present himself before the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln’sInn-Fields in order to gain the necessary qualification to become a Surgeon in one of the East India Company ships, and in a letter to his family dated 1 February 1812 he gave an account of his ordeal:24 Yesterday I passed as Fellow of the College of Surgeons, and with flying colours. Five days were all I had, in which to prepare and go through the previous business. I appeared before my examiners with all the courage I could muster, and having evaded in the Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 124. Hooker’s Memoir of Jack was based on information supplied by Jack’s mother, Grace Jack, so the words are obviously hers. She had great hopes that Raffles would write the Memoir of her son and she corresponded with him on the subject shortly before his death. Letter dated 2 June 1826, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/3.

21

Chapter Seven, note 5.

22

Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 124 states that Jack also became acquainted with Sir Joseph Banks at this time but there is no direct evidence to support this statement. However, Jack corresponded with Banks when he was at Penang in 1819 (Banks Letters, p. 168. See also p. 200).

23

Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), pp. 124–5.

24

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best way that I could, the demand for a certificate of age, they agreed, after a little consultation, to examine me. Sir William Blizard [1743–1835] questioned me, and as it was an extraordinary meeting, the whole Court were judges. My trial was short, and they seemed so well pleased with my replies, that Sir William Blizard said it was unnecessary to put any more questions, as it was evident I understood my subject. Sir James Earle [1755–1817] agreed, and obligingly declared that not one in five hundred would answer so accurately. I retired for a while, and when I returned, the Master put a few questions as to my period of study, &c. I offered to produce my certificate of apprenticeship, but he said, that as I had answered so perfectly, the Court did not require it, and informed me that I had passed. They then congratulated me on my success; one observed that I should be an honour to the Company’s Service, and paid me such compliments as modesty forbids me to repeat.

Sir Vicary Gibbs used his influence to obtain for him an immediate appointment on the Bengal Medical Establishment but before his departure for India Jack spent eight months in Aberdeen with his family. He sailed for India on HCS Baring (H. Templer) on 29 January 1813, his 18th birthday, and arrived at Calcutta early in August, his rank as Assistant Surgeon being dated the 12th of that month. He was attached to the Regiment of Artillery and spent a year at the headquarters of the regiment at Dumdum, eight miles north-east of Calcutta, where he applied himself ‘vigorously’ to learn Hindostani, having earlier acquired some knowledge of Persian. On the outbreak of the Nepal War in October 1814, he served during the operations against Kathmandu and he was a witness to the conclusion of the British defeat at Pursah at the beginning of 1815. After the British capture of Malaun on 15 May 1815 by the army under Sir David Ochterlony (1758–1825), he returned to the cantonment at Dinapur, near Patna, and was engaged briefly in operations at Benares during the cold season.25 At the end of hostilities in 1818 he suffered a severe illness which obliged him to visit Calcutta in the hope of arranging a sea voyage to restore his health. It was while there that he visited the Botanic Garden and made the acquaintance of Wallich, having opened a correspondence with him in the previous year by sending him seeds and a specimen of Lobelia he had found in Nepal which Wallich subsequently confirmed as a new species.26 It is uncertain if Jack took part in the second campaign of the Nepal War in 1816, but he appears to have been stationed at Dinapur during most of 1816 and the whole of 1817. For a detailed account of the Nepal War, see H.T. Prinsep, History of the Political and Military Transactions in India during the Administration of the Marquess of Hastings 1813–1823 (London, 1825), vol. I, pp. 54–213.

25

Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 129.

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Jack was received with ‘great kindness and warmth’ by Wallich, who invited him to stay with him during his visit. ‘Dr. Wallich has kindly insisted on my staying with him to pursue my Botanical researches’, Jack wrote to his family on 19 August 1818, ‘he has an excellent house in a delightful situation, about six miles below Calcutta, where I hope to pass my time most agreeably, free from those temptations to fatigue and exertion which beset me at Calcutta, and where I trust to be so much benefited by ease of body and mind, that my health will improve as fast as it could do from a sea voyage, to which so many inconveniences are attached … I am now engaged in drawing up a paper on some of my discoveries, which I have promised to furnish for a periodical work, about to be printed at the Serampore press, to which Dr. Wallich has agreed to contribute, and he wishes for my aid in the performance. We also propose, some time hence, to undertake jointly a Botanical work, for which we possess ample materials in the immense number of new plants which he has already received, and is daily receiving from that most glorious and unexplored field, Nepaul’.27 These plans were set aside when Raffles visited the Botanic Garden and offered Jack the opportunity of accompanying him to Bengkulu. This unexpected news was relayed by Jack to his family on 10 November 1818: Some days ago, Sir Stamford Raffles, the governor of Sumatra, came here to see the garden, and spent the day, during which Dr. Wallich and I had a long conversation with him, the result of which has been, my agreeing to accompany him to Sumatra, and his promising to forward my views, and in particular, to afford me every facility for exploring the Natural History of that island, where I doubt not to meet with many new and interesting things, by sending which home, I may form some useful connections. I expect to sail, shortly, with Sir Stamford Raffles, in the Company’s cruizer, “Nearchus”. The party will consist of Sir S. and Lady Raffles, two Civilians on the Bencoolen Establishment, an Artillery Officer, and two French Naturalists, who have been recommended to Sir S. Raffles, and whom he employs as such; their subject is to the Animal Kingdom – one of them is a nephew to the celebrated Cuvier. Sumatra being, in part, a volcanic country, I intend to study its Mineralogy as well as its Botany, and have purchased the last edition of Jameson’s Mineralogy, by the aid of which, with two other works on the same subject, and all the observation I can bestow, I hope to make some progress. Sir S. Raffles possesses a large and very scientific library, which he kindly offers to place entirely at my command.28 Ibid., vol. I (1835–6), p. 130.

27

Ibid.

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The two French naturalists mentioned in Jack’s letter were Pierre Diard (1795–1863) and Alfred Duvaucel (1793–1824), the former a pupil of the renowned anatomist and morphologist, George Léopold C.F.D. Baron Cuvier (1769–1832), and the latter his step-son, who, after serving in the French armies, was appointed as a travelling naturalist in India for the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Diard, the more scientifically accomplished of the two, had arrived at Calcutta in 1817, and, after joining Duvaucel in May of the following year, began collecting in the region north of the city. During the seven months prior to their being engaged by Raffles, the two naturalists had despatched to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle a number of important objects, including a description of the Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus Desmarest), based on a full length drawing of the animal, as well as a drawing and skeleton of its head which had been sent to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta by Major William Farquhar (1770–1839), and also a living specimen which had been despatched from Bengkulu to the Barakpur Menagerie by the Acting Resident of Fort Marlborough, George John Siddons (1787–1838), in the same year.29 The two Frenchman had been introduced to Raffles by Charles Milner Ricketts (1776–1867), a member of the Supreme Council, and it was at his suggestion that they agreed to accompany Raffles to Bengkulu.30 The Nearchus (William Maxfield), with Raffles, Lady Raffles, Jack, the Artillery Lieutenant Henry Ralph (1791–1869), and the French naturalists on board, sailed from Calcutta on 7 December 1818, accompanied by the Honourable Company ship Minto (J.S. Criddle). Jack found the first part of the voyage ‘long and tedious’, but the Nearchus eventually landed her passengers at Penang on 31 December. Raffles was immediately drawn into discussions with the Governor of Prince of Wales Island, Colonel John Alexander Bannerman (1759–1819),31 concerning his orders to resolve a dynastic dispute in Aceh,32 and also establish a British base at the entrance of the Melaka Strait for the resort of the country and China trade.33 On the previous day, the former Resident and Commandant of Malacca, Major William Farquhar, had arrived at Penang, and he was now engaged by Raffles to W. Farquhar, ‘Account of a new species of Tapir found in the Peninsula of Malacca’, Asiatic Researches, vol. XIII, no. xi (1820), pp. 417–27. On Siddons, see John Bastin, The British in West Sumatra (1685–1825) (Kuala Lumpur, 1965), n.383.

29

Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p. 158, n.71.

30

Ibid., pp. 160–1, n.84.

31

Lee Kam Hing, The Sultanate of Aceh Relations with the British 1760–1824 (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), pp. 242– 314; T. Puvanarajah and R. Suntharalingam, ‘The Acheh Treaty of 1819’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 2, no. 3 (1961), pp. 36–46.

32

Bastin, Founding of Singapore, pp. 24–79.

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conduct a survey of the islands in the southern Straits to find a suitable location for the British settlement.34 In a letter to Wallich dated 23 January 1819, Jack explained how Raffles had out-manoeuvred the Prince of Wales Island Government by securing a postponement of his mission to Aceh in favour of engaging directly in the mission to the south.35 You probably know that Sir Stamford left Bengal with a commission to settle the affairs of Acheen where two rivals have been contending for power … He has also in view to make some settlements farther to the Eastward, and as these are in fact the most important, he was anxious to make the earliest possible arrangement of the Acheen affairs in order to be more at liberty in proceeding with his other plans. Expedition however forms no part of the political code of Penang, besides which, there has been such a scene of intrigue, and I believe I may add corruption going on here in regard to Acheen as is quite disgusting. … You may easily image that the arrival of a man like Sir Stamford to clear up such a business as this, could not be welcomed by those whose schemes were likely to be overset by the event; and they accordingly determined to throw every possible obstacle in the way. … But they had to do with a man too much their superior. Sir Stamford first intended to have gone to Bencoolen on Lady Raffles’ account, and to have returned to make the final arrangements. The intrigues that were going on here however rendered the execution of that plan impossible, and he was at last obliged to determine on her remaining here, and going himself to Acheen. In the meantime, that the other plans might not be entirely suspended, during the delays of the Acheen business, he employed Major Farquhar to proceed on a mission down the Straits, as, though very desirous of it, he could not go himself. Major Farquhar sailed on the 18th and he was to go in a few days after to Acheen. Now you must know that Sir Stamford had offered to the Governor that if he wished to make a reference to Bengal on the subject of Acheen, that he would delay his proceedings till an answer should arrive and in the meantime pursue his ulterior object, but the Governor was just as averse to these other views, and wished if possible to prevent his accomplishing either, therefore declined the offer, in hopes, by throwing obstacles in the way, to keep him idle here. He was afraid to take any decided step to prevent his going to Acheen till after Major Farquhar should have sailed for fear he should go away on that expedition. But no sooner was Major Farquhar’s ships out of the harbour than he addressed to Sir Stamford the most urgent solicitation that he would suspend all proceedings relative to Acheen till a reply should be received to important Ibid., pp. 33–44.

34

I.H. Burkill, ‘William Jack’s Letters to Nathaniel Wallich, 1819–1821’, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 155–7. Two additional letters from Jack to Wallich dated 22 November 1821 and 27 March 1822 are in the Library of the Wellcome Institute, London.

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references that had already been made to Bengal. … The moment he received this, Sir Stamford took his resolution; Major Farquhar’s ships were but just outside the harbour, and at anchor till next tide: he immediately dispatched intimation to them, ordered the ship in which he was to have proceeded to Acheen to be ready to go to sea immediately, and commenced sending everything on board. This was in the evening, and as soon as everything was arranged for his starting before day-break next morning, he wrote to the Governor to say that he had determined to meet his wishes, and complied with his request of suspending all proceedings relative to Acheen till the arrival of the expected reply, and had in consequence determined to sail next day to overtake Major Farquhar, and that he should return in time to resume the Acheen affairs after the requested delay had been granted.

Farquhar’s brig Ganges, commanded by his son-in-law Francis James Bernard (1796–1843), with the Mercury (J.R. Beaumont) and Nearchus (W. Maxfield), sailed from Penang before Raffles’s ships, the Indiana (James Pearl) and the Enterprise (R. Harris), were able to join them, but they all met up off the Karimun Islands on the evening of 27 January, with the addition of the Bombay Marine ships Investigator and Discovery commanded by Captains Daniel Ross and J.G.F. Crawford. After a survey confirmed the unsuitability of Karimun Besar for a British settlement,36 it was decided to examine a spot on the chart which Ross considered ‘more eligible in point of harbour, cleared of jungle, and advantageous for trade to the N.E. of St. John’s Island’.37 The ships accordingly sailed next morning for Singapore, where on 30 January Raffles signed a provisional Agreement with Temenggong Abdul Rahman allowing the establishment of a trading factory on the island. This arrangement was confirmed on 6 February by a formal Treaty of friendship and alliance concluded with Sultan Husain Mahomed Syah of Johor and Temenggong Abdul Rahman granting the East India Company permission to establish a trading factory at Singapore in return for annual payments of Sp.$5,000 and Sp.$3,000. On the same day Farquhar was appointed Resident and Commandant of the British settlement.38 News of Raffles’s activities at Singapore soon reached Penang, where Jack had been left in medical charge of Lady Raffles, and on 12 February 1819 he conveyed the news to Wallich: ‘We have just had accounts from Sir Stamford, Bastin, Founding of Singapore, pp. 38–9.

36

Flinders Barr, ‘How Singapore was Founded’, Straits Times, 11 October 1937.

37

Bastin, Founding of Singapore, pp. 40–2.

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who has taken possession of Singapura (the City of the Lion) an ancient Capital of the Malays and situated on the Island of Singapore, opposite to Johor’.39 Three days later Raffles arrived back at Penang bringing with him a number of botanical specimens from Singapore, including ‘three new and splendid species of Nepenthes’.40 His attention was now directed to his mission to Aceh but before his departure for Sumatra on 8 March he had discussions with Jack about the terms of his engagement, which had not been touched on since leaving Calcutta. ‘He has in consequence’, Jack informed Wallich, ‘addressed (pro forma) a letter to me requesting me to accompany him on his further voyage to the Eastward, and offering me the appointment of Personal Surgeon to him retrospectively from the 1st of January; to this I of course gave an affirmative reply, which he will forward with his own letter to Bengal and request His Lordship’s confirmation of the appointment’.41 Jack’s future hopes of joining Wallich at Calcutta were raised during the discussions, but it was agreed that these plans should be left to their own decision. In any event, Jack wrote, ‘I do not think it probable I shall be in any hurry to leave Sir Stamford, for the very society of such a man is worth a sacrifice, if there were any in the case. Besides which between ourselves, he has made me another promise, still more flattering, which is to appoint me his Private Secretary, as soon as the situation becomes vacant, which it will, when the Acheen business is over’.42 Approval of these appointments was to be secured from the Supreme Government but confirmation was never forthcoming, and the only official appointment Jack held on the Fort Marlborough establishment was as Civil Surgeon. He continued, nevertheless, to act as Raffles’s Secretary during the whole of his period in west Sumatra. Raffles advised Sir Joseph Banks on 4 March 1819 of his engagement of Jack as botanist and also of the two French naturalists, Diard and Duvaucel, as zoologists: 43 I am happy to inform you that I have had the good fortune to meet with a Gentleman qualified to supply the place of our lamented Friend Dr. Arnold – his name is Jack Jack to Wallich, 12 February 1819, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 161.

39

Postscript, Jack to Wallich, 15 February 1819, ibid., p. 163.

40

Jack to Wallich, 5 March 1819, ibid., p. 166. See Chapter Ten, note 56.

41

Ibid., p. 167. Jack wrote of Raffles in a letter to Wallich dated 14 January 1819: ‘I cannot express to you how much I am delighted with him; he is of the real Sterling stamp, of that active and comprehensive mind that diffuses a portion of its own energy to all around’, ibid., p. 153.

42

Raffles to Sir Joseph Banks, 4 March 1819, The Straits Times, 24 October 1932.

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and I believe he is not unknown to Mr. Brunn [Brown] to whom he will write by the present opportunity – He has agreed to accompany me to Sumatra and to remain with me during my residence in India – His attention is almost exclusively devoted to Botanical pursuits and his collections are already very interesting. In addition to this aid I have engaged in our service Messrs. Duvoulle [Duvaucel] and Diard, two French Gentlemen who went to Calcutta under your recommendation – the former is the stepson of Cuvier and they are both very able Naturalists – their attention is chiefly directed to Zoology and comparative Anatomy, but we shall endeavour to comprehend in our researches whatever relates to the geology of Sumatra.

He added that he had sent by the present conveyance ‘to our friend [Sir] Everard Home … the Head of a Dugong …’.44 Because of Lady Raffles’s advanced pregnancy, Raffles hoped to delay his departure for Aceh but his relationship with the Prince of Wales Island Government made this impossible. Four days after he left Penang she gave birth on 12 March to a boy, who was named Leopold after Prince Leopold of Coburg-Saxe-Saalfeld, husband of the deceased Princess Charlotte Augusta.45 Jack found the means to convey the news to Raffles as he knew he would be delighted in having a son. Raffles returned from Aceh on 29 April,46 and three weeks later, on 22 May, in the company of Lady Raffles, Jack and the French naturalists, he boarded the Indiana for Singapore. Jack reported to his parents that they had ‘a very pleasant voyage down the Streights’, his time being spent with Lady Raffles in learning Malay under the tutorship of Raffles, ‘who is an excellent Malay scholar’.47 He wrote to Wallich reporting their arrival at Singapore on 31 May: It is impossible to conceive any thing more beautiful than the approach to this place through the Archipelago of Islands that lie at the Eastern extremity of the Straits of Malacca. The place itself is advancing rapidly, and will soon become one of the most populous settlements to the Eastwards. The forests that now form my delight will gradually give place to man and his habitations, but they are more interesting to me in the present state. Flora here luxuriates in endless varieties, where she finds soil, climate and everything congenial.48 On Sir Everard Home, see Chapter Seven, note 23.

44

On Prince Leopold George Frederick of Saxe-Coburg, see Chapter Seven, note 48.

45

On the political results of Raffles’s mission to Aceh, see Lee Kam Hing, Sultanate of Aceh, pp. 273–321.

46

Jack to his parents, 7 June 1819, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 132.

47

Jack to Wallich 8 June 1819, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 177–8. Raffles’s further orders to Farquhar at this time related to the police and administration of justice, the general lay-out of the European town along

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While Raffles was engaged with the Resident Major Farquhar in arranging the details of the administration of the new settlement, Jack was able to botanise and collect specimens of the beautiful Nepenthes, or pitcher plant. Raffles wrote of these discoveries, and of his employment of Jack, in a letter to Prince Leopold’s Equerry, Colonel John Peter Addenbrooke (1753–1821), on 10 June:49 I have now with me, as a botanist, Dr. Jack, a gentleman highly qualified; and we are daily making very important additions to our herbarium. We have recently discovered at this place some very beautiful species of the Nepenthes, or pitcher plant, which, in elegance and brilliancy, far surpass any thing I have yet seen in this quarter: the plant is very remarkable, and though the genus has been generally described, but little is known of the different species. We are now engaged in making drawings of them, and with a few other of the most remarkable and splendid productions of the vegetable world which we have met with, propose forming them into a volume, to be engraved in Europe. This will be an earnest of what we propose to do hereafter; and you will oblige me much by informing me whether His Royal Highness [Prince Leopold] would have any objection to their being dedicated to him: there will not be above six or eight engravings, but they will be on a large scale. Besides our botanical pursuits, I have in my family two French naturalists, one of them step-son to the celebrated Cuvier; their attention is principally directed to zoology, but we include in our researches every thing that is interesting in the mineral kingdom. Our collection of birds is already very extensive, and in the course of two or three years we hope to complete our more important researches in Sumatra. the East Beach, restrictions on the alienation of land required for public purposes on the north-eastern side of the Singapore River, and zones for the Asian communities under their own headmen. A further Agreement was concluded with the Sultan and Temenggong on 26 June 1819 defining the boundaries of the British settlement from Tanjong Malang on the west to Tanjong Katong on the east, and as far inland as the range of a cannon shot. The Agreement also specified new sites for the Chinese and Malay settlements, and stipulated that no duties or customs were to be levied, or revenue farms established, without the joint consent of the Sultan, Temenggong and Resident. Raffles to Addenbrooke, 10 June 1819, Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 381. Colonel John Peter Addenbrooke (?1753–1821) of the 54th Foot, former Equerry to Princess Charlotte, who wrote of him in a letter dated 31 July 1815, ‘I trust Adden[brooke] will not leave me as he is quite a treasure, & I like him so .... ’, and in another letter dated c.23 March 1816, ‘no one can be more trustworthy or gentlemanlike’ (Letters of the Princess Charlotte 1811–1817 (ed.) A. Aspinall (London, 1949), pp. 201, 235). Before becoming Princess Charlotte’s Equerry, Addenbrooke had served from 3 May 1814 as Gentleman Usher and Quarterly Waiter to her grandmother, Queen Charlotte, and after Princess Charlotte’s death on 6 November 1817 he became Chamberlain of the Household at Claremont. Raffles got to know him well during his visits to Claremont from April 1817, and he corresponded with him after his arrival at Bengkulu in March 1818. In his letter of 10 June 1819 he expressed the hope that some Sumatran plants he had entrusted to Horsfield had arrived safely at Claremont and in tolerable preservation (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 382). On 22 July 1820 he wrote to him acknowledging his letter of 22 February 1819, accompanying one from Prince Leopold, and he informed him that he had arranged for a stuffed specimen of a Malayan Tapir to be sent to Claremont (Archives John Murray, National Library of Scotland). Addenbrooke died at Versailles on 9 September 1821 in his 68th year.

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Jack informed his parents that he had completed two perfect drawings and descriptions of the Nepenthes (‘surpassing any yet known in Europe’) with the prospect of their being published along with illustrations of the Rafflesia arnoldi: ‘Sir S. Raffles is anxious that we should give publicity to our researches in some way or other, and has planned bringing out something at Bencoolen. He proposes sending home these Pitcher Plants, that such splendid things may appear under all the advantages of elegant execution, by way of attracting attention to the subject of Sumatran Botany. There is a plant which Sir S. has met with in Sumatra, which appears to be the wonder of the vegetable world, for its flowers are of the colossal dimensions of a yard in diameter! I would hardly venture to mention this, did I not know that a specimen has actually gone home in spirits. We made a sailing expedition lately among the islands, and spent the day very pleasantly in exploring them; we carried our provisions with us, and spread our table in the woods, protected from the sun by the dense shade. Here, I saw, for the first time, the coral banks of tropical seas in perfection, and nothing certainly can be more beautiful.’50 The Indiana sailed from Singapore for Bengkulu on 28 June 1819 and two days later ran aground on a shoal in the Straits of Riau. A small boat was prepared to take Lady Raffles and her child back to Singapore, but after reducing the weight by throwing all the water overboard the ship managed to anchor off the Dutch settlement at Riau. The Dutch Resident refused all assistance but Jack managed to get ashore and collect botanical specimens, describing the settlement as ‘a paltry miserable place’.51 An American ship came to their rescue by replenishing the ship’s water supply and the Indiana continued her voyage against the prevailing monsoon by way of Bangka and the Straits of Sunda. A favourable wind then afforded an easy passage to Bengkulu, where the passengers were landed shortly before midnight on 31 July.52 Jack had been unwell during the latter part of the voyage and also after his arrival, but he soon engaged actively in collecting specimens of the local flora as well as meeting Raffles’s demands as his Secretary. In a letter to Wallich dated 26 August 1819, he repeated Raffles’s intention of having the most interesting of their discoveries published in London ‘in a small fascicle, in the most splendid style that Jack to his parents, 20 June 1819, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), pp. 131–2.

50

Jack to Wallich 19 August 1819, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 181. See Chapter Ten, note 61.

51

Ibid., pp. 181–2; Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 402–3.

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they can be executed in’, but that in the meantime it was intended ‘to go on for some time printing without publishing [on the local Baptist Mission Press], but after a little to make selections from among the materials thus collected, of which to form a volume which may be published quarterly or as matter sufficient may accumulate. In this way a great deal will be preserved of considerable interest; but perhaps not finished enough for the established channels of information as the Asiatic Researches &c. For instance we think of printing descriptions of plants …’.53 From these ideas sprang two volumes of the Malayan Miscellanies, which the Baptist [Sumatran] Mission Press printed in 1820 and 1822 containing Jack’s ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants’ and papers of zoological interest by the French naturalists.54 Also printed as a separate item was Jack’s so-called ‘Third’ paper, describing the giant flower discovered by Dr. Arnold as Rafflesia Titan.55 On 28 September 1819 the brig Favourite (J. Lambert) arrived at Bengkulu bringing news of the ‘most unexpected and important’ nature, namely the death of the Governor of Prince of Wales Island, John Alexander Bannerman, and his son-in-law, William Edward Phillips, the senior member of the Government. It subsequently transpired that the latter’s death had been confused with that of John Lyon Phipps, the Accountant and Auditor, but for Raffles the intelligence was of the highest importance because he had come to an understanding in Calcutta with the Governor-General the Marquess of Hastings that on the death or removal of Bannerman consideration would be given to an amalgamation of the Governments of Penang, Bengkulu and Singapore under a single authority, with Raffles in charge.56 Jack informed Wallich that it would rest with the Bengal Government to make the necessary provisional arrangements but that as the ‘plan has already been recommended by Lord Hastings to the Court of Directors, for adoption on the retirement of Col[onel] Bannerman, … I think that there can be little doubt of his embracing this unlooked for opportunity of carrying it into effect; I shall rejoice at it on Sir Stamford’s account, though I confess after so much moving about as we Jack to Wallich, 26 August 1819, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 186.

53

Note 90.

54

Jack’s Paper No. III on Malayan Plants describing the large flower under the designation of Rafflesia titan was printed at the Baptist Mission Press at Bengkulu in 1820 but was not published pending its formal description by Robert Brown in London. A copy of the Paper is in the National Library of Singapore. See Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 203, n.203; D.J. Mabberley, ‘Robert Brown on Rafflesia’, Blumea, vol. 44, no. 2 (1999), pp. 343–50, and B.C. Stone, ‘Description of Malayan Plants I–III. By William Jack’, JMBRAS, vol. 51, pt. 1 (1978), pp. 122–4.

55

Bastin, Founding of Singapore, pp. 98–105, and n.84 on John Alexander Bannerman and n.192 on William Edward Phillips.

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have had lately, I would rather remain quietly here for some time, especially as I have so much in hand. Sir S[tamford] himself would like to remain here too for some time: however we must take things as they come’.57 Although Raffles was inclined to remain at Bengkulu and allow matters to take their course, he took the precaution of writing to Hastings on 29 September to remind him that if the death of Phillips proved true, he was the next in seniority to succeed to the governorship of Prince of Wales Island, and that the opportunity might prove advantageous for uniting the three settlements under the administration of that Government.58 However, on being reminded by his aide-de-camp Captain Thomas Otho Travers that with few friends to plead his cause at Calcutta, his only chance of success was to press his claim in person with the Governor-General, Raffles again wrote to Hastings on 5 October informing him that he intended to proceed immediately to Calcutta in the Favourite, being ‘influenced, not only by a consideration of the immediate measures which may become necessary at Penang, but the probability that by the period of my reaching Bengal, your Lordship may be apprized of the views and disposition of the Authorities at home with regard to our more Eastern interests generally –’.59 As the Favourite had insufficient accommodation for Lady Raffles, Raffles decided to take Jack with him, together with his former aide-de-camp, Thomas Watson, who was proceeding to Calcutta on business.60 During the six weeks’ voyage Raffles and Jack worked hard in writing official reports, one being an account by Jack of the local population of Bengkulu which, he informed his parents, Raffles was so ‘well pleased with’ that he intended to forward it to Calcutta ‘with a very high recommendation’.61 He also informed them that another paper prepared for Lord Hastings was on ‘the future government of the Eastern Islands, proposing great reforms and alterations’, as well as suggesting ‘the propriety of establishing a native college at Singapore’. This paper, which Raffles later had printed in London in 1824 under the title of Substance of a Memoir on the Administration of the Eastern Islands, proposed a reduction in the burdensome and costly administrations of Jack to Wallich 28 September 1819, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 191–2.

57

Bastin, Founding of Singapore, pp. 98–102.

58

Ibid., p. 101.

59

On Thomas Watson, see Chapter Four.

60

Jack to his parents, 17 November 1819, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), pp. 132–3. Jack’s ‘Substance of the Report on the Condition of Society’ at Bengkulu was printed as No. II in Proceedings of the Agricultural Society, established in Sumatra, 1820 (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1821), Vol. I, pp. [i–ii], [1]–52.

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Penang and Bengkulu and their replacement by ‘commercial stations, similar in principle to what has lately been adopted at Singapore …’.62 The paper was written in the mistaken belief that Bannerman and Phillips were both dead, and that the proposed reorganisation of the settlements would be possible, but on his arrival at Calcutta Raffles learned that Phillips had assumed temporary charge of the administration of Prince of Wales Island and that his appointment as Governor was likely to be confirmed by the Supreme Government. Raffles wrote privately to Hastings on 25 November stating that while he understood that these arrangements would be an obstacle to the immediate and full implementation of the proposals made in his paper, especially with regard to Penang, his personal wish was ‘to secure the eventual succession to the general charge of our interests to the Eastward’ rather than to obtain the immediate appointment to Penang under the present arrangement, and he therefore wondered if the interests of all parties might be resolved by a date being fixed for the introduction of the reforms and Phillips permitted to remain in charge of Prince of Wales Island until that time.63 While not committing himself to the details of these proposals, Hastings nevertheless expressed his general approval of the amalgamation of the settlements but pointed out that no changes would be possible before a conclusion of the diplomatic negotiations in Europe between the Netherlands and British Governments relating to their interests in the region.64 Then, having given this plausible explanation why no change of the sort envisaged by Raffles could be made, Hastings, in an unbelievable act of hypocrisy, proposed privately that Sir John Malcolm should be made Governor of the combined settlements of Penang, Singapore and Bengkulu in compensation for his not having secured the post of Governor of Bombay, a proposal rejected by Malcolm, who thought the appointment would make him a ‘Pepper-cloves-and-cinnamon Governor’.65 Frustrated in his ambition of succeeding to the governorship of Penang and assuming general responsibility for British interests in the Eastern Seas, Raffles suffered a bout of depression, which led to his being confined to his bed and forbidden to write letters. His spirits were lifted with the arrival of the private ship Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p.102. Raffles’s Memoir on the Administration of the Eastern Islands was privately printed in London in 1824, and reprinted as an Appendix in Lady Raffles’s Memoir, pp. [3]–38.

62

Bastin, Founding of Singapore, pp. 103–5.

63

Ibid., p. 105.

64

J. Malcolm, Malcolm Soldier, Diplomat, Ideologue of British India The Life of Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) (Edinburgh, 2014), p. 418.

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Rochester (D. Sutton) carrying his sister Mary Anne and her husband, Captain William Flint R.N., with their child William Charles Raffles Flint, and he arranged for them to accompany him back to Bengkulu on the Indiana (James Pearl), together with Lady Raffles’s youngest brother, Robert Hull (1789–1820).66 Jack was also of the party, having managed between periods of attending on Raffles to visit Wallich at the Calcutta Botanic Garden.67 The Indiana arrived off Tapanuli in northern Sumatra on 23 February and Jack accompanied Raffles ashore on Pulau Musala to collect botanical specimens. They were caught out by the early darkness and had to row a considerable distance to join the ship anchored in Tapanuli Bay (Teluk Sibolga), off the British settlement on Pontjang Kechil. During the following two days, Jack was able to collect specimens of the flora of the Tapanuli region and to make direct enquires about the camphor tree, specimens of which he had collected in the previous year. He wrote to Wallich describing their experiences in a letter dated 27 February 1820: ‘During the two days we stayed at Tappanooly, I scrambled over not a few hill and forest tracts, but the season is not the best. The night came in, we had a narrow escape. We went ashore on Mansilar Island in the evening, the vessel continuing under sail, night came on, the ship outsailed us, we lost sight of her, and had to row about 20 miles in the dark without compass and no stars visible. Ten minutes after we did get on board, (which was at one o’clock at night) there came on a most furious squall which nearly drove us from our anchors, and would have sent us and the boat had we been out in it, to the D--l in double quick time. However we were born under lucky stars’.68 During their stay, he and Raffles made enquiries about the Batak people in the interior of Tapanuli and confirmed the fact that they were cannibals.69 Robert Redman Hull was born at Belvidere, County Down, on 12 September 1789. He entered the military service of the East India Company in 1804 and was gazetted Ensign on 8 April 1806, two days after his arrival in India. He was promoted Lieutenant on 16 July 1807 and Brevet Captain on 1 January 1819. His health was affected during his service in the Third Mahratta War (1817–19), and he was issued with a sick-certificate which enabled him to join Raffles and his sister on board the Indiana (James Pearl) for the voyage to Bengkulu. Travers described him at this time as ‘a very fine young man, and well deserving the high character given of him’ (Journal, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), p. 141). He died on 21 October 1822 after a severe illness of five days. His Memorial at Bengkulu is illustrated in Alan Harfield, Bencoolen A History of the Honourable East India Company’s Garrison on the West Coast of Sumatra (1685–1825) (Barton-on-Sea, 1995), p. 483.

66

During his illness Raffles stayed at the house of Commodore Sir John Hayes (d.1831), senior officer of the Indian Navy and Master-Attendant at Calcutta, with whom he had formed a friendship when Hayes commanded a squadron of nine vessels during the British invasion of Java in 1811. Jack had some disagreement with Mrs. Hayes and left the house, though he continued to look after Raffles in his medical capacity.

67

Jack to Wallich 27 February 1820, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 198.

68

See the Reverend R. Burton’s account of 6 June 1822, ‘Proofs of Cannibalism among the Battas’, Malayan

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Three days after leaving Tapanuli they called at Natal, where Jack, in a letter to his parents, wrote one of the earliest accounts of the customs of the Batak people of northern Sumatra:70 I sit down to fulfil my promise of sending you some account of Tapanooly and the Battas, who inhabit the interior of that part of Sumatra. They had been stated to be cannibals, and we were curious to ascertain that fact, and learn something of so peculiar a state of society. We therefore assembled some of the most intelligent chiefs, whom we examined at length respecting all their usages and customs, and obtained the amplest and most indisputable information on every point. The history of these people is so extraordinary and peculiar, that I should not have credited it on any evidence less convincing than that which we received, and should almost fear to communicate it, were I less certain of its absolute correctness. That they are cannibals is placed beyond doubt, but the circumstances and manner in which this revolting custom is practised stand, I believe, unparalleled in the history of the human race. The eating of men is not merely practised by them in war, as in some other savage countries, but is the punishment solemnly and deliberately decreed by their laws for certain capital crimes. Five cases are enumerated, in which eating the offenders is ordained, of which the first, and in their ideas, the greatest is adultery. The sentence is passed in full council by the assembled chiefs, and publicly carried into effect three days after, when the whole neighbourhood is collected. The victim is tied up, with his hands extended, and the injured party is asked what part he prefers. He perhaps chooses the ears – these are instantly cut off, and he deliberately eats them, either raw with limes and pepper, or drest as he pleases. All present then help themselves to and devour what portion they like; and after all are satisfied, the chief enemy cuts off the head and carries it home, to suspend in triumph on the top of his house. Thus the culprit is literally eaten alive, and with a coolness and deliberation that I believe to be absolutely unparalleled.

The Indiana approached Bengkulu on 3 March, but as the seas were high Raffles and his party had to be landed at Pulau Bay and conveyed to the settlement in carriages and on horseback. Nine days later, Jack wrote to his parents reporting his first sighting of a flower-bud of the Rafflesia and of the success of the French naturalists Diard and Duvaucel in making large zoological collections, including a specimen of a Malay Tapir (Tapirus indicus Desmarest):71 Miscellanies, vol. II, no. X (1822), pp. [1–3], and his Report of a Journey into the Batak Country, 1824, Raffles Collection, IX: BL:MSS.Eur.E.108/14. Jack to his parents, 29 February 1820, Hooker Companions to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 133.

70

Jack to his parents, 12 March 1820, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I, p. 135.

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I have obtained a flower-bud of the gigantic plant I formerly mentioned to you. It is really one of the wonders of the vegetable kingdom – the head is of the size of a large cabbage, only more flattened. I have opened it, and ascertained its structure, which is as unique and peculiar as its dimensions, and seems to set analogy at defiance. I have not procured the fruit, or been able to learn its situation, but of the inflorescence I am making drawings, which I hope to publish in my first fasciculus. The two Frenchmen whom I mentioned as having been brought hither by Sir S. Raffles, have been very industrious, and made very large Zoological collections. Among them is a new animal, which comes next in size to the Rhinoceros, and resembles the Tapiir [sic] of America, but is a much larger creature than the latter, with a white band over the back and sides, just in the situation and to the extent of a saddle-cloth – the rest of the body is black.72

Diard and Duvaucel may have been commendably industrious in assembling their zoological collections during Raffles’s absence in Calcutta, but when they were informed that the Supreme Government had refused to sanction his proposals for their employment, they were led into a bitter dispute which ended in their expulsion from Bengkulu and the seizure of their collections.73 These dramatic happenings were reported by Jack to Wallich in letters dated 15 and 29 March 1820,74 as well as his own involvement in a committee appointed by Raffles to take custody of the collections, and his engagement to compile a Catalogue of the specimens. This Catalogue, as he explained to his parents in a letter dated 10 April 1820, would be published in London but with Raffles as the designated author:75 A ship having unexpectedly arrived, bound for England, I avail myself of such a fortunate opportunity to transmit to you the first part of our account of our Zoological collections. I have been employed on it ever since I wrote last, and have just finished the first and most important portion, containing the Mammalia. This paper, which will, I trust, prove interesting, is to appear in the Transactions of the Royal Society, under Sir S. Raffles’ name, and you will be able to see it there. We have taken much pains to Note 29.

72

‘Correspondence with Messrs Diard and Duvaucel’, Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 702–23; Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 201–2, 204, 206.

73

Jack to Wallich 15 March 1820, 29 March 1820, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 201–7.

74

Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 135; Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, ‘Descriptive Catalogue of a Zoological Collection, made on account of the Honourable East India Company, in the Island of Sumatra and its Vicinity, under the Direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, LieutenantGovernor of Fort Marlborough; with additional Notices illustrative of the Natural History of those Countries’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1821–3), pp. 239–74, 277–340.

75

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obtain full information on the subject, and for this purpose have had assemblies of all the native chiefs, whom we have questioned much in the way that Rheede is said to have done those in India.76

On 1 June 1820 Jack informed Wallich that he had concluded the second and longest part of the Catalogue on the Sumatran birds and that the remainder would not be given in so much detail.77 He also reported that he had obtained specimens of the gigantic flower and had been able to resolve all outstanding problems connected with it: ‘I find it is parasitic on a species of Cissus with quinate and ternate leaves … these leaves are serrate and smooth. From the stems of this woody Cissus which run either on, or under the ground, spring these gigantic flowers … We get them in numbers from all parts of the country, so that they do not appear to be rare. Strange that they never before should have been heard of. They are called by the natives Pelinum Sekuddi, or the devil’s siribox …’.78 Jack also referred in the letter to the birth of Raffles’s second son a week earlier,79 and of his attempts to rejuvenate and improve the settlement of Fort Marlborough: Sir Stamford’s indefatigable mind is now turned to the improvement of this place, and to drawing forth its resources whatever they may be. It would be too long to give you here a detail of all he has done, and all he is doing, suffice it to say the very aspect of the place is changed, and in spite of all its natural disadvantages, there are good hopes of its rising. Natives and Europeans all seem to awake to the new impulse they receive, and I really think the former more readily and fully than the latter. It is hardly possible to conceive the apathy and vis inertiæ of the Europeans who have been trained up and imbibed the spirit of the old school of this place.80 H. van Rheede tot Draakestein, Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (Amsterdam, 1678–1703), 12 vols.

76

Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 208.

77

Jack to Wallich, 1 June 1820, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 208.

78

Ibid., p. 207. Raffles’s second son and third child, Stamford Marsden Raffles, was born at Bengkulu on 25 May 1820 and named after Raffles’s friend, William Marsden, the historian of Sumatra. He died on 4 January 1822.

79

80

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Ibid., pp. 207–8. A contrary view to Jack’s assessment of Raffles’s reforms at Bengkulu is contained in T.O. Travers, The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960), p. 137: ‘The constant reports of changes, of abandonment, and the attempt to introduce a new system without the means of carrying any plan into effect, has operated much against the place. Sir Stamford, in my opinion, acted precipitately in almost all he has done, and this opinion is, in fact, confirmed by his being compelled to relinquish some of his plans, which the obstinacy, prejudice and indolence of the people have rendered altogether abortive’. On the details of Raffles’s reforms at Bengkulu, see John Bastin, The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra (Oxford, 1957), pp. 72–134.

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Jack described to his parents how Raffles had utilised the knowledge of the local Indonesian rulers for the descriptions of the birds in the Catalogue:81 We have, at present, no less than three Sultans here – the Sultan of [Inderapura], and the new and ex Sultans of Moko Moko. There is something farcical in these high-sounding titles, when applied to men, whose whole revenues do not amount to as much as we would pay a common writer in an office. But you will, perhaps, be still more amused by an idea which we actually put into execution this morning, of appointing a committee to investigate and report on the customs and histories of all the Birds of Sumatra; in short, to collect all the native information about them, for the purpose of completing our paper for the Royal Society.82 This Special Committee on the Birds is composed of the Sultan of [Inderapura], Rajah Dyan Mabela, Raden Aria Surca (i.e. Child of the Sun), Dyan Indra, and another Raden. I suppose it is the first time that Sultans and Rajahs have ever been so employed; however, I have no doubt we shall receive a very amusing report.

The manuscript Catalogue on Sumatran birds, and the greater part of the zoological collections acquired from the French naturalists, was consigned in June 1820 on a China ship direct to London, where it was published in two parts in March 1821 and September 1823 in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, volume XIII, establishing Raffles’s reputation as a zoologist.83 Specimens of the gigantic flower in casks of spirits were also consigned directly to Sir Joseph Banks and named by Robert Brown as Rafflesia arnoldi, thereby replacing Jack’s designation Rafflesia titan, which he had suggested in a letter to Wallich on 15 March 1820 and had incorporated in his paper printed by the Baptist Mission Press at Bengkulu.84 Other papers and reports printed at the Mission Press were detailed by Jack in a letter to Wallich dated 19 August 1820,85 and also in a letter to his family of the same date:86 I have now finished my first report on the Agricultural Society [of Sumatra], which we think of printing,87 along with my account of the state of Society and some other Statistical Jack to his parents, 26 May 1820, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 136. The birds are described in Part II of the Catalogue.

81

The paper was, in fact, published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, vol. XIII (1821–3). See note 75.

82

Note 75.

83

Note 55.

84

Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 210–12.

85

Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 136.

86

[W. Jack], ‘First Report of the Sumatran Agricultural Society’, Proceedings of the Agricultural Society, established in Sumatra, 1820, vol. I, no. III (1821), pp. [i–ii], [1]–53.

87

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papers.88 During our absence at Calcutta, Sir Stamford gave a few miscellaneous articles to the press, merely to keep it employed; and, as these amount to a small volume, he thinks of bringing it out under the title of Malayan Miscellanies, vol. i.89 I have added the descriptions of a few plants, and we shall probably continue the same plan, and the second volume will be much better than the first.90 It is now my intention to preface the descriptions and engravings of plants, which I formerly mentioned, with a general view of the Natural history of our Eastern Islands; a plan by which I think the subject may be made generally interesting, and attract public attention to this quarter. Much time and labour will be required to collect and arrange the materials, but the means and advantages, which I at present possess, are such as ought not to be lost.91

On 29 September 1820 Jack was appointed by Raffles to serve with the British Resident of Tapanuli and Natal, John Prince,92 on a political mission to Pulau Nias, the largest of the islands lying off the north-west Sumatran coast. Having been disappointed in his earlier attempts to gain detailed information on the island,93 and concerned about the ravages of the slave trade which in his view necessitated ‘the interference of some superior authority to prevent the ruin of the Country,’ Raffles instructed Jack and Prince to claim sovereignty of the island as a prelude to establishing a British post and abolishing the slave trade.94 On his voyage northwards to Natal, where he was to join Prince, Jack explained to Wallich the origins of their mission: Sir S[tamford] and I had some conversation one morning at breakfast about Pulo Nias which ended in his proposing to me to go on a special mission, and so in two days thereafter, I put myself on board a native vessel for Natal[,] the point of appui for Nias, Note 61.

88

The Malayan Miscellanies were issued in two volumes by the Baptist [Sumatran] Mission Press at Bengkulu in 1820 and 1822. See Chapter Ten, note 206.

89

The second volume of Malayan Miscellanies (1822) contained articles on Malayan Plants and Pulau Nias by William Jack; Cannibalism among the Bataks by the Revered R. Burton; Customs of the Dayaks at Banjarmasin by C. Methven; and Diary of a Journey across the island of Sumatra from Fort Marlborough to Palembang by Captain F. Salmond.

90

All of Jack’s papers were destroyed in the fire on the Fame in February 1824, but see Chapter Ten, note 249.

91

On John Prince (b.1770), the long-serving British Resident at Tapanuli and Natal, see Bastin, British in West Sumatra, pp. 117–18, n.330. Prince succeeded Raffles in charge of Fort Marlborough during the period of the transfer of the settlement to the Netherlands in 1824–5, and later became Resident Councillor at Singapore. Raffles had a high opinion of him, describing him as a Prince by name and a Prince by nature, but Jack found him ‘a freezing mass of ice, out of which all my fire failed to elicit one single spark’. Obviously, the 50-year-old Prince, with his long experience of affairs in northern Sumatra, found it somewhat irksome to be associated with such an over-enthusiastic and inexperienced 27-year-old as William Jack.

92

P.H. van der Kemp, ‘Raffles’ Betrekkingen met Nias in 1820–1821’, BKI, vol. 52 (1901), pp.587–8.

93

Raffles to Prince and Jack, 29 September 1820, BL:Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 48, fols. 685–91.

94

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and am thus far on my way. … For the last few days I have been bothered with calms, but (to speak in that case like an Irishman) ‘it[‘s] an ill wind that blows nobody good’, so instead of fretting for a wind that would not come, I ordered out the boat, and proceeded to ransack the hundred beautiful little islands that stud this part of the Sumatran coast. … You can hardly imagine anything more beautiful than these little islands, rising in little hills out of the blue waters, and covered either with forests, or planted with cocoanut trees. The access to them is not however always easy, their shores being generally guarded by coral reefs, on which the heavy surf is always beating, – a good roll in which is often the price of landing.95

Jack’s small Indonesian craft arrived at Natal on 14 October 1820 and a month later, after surveying the eastern and southern shores of Pulau Nias, Telukdalam on the southern coast was selected as the most suitable place for a British base. By the terms of a treaty concluded with the Nias rajahs, who placed ‘themselves unconditionally under the Protection and Authority’ of the East India Company, the slave trade was abolished and a system of free trade introduced.96 ‘Pulo Nias is now a British Possession, in full sovereignty’, Jack wrote to his family, ‘and our principal station is established at Tello Delam, the finest harbour on the island. It is really a beautiful spot: the shores are skirted by hills of no great elevation, covered with Cocoa-nut trees, except where their sides and bottoms are cleared for Rice fields and plantations of sweet Potatoes and other vegetables. … With the people I am, on the whole, highly delighted; they exhibit a mixture of barbarism and civilization, that makes them very interesting. In agricultural industry, in the building and internal comfort of their houses, they show a great advance in the arts of life; while, in their war-dresses and many of their customs, they bring to mind the accounts of the early voyagers in the Pacific Ocean’.97 Having spent some six weeks on the island, Jack returned to Natal and Tapanuli before proceeding to Bengkulu, where he arrived in mid-January 1821. Raffles was delighted with the Nias treaty but it was disavowed by the Supreme Government in Calcutta.98 The only positive result of Jack’s mission to Pulau Nias, therefore, Jack to Wallich, 11 October 1820, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 221.

95

Van der Kemp, BKI, vol. 52 (1901), pp. 590–1. A copy of the treaty with the rulers of Pulau Nias, in English and Arabic script, dated 31 December 1820, is in the Raffles Collection, no. VII (BL:MSS.Eur.F.32/9). See also Raffles Collection, vol. IX (BL:MSS.Eur.E.108/15), and the report, ‘Slave Trade at the Island of Nias’, in the Singapore Chronicle, 24 April 1828, reprinted in J.H. Moor, Notices of the Indian Archipelago, and Adjacent Countries (Singapore, 1837), pp. 185–8.

96

Jack to his parents, 12 December 1820, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 136.

97

BL:Bengal Public Consultations, vol. 29, despatch of 15 June 1821. See Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p. 185, note 284; Van der Kemp, BKI, vol. 52 (1901), pp. 595–6.

98

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was his long report on the island which was printed at Bengkulu in the second volume of the Malayan Miscellanies in 1822,99 and another paper entitled, ‘On the Geology and Topography of the Island of Sumatra, and some of the adjacent Islands’, which was published posthumously in the Transactions of the Geological Society of London.100 Accompanying this paper was ‘a small collection of specimens of the rocks’ from the western coast of Sumatra which he presented to the Geological Society in London.101 After Jack’s return to Bengkulu he complained in a letter to his parents of a dearth of shipping on the west coast and also relayed to them the ominous news of a recurrence of his illness:102 I have never yet seen this place so completely without communication with the rest of the world, as it has been lately: we have not had a single arrival that could bring any intelligence of home, since I wrote last, nor an opportunity even of sending a letter. Yesterday a vessel came in, which I confidently hoped was from Bengal or England, and lo! it was from Ceylon, and I could, of course, expect nothing. I send this letter, by way of Batavia, by a vessel which is to touch there, on her way to Singapore. I have lately had a return of the old complaint in my lungs, which laid me up for some time; but, by dint of bleeding, blistering, and starving, I got over it pretty well, and have now only to recover strength, which I shall do very fast, I feel no doubt. I cannot assign any cause for the recurrence of my illness, for I had not been at all exposed, and it commenced and proceeded very imperceptibly, until it became so severe on the very day when I was to have accompanied Sir S[tamford] and Lady Raffles on a trip to the country, that I was obliged to stay behind and take advice. … This illness occurred rather inopportunely, as I was just beginning a View of the Natural History of the Eastern Islands, and it has, of course, suspended it for a while. Under the idea of bringing out this work under all possible advantages, I have almost determined, so far as one can determine on what is so distant, to accompany Sir Stamford Raffles when he returns to England. In that event, I should have leisure on the voyage to arrange my materials; and, with a little brushing up at home, might make my Sketch a thing of some character, much better than I could hope to do here, amid the constant pressure of new matter, and the daily interruptions of duty and business. [W. Jack], ‘Short Notice concerning the Island of Pulo Nias; from observations made during a Visit to the Island in 1822’, Malayan Miscellanies, vol. II, no. VIII (1822), pp. 1–17.

99

Vol. I, second series (1824), pp. 397–405.

100

BL:1911.1349: ‘A Collection of Rocks from Sumatra and Pulo Nias Islands in the Indian Archipelago’. Presented to the Geol. Society by William Jack, M.D. M.G.S. Aug. 15th, 1822.

101

Jack to his parents, 8 April 1821, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 140.

102

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In a letter to Wallich dated 1 May 1821, Jack enclosed a copy of his second paper on Malayan Plants printed at Bengulu by the Baptist Mission Press for inclusion in the first volume of Malayan Miscellanies,103 and also a copy of his famous ‘Third’ paper containing a description of the gigantic flower, which he designated Rafflesia titan104 pending its description in England:105 I now send you No. 2 and 3 of Malayan plants, and I am in hopes before this vessel sails of being able to send you a volume of Agricultural [P]roceedings from the Sumatra press.106 I do not know that you will find much to interest you in it, but it will give you an idea of what we are about here, and will show you the flourishing condition of our spice cultivation, which we find to be now equal to the supply of Great Britain. … No. 3, will I think please you, but you must observe that though called an appendix to the Malayan Miscellanies it has been kept back till we hear what is done at home about the great flower. If it is brought forward in England, then this is to be suppressed and not published; if not, then this may be used in the event of the French getting hold of it, as a proof of priority of publication. So you understand that it is at present “inedita”, dost thou comprehend [?] … I am at present at a country residence of Sir Stamford’s in the midst of forests and jungles, from which I am daily receiving treasures.107 Materials are accumulating so fast upon me that I should like to clear off arrears by getting out descriptions. When a thing is printed, it is in a manner done with, and you go on unencumbered.

Jack sent to Robert Brown in London at this time a paper on the Malayan Melastomaceæ for publication in the Transactions of the Linnean Society, and probably a copy of his printed paper on the Rafflesia titan.108 These matters he reported to his family in a letter dated 27 May 1821. Two weeks later, on 10 June, he set out on horseback with Captain Harry Auber, commander of the ship Lady Raffles,109 Jack to Wallich, 1 May 1821, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 226–31; W. Jack, ‘Description of Malayan Plants, No. 2’, Malayan Miscellanies, vol. I, no. V (1820), pp. 1–49.

103

Note 55.

104

Jack to Wallich, 1 May 1821, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 227–30; Brown, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), pp. 201–34.

105

Proceedings of the Agricultural Society, established in Sumatra, 1820 (Bencoolen, 1821), vol. I. Only volume I was printed and most copies of the book were lost in the fire on the Fame in 1824, the relatively few remaining copies being those which were sent earlier by Raffles to his friends and officials at the East India House in London.

106

Raffles’s country house at Pematang Balam (‘Dove’s Rise’ or ‘Dove’s Ridge’) is described and illustrated in Mildred Archer and John Bastin, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library London (Kuala Lumpur, 1978), nos. 7–8, pp. 28–31.

107

Jack to his parents, 27 May 1821, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 140. A letter Jack wrote to Brown dated 2 June 1820 is printed in Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), pp. 229–30.

108

On Captain Harry Auber, see Chapter Seven, note 41.

109

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and Francis Salmond, the Master Attendant at Fort Marlborough,110 on an exploratory journey to Sugar Loaf Mountain (Gunung Bengko), 18 miles northeast of Bengkulu. Previous attempts to ascend the mountain by Europeans had failed, the local Indonesian people regarding it as a kramat, or holy place. Jack and his party succeeded in their ascent with some help, but without the assistance of Indonesian porters, and from the summit they were able to view vessels anchored in Tikus Bay, off Bengkulu, and a large part of the west Sumatran coastline. Jack was able to collect specimens of alpine flora, including a plant which the Indonesians considered to be a substitute for making tea. The descent proved difficult and it was not until the evening of 16 June that they finally reached Bengkulu.111 Sugar Loaf Mountain soon lived up to its evil reputation because Captain Auber died shortly after his return to Bengkulu, a few days after the death of Raffles’s eldest son, Leopold Stamford Raffles, on 27 June. Jack informed Wallich of these events in a postscript to a letter dated 3 July 1821:112 The first visitation was the death of Sir S[tamford]’s eldest boy, one of the finest and loveliest children I ever saw. Scarcely had Sir S[tamford] and Lady R[affles] begun to recover some degree of composure after such an affliction, than Capt. Auber fell ill, and was carried off after a few days by an apoplectic stroke. This has been a severe blow, not merely from his relationship to Lady R[affles], but from the great regard and esteem in which he was personally held. He was a man of most engaging manners and superior mind, and had embarked on an extensive speculation with every prospect of success, which is now destroyed by his premature death. He had been my companion on the trip to the Sugar [L]oaf, and bore the fatigues of it much better than I did. It was a singular circumstance that the natives strongly dissuaded us from attempting the ascent as they said it would provoke the anger of the Dewas whose sanctum is on the summit. We of course laughed at such a reason, but they tried everything at the difficult parts of the ascent to induce us to turn back by representing it was impossible to go further. … On our return the people declared one of the three, Auber, Salmond and myself would be sure to die for having profaned the sacred spot; and now they are of course firmly persuaded of the special interposition of the offended spirit of the Mountain. … These unfortunate events have depressed all our spirits; Sir Stamford himself has not been well, and the fatigue and anxiety of looking after so many invalids has almost knocked me up. … Sir On Francis Salmond, see Chapter Ten, note 237, and Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p. 155, n.42.

110

[W. Jack], ‘Memorandum of a Journey to the Summit of Gunong Benko, or the Sugar Loaf Mountain in the interior of Bencoolen’, Malayan Miscellanies, vol. II, no. I (1822), pp. 1–22.

111

Jack to Wallich, 3 July 1821, postscript 18 July 1821, Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 234–5.

112

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S[tamford][,] as you may recollect in Calcutta[,] is a very bad patient, for there is no keeping up his spirits when he is ill.113

Jack’s last two letters to Wallich dated 6 and 26 October 1821, written some eleven months before his death, contain the usual information on botanical subjects as well as details of his paper on the Geology of Sumatra, which he had sent to H.T. Colebrooke in England for publication in the Transactions of the Geological Society of London.114 ‘I have just received a letter from the Secretary of the Geological Society, announcing my election’, Jack informed his family on 24 October 1821, ‘and forwarded by Mr. Colebrooke, who hopes I will not disavow what he has done in my name. My paper on the Geology of Sumatra is complete, and will probably be given in the Society’s Transactions: it is sufficiently general, but its geological deficiencies are compensated by geographical information, much of which is new and interesting’.115 During the last weeks of 1821 Jack was kept busy in medical attendance on Raffles’s three other children, who were suffering from a high fever, but Stamford and Charlotte died within a few days of each other in January 1822,116 and Ella was bundled off to England aboard the Borneo (J.C. Ross) in the hope that she might be saved.117 Raffles himself became very ill, and a general mood of ‘gloom & anxiety’ pervaded the British settlement. In March 1822 Jack was deputed by Raffles to superintend the installation of a new Sultan at Mukomuko, northwards of Bengkulu, and to report on the district of Lais as part of a general survey of the districts dependent on Fort Marlborough.118 The project was obviously devised so that Jack could visit his younger brother Robert at Mukomuko, where he was engaged in trading activities with the mercantile firm of Kempt, Mackintosh & Co.119 He reported on his visit to Mukomuko and the installation of the Sultan in a letter to his parents dated 21 April 1822:120 See Chapter Five, note 46.

113

On Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Chapter Two, note 144.

114

Jack to his parents, 24 October 1821, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 144.

115

On the deaths of Raffles’s children, see Chapter Ten, note 166.

116

Ella Raffles was sent to England in the Borneo in charge of Nurse Mary Grimes.

117

Jack to his parents, March 1822; 21 April 1822, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), pp. 144–5.

118

Robert Jack was the third son and fifth child of Professor William and Grace Jack. He was born on 18 August 1803 and arrived in west Sumatra to join his eldest brother William in 1821 or 1822. He proceeded to Mukomuko where he became a partner in the trading firm of Kempt, Mackintosh & Co., which was possibly connected with the agency house of Mackintosh & Co., Calcutta. Raffles obtained a share in the firm for Robert Jack (Chapter Ten, note 228).

119

Jack to his parents, 21 April 1822, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 144.

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I started by sea, on the 1st of April, and the time was so nicely chosen, that I arrived off Moco-Moco the next evening. On the 3rd I landed, and … remained at Moco-Moco till the 15th, when we commenced our return by land. … The Sultan is elected by the chiefs, from among the royal family, and must be confirmed by the [East India] Company. The election of a successor had already been made by Sir Stamford, and my business was to make this choice good, if possible; this was fully accomplished, though some opposition was at first expected, and the election was carried unanimously.

On 24 April Jack wrote to his friend Andrew Hay in Singapore from Ketahun describing his visit to Mukomuko and stating his intention of visiting and reporting on the district of Lais.121 He returned to Bengkulu some time afterwards by which time he was extremely ill from tuberculosis, which he had seemingly suffered for much of his life, and from malaria, which he evidently contracted during his visit to Mukomuko. In an attempt to recover his health he sailed to Batavia, an unlikely health resort, and arrived back at Bengkulu in late August or early September 1822. He was still gravely ill and in a desperate attempt to save his life he took passage for the Cape of Good Hope on the ship Layton, but he died on 15 September before the ship sailed and his body was brought ashore to Government House by the Master Attendant, John Grant.122 Raffles was on the point of leaving Bengkulu for Singapore but he delayed his departure long enough to arrange for the burial and the disposal of Jack’s property. During his passage to Singapore, Raffles wrote to his cousin, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, assessing the loss he had sustained by Jack’s death: ‘Death as if he seemed determined to glut himself to the last, snatched from us, two days before we sailed, another member of our family, my invaluable & highly respected friend Dr. Jack – he had supplied the place of Dr. Arnold and all my future views in life were intimately blended with plans and projects which we had formed – he was to accompany me to England – and has left a blank which will not be easily or speedily filled up’.123 Jack to Andrew Hay, 24 April 1822, Letters of Andrew Hay, Archives Department of the Shetland Islands Council, Lerwick. The letter relates to Hay’s dispute with Lieutenant-Colonel Farquhar in Singapore.

121

That he died on board ship, and not at Government House as later claimed by Raffles, is confirmed by a marginal note in pencil in the hand of the Deputy Master-Attendant at Fort Marlborough, John Howard Grant, on p. 556 of his copy of Lady Raffles’s Memoir: ‘Died on board Layton – I brought his body [on?] shore. J.H.G.’ The book is in the Singapore National Library.

122

Raffles to the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, 1 October 1822, John Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009), p. 150.

123

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On his arrival at Singapore on 10 October, Raffles was surprised to find Nathaniel Wallich residing there and he was able to report Jack’s death directly to him. Wallich in turn conveyed the distressing news to his parents on the same day:124 When I wrote to you last, I had hopes of being shortly able to convey to you more welcome intelligence. Alas! It was otherwise ordained, and it has become my lot to condole with you on the untimely departure of your most excellent son, my dear and beloved friend, William! This sudden and most melancholy intelligence was communicated to me by Sir S. Raffles, who landed here this morning, and who deeply participates in our deplorable loss. Your son’s spotless integrity, his excellence of character and of heart, and the universal esteem which he enjoyed here, have now their reward. It is therefore only my own bitter loss, and that of his revered and afflicted parents that distresses me, and which, recent as the shock is, almost overcomes me while I pen these words. Forgive me, therefore, for dwelling in this manner on this sad event: I should endeavour to console you – and I cannot console myself!

Some months were to elapse before Raffles felt able to write to Jack’s parents and to express adequately the loss he had personally sustained by his death. On 1 January 1823 he wrote to Principal and Mrs. Jack giving full flow to his feelings:125 I cannot without much pain, bring myself to the performance of the duty I am now about to undertake; but under the expectation that you will, by this time, have overcome the first effects, and in some degree become reconciled to the dispensation of Providence, which has, in this instance, fallen so severely upon you, I must no longer delay the communication of such particulars regarding your late son, as you have a right to expect from me. Before, however, I enter upon these, you must allow me, as the sincere and devoted friend of your son, to bear testimony to the spotless purity of his character, and to the high value and importance of his intellectual exertions while he was permitted to remain amongst us. The warmth of his heart and enthusiasm in whatever his head and heart approved, united us in the bonds of the closest friendship, and his loss has been to me as severe as that of a brother. In the society in which he moved, there was but one feeling of admiration for his character and talents, and but one of deep regret and sorrow at the melancholy event which has so prematurely put a stop to his useful and valuable career. His health was delicate when he first joined me, owing to an affliction of Wallich to Principal Jack, 10 October 1822, Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 146.

124

Raffles to Principal and Mrs. Jack, 1 January 1823, ibid., pp. 146–7.

125

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the lungs contracted during the campaign in India; but it was a fever which carried him off. Poor fellow! he battled with it for months, and we had hopes to the last. The object nearest to his heart as he lay on his death-bed, and which indeed had filled his thoughts for months before, was the settlement of his brother Robert. His trip to Moco-Moco, where he caught the fever, was in a great measure undertaken with this view, and before we parted, he had my solemn pledge that I would serve his brother to the utmost of my power; and this pledge I shall always be ready to redeem. Dr. Wallich has had the pleasure of giving your son’s name to a noble tree, with pendent flowers and drooping fruit, alas! Too emblematical of his early fate, which he has called Jackia ornata; and we are desirous of placing an inscription over your son’s grave, and have written to Calcutta for a suitable stone.

A memorial to Jack was erected at the Calcutta Botanic Garden and today survives intact.126 Addressing the Supreme Government in support of having the memorial erected, Wallich wrote:127 It is needless to dwell long on the merits of the late Mr. Jack as an eminent Botanist and a most zealous contributor to science in general, they have been equaled by few, exceeded by none: they have repeatedly been brought to the notice of the Supreme Government by the late Lieutenant-Governor of Sumatra; they are gratefully inscribed on the records of this Institution, which has derived so much benefit from them; they are conspicuous on the pages of his numerous publications, and have been acknowledged by all; …

H.J. Noltie, Raffles’ Ark Redrawn (London, Edinburgh, 2009), p. 41.

126

Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), p. 147.

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Chapter Ten

The Danish Naturalist Nathaniel Wallich and the Singapore Botanic Garden ‘That being, so pure and good, so friendly, so highly blessed beyond all others with heaven’s choicest gifts that never – never shall we see his like again …’ Nathaniel Wallich to Lady Raffles, 20 February 1830

Nathaniel Wallich (1785 –1854) Lithograph by M. Gauci after a portrait by Andrew Robertson

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W

hen Raffles arrived at Singapore on 10 October 1822 much had changed during the three years since his previous visit and many of the changes were not to his liking. In June 1819 he had left instructions for the guidance of the Resident and Commandant, Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar, but they were insufficiently precise to cover the multifarious problems that arose during the rapid expansion of the settlement. Farquhar had corresponded with Raffles at Bengkulu but the correspondence was of a desultory nature due to the poor communications between the two places. It was, in any case, difficult for Raffles to fully comprehend the scale and nature of the day-to-day problems that Farquhar had to deal with, as people from all quarters flocked to the new settlement. Raffles must have been astonished on his return by the size of the population, the bustling air of prosperity, and the growth in trade and commerce; but the physical lay-out of the settlement was not as he had envisaged it, and he realised that changes would have to be made. Farquhar was very popular in the settlement but his easygoing manner and long unrelieved service of 30 years at Madras, Melaka, Java and Singapore, allowed for a degree of laxity in his administration which Raffles found increasingly objectionable. A falling-out between the two men was thus inevitable, and their friendship formed over many years soon turned to outright hostility and, in Farquhar’s case, even to a degree of animosity. Raffles was in a poor state of health when he arrived at Singapore, overwhelmed by the loss of three of his children, and concerned about the fate of the fourth child, Ella, who had been consigned in a small and uncertain vessel to England. He had lost by the death of William Jack an intimate friend and an essential aide in his natural history researches with little hope of filling his place. To make matters worse, the irregularities he found in Farquhar’s administration brought him into conflict not only with that official but also with a number of the local British and European traders when he ordered the removal of their houses and godowns to the area allocated for mercantile pursuits south of the Singapore River. The fortuitous presence at Singapore of Jack’s mentor and friend Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, unconnected with local factions, and entirely devoted to botanical pursuits, gave Raffles the opportunity to pursue for a brief period his scientific interests with a companion he admired and held in the highest personal esteem. During the six weeks that Wallich remained in the island a close bond of friendship developed between them, to which Lady Raffles later referred in the Memoir of her husband: ‘Dr. Wallich, who, for a time, personally assisted Sir Stamford in his study of Natural

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History, will feel, that however highly Sir Stamford prized his professional abilities, it was for the qualities of his heart, and for his strong and devoted attachment, that he was still more valued.’ Nathaniel Wallich, or as he was christened in his native Denmark, Nathanael Wulff Wallich, was born on 28 January 1786 in Copenhagen, the son of Købmand Wulff Lazarus Wallich (1756–1843), a Jewish merchant, and Hanne Jacobson (1757–1839).1 After graduating from the Royal Copenhagen Veterinarian School in 1801, he studied medicine and qualified as a Surgeon in 1806. In the same year he was appointed Surgeon to the Danish factory of Frederiksnagor (Serampur) in India, but by the time he arrived in 1807 the place had been re-taken by the British and he became a prisoner-of-war. He had already shown a considerable interest in botany, having followed in Copenhagen the lectures of Jens Wilken Hornemann (1770–1841) and Martin Hendriksen Vahl (1749–1804), and he arrived in India with a commission to send plants and seeds to the Botanical Garden in Copenhagen. As a result, he came into contact with William Roxburgh (1751–1815), Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden, who was sufficiently impressed with his qualifications to write to the Governor-General urging the ‘considerable advantage’ that would occur from utilising Wallich’s services in the Botanic Garden, and by engaging him to explore ‘the unknown productions in Botany, as well as Zoology and Mineralogy’ in the East India Company’s territories.2 After clarification of the financial implications of the appointment,3 the Supreme Government agreed Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, vol. 25 (1943), pp. 75–7. For further biographical information on Wallich, see M.J. van Steenis-Kruseman, ‘Malaysian Plant Collectors and Collections being a Cyclopaedia of Botanical Exploration in Malaysia …’, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis (Jakarta, 1950), ser. I, vol. I, pp. 557–8; E. Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in China (St. Petersburg, 1898), vol. I, pp. 246–7; ODNB, vol. LIX (1899), pp. 135–6; Proc. Linn. Soc., vol. II (1845–55), pp. 314–18; D.G. Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service 1600–1913 (London, 1914), vol. II, pp. 143–4; D.G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615–1930 (London, 1930), no. 725; R. De Candolle and A. Radcliffe-Smith, ‘Nathaniel Wallich, MD, PhD, FRS, FLS, FRGS, (1786–1854) and the Herbarium of the Honourable East India Company, and their relation to the de Candolles of Geneva and the Great Prodromus’, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 83, no, 4 (1981), pp. 325–48.

1

Roxburgh to H. Tucker, Secretary to Government in the Public Department, 1 February 1809 (BL:Bengal Public Consultations, 10 February 1809, Range 7/17). In a subsequent letter to the Government, dated 24 February 1809, Roxburgh wrote: ‘My Chief, I may say only object in recommending Dr. Wallich, is that he may be employed to travel about in search of the unknown objects of natural history, & first on our eastern frontier, where I have every reason to think, there is a rich field for discovery, & where I wish to send him as soon as he can possibly make himself acquainted with what is already known to us, & now in this Garden. –’ (BL:Bengal Public Consultations, 10 March 1809, Range 7/18).

2

3

On receipt of Roxburgh’s letter of 1 February 1809, Lord Minto and his colleagues in the Supreme Council stated that they were ‘extremely well disposed’ to Wallich’s appointment, but prior to authorising his employment at the Botanic Garden they wished to know what additional expense would be incurred by the East India Company (BL:Bengal Public Consultations, 10 February 1809, Range 7/17). Roxburgh replied on 24 February 1809 after consulting Wallich on the subject: ‘… Mr. Wallich desires me to inform you

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on 10 March 1809 to employ Wallich at the Botanic Garden without any addition of pay, but with an extra monthly allowance of 200 Rupees while engaged in botanical research at places distant from his place of residence.4 In 1811 Wallich petitioned the Court of Directors of the East India Company to be appointed an Assistant Surgeon on the Bengal Establishment having, as he states in his Petition, ‘applied himself with great Diligence to the Study and Practice of Surgery’.5 His Petition was supported by private letters to members of the Direction by friends in Calcutta, one of whom, Dr. John Fleming (1747–1829), wrote that during a period of more than 40 years as a Surgeon in India he had seldom met with a man whose professional qualifications he could vouch for ‘with more confidence than … this Gentleman’s’.6 Fleming was an enthusiastic botanist,7 and he also testified to Wallich being ‘an Excellent Naturalist’, a merit, he added, ‘which I regret to say is much rarer among us than could be wished’.8 Wallich was commissioned as an Assistant Surgeon on 10 May 1814, about a year after he returned to India from Mauritius, where he had gone in 1812 for the recovery of his health.9 On 24 February 1815, Wallich was appointed to take temporary charge of the Botanic Garden, following the departure from India of Dr. Francis Buchanan (Hamilton) (1762–1829), who succeeded Roxburgh as Superintendent on his retirement in 1813. Wallich remained in charge until 20 April 1816, when he left the Garden following a disagreement with Dr. James Hare (d. 1831). According to the Baptist missionary, Dr. William Carey (1761–1834), Hare was largely responsible

that his present income, arising from the allowances granted by Government, & his private practice as a medical man amounts to between three, & four hundred Rupees Monthly; at the same time. [he] says he will be satisfied with whatever allowance Government may be pleased to grant, & declares his object is Knowledge, & not Money’ (BL:Bengal Public Consultations, 10 March 1809, Range 7/18). BL:Bengal Public Consultations, 10 March 1809, Range 7/18. The Supreme Government informed the Court of Directors of the East India Company of the appointment in a letter dated 30 June 1809 (BL:Bengal Letters Received, 55, Para. 210, E/4/75).

4

BL:Military Records, L/MIL/9/366.

5

Fleming to R.M. Bird, 25 September 1811 (BL:Military Records, L/MIL/9/366). Fleming served on the Bengal Establishment as a Surgeon from 1768 to 1813. He was one of the four proposers of Wallich’s nomination as a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1818, and was acknowledged by Wallich as being one of those responsible for securing his appointment as Superintendent of the Botanic Garden (Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores (London, 1829–32), vol. I, Preface, p. vii).

6

For Fleming’s collection of botanical drawings, see Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the lndia Office Library (London, 1962), pp. 23, 72–3, 92, 97–8.

7

Fleming to Bird, 25 September 1811 (BL:Military Records, L/MIL/9/366).

8

Proc. Linn. Soc., vol. II (1848–55), p. 314; Wallich, Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores, vol. I, Preface, p. vii. Wallich was promoted to the rank of Surgeon on 5 May 1826.

9

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for the rupture, although Wallich was ‘perhaps too lively in his resentment’.10 The Governor-General Marquess of Hastings was prejudiced against Wallich because of the abrupt withdrawal of his services, but when Carey learned that Hare was to retire from the post of Superintendent, he waited on Hastings to urge Wallich’s claims to the vacant post and at the same time encouraged Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Hardwicke (1756–1835) to use his influence with the Governor-General in Wallich’s interest. He also effected a reconciliation between Wallich and Hare and secured the latter’s agreement to recommend the Dane as his successor. The outcome, however, was the appointment, until his death in 1817, of Dr. Thomas Casey, a man, according to Carey, who was never known to have the smallest interest in botany. Advocating the advantages of Wallich’s appointment in June 1817 in a letter to Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765–1837), a member of the Bengal Council, Carey declared that the Dane ‘would do more for the science of Botany than any other man in India’.11 As a result of such forceful representations in India, and equally strong support from the President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820),12 Wallich was appointed Superintendent of the Botanic Garden on 1 August 1817, a post he held until 9 April 1846. During his long period as Superintendent, Wallich developed the broad grass walks through the 600-acre Garden and turned it into a popular pleasure ground for the European inhabitants of Calcutta.13 He continued Roxburgh’s enlightened policy of systematically describing the local flora and engaging Asian artists to make drawings of living plants, and he gradually increased the number of staff employed in the Garden to more than 300. New plants were introduced from various parts of the Indian sub-continent, China14 and South-East Asia by encouraging people to send seedlings and living plants to him, by stationing collectors at various places in India, and by his own collecting efforts. Even after his appointment as Superintendent, he adhered to the terms of his original engagement with the East India Company and travelled widely, collecting the flora of the surrounding regions. He visited Nepal during 1820–21, Penang and Singapore in 1822, and Oudh, Rohilkhand and Dehra in 1825, when he was appointed W. Carey to H.T. Colebrooke, 14 June 1817 (BL:MSS.Eur.B230).

10

Ibid. On Colebrooke, see Chapter Two, note 144.

11

Wallich to Banks, 24 July 1817 (Kew:Banks Collection., vol. 2, 341). In the Preface to his Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores, vol. I, p. vii, Wallich acknowledged that his appointment was due to the recommendation of Banks, Fleming, and Colebrooke.

12

For a description of the Botanic Garden in 1828, see Archer, Natural History Drawings, p. 24.

13

Bretschneider, European Botanical Discoveries, vol I, p. 247.

14

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Government Inspector of the timber forests of the Western Provinces. Following the end of the first Anglo-Burmese War, he accompanied a mission to Ava during 1826–27 in the capacity of Superintendent General of Plantations, and visited Rangoon, Moulmein, Martaban and Tenasserim.15 Wallich had sent many duplicates of his Nepal plants to Banks,16 A.B. Lambert (1761–1842),17 Sir James Edward Smith (1759–1828),18 and others in England and Europe,19 and when he arrived in London in 1828 he brought with him more than 8,000 species, including many duplicates, which he had collected during his journeys in northern India, the Straits,20 and Burma. With the permission of the Directors of the East India Company, he spent the next four years distributing a large number of duplicates to Herbaria in Europe and the United States.21 To these were added for distribution, duplicates in the East India Company’s Museum from the collections of Roxburgh, Francis Buchanan (Hamilton), Benjamin Heyne, George Finlayson (1790–1823), Robert Wight (1796–1872), and others.22 In order to avoid the necessity of writing numerous labels for these duplicates, he began publishing in 1829 a lithograph work entitled, A numerical List of Dried specimens

For reports, including journals, of Wallich’s excursions along the Salween and Attran rivers in 1827 to examine the teak forests, see BL:Home Misc., 669 (8), (14); 671 (2), (16); 675 (15).

15

Wallich to Banks, 15 January 1818, 24 January 1818, 25 January 1818, 27 January 1818, 16 February 1818, 20 February 1818, 14 July 1818, 24 November 1818, 30 December 1818, 14 January 1819, 16 March 1819, 2 December 1819 (BL:Add. MSS. 33982, fols. 135–42, 149–52, 155–8, 165–9, 178–9, 180–4, 195–6).

16

David Don (1799–1841) records in his account of the Lambertian Herbarium, ‘Dr. Wallich, the indefatigable superintendent of the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, has enriched the Herbarium with many valuable collections from Nepal and various parts of India, as well as from the Calcutta Garden. The Nepal collections, including both those sent by Dr. Francis Hamilton (Buchanan] and Dr. Wallich, may be estimated at about 1500 species, the greater part of which are entirely new ...’ (A.B. Lambert, A Description of the Genus Pinus (London, 1828– 37), vol. II, App., p. 30). Lambert became a correspondent of Wallich in 1817 and the latter records in his letters to Banks in 1818 and 1819 (BL:Add. MSS. 33982, 133–4, 151–2, 155–8, 180–4) sending plants to him. Wallich wrote to Lambert in November 1819: ‘Need I say that your Herbarium is uppermost in my thoughts with that of Sir J. Banks. I only apprehend that you may not be so well pleased with the great liberty I have taken in venturing to address my dispatches to you, as if you were the botanical agent of the superintendent of the botanic garden at Calcutta, by my having requested you always to communicate duplicates to Sir. J. Banks, Sir J.E. Smith, Mr. [Edward] Rudge, Mr. [William J.] Hooker, Dr. [Thomas] Taylor, Professor [A.P.] De Candolle & [J.W.] Horneman’ (Kew:Lambert Letters, cited H.S. Miller, ‘The Herbarium of Aylmer Bourke Lambert Notes on its Acquisition, Dispersal, and Present Whereabouts’, Taxon, vol. 19, pt. 4, (1970) p. 544). For the dispersal of Wallich’s specimens at the sale of Lambert’s Herbarium on 27–29 June 1842, see ibid., pp. 544–5. Raffles was also a friend of Lambert and sent him botanical specimens from Singapore and Sumatra, ibid., pp. 526–7, 537.

17

Wallich to Banks, 10 January 1818, 20 February 1818, 14 July 1818 (BL:Add. MSS. 33982, 133–4, 151–2, 155–8).

18

Note 17.

19

For Wallich’s botanical collection in the Straits of Melaka and Malaysia, see note 45.

20

Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana. ser. I, vol. I, p. 557.

21

‘The Wallichian Herbarium’, Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, vol. 5 (1913), p. 256. The name of Richard Wight is recorded, but this must be a mistake for Robert Wight.

22

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of plants in the East India Company’s Museum, collected under the superintendence of Dr. Wallich of the Company’s botanic garden at Calcutta,23 and this publication continued during 1847–49 after he retired to England, by which time some 9,148 specimens were listed. In 1832 the type set of catalogued specimens was transferred to the Linnean Society of London, the ‘magnificent donation’ being recorded in the printed extracts from the Minute Book of the Society in its Transactions under the date 6 November 1832.24 Wallich had already produced in India his Tentamen Floræ Napalensis Illustratæ, which was printed in two fascicles, each containing 25 plates, at the Asiatic Lithographic Press, Serampore, during 1824–26,25 and he assisted Carey in the publication of Roxburgh’s Flora Indica (Serampore, 1820–24).26 While he was in London he published between 1829 and 1832 the 12 parts of his Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores,27 containing 295 handcoloured lithograph plates by M. Gauci (fl. 1810–46), the subjects having been chosen from drawings executed under his direction at the Calcutta Botanic Garden, or made during his various journeys by Indian artists, notably Vishnu Prasad.28 The book, which in many respects supplements Roxburgh’s For publication details of this work, see F.A. Stafleu, Taxonomic Literature (Utrecht, 1967), no. 1382; Bull. Roy. Bot. Gard. Kew, vol. 5 (1913), p. 260.

23

Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XVII (1837), p. 554. The letter from the Chairman of Directors of the East India Company to the Linnean Society of London, dated 19 June 1832, offering the Wallich collection as an addition to the Society’s Museum, and the Address of the Council of the Linnean Society, dated 23 June 1832, in reply, are printed as a Postscript to Vol. III, pp. vii–viii, of Wallich, Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores. See also Bull. Roy. Bot. Gard. Kew, vol. 5 (1913), pp. 257–8. In 1913, after a disputation about the terms of the ‘donation’, Wallich’s Herbarium, together with those of Dr. Thomas Horsfield and some others, were transferred to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (A.T. Gage, A History of the Linnean Society of London (London, 1938), pp. 125–6; Bull. Roy. Bot. Gard. Kew. vol. 5 (1913), pp. 262–3).

24

Tentamen Floræ Napalensis Illustratæ consisting of Botanical Descriptions and Lithographic Figures of Select Nipal Plants (Asiatic Lithographic Press, Serampore, 1824–26). See Stafleu, Taxonomic Literature, no. 1381 for details of publication.

25

Flora Indica; or Descriptions of Indian Plants, by the late William Roxburgh … Edited by William Carey, D.D., to which are added Descriptions of Plants more recently Discovered by Nathaniel Wallich, M.D., F.L.S. &c. Superintendent of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Mission Press, Serampore, 1820–24), 2 vols. The copy of the book in the Library of the Linnean Society of London is inscribed in ink on the title-page in Wallich’s hand: ‘To Sir J.E. Smith Prest. of the Linnean Society as a testimony of respect & esteem from N. Wallich’. For details of Wallich’s contribution to the work, see the Preface by C. B. Clarke to the reprint of Carey’s 1832 edition published by Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta, 1874. See note 58.

26

Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores; or, Descriptions and Figures of a Select Number of Unpublished East Indian Plants (London, 1829–32), 3 vols. See Stafleu, Taxonomic Literature, no. 1383: C. Nissen, Die Botanische Buchillustration Ihre Geschichte und Bibliographie (Stuttgart, 1966), no. 2099; G. Dunthorne, Flower & Fruit Prints of the 18th and early 19th centuries (London, 1970), no. 326. A copy of Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores, presented by Wallich to Lady Raffles, with each part bound separately, is in the Library of the Zoological Society of London, having been placed on permanent loan in 1977 by Mrs. A. Johnstone, a descendant of Raffles’s sister, Mary Anne Flint.

27

Vishnu Prasad (his own spelling of his name being Vishnupersaud) was responsible not only for many of the drawings for the plates in Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores but also for the majority of the lithograph plates in

28

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Plants of the Coast of Coromandel (London, 1795–1820),29 ranks among the finest botanical works ever published. Shortly after his return to India from England in 1833, Wallich headed a scientific mission to investigate the cultivation of the Tea plant in Assam,30 the mission collecting extensive botanical and other natural history materials. He continued to add plants to the Botanic Garden and between 1836 and 1840 he distributed no less than 189,932 plants to 2,000 gardens in other parts of the world.31 He had already sent numerous specimens of plants to Denmark, notably to J.W. Hornemann in Copenhagen, and when the Danish Galathea expedition was in Calcutta in 1845 he donated to it a large herbarium of Indian plants.32 During 1842–43 he visited the Cape of Good Hope in a vain attempt to recover his health, but he was forced to resign from the East India Company’s service on 9 April 1846. In his years of retirement in London he took an active part in the affairs of the Linnean Society and was elected one of its Vice-Presidents in 1849. He died at his house in Upper Gower Street, London, on 28 April 1854, in his 69th year, and was buried in the Kensal Green cemetery.33 Wallich received numerous honours and distinctions during his lifetime. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1818,34 and in the same year he Tentamen Floræ Napalensis lllustratæ (note 25). See W. Blunt. The Art of Botanical Illustration (London. 1967), pp. 166, 215. Plants of the Coast of Coromandel; Selected from Drawings and Descriptions Presented to the Hon. Court of Directors of the East India Company, by William Roxburgh, M.D. Published, by their order, under the direction of Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P.R.S. (London, 1795–1820), 3 vols. See Stafleu, Taxonomic Literature, no. 1115, and Chapter Seven, note 27.

29

R.H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 1945–58), vol. IV, pp. 204, 446.

30

Proc. Linn. Soc., vol. II (1848–55), p. 316.

31

Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, vol. 25 (1943), p. 76.

32

Wallich first married on 30 May 1812 at Frederiksnagor Juliane Marie Hals, daughter of a Bengal planter, Christopher Hals (c.1772–1800), and Caroline Franciska Bie (1774–1844). She was born on 5 February or 19 September 1797, the first date being more likely because a contemporary newspaper reported on her death on 1 August 1812, only two months after her marriage, that she ‘had not as yet completed her 15th year’. Wallich married a second time in 1813 Sophie Colling, who is stated to have been the daughter of an English Colonel Colling, but no one of that name is recorded in the list of officers of the Bengal Army. It is not clear how many children Wallich had by her, but there is a portrait of him and his wife with five of their children (note 52). Obviously, this number could not have included an infant daughter who was born on 9 February 1817 and who died the following day (Asiatic Journal, vol. IV, no. 22 (October 1817), p. 415) or another daughter, Hannah, who died at Garden Reach, Calcutta, on 8 March 1819 (ibid., vol. VIII, no. 46 (October 1819), p. 390). Two of Wallich’s sons, George Charles Wallich (1815–99) and Nathaniel David Scott Wallich (1825– 63) entered the Indian Medical Service (Crawford, Roll, nos. 1287, 1546: ODNB, vol. LIX, p. 136).

33

Wallich was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London on 3 November 1818 having been proposed on 21 April 1818 ‘as likely to become a useful and valuable member of the Society’ by H.T. Colebrooke, J. Fleming, A. B. Lambert, and the entomologist, Alexander McLeay (1767–1848), who was Secretary of the Society between 1798 and 1825, when he resigned to become Colonial Secretary of New South Wales.

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was created a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, the Cross of Honour (‘Silver Cross’) being awarded nine years later, and the Commander’s Cross in 1852.35 He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by Marischal College, University of Aberdeen, in 1819,36 and he had conferred on him the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Copenhagen two years later. In 1826 he was made a member of the Royal Danish Society for the Sciences, and in 1829 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.37 He contributed many papers to learned journals,38 and he is commemorated in the names of several plants, including the genus of palms Wallichia (Roxburgh). An obituary notice in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London describes him as a man of ‘warm affections, of ready wit, and of pleasing manners; a most amusing companion, steady in his attachments, and indefatigable in his exertions for the advancement of his favourite science’.39 It was these qualities in Wallich which Raffles came to appreciate after their first meeting at the Botanic Garden at Sibpur in November 1818, when he was hoping to find a replacement for Dr. Arnold as a naturalist in Sumatra and managed to engage Dr. William Jack. Raffles and Jack made another visit to the Botanic Garden in November and December 1819, his growing admiration for Wallich being expressed in a letter he wrote to Horsfield from Calcutta on 26 December 1819: ‘We are now passing some time at the Botanic Garden of this place which is a splendid Establishment – Dr Wallich who superintends it, is a most superior Man and most zealous’. It was, however, not until after Jack’s death, when he and Wallich spent six weeks together in Singapore during October and November 1822, that an exceptionally warm and intimate bond of friendship developed between them. The Order of the Dannebrog was instituted by King Christian V of Denmark in 1671 and was first awarded in that year. In 1808 by letter patent King Frederik VI ruled that the order might be bestowed on any Danish subject in four classes: grand commander; commander, grand cross; commander; and knight. In the same year the Cross of Honour of the Dannebrog was instituted as the Cross of Honour of the Men of the Dannebrog, the decoration being a silver cross on a ribbon with a rosette. It is restricted to Danish citizens already members of the Order of the Dannebrog (A. Fabritius, The Monarchy Symbols National Anthem [reprinted from Denmark, an official handbook], Copenhagen, 1974).

35

The degree was awarded on 30 April 1819. Candidates for the degree had to satisfy the University of Aberdeen that they had received a liberal education and had attended courses in medicine at a university or ‘celebrated school’ under teachers of reputation. Candidates like Wallich, who could not be examined in person by the University, received their degrees on the attestation of two physicians, in his case by Dr. John Fleming and Dr. Francis Hamilton (Buchanan). See P.J. Anderson, Fasti Academiæ Mariscallanæ Aberdonensis: Selections from the Records of Marischal College and University 1593–1860 (Aberdeen, 1898), vol. I, pp. 142–3, 152.

36

The date of Wallich’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society was 12 March 1829. Wallich was also a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, having been elected on 19 March 1818 on the nomination of H.T. Colebrooke, A.B. Lambert and J. Bostock (1773–1846), who became President of the Geological Society in 1826.

37

For a list of Wallich’s publications, see Catalogue of Scientific Papers 1800–1863 Compiled and Published by the Royal Society of London (London, 1867–72), vol. VI, pp. 252–3.

38

Proc. Linn. Soc., vol. II (1848–55), p. 317.

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Wallich’s visit to Singapore arose from an application he made to the Supreme Government in July 1822 for six months’ leave of absence to visit China for the recovery of his health from the effects of the botanical expedition he had made in the previous year to Nepal. In his application he also expressed the wish to collect botanical specimens during the period of his leave, for which purpose he petitioned to take with him the Head Overseer at the Botanic Garden, George Porter (1800– 33), two apprentices, Julius Pigeot and George Huddart, and two Indian servants. The application was granted, and Wallich sailed from Calcutta on HCS Sir David Scott (W. Hunter) on 10 August 1822. After calling at Penang, where Porter remained,40 the party disembarked at Singapore, which appealed to Wallich because of its climate and the opportunity it presented for collecting Malaysian flora. Raffles arrived some five weeks later, on 10 October 1822, and between then and 22 November, when Wallich returned to Calcutta, the two men met frequently, often across the breakfast or dinner table. On 17 October Raffles appointed him and two others to serve on a Committee to report on the suitability of the southern bank of the Singapore River for building warehouses for the European merchants, the report being completed on 23 October 1822.41 Raffles also engaged him to assist Dr. William Montgomerie (1797–1856), Assistant Surgeon in general medical charge of the troops, in the dissection of a recently captured Dugong (Dugong dugon Müller),42 and encouraged him to write an official letter proposing the establishment of a Botanic Garden at Singapore.43 In his letter to the Supreme Government of 19 July 1822, in which he applied for six months’ leave of absence to visit China for the recovery of his health, Wallich also applied for the Head Overseer at the Botanic Garden to accompany him, his health being such ‘as to make a voyage to sea very necessary to save his life’. Dr. R. Hanitsch reproduces the letter (JSBRAS, no. 65 (1913), pp. 40–1) in which his name is given as George Potter, following the spelling by Curtis (JSBRAS, no. 25 (1894), p. 97) and Ridley (ibid., 165). In fact, he was George Porter, whose name is associated with Pleomele porteri and Dracæna porteri, and whose career in Penang is detailed by Marcus Langdon in Penang The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830 (George Town, Penang, 2015), vol. II, passim. He died at Calcutta on 10 February 1833, his will dated 22 September 1832 indicating, from a reference to relatives, that he probably came from Chelsea (BL:L/AG/34/29/52 Part I, 181–2).

40

Hanitsch, JSBRAS, no. 65 (1913), pp. 41–3.

41

In the Library of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta, there is a draft letter in Wallich’s hand to Raffles, dated Singapore 9 November 1822, in which he reports details of the dissection of the Dugong carried out by him and Dr. Montgomerie on the previous Sunday ‘under your instructions’. Raffles had sent a skull of a Dugong to Sir Everard Home (Chapter Seven, note 23) from Penang in 1819, on the receipt of which Home read a paper to the Royal Society ‘On the milk tusks, and organ of hearing of the Dugong’ (Philosophical Transactions, vol. 110, no. 2 (1820), pp.144–55). Raffles’s own paper, ‘Some account of the Dugong’, was read by Home to a meeting of the Royal Society on 18 May 1820 (ibid., pp. 174–82), and Home presented a further paper, ‘Particulars respecting the anatomy of the Dugong, intended as a Supplement to Sir T.S. Raffles’ Account of that animal’, at a meeting on 29 June 1820 (ibid., pp. 315–23). Raffles sent copies of these to Wallich on loan to assist him in the dissection, and he returned the ‘excellent papers’ to Raffles in his letter of 9 November 1822.

42

Wallich to Raffles, 2 November 1822, Appendix, Letter No. I.

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Wallich left Singapore on 22 November 1822 on the John Adam (Brown), having joined John Crawfurd and George Finlayson (1790–1823), who were returning to Calcutta from a political mission to Thailand and Cochin China.44 On the following evening, the party landed on Alligator Island, near P. Biola, south of Singapore, and collected what was described as ‘a curious and extensive botanical collection’. 45 On 25 November he went ashore at Cape Rachado, north of Melaka, and added what Crawfurd stated were ‘many novelties to our botanical

J. Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China; Exhibiting a View of the Actual State of Those Kingdoms (London, 1828); G. Finlayson, The Mission to Siam, and Hué the Capital of Cochin China, in the Years 1821–2 (London, 1826).

44

Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy, p. 297. Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana, ser. I, vol. I, p. 557 cites C. Curtis, ‘A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns found growing wild in the Island of Penang’, JSBRAS, no. 25 (1894), pp. 67 et seq., as authority for Wallich having visited many parts of the Malay Peninsula, including the Dindings [?], and Penang, on his way back to Calcutta at the end of 1822, the information, in fact, seeming to derive from the appended note by H.N. Ridley on ‘The Botanists of Penang’ (ibid., pp. 163–7). I.H. Burkill, Gard. Bull. Straits Settlements, vol. 4 (1927), p. 133 is also cited to the effect that Wallich collected much in Singapore and a little in Penang. The principal source of information on the subject, Crawfurd’s Journal of an Embassy, pp. 297–300, appears to have been overlooked, for it is clear that 14 large boxes of living plants and a great quantity of dried plants were collected by Wallich in Penang and taken to Calcutta, as well as other botanical specimens collected near Cape Rachado, P. Pangkor and the coast of Kedah. Wallich himself in the Preface p. viii of his Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores states that he visited Penang, Singapore ‘and some other places in the Straits of Malacca’ from which he ‘reaped a rich harvest of the productions of those countries’. Raffles, in a letter to Horsfield dated Singapore 23 January 1823, states that Wallich’s Singapore collections were ‘most extensive’ (KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562), and he also indicates in another letter to the same correspondent, dated 20 April 1823, that Wallich had already shipped some of his Malaysian collections direct to the East India Company Museum in London: ‘Before this arrives the Court [of Directors] will have received the first part of my friend Wallich’s Collections of Plants – and I conclude they will fall under your care as I know Dr [Charles] Wilkins cannot give his time or attention to them – It consists of his Nipal[,] Sylhet and Malayan Ferns no less than 35 new genera and 246 determined species besides several others that are new but not named – there are at least 280 species which Wallich informs is nearly 1/4 of all the Ferns hitherto described – there are from 20 to 50 specimens of each – there are also innumerable specimens of plants preserved in all manner of ways &c. particularly Nepenthes Rafflesiana – Ampullaria &ca[.] Pray see they are done justice to – ’ (KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562). Raffles also reported on botanical subjects to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, in a letter from Singapore dated 23 January 1823: ‘We have recently discovered a Companion for my Great Flower in a Noble Orchideous plant which will shortly be described by Mr Finlayson or my friend Dr Wallich, the latter of whom has taken several growing Specimens to Calcutta in the hope of getting them to England – It grows parasitically on rocks on roots in several of the Islands in the Straits of Malacca & the Stems are as thick as a Man’s wrist & from six to ten feet long without branches at the extremity of which they produce abundance of leaves – But the wonder is it’s magnificent inflorescence which forms an erect spike Six feet high with upwards of 100 large spreading brown and white chequered fragrant flowers between two and three inches in diameter –’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24; cf. Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), pp. 535–6). Raffles gives the impression here that he shared in this discovery but it was, in fact, made on P. Pangkor on 9 January 1822 by George Finlayson, who gives a somewhat similar description of the plant in his Mission to Siam, pp. 35–6, and a more detailed description in his Botanical Journal (ibid., pp. xviii–xix). Crawfurd (Journal of an Embassy, p. 31) records the discovery, and also reports on the return visit to P. Pangkor on 28 November 1818, when Wallich was one of the party: ‘The island of Dinding or Pangkur having proved in our outward voyage so rich a field for botany, we were induced to touch at it last night for a few hours. A party landed near the ruins of the Dutch fort, and was very successful in obtaining specimens of living plants for the Botanical Garden at Calcutta. Among others, we procured several fine ones of the splendid epidendron, which Mr. Finlayson had discovered in our former visit’. A specimen of the orchid (Gramatophyllum speciosum Blume), probably collected on this occasion, is in the Wallich Herbarium at Kew.

45

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collection’.46 On 28 November a few hours were spent on P. Pangkor and specimens were obtained of living plants for the Calcutta Botanic Garden. To these were added at Penang between 2 and 8 December, 14 ‘large boxes’ of living plants and a ‘great quantity’ of dried specimens.47 Wallich returned to Calcutta on 29 December, after an absence of nearly five months.48 Following his departure from Singapore, Raffles began addressing extremely warm and intimate letters to him, not only on natural history subjects, but also about Singapore affairs when he was encountering opposition from LieutenantColonel William Farquhar and elements of the European mercantile community. Thereafter, he continued to correspond with Wallich until he left Bengkulu, the last letter of 28 March 1824 describing his losses in the fire on the Fame in the previous month. It does not appear that he wrote to him after his arrival in England in August 1824, probably because Wallich was travelling in Burma during much of the period prior to Raffles’s death, and because Raffles himself was busily engaged in his own affairs in London. When Wallich arrived in England in 1828, he brought with him a number of Raffles’s letters for Lady Raffles to use in writing the Memoir of her husband and was rewarded with a handsome tribute in the introduction. When she sent him a copy of the book, his reply recorded one of the most fulsome tributes ever paid to Raffles: 49 Great Coram Str. 20th Feby 183049 My Dear Lady Raffles It is quite impossible for me to express in suitable language the feelings with which I received, and have now word for word perused your Ladyships precious volume.50

Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy, p. 298.

46

Ibid., pp. 298–9.

47

The John Adam (note 118) did not arrive at Calcutta until 30 December 1822 (Asiatic Journal, vol. XV no. 89, (May 1823), p. 534) but Crawfurd left the ship on 28 December at Saugor Island and, by means of a small native craft, reached Calcutta on the afternoon of 29 December. One must assume that Wallich accompanied him, but it is possible that he remained aboard ship in order to unload his botanical collections.

48

BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/10. A postscript to this letter has not been printed.

49

Lady Raffles arranged to have printed 1,500 copies of the Memoir at her own expense, and she contracted with John Murray to advertise them at his sale on 4 February 1830, which may be regarded as the date of publication of the book. Twelve copies printed on special paper, with the frontispieces on China paper, and a Map of Sumatra dedicated to William Marsden, were presented by her to important persons, such as Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Sotheby’s sale 8 June 1970, lot 154), and the second Earl of Minto

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As your husband moved, and breathed and felt and thought, when he was still among us, so have you exhibited him to our view – That being so pure and good, so friendly, so highly blessed beyond all others with heavens choicest gifts that never – never shall we see his like again; we shall not even be remind[ed] of him except by himself, by the recollection of what he was, by his letters, by your Ladyships beautiful memoirs of him, and by his countless acts of benevolence, philanthropy and wisdom. He was, I firmly believe, an emanation from some other and better world, granted us but for a short period, and then speedily returning to the realms of unfading bliss and peace. The memory of him will live for many ages; it will shine brighter and brighter as years roll away; and when those who misunderstood, and mistrusted and mistook him are mouldering in an oblivion his name shall still live and be revered and beloved by all the good and upright both here and in India. It was they, that gave him sorrow and sadness in his circle of happy content; alas! but for their machinations “the silver chord would not, perhaps, have been yet broken at the wheel”. But why grieve at his dispensation? He is happy now – and let the rest make up their accounts with their own conscience. – Forgive, my Lady, for this long digression. My purpose was to have tendered you, and I do it from my heart & soul, the most grateful thanks for the noble gift you have bestowed upon me, for the honor you have conferred on me in the introduction as well as in the body of the work: a greater honor than I have ever dared to aspire to and more highly prized by me and mine than any other honor, that has ever been or ever will be granted to us. Great as was always my admiration of the inexhaustible mine of information and knowledge which Sir Stamford possessed, I am lost in amazement at the stupendous treasures contained in his epistolary correspondence published by your Ladyship. The volume contains more information, more sound wisdom, more research and information than any I ever read in the whole course of my life; and the time will assuredly come, when it will be referred to and consulted as a never-failing text book on every subject connected with the Malayan Archipelago. It will then be a matter of regret that it did not contain every line, which Sir Stamford ever wrote. May I respectfully intimate this as a hint for the 2d Edition? Will your Ladyship permit me also to suggest the addition of an autograph of Sir Stamfords handwriting– so beautiful and elegant?51

(J.R. Abbey, Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770–1860 (London, 1956–7), no. 555). One would assume that Wallich received an ordinary copy of the book. This was the period when the collection of autographs of historical personages was becoming a popular engagement, as described by A.N.L. Munby in The Cult of the Autograph Letter in England (London, 1962). Wallich’s statement is evidence of his own interest in the subject and explains why he was careful to retain all his private correspondence, including Raffles’s letters to him. His suggestion was accepted by Lady Raffles,

51

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Mrs Wallich52 begs to unite with me in kindest regards and in fervent prayers for your uninterrupted health & happiness. I have the honor to remain with sentiments of the highest respect & esteem. My dear Lady Raffles Your most grateful & obliged ser[van]t N. Wallich Lady Raffles

RAFFLES’S LETTERS TO NATHANIEL WALLICH No. 1 Private Pinang 4th March 181953 My dear Sir, I have only time to send you two lines and to refer you to our friend Jack’s communications in proof that we have not been idle –54 I am now about to proceed to

who included a facsimile copy of one of Raffles’s letters to Horsfield in the second (octavo) edition of the Memoir in 1835. 52

On Sophie Wallich, see note 33. According to P.B.C. Westergaard, Danske Portraeter (Copenhagen, 1934), vol. II, p. 839, there is a woodcut depicting her with Wallich and their five children. There are three known portraits in oils of Wallich. The first by John Lucas (1807–74) was probably executed in 1833, the same year in which a mezzotint was engraved after it. The portrait at that time belonged to Wallich’s friend, Major-General Thomas Hardwicke (note 179), but it subsequently came into the possession of the Linnean Society of London, in whose rooms it now hangs. The second portrait in oils was painted by T.H. Maguire in 1849 and this was acquired by H.N. Ridley (1855–1956), who presented it to the Raffles (National) Museum, Singapore, in the early years of the present century. A lithograph of it by Maguire was published by George Ransome in Portraits of Honorary Members of the Ipswich Museum (Ipswich, 1852), and this is reproduced in W. Makepeace, G.E. Brooke & R. St.J. Braddell, One Hundred Years of Singapore (London, 1921), vol. II, facing p. 64. The third oil portrait is by E. Jerichau Baumann and is part of the Danish National Collection in Frederiksborg Castle. The mezzotint after the oil portrait by Lucas was executed by the artist in 1833 and was published in July of that year, with a dedication to the Linnean Society of London. A lithograph by M. Gauci (fl. 1810–46) after a portrait by Andrew Robertson (1777–1845) appears to represent Wallich at a slightly younger age, perhaps shortly after he arrived in England from India in 1828, Gauci being also responsible for the botanical plates in Wallich’s Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores, which were being executed at this period.

Holograph letter, written on one leaf recto and verso with the address in Raffles’s hand on the verso of second leaf: ‘Dr. Wallich/Botanic Garden/Calcutta/T S Raffles’. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand: ‘rd 3 April’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/E17, no. I).

53

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See Jack’s letters to Wallich dated Prince of Wales Island, 14 January 1819 (postscripts dated 16 and 23 January), and 12 February 1819 (postscript dated 15 February), Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), pp. 151–64.

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Acheen a nice Country altogether and I trust we shall commence our Flora Sumatrana with some very interesting discoveries – 55 I have written to Mr Stuart on the subject of Jack’s remaining to the Eastward; it is of great importance this should be settled at once and I am sure you will find Mr. Stuart friendly – but the Members of Council have always so much important business on hand that it cannot be expected they will always recollect arrangements of a personal nature – I think therefore you may assist our views by waiting on Mr. Stuart and communicating some of the particulars which Dr. Jack has sent to you – 56 Yrs very Sincer[el]y T S Raffles Will you send me a Hortus Bengalensis57 and Carey[’]s Edition of Roxburgh as far as compleated –58 Jack has them but another Copy would be useful[.] Dr Wallich &c &c &c &c Raffles left Penang on his political mission to Aceh on 8 March 1819 (Chapter Nine, notes 32, 46) and took with him the French naturalists Pierre Diard and Alfred Duvaucel, but as they were zoologists he assumed responsibility for collecting botanical specimens in Aceh. According to a letter Jack wrote to Wallich on 7 May 1819, eight days after Raffles’s return to Penang, he was not very successful in his task: ‘He brought very few [specimens] as they were but little on shore and too busy to attend much to them. The principal ones from thence are the splendid Barringtonia speciosa [Forst.], the Nymphæa cyanea. Roxb. at least I take it to be so and several of which I have sent specimens from hence as Volkameria, Calophyllum, Cardiospermum, Gmelina’ (Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 174).

55

James Stuart was President of the Board of Revenue in Bengal and a member of the Supreme Government. Jack had no official position on Raffles’s staff when he left Calcutta on 7 December 1818, but early in March 1819 Raffles offered him the position of his Personal Surgeon retrospectively from 1 January 1819, and he wrote to the Governor-General requesting confirmation of the appointment (Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 166). Jack also sent papers in support of the appointment to Wallich and in the above letter Raffles asks Wallich to wait on Stuart to assist in the matter. Raffles also offered Jack the appointment as his Private Secretary (ibid., p. 167), but this was not an official position. In a ‘List of Civil Servants on the West Coast Establishment’, dated 1 January 1822, Jack’s name appears in the Singapore section as Civil Surgeon (NSA:L2 (Raffles: Letters to London, 1822–1826), fols. 1–2).

56

W. Roxburgh. Hortus Bengalensis, or a Catalogue of the Plants Growing in the Honorable East India Company’s Botanic Garden at Calcutta (Mission Press, Serampore, 1814). See Stafleu, Taxonomic Literature, no. 1116.

57

Note 26. See also K.S. Diehl, Early Indian Imprints (New York, London, 1964), nos. 272–4. It would seem that Volume I of Carey’s edition of Roxburgh’s Flora Indica was not issued until the early months of 1820, though it is possible that some sheets were printed before then. This is suggested by the reference in Raffles’s letter above, and by another in Jack’s letter to Wallich dated 15 March 1819, postscript 25 March 1819 (Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 171). Jack at this time possessed only part of a manuscript copy of the work (ibid., p.160, n.37), which he subsequently supplemented by arranging through Wallich to have a clerk copy the rest of the manuscript (ibid., p. 181, n.119; p. 196, n.179). By September 1820 a printed copy of Volume I of the work had reached Jack at Bengkulu which he presented to Raffles, at the same time returning to Wallich ‘the portion of a [manuscript?] copy still remaining here’ (ibid., p. 214).

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No. 2 Private Singapore 17 June 181959 My dear Sir, Our friend Dr. Jack will keep you so regularly informed of our Proceedings that I shall not attempt to give you any account of our Collections and discoveries –

60

You will however be happy to hear that we are at last on the Wing for Bencoolen61 where we shall commence operations on a more determined plan – We have however no right to complain and Singapore would have recompensed all our pains had we found in it nothing but the new Species of Nepenthes62 which are splendid beyond Holograph letter written on two leaves. verso of second leaf blank. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand: ‘Rd 23 July’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/EI7, no. II). The first paragraph, with deletions, is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 382.

59

See Jack’s letters to Wallich dated 5 March 1819 (with postscript dated 6 March), 15 March 1819 (with postscripts dated 25 March and 12 April), 7 May 1819, 19 May 1819, 8 June 1819 (with postscript dated 15 June), Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), pp. 164–81.

60

On 28 June 1819 the Indiana sailed for Bengkulu but two days later ran aground on a shoal in the Straits of Riau (Chapter Nine), necessitating a brief stay at the Dutch port, where Jack collected a few botanical specimens including the Hypericum alternifolium Vahl [= Archytaea Vahlii Choisy] and apparently, Nepenthes ampullaria (note 62).

61

Raffles found three species of Nepenthes or Pitcher Plants when he first visited Singapore in late January and early February 1819 and he brought them back with him to Penang where Jack described them in a letter to Wallich dated 12 February 1819: ‘Sir Stamford has brought with him a number of specimens which I have not yet gone through; among them however are no less than three new and splendid species of Nepenthes! from Singapore, the new settlement. I must name one of them after him, and Lady Raffles’ (Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 163). This Jack did in his unpublished ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants. No. Ill’ (Baptist Mission Press Bencoolen), 1820, pp. 21–6 as Nepenthes rafflesiana and Nepenthes ampullaria, the third species being named by him (incorrectly) Nepenthes distillatoria [ = ? Nepenthes gracilis Korthals ]. When Raffles returned to Singapore in June 1819 Jack was anxious to collect specimens himself, and in a letter to his family dated 20 June 1819 he reported having made ‘many interesting discoveries. particularly two new and splendid species of Pitcher Plant (Nepenthes Linn.) far surpassing any yet known in Europe’ (Hooker, Companion Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835), p.131. Cf. Jack to Wallich, 8 June 1819, Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 178). These are two of the species already referred to, and Jack informed his family and Wallich that he had made two drawings of them and that Raffles intended sending home specimens of the plants themselves. They were apparently sent to Banks and Marsden by direct consignment, and Jack sent Indian ink drawings of two of the species to London in March 1820 (Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73, 1916, p. 204). Specimens of all three species came into the possession of A.B. Lambert (note 17) through Charles Wilkins (1749–1836), Librarian of the East India Company’s Oriental Repository (Don, ‘... an account of the Lambertian Herbarium’, Lambert, Description of the Genus Pinus, II, App. p.51), and these were subsequently duplicated by specimens sent by Jack via Wallich to Lambert (ibid., II, App. p. 40). The latter had engraved and published in his Pinus, II. Tab. 7 a magnificent plate of the Nepenthes rafflesiana, together with text extracted from Jack’s ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants, No. III’, p. 23: ‘This is the largest and most magnificent species of the genus, being adorned with two kinds of urns both elegant in their forms, and brilliant in their coloring. It was first discovered with the following species [Nepenthes ampullaria] in the forests of Singapore by Sir T. Stamford Raffles, Lieut. Governor of Sumatra, when he established a British colony on that island in February 1819. To him therefore it is justly dedicated’. Jack subsequently discovered another species of Nepenthes at Bengkulu in 1819 which he named Nepenthes phyllamphora (Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 186; Jack, ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants No. III’, p. 26). and he sent seeds via Wallich to Banks in London (Burkill. JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 210). Raffles mentions in a letter to Horsfield dated 20

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description and for novelty size and effect certainly rank among the wonders of the East next to my great Sumatran Flower –

63

I am anxious to interest you about the Gardens at Claremont – I promised to send to Prince Leopold64 Collections of Seeds and Plants from time to time, & the taste he has evinced for Botanical pursuits demands every possible attention and respect from the Lovers of that beautiful Science – I believe I spoke to you on the subject in Bengal – if so – this will serve to remind you, and at all events to secure a Package of Seeds and a few interesting plants for his Serene Highness by the first convenient opportunity – Colonel Addenbrooke65 is his Man of business and to him I enclose a short Letter of introduction leaving it to you to communicate what further may occur to you – I would wish you also to send a few Plants & seeds to Prince Esterhazy the Austrian Ambassador in London,66 who is particularly anxious to obtain foreign Plants for the Emperor – You may write a Note to the Prince mentioning that you have sent them at my Request – These Communications & attentions from you will be taken very kindly and duly appreciated – We hope to find at Bencoolen many Packets from you67 to enable us to clear up the ground over which we have already passed, before we commence on a new and still more interesting field[.] Lady Raffles unites in Kindest regards, I remain My dear Sir Always yr’s very Sincerely T.S. Raffles Dr Wallich &c &c &c

April 1823 that a collection of plants Wallich had sent to London (note 45) included specimens of Nepenthes rafflesiana and Nepenthes ampullaria (KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562). Rafflesia arnoldi Brown. See Chapter Seven.

63

Chapter Seven, note 48.

64

Chapter Nine, note 49.

65

Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy (1786–1866), Austrian Ambassador in London, and a friend of Prince Leopold and Princess Charlotte, who wrote of him in a letter dated 4 March 1816, ‘Esterhazy was in high feather, & so happy at my marriage, & so full of his [Leopold’s] praises that he quite won my heart’. He was a frequent guest at Claremont and it was probably there that Raffles first met him.

66

On his arrival at Bengkulu, Jack acknowledged receiving letters from Wallich dated 18 February 1819, 10 April 1819 and 27 April 1819, together with a note of 14 June 1819, but several packets alluded to in these letters had not arrived (Burkill, JSBRAS, no.73 (1916), p. 181). It is uncertain if Wallich wrote directly to Raffles at this time.

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No. 3 [Calcutta, November 1819]68 My dear Sir Accept my best thanks for the Specimens of Engraving which you have sent me – they more than equal my expectation and certainly answer every useful purpose –

69

The Sonerilla I recognize as an old friend but I think we have one if not more Species of a different kind –70 In the anticipation of the pleasure of your Company in the Evening which we are led to expect from Colonel Mackenzie71 I will not detain your Messenger but conclude with the assurance that you shall always find me zealous in promoting all your objects in Sumatra[.] Yrs faithfully T S Raffles Dr Wallich

Holograph letter with the address in Raffles’s hand on the verso of second leaf: ‘Dr Wallich/&c &c/ T S Raffles’. (Private collection: Sold as lot 328 at Sotheby’s, London, on 29 June 1971). The letter is undated but from internal evidence it was written during Raffles’s visit to Calcutta between November 1819 and January 1820, and almost certainly during the first of these dates.

68

It is possible to speculate about what these engravings were, but there is nothing to identify them with certainty. They appear to have included a representation of a species of Sonerila (note 70).

69

70

Jack sent to Wallich in January 1819 seeds of a new species of Sonerila which he found in Penang during that month and which he named Sonerila erecta in his ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants No. II’, Malayan Miscellanies (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1820), vol. I, No. V, pp. 7–8. He had already proposed this name in a letter to Wallich dated 12 February (postscript 15 February) 1819, when he sent him an actual specimen of the plant together with a specimen of Sonerila moluccana Roxburgh (Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), p. 160, n.32, p. 162). Later at Bengkulu, Jack found among the specimens of the plants which Raffles had collected during his visit to the Minangkabau highlands of central Sumatra in July 1818 ‘two new Sonerilae’, but he does not specify what they were (ibid., pp.185–6. See Merrill, ‘William Jack’s Genera and Species of Malaysian Plants’, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, vol. XXXIII, no. 3 (1952), pp. 244–5). Raffles would have had these various species in mind when he refers in the letter above to the Sonerila as an old friend but the engraving that elicited this comment was presumably a representation of something like Sonerila angustifolia or Sonerila squarrosa, which Wallich later reproduced on Plate 102 of his Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores, vol. II.

On Colonel Colin Mackenzie of the Madras Engineers, the first Surveyor-General of India, see Chapter Three, note 162. Mackenzie recorded meeting Raffles in Calcutta at this time in a letter to Francis Mountford (1790–1824) dated 26 November 1819: ‘I was in town for a day on Saturday, and hurried off to receive some friends here – a member of Council and Sir Stamford Raffles just come in from Bencoolen – they left me this morning. I suspect the latter has his own troubles to get thro’ from the differences with the Dutch and Penang Government. ... All, great and low have their troubles, and we little men should not complain if we have our share; … (Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India, vol. III, p. 477).

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No. 4 [Singapore October/November 1822]72 Splendid indeed! a thousand thanks my dear Sir for supplying us with such abundant food for the Mind – You are too considerate & seem determined to bring us largely in debt to you – We will take the greatest care of the Books Sincerely Yrs T.S. Raffles Lady R is dressing or would answer your Note herself – No. 5 Saturday Evg.73 My dear Sir Ryan74 is certainly a Royal fellow and his zeal does credit to your patronage – The Squirrels are splendid & to me new – for the like I have not before seen. Entre nous ascertain from Ryan how and to what extent he can be best served, and as far [as] my means go he shall not be disappointed – his small views will not greatly burden the State, and we will hope, tho’ not in Denmark, that it is yet sound enough to bear his weight – For the Squirrels75 I thank him and thank you – and for your sake & on your recommendation Be assured he shall be served – Nevertheless for the sake of Science keep up his exertions[.] Sincerely Yrs T S Raffles Dr Wallich &c Holograph letter, written on one leaf (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

72

Holograph letter, written on two leaves (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

73

Charles Ryan, the first civilian Post Master of Singapore, was employed at this time as a clerk working under Raffles’s brother-in-law, the Master Attendant Captain William Flint R.N. He was appointed Post Master by Raffles in January 1823 with effect from 1 February, but the establishment was reduced by John Crawfurd towards the end of the year when Ryan was transferred to the Resident’s Office. He resigned from this post in March 1824, and his postal duties ceased in May of that year. He then became a storekeeper with the firm of Napier & Scott (note 127) for some three years, and left Singapore in March 1827 after selling the land known as Ryan’s Hill between the Old Gaol and Tanjong Pagar. He returned to Singapore at the end of 1828 and by 1830 was again in Government employment as a clerk to the Assessment Fund. He died in September 1840 (See C.A. Gibson-Hill, ‘Notes on the administration of the Singapore Post Office, 1819–67’, JMBRAS, vol. XXXI , pt.1 (1958), pp. 146–8).

74

They are not identified in the correspondence.

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No. 6 [Singapore November 1822]76 My dear Sir, I return the Letter for any addition you wish to make – don’t copy any part over again as I shall only make use of the Copies.77 I ought to have acknowledged it before this but have been much taken up with the new arrivals and Letters from Bencoolen[.] Sophia78 tells me I may expect to see you at Breakfast – so adieu for the present Yrs Sy T S Raffles No. 7 To Nathaniel Wallich Esqr &ca &ca Superintendent of the Botanic Garden79 Sir, I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 2nd Inst. submitting for my consideration the advantage of establishing a Botanic and experimental Garden at this Settlement[.]80 Situated as Singapore is, in the very heart of the Malayan Archipelago and midway between India China and New Holland[,] it is hardly possible to conceive a position more admirably calculated for such an establishment as your active zeal in the cause of Science has prompted you to suggest. – The advantages are obvious and I rejoice that I am enabled to avail myself of your superior genius and experience in laying down a Plan for its’ commencement –

Holograph letter. written on one leaf (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of lndia, Calcutta).

76

Probably a reference to Letter No. 7.

77

78

Lady Raffles. A number of her undated letters written to Wallich at this time are in the Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta. They are relatively short and generally relate to Raffles’s health.

79

Letter in a clerk’s hand, written on four leaves. Endorsements in Wallich’s hand (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

Appendix, Letter No. 1.

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The Plan must necessarily be limited by the means afforded for the support of such an Establishment and in the present circumstances of the Settlement I do not feel myself justified in holding out to you a larger Sum than 60 Dollars a month but I will cheerfully contribute the Sum of One Thousand Dollars as a donation in the first instance for the purpose of enclosing and laying out the ground in such manner as you may think proper. –81 A Grant of the Ground shall be made out in the name of Nathaniel Wallich and his successors in the superintendence of the Company’s Botanic Establishments under the Bengal Presidency and in submitting the same for the information of the Most [Noble] Governor General in Council I shall have great satisfaction in conveying to that Authority the very high opinion which I entertain of your Botanic researches in the Eastern Archipelago and of the advantageous results which may be contemplated by the formulation of so rational and useful an Establishment under such favorable auspices. – With this understanding you will be pleased to select the most advantageous Site which offers for the purpose[,] keeping in view the advantage of the Establishment being as near the Town and the intended residence of the Chief Authority as circumstances admit and the propriety of defining the Boundaries with exactness. The spot already occupied as a Government Garden offers considerable advantages and with reference to the whole of the Hill having been reserved for the accommodation of the Chief Authority except in as far as it may hereafter be required for defences I am induced to suggest for your consideration the facility with which the proposed Establishment may be formed in that direction by extending the present Garden so as to include as much ground as may be required[.] [U]nder this arrangement the Garden might include the Eastern side of the Hill and extend as far as the Fresh Water Stream or the road leading to Bukit Salegi; Northerly it might include any extent of ground required and towards the Sea the front might be formed by a handsome railing at the distance of 20 or 30 feet from the Cantonment Road which runs from the Water Course to the small Bridge. – Within this space the Establishment would have the advantage of Hill and Dale of level and swampy ground as well as of a copious perennial stream of water.82 In defining the Boundaries and laying out the ground on this or any other more advantageous spot that you may fix upon you will be assisted by the Assistant Engineer83 who has been directed to attend to your requisitions whenever called upon. – On the Botanic Garden, Singapore, see Letters Nos. 13, 15; Appendix, Letters Nos. 1 and 2. On Wallich’s neglect of the Garden, see note 103.

81

See Wallich to Raffles, 21 November 1822, Appendix, Letter No. 2.

82

Lieutenant Philip Jackson of the Bengal Regiment of Artillery (1802–79). He arrived at Singapore on 21 January 1822 and was appointed Assistant Settlement Engineer on 29 October with responsibility for the revised town plan as projected by the Town Committee appointed by Raffles in November 1822 (‘Plan of the

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Allow me to express my obligation to you for the just and feeling tribute which you have paid to the revered Memory of our lamented friend Mr. Jack,84 no person is more competent than yourself to appreciate the value of his labours and it is no small consolation to reflect that while they are followed up by a mind so ardent and so congenial with his own the importance of his researches and the excellence of his Character can never be forgotten. – I have the honor to be Sir, Your most obedient Sert. (Signed) T.S. Raffles Singapore 15h . Novr. 1822

No. 8 [Singapore, November 1822]85 My dear Wallich I enclose for your perusal the Draft of my official Letter to Bengal on the subject of the Garden – I require another Letter from you to complete the Enclosures; it is necessarily stiff and cold but enthusiasm will not always succeed with such grave Authorities – Some caution is therefore necessary. Shall we not see you to Breakfast – & Dinner tomorrow. Yrs v sy T S Raffles

Town of Singapore by Lieut. Jackson’ in Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy, facing p. 529; H.F. Pearson, ‘Lt. Jackson’s Plan of Singapore’, JMBRAS, vol. 26, pt. 1 (1953), pp. 200–4). In January 1823 he was given the additional appointment of Surveyor of Lands, and two days before Raffles’s final departure from Singapore on 9 June 1823 he was provisionally appointed Executive Officer with effect from the first day of the month (cf. C.A. Gibson-Hill, ‘Singapore Old Strait & New Harbour 1300–1870’, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, no. 3 (1956), p. 83, n.157). The appointment was confirmed by the incoming Resident John Crawfurd who, like Raffles, had a high opinion of Jackson’s abilities. In 1826 he was appointed Acting Assistant to the officer in Charge of the Residency, but because of illness he left Singapore on sick-leave on 1 July 1827. He was invalided from the army on 23 November 1835 and retired on 4 January 1836 on half pay with the rank of Captain. He died in 1879. Wallich to Raffles, 2 November 1822, Appendix, Letter No. 1.

84

Holograph letter, written on one leaf (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

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No. 9 [Singapore, November 1822]86 My dear Wallich The enclosed will give you every information regarding Crawfurd’s plans – 87 I shall see him after Church but I fear, as his object is to ca[tch] Lord Hastings, we shall find it difficult to detain him as long as you wish –88 My warmest thanks for your truly kind and friendly advice – I will endeavor to follow it – Excuse haste Yrs Sincly T S Raffles

No. 10 [Singapore, November 1822]89 My dear Wallich My best thanks for the trouble you have taken – Not for all the Birds in the World would I interfere between you and your intentions of respect to Lady Hastings –

90

By

Holograph letter written on one leaf (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

86

John Crawfurd and George Finlayson arrived at Singapore from their unsuccessful mission to Thailand on 16  November 1822 aboard the John Adam (Brown), and this presented Wallich with an unexpected opportunity to transport his botanical collections to Calcutta. Crawfurd, however, was not prepared to delay his passage because the Governor-General Lord Hastings was on the point of departing for England and he wished to report on the mission before he left Calcutta.

87

The John Adam (note 118) sailed from Singapore with Wallich on board on the morning of 23 November 1822, the passengers having embarked the previous night.

88

Holograph letter, written on two leaves (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

89

Flora Muir (Campbell), Countess of Loudoun in her own right, was born in August 1780 and died on 8 January 1840, having married the 1st Marquess of Hastings on 12 July 1804. She was a devoted naturalist, and used her position as wife of the Governor-General to solicit materials from naturalists in Asia for her pet causes, foremost among which was the Natural History Museum at Edinburgh (note 93). Her request to William Jack for Sumatran plants is mentioned in two of his letters to Wallich, dated 19 August 1820, and 9 September 1820: ‘Lady Hastings has requested me to send a Hortus Siccus for the Edinburgh Museum which of course I must do, and I shall take care that at least the things be neatly put up and in good paper, which perhaps are points that are better understood than the value of the specimens. Were it not that it would be as well on Sir Stamford’s account to keep her in good humour, I should hardly be induced to take even that trouble for any attention I have ever received, or good that I am ever likely to get from her’. And: ‘In one of my late letters from Lindsay, he communicates a request from the Marchioness, that I would send her a Hortus Siccus for her Edinburgh Museum: I comply with it by this occasion, but mean to humbug her in the matter. My best specimens have all gone home, as you know … I have therefore put up a parcel of second rate ones, with plenty of good paper, which is of more consequence (Kaleidoscopically!) and sent her such a flaming list, as will make her think she has the most precious and learned collection ever sent from India. I trust to her indolence never to look into them: indeed if she did, I don’t suppose she would know a Mangosteen from an apple, and then as far as for the most learned body to which they are to go, the name of the Marchioness

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all manner of means take them up to her as they are – a Drawing shall be completed before you go – pray also take the Cockatoo – as we want it not – Sincery yrs T S Raffles No. 11 Singapore 8th. Dec 182291 My dear friend There are so many Vessels sailing for Calcutta that I must say a few words altho’ I had resolved to remain silent till next month. – God grant that this may find you happy and comfortable with your family and in the enjoyment of your Second Paradise – and I long much to hear of your Voyage up & what you made of the Duyong;92 I have had an Adult female since with milk in the breasts but unfortunately L’enfant perdu – The Skeleton of another is now preparing for the Edinburgh Museum,93 so that you may announce it as going home from hence in the Venilia – 94 Since you left us also, I have been compelled to some rather sharp correspondence with the King Malachi95 of which & other things he will I doubt not complain abroad – but I am happy to say that personally we remain as you left us and that I perceive Symptoms will humbug them, and I daresay the sapient Professor of Botany will in reply, extol her Ladyship’s skill and discernment in the selection, and sound the praises of that of which he knows nothing about’ (Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 212, 215). By a strange irony, given the fact that Jack’s major collections were destroyed in the fire on the Fame in February 1824, the plants sent by him to the Marchioness of Hastings appear to have survived in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, having been transferred from the Edinburgh Museum in 1829 (J.M. Cowan, ‘Some Information on the Menzies and Jack Collections in the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh’, Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, vol. 21, pt. 4 (1954), pp. 219–27). The Marchioness of Hastings took an active part in the affairs of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society, Calcutta, of which Wallich was the Secretary. Its members subscribed to have a portrait of her executed as a ‘testimony of gratitude and respect, for the indefatigable exertions in the cause of the agriculture and horticulture of this empire, which distinguished the Marchioness of Hastings during the time she spent in India’ (Asiatic Journal, vol. XVII, no. 98 (1824), pp. 169–70). Holograph letter, written on three leaves. Endorsed in Wallich’s hands: ‘recd 13 Jany 23’ (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

91

Wallich apparently took with him on the John Adam a specimen of a Dugong. See note 42.

92

The Keeper of the Edinburgh Museum between 1804 and 1854 was Professor Robert Jameson (1774– 1854), Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh. He was a friend of Raffles, who corresponded with him.

93

The Venilia (Thompson) sailed from Singapore on 29 January 1823 and arrived at Gravesend on 4 August 1823, carrying, in addition to the skeleton of a Dugong, a collection of stuffed birds and animals from Singapore (Raffles to Horsfield, 23 January 1823, KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562).

94

A reference to Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar, Resident and Commandant of Singapore. The name King Malachi derived from his long association with Melaka, first as Chief Engineer of the British expeditionary force sent to capture the fort from the Dutch in 1795, and later, during 1798–1803, as Chief of Staff to the Resident and Commandant, Lieutenant-Colonel A. Taylor, and, finally, between 1803 and 1818, as Resident and Commandant. See Brian Harrison, Holding the Fort: Melaka under Two Flags, 1795–1845, MBRAS, Monograph 14 (1985).

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which induce me to believe that he now takes a different view of my Measures to what he did at first – I have I trust completely upset the System of favoritism & partiality, and established the principle of fair & open competition in its room – but of this more in my next – 96 Lady Raffles continues to improve & tho’ I am still annoyed with my headaches I think I am upon the whole better than when you left us – 97 I marked out the Site of a small Bungalow on the Hill where you threw the Stone – 98 last night – and in three weeks we hope to think of you there in our Evening prayers – Adieu My dear friend. My kindest regards to Mrs. Wallich & Believe me always Sincerely Yrs T S Raffles Dr Wallich

No. 12 [Singapore, December 1822]99 My dear friend I ought long since to have returned the enclosed – The Memo. in your own handwriting I reserve in my writing desk for future reference when I may have the Letters Nos. 13, 15.

96

On Raffles’s health generally, see Chapter Five, note 46, and Bastin, JMBRAS, vol. 46, pt. 1 (1973), p. 45, n.243. He experienced extremely painful headaches during his stay at Singapore during 1822–3. See Letter No. 13.

97

The site of the bungalow which Raffles ordered to be built on Singapore (Government) Hill during December 1822 and January 1823 was decided by a stone thrown by Wallich when he and Raffles were walking together sometime prior to his departure for Calcutta on 22 November 1822, and not on 7 December 1822, as stated in The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library (Kuala Lumpur, 1978), p. 20. On the latter date, Raffles marked out the actual site and by 5 January 1823 the bungalow was sufficiently completed for him to take up occupancy (Letter No. 13). In a letter to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, dated 23 January 1823, he wrote that it had been finished in a fortnight from its commencement and measured 100 feet along the front and 50 feet deep and was ‘a very comfortable House containing Ten rooms and a spacious Hall’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24. Cf. Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 535). Two days earlier he had written to William Marsden: ‘We have lately built a small bungalow on Singapore Hill, where, though the height is inconsiderable, we find a great difference of climate. Nothing can be more interesting and beautiful than the view from this spot. I am happy to say the change has had a very beneficial effect on my health, which has been better during the last fortnight than I have known it for two years before. The tombs of the Malay kings are, however, close at hand; and I have settled that if it is my fate to die here, I shall take my place amongst them…’ (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 535). The earliest pictorial representation of the bungalow is a pencil sketch made by Lieutenant Phillip Jackson in 1823, which is reproduced in Archer and Bastin, Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library, no. 3; JMBRAS, vol. 26, pt. 1 (1953), p. 46; and Plate 1 facing. Some idea of the view which Raffles and Lady Raffles enjoyed from the bungalow is represented in an uncoloured lithograph of about 1824 in the Library of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (reproduced in The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960), facing p. 143), and in two later uncoloured aquatints in Lady Raffles, Memoir, facing p. 525, and in Crawfurd’s Journal of an Embassy, frontispiece. Crawfurd subsequently extended the bungalow, as he informed the Reverend Robert Morrison on 12 July 1823: ‘I have newly rebuilt the house on the hill, and shall be able to give you good accommodation, …’ (Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison, D.D. (London, 1839), vol. II, pp. 213–4). See Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library, pp. 92–3, n.6.

98

Holograph letter, written on three leaves (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

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opportunity of impressing others with your exalted merits and claims to distinction – 100 Long may you live to enjoy these and all such higher honors as may be in store for you, and may they at an early date be followed up by something more substantial – Gratifying as these must be to you, your Wife and Children as well as your own health and happiness must depend upon your being able within a reasonable period to revisit your Native Land and take your Appropriate place among the Savants of Europe – As far as my small influence extends, rely on its’ being executed with the zeal and fidelity of a sincere friend. Little things they say suit little men, nevertheless there is something in these kinds of distinctions & notices that must always be pleasing to every one – they are at least flattering & where is the man who is quite proof against a fair proportion of flattery – to prove to you that I am not any more than yourself & that I have on occasion taken in a much larger dose I now send you the Address101 to which we alluded the other day – I had not seen the Book since we were married till the other day when Lady R. was unpacking – I am half inclined to believe she fell in love with me before she saw me from the perusal of them, as I know not what else could have induced her to follow the fortunes of such a shattered concern as myself[.] Yrs Most Sincery T S Raffles. D . Wallich r

&c

No. 13 Singapore Hill 5th Janry 1823102 My dear Friend We have this day fixed our abode on the Hill in a roomy and very comfortable Bungalow and if my health admits I hope to lay out both the Garden & Hill before I quit the place – With the former Montgomerie103 has yet done nothing waiting Instructions

A reference, presumably, to the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Philosophy which had been conferred on Wallich by the University of Copenhagen in the previous year.

100

Although Raffles uses the singular he is undoubtedly referring to Addresses, &c. Presented to Mr. Raffles on the Occasion of His Departure from Java (London, 1817), a rare work printed by Cox & Baylis, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and containing the text of letters and public addresses written by Europeans and Indonesian rulers on his departure from Java in March 1816. A copy is in the Singapore National Library.

101

Holograph letter, written on six leaves. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand: ‘recd 1st Feby’ (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

102

Dr. William Montgomerie (1797–1856), Assistant Surgeon in medical charge of the troops at Singapore, who was also responsible for the Vaccine Department, Paupers and the Gaol. He graduated M.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1817 and was appointed officiating Assistant Surgeon on 3 July 1818, the post being confirmed in May 1819 when he arrived in Singapore. The medical duties of the settlement were then in charge of Dr. Thomas Prendergast, who had accompanied the original military detachment from Penang to Singapore in January 1819, but on his being given four months’ leave to return to Madras in December 1822 Raffles dispensed with his services and in January 1823 placed the medical charge of the settlement in Montgomerie’s hands

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from you – but tomorrow he goes to Work Nolens volens under my immediate eye – I shall enlarge it considerably & spare no pains to lay a substantial foundation for your future Superstructure – Having surveyed the Hill, I find it will make a very pretty Park, and my first object is to commission you without delay, as the man I can most rely upon, to send down two hundred head of Spotted Deer – If you use expedition they may be here in three Months and by that time I will have my fences up – Fear not for your Garden as I am constructing a fence round it which they cannot leap. – My Agents Macintosh & Co .104 will pay the expence – you may send 50 in a Ship – I am sorry to say I have had several alarming Attacks since you left us – One not many days ago when the Doctor wanted to hurry me off to England by a Ship on the eve of sailing – but let what will happen I cannot move from hence until my place can be supplied here, even if it should be my fate to leave my bones below ground. You will probably hear that I have not been idle here and notwithstanding the obstructions thrown in the way, the work of reform & improvement is going on well. The lots along the South Bank of the River, 8 in Number with 30 or 40 lots along the new (NSA:L13, Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 34). Montgomerie’s promotion probably had something to do with the fact that he tended Raffles during his illness in 1822, and also because he was interested in natural history. He was appointed provisionally Professor of Natural Philosophy (Chemistry) to the Singapore Institution (Formation of the Singapore Institution. A.D 1823 (Mission Press, Malacca, 1823), p. 75), and was chosen to take charge of the Botanical Garden after Wallich’s departure in November 1822. However, according to a report he wrote on the Garden in February 1827, no assistance was ever offered to him by the Danish naturalist: ‘Dr Wallich proposed to me to take charge of the garden, but at the same time told me that as the thing was upon a small scale my services must be gratuitous. I readily assented to his proposal and was in consequence put in charge by the Lieutenant Governor [Raffles]. When Dr Wallich left Singapore he promised to send one of his experienced assistants from the Botanical Garden at Calcutta, who would give me the necessary aid in the Botanical department. In the mean time the Lieutenant Governor ordered an allowance of $60 per mensem, for the support of an establishment and to cover contingent charges for tools, building and repairing of huts for the workmen, and I was directed to go on with the necessary operation of clearing the ground and planting out the spices and taking care of those already planted by Lieut. Colonel Farquhar, until I should obtain the promised aid from Calcutta; but from causes of which I am ignorant, I have never heard from Dr Wallich further upon the subject. My attention has been therefore turned solely to the cultivation of the spices which appeared to thrive uncommonly well’ (‘Notices of Singapore’, JIA, vol. IX (1855), p. 62). The Botanic Garden was abolished in 1829, two years after Montgomerie left Singapore to take up a post in India. He was appointed Surgeon on 9 December 1829 and returned to the Straits in 1836, when he was appointed to Penang. In the following year he was transferred to Singapore, and on 3 April he lost two of his infant children. These, together with a third child, who died on 17 November 1840, were all buried in the Fort Canning Cemetery, which bounded the site of the original Botanic Garden, their gravestones still surviving (A.G. Harfield, Early Cemeteries in Singapore (London, 1988), p.12). During his second period in Singapore, Montgomerie, with Chinese labour, opened up Kallangdale Estate, along the Serangoon Road, beyond Balestier Plain, in order to cultivate sugar cane, but he appears to have derived little profit from it (Gibson-Hill, JMBRAS, vol. XXXII, pt.1 (1959), p. 133 n.85; J.C. Jackson, Planters and Speculators: Chinese and European Agricultural Enterprise in Malaya, 1786–1921. (Kuala Lumpur, 1968), pp. 134–5). The estate continued to be managed for some nine years by his son, William, after Montgomerie left Singapore in 1843 on leave in Scotland. He was in China during 1841–42, and also between 1852 and 1853, in which year he was appointed Superintending Surgeon. He served as a Field Surgeon in Burma and was mentioned in despatches. He died at Calcutta on 21 March 1856. Mackintosh & Co., one of the Calcutta Houses of Agency, of which there were 31 at that time. The idea of keeping Spotted deer (Axis axis [Erxleben] in the Botanic Garden at Singapore probably occurred to Raffles after he had seen them when he stayed at Barakpur in the country residence of the Governor-General Marquess of Hastings in 1818, or perhaps by more direct acquaintance in the grounds of Suffolk House, the residence of the Governor of Penang, William Edward Phillips (Chapter Two, notes 130, 163).

104

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Streets leading from them & six lots of Ground along the North Beach were put up to Auction on Saturday and a Sum not less than 50,000 Dollars was bid in the course of an hour – altho each lot was put up at only one Dollar and the public informed that Revenue was not wanted, and the object of the Sale was only to allow every one a fair chance – it being simply declared that Govt. preferred the System of fair & open competition to that of granting lands by favor – I enclose you two Printed Papers which will explain to you the tenure of the lands &c –105 Your Hill shall not be forgotten & as soon as it can be measured you shall have the Grant – We have opened a Grand Road to the Malay Straits or New Harbour106 along which the Native Town is rapidly forming – The Toomoongong removes there immediately.107 The House108 is full of carpenters and bustle & my hand unsteady – therefore excuse more till a more leisure opportunity. Yrs Affectionately T S Raffles

The printed papers are not included in the letter, which is unfortunate as they represent some of the earliest pieces of the Singapore press (note 110). They probably included Raffles’s Proclamation of 2 December 1822 on the disposal of lands, Advertisements of the same date giving notice of the sale on 1 January 1823 of lots of lands for commercial establishments as well as the sale on 5 January 1823 of lands to the Chinese who had been required to remove their establishments to the south bank of the Singapore River in accordance with Raffles’s model plan for the settlement. Raffles’s so-called ‘sale’ of lands was not a sale at all, but was conducted on the principle that the payment of bids at auction would be later determined by the Supreme Government. That the idea was confusing and not understood by everyone in the settlement is evidenced by the remarks of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir in his Hikayat (JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), p. 148), and also by the fact that Raffles had to explain the arrangement even to the Resident, Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar: ‘It appears to the Lieutenant Governor that you are under a misconception with regard to his intentions in the disposal of the several Lots of Ground recently advertised. Nothing is further from the intention of the Lieut Governor than to make a permanent and bona fide Sale of lands as assumed by you, all that is intended to be disposed of is the privilege of occupation on such terms and General Regulations as may be hereafter determined upon by the higher Authorities. This will be fully provided for in the Grants which will again be subject to the revision and confirmation of the Governor General in Council. It further appears to the Lieut Governor that there are but two ways in which Individuals can be accommodated with the ground they require, either by favor or by fair and open competition and he is desirous of adopting the latter mode’ (NSA:L11: Letters to and from Raffles, 1822: Hull to Farquhar, 3 December 1822).

105

New Harbour, or as it was later called Keppel Harbour, was first observed in August 1819 by Farquhar, who reported his discovery of a ‘new harbour’ to Raffles in the following month (C.A. Gibson-Hill, ‘Singapore: Notes on the History of the Old Strait, 1580–1850’, JMBRAS, vol. XXVII, pt. 1 (1954), pp.194–5; ‘Singapore Old Strait & New Harbour (1300–1870)’, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum no. 3 (1956), pp. 76–7). The harbour was then inhabited by Orang Laut living in boats along the southern and western shores, though some houses had already been built in Teluk Saga on the northern side of P. Brani. Raffles wished to move the Temenggong and his 600-odd followers from the northern side of the Singapore River to a strip of territory between Tanjong Pagar and Teluk Belanga. The road to the Malay Town was commenced in December 1822, and made rapid progress after it had been surveyed towards the end of that month.

106

Note 106. On Temenggong Abdul Rahman (installed 1806 – d.1825), see C.A. Trocki, Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Development of Johor and Singapore 1784–1885 (Singapore, 1979), pp. 40– 60; R.O. Winstedt, ‘A History of Johore (1365–1865)’, JMBRAS, vol. X, pt. 3 (1932), Chapter X.

107

Note 98.

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Dont forget the fœtus of the Tiger Lion &c – for Sir Everard109 – I am pledged to send them & rely on you – and you alone. Lady Raffles joins in kindest regards to Mrs Wallich I have a press going in English & Malay –110 Dr. Wallich &c &c Sir Everard Home, see Chapter Seven, note 23.

109

The printing press was introduced into Singapore by the Reverend Claudius Henry Thomsen (1782– 18??) of the London Missionary Society, who arrived on 19 May 1822 and settled at Campong Gelam, where he built a house on land granted to William Milne (1785–1822) by the Resident, Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar, in 1819. It was, however, not until 17 January 1823 that he made formal application to Raffles for permission ‘to use a printing Press with which I may be able more effectively to pursue my labours as a Christian Missionary among the Malays’ (NSA:L12, Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 12). Permission was granted by Raffles six days later, on 23 January: ‘With regard to the establishment of a printing press in aid of your Labours the Lieutenant Governor gives his full sanction to the measure, and will be happy to assist the undertaking by the patronage and support of Government as far as circumstances admit’ (NSA:L17, Raffles: Letters to Singapore, 1823, no. 34). It is possible that there was some printing on the Mission Press in 1822, before the formality of Government permission was granted, as C.K. Byrd has suggested (Early Printing in the Straits Settlements 1806–1858 (Singapore, 1970), p. 14), although from the way Raffles wrote on the subject in his letter to Wallich of 5 January 1823, and in letters to other correspondents during the same month (Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 533, 536), it is clear that the ‘small portable press, with Roman and Malay types’ was something new at that time. Thomsen himself wrote to the Directors of the London Missionary Society in February 1823: ‘We are now printing in English & Malay & have a small Type-Foundery & are doing bookbinding. Government has been pleased to honour our little Press (which I described in a former letter) with the printing of all public Documents both in English & Malay – One of the Lads composes in English and one the Malay – one is Pressman – one does Type cutting & another bookbinding … I would now only mention that the little travelling Press is merely provided with a small quantity of Malay Types, & Engl. Types barely enough to set up 4 pages smo which will nearly be worn out in 12 months – regular Bookprinting must be deferred “till the Directors supply our wants”’ (Byrd, Early Printing, p. 13). Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, who was intimately involved with the press, relates in his Hikayat how he cut types for the printing of Raffles’s regulations: ‘The Settlement of Singapore had become densely populated and Mr. Raffles drafted laws clarifying the regulations and the procedure for their enforcement which were needed in the Settlement to protect its inhabitants from danger and crime. He drew up several sections in English dealing with penalties for infringing the regulations, which were then translated into Malay. After this he told Mr. Thomsen to print them. Now at that time there were not enough types for much printing, only a very small number in Mr. Thomsen’s hands. Mr. Thomsen knew that I had learned how to make types in Malacca, so he told me to make up the deficiency. For two days I sat making types. Then they were ready, and the printing was done, fifty copies in Malay and fifty copies in English. A friend of mine set up the type, a young Eurasian named Michael. At last at three o’clock in the morning all was finished, for the same morning, which was the first day of the new year, they wanted to publish the laws. Work went on and on and the perspiration poured off us. Eyes drooped and stomachs felt the pangs of hunger; all because the task had to be finished that night. For Mr. Raffles had insisted that it be ready by the next morning. And the next morning the notices were posted in every quarter of the town’ (JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), pp. 165–6). Abdullah is not always accurate in his chronology but it is clear that the events he describes made a deep impression on him, and we may reasonably conclude that he is referring to the printing of Raffles’s Proclamation of 1 January 1823, which stated that in future ‘all orders of Government … having a general application, will be printed for public information, and that translations thereof in the Malay language will be affixed in convenient stations, to be selected for the purpose’, and also his Regulation No. I of the same date, entitled ‘A Regulation for the Registry of Land at Singapore’. In his account, Abdullah (ibid., p. 166) suggests that the regulations which had to be printed with such urgency related to the prohibition of gambling, but this subject was not dealt with until Raffles issued his Regulation No. IV of 1 May 1823. These various regulations, which were promulgated between 1 January and 6 June 1823, were subsequently gathered together by Raffles on his return to England and printed by Cox & Baylis, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’sInn Fields, London, in 1824 under the title, Singapore Local Laws and Institutions, 1823, the text being later reprinted in Lady Raffles, Memoir, App. pp. 39–73.

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No. 14 Singapore Hill 13 January 1823111 My dear Wallich If you see Crawfurd, tell him I have sent up my resignation & recommendation for the relief of the present Resident112 – & that I am anxious to get away before May – We are going on gloriously, that is to say a tenth part of the Sth. Bank – so long discarded, sold the other day for upwards of 50,000 Dollars – Dont forget the Deer – and of all things the fœtus’es for my friend Sir Everard – the Tiger the Lion, the Whale and Gangeticus113 Yrs ever, in haste T S Raffles

No. 15 Singapore 8th. February 1823114 My dear friend Your long and kind letter from Penang of the 5th December only reach’d me a few days ago by the hands of Mr. Morgan115 to whom you entrusted it and I hasten to thank you most sincerely for all the particulars which it contains. I have already informed you that we have contrived to fit up a temporary Bungalow on the Hill & you will I am sure be happy to hear that we continue to enjoy great benefit from the change. Of Singapore politics I suppose you will hear various accounts – I continue to go on as steadily and quietly as possible – not so however our local Chief116 who seems every

Holograph letter, written on one leaf. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand: ‘recd 13th Feby’ (Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta).

111

Raffles wanted John Crawfurd to replace Farquhar as Resident of Singapore and he obviously spoke to him on the subject when Crawfurd was in Singapore between 16 and 22 November 1822 on his way back to Calcutta from his mission to Thailand.

112

Raffles repeats his request made in Letter No. 13 for particular subjects of natural history to be sent to Sir Everard Home (Chapter Seven, note 23).

113

Holograph letter, written on 11 leaves, with endorsement on verso of last leaf in Wallich’s hand: ‘recd March’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/EI7, no. III). Paragraph six, with three additional lines, is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, p.537.

114

Note 134.

115

The acrimonious correspondence between Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar and Raffles is preserved in the Singapore National Archives. Farquhar was superseded as Resident by John Crawfurd when he arrived at Singapore on 27 May 1823, but by then Raffles had removed Farquhar’s civil and military powers by the simple device of accepting his earlier letter of resignation. The conflict between Raffles and Farquhar in

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day the more and more to forget himself – his principle [sic] Satellites are at present Messs Qu!ass [sic]117 – and Mc Donnell who formerly commanded the John Adam,118 and through them he hopes to impress Mr Palmer119 with an idea that he is sadly used by me. – The first Singapore is discussed (with marked bias in favour of Farquhar and unrelenting criticism of Raffles) by Nadia H. Wright in William Farquhar and Singapore Stepping out from Raffles’ Shadow (Penang, 2017). Claude Queiros (spelled variously by Raffles) was a Eurasian merchant, who had arrived at Singapore in February 1820 accompanied by his wife and numerous children, for whose accommodation he purchased the vacant house of Dr. Thomas Prendergast (note 103) for 750 Sp. drs. He was the son of Joseph Queiros Sr., a merchant of Lucknow in the service of the King of Oudh, who was a close friend and business acquaintance of the Calcutta merchant John Palmer (note 119), under whose auspices Claude was sent to Singapore. Palmer’s letter of advice to the young man on his setting out from Calcutta in January 1820 is recorded in his Letter Books in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Eng. Lett. C. 89, fols. 87–8): ‘I have afforded you an unequivocal proof of Friendship, by reposing an entire confidence in your prudence, diligence, discretion & activity & I look for correspondent results. I have hazarded a considerable Property with you, though aware of your Inexperience & of your alleged Extravagance: you cannot fail to feel the weight of responsibility you have hence forward to sustain. At Penang seek for & follow implicitly the Counsel of Mr David Brown or Robert Scott, his Partner at Singapore. [P]ut yourself, if he permit you, into Colonel Farquhar’s Hands. Scrupulously avoid all Species of ostentatious appearance in manner, conduct, apparel, or domestic arrangements; & limit your whole Monthly Expences, personal & official, to 100 Drs. per month, exclusive of a Store Room; which you must make your dwelling House. Sell nothing upon Credit, unless previously told by Col. Farquhar that you may safely do so; & until you feel Surety, sell only for Coin, or Bullion. In time, or if so advised by Col. F., sell or Barter for Articles of certain Sale here … The whole returns of your Investment, must come back to us … Work hard at Malay during your Voyage, & constantly at Singapore when you had better engage an Instructor in the Language – it being of vast Consequence to read & write it fluently, & keep your Accounts in Malayas. Be mild, but strict with that People, & persuade Mrs Q to acquire the Language as soon as possible … ’. Claude Queiros was not one to take such advice seriously, and as Raffles records in his letter to Wallich, dated 1I February 1823 (Letter No. 16), spent money very freely. On his arrival at Singapore he contracted a partnership with Andrew Farquhar, the youngest son of LieutenantColonel Farquhar, but the partnership came to an end in mid-1822 to the extreme annoyance of Palmer in Calcutta: ‘I was not prepared for, and shall not soon be reconciled to, the rupture of your Engagements with young Farquhar; and still less am I satisfied with the reasons assigned for it. Happily however you can go on without the connection, if you will only be discreet and œconomical – Remembering that by Industry and parsimony only can you possibly acquire Independence. I trust to procure you Consignments in progression; but you must scrupulously see to the promptest and most eligible returns. I had been pleased to witness some thing of this Kind to Ourselves, and I beg to remind you of the expedience of your straining every nerve to reduce your Balance.’ (Bodleian Library, Oxford:MS. Eng. Lett. C. 94, fols. 171–2, letter dated 27 August 1822). Palmer continued to give such ‘parental advice’ to Queiros after the death of his father in Lucknow on 7 January 1822, but to little avail. Queiros continued to get into scrapes at Singapore, and came into direct opposition to Raffles about his Warehouse which he had built on the northern bank of the Singapore River on land allocated to him by Farquhar but which Raffles demanded should be removed to south of the river. The records of the period in the Singapore National Archives are full of this subject which is too exhausting to go into here. Raffles’s summary of the subject in his letter to Wallich is on the whole a fair statement.

117

The John Adam (Brown), named after a member of the Supreme Government (note 122), was an Indiabuilt ship of about 380 tons. It had carried John Crawfurd on his mission to Thailand and Cochin-China in 1821–22, and Wallich travelled back from Singapore to Calcutta in her with his botanical collections in November and December 1822. It was not at this time under the command of McDonnell, apparently Thomas MacDonnell, who later commanded the Lady Flora, the ship in which Raffles had the chance of returning to England from Bengkulu in April 1824, after the destruction of the Fame, but chose instead to engage the Mariner (Herbert) (Letter No. 24). The Lady Flora kept company with the Mariner during the first ten days of the homeward voyage to England but arrived at Portsmouth on 4 September, nearly a fortnight later.

118

John Palmer, ‘the Prince of Merchants’, according to the Governor-General the Marquess of Hastings, was head of the largest of the Indian Agency Houses, Palmer & Co., which had connections with many parts of Asia, including Penang, Pegu, Canton, Singapore and Java. Palmer was born in India on 8 October 1767, the second son of Major (later Lieutenant-General) William Palmer, Confidential Secretary of Warren Hastings. After a short period of service in the Navy he went into the retail business in Bengal during the 1780s and by

119

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of these after proposing terms for removing his Warehouses to a more advantageous Site with which I closed, no sooner got an order for the new piece of Ground, than without any intimation to me he wrote up to Mr Palmer with a kind of Estimate to shew that on account of the rise in the price of Materials he could not now build as good a Warehouse for 13,000 Dollars as he had first done for 5000, and that if therefore he was obliged to remove it was out of his power to pay the additional Sum & that he must leave the Settlement – You will easily enough comprehend the meaning of this – it is intended that Mr Palmer should be able to shew the Supreme Govt. the ruinous consequences of my measures & thus support the Colonel’s argument that I am driving away the People from the place –120 The best of the Story however, is that Mr Bernard121 at the very same time claims compensation for the the time Palmer & Co. was incorporated in 1810 he had been a partner in a number of commercial enterprises in India. He showed considerable interest in the British settlements in South-East Asia, and made personal visits to Java, Bengkulu and Singapore. In August 1812 while on a voyage to Java he was shipwrecked off the western coast of Borneo and spent some weeks at Pontianak, whose ruler he subsequently presented with some ‘beautiful mirrors and chandeliers’ (B. Hall, Fragments of Voyages and Travels, Third Series (London, 1852), p. 108; D. Macdonald, A Narrative of the Early Services of Captn D. Macdonald, I.N. (Weymouth, 1830), pp. 127–8, 252–6). He became involved with the plantation economy of Java and during the 1820s entered into negotiations with the Dutch authorities to advance loans sufficient to underwrite the colonial Government’s debt (G.R. Knight, ‘John Palmer and Plantation Development in Western Java During the Earlier Nineteenth Century’, BKI, vol. 131, pts. 2–3 (1975), pp.309–37; N. Tarling, ‘The Palmer Loans’, BKI, vol. 119, pt. 2 (1963), pp. 161–88). After 1825 Palmer & Co. over-speculated in trade and finance and was accordingly seriously affected by the commercial crisis during 1825–26. In 1829 four of the partners withdrew their money from the firm and in January 1830 it went bankrupt. Palmer himself died on 22 January 1836. His Letter Books in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (C.E. Wurtzburg, ‘The Private Letter Books of John Palmer’, JMBRAS, vol. XXII, pt. 1 (1949), pp. 182–3) afford evidence of his extensive range of correspondents, among whom was Raffles, whose friend he pretended to be. Raffles was aware of his true feelings towards him and expressed apprehension about his possible adverse influence in Calcutta (Letter No. 18). The hill allocated to him by Raffles was for many years an important landmark in Singapore (notes 123, 133). For a detailed account of Palmer, see Anthony Webster, The Richest East India Merchant The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta 1767–1836 (Woodbridge, 2007). This was one of the main charges made by Farquhar against Raffles’s attempts to re-settle the Asian communities in Singapore, and his measures may have affected some groups. Whether or not this led to depopulation cannot be established since the rapid influx of population obscured any minor movement of people out of the settlement.

120

121

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Francis James Bernard was the son-in-law of Lieutenant Colonel William Farquhar whose eldest daughter Esther (1796–1838) he married at Calcutta on 26 June 1818. Their first child, Agnes Maria (Sri Singapura), was born at Singapore on 25 July 1819, the first recorded birth in the settlement. Bernard was born in London on 6 July 1796, the son of Charles Bernard, Comptroller of Taxes for the City of London. In 1810 he volunteered to join the Bengal Pilot Service from which he was discharged on 11 March 1815. He subsequently became master of the locally registered Ganges, a brig of 130 tons which his father-in-law purchased and which was one of the ships engaged in the founding of the British settlement at Singapore in January 1819. Bernard shortly afterwards became the settlement’s first Master Attendant (Gibson-Hill, JMBRAS, vol. XXXIII, pt. 1 (1960), pp. 5–16) until he was forced to give up the post on 24 April 1820 to Raffles’s brother-in-law, Captain William Flint R.N. He was then placed in charge of the Police Department (note 153) and in 1824 he helped to establish Singapore’s first newspaper, The Singapore Chronicle (GibsonHill, JMBRAS, vol. XXVI, pt. 1 (1953), pp. 175–99). He resigned his interest in the paper in 1824 and later engaged in various trading enterprises in eastern Indonesia. He settled for a time in Sulawesi where in 1840 he met James Brooke, who describes him as ‘a gentleman of intelligence’ (R. Mundy, Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes, Down to the Occupation of Labuan: from the Journals of James Brook, Esq. (London, 1848), vol. I, p. 105). He died at Batavia on 19 December 1843. Nadia H. Wright in ‘The Career of Francis James Bernard: Nepotism and Patronage in Early Singapore’, JMBRAS, vol. 89, pt. 2 (2016), pp. 25–44

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actual cost of his House instead of its present lower value, on the plea that Materials were much dearer when he built than they are now – This underhand trick has only just come to my knowledge and fortunately in time for me to delay the delivery of his new grant and to intimate to the Supreme Government how little such misrepresentations are worth – I wish you would take an opportunity of intimating to Mr Adam122 the caution necessary in receiving accounts of the kind – a hint or two of the extent of the Colonel’s range of Hills –123 the Character of Mr Bernard and the importance of avoiding all partial decisions may also be useful – as I have several points at reference connected with these –

seeks to re-establish Bernard’s reputation by placing much of the blame in their relationship on Raffles, but Bernard’s obvious personal defects, not least in abandoning his wife and children in Singapore, seems sufficient to justify Raffles’s characterisation of him as ‘a person of low character’. John Adam was born on 4 May 1779 and was nominated to the Bengal service of the East India Company in 1794. He was appointed Secretary to the Government in the Military Department in 1809 and three years later he succeeded to the post of Secretary of the Government. He was nominated a provisional member of the Supreme Council by the Court of Directors in 1817 and he took his seat two years later. On the unexpected departure from India of James Stuart (note 56) because of ill-health, Adam became first member of the Supreme Government on 13 January 1823 and he continued in that role until 1 August 1823 when Lord Amherst arrived as Governor-General. He was thus in control of the Supreme Government during the crucial period when Raffles was effecting his reforms in Singapore and he gave general if not entirely unqualified approval to his various measures. He sailed from India on 16 April 1825 on the Albion (Swainson) but died off Madagascar on 4 June of that year at the age of 46.

122

123

The subject of the hills in the immediate vicinity of the town, which had been allotted by Farquhar or appropriated by individuals during 1819–22, is summarised in the following important letter of his to Raffles, dated 23 December 1822 (NSA:L11, Letters to and from Raffles, 1822): ‘… the first Hill lying to the Northward of the Government Hill is that of Selligie which on clearing the Country at the commencement of the Establishment was found to be occupied on the Western side by a Chinese Planter who had formed a Gambier Plantation there, on the Eastern half of the Hill is at present occupied by Captain Flint & was a primitive Forest which I caused to be partially cleared at the Government Expence to the extent of about 33 acres. Captain Flint holds the Ground on no specific terms that I am aware of, further than a public assurance made to me that he had the Lieut Governor’s permission to take possession of it. The next Hill in succession lying to the Northward of Bukit Cawah which on first clearing the Country was found totally unoccupied & covered with primitive Forest Trees, a portion of the Eastern side of it, to the extent of about 20 acres, was also partially cleared at the Expence of Government. The Garden & Plantation subsequently formed at my own expence on that Hill and the adjacent Grounds, were done on the general principle on which all original Plantations in the interior have been hitherto occupied, viz. that if any Individual clearing & bringing Forest Lands into cultivation at his own expence, would be entitled to hold the same on such terms as might be hereafter generally established by the Government of the Country, which general arrangement was approved & sanctioned by the Tummongong as the Chief Native Authority in whom the disposal of all Gardens & Plantations was vested by the 1st Article of the General Regulations Established here under the Authority of the Lieutt Governor dated the 26th of June 1819 from which the following Extract is taken “With respect to the Gardens & Plantations that now are or may hereafter be made, they are to be at the disposal of the Tummongong as heretofore, but it is understood that he will always acquaint the Resident of the same” – no restraint therefore has been hitherto placed on any one wishing to clear Forest lands provided they were beyond the Limits originally cleared at Public Expence. The extent of the Ground cleared & now clearing at Bukit Cawah, has not been as yet ascertained by me, and in case any accurate measurement of the same or other Lands under similar circumstances be required by Government, it would I conceive be expedient to employ a Land Surveyor for this express purpose. The Range of Hills lying to the Westward of the Government Hill and extending towards Panglima Prangs Campong were partially cleared at the expence of Government, and still remain unoccupied with the exception of a portion of the N.E. side of the one near the western extremity of the Old Malay lines where a Chinese Gambier Plantation had been commenced previous to our Establishment at Singapore, and which has been since considerably extended. The S.W. side cleared by Government remains as yet unoccupied. The Hills on the Southern side

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I enclose you a Copy of my Regulations for a local Magistracy,124 in the propriety and policy of which I believe every European Gentlemen in the place is decided except this said Mr Quierass who will no doubt attempt to influence his principal – Mr Bernard is of course in high dudgeon & altho a provision is made for his continuing to act as Assistant to the Magistrates talks of declining – he has so long had his own way and ruled supreme that he cannot easily accommodate himself to his proper Station[.]125 You would hardly know the South bank of the River again – from the point as far as the small Nullah all is in active improvement – Mr Mackenzie – 126 Napier & Scott –127 of the Singapore River are those of Tooloo Ayer Captain Pearls Hill and that at the Brick-Kilns. The whole of the near range of Tooloo Ayer Hills with the exception of the one forming the Northern most extreme which is at present occupied by Mr. Chas. Scott were partially cleared at the expence of Government, & continue vacant with the above exception & that the Southernmost Hill at Point Malang called Mount Palmer, a small temporary Bungalow has been lately erected. Captain Pearl holds his Hill under the chop of the Tummongong subject to the approval of the Lieutt Governor. With respect to the positions of what are called Mr. Erskine’s and Mr. Palmer’s Hills, the former is the Hill adjoining to the Highest or Government Hill of the Tooloo Ayer Range on the North side, and occupying the space between that & Mr. Scott’s Hill. Mr Palmer’s Hill is the one at the Southern extremity of the Range near Point Melang, where a small Bungalow has been erected as mentioned above. The exact limits or dimensions of none of the Hills have as yet been accurately determined, and to do so would of course require a minute survey. It may be proper to mention that a Chunam Kiln has been erected in the valley between the highest or Government Hill of the Tooloo Ayer Range and that of Mr. Palmer’s, but the occupiers of the same have no permission from me to make the Plantations they have done on the sides of the aforesaid Hills, on the contrary, they were expressly told that what they did in this way would not on any future disposal of the Hills taking place, be admitted as giving them any claim whatever to remuneration’. Raffles did not accept Farquhar’s interpretation of tenure rights of the hills (NSA:L13: Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 46), and in any case regularised the position by having Lieutenant Philip Jackson (note 83) make a regular survey of them in January 1823 (note 132). For a list of occupiers of land in Singapore in July 1821, see D.M. Campbell, Java: Past & Present (London, 1915), vol. I, pp. 623–4. Regulation No. III of 1823: A Regulation for the Establishment of a Provisional Magistracy and the Enforcement of a due and efficient Police at Singapore, with certain Provisions for the Administration of Justice in Cases of Emergency, dated 20 January 1823. On 6 June 1823 Raffles issued Regulation No. VI: A Regulation in furtherance of the Objects of Regulation, No. III. of 1823, and containing additional Provisions for the Magistracy and Administration of Justice at Singapore. This established the Resident’s Court, the rules of which were appended to the Regulation. The text of the regulations is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, App. pp. 42–5, 49–62. The regulations were undoubtedly printed locally (note 110) but no printed copy appears to be extant.

124

Note 121. The appointment of the magistrates directly affected Bernard’s position in the Police Department for which he drew a salary of 150 Sp. drs. per month.

125

Graham Mackenzie, one of the early merchants in Singapore, and a partner in the firm of Mackenzie & Co., was a friend of Raffles, who nominated him as one of the magistrates under Regulation VI of 6 June 1823. He took an active part in early Singapore affairs, and subscribed to the Singapore Institution. He died on 29 October 1828 at Macau, where he had gone for the recovery of his health.

126

The mercantile firm of Napier & Scott was established in Singapore in 1820, its principal partners being David Skene Napier, the son of Macvey Napier (1776–1847), editor of The Edinburgh Review and first Professor of Conveyancing in the University of Edinburgh, and Charles Scott (of Scott’s Hill in Singapore, note 123), a son of Robert Scott of Penang. Napier arrived at Singapore in 1819 from Calcutta where he had been introduced to Raffles by John Adam (note 122), a member of the Supreme Government (Letter No. 16). He and his first wife Anna were the most intimate of Raffles and Lady Raffles’s friends in Singapore, ‘Nap’s wife’ being referred to in the most affectionate terms in Lady Raffles’s letters to Mary Anne Flint. Raffles described her in a letter to Dr. Robert Morrison (note 159) in June 1823 as ‘an excellent creature’ (Memoirs of … Robert Morrison, D.D. (London, 1839), vol. II, p. 212). She died at Singapore aged 32 on 3 November 1826, leaving her husband desolate. Seven weeks later, on 24 December 1826, he took passage with his four children for

127

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Che Sang128 & others building substantial Warehouses according to an approved plan & two high Streets forming from the River through the centre of the Chinese Town to the Sea – the Bridge too is in great forwardness and in two months more,129 the whole plan for that side of the Water will be so far proceeded upon that my Successor cannot help following it up – I shall soon become anxious to know the arrangements for this place – Crawfurd I think must succeed, and the sooner he comes down the better –130 the decided hostility and opposition exhibited by the Colonel to all my views must shew the necessity of this or some other arrangements for relieving him from the local charge – he gives out that the moment my back is turned he will upset all I have done and he gets some few fools to believe that he may have the power to do so – Give me the earliest hint on this subject that you can – The Colonel I am told places his chief reliance on Adam now the acting Governor General – and this through Palmer –131

England, where he appears to have met Lady Raffles, for we find her informing her cousin, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles of Liverpool, on 23 May 1827: ‘I write these few lines to entreat your kindness – assistance & Hospitality for Mr Napier who has just arrived from Singapore, & who visits Liverpool on his way to his father’s in Edinburgh – We were intimately acquainted in days of mutual Happiness at Singapore where he has been settled ever since its first establishment as a Merchant – & where he was in habits of the closest & daily intimacy with Marianne & Mr Flint – He had a most amiable & pleasing wife who died a few days previous to his embarkation to come to this country, this sad event has plunged him in the deepest affliction, & I shall feel greatly obliged to you for any thing you can do for him’. Napier soon acquired a new wife, Anne Margarita, and with her and their first daughter returned to Singapore on the Huntley Castle on 24 August 1828, another daughter being born to them in Singapore on 1 January 1830. The partnership between Napier and Scott had been dissolved in June of the previous year, and Napier now formed with his elder brother, William Napier (‘Puffing Billy’), the erstwhile friend of Rajah James Brooke, the firm of Napier & Co. Six months later, on 15 January 1830, he left Singapore with his family for retirement in Scotland, his large house in Beach Road, built by G.D. Coleman in 1826, being transferred to Mrs. John Purvis in February 1832. He died at Cringletie House, Peeblesshire, on 17 December 1836. It is interesting to note that Napier’s father, Macvey Napier, recommended the conferment on Raffles of the Honorary Degree of LL.D. by the University of Edinburgh on 18 June 1825. Raffles acknowledged ‘the honor which your University proposes to confer on me, and of which you so kindly apprise me’, in a letter to Macvey Napier dated Hornsey 20 June 1825 (BL:Add. MSS. 34, 613 fol. 318). Tan Che Sang, the most prominent of the Chinese merchants in Singapore at the time, was born in Canton in about 1763. He went to Riau when he was 15, and then for 10 years he was settled in Penang before moving to Melaka and then to Singapore, shortly after the settlement was founded. He is said to have been a great miser, but also addicted to gambling, a habit he tried unsuccessfully to conquer by cutting off the first joint of his little finger with an oath of never gambling again. He wielded great power in the early Chinese community in Singapore until his death on 2 April 1836, at the age of 73. For the terms of his will, see Song Ong Siang, One Hundred Years of the Chinese in Singapore (London, 1923), p. 14.

128

The drawbridge, the first to span the Singapore River, was projected by Raffles late in 1822, and the task of building it was given to Lieutenant Philip Jackson (note 83). There were delays in placing the contracts for the work and it was not completed until July or August 1823, after Raffles had left the island. The bridge is depicted in an undated lithograph of Singapore of about 1824 in the Library of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (reproduced in Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (1960), facing p. 143).

129

See notes 112, 136. He actually arrived at Singapore on 27 May 1823.

130

Notes 122, 119.

131

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I have ordered Jackson to measure your Hill132 (the one between Scott’s & Palmers) and the best plan will be for him to share it with you & take the management – I have suggested this to him but the Grant will be made out in the name of the Knight of Daimebrog – by the bye – Would not Daimebrog Hill be a good name?133 I have lately settled the affair between the Resident & Mr Morgan,134 tho’ I am sorry to say not much to the satisfaction of the former if I can judge from his subsequent communications – poor Morgan appears to have been rather too harshly treated, and considers that he has been excluded from the Notice of the Chief Authority for nearly a twelvemonth and long since offered an apology – a reprimand must be quite enough in addition – The Colonel also appears to have acted unfairly by him in sending up most outrageous Charges against his Character, without the documents on which they were founded, by which means he has got one Member of the Supreme Govt. at least to prejudge the question on partial information – The order to Jackson to survey the hills was given by Farquhar on 7 January 1823, ‘with a view to the Parties being furnished with Grants’ (NSA:L13, Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 9).

132

Mount Wallich no longer exists as it was used for reclamation purposes during the 19th century. It lay between Tanjong Pagar and the Town, next to Mount Palmer on the one side, and Mount Erskine and Scott’s Hill on the other. In his letter to Wallich, Raffles was suggesting that it should be named after the Knighthood of the Order of the Dannebrog (note 35) which had been conferred on him in 1819. Raffles’s odd spelling of the name has been transcribed accurately, though he does not place a dot on the ‘i’.

133

The dispute between Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar and the merchant, John Morgan, occurred in May 1822, when the latter publicly accused the Resident, among other things, of having acted as a commercial agent of Claude Queiros (note 117). Morgan had studied law in Scotland before undertaking a number of voyages in an East lndiaman. He established himself in the retail business at Batavia, and with his brother Alexander Morgan became a partner in the local firm of Paton, Morgan & Co. (Campbell, Java, vol. I, p. 623). The brothers moved their operations to Singapore some time after the settlement was established and John Morgan obtained a grant of land on the south-west side of what is now North Bridge Road to build a bungalow. Farquhar naturally reacted violently to his accusation – ‘an imputation … totally false, scandalous and injurious to my character … ’, and he reported the matter directly to the Supreme Government, at the same time informing Raffles at Bengkulu of his action (NSA:L8, Singapore: Letters to Bencoolen, 1822, fols. 102–106: Farquhar to Raffles, [?] May 1822). The dispute dragged on for some time, largely because of Morgan’s periodic absences from Singapore on trading voyages, and it was only in February 1823 that Raffles was able to deal with the matter. After receiving a long explanation of the original charges made by Morgan (NSA:L12: Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 76), Raffles decided on 5 February that no further enquiry was necessary and that because Morgan had apologised to Farquhar the matter should end. At the same time, he felt that there was enough evidence to confirm the fact of Farquhar ‘having had a commercial transaction in opium’ in infringement of the regulations. Farquhar protested his innocence, claiming that he had never received a proper apology from Morgan, and announced his intention to appeal to the Supreme Government (NSA:L12: Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 83). Raffles forbade this, but Farquhar asserted his right as Resident and Commandant to appeal to a higher authority (NSA:L12: Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 89). His subsequent appeals to Calcutta and London do not appear to have had much success. Morgan, naturally, was an ardent supporter of Raffles’s measures in Singapore and his brother helped to frame the address of the Singapore merchants on his departure from Singapore in June 1823 (note 213). He was, however, by no means so straightforward a character as Raffles seems to have believed, and he later got into trouble with Crawfurd for shipping arms to Thailand, where he had close trading and other connections (O. Frankfurter, ‘The Unofficial Mission of John Morgan, merchant, to Siam in 1821’, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. XI, pt. 1 (1914), pp. 1–7). In Singapore he learned Malay from Munsyi Abdullah (JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), p. 150) and allowed his house to be used by Abdullah to give Malay lessons to other Singapore merchants (ibid., p. 175). He was also responsible for arranging to have Abdullah’s hydrocele cured (ibid., pp. 175–80). He seems to have left Singapore in about 1827.

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It has not appeared to me that these Charges are borne out by the facts of the Case & they necessarily fall to the ground, but in the mean time much injury may have been done to the Character of the Individual – The Col. has a Note from Mr Adam135 giving his opinion on the Case as so represented, and on the faith of this he now proposes to appeal from my decision to that of the Supreme Government – This of course is inadmissable – but it is right you should know how the land lies – Palmer is inimical to Morgan as the rival of Quieros – I am ashamed to enter into such particulars but I know you will like to hear what is going on – The poor Colonel complains that he cannot resist the strong arm of power – but he forgets that it is the strong power of justice that is aimed against him and resists the one as strongly as he would the other – I do not calculate on much sound support in Bengal – but my arrangements once made they must be continued and every day’s experience will give them greater permanency – Crawfurd will look only to himself – 136 it is his nature – but See note 122.

135

136

Raffles did not have a particularly high personal regard for John Crawfurd, who succeeded Farquhar as Resident of Singapore in May 1823, though he recognised his considerable abilities. Crawfurd was born on 13 August 1783, the son of Dr. Samuel Crawfurd, a physician of Islay, Hebrides, Scotland, and his wife, Margaret Campbell. He studied at Edinburgh University from 1799 and was appointed Assistant Surgeon on the Bengal medical establishment of the East India Company on 24 May 1803. In 1808 he was posted to Penang, where he probably first met Raffles, and in 1811 he joined the British military expedition against Java. After the conquest of the island, he held a number of senior posts in the administration, including that of Resident of Yogyakarta (Peter Carey, The Power of Prophecy Prince Dipanagara and the end of an old order in Java, 1785–1855, VKI, vol. 249 (2007), passim; De Haan, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 526–9). He drew on this experience for his work, History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), which Raffles reviewed critically in The Quarterly Review, vol. XXVIII, no. LV, art. V (1823), pp. 111–38 (see also Raffles to Wallich, 1 November 1823, Letter No. 21), Crawfurd having dealt out his own criticism of Raffles’s The History of Java (London, 1817) in The Edinburgh Review, vol. XXXI, no. LXII, art. VIII (March 1819), pp. 395–413. According to the Indonesian national hero Dipanagara, Crawfurd mastered the Javanese language in under six months (Carey, VKI, vol. 249 (2007), p. 109), and William Marsden stated that even where he differed from him on linguistic matters, he felt the weight of his opinion (Miscellaneous Works (London, 1834), p.12). He was employed by the Governor-General of India on a commercial embassy to Thailand during 1821–22, and after his period as Resident of Singapore (1823–26) he was appointed envoy to the court of Ava. He published excellent accounts of both missions in 1828 and 1829, as well as A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language (London, 1852), A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries (London, 1856), and numerous other works and papers on the Malay Archipelago. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Geographical Society, and for many years before his death on 11 May 1868 he was recognised in Britain as the leading authority on Malaysian and Indonesia subjects. He married for a second time in 1820, Horatia, daughter of James Perry, his first wife (née Robertson, according to Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India, vol. III, p. 434, or Nicholson, according to the East-India Register and Directory for 1811, p. 456, which records the marriage in Penang on 17 June 1809) having, it is said, died at sea with his child. Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir in his Hikayat noted that Crawfurd was inclined to impatience and outbursts of temper, as well as being tight-fisted and too fond of material wealth. His intolerance of listening to long-winded complaints led to grumbling among the Chinese and Malay population in Singapore (JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), p. 197), and there is little doubt that he was considerably abrasive in his handling of people, as Wallich himself was to discover (Letter No. 17). Captain Travers noted that when Crawfurd was British Resident at Semarang in Java in 1814 he made himself disagreeable to everyone and turned the whole settlement

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he ought now to stand well enough in his own opinion to trust to his own rise by the worth of his own talent without trying to lower others that he may raise himself above them – I am sincerely grieved at the bad accounts you give of Finlayson –137 God grant that the air of the Botanic Garden and the kind attention of its Superintendent may do all you hope for – I should be delighted to see him here, and yet I fear I ought not to indulge in such a hope – Remember me most kindly to him. Lady Raffles unites in Kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Wallich & I remain My dear friend for ever & in truth Most Sincerely Yrs T S Raffles The Botanic Garden goes on well – I am now employed in laying out the Walks – and Stones are collected for the foundation of a handsome rail way round it –138 With regard to the Deer – dont send any down after Crawfurd or any other Authority leaves Calcutta, as I shall wish to be off as soon as I can – I hope in April – Dont forget my Commission for Sir Everard139 – Dr Wallich &c

against him (Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960), p. 51), and Walter Scott Duncan recorded an equally critical opinion of him in Singapore in 1824 (Singapore Sixty Years Ago (Singapore, 1883), pp. 4–5). Raffles received numerous complaints about Crawfurd’s behaviour as Resident of Singapore, especially in not following the line of policy he laid down before leaving the island in June 1823. To one such complainant, his friend Thomas Macquoid (Chapter Six, note 57), he wrote on 17 January 1824: ‘I am sorry to find that Crawfurd is going on as bad as he can, and has failed on every thing he promised both privately and publicly – to me he has acted shamefully – and I think it not very unlikely that he may be returned [to] England – I shall however have no explanation with him & therefore go on as usual, but he is hollow as a Drum and as false as the devil – at least such is my present impression –’ (BL:MSS.Eur.B.322). Lady Raffles in 1830 printed in her Memoir (p. 515) a letter of Raffles about Crawfurd, and another letter of his containing further remarks about him is printed in the Memoirs of ... Robert Morrison, D.D., vol. II, pp. 209–10 some nine years later, so that Crawfurd was well-aware during his life-time how Raffles regarded him. See note 184.

137

Acting on Raffles’s orders, Farquhar instructed Lieutenant Philip Jackson (note 83) on 6 January 1823 to construct ‘a proper railing or Fence round the proposed Botanic and Experimental Garden’ without delay (NSA:L13, Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 3). A few days later Farquhar was ordered by Raffles to warn all those inhabitants residing within the limits of the Botanic Garden to remove themselves, and Francis James Bernard, Assistant in the Police Department, was instructed to draw up a list of the people involved in order to establish claims for compensation. These claims were to be restricted to expenses incurred in clearing and bringing the ground into cultivation, and for the cost of erecting houses (NSA:L13, no.14).

138

Chapter Seven, note 23.

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No. 16 Singapore 11 Feb 1823140 My dear Sir I think it right to mention that the Merchants who will take the first turn as Magistrates are Johnston141 Maxwell142 and Napier – the first must be well known to you, the second shews himself to be a Gentleman by the enclosed Note I have just received from him in acknowledgement of the Nomination – and Napier was first introduced to me by Mr. Adam.143 With the exception of the Colonel’s own family, the only man who is not cordially disposed to second my arrangements is Mr Quieros and I very much fear he will do

Holograph letter, written on two leaves, recto and verso. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand: ‘recd (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/E17, no. IV). A second holograph letter written by Raffles to Wallich on one leaf with the same date (11 February 1823) was recently acquired by the National Museum, Singapore, at the sale of Valuable Books and Manuscripts at Christie’s, London, on 13 December 2017 (lot 38). It is reproduced here by permission of the Director of the National Museum, Angelita Teo. In the letter, Raffles asks Wallich (having ‘long since got through our Stock of Ether’) to send ‘by the first opportunity a Pound or two of the most volatile you can procure’, with payment to be made by James Calder of Mackintosh & Co. (note 177). Raffles then refers to an enclosed report (not present) by an unknown author, apparently referring to a complaint made against the administration of Lieutenant-Colonel Farquhar, with the hint that, ‘if it could fall into the hands of Holt Mackenzie [Secretary to Government] … [it] might serve to explain the State of Affairs here before my arrival, and the necessity of my interference’. The ether was apparently required by Lady Raffles and a bottle sent by Wallich is acknowledged by Raffles in Letter No. 19.

140

Alexander Laurie Johnston, a bachelor and founder of the firm of A.L. Johnston & Co., the leading merchant house in Singapore during the first 30 years of the settlement’s history. He was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, of a highly respectable family and after some years’ service in a number of East Indiamen he purchased his own vessel and engaged in the country trade. Attracted by the new settlement of Singapore he sold his ship and in 1820 bought a large stock of goods which constituted the foundation of his fortune. He acquired a bungalow on the lower slopes of Government Hill from the Artillery officer, Lieutenant Henry Ralfe, and rented part of the godown at Ferry Point at the entrance to the Singapore River owned by Captain Cathcart Methven (Chapter Four). He became a close friend of Raffles, who appointed him a member of the Town Committee and as one of the Magistrates under Regulation No. III of 20 January 1823 (note 124). He was one of the Trustees of the Singapore Institution, and the firm of Johnston & Co. acted as Treasurer to the Institution. Raffles had money invested with the firm for we find Lady Raffles writing to her sister-in-law, Mary Anne Flint, on 6 May 1826, after the collapse of the agency house of Thomas Macquoid, expressing the hope that ‘the money from Johnson’s [sic] House will come safe home soon or we shall be ruined & have not health to begin in the world again –’ (BL:MSS. Eur.D.742/15). When Johnston retired from Singapore in 1841 with a ‘handsome competence’ he stated in reply to an address presented to him that he had been longer in Singapore than any of those who remained. After his return to Scotland he was involved with Lady Raffles in a proposal made to the London publisher John Murray to write a book on the Eastern Archipelago, but Murray was ‘not of opinion that such a work will answer a literary speculation’ and he was therefore not prepared ‘to take any risque in the concoction of such a one’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/7). Johnston died in Scotland in 1850. A portrait of him is reproduced in C.B. Buckley, An Anecdotal history of Old Times in Singapore (Singapore, 1902), vol. I, facing p. 62.

141

John Argyle Maxwell was the principal partner of the Singapore merchant firm of Maxwell & Co. He was a supporter of Raffles’s measures in Singapore and became the first Secretary of the Trustees of the Singapore Institution. His appointment as Magistrate under Regulation No. III of 20 January 1823 began a long period of service in that capacity, as he was one of those included in 1826 in a Commission of Peace in Singapore, following the establishment of the Recorder’s Court at Penang. His house in High Street, built by the architect G.D. Coleman in 1826–27, and sold by him in 1829, was acquired by the Singapore Government in 1841 as the new Court House.

142

On D.S. Napier and J. Adam, see notes 127 and 122.

143

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Holograph Letter of Raffles to Nathaniel Wallich dated 11 February 1823 Courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board

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mischief by making partial and incorrect Reports to Mr Palmer, drawn out at the instigation of Bernard and calculated to back the Colonel’s arguments – In addition to the case I mentioned in my last, he has just made a most extraordinary Appeal about his Wharf – 144 it appears that a Robbery has taken place at his Godowns and that a Chest of Opium has been extracted therefrom. This he lays to his Wharf not having been allowed to be compleated – & has got three Strangers with Mr Bernard to sign a Paper setting forth that it is necessary his Wharf should be compleated to admit of his property being duly secured – The Colonel supports the representation and I have given them a very short answer, that I see no objection to the construction of such a temporary Watch House as 144

On Claude Queiros and F.J. Bernard, see notes 117 and 121. The ‘robbery’ of a chest of Benares opium valued at 2,500 Sp. drs. from Queiros’ warehouse at Ferry Point took place on the night of 6 February 1823, entry having been gained through the breaking down of part of a three-foot thick wall along the Singapore River, the construction of which had been stopped by order of Raffles in accordance with his new plans for the Settlement. In a letter to Farquhar dated 8 February 1823, Quieros applied for permission to complete the outbuildings on his wharf so as to afford greater security to his property, which he estimated to be worth 186,200 Sp. drs.: ‘From the situation of Singapore and its capabilities as a place adapted for transit commerce from the encouragement first held out and the firm reliance placed by the British Merchant for the security of his Property and the Capital which he has so fearlessly embarked in order to second the measures of his Government by adding stability to the growing Importance of this new Settlement, it is to be hoped that he will not now meet with a check and that the Lieut Governor will in the present instance after the daring Robbery … set aside his interdict and accede to the Tenor of the accompanying Recommendation, as otherwise valuable property at this moment deposited in my stores, amounting to nearly two Lacs of Spanish Dollars … becomes wholly insecure & liable every hour to similar depredations’ (NSA:L12: Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 98). Raffles refused such permission and made matters more difficult for Queiros by ruling on 19 February 1823 that the land on which his house on Cantonment Plain was built was to be resumed by Government for public purposes, and that the question of compensation would be referred to the Supreme Government. At the same time, the amount owing to Government for the land granted to him on Beach Road, in lieu of that on Cantonment Plain, was remitted. Queiros naturally reacted strongly to these decisions and, as correctly surmised by Raffles, he wrote to John Palmer (note 119) in Calcutta complaining about his actions. But Raffles was wrong in his supposition that Palmer would intervene with the Supreme Government in Queiros’ interest. In reply to the latter’s complaint of 12 February 1823 Palmer told him that he would gain no redress from the Supreme Government unless a Memorial was presented through the constituted authorities in Singapore, and being obviously suspicious of the robbery, expressed his feelings about the whole matter in the following damning sentence: ‘I am so disgusted with the contradictions, Intrigues, vanity & Lies of my Correspondents &ca. &ca., that I have long resolved to meddle no more in their Concerns. I trust that Justice may be done between Parties by the Supreme Government’ (Bodleian Library, Oxford:MS. Eng. Lett. C. 96, fols. 112–13, letter to Queiros dated 12 April 1823). In another letter dated 18 June 1823, in answer to further complaints from Queiros about the removal of his warehouse, Palmer wrote: ‘I have just recd. your letter of the 28th. May, and its voluminous Enclosures; and am perfectly astonished at your presumption and folly in regard to your Store House; and throughout the correspondence with Sir Stamford Raffles. It does not seem to me that you have a Leg to stand on, by your own shewing; compensation having been offered to you and timely notice given for the removal of your Property. I see nothing for reference to counsel – nor for redress, except in reference to the original grant of land and the question of Compensation; which was fit matter for a Memorial to the Sup. Govt. and would, doubtlessly, have been attended to, if submitted through the proper channel & in respectful Terms. In such a Form I could have assisted your just, or reasonable Pretensions: but I will not move in an affair, to say the best of it, so equivocal; and conducted with so little discretion, temper or relative consideration –’ (Bodleian Library, Oxford:MS. Eng. Lett. C.97, fols. 30–1). Queiros obviously received some compensation after Raffles left Singapore because in a letter dated 28 September 1823 Palmer reported having learned of his having ‘triumphed in the merits of your Case’, which, he stated, was the more pleasing as this success ‘grew out of no effort here’ (Bodleian Library, Oxford:MS. Eng. Lett. C. 98, fols. 252–4). The inference to be drawn from the letter is that Crawfurd was responsible for this decision, as Queiros informed Palmer of Crawfurd’s popularity in Singapore. (cf. note 136).

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may be indispensable but that I cannot authorize the Resident to permit Brick and Mortar of any kind or the completion of the Wharf as suggested –145 The Case will of course be appealed to Mr Palmer who will no doubt submit it to the Supreme Govt. – but I hope they will do me the justice not to adopt any measures upon it, without at any rate a previous reference – the Statement is altogether calculated to mislead and it is important that the Members of Council should be aware of this – The whole thing is absurd in the extreme, but perhaps it ought to be met. By the way Quieros is going on, he must either have found a gold mine or is dipping very deep into his Profits as a Merchant to make both ends meet, and it is rumoured that removal from Singapore e’er long may be found convenient to him – of course he will throw as much blame on the Govt. as possible or as they choose to admit –146 I wish you would guard Mr Adam against Palmer’s influence in the Case Yrs faithfully T S Raffles Dr Wallich &c &c

No. 17 Singapore the 8th of March 1823147 My dear friend I snatch a few moments to thank you for your kind and welcome Letter of the 10th January, and congratulate you most sincerely on your return to the bosom of your family and the delights of your Second Eden – The intelligence you give me as to the feeling of the higher powers on the changes here is extremely gratifying & the more interesting as I have not yet received any official intimation on the subject. It will be satisfactory to you to learn that notwithstanding the delays attending the Wet Season the job is nigh accomplished already – the ground being raised as far as the small Nullah and the New Warehouses rising in every direction –

The reason being that buildings constructed of brick were more difficult to remove from unauthorised sites and, being so constructed, attracted, on removal, larger amounts of compensation.

145

Notes 117, 144.

146

Holograph letter, written on five leaves, recto and verso. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand on the verso of sixth leaf: ‘recd 2 June/By Mr Gordon’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/EI7, no. V). The first paragraph, together with parts of the second, fourth, fifth, eighth and 11th paragraphs, as well as paragraphs seven and 10 of Letter No. 18, are printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 537–8.

147

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In a former Letter I mentioned my apprehension about Palmer – this has been since confirmed by a Letter which I have received from him wherein he shows the cloven foot too plainly to leave any doubt on the subject – His interest is to keep up a System of favoritism and to make the local Authority a tool for his advantage –148 What shall I say of your rupture with Crawfurd?149 tis true you have made us smile by the incomparable Style in which you have represented the proceeding but we have not the less entered into your feelings and sympathised in the generous burst of indignation which you describe – It was like yourself and composed as you were of such opposite ingredients it is not surprising that on coming so closely in contact there should have been an explosion – You are not an every day Man nor fit for every day Society – Your principles are too pure and your heart too warm to encounter the shafts of ridicule which envy and malice may fling at you – these are the Weapons of the heartless and unprincipled – of those who have no sympathy with the feelings of others, no consideration for their happiness – no common feelings for the common benefit of Mankind – Never mind, magna est veritas et praevalebit – and truth is virtue, and if there’s virtue or honour in Man, it is in you – For you and on your account I regret that I was the means of bringing you so closely together – With regard to the other party, tho’ he must stand much lower in my estimation, I have little to say – You must recollect my warning, and cannot forget what passed between us on the subject before we parted – We live in a strange world and unfortunately in the political part of it we are often obliged to smother our feelings and allow things to take their course – This I say in my own defence lest you should think I do not do enough to avenge your Cause – My heart and Soul are with you and for you and therefore you may judge how I feel towards those who annoy you – a curse on him who disturbs the peace of your earthly paradise – Gordon of Macintosh’s House150 is now here and as he seemed a little inclined to join in the idea that you might have indulged too much, I shewed him that part of your Letter in which you mention having previously gone to Finlayson and returned with a The letter, which was presumably of the same date as Wallich’s (January 1823), is not recorded in John Palmer’s Private Letter Books in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A letter to Raffles dated 3 September 1822, recommending Lieutenant Philip Jackson (note 83) to his favourable attention (MS. Eng. Lett. C. 94, fols. 189–90) is the last recorded letter directed to him in Singapore by Palmer. That Raffles corresponded regularly with Palmer at this time is indicated by a letter Palmer wrote to Queiros on 12 February 1823: ‘If R – is the double faced Fellow he would seem, it was disgusting to have further converse or communication with Him: his latest Letters tell me you are content and that Farquhar is growing concessory: you, of a later date say the reverse. But your case must rest upon its own Merits; and you may safely believe it will not be prejudiced by his Influence with this Govt –’ (MS. Eng. Lett. C. 95, fols. 92–3).

148

Note 136.

149

G.J. Gordon of the agency house of Mackintosh & Co. (note 104), who were Raffles’s agents in Calcutta (Letter No. 13). The firm was connected with Rickards, Mackintosh & Co., London, and was one of the biggest of the Calcutta agency houses. It received substantial loans from the India Government during the commercial crisis of 1830 but despite this support the firm failed in January 1833. Gordon carried Raffles’s letter to Calcutta and delivered it personally to Wallich.

150

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determination not to bring C. to his bearings “till after he had left your House”151 – Gordon returns by the present conveyance and will be able to tell you how we are going on. Mr. John Morgan152 also avails himself of the present opportunity of proceeding to Calcutta – and I have requested him to make a point of calling at the Garden – he has got over his difficulties and I am only sorry I have not seen more of him – You must know that he is a friend of Crawfurd’s – but this should not interfere with your communications with him – He will be able to tell you exactly what we are doing and to describe the progress of the improvements. The Magistrates have commenced operations with great prudence and judgement – their first presentation was against the irregularity of the Town &a and requesting that no time might be lost in carrying my arrangements into effect, as without them it was impossible to establish any thing like an efficient Police –153 The second came in yesterday in the shape of a Memorial against Slavery – The Slave Trade and Slave Debtor System, which my Representative seems to have permitted to an unlimited extent – I have not yet finally decided upon the question154 but I am much inclined to think the wisest and safest plan will be to do in this as I did in the Lands – to disavow & annull all that has gone before – This establishment was formed long after the enactments of the British Legislature which make it [a] felony to import Slaves into a British Colony,155 and both importers & It would appear that Crawfurd stayed with Wallich at the Botanic Garden at Sibpur after they returned to Calcutta from Singapore at the end of December 1822 (note 48).

151

Note 134.

152

153

Police arrangements at Singapore were established on a rather haphazard basis under F.J. Bernard (note 121), who had been appointed Assistant in charge in 1820 without regular pay. After a lapse of two years he applied on 7 May 1822 for either a fixed salary or an increase in his temporary provisional allowance, an application which was supported by his father-in-law, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Farquhar in a letter to Raffles, dated 8 May 1822: ‘In recommending Mr Bernard[’]s present request to your favourable consideration, I beg leave to state that the numerous and laborious Duties of the Police Department are daily increasing with the rapid advancement of the Establishment in Population, that constant claims are preferred for the recovery of petty debts, which of itself is sufficient to occupy a great portion of the Assistant’s time, independent of which, he is obliged to register & attend at investigations of all the numerous Police causes which are daily brought forward, – in short, I may safely assert that his Duties here if they do not exceed, certainly fall little short of those of the Police Magistrate at Penang; …’ (NSA:L8: Singapore: Letters to Bencoolen, 1822, fols. 47–8). Bernard was eventually granted a monthly salary of 150 Sp. drs. by Raffles, but his position was undermined by the appointment of magistrates under Regulation No. III of 20 January 1823 for ‘the Enforcement of a due and efficient Police at Singapore …’. Raffles proposed that Bernard should be appointed ‘Head Constable’, a designation which Farquhar regarded as an insult, ‘as no person in the character of a Gentleman is known under that denomination in India, the title universally given to the lowest class of Peace Officers …’. (NSA:L12: Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 101, letter dated 13 February 1823). On the subsequent history of the police in the Straits Settlements, see P. Morrah, ‘The History of the Malayan Police’, JMBRAS, vol. 36, pt. 2 (1963), pp. 34–5.

Resolved by Regulation No. V, ‘A Regulation for the Prevention of the Slave Trade at Singapore’, dated 1 May 1823. The Regulation, which is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, App. pp. 46–9, prohibited the slave trade at Singapore, and granted freedom to all persons who had been imported, transferred or sold as slaves or slave debtors in the Settlement since 26 February 1819. The Regulation did not apply ‘to the domestic establishments of native Chiefs, or traders who may occasionally resort to this port … ’.

154

A point made in the first paragraph of Regulation No. V of 1823 (note 154): ‘The Act of Parliament [of 1807] prohibiting the slave trade from being carried on with any British colony or settlement, or by any

155

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purchasers are alike guilty to say nothing of the British Authority who countenanced the trade – the acknowledgement of Slavery in any shape in a Settlement like Singapore founded on principles so diametrically opposed to the admission of such a practice is an anomaly in the constitution of the place, which cannot I think be allowed to exist – but of this more hereafter – I am becoming a little anxious about the arrangements in Bengal for this place, as it is my wish to be at Bencoolen in all May and we cannot calculate on a shorter passage than three weeks – this is the 8th of March and by the 8th of May, at furthest we hope to be off – so that you will have scarce time to acknowledge this by Morgan156 The Botanic Garden is progressing, two or three noble Walks have been cut through it and a noble railing is now rising in front of it – pray send down something like a Gardener or Head Man.157 I am now in negociation with Dr. Morrison158 for the transfer of the Anglo Chinese College from Malacca to this place and its’ union with my proposed Malay College under the general designation of the “Singapore Institution” –159 The paper you allude to about the Schools must be that on the College – I have not a printed Copy left but I send you my MS. Copy in which you must make allowances for errors in copying &c –160 British subject, having been passed previously to the establishment of the British settlement of Singapore, the provisions of the said Act are considered to be in force in this Settlement, and to apply to all persons who may have obtained a fixed residence at Singapore since the establishment of the British Government’. Note 134.

156

Note 103.

157

The Reverend Dr. Robert Morrison (1782–1834) of the London Missionary Society was the first Protestant missionary to China and author of A Grammar of the Chinese Language (Serampore, 1815) and A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (Macau, 1815–23). He was the translator, with William Milne (1785–1822), of the Bible into Chinese. Morrison arrived at Singapore on 29 January 1823 on the Duchess of Argyle (Harding) from China, and was introduced to Raffles the same evening at his house on Government Hill. Morrison records in his Journal that Raffles ‘soon entered on the subject of a School, or College, for the Malays, and other tribes of men in the Indian Archipelago. He wished much that the Anglo-Chinese College should be removed to Singapore. And we came to an understanding, that it would be expedient to establish a place of education which might be called “The Singapore Institution”; consisting of the Anglo-Chinese College, and a Malay College, each independent in its peculiar department, but under one general direction and management’. (entry under 29 January 1823, Memoirs of ... Robert Morrison, D.D., vol. II, pp. 191–2). Morrison left Singapore for Melaka, where he arrived on 4 February 1823, but he returned to Singapore and on 1 April 1823 he attended a meeting of the principal inhabitants, when the Singapore Institution was formally constituted, and a subsequent meeting of the Trustees on 15 April (Formation of the Singapore Institution. A.D. 1823 (Mission Press, Malacca, 1823)). Raffles and Morrison continued to correspond with one another after they left Singapore and they met on occasion in England during 1824–26.

158

On the establishment of the Anglo-Chinese College, see B. Harrison, Waiting for China: The Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca 1818–1843 (Hong Kong, 1979), and for the rules and regulations of the Singapore Institution, see Lady Raffles, Memoir, App. pp. 74–86. The Anglo-Chinese College never moved to Singapore and the Singapore Institution, which was renamed the Raffles Institution, had a rather different history from that envisaged by Raffles (E. Wijeysingha, A History of Raffles Institution 1823–1963 (Singapore, 1963), and note 187).

159

Minute by Sir Stamford Raffles on the Establishment of a Malay College at Singapore, which he read to the meeting of Singapore residents held on 1 April 1823 to establish The Singapore Institution, and which was printed, with some variation of text, in Formation of the Singapore Institution. A.D. 1823 (Mission Press, Malacca, 1823), pp. 5–34, Asiatic Journal, vol. XVIII, no.103 (July 1824), pp. 9–21, and Lady Raffles, Memoir, App. pp. 23–38.

160

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Lady Raffles unites in kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Wallich and I remain always My dear friend Most Sincerely & Affectionately yrs T. S. Raffles Dont send down any more Deer after you receive this – as I may not be here to receive them –161 Dr Wallich &c &c

No. 18 Singapore 17th Apl 1823162 My dear friend I have lately received your Kind Letters of the 17th. of January and 15th. of February, and most deeply am I concerned at the bad account you give of your health –163 for god’s sake be careful of yourself – Keep your mind easy and do not allow trifles or trifling people to annoy you – I know how you are perplexed and intruded upon by

The work has caused more confusion than any other of Raffles’s publications. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles, p. 626 states that although it was written in 1819, it was only made public in 1823, a date which is also given to the work by Harrison, Waiting for China: The Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, 1818–1843…, p. 199. It was, in fact, written by Raffles during the voyage on the brig Favourite (J. Lambert) from Bengkulu to Calcutta during October–November 1819 and printed at the Baptist Mission Press, Serampore, in December 1819 under the title, On the Advantage of Affording the Means of Education to the Inhabitants of the Further East. A facsimile reprint of the pamphlet is printed in John Bastin, The First Printing of Sir Stamford Raffles’s Minute on the Establishment of a Malay College at Singapore (Eastbourne, 1999). Raffles sent a manuscript copy of the work to his cousin, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, under cover of a letter dated 10 November 1819, ‘Off the Sand Heads Bengal’. In another letter to him dated the previous day, ‘At sea ... within 3 days sail of Calcutta’, he states his intention of probably printing ‘a few Copies’. He sent a printed copy to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, as stated in a letter to her dated 27 December 1819: ‘I have taken the liberty to enclose under a separate Cover a few observations I have thrown together on the advantage of affording the means of Education to the Inhabitants of the further East – I have been induced to print a few Copies not for publication but merely for the convenience of communication .... (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24). In a subsequent letter to her dated 12 February 1820 he states that he had sent to the Duke of Somerset from Calcutta ‘a short printed Paper on the advantage of establishing a College at Singapore –’ (ibid.). Note 104.

161

Holograph letter, written on nine leaves, recto and verso. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand on verso of ninth leaf: ‘recd July 5th 1823’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/El7, no. VI). The fourth, 13th, 14th and 15th paragraphs are printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 539–40, and the seventh and 10th paragraphs are printed as part of letter dated 8 March 1823, ibid., p. 538.

162

Wallich claimed that he suffered from poor health and regularly applied for sick-leave to escape the climate of Calcutta. He managed, nevertheless, to live to the age of 69.

163

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persons to whom it is necessary to shew some little attentions, but you should shut yourself up for a certain number of hours in the day & deny admittance to great and small. No constitution can stand for a length of time the severe workings of the Liver with which you seem to be afflicted, and therefore before it is too late you should contemplate some change – Would I could see you at Singapore once more – but that is impossible – when I am gone & far away you may be here, and that you may have a home I enclose you the Grant of Daimebroog Hill –164 the same that you first fixed upon and the most elevated of the range – Looking forward to the possible necessity (which I however I sincerely hope God in his infinite mercy will avert) of your making some change, I am inclined to suggest for your consideration a trip to Europe – which I think may by a little management be accomplished with great advantages to Science and also to yourself – You stand justly high both in England and on the Continent – Your Collections are most extensive and your arrival would be hailed with gratification by all lovers of Science and Natural History – You would have the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the leading men of the day, and by a Coup d’œil learn more in a month than you can collect from Books in a year – but above all you would gain health and vigour enough to support your strong and active mind – The Company could not refuse your allowances or to pay your Expences & which may be as moderate as you please and you would of course have the opportunity of visiting your Native Country – Think of this & don’t suppose that I suggest the plan out of pure selfishness – merely for the pleasure of again seeing you – tho’ I will admit that it may have had a considerable influence in directing my thoughts to the arrangement – Think and act for yourself – and if possible selfishly –165 We have lately received very satisfactory Letters from home of our dear Child166 and also on public points – My friends seem to be gaining power, or rather my Enemies may be

Note 35.

164

Wallich did not leave Calcutta for London until 1828.

165

Raffles’s eldest son, Leopold Stamford Raffles, died at Bengkulu on 27 June 1821, aged two years. The health of his three other children, Charlotte Sophia, Stamford Marsden, and Ella was causing concern by the end of the year, when it was decided to send them all to England. Unfortunately there was no available shipping on the west coast and Stamford, aged 19 months, and Charlotte, aged nearly four years, died on 4 and 14 January 1822. Ella was placed in the care of Nurse Mary Grimes and an attendant named J. Rosseau and bundled off on the Borneo (John Clunies Ross) for London on 4 March 1822, arriving safely in England in July. The anxiety of Raffles and Lady Raffles to learn of her safe arrival may be imagined, but news did not reach them in Singapore until April 1823. Ella was always of a weak and somewhat sickly disposition and she died at St. Leonards in Sussex on 5 May 1840, shortly before her 19th birthday, of a ruptured blood vessel. As a child she had straight chestnut hair, the colour of her father’s, and she was said to be very like him. She was a seriousminded child and, like her mother, very religious. A bust of her by Antonio Canova executed when she was in her early ’teens shows her possessed of the most delicate and beautiful features. She was a close companion to her mother and her death was a final blow in the tragic life of that unfortunate woman. At the time of Ella’s death she was engaged to be married to John Sumner, eldest son of the Bishop of Winchester. A letter of hers addressed to ‘Dear Phi’ [= her cousin, Jenny Rosdew Mudge] is in the British Library.

166

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diminishing –167 The Court have accepted my resignation168 with handsome expressions of which they are not in general too liberal, and in regretting the necessity leave it to my option to resign or not as I may feel inclined – I still however adhere to my determination of leaving India towards the close of the year –169 What if you were to join us at Bencoolen and form one of our Party? – but god forbid you should feel the necessity of listening to such a plan. My health is upon the whole much the same as when you left us – not over good at any time, and at others miserable – Nevertheless I hold up with a good heart and again feel some confidence that I may last out the year – more I dare not risk in these Climes – Lady Raffles is better and being in the family way170 all other complaints seem to be absorbed as her pregnancy advances. She expects to be confined in October – We have just passed the middle of April upwards of four months since you left us – and as yet I have not one line good bad or indifferent from the Government of Bengal in reply to my several references – the only intelligence I have is from yourself – but many weeks cannot now elapse without something; indeed I am daily looking for Crawfurd’s arrival,171 who with all his faults will be ten thousand times better than what we have – Nothing indeed can have been worse than the Colonel’s Conduct – it has gone on from bad to worse since you left us – until he has associated in combination with the lowest of the low in order to uphold his party, never as you may recollect very respectable – With Mr Queiros[,] Captain Pearl –172 Captain

Most significant in this context was the growing influence of Peter Auber (1770–1866), Assistant Secretary of the East India Company, who was Raffles’s brother-in-law by marriage to Lady Raffles’s younger sister, Mary Jane Hull. Auber was obviously an important source of information for Raffles on the politics of East India House, being described by him in 1820 as ‘my man of business in England’. Auber succeeded to the post of Secretary of the Company in February 1829 on the retirement of Joseph Dart, and held it until 1836, when he retired after 50 years’ service on a pension of £2,000 a year. In his book, Rise and Progress of the British Power in India (London,1837), vol. II, pp. 555–7, he gives an account of Raffles’s founding of Singapore and concludes that whatever Great Britain secured in the Malay Archipelago ‘may, in a great measure, be attributed to the perseverance and discernment of Sir Stamford Raffles …’.

167

Raffles’s letter of resignation addressed to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company, dated February 1822, is in BL:Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 49. In it he requests to be released from his duties at the close of 1823.

168

169

This plan was partly frustrated by the departure of his deputy at Fort Marlborough, Captain William Gordon Mackenzie (note 174), for reasons of health, partly because of ‘an accumulation of detail’ (Letter No. 21), and partly by the absence of ships on the west coast of Sumatra at the end of the year, leading to his taking passage in the ill-fated ship Fame on 2 February 1824, with the consequent loss of all his possessions.

Flora Raffles was born at Pematang Balam, 12 miles from Bengkulu, on 19 September 1823, a month prematurely according to her mother, but not according to her doctor. The child died at Bengkulu on 28 November 1823. Raffles reported her death to Wallich in his letter of 10 December 1823 (Letter No. 23).

170

Crawfurd did not arrive at Singapore until 27 May 1823.

171

Captain James Pearl, commander of the Indiana in which Raffles sailed to Singapore in January 1819, Aceh in March 1819, Singapore in May 1819, and Bengkulu during June and July 1819. The Indiana was a merchant vessel of 375 tons registered in Calcutta under the names of its managing owners, Barretto & Sons. At the end of 1818 Raffles arranged for the ship to be sent to Penang in circumstances described by Captain J.G.F. Crawford in his Diary: ‘The way of the transaction was a preconcerted plan. Sir Stamford, having power to do as he liked at Calcutta in the execution of the Company’s pleasure, under the ruse arranged with a house

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Methven173 & some others you may pretty well guess the kind of Coterie which exists – all their reliance is upon Palmer who it is said is exerting all his influence and power, to oppose all and every of my arrangements and plans – I trust however Mr Adam will think for himself – and not allow himself to be led away as was his Noble Predecessor, by the wily acts of those who are interested in checking the public good. My Locum tenens at Bencoolen (Mackenzie)174 has been obliged to fly from Bencoolen on acct. of ill health and this is an additional reason for my early return to of agency [John Palmer, note 119] to send the ship to Penang where he engaged to take her up on account of Government. This was readily assented to, trade being so extremely poor. To Captain Pearl, a naval officer, her Commander, it was hinted what admirable ballast bricks would make, and their dearness to the Eastward, no doubt of their answering a good speculation. He followed the suggestion …’ (Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles, p. 482). According to the same informant, Pearl made an ‘excellent percentage’ when he sold the bricks in Singapore in February 1819 (ibid., p. 489). Pearl acquired one of the large hills in the island, south-east of the Settlement (note 123), by a succession of purchases of land in May 1822 from Chinese gambier planters who had been in Singapore before the arrival of the British (NSA:L6: Singapore: Letters to Bencoolen, 1821– 22, no. 18). He named it Mount Stamford and had a house built near the top, but his tenure rights did not stand up to Raffles’s scrutiny and on 21 February 1823 he ordered Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar to take possession of the property on behalf of Government (NSA:L17: Raffles: Letters to Singapore, 1823, fols. 150–2). After some hesitation (ibid., fols. 152– 3) Farquhar proceeded in person on 24 February and took the land in accordance with his orders. Pearl immediately registered an official Protest against Raffles, Farquhar ‘and every Person and Persons concerned in taking Possession of his ... Grounds, Plantations, Gardens &c on and about Mount Stamford and entering into his dwelling house thereon situated and taking possession of the same from his Servants …’ (NSA:L12: Raffles: Letters from Singapore, 1823, no. 129). But having asserted in principle the Government’s rights to the lands, Raffles informed Pearl in a letter dated 25 February 1823 that there was ‘now no objection to your receiving a Grant for the grounds in question on the same terms as Europeans in general are allowed to hold Lands in Singapore’ (NSA:L17: Raffles: Letters to Singapore, 1823, fols. 161–2). In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that Pearl was not among Raffles’s keenest supporters in Singapore. That Pearl held the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Navy is indicated by his correspondence with the Dutch Resident in Borneo, J.H. Tobias, in February 1822, when he saved part of the crew and passengers of a Chinese junk bound for Batavia and landed them at Pontianak (Asiatic Journal, vol. XV, no. 85 (January 1823), pp. 36–9). The Navy lists and Records of Service of Seamen of the period record only one James Pearl, and he was born in America, served as a Master’s Mate in the Neptune at Trafalgar in 1805, as a Lieutenant in the Mediator during the destruction of French ships at Basque Roads in 1809, when he was severely burned and blown out of his ship, as a Lieutenant in the fire-ship Harpy in 1809, as a Lieutenant in the Comet in 1814, and as a Lieutenant in the York in 1815. Details of his service then cease until 1827, when he is listed with the rank of Commander. He was Knighted in 1838 and died the following year. Nothing in the Navy records connects him with the Indiana, but it seems reasonable to assume that, like many others, he was discharged after the Napoleonic Wars from active service and forced to pursue a living elsewhere. His name appears among the European inhabitants of Bengal in 1820 as a ‘mariner’ but thereafter it disappears following his decision to reside at Singapore. One of Singapore’s landmarks, Pearl’s Hill, is thus named after a man with a more distinguished naval service than has hitherto been recognised (cf. ‘James Pearl – Captain of the Indiana’ in H.F. Pearson, People of Early Singapore (London, 1955), pp. 47–52). Captain Cathcart Methven of the 20th (Marine) Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry (Chapter Four).

173

Captain William Gordon Mackenzie, son of the Scottish novelist and essayist, Henry Mackenzie (1745– 1831), and a brother of Holt Mackenzie, Secretary to the Bengal Government. He was born at Edinburgh on 9 May 1785 and was appointed a Cadet in the military service of the East India Company in 1801. He arrived in India the following year, and was present at the capture of the Cape of Good Hope in January 1806, and of Ambon in 1810. He served as Third Assistant to the Resident at Ambon between 1812–16, and in 1818 he was promoted Captain and appointed in October 1817 as Second Assistant to the Resident at Fort Marlborough. He was sent by Raffles in 1820 to succeed Farquhar as Resident of Singapore but the latter refused to yield his place and Mackenzie was obliged to return to his old post at Bengkulu. He left for Calcutta because of ill-health early in 1823, but Raffles expected his early return and wrote to the Supreme Government on 1 November 1823 stating that, because of his own declining health, he intended ‘on the return of Captain

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Bencoolen & I sincerely hope nothing will prevent it during the next Month – but until Crawfurd or some competent Authority arrives I cannot quit – I notice your request about my Book175 and tho’ you really lay the plaister on too thick and beyond what I can stand under, I shall most readily & willingly meet your wishes – The Book itself was a hasty performance & I have often been ashamed of it – but the true circumstances under which it was written are stated in the Preface – and all the World must know that I am no Bookmaker – (By the bye have you seen MacDonnel’s attack on Crawfurd commencing with “I am no Bookbuilder &c”)176 I am glad you have decided to limit the number of Deer – those you have already will be sufficient & accept my best thanks for what you have done – I hope you have obtained repayment from Calder –177 Gordon is still here, having put back, and I have communicated fully with him on your affairs – 178 He will go up by the first direct opportunity & I refer you to him generally as to what we are doing at Singapore – The Town is now quite a different thing to what it was when you were here – and our improvements notwithstanding all possible obstructions are going on rapidly & in many instances completed – but without a favorable & proper decision in Bengal respectg Mr Q! Warehouses &c – the business will be but half done – I will write to our excellent friend General Hardwicke179 by the present opportunity if I can snatch a few moments time – I feel most grateful for his kind and generous W.G. Mackenzie first assistant at this Residency (now in Bengal on sick certificate) to proceed to the Cape of Good Hope, whence should no essential change take place for the better I shall eventually proceed to Europe’ (NSA:L2:Raffles: Letters to London, 1822– 26, fol. 60). This was followed by another letter dated 31 January 1824 in which he stated that as no change had occurred in his health, and feeling ‘perfectly unequal longer to carry on my public duties in the East’, he had appointed John Prince (Chapter Nine, note 92) to take provisional charge of Fort Marlborough pending the return of Mackenzie from Bengal (NSA:L2: Raffles: Letters to London, 1822–26, fols. 61–3). After the west Sumatran possessions had been transferred to the Netherlands in 1825, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of London of the previous year, Mackenzie served for a brief period as Resident of Melaka. He retired from service on 19 September 1840 and died on 20 July 1842. On Raffles’s The History of Java, see Chapter Six.

175

Reference untraced.

176

177

James Calder, a merchant with the firm of Mackintosh & Co., who were Raffles’s agents in Calcutta (notes 104, 150). He was a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal to which he was elected on 12 April 1817, and he contributed a paper entitled, ‘General Observations on the Geology of India’, to the Asiatic Researches, vol. XVIII, pt. 1 (1829), pp. 1–22.

Note 150.

178

Major-General Thomas Hardwicke (1756–1835) was Commandant of the Bengal Regiment of Artillery, a member of the Military Board, and Vice-President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He entered the military service of the East India Company in 1778, becoming a Fire-worker in the same year. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1784, Captain in 1794, Major in 1804, Lieutenant-Colonel in 1804, Colonel in 1817, and Major-General in 1819. He took part in the Second and Third Mysore Wars and Second Rohilla War, and was appointed Commandant of Artillery in 1820. He proceeded on leave to England at the end of 1823, when he retired from active service. He was a devoted and accomplished zoologist and published between 1830 and 1835 the magnificent work, Illustrations of Indian Zoology, containing 202 lithograph plates and an engraved portrait (W.R. Dawson, ‘On the History of Gray and Hardwicke’s Illustrations of Indian Zoology, and some Biographical Notes on General Hardwicke’, J. Soc. Biblphy Nat. Hist., vol. 2, pt. 3 (1946), pp. 55–69; F.C.

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attachment and I beseech of you to say from me to him all and every thing that with such feelings I ought to say – I have indeed a warm and affectionate regard for him – and to tell you the truth I love you both – & what can I say more – I have not yet received the Letter from the Supreme Government respecting the Botanic Garden –180 to which you allude – We are going on with the railing and the grounds are fast improving – Jackson is preparing a Copy of the Survey which I will assuredly send before I leave this.181 I am indeed astonished at the extent of the Collections which you have sent home –182 they shall not be idle in the Boxes as far as my influence extends and on my arrival in England it will be one of my first cares to see that justice is done to your talents and exertions – If I stand well and can serve you by so doing, I shall publicly take you under my Wing and assert your Claims – If my name & authority can do you no good – as a private friend I will privately but zealously and unceasingly advocate your Interests – I have just established an Institution183 which will I am sure give you satisfaction – the particulars I shall hereafter communicate, not having time at present – The object is the cultivation of Chinese and Malayan Literature with the improvement of the moral and intellectual condition of the People – The Anglo Chinese College at Malacca is to be removed here and united with a Malay College erected by myself and both form parts of the Institution which has a Scientific Department and places for Professors in Natural Philosophy History &ca – I have put poor Finlayson’s name down for the latter184 partly

Sawyer, ‘The Dates of lssue of J.E. Gray’s “Illustrations of lndian Zoology” (London, 1830-35)’, ibid., vol. 3, pt. 1 (1953), pp. 48–55). He was a close friend of Raffles with whom he corresponded regularly on natural history subjects, and he actively supported his attempts to found the Zoological Society of London during 1825–26 (Chapter Twelve). His feelings for Raffles were expressed in a letter he wrote to Lady Raffles dated 15 February 1830 after receiving a copy of the Memoir of her husband: ‘I have this day been honored by your Ladyship with a Compliment so gratifying to my feelings, that I am at a loss to express in adequate language, how much I value such a Token of your Ladyship’s Regard, and the proof it affords of the Estimation in which you have continued to hold those who had the happiness to enjoy the proud distinction of Friend, with the ever to be lamented Personage whose Life & Services you have narrated to the Public with so much amiable feeling & animation. – I am quite convinced every Person who has experienced the pleasure of frequent Intercourse with Sir Stamford Raffles – whether Personally or otherwise, will peruse this Volume with an Interest of no common kind. – I have run hastily over so many pages as in a few hours I could examine, and in all I have felt delight; so much does every line bring to my remembrance the pleasing manner in which all his Information was communicated, whether through Colloquial intercourse or the Medium of a Correspondence.’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D742/10) See Letter no. 21.

180

On Jackson, see note 83. This Survey appears to be no longer extant.

181

Note 45 and Van Steenis-Kruseman, Flora Malesiana, ser. I. vol. I, p. 557.

182

Notes 158, 159, 187.

183

George Finlayson’s duties as Professor of Natural History were specified by Raffles as follows: ‘The Professor of Natural History shall be expected to be versed in whatever concerns the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Kingdoms; and shall not only teach Zoology, Botany, and Mineralogy to the students, but shall exert himself to procure new information on these subjects from the surrounding Countries, to be transmitted to the Home Committee of Co-operation: and shall do his utmost to procure satisfactory answers to such questions as may be sent out, by scientific Individuals or Bodies, through the medium of the home Committee’ (Formation

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as a just compliment I wished to pay to him, and partly to raise the character of our Institution by associating so creditable a name with it – I have also taken the liberty of naming you as a Trustee185 – Our proceedings are just going to the Press & as soon as they appear in Print you shall have the first Copy –186 We have about 20,000 Dollars in funds and have voted 15,000 for the Building which Jackson is to execute –187 The Site is fixed upon near the Beach and to the East of Cantonments & the plan and appearance will be very respectable –188 I trust in providence this Institution may be the means of civilizing & bettering the Condition of millions – it has not been hastily entered into nor have its possible advantages been over rated – our field is India beyond the Ganges including the Malayan Archipelago Australasia China Japan & the Islands in the Pacific Ocean – by far the most populous half of the World. Do not my dear friend think that I am led to it by a vain ambition of raising a Name – it is an act of duty & gratitude only – In these Countries has my little independence

of the Singapore Institution. A.D. 1823, pp. 92–3). Finlayson was born at Thurso in Scotland in 1790. After attachment to the medical staff of the British Army in Sri Lanka for three years, he arrived in Bengal in 1819 as Assistant Surgeon of His Majesty’s 8th Regiment of Light Dragoons. He remained in India when his regiment returned to England in order to take up the post of medical officer and naturalist on John Crawfurd’s Mission to Siam and Cochin-China in 1821–22. On the return of the Mission in November 1822 he met Raffles at Singapore and accepted his offer to eventually join him there and at Bengkulu as naturalist in place of the late Dr. William Jack. These plans were frustrated by Finlayson’s ill-health, as Raffles explained to Dr. Thomas Horsfield, in a letter dated 20 April 1823: ‘I had made an arrangement with another Gentleman Dr. Finlayson who accompanied Mr Crawfurd on his Mission to Siam and Cochin-China, but he alas is scarcely expected to live a Month –’ (KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562). Finlayson died in the same year on a homeward voyage to England, a fact which Raffles records in his letter to Wallich dated 1 November 1823 (No. 21). The manuscript Journal which Finlayson kept during the Mission to Siam in 1821–22 came into Raffles’s possession after his death, and he arranged for it to be published by John Murray in 1826 under the title, The Mission to Siam, and Hué the Capital of Cochin China, in the Years 1821–2, to which he contributed an introductory Memoir of the author. A Dutch translation by J.G.S.[turler] was published at Dordrecht in the same year. Finlayson’s herbarium was placed in the Museum of the Honourable East India Company and in 1832 it was presented along with Wallich’s type set to the Linnean Society of London. In 1913 it was transferred to Kew. Finlayson’s botanical and mineralogical notes on the Mission to Siam are in the British Library (MSS.Eur.D.135), as are his natural history drawings (Archer, Natural History Drawings, pp. 48–51, 78). Wallich was one of 18 Trustees of the Singapore Institution among whom were William Wilberforce, Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar, the Reverend Dr. Robert Morrison (note 158), and D.S. Napier (note 127).

185

Note 243.

186

The erection of the Singapore Institution building, designed by Lieutenant Philip Jackson, the Settlement Engineer, did not begin until 1827. It was a square-shaped single [?] storey building, something like a cross, with two small out-buildings. It was so badly constructed that the roof leaked and it proved unsuitable for the purpose intended, being used for a time as the premises of the Singapore Mission Press (note 110). George Windsor Earl (1813–65), who visited Singapore in 1833, recorded seeing close to the sea-shore ‘the ruins of a large building called the Singapore Institution’, which suggested that the Settlement was older than in fact it was (The Eastern Seas (London, 1837), p. 350). Another effort to complete the building was made in 1836 by G.D. Coleman, Superintendent of Public Works at Singapore, and work on the two-storey construction was finished in the following year. Two wings were added in 1839 and 1841 and the building as it then stood is depicted in a watercolour drawing in the Raffles Collection in the British Library (reproduced in Archer and Bastin, The Raffles Drawings, no. 1).

187

Represented in an uncoloured aquatint plate, ‘View of Singapore Town & Harbour taken from the Government Hill’, probably after Augustus Earle (1793–1838), in Lady Raffles, Memoir.

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been gained – In these Countries have I passed the most valuable if not perhaps, the whole period of my public life – I am linked to them by many a bitter and many a pleasant tie – It is here that I think I may have done some little good and instead of frittering away the stock of zeal and means that may yet be left me in objects for which I may not be fitted I am anxious to do all the good I can here, where experience has proved to me that my labours will not be thrown away. Ill health forces me to leave Singapore before even the material arrangements are made for its prosperity – but in providing for its moral improvement I look to its more certain & permanent advance – Would that I could infuse into the Institution a portion of that Spirit & Soul by which I would have it animated, as easily as I endow it with lands &c – It will long be in its infancy and to arrive at Maturity will require all the aid of friends & 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. Adieu, I am called to breakfast and have written this random letter with so much haste and inattention that you will hardly make it out – Lady Raffles desires to be most kindly remembered to you & Mrs. Wallich & I remain now & for ever Yrs Most devotedly & affectionately T S Raffles Dr. Wallich &c &c

No. 19 At Sea off the Coast of Borneo189 My dear friend It is quite an age since we heard from you & we have been somewhat disappointed in not receiving a line from you by Crawfurd or at any rate by the Ship on which he came down –190 He however brought Sophia your Bottle of Ether which has proved that you did not forget us. – Accept our best thanks for it. It will I am sure be satisfactory to you to know that all my arrangements have been approved in Bengal and that I have cause to be highly satisfied & grateful for the considerate attention & support which I have uniformly met with from Mr Adam’s Holograph letter, written on four leaves, recto and verso, last leaf verso blank. Undated but July 1823. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand on recto of first leaf: ‘recd Octob 7th 1833’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/E17, no. VII). The first paragraph of the letter, with part of the second, third, fourth, seventh, ninth, 10th and 11th paragraphs, are printed under the date of July 1823 in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 550–1.

189

Crawfurd arrived at Singapore on 27 May 1823.

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Government –191 They appear to have entered into and fully understood my views and what is more, fully appreciated them – Colonel Farquhar finding that I disappointed his expectations in quitting Singapore, had recourse to the lowest artifices to annoy & for some time previous to Crawfurd’s arrival had commenced a course of open hostility, aided by his friends Mr Bernard, Mr Quieros & a few others of the same stamp – it would make your hair stand on end were I to mention half what took place – but in consideration to him personally and for the sake of peace & quietness I would willingly keep these things from the great World – They have shocked every reasonable man at Singapore – Thank god there is now an end of it – I placed Crawfurd in full charge before my departure, and Murray has the Command of the Troops – The Colonel talks of going up to Bengal to appeal against me, but I fancy he will gain little by such a trip and that his best plan will be to steer homewards by one of the China Ships – With the exception of his immediate family – no one seems to have the least feeling or consideration for him – I give you this parish news because I am confident it will interest you & be at the same time satisfactory to you to know that however annoyed I may have been for a time the close of my Administration at Singapore has been just what I wished – You will probably hear much of my College & my Laws – of the former the Pamphlet now in the press will give you all information –192 & of the latter193 I have not time to enter into the details – It would be highly satisfactory to me to know how the latter are received in Bengal & even common report will be acceptable – It was impossible that after having collected together so great a population & so much Wealth as is now accumulated at Singapore, I could, with any satisfaction to myself leave the place without establishing something like Law & Regulation – The Constitution which I have given to Singapore is certainly the purest & most liberal in India, but this perhaps is not saying much for it – I am sorry we have not heard a Word regarding the Botanic Garden194 – it remains as you left it under charge of Montgomerie but with a handsome Wall and railing in front – Crawfurd seems anxious to have a Mr Voisy195 down & I have recommended his employment as an Assistant Surgeon – from what I have heard of his acquirements in Note 122.

191

Note 243.

192

Lady Raffles, Memoir, App. pp. 39–73.

193

Appendix, Letters No. 1 and No. 2.

194

Henry Westley Voysey (17??–1824), an Assistant Surgeon, was born in Scotland and studied at the medical schools of Edinburgh and London. He studied geology and mineralogy under Professor R. Jameson (note 93), and after service with his regiment at the Cape of Good Hope he proceeded to Calcutta, where he became attached to the survey under Colonel William Lambton (1753/6–1823). His career in this capacity is detailed in Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India, vol. III, pp. 508–10. Any plans he might have had about joining Crawfurd at Singapore were cut short by his death near Sulkia Ghat, Howrah, on 19 April 1824. It is interesting to note that Voysey joined the French naturalists Diard and Duvaucel in their early natural history researches in the region around Calcutta in 1818 (Asiatic Journal, XVIII, no.108 (December 1824) p. 591).

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Natural History & turn of Mind, I hope he will be an acquisition to the College and the Settlement. I left Singapore on the 9th Inst and am forced to touch at Batavia on my way to Bencoolen, very much against my will, but the Captain has goods to land there & no other opportunity was likely to offer of getting round – The Dutch will be a little astonished but I cannot help it – I do not intend to land unless particularly invited to do so –196 By some accident the flowers painted by my China Man197 were not dispatched to you before I quitted Singapore – & they are now on board – I shall send them up by the first safe opportunity – Dont forget to send me a full account of the Jackia formosa198 & to complete the Memoir of our dear friend’s life199 & Character – Send it to me at Bencoolen & leave me to publish it according to circumstances – You will be grateful to hear that altho I was dreadfully harassed & fagged before leaving Singapore, I feel no ill effects from it & now do not have a dreadful headache above once or twice a week instead of for two or three days together as heretofore; Lady Raffles also bears the Voyage better than I expected – and upon the whole we have great cause to be thankful for the comparatively tolerable health we now enjoy – so that I hope we may yet last out till the end of the year after which it would be madness to attempt remaining in this Country – Write me fully and frequently to Bencoolen – & say what I can best do for you at home – send down the latest sheets of the flora200 and let me be able to tell them in England what you are doing. God bless you my dear friend – Our united regards to Mrs. Wallich & may you enjoy health happiness & prosperity is the sincere & ardent wish of Yrs Most Affectionately T S Raffles Dr. Wallich &c &c &c

Raffles rightly anticipated a hostile reception from the Netherlands authorities at Batavia and he remained on board the Hero of Malown during the week the ship remained there from 25 June 1823. See Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 551–4, Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles, pp. 658–61.

196

He was possibly the Chinese artist from Macau referred to by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir in his Hikayat as being ‘very expert at drawing life-like pictures of fruits and flowers’ (JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), p. 73). Abdullah states that he was already engaged by Raffles at Melaka. Another Chinese artist employed by him at Bengkulu was a certain A. Kow, who was described in 1827 as being ‘proficient’ in the art of drawing. He had other Asian artists working for him but, with the exception of a Eurasian [?] named J. Briois, their names are unknown.

197

Note 233.

198

Note 204.

199

Notes 26 and 58.

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No. 20 Java Seas 20th. July 1823201 My dear friend Before we arrive at Batavia where recollections of the past and change of Scene may occupy my whole attention, let me remind you of two or three little things in which I require your good offices – First and foremost – stands my desire to obtain for Sir Everard Home the fœtus of the Tiger, Lion, Whale, Rhinoceros &ca 202 In the next place – a particular description of the Jackia formosa203 and Memo. for the life or Memoirs of our Departed Friend –204 to be completed with the assistance of his Brother205 at Bencoolen & published in the Malay Miscellanies,206 or otherwise as may be found most expedient. 3dly. I wish you to send me drawings and descriptions of all the Varieties of the Nutmeg in your possession – whether found at Singapore or elsewhere – I shall have to say much respecting the cultivation of the edible Nutmeg at Bencoolen and it would be interesting to enliven the description with an Account of the natural growth habitat &c. of those which are not so – I have already a large Collection & if it were complete I would put the whole in the hands of such a Man as Brown207 to arrange –

Holograph letter, written on two leaves, recto and verso, second leaf verso blank. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand on verso of second leaf: ‘recd Octob 7th 1823’ (Kon Bibl., The Hague:72/E17, no. VIII). The first parts of second and third paragraphs and the postscript are printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 551.

201

Letters Nos. 13, 14 and Chapter Seven, note 23.

202

Note 233.

203

Wallich failed to supply a Memoir of Dr. William Jack for publication in the Malayan Miscellanies (note 206) but he did pay a warm tribute to him in Flora Indica (Serampore, 1820–24) (note 26): ‘I was in hopes of meeting again with this most zealous naturalist in Singapore, last year, when I was obliged to visit that island, on account of a severe fever which I had contracted on my way down to the plains of Nipal. But it was otherwise ordained; and I have now to claim the sympathy of the reader, while I indulge a moment in rendering a feeble tribute of respect and friendship to his memory, leaving it to the pen of Sir Stamford Raffles, the revered friend and patron of us both, to do it far ampler justice. During Mr. Jack’s short and unostentatious, but highly useful and meritorious career, his comprehensive mind extended to every branch, almost of moral and physical science, with a degree of success, which the world has ample opportunities of appreciating, from his numerous valuable contributions to the common stock of information, both printed and manuscript. To his family and friends, the loss of such a man is indeed irreparable; nor can it be replaced to the public, but by an equally fortunate combination of first-rate talents, with the utmost suavity of temper and urbanity of manners’ (vol. II, p. 202). Any plans that Raffles might have had to publish a Memoir of Jack ended with the loss of his papers in the fire on the Fame in February 1824 (Letter No. 24), and it was left to Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) to publish ‘a brief Memoir’ of Jack in the Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835), pp. 121–47.

204

Chapter Nine, note 119.

205

Malayan Miscellanies, printed by the Baptist [Sumatran] Mission Press at Bengkulu, was issued in two volumes in 1820 and 1822. A list of contents of the volumes, which include Jack’s ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants’, nos. 1–3, is printed in C.E. Wurtzburg, ‘The Baptist Mission Press at Bencoolen’, JMBRAS, vol. XXIII, pt. 3 (1950), pp. 136–42.

206

On Robert Brown, see Chapter Seven, note 5. In a letter to Horsfield dated 29 January 1822 Raffles referred to Brown’s ‘capacity of throwing more light upon the Science in general in one Note than is to be found in all the ponderous Volumes of many Systematic Writers’ (KITLV:Westerse Handschriften H 562).

207

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4ly. Lady Raffles will feel infinitely obliged by your sending her by the first opportunity – two glass sucking Bottles for Infants208 – they are obtained at the Chemists & you will easily know what she means. She knows no one to whom she could make such a Request but yourself, & she feels confident you will attend to her wishes – She expects to be confined in October – and as we hope to embark in January we must look forward to the necessity of bringing up the child by hand. As this is a Letter on business I shall not enter upon other subjects – Adieu My Good friend and God bless you and your’s Yrs Sincerely & Affectionately T S Raffles I enclose you my decision on the Slave Question209 Dont forget to send the Dwarf Bull & Cow210 to Bencoolen before I go. Dr Wallich

No. 21 Bencoolen 1st. Nov 1823211 My dear Sir, It was not till after my return to Bencoolen and after the sailing of the last Ship for Bengal, that I received your two most valuable & interesting Letters on Singapore Affairs212 – How shall I sufficiently thank you for your exertions and attention on the occasion? Words cannot express what I feel and therefore be assured that I duly appreciate & am truly grateful for the service rendered – Of Singapore I have not heard a word since I left it, tho’ we have a flying Report that there have been some disagreements which God forbid – Crawfurd and I parted the best friends as you will see by his Communication of the Address from the Merchants213 They were needed for her expected child, Flora (note 170).

208

Notes 154 and 155.

209

They were possibly intended more for the improvement of agriculture at Bengkulu than in providing, from the cow, milk for his expected child Flora during the voyage to England in 1824.

210

Holograph letter, written on six leaves, recto and verso. Endorsed in Wallich’s hand on verso of last leaf: ‘Recd 22d Jany 1824’ (Kon Bibl., The Hague:72/El7, no. IX). Part of the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth and 10th paragraphs are printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 555–6.

211

The letters are not extant, having been destroyed in all probability in the fire on the Fame in February 1824 (Letter No. 24).

212

Address of the Merchants of Singapore, on the occasion of the departure of the Honorable Sir T.S. Raffles in 1823 (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1823), p. 8. That it was printed in November 1823 is indicated by the fact that Raffles sent another copy to his friend, Thomas Murdoch (Chapter Six, note 13), under a covering letter dated 14 November 1823, a fortnight after despatching a copy to Wallich. The text of the Address,

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& he promised most solemnly to adhere to uphold all my arrangements – but this is too much to expect and I shall be content if he does not openly oppose them or if he substitutes any thing better in their place – I fear he will have been a little annoyed at the Quarterly Review on his Work,214 as I see his friends in Calcutta seem to think it severe – I know it was not intended in unkindness & I feel satisfied that it is nothing more than fair and just, and as he will doubtless write other Books, I trust he will derive benefit from it – Our friend Farquhar was sadly led away before his arrival and all personal communication had ceased between us – He thought until the last, that it was impossible he could be removed and the blow seemed altogether unexpected – All his reliance was on Mr Palmer, whose interest at Head Quarters at the moment fortunately was not strong – His Appeal to the Supreme Government against what he terms the harshness of my proceedings has induced that authority, according to its usual policy to throw as much of the onus & odium on me as possible in order to shield themselves and I must be content to bear the brunt as the weaker body – I mention this that you may be aware that altho’ as far as I yet know my public measures were generally approved[,] there is yet a feeling towards Farquhar which I can hardly understand, and tho’ I have nothing to fear in any Contest with him, it may be as well to be on my guard against misrepresentation especially from a party who declares himself injured – 215 Heaven knows I have had but one object in view, the Interests of Singapore, and if a Brother had been opposed to them I must have acted as I did towards Farquhar, for whom I ever had & still do retain a warm personal affection and regard – I upheld him as long as I could and many were the sacrifices I made to prevent a rupture – but when it did take place I found it necessary to prosecute my Cause with vigour and effect – I lament to observe by the public Papers that poor Finlayson breathed his last on the way home –216 poor fellow, I never had much hope that he would be spared, yet his death has been to me a severe shock – admiring & valuing as I did his talents disposition and principles & feeling that he was in some degree personally attached to me. including Raffles’s reply, is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 544–8, and Asiatic Journal, vol. XVI, no. 96 (December 1823), pp. 616–18. Raffles’s review of Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820) was published in The Quarterly Review, vol. XXVIII, no. LV, art. V (1823), pp. 111–38. See note 136.

214

Raffles’s suspicion that John Palmer (note 119) was active on Farquhar’s behalf in Calcutta is confirmed by Palmer’s letter to Farquhar dated 21 June 1823 in which he informed him that he had forwarded his public letters of April and May to the Secretary of the Supreme Council, and that while he had not written to the Governor-General on the subject, he had sent Farquhar’s private letters to a member of Council, who had in turn communicated them to his colleagues. Palmer expressed the belief that the Supreme Government would disavow and disapprove of Farquhar’s supercession as Resident of Singapore (Bodleian Library, Oxford:MS. Eng. Lett. C.97, fols. 43–5).

215

Note 184.

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It is only a Week ago that we had another death in our family, a Gentlemen, Mr Drummond217 who had come out to us highly recommended from home & was embarking largely in our Agricultural pursuits was carried off in less than 12 hours! – I know not how it is, but these continued breaks in our domestic Circle seem to be sad warnings that we should not trust this Climate too long – I had hoped to have got away by the end of the present year but an accumulation of detail and the arrival of a Detachment of Troops most unexpectedly sent by the Bengal Government to Nattal218 may keep me some time longer – and under present circumstances I am precluded from sending up my resignation –

219

My health for the

last week or two has rather improved but I am still subject to the same attacks which so often & so completely overpowered me at Singapore  – Lady Raffles tho’ entirely recovered from her last confinement is in a very delicate state & it was only last night that we were forced to apply 30 leeches & have recourse to Warm Bath & Laudanum to keep down inflammation – I was happy to see that Lord & Lady Amherst220 paid so early a Visit to the Garden & I hope you will have found in them every thing you could wish. He appeared to me a very There was a spate of deaths of Europeans at Bengkulu during October and November 1823. Drummond died in the last week of October, followed on 29 October by Thomas S. Day, one of two brothers who ran the Botany Bay Plantation near Bengkulu (Letters from Bencoolen during the Lieutenant-Governorship of Sir Stamford Raffles Thomas Day and William Day, Introduction by James Trelawny Day (Kilkerran, 2008)). Next was Charles Halhead, Registrar of the Pangeran’s Court at Fort Marlborough, on 20 November, and three days later Captain Francis Salmond, the Master Attendant (Note 237). Finally, Raffles’s child, Flora Raffles, died on 28 November (note 170).

217

Natal was one of the so-called ‘Northern stations’ of the East India Company on the west coast of Sumatra. See John Bastin, The British in West Sumatra (1685–1825) (Kuala Lumpur, 1965), passim.

218

Notes 168 and 174.

219

William Pitt, 2nd Baron Amherst and 1st Earl Amherst (1773–1857), British Ambassador to China in 1816, and Governor-General of lndia between 1823–28. The China Embassy had called at Java in June 1816, three months after Raffles had left the island, and Henry Ellis (1777–1855), Third Commissioner of the Embassy, recorded a highly favourable account of his administration in Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China (London, 1817), pp. 37–8, and also in a public speech at a dinner given to Raffles at the Albion public house in London on 23 August 1817. Amherst undoubtedly shared this appreciation of Raffles’s reforms in Java, and both men seem to have got on well when they met as guests of Queen Charlotte at Frogmore some time between August and October 1817 (Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 230, 238–9). Amherst wrote a personal letter to him on 5 February 1824 from Calcutta expressing regret that the state of Raffles’s health made it necessary for him to resign his post at Fort Marlborough as it ‘would have afforded me pleasure to have found myself in correspondence with you, and to have received advantage from those services which have already been so beneficially exerted in this part of our Empire’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/3). In a second letter dated 21 April 1824, he expressed his ‘deep concern’ at Raffles’s losses on the Fame in February 1824: ‘To the scientific world, and indeed I fear to all who take delight in the promotion of useful learning and in the improvement of their fellow creatures, the loss of your labours is irreparable. As for yourself, I trust that notwithstanding the present impaired state of your health, many years of an honorable and useful life may yet be spared to you, and that the means may be found of repairing the misfortune which no human foresight could have averted’ (ibid.). Amherst’s wife, Countess Sarah Amherst (1762–1838), was the widow of Other Hickman, 5th Earl of Plymouth, and daughter and co-heir of Andrew (Archer), 2nd Lord Archer. She took a keen interest in natural history, especially botany, and some plants collected by her, sent directly or indirectly by Wallich, formed part of the herbarium of A. B. Lambert (note 17) (Miller, Taxon, vol. 19,

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amiable man and tho’ of a very different stamp to Lord Hastings221 I hope you will [have in] him an excellent Governor General – I perceive that he has made my friend Dalgairns222 one of his Aides de Camp; I hope you are acquainted with him – he was formerly my Aide de Camp in Java and is an excellent man. pt. 4 (1970), p. 511). She died on 27 May 1838, and Amherst re-married a year later. There are portraits of Countess Sarah Amherst and Lord Amherst after Lawrence in the Great Red Room at Claydon House, Buckinghamshire, and an engraved portrait of the latter forms a frontispiece to Ellis’s book, referred to above. Francis, 1st Marquess of Hastings and 2nd Earl of Moira (1754–1826). He inherited on the death of his mother in 1808, the Baronies of Botreaux, Hastings, Hungerford, &c., and was created in 1816 a peer of the United Kingdom by the titles of Viscount Loudoun, Earl of Rawdon, and Marquess of Hastings, having previously been created a peer of Great Britain in 1783 by the title of Baron Rawdon, of Rawdon, Co. York. He was educated at Harrow and University College, Oxford, and engaged in a military career. He distinguished himself at Bunker’s Hill in 1775 during the American War of Independence, and three years later he was appointed Adjutant-General to the Forces in America. On his return to England he joined the Parliamentary Opposition and supported the cause of the Prince of Wales on the Regency question. He commanded the expedition to Brittany in 1793 and was promoted to the rank of General in 1803. In the same year he was made Commander-in Chief in Scotland and three years later Master-General of the Ordnance in the Ministry of All the Talents. In 1812 he attempted unsuccessfully to form a Ministry with Lord Wellesley and in the following year he was appointed Governor-General of Bengal. He held this post until 1822 so that he was Raffles’s superior during most of the time that Raffles held office in Java and west Sumatra. Hastings had been early prejudiced against him because of his failure to supply the revenue from Java that had been promised: ‘Java is a still worse drain ... Instead of the surplus revenue which, for the purpose of giving importance to the conquest, was asserted to be forthcoming from that possession, it could not be maintained without the treasury as well as the troops of Bengal. Just now, in the height of our exigencies, we receive an intimation from the Lieut-Governor that he cannot pay his provincial corps unless we allow him 50,000 Spanish dollars monthly in addition to the prodigious sums which we already contribute to his establishment’ (Marchioness of Bute (ed.), The Private Journal of the Marquess of Hastings (London, 1858), vol. I, pp. 40–1). This prejudice against Raffles was further reinforced by the charges of corruption preferred against his administration in Java by Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie (1766–1814), and it was not until after they had been proved untrue that Hastings’s attitude towards him showed any marked change. Hastings wrote a conciliatory letter to him in July 1818 congratulating him on his safe arrival at Bengkulu: ‘It was painful to me, that I had, in the course of my public duty, to express an opinion unfavourable to certain of your measures in Java. The disapprobation, as you would perceive, affected their prudence alone; on the other hand, no person can have felt more strongly than I did your anxious and unwearied exertions for ameliorating the condition of the native inhabitants under your sway. The procedure was no less recommended by wisdom than by benevolence; and the results have been highly creditable to the British Government. I request you to consider yourself at liberty to carry into execution your wish of visiting Bengal, whensoever your convenience and the state of affairs in the Island may afford an eligible opportunity. The means of rendering the settlement at Bencoolen more advantageous to the Honourable Company than it now appears to be, are certainly more likely to be struck out in oral discussion’ (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 568). Raffles’s visit to Calcutta later in the year led to the two men became somewhat reconciled. ‘You will perhaps be surprised to hear that I have just returned from spending a Week with Lord Hastings and I am in high favour –,’ Raffles wrote to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, in a letter dated 15 November 1818. ‘I shall take another occasion to say what I think of him – at present I will only observe that I have from him the strongest assurances of friendship and support –’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24). Hastings’ support assured the success of the founding of Singapore, though it did little to change Raffles’s private opinion of him. In another letter to the Duchess of Somerset dated 26 November 1818 he wrote: ‘I have begged of Lady R[affles] to give your Grace an account of Calcutta and of the regal state of the Governor General which really exceeds all the Nonesense I heard of – I am now personally and publicly on fair terms with the Marquess but my opinion of him is not in the least altered by communion – He enjoys excellent health and is not likely to return to Europe until recalled; we are in daily expectation of the Marchioness [note 90], but her arrival will not be hailed with much glee as she is far from being a favourite here –’ (ibid.). That Raffles’s attitude towards Hastings had not changed in the intervening five years is indicated by the slighting reference to him in the above letter to Wallich. See John Bastin, Raffles and Hastings Private Exchanges behind the Founding of Singapore (Singapore, 2014), passim.

221

James Dalgairns of the Madras Native Infantry (Chapter Four).

222

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My time has been so occupied since my return that I have hardly been able to arrange the Papers of our lamented friend Jack – I propose to take them all home with me – they are not very extensive but they are generally to the point and valuable.223 We are desirous of placing an Inscription over his Grave & I have written to Calder to send an appropriate Stone from Calcutta –224 I learn from his Brother that his age was only 27!225 he died at Bencoolen at the Government House on the 11 Sepr 1822226 – I must beg of you to do the last kind office of adding to the above particulars a few words expressive of his Character & attainments, and you will oblige me by consulting our friend Calder on the subject & expediting the transmission of the Stone by an early opportunity – Robert Jack227 the Brother is at Moco Moco about 100 Miles from this, & I have not seen him since William’s death. I however expect him here towards the close of the year, when I hope to make a permanent arrangement with Kempt & Macintosh228 of this Coast for his admission into their House – He is very much like his Brother and bids fair to follow in his steps – but it is to be regretted that he had no previous experience in Natural History – he is however applying to the subject and I think him likely to succeed in whatever he undertakes.229 I will do all I can for the Garden at Singapore & send you a Copy of the Communication on the subject to Bengal and Singapore –

230

If I have an opportunity

I shall certainly recommend both you & the Garden to the warmest patronage of the New Authority in Bengal, and when in Europe, you may rely on my not being wanting to your interests or fame – Dont forget the Memoir respecting our dear friend

Jack’s scientific papers were lost in the fire on the Fame on 2 February 1824, as Raffles informed Wallich in his letter dated 28 March 1824 (No. 24), but see note 249.

223

On James Calder, see note 177. The tombstone was presumably never sent, since C.J. Brooks was unable to locate it during the early years of the last century (‘English Tombs and Monuments in Bencoolen’, JSBRAS, no. 78 (1918), p. 51). Wallich, however, did seek permission to have a monument erected to Jack’s memory (Chapter Nine) and it still stands in the grounds of the Calcutta Botanic Garden at Sibpur (H.J. Noltie, Raffles’ Ark Redrawn (London, Edinburgh, 2009), p. 41).

224

William Jack was born on 29 January 1795 (Chapter Nine), so that he was 27 years old when he died, as stated by Raffles. Considering their intimate relationship, it is curious that Raffles was surprised by Jack’s age.

225

Jack did not die at Government House, Bengkulu, on 11 September 1822, but on 15 September 1822 on board the Layton. (Chapter Nine, note 122.).

226

Chapter Nine, note 119.

227

Raffles obtained for Robert Jack a 4/16 share in the firm of Kempt, Mackintosh & Co. (Chapter Nine, note 119), the remaining 12/16 being shared by Kempt and Mackintosh (W.S. Duncan, Singapore Sixty Years Ago (Singapore, 1883), p. 15.

228

The later history of Robert Jack is obscure, and the fact that his date of death is not to be determined from sources in Scotland, suggests that he remained in Asia after the death of his brother.

229

Presumably a reference to some observation made on the Botanic Garden by the Supreme Government (Letter No. 18).

230

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Jack,231 nor an Account of the Singapore Plants232 as I am anxious to bring his name forward & unite it with the favorable feeling which exists regarding that Settlement – I mentioned in my last my wish to have Memo. or drawings if practicable of all the Varieties of Wild Nutmegs collected by you – I have upwards of Ten collected at Bencoolen & probably you have as many from Singapore – a description of the Jackia is also a desideratum –233 By the bye, I perceive in the Catalogues of Plants at Batavia there is a Genus Jackia?234 I must now conclude these hurried lines – with assuring you of our unfeigned & undiminished attachment and with our united regards to Mrs Wallich – God grant that you may have recovered your health & that you are again as happy as another Adam in another Paradise – Let me hear from you soon – Yrs Sincerely and Affectionately T S Raffles I will thank you to send me the Hortus Bengalensis235 as far as it is printed & when I go home to continue it until completed – Dr Wallich

Note 204.

231

This Account seems never to have been written by Wallich.

232

233

In Letters Nos. 19 and 20 Raffles refers to Jackia formosa which is an unknown species, and it might be reasonable to assume that the reference is to Jackia ornata [Jackiopsis ornata], ‘a very large branchy and umbrageous forest tree’, a native of Singapore, of the natural order Rubiaceæ, which Wallich dedicated to Jack’s memory in Flora Indica (notes 26 and 58): ‘I have dedicated this new genus to the memory of my departed friend, the late William Jack, whose premature loss I have already adverted to above, and whose well-known indefatigable labours in Natural History, have long ago entitled him to the highest respect. It was the amiable modesty of his character, and not any neglect on my part, which prevented me from executing my design of naming a plant after that excellent botanist during his life-time’. Wallich subsequently recorded Jackia ornata in his Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores (London, 1829–32), vol. III, p. 68: ‘Habitat insula Singapore, floribus fructibusque immaturis onusta Octobre’, and it is depicted in Plate 293 of that work. The difficulty with the assumption, however, is that Raffles already knew in January 1823 that Wallich intended to name the ‘noble tree, with pendent flowers and drooping fruit’ as Jackia ornata (W.J. Hooker, Companion to the Botanical Magazine, vol. I (1835–6), pp. 146–7), so that he would hardly be enquiring about Jackia formosa six months later. If the two species are connected then one must assume that in printing Raffles’s letter of 1 January 1823 Hooker altered Jackia formosa to read Jackia ornata, the name which had by then been recorded by Wallich.

A reference to C.L. Blume, Catalogus van Eenige der Merkwaardigste zoo in-als uit-heemsche Gewassen, te vinden in ’s Lands Plantentuin te Buitenzorg (Batavia, 1823), p. 17 where reference is made to Jakkia (sic). The exact month in which this work was issued is unknown (Stafleu, Taxonomic Literature, no. 101), but Raffles must presumably have acquired his copy when he was at Batavia in June 1823. See also C.L. Blume, Bijdragen tot de Flora van Nederlandsch Indië (Batavia, 1825–27), 60, where the genus Jackia is recorded [= Xanthophyllum Roxb.]

234

Notes 26 and 58.

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No. 22 Bencoolen, November 24, 1823.236 You will grieve to hear that we have just lost our worthy inestimable friend Captain Salmond;237 he is the second in our family and the fourth in our small society who has paid the debt of nature within the last month!238 Would to God we were ourselves fairly out of the place! Sophia recovers but very slowly from her late dangerous illness, and these events cast a sad and melancholy gloom over every thing. I write these few lines at her very particular request, to remind you of my This letter is not present in either the Wallich Correspondence, Library Botanic Garden, Calcutta, or in Raffles’s correspondence to Wallich in the Kon. Bibl., The Hague, but the text is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 563–4.

236

Captain Francis Salmond of the Bombay Marine and Master Attendant at Fort Marlborough was born at Waterfoot in Cumberland, one of six children of William Salmond of Seaforth, Antigua, and his second wife, Jane, daughter of Edward Hasell of Dalemain, Cumberland. His eldest brother, James Hanson Salmond, was born on 17 August 1766 and in 1782/3 was appointed a cadet and ensign in the Bengal Army, later serving as Secretary in charge of military correspondence in the Examiners Office on the Home establishment of the East India Company from 1809 to 1837. Francis Salmond was appointed to the Bombay Marine and to the post of Master Attendant at Fort Marlborough in about 1805. On 21 January 1806 he married Anne Salmon, one of a number of daughters in the family of George Salmon, who served as Deputy Governor of Fort Marlborough between 1787 and 1789. She died in 1812 after giving birth to James William Salmond in 1807, Francis Charles Salmond in 1809, Louisa Jane Salmond in 1811, and Emily Parker Salmond in 1812. Captain Francis Salmond formed an early friendship with Raffles, writing to his sisters a year after Raffles’s arrival as Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough: ‘Our Governor is a good friend of mine, and his lady a most pleasant woman. The rest of our settlement only so so’ (D.C. Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897), p. 287). In June 1818 Raffles placed him in charge of a military escort to give support to Sultan Ahmad Najmu’d-din in a succession dispute at Palembang, but he and his escort were arrested by the Dutch Commissioner and sent as prisoners to Batavia (P.H. van der Kemp, ‘Palembang en Banka in 1816–1820’, BKI, vol. 51 (1900), pp. 384–95; C.R. Low, History of the Indian Navy (1613–1863) (London, 1877), vol. I, 245–52). His ‘Diary of a Journey across the Island of Sumatra, from Fort Marlborough to Palembang, in 1818’ was later printed in Malayan Miscellanies (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1822), vol. II, no. III, pp. 1–12. Salmond joined Captain Harry Auber and William Jack in the ascent of Sugar Loaf Mountain (G. Benko) north-east of Bengkulu in June 1821 (Chapter Nine), and in October 1822 he accompanied Raffles to Singapore, where he was appointed with Wallich and Dr. Lumsdaine to a committee to report on the suitability of the southern bank of the Singapore River for building purposes. He died at Bengkulu, after his return from Singapore, on 23 November 1823, Raffles writing on the same day to Peter Auber: ‘... I have just received information that my dear and valued friend Salmond is no more. This last blow has been almost too much for us, for Salmond was as dear and intimate with us as our own family. I have just opened his will, and find he has nominated me as his sole executor in the following words:- “I appoint my only friend Sir Stamford Raffles to be my executor, and I pray to God he will take charge of my estate and children”’ (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 563). Acting in the capacity of executor, Raffles sold in January 1824 Salmond’s land at Panurunan, on which brick and chunam kilns were erected, to his own brother-in-law, John Watson Hull (1792–1842), for 1,350 Madras Rupees. Subsequently, in June 1825, Salmond’s two sons, James William Salmond and Francis Charles Salmond, who had been pupils at Charterhouse School in Godalming from 1821, arrived at Penang to take up official appointments in the East India Company’s service, the latter as Assistant to the Accountant and Auditor, and subsequently as Assistant to the Superintendent of Province Wellesley. He died on 28 May 1827, only 18 years of age, and was buried in the Northam Road Protestant Cemetery (Marcus Langdon, Epitaph The Northam Road Protestant Cemetery George Town, Penang (Penang, 2017), vol. II, pp. 537–8). James William Salmond had a more illustrious career, becoming Resident Councillor at Penang from 1834 to 1841 and later at Melaka. He died at Penang on 12 March 1848.

237

Note 217.

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picture. Whether I go home or not, I must, if Lady Raffles survives, send her home by an early opportunity. Our united regards and fervent prayers for your health and happiness. Believe me always your’s affectionately. [T. S. Raffles]

No. 23 Bencoolen 10th Dec 1823239 My dear friend I enclose you two Copies of a Work recently published at Bencoolen on Malayan Orthography,240 which with a very unassuming title contains much valuable information and must I think do great credit, not only to our Press, but to the Baptist Mission in general –

Holograph letter, written on two leaves, recto and verso, verso of last leaf blank. Endorsement in Wallich’s hand on verso of last leaf: ‘recd 29th Jany 1824’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/El7, no. X). Part of the third paragraph is printed in Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 564.

239

240

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W. Robinson, An Attempt to Elucidate the Principles of Malayan Orthography (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1823). The work contains a long Dedication to Raffles, the text of which is reproduced in Wurtzburg, JMBRAS, vol. 23, pt. 3 (1950), p. 138. The collation of the book given there is somewhat confusing and should be: Title, Dedication, Introduction [i]–lxiv; Text [1]–214; Appendix [215]–237; Errata [238]. The book is of the greatest rarity, as indicated by the remarks of E. Netscher in the Foreword to the Dutch translation of the octavo edition of the work (Batavia, 1855, pp. xii, 273; quarto edition: VBG, vol. XXVI (1857), pp. xii, 173 [174]. The work was issued from the Baptist, or Sumatran Mission Press, Bengkulu, between 27 October 1823, which is the date of the Dedication, and 10 December 1823, the date of Raffles’s letter to Wallich, in which he enclosed two copies of the work. The fact that on 10 December 1823 he also sent 30 copies of the work to the Directors of the East India Company in London, and six copies to the Supreme Government in Calcutta, points to early December as being the date of issue. These copies, as well as a few sent to private individuals, were safely distributed, but a ‘large … number’ of copies despatched by the Baptist missionaries to London, representing the bulk of the printing, was lost in the fire on the Fame in February 1824. The remaining stock of 43 copies in the possession of the missionaries was taken to England by Raffles in April 1824, but many of these copies appear to have been defective, especially with regard to the title-page, which is missing in the copy in the Singapore National Library and in other copies. From the above, it may be concluded that at least 73 copies of the work were distributed in England and eight copies in India, which, allowing for the addition of copies sent to individuals, would give a distribution of around 100 copies, thus accounting for its present-day rarity. Marsden had a good opinion of Robinson’s linguistic ability, stating with reference to his Malay Hymns that their composition evinced ‘an uncommon degree of proficiency’ in the language, which ‘in point of idiom would do credit to a native writer’. Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir was more critical of Robinson’s Malayan Orthography: ‘When I say that I would like to compile a grammar of the Malay language, I do not mean one like that produced by the Dutch who translated the Gospel into Malay some centuries ago, or the similar one by Mr. Robinson who applied the grammatical rules of English and Latin and other languages to Malay without understanding its idiom’ (JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), p. 215).

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Have the goodness to present from me at the Request of Mr Robinson,241 one Copy of this Work to the Asiatic Society242 as well as a Copy of the Papers regarding the formation of the Singapore Institution243 of which I also enclose you two Copies – We are I am sorry to say in great distress having lost several friends during the last Month, and among the rest poor Salmond –244 You know his honesty and Worth –

The Reverend William Robinson (1784–1853) was one of the more accomplished of the early Baptist missionaries in Asia. He arrived in India in 1806 without the requisite permission of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, but he managed to stay on at Serampur, and between 1808–10 he made annual journeys to Bhutan in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a mission there. In May 1813 he arrived with his wife and child in Java, where he opened a school. By April 1814 he was able to conduct his first regular Church service in Malay, and he began to learn Javanese. He remained in Java until 1820, when he moved to Bengkulu to assist the recently established Baptist mission. He translated into Malay various Christian tracts for printing, and he preached to the local Indonesian community. Unlike the other Baptist missionaries at Bengkulu, he won Raffles’s respect and friendship. He subsequently returned to India where he worked as a missionary, his life being fully detailed by his son, John Robinson, in Memoirs of the Rev. W. Robinson, Baptist Missionary (Benares, 1856). See also E.A. Payne, South-East from Serampore: More Chapters in the Story of the Baptist Missionary Society (London, 1945), pp. 26 et seq.

241

The copies of Robinson’s Malayan Orthography (note 240) and Formation of the Singapore Institution. A.D. 1823 (note 243) were presented by Wallich to the Asiatic Society of Bengal at its meeting on 10 March 1824 (Asiatic Journal, vol. XVIII, no. 106 (October 1824), p. 395).

242

These papers included the report of the meeting of the principal inhabitants of Singapore on 1 April 1823 to establish the Singapore Institution; Raffles’s ‘Minute ... on the Establishment of a Malayan College at Singapore’ (note 160); the Deed and regulations of the Anglo-Chinese College at Melaka; and the administrative and academic arrangements for the Singapore Institution. They were all printed in Formation of the Singapore Institution. A.D. 1823 (Mission Press, Malacca, 1823), pp. [3]–110. Judging by Raffles’s letter to Wallich (No. 19), the work was still in the press when he left Singapore in June 1823, a point made in his letter to his cousin, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, dated ‘At Sea, off the Coast of Borneo, June 14, 1823’: ‘I am sorry that I have been obliged to leave Singapore before the printing of the papers on the formation of the Singapore Institution was completed. Printing in this country is, indeed, most tedious and expensive work. I have left orders that several copies be sent to you by the very first opportunity ....’ (Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 549). That there was some delay in printing the work is indicated in Raffles’s letter to the Reverend Dr. Robert Morrison (note 158) dated 15 May 1823: ‘I am sorry the papers respecting the ‘Formation of the Institution’ will be so long in the press, but we must submit to these delays; and as my departure from this place is still uncertain, it will be of little consequence’ (Memoirs of … Robert Morrison, D.D., vol. II, p. 200). This letter was obviously written in reply to one from Morrison, who had returned to Melaka early in May, yet by the end of that month advance copies of the work must have reached Raffles in Singapore because in a covering letter dated 30 May 1823 he was able to despatch to the Court of Directors in London ‘30 printed copies of the papers relating to the formation of that [Singapore] Institution’ (BL:Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 49, fol. 395). Additional copies, under cover of a letter of the same date, were sent to the Supreme Government in Calcutta. This would point to a conclusion that the work was issued in May 1823 and that only advance copies were available to Raffles before he left Singapore in the following month. That May 1823 was the date of issue of the work is also indicated by the following entry in Morrison’s Diary of 24 May 1823: ‘During this month I composed and had printed a Report of the College concerns’ (Memoirs, p. 193), though the entry is a somewhat confused one and the description hardly conforms to the contents of the present work. Apart from advance copies received by Raffles at Singapore, most of the copies sent to him at Bengkulu were distributed from there to private individuals like Wallich during December 1823. Shipping was scarce on the west coast of Sumatra during that and the following month, and it seems likely that the copies destined for England were taken by him aboard the ship Fame in February 1824 and that they suffered the same fate as other works printed by the Sumatran Mission Press (note 240).

243

Note 237.

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But the worst of all has been the loss of our only remaining Child in this Country,245 and at a time when Lady Raffles was herself dangerously ill with fever – The Shock has indeed been too much for us and I hardly expect she will get over it – We have indeed been severely afflicted, & what is worse we are both so ill ourselves that neither of us dare quit the room – These circumstances will be a sufficient excuse for not writing you more fully Yrs Sincery & Affectionately T S Raffles Sophia begs me to remind you of the picture –246 Dr N. Wallich

No. 24 Bencoolen 28 March 1824247 My dear friend You will have heard of our dreadful misfortune long before this reaches you & therefore I shall not enter into particulars further than by stating that I have lost all

Note 170.

245

This was apparently a miniature portrait of Raffles which Wallich had taken with him to Calcutta, possibly with the intention of having it copied. He did not return it to Raffles at Bengkulu so that it escaped destruction in the fire on the Fame in February 1824 (Letter No. 24). Family tradition has it that the miniature portrait of him executed by A. E. Chalon R.A. (1780–1860) in 1817 was lost in the Fame, in which case Wallich was either in possession of a different portrait or else the family tradition is wrong. There were, in fact, at least three replicas of the Chalon portrait, one of which was in the possession of Raffles’s mother, and this was engraved by Thomson [=? James Thomson (1789–1850)]: ‘Sir Thos. Raffles, Knt. F.R. & A.S./Lieut-Governor of Bencoolen, &c./Engraved by Thompson, from a Miniature in possession of Mrs Raffles’ (19.7 × 13.5cm). The engraving is printed on paper watermarked: Turkey Mill/ 1825, indicating that it was executed after Mrs. Raffles’s death in 1824, and when Raffles was in England. The miniature was bequeathed by Mrs. Raffles to her youngest daughter, Ann, and it remained in her possession until her death in Edinburgh on 23 May 1825, when it passed, via her cousin Mary Ann Wise (née Lindeman), to Raffles’s friend, John Thomas Simes of High Street, Stoke Newington, a senior partner in the firm of J.T. Simes & Co. of No. 58 Coleman Street, London, woolbrokers. It was Simes, in all probability, who had the engraving made, though it is possible that Raffles had a hand in the arrangement. It is reproduced as a frontispiece to Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954).

246

Holograph letter, written on three leaves, recto and verso, the third leaf verso blank. Intervening blank leaf, verso with address in Raffles’s hand: ‘Dr Wallich/Botanic Garden/ Calcutta/ TS Raffles’; endorsement in Wallich’s hand: ‘Recd 29th May 1824’ (Kon. Bibl., The Hague:72/El7, no. XI). Printed, with minor omissions, in Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 575.

247

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and every thing belonging to me save my Wife & myself – We thank god escaped by a Miracle & are grateful to providence for so wonderful a deliverance – 248 The whole of my Drawings between 2 & 3,000 – all my Collections descriptions and papers of every kind – all those of our invaluable friend Jack with every document & Memo that I possessed on earth fell a prey to the all devouring flame –249 A subsequent attempt to get home in the Wellington250 has failed in success, for after taking her up & being prepared to embark, the Commander most suddenly & unexpectedly went out of his mind, and is now raving mad – This in fact was the third Ship251 we had engaged & in which something occurred to check our progress – I have now engaged a fourth the Mariner252 a small Botany [Bay] Ship to take home the Crew & Passengers of the unfortunate Ship Fame & god grant we may be more successful in her – We hope to embark on her in the course of the Week – and once more to trust ourselves to the mercy of the Elements – If it pleases God that we should arrive in England, you will hear from me e’er long – and I shall not fail to inform you of all that I think likely to interest you – You will of course hear that Crawfurd is going on at Singapore all wrong –253 the Colonel will have paid you a Visit in Calcutta – Adieu & excuse the haste of the moment – Lady Raffles desires to be most kindly remembered to Mrs Wallich & yourself – and all I have time to add is a repetition of what I

For Raffles’s account of the destruction of the Fame (Charles Young) by fire on the night of 2 February 1824, and the survival of her passengers and crew, see Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 566–9. An East lndiaman of 430 tons, the Fame was a relatively new ship, having been built in the Thames in 1818 and registered in London with Joseph Dowson as her managing owner. She sailed from Gravesend on 25 May 1823 for Bengal and Bengkulu, and her destruction by fire is depicted in a line engraving in the British Library (Print no. 411). An oil painting by Thomas Whitcombe (1760–1824), depicting the Fame off Cape Town, was offered for sale by the Parker Gallery, London, in 1964. Raffles’s account of the loss of the Fame circulated widely in England during 1824, but a better account is given by Lady Raffles in an unpublished letter to her sister-in-law Mary Anne Flint, dated 22 March 1824 (BL:MSS.Eur. D.742/15).

248

See Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 571–3 for a list of Raffles’s losses on the Fame. Jack’s scientific papers were destroyed but some of his papers which were in the possession of his brother Robert Jack survived and were sent to his father, Professor William Jack, who refers to them in a letter to Raffles dated 10 January 1826: ‘… some Mss remains, which by mere acci[dent] did not find a place in the Box consumed in the Fame, [the] greater part being poetical effusions of the heart, [and not?] for publication, therefore the more prized by us ... ’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/ 3).

249

The Wellington, a ship of 487 tons, was built at Bombay and registered at Calcutta. The managing owners were Fergusson & Co., and the ship’s commander was named as G. Maxwell.

250

The first was the Borneo, a square-sterned ship of 428 tons, commanded by John Clunies Ross, but Raffles cancelled his passage in favour of better accommodation on the larger Fame, subsequently destroyed by fire. Arrangements were then made for a passage on the Wellington, but, for the reason given in Raffles’s letter to Wallich, had to be cancelled. The fourth ship was the Mariner.

251

The Mariner, a so-called Botany Bay ship, was built at Whitby in 1807, and made a number of voyages to Australia carrying convicts, including women convicts. See C. Bateson, The Convict Ships 1787–1868 (Glasgow, 1985), pp. 78, 340, 346, 382, 385.

252

Note 136.

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have often said before & will continue to say till my dying day “god bless you, and be assured of my devoted friendship and affection[”] – We have not had a line from you for months Yrs Most Sincery & Affectionately T.S. Raffles Lady Raffles now thanks you for having kept my picture254 so long – as it otherwise would have been lost with every thing else by the Fame – Dr Wallich

Note 246.

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Appendix WALLICH’S LETTERS TO RAFFLES ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A BOTANIC GARDEN AT SINGAPORE 255

Letter No. 1 The Honble Sir T. S. RAFFLES, Kt. Lieut. Govr. of Sumatra, etc., etc., etc. Honble Sir, I request your indulgent attention while I take the liberty of submitting for your consideration some ideas, which have occurred to me relative to the expediency of establishing a Botanic and Experimental Garden on this Island. It would perhaps be impossible to picture to the mind a situation better calculated in every respect to accomplish the ends of such an institution than that, which Singapore represents in reality, placed under circumstances the most favourable for indigenous as well as foreign vegetation and forming part of the richest archipelago in the world – its soil yielding to none in fertility, its climate not exceeded by any in uniformity, mildness and salubrity. It abounds in an endless variety of plants equally interesting to the botanist, the agriculturist and the gardener, with unrivalled facilities and opportunities of disseminating these treasures and exchanging them for others. To form a just estimate of natural curiosities would require the labours at least of some years, exclusively devoted to its investigation: an undertaking, which the infancy of the settlement, together with various other concurrent circumstances have naturally prevented from being hitherto accomplished. Fortunately the researches of barely a few weeks, instituted by my only predecessor256 in this interesting field and amply verified by my own personal observations are more than adequate to exemplify what has been advanced above, both as to the wonderful resources of the Island and the ease with which they might be still further augmented. The text of this and the following letter is printed in Hanitsch, JSBRAS, no. 65 (1913), pp. 43–6,47–8. There are various drafts and copies of the letters in the Library, Botanic Garden, Calcutta, and the Singapore National Archives:L9: Singapore: Letters to Bencoolen, 1822, fols. 91–100, but the original letters are not extant.

255

A reference to the fact that William Jack made botanical collections in the island between 31 May and 27/28 June 1819. See Burkill, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 177–81.

256

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Here may I hope to be forgiven while I indulge a few moments in rendering a feeble tribute of respect to the memory of a departed friend, to whose lot it would have fallen and who would have been by far the best able to address you on the present occasion, had he not thus early sunk a victim to the most ardent pursuit of knowledge. During Mr. Jack’s257 short and unostentatious but highly useful and meritorious career, his comprehensive mind extended to every branch almost of moral and physical science with a degree of success, of which none can be a better judge than yourself, Honble Sir, who was pleased to honour him with your distinguished friendship and confidence, and which the world has ample opportunities of appreciating from his numerous valuable contributions to the common stock of information both printed and in manuscript. To his family and friends the untimely loss of such a man is indeed irreparable; nor can it be replaced to the public but by an equally fortunate combination of first rate talents, with the utmost suavity of temper and urbanity of manners. I return with pleasure from this painful digression to the magnificent and novel productions which adorn this delightful Island. Scarcely a dozen of these are known to the world beyond what have been published by my departed friend in the Malayan Miscellanies258 and the Linnean Transactions,259 perhaps not one of them had ever found its way into any botanic garden in Europe. In this view alone the proposed establishment would deservedly claim every attention which could be bestowed on it by a liberal Government, independent of the numerous other advantages which it would possess in common with all similar institutions and which it would be perfectly unnecessary to take up your valuable time in enumerating here. It will be presently seen, however, that there are considerations of an agricultural and commercial nature of such importance to this most flourishing settlement as to render an experimental garden an object of no common interest to its prosperity. I allude to a vast number of trees, constituting the bulk of these primeval forests, which fully deserve the trial of an extensive cultivation. Among them there are many, which yield timber fit for ship and house buildings and for all purposes of carpentry and joinery; if the Teak is not among their number, others will be found, so closely resembling it in its principal features, as to be little inferior to that celebrated wood. Indeed I have no hesitation in asserting that the spontaneous productions of the Island would afford abundance of every material for the construction of Ships of every description and size, and that the Teak, Sisso, Mahogany, Bamboo Chapter Nine.

257

W. Jack, ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants’ nos. 1–3, Malayan Miscellanies (Baptist [Sumatran] Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1820–22), vol. I, No. I, pp. 1–27, No. V, pp. 1–49; vol. II, pp. i–iii, 1–96; Inédit. ‘Descriptions of Malayan Plants No. III’, pp. 1–26.

258

W. Jack, ‘On the Malayan Species of Melastoma’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIV, pt. 1 (1823), pp. 1–22; ‘On Cyrtandraceæ, a new Natural Order of Plants’, ibid., pp. 23–45; ‘Account of the Lansium and some other Genera of Malayan Plants’, ibid., pp. 114–30.

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and a great variety of others, might with the fairest prospects of success be introduced and cultivated here. The experiments which have already been made by the Resident, Lieut. Col. Farquhar,260 to whose unbounded hospitality and most cordial cooperation I am indebted for whatever success has hitherto attended my enquiries on the Island abundantly prove, that the Clove and Nutmeg thrive here uncommonly well; nor is this to be wondered at since the wild species of the latter are so numerous, that I have been able to discover no less than five distinct ones in the immediate vicinity of the Cantonments alone. In fact there are neither mountains, ravines, ferocious animals, or any other impediments in the way of cultivating these valuable trees; on the contrary the frequent hills which lie scattered over the whole of the Island, none of them, probably, exceeding 150 feet in perpendicular height, present the most advantageous situation for their growth. How well the Pepper, Gambier, even the Sugar-cane succeed is obvious from the number of their flourishing plantations, and that the best cotton in the world, the Pernambuco sort, thrives luxuriantly may be seen from the individuals that have been raised from seeds, imported by yourself a few years ago at the very commencement of the Colony. The Coffee shrub promises to succeed as well here as it does in Java; even Tea grows freely and seems to lose nothing in luxuriance of flower and fruit by the change from its natural climates. Similar observations apply to a vast number of Malayan and exotic fruits and vegetables cereal grains and other objects of husbandry and horticulture, which offer themselves as well deserving of a judicious and efficient trial. In short wherever the eyes are turned, we behold a most enchanting scene of nature bountiful almost without a parallel and holding out unfailing reward and success to every one, who may choose to draw on her riches. With reference to these facts and deeply impressed with the conviction, that the cause of science and the arts will always continue to derive the utmost support and encouragement from your enlightened Government I beg leave to recommend that a suitable piece of ground may be appropriated in the neighbourhood of the European town for the purposes of a botanic garden and for the experimental cultivation of the indigenous plants of Singapore and the adjacent Islands, as well as of such others of foreign growth, as it might be desirable to submit to a skilful trial, previous to encouraging their general introduction. The expenses of such a garden would, I imagine, be moderate; that they would in the event be infinitely compensated by the beneficial results, which the public at large would derive from its influence, I am certain. They would be limited to the support of an efficient establishment and to a few monthly contingencies, and might be defrayed by a number of spice trees expressly cultivated for that purpose. I am confident

Farquhar’s well-known interest in natural history has been recorded in detail, but less attention has been paid to his experimenting with the planting of crops in Singapore.

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that the Supreme Government would willingly authorize my supplying some botanical apprentices and a couple of experienced gardeners from the Honble Company’s botanic garden at Calcutta and finally I should feel the highest pride and satisfaction in being honored with the general superintendence of an institution which promises to prove so ornamental and so beneficial to this settlement. I have the honor to be Honble Sir, Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant (Signed) N. WALLICH, M.[D.] & PH.D. Supt. Bot. Garden, Calcutta. Singapore, 2nd November, 1822.

Letter No. 2 The Honble Sir Thomas Raffles, Knight Lieut. Govr. of Sumatra, etc., etc., etc. Honble Sir, I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 15th instant replying to the application I had the honor of addressing you on the 2nd of this month. In conformity with your instruction I have carefully examined the ground suggested by you as the most eligible site for the proposed botanic and experimental garden and I have to state, that the result has been in the highest degree satisfactory. they appear to be in every respect calculated to answer the ends in view. In order to enable you to form a clear idea of the situation and extent of the land which I take the liberty to solicit may be added to the government garden, I beg to submit to your approbation the accompanying sketch made at very short notice by Lieut. P. Jackson,261 Assistant Engineer, to whose ready and valuable aid I stand greatly indebted on this occasion. You will be pleased to observe that the government garden forms the points from whence we have proceeded and that, together with the proposed additions, it forms an oblong tract, occupying a proportion of the eastern part of the Government or Singapore hill and the adjacent low grounds, extending in a N.W. direction, where

Note 83.

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it is terminated by Bukit Salegy. From thence in a S.E. direction it is bounded by the Salegy road; the cantonment road forms its S.E. boundary and the road leading round Singapore hill close to the government garden defines its S.W. side. By thus extending and defining the garden it will be made to comprise an area of about 48 acres (or 144 Bengal biggahs) of land, enjoying all the advantages specified in your letter, of soil and aspect, elevation and depression, dryness and wetness, a constant supply of water from a small rivulet running nearly through its middle, besides those of easy access. and such as must necessarily result from its situation immediately under the eye of the chief authority.262 The accompanying plan263 refers, however, only to the garden, in as far as it is suggested that this should be surrounded by an appropriate enclosure; but I request that I may by no means be understood as intending to exclude from the objects of the garden the other parts of the government hill, which you have been pleased to recommend as available. On the contrary, I beg to propose, that they should be laid out as a park by the superintendent and ornamented with a variety of trees and shrubs, indigenous and foreign, that they should form part of his charge and thus be rendered essentially contributive to the general objects of the Singapore botanic and experimental institution. The immediate departure of the ‘John Adam’,264 on which I proceed to Bengal, unfortunately precludes my entering at present into any detail of the internal arrangement of the garden; I shall however take the earliest opportunity of submitting my views in this respect for your consideration. In the meantime I have the pleasure to report that Mr. Asst. Surgeon Montgomerie265 at this station, to whom I applied according to your permission, will be extremely happy to undertake the temporary charge of the garden. I have accordingly had the honor of consulting with him on the most material points to be immediately attended to, and we have agreed on the necessity of devoting the whole of the monthly sum of 60 Dollars, which has been allowed for the cultivation of the garden, to the support of a permanent establishment of ten labourers and one overseer; and we propose reserving your splendid donation for such purposes, as will at once eminently benefit the institution, and perpetuate the name of its munificent founder and first patron. In conclusion I respectfully solicit to be permitted to render you my warmest and most grateful thanks for the flattering manner in which you have been pleased to accept

See Letter No. 7.

262

The plan is not included.

263

Note 118.

264

Note 103.

265

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The Danish Naturalist Nathaniel Wallich and the Singapore Botanic Garden   373

and notice my humble endeavours: a distinction which I value more than I can possibly express and which I shall always exert myself to the utmost to merit. I have the honor to be, Honble Sir, Your most obedient humble Servt. (Signed) N. WALLICH, M.D. Supt. Bot. Garden. Singapore, 21st November, 1822.

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Chapter Eleven

Raff les and his Malay Clerk John Leyden Siami ‘[A] nature so good at winning the affection of others and so noble as that of Mr. Raffles I have never found. Even should I die and return to this world in another life I should never again meet such a man’ Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, 1849

Hikayat Abdullah (American Mission Press, Singapore, 1849)

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I

t is surprising that the only description we have of Raffles’s physical appearance is by a Malay named Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi, whose autobiographical work Hikayat Abdullah1 was lithographed in jawi script by the American Mission Press in Singapore in 1849. Abdullah began writing his book nine years earlier so that his account of Raffles at Melaka and Singapore goes back less than 30 years which is not a particularly long period of recall for such an intelligent and acute observer as Abdullah. Some of the episodes relating to Raffles are inaccurate, including the account of the founding of Singapore, but this was based on hearsay and not on Abdullah’s own experience. Where he writes from direct experience and observation of people and events his accounts are remarkably accurate. He is the only writer, for example, to record the fact that Raffles had a cast in his left eye, and that he walked with a slight stoop, and while many of Raffles’s friends described him as being amiable, none of them described this feature so perfectly as Abdullah when he wrote that Raffles spoke in smiles2: Now as to Mr. Raffles’s physical features I noticed that he was of medium build, neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. He was broad of brow, a sign of his care and thoroughness; round-headed with a projecting forehead, showing his intelligence. He had light brown hair, indicative of bravery; large ears, the mark of a ready listener. He had thick eye-brows, his left eye watered slightly from a cast; his nose was straight and his cheeks slightly hollow. His lips were thin, denoting his skill in speech, his tongue gentle and his mouth wide; his neck tapering; his complexion not very clear; his chest was full and his waist slender. He walked with a slight stoop.

This is Abdullah’s description of Raffles at Melaka in 1810–11, when he was employed as Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States preparatory to the British invasion of Java, but Abdullah continued to write about him when Raffles was in Singapore between October 1822 and June 1823, providing us with an eye-witness account of a number of otherwise unreported incidents connected with his stay there. Without Abdullah’s Hikayat we would have no knowledge of how Raffles actually appeared to his contemporaries at Melaka and Singapore, and, as has been happily observed, it is appropriate that this information about him should have been recorded in ‘the language of the people whom he loved’. A.H. Hill (transl.), ‘The Hikayat Abdullah An annotated translation’, JMBRAS, vol. XXXIII, pt. 3 (1955), pp. 345, [9].

1

Ibid., pp. 72–3.

2

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Yet as close as Abdullah was to Raffles, he was not the most intimate of his Malay friends. That honour goes to a little-known Malay clerk, who was a member of his household in Penang, Melaka and Java, and also in England and Bengkulu, where he arrived as a member of Raffles’s party aboard the Lady Raffles (Harry Auber) in 1818. Subsequently, he accompanied Raffles to Calcutta, Penang and Singapore, when Raffles was involved in founding the British settlement, so that if he had been as energetic as Abdullah in recording all that he saw, his account of these years would have embraced virtually the whole of Raffles’s period in the East. Instead, his literary efforts amount only to a poem inspired by Raffles’s celebrated journey into the Minangkabau regions of central Sumatra, and two pamphlets in rhymed verse which he had printed at Singapore in 1830 criticising British rule when retrenchment measures in the Straits Settlements led to his removal from his post in the customs service.3 This Malay, who was known generally as Siami, was only a boy when he was first engaged by Raffles shortly after his arrival at Penang. As his name suggests, he was born in Thailand, but the circumstances which led to his employment by Raffles are unknown, though it is possible that he attracted his notice because of his knowledge of both Thai and Malay. As this connection began soon after the Raffles’s arrival at Penang in September 1805, Siami preceded those ‘several natives’ who were in Raffles’s employ when he became Malay Translator to the Prince of Wales Island Government in the following year.4 It seems therefore likely that Siami was actually the first to give him direct instruction in Malay following his own private study of the language during his voyage from England. Siami was already in Raffles’s service before John Leyden arrived at Penang on 22 October 1805 because we have the testimony of Captain Thomas Otho Travers that Siami, ‘a Native of Siam’, ‘was given by Mr. R[affles] to that ever to be lamented Genius Dr. Leyden to assist him in his researches being a good Linguist’.5 Siami accompanied Leyden back to India, when he left Penang in January 1806, and he probably acted with Ibrahim, son of Kandu, as one of his assistants in Ian Proudfoot, I., ‘Abdullah vs Siami: Early Malay Verdicts on British Justice’, JMBRAS, vol. LXXX, pt. 1 (2007), pp. 1–16.

3

D.C. Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897), pp. 42–3.

4

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, 29 April 1815.

5

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translating the Malay Annals.6 He was almost certainly the one who provided Leyden with his vocabulary of Malay and Thai words for his book, A Comparative Vocabulary of the Barma, Maláyu and Thái Languages, which was printed in 600 copies at the Serampur Mission Press in 1810,7 and he was also useful to Leyden in composing his paper, ‘On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations’, which was printed at the Hindoostanee Press in 1807 and published in the Asiatic Researches in the following year.8 Indeed, he was undoubtedly ‘the Siamese’ referred to by Leyden in his paper who provided him with particular information for the work.9 That he was regarded by Leyden as something more than an assistant seems clear from the fact that he was in some manner ‘adopted’ by him, allowing Siami to call himself John Leyden Siami, or simply, J.L. Siami. Siami sailed from Calcutta with Leyden and the Java invasion force in 1810, though possibly not aboard HMS Modeste (Hon. George Elliot) with the GovernorGeneral Lord Minto and his staff. He was almost certainly Leyden’s companion on his tour of the Naning districts inland of Melaka in May 1811,10 and he assisted him in the onerous task of corresponding with the Indonesian rulers prior to the British conquest of Java.11 As Leyden was working in close collaboration with Raffles and his own Malay writers, there is little doubt that Siami and Abdullah met at this time. On the voyage from Melaka to Java, Leyden was obliged to give up his berth on HMS Modeste to Raffles, and he sailed instead in the schooner Lord Minto (William Greig) with ‘a number of Malay moonshees or interpreters and writers of that learned language’.12 Following Leyden’s death at Batavia on 28 August 1811, two days after the defeat of the Franco-Dutch forces at Meester Cornelis, Siami ‘rejoined’ (to use Captain Travers’s word) Raffles, and he remained in his employ John Leyden, Malay Annals: Translated from the Malay Language, by The Late Dr. John Leyden. With an Introduction, by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. &c. (London, 1821); C. Skinner, ‘The Author of the Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala’, vol. BKI, vol. 132, (1976), pp. 195–206; C. Skinner, ‘Ahmad Rijaluddin’s Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala’, Bibliotheca Indonesica, 22 (1982), pp.1–198.

6

Pages, lv, [lvi], [i]–ii, [1]–239. See William Marsden, A Grammar of the Malayan Language, with an Introduction and Praxis (London, 1812), pp. xlvi–xlix.

7

Volume X (1808), pp. 158–289.

8

Ibid., p. 257.

9

Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), pp. 28–9.

10

NLS:MS 971, fol. 85v.

11

Countess of Minto, Lord Minto in India: Life and Letters of Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto from 1807 to 1814 while Governor-General of India (London, 1880), p. 278.

12

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during the whole of his period in Java, working with the other writers and clerks at the official Government residences at Buitenzorg and Batavia. Siami’s relationship with Raffles was close, because when Raffles left Java for London aboard the Ganges (Peter Falconer) on 25 March 1816 he took Siami with him as his Malay writer, and Raden Rana Dipura as his Javanese translator, to assist him in the composition of The History of Java. Both, according to Travers, were ‘terrible sufferers’ from sea-sickness, as was his own Malay servant, Kechil, who ‘has now been a week without being able to hold up his head’. Travers records in his Journal that on the evening of 28 April Raffles amused his fellow passengers with a recital of his translation of a Malay poem which Siami had written on leaving Java. The translation, Raffles admitted, did not equal the original, a fact which Travers confirmed: ‘as far as I am able to judge from my own knowledge of the language it has not certainly acquired much by translating’. Fortunately, he recorded the poem in his Journal the following day:13 Translation of a Poem written on Leaving Java by Siami Faded and dejected is every feeling of the Soul On account of the departure from Java Even as a salt sea that becometh fresh Where shall I offer my sad complaint Melancholy is it for all her Cities For the friends and companions we left within them For now, on the distant shore of the whole Island I cast my eyes and can discover nothing Like unto a joint of Sugar Cane is the Island of Java The taste of which is delightful but satisfieth not The Vices of the world are too powerful And the affections and desires are continually encreasing This it is that occasions disappointment in every one To quit the Island in anxiety and apprehension For the many friends and companions scattered abroad Radeens, Tumunggungs, Dipattys & Pangerangs But it is the clear and evident will of God Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, 29 April 1815.

13

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And which must be obvious to every one who can see Therefore what is the use of saying more about it For even this misfortune is the gift of God The dispensations of Providence are of various kinds And thou Oh man, be not forgetf[u]l of this Now that they are like the smoke which ascendeth from Incense And that the precious gift is lost in unsubstantial form –

After Raffles arrived at Falmouth on 11 July 1816 Siami accompanied him to London and lived in his household at No. 23 Berners Street, where we get a possible sighting of him in the ‘Reminiscences’ of the Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, who visited his cousin shortly after his arrival: ‘I found the house full of oriental matters, a perfect Museum – many things curious & magnificent: & multitudes of people waiting to see him – together with Servants & others in partially oriental costumes, presenting to my eyes a somewhat novel & amusing spectacle.’14 Raden Rana Dipura is mentioned by Travers in his Journal as having been taken in January 1817 to ‘all the Public places of amusement [in London], with all of which he was very much pleased but particularly with the Opera’, and by Raffles to see ‘some specimens of Electricity and galvanism’, but there is no reference to Siami being a member of the party.15 Whether or not he accompanied Raffles on his travels in England, Scotland and Ireland during 1816–17 is also unknown, as there is no record of him in any source, printed or manuscript, during the whole period of Raffles’s stay. Siami sailed from Portsmouth in October 1817 as a member of Raffles’s entourage aboard the ship Lady Raffles (Harry Auber), and being a bad sailor he doubtless suffered like Lady Raffles from sea-sickness when the ship encountered strong gales in the Channel. He landed with Raffles and his party at Bengkulu on the morning of 20 March 1818, but whereas Raden Rana Dipura was appointed to the rank of Lieutenant in one of the local Bugis regiments at Bengkulu, Siami continued to work as a Malay clerk and translator. He did not accompany Raffles on his journey into the central highlands of Sumatra in July 1818,16 but he was almost certainly the author of the Syair describing the journey in Malayan John Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009), p. 228.

14

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, January 1817.

15

Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 340–66.

16

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Miscellanies,17 since it was based on what the author had heard, obviously as a member of Raffles’s household. On 2 September 1818 both Siami and Raden Rana Dipura sailed with Raffles and Lady Raffles from Bengkulu in the brig Udney for Calcutta, and they subsequently accompanied him to Penang aboard HCS Nearchus (William Maxfield). Raden Rana Dipura sailed with Raffles from Penang on the historic mission to Singapore aboard the Indiana (James Pearl), and on 6 February 1819 at the celebrations following the conclusion of the Treaty establishing a British post on the island, he ‘gave way to great inebriety and afforded a degree of amusement by rising up to address the company in English’.18 If Raden Rana Dipura was at Singapore with Raffles at this time, it is fairly certain that Siami was there also, and that he was at Raffles’s side during the treaty negotiations with Temenggong Abdul Rahman and Sultan Husain Mahomed Syah of Johor. He certainly accompanied Raffles when he returned to Singapore from Penang in June 1819, as he is mentioned by name in a letter dated the 26th of that month in which Raffles informed Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar that a proper record should be made of all Malay letters and documents, together with an English translation, and that he would assign to the task his acting-Secretary, Lieutenant Francis Crossley (1786–1846) of the Bengal European Regiment. ‘To enable him to perform this as well as to assist in any general purposes that may be required’, Raffles added, ‘I have at the request of Lieutt Crossley left with him a writer named Siami, who has been long known to me & is capable of rendering very essential assistance in this Department. His salary is fixed at 30 Drs pr Mensem which you are authorized to disburse.’19 This instruction was confirmed on the same day by Farquhar in a letter to Crossley: ‘I am authorized by the Lieutt Governor to inform you that for the purpose of assisting you in the keeping a Record and making [an] English translation of all Malay documents you are permitted to entertain the Writer Siamie at a Salary of Sp. Dollars 30 pr Mensem’.20 Siami was subsequently appointed to the Singapore establishment of the Master Attendant, Captain William Lawrence Flint R.N., on an increased salary of 40 Spanish dollars, and his name ‘J.L. Siamee’ is listed on 29 August 1823 as a ‘Chinese ‘Poem in the Malay Language, Descriptive of the Journey of the Lieut. Governor to Menangcabow in 1818’, Malayan Miscellanies (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1820), vol. I, no. XIII, pp. [1–16].

17

Flinders Barr, ‘How Singapore was Founded’, Straits Times, 25 October 1937.

18

NSA:L10, fols. 75–6.

19

NSA:L10, fol. 87.

20

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& Siamese Writer & Interpreter’.21 In the following year, he was appointed to the newly-established Singapore Institution, where ‘John Leyden Siami’ is recorded on the staff as an instructor in Siamese.22 This was a notional appointment, as he continued in Government service, being listed in 1827 as one of two assistants in the Master Attendant’s office.23 Following the amalgamation of the Straits Settlements, it was decided by the Directors of the East India Company that the Master Attendant should be stationed at Penang, which led to a reduction in staff in the office of the Assistant Master Attendant at Singapore, and the consequent dismissal of Siami. Given his long service as a writer and Malay translator with Raffles, who was responsible for his appointment at Singapore, and his period in Government service at Singapore since the foundation of the settlement, mostly in the Master Attendant’s office, it is little wonder that Siami felt a bitter sense of grievance and resentment against his British colonial masters which he voiced in his poems in 1830.24 What happened to him after that date is unknown, but he doubtless eked out an existence at Singapore working as a private Malay and Thai translator. If he had spent those years writing an account of his life and experiences with Raffles in Penang, Melaka, Java, London, Bengkulu, Calcutta and Singapore, his name would have enjoyed pre-eminence over that of Abdullah as the principal Malay source of information on Raffles.

C.A. Gibson-Hill, ‘The Master Attendants at Singapore, 1819–67, JMBRAS, vol. 33, pt. 1 (1960), p. 25.

21

[R. Morrison, T.S. Raffles], Formation of the Singapore Institution, A.D. 1823 (Anglo-Chinese Mission Press, Malacca), p. 96.

22

C.B. Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore (Singapore, 1902), p. 202.

23

Proudfoot, JMBRAS, vol. LXXX, pt. 1 (2007), pp. 1–16.

24

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Chapter Twelve

Raff les’s Friends in England and the Founding of the Zoological Society of London ‘Having lost one splendid collection by fire he instantly commenced the formation of another; and having brought this to Europe, he made it not private, but public property, and placed it entirely at the disposal of a New Association for the promotion of Zoology, of which he had been chosen President by acclamation’ Sir Humphry Davy on Raffles’s death, July 1826

Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829)

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T

he Mariner (John Herbert), an Australian convict ship of 449 tons, sailed from Bengkulu on 10 April 1824, with Raffles, Lady Raffles, and their young nephew Charles Raffles Flint (1819–1884) on board, together with Captain Charles Young and the officers and crew of the ill-fated Fame. She sailed in the company of the Lady Flora (M’Donnel) until they were separated by fierce gales off the Cape of Good Hope, the worst that Captain Young had experienced in having passed the Cape 19 times. ‘[T]he storm was more dreadful than I can describe –’, Lady Raffles wrote, ‘& raged with unabated fury for 3 weeks during which time the ship lay like a wreck upon the water – with the topmasts down, & a single storm sail set, which was also carried away by the sea breaking over the Round House – the season has been one of the severest ever known. Several vessels have foundered … [F]ortunately I suffered very little from sea sickness so that I was better able to encounter all the bad weather –’.1 After a passage of 11 weeks, the Mariner came to anchor off St. Helena, where the Governor of the island, Brigadier-General Alexander Walker (1764–1831), and his wife,2 invited Raffles and Lady Raffles to stay at Plantation House. Ten days later, they prepared to sail again, but not before Raffles had received news of the death of his 69-year-old mother on 8 February. ‘I have a heavy heart …’, he wrote to his sister Mary Anne Flint in Singapore on 1 July 1824, ‘My health and Spirits will not admit of my dwelling on it – Heaven rest her Soul!’3 Lady Raffles wrote to her sister-in-law the following day, on the eve of their departure from the island: ‘Tom is certainly much better (that is) the nervous excitement & consequent agony of pain has subsided & he only suffers from debility & occasional bilious attacks … [F]or myself I have nothing to complain of but want of strength to enjoy the air & exercise this very agreeable residence affords – I write this by a large blazing fire …’.4 The Mariner crossed the Line on 12 July and arrived off Plymouth on 20 August. They landed two days later, a Sunday, and spent the night at ‘Beechwood’,

Lady Raffles to Mary Anne Flint, 2 July 1824, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/15.

1

General Walker served in the Bombay army during 1780–99 and was political agent at Baroda from 1800 to 1808. He returned to England in 1810 and was appointed Brigadier-General and Governor of St. Helena in 1822, a post he held for eight years. He was keenly interested in oriental studies which may have been a factor in accounting for the warm relationship he formed with Raffles at St. Helena. Two letters which Raffles addressed to him from England are in the British Library: MSS.Eur.D.742/21.

2

Raffles to Mary Anne Flint, 1 July 1824, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/17.

3

Lady Raffles to Mary Anne Flint, 2 July 1824, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/15.

4

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the house of the banker Richard Rosdew (d.1837),5 together with their cousin, the Reverend Thomas Raffles, who had been preaching at Devonport and heard of their arrival. ‘Lady Raffles looks better than I expected to find her’, he wrote to his wife, ‘but my cousin is very much reduced, and excessively weak’.6 Next morning Raffles and Lady Raffles set off for Cheltenham, anxious to be re-united with their daughter Ella, who was being cared for by Lady Raffles’s parents. They were delayed during the first days of their journey by ‘assizes, horse-races, air-balloons, and other festivities of the season,’ but they eventually arrived at Cheltenham to a joyous reunion with their daughter. Raffles rented ‘a snug house’ at No. 2 Wellington Place, where they remained until mid-November slowly recuperating and meeting friends in the neighbourhood. During the second week of September they visited London and stayed for a few days at Thomas’s Hotel in Berkeley Square so that Raffles could make his official reports on Fort Marlborough and Singapore to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company.7 Lady Raffles was ill during much of their stay but her health improved after they returned to Cheltenham. Raffles, however, was suffering from one of his severe headaches and confined to bed when Captain Travers visited him early in October and was shocked to find him ‘a complete Skeleton, with scarcely enough skin to cover his bones’.8 By the end of the month Raffles had recovered sufficiently to visit Henry, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, at his seat ‘Bowood’ in Wiltshire, where he met his old friend Thomas Moore, who recorded in his Journal that at dinner on the evening of the 29th he gave an interesting account of the burning of the Fame and the following morning showed him ‘maps of his new settlement at Singapore’.9 With their health largely restored, Raffles and Lady Raffles finally left Cheltenham for London, where they arrived on the afternoon of 17 November Richard Rosdew’s ‘Beechwood House’ was at Plympton in Devon. He was the uncle of Lieutenant-General Richard Zachariah Mudge (1790–1854) of the Royal Engineers, who married Lady Raffles’s younger sister Alice Watson Hull (1787–1862) on 1 September 1817. Mudge inherited the house on Rosdew’s death on 29 September 1837 (John Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009), p. 234, n.6). Mudge’s important contribution to the Ordinance Survey is examined in Rachel Hewitt, Map of a Nation A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (London, 2010).

5

T.S. Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Rev. Thomas Raffles, D.D., LL.D. (London, 1864), p. 230.

6

The Chairman of Directors of the East India Company to whom Raffles made his report was William Astell (1774–1847), Member of Parliament for Bridgewater during 1807–32 and later for Bedfordshire. He served as a Director of the East India Company from 1807 to 1846 and was Chairman of Directors in 1810, 1824, 1830 and 1838.

7

Pr. Coll.:MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, October 1824.

8

W.S. Dowden (ed.), The Journal of Thomas Moore (London, Toronto, 1984), vol. 2, p. 772. On Raffles’s friendship with Moore, see Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 201, n.61.

9

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Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Engraving by W. Finden after a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence

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Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset (1772–1827) Miniature portrait

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after spending the previous night at Oxford. They took up residence at No. 104 Piccadilly, which had belonged to Sir William Parton and had been taken for them by friends on a two-year lease.10 The house was well situated opposite Green Park, but it was too small, and on 24 November Raffles purchased for £3,000, and an annual ground rent of £230, a 30-year lease of No. 23 Lower Grosvenor Street,11 a house belonging to Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), President of the Royal Society.12 This was also small, with a nursery and light closet on the top floor used as a guest room, and a bedroom on the first floor, but it was comfortable and had ‘tolerably good reception rooms’. Raffles immediately ordered extensive renovations to be made and completed by early February 1825. Meanwhile, during the early days of December, he arranged for the delivery to his house in Piccadilly the large cases containing the natural history collections he had assembled at Bengkulu after the loss of the Fame, together with those he had sent earlier from Singapore on the Venelia (Thompson) and the Daphne (Noak), which had arrived in August and September of the previous year and been stored at the East India Company’s Baggage Warehouse. Their delivery to Piccadilly caused problems, as Raffles explained to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, in a letter dated 9 December 1824: ‘We are beginning to get a little more to rights than when you left us but I have only been able to unpack ten cases out of 173! in course of transport to the House – I don’t think we shall be able to move into Grosvenor Street till the beginning of February and in the mean time I am making the principal Rooms of our present House more like a Warehouse than a residence – The Number of Monkies[,] strange animals and odd fish that we have already unpacked would astonish you & I am happy to say they are all in good preservation as perfect as when packed.’13 Better progress was made in the following days, and he was able Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 163, 213, n.192.

10

Ibid., pp. 167, 241, n.49.

11

Sir Humphry Davy was educated at Penzance Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge. He was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution in 1802 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the following year. He was knighted in 1812 and created a baronet in 1818, becoming President of the Royal Society two years later. He died at Geneva in 1829.

12

Raffles to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 9 December 1824, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24. Raffles’s friendship with the Duchess of Somerset was said to be that which, ‘he values & clings to above every other’. Her high social standing was an obvious attraction but she appears to have been a warm and kind-hearted woman who attracted many of the intelligent men of her day (Lady Guendolen Ramsden (ed.), Correspondence of Two Brothers: Edward Adolphus, Eleventh Duke of Somerset, and his Brother, Lord Webb Seymour, 1800 to 1819 and After (London, 1906), pp. 12–13). The banker and poet, Samuel Rogers, was particularly attached to her, and Lord Byron, on the eve of his departure from England in 1816, wrote in a farewell letter, ‘Your Grace is one of the few whom I would not willingly see for ye last time’. She was fond of society and liked to be surrounded by intelligent men and women with whom she engaged in ‘bright and clever conversation’. The President of

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William Marsden (1754–1836) Etching by Mrs. Dawson Turner after a painting by T. Phillips

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to report on 21 December that he had ‘nearly unpacked all my Birds and Beasts from the India House – but it will take me all next Month before I am quite right, & then to remove to Grosvenor Street – where I mean to live and die as far [as] a Town residence is concerned’.14 Christmas was spent away from London at ‘Edge Grove’, Aldenham, near Watford in Hertfordshire, with William Marsden and his wife Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the orientalist Sir Charles Wilkins (1749–1836), Keeper of the East India Company’s Library and Museum, who Raffles had known when serving as a Clerk at the East India House, and who had assisted him on several points when he was writing The History of Java (London, 1817).15 Marsden had retired as First Secretary to the Admiralty in 1807, but earlier in his life, between 1771 and 1779, he had served in the secretariat at Fort Marlborough,16 and was doubtless interested to learn of the changes made by Raffles during his administration. On a previous visit to

the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, was a close friend of hers (N. Chambers (ed.), The Letters of Sir Joseph Banks A Selection, 1768–1820 (London, 2000), Letters 118, 121, 122, 124). She was in delicate health, and her suffering increased with age, so that she was obliged to receive her friends while reclining on a sofa. She was born on 6 April 1772, the daughter of Archibald, 9th Duke of Hamilton and Brandon (1740–1819) and Lady Harriet Stewart (d.1788), daughter of the 6th Earl of Galloway. She married Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset (Chapter Six, note 53) on 24 June 1800. The occasion leading to the proposal of marriage was described by Elizabeth Heber in a letter to the Reverend Reginald Heber dated 5 July 1800: ‘Her father when shewing the house took the young Duke into his daughter’s apartments where they found the young Lady surrounded with books, on further inspection, the Duke was so much pleased with the collection in which she had shewn so much taste and judgment, that an offer of marriage immediately ensued and was accepted. The daughters of the Duke of Hamilton were all well educated under the eye of their excellent Mother’ (R. H. Cholmondeley (ed.), The Heber Letters, 1783–1832 (London, 1950), p. 119). Raffles’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society on 20 March 1817 led to his friendship with the Duke of Somerset and his wife, and, through her, with her father, the Duke of Hamilton. Raffles’s first letter to her is to be dated about May 1817, when his The History of Java was published, for in the letter he playfully acknowledges her gift of a pen: ‘You have I fear put the pen into very unfit hands; it is true I have written a Book, but then your Grace has not read it – and it is probable that when you have, you will regret that you have been instrumental in my writing more –’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24). The letter began a correspondence which continued for the rest of his life, and the fact that she preserved his letters is a measure of the affection and esteem she felt for him, writing to him in October 1824: ‘What a pity such a Character [as you] was not sent out [as] Governor General of India! How much good wd. you have done, not only to India but to England …’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/27). The most revealing indication of his feelings for her is afforded by a postscript to a letter he wrote to her from Fort Marlborough on 15 April 1818: ‘I have just closed all my dispatches and as you are my Alpha and Omega – the first and last in my thoughts – I cannot resist adding one line to say farewell – and god bless you – Forget me not – and as I love you and yours so do you continue to love me and mine – farewell TSR’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24). She died less than a year after him, on 10 June 1827, aged 55. Raffles to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 21 December 1824, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24.

14

Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 200–1, n.57.

15

Introduction to the facsimile reprint of William Marsden’s The History of Sumatra (Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1966), pp. [v]–x. Raffles’s friendship with William Marsden began in 1806 when he was Secretary to the Prince of Wales Island Government and he corresponded with him during his time in Java, particularly with regard to Horsfield’s researches on the Upas tree (Chapter Three). In August 1815 Raffles referred to him as ‘a warm friend’, and he met him on several occasions when he was in England during 1816–17. Marsden died at Aldenham, Hertfordshire, in 1836, having six years earlier described Raffles as ‘my excellent & amiable friend’. Raffles’s and Marsden’s correspondence is detailed in Chapter Two, note 138.

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Marsden in October 1817, Raffles had left with him his Malay manuscripts and other related documents and these were now returned to him in good order but unused, as Marsden’s literary pursuits had taken him in another direction.17 Raffles and Lady Raffles returned to London on 29 December and on the following day he informed the Duchess of Somerset that he had taken possession of his house in Lower Grosvenor Street but that as it was undergoing repairs he did not expect to be able to move for a month. In the meantime, he was in the process of arranging his collections and wished to reclaim the large number of packed boxes he had left with the Duke in Park Lane seven years earlier. These were delivered a few days later, when Raffles had the idea of adding a ‘Museum’ to his house in Lower Grosvenor Street to accommodate his collections. He was strongly advised against this by the Duchess, who warned him that the cost of building in London was not the same as in India. ‘Consider first’, she wrote, ‘whether you would not rather have your Museum in the Country than in London? – If you have a place near Town & sd reside much at it, possibly it may be there you wd prefer lodging your beasts & birds’.18 He had in fact already begun looking for a country property, and in June 1825 he purchased ‘High Wood’ in the parish of Hendon, Middlesex,19 a remodelled Georgian-style house recommended to him by his ‘revered’ and ‘respected’ friend, the anti-slavery campaigner and social reformer, William Wilberforce (1759–1833).20 He designated one of the principal rooms John Bastin, ‘Provenance of the Raffles Malay Letters’, Ahmat Adam, Letters of Sincerity: The Raffles Collection of Malay Letters (1780–1824), MBRAS Monograph 43 (2009), p. x.

17

Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, to Raffles, 2 January 1825, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/27.

18

On Raffles’s house and estate of ‘High Wood’, see Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 170–1, 174, 178, 185.

19

Raffles first met Wilberforce when he visited his London residence, Gore House, Kensington Gore, on 10 August 1816 with his cousin, the Reverend Thomas Raffles. Raffles wrote to Wilberforce from Spithead on 23 October 1817, on the eve of his departure from England, recommending Sumatra and Borneo as suitable fields for missionary activity, and he addressed a long letter to him from Bengkulu in September 1819 enclosing a manuscript copy of his later printed paper, On the Advantage of Affording the Means of Education to the Inhabitants of the Further East (Baptist Mission Press, Serampore, 1819). After his return to England Raffles invited Wilberforce to dinner, but in declining the invitation on 26 February 1825 Wilberforce took the opportunity to express his sympathy for Raffles’s losses in the fire on the ship Fame: ‘And let me now do myself the justice of assuring you, that I was repeatedly on the point of writing to you again and again, from the very first of my hearing of your safe return to your native Country, after all your labors and sufferings. It required not any personal regard to have felt deeply interested in your dangers, but that regard grounded on Esteem called forth a more than general measure of sympathy’. He went on to invite him and Lady Raffles to visit his cottage near Uxbridge, ‘in our little Retirement, accepting a homely reception in consideration of its being a cordial one’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/3). The visit occurred at the end of the following month, as Lady Raffles informed the Reverend Thomas Raffles on 28 March 1825: ‘We are going this day to Mr Wilberforce’s where we dine & sleep & tomorrow go on to Brighton to enjoy a little fresh air …’ (Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 298). Wilberforce recorded details of the visit in his Diary: ‘Sir Stamford and Lady Raffles, and Dr. [Robert] Morrison the Chinese scholar came between one and two – Lord Gambier [1756–1833] called and we had an entertaining confabulation. [William] Ward dined, and we had a very interesting evening…’ (R. Furneaux,

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William Wilberforce (1759–1833) Contemporary print

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leading off the hall as ‘The Museum’ and moved into it all his natural history collections, including the skin and skeleton of a female orang utan and ‘an extensive series of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and insects’, which had been sent to him by his friends in Sumatra.21 As well as dealing with his own natural history collections, Raffles became actively engaged at this time in soliciting support for the establishment in London of a Zoological Society, the principal purposes of which he outlined in a letter to his cousin, the Reverend Thomas Raffles, on 9 March 1825:22 I am much interested at present in establishing a grand Zoological collection in the Metropolis, with a Society for the introduction of living animals, bearing the same relations to Zoology as a science that the Horticultural Society does to Botany – The Prospectus is drawn out, and when a few Copies are printed I will send some to you – We expect to have 20,000 subscribers at £2 each – and it is further expected we may go far beyond the Jardin de Plantes at Paris – Sir Humphry Davy & myself are the projectors & while he looks more to the practical & immediate utility to the Country Gentlemen, my attention is more directed to the Scientific Department –

Raffles had approached Sir Humphry Davy as President of the Royal Society in the hope of enlisting the support of members of the Royal Society for the proposed institution, with Davy being given the specific task of signing up subscribers. It is not known when Raffles first met Davy though it may have been as early as 1817 when he was elected a member of the Royal Society and attended the Society’s dinners.23 While engaged in his natural history activities in Java and Sumatra he had been closely associated with Davy’s predecessor Sir Joseph Banks, whose death on 19 June 1820 had been ‘a severe shock’ to him, as he considered that it would

William Wilberforce (London, 1874), p. 425). On 30 July 1825 Wilberforce wrote to Raffles, who was in residence at ‘High Wood’, about the possibility of establishing ‘a chapel of Ease in our Neighbourhood’, but the proposal met with the opposition of the Vicar of Hendon, the Reverend Theodore Williams, on his realising that he would suffer a loss of collections and pew rents from a new church at Highwood Hill. Wilberforce moved his family into his refurbished house next to ‘High Wood’ on 16 June 1826, but Raffles’s death occurred just three weeks later. See Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 239–40, n.47. On the natural history collections sent to England by Raffles from Sumatra, see Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 206–7, n.107. Other collections were sent from Singapore.

21

Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 9 March 1825, Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 167–9; Lady Raffles, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830), pp. 592–3.

22

Raffles dined eight times at the Royal Society Club, or the Dining Club of the Royal Society, during the first half of 1817, following his election as a Fellow on 20 March, and he seems to have dined regularly at the Club on his return to England in 1824 (Sir Archibald Geikie, Annals of the Royal Society Club (London, 1917), pp. 253, 284, 290; T.E. Allibone, The Royal Society and its Dining Clubs (Oxford, 1976)).

23

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be impossible to fill his place. ‘I am very much afraid that the death of Sir Joseph will go far to break the heart of the Society’, he wrote to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, on 22 June 1821, though he recognised that ‘every thing, will depend on the character of the new President’.24 At this time, when many others shared Raffles’s concern for the future of the Royal Society, he must have been reassured by the appointment of Davy as Banks’s successor. Securing Davy’s support as a co-adjatator for the establishment of a Zoological Society in London ensured its success, even though his actual participation in the events leading to its foundation seem to have been relatively small. The direction of the affairs of the Society from the start lay in Raffles’s hands and it was he who wrote the various Prospectuses outlining the objects of the Society. The first of these, dated 1 March 1825, was issued later that month. No copy has survived, but the text was reproduced fully in the Zoological Journal in July 1825, four months after it was printed:25 Prospectus of a Society for introducing and domesticating new breeds or varieties of animals, such as Quadrupeds, Birds, or Fishes, likely to be useful in common life; and for forming a general collection in Zoology. Zoology, which exhibits the nature and properties of animated beings, their analogies to each other, the wonderful delicacy of their structure, and the fitness of their organs to the peculiar purposes of their existence, must be regarded not only as an amusing and interesting study, but as a most important branch of Natural Theology, teaching by the intelligent design and wonderful results of organization the wisdom and power of the Creator. In its relation to useful and immediate economical purposes, it is no less remarkable; the different races of animals employed in social life, for labour, cloathing, food, or amusement, are the direct objects of its contemplation: their improvement, the manner in which their number may be increased, the application of their produce, its connexion with various departments of industry and manufactures, are of great importance to man in every stage of his existence, but most so in proportion as he advances in wealth, civilization, and refinement. It has long been a matter of deep regret to the cultivators of Natural History, that we possess no great scientific establishments either for teaching or elucidating Zoology, and no public menageries or collections of living animals, where their nature, properties, and habits, may be studied. In almost every other part of Europe, except

Raffles to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 22 June 1821, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/24.

24

Vol. II, no. 4 (July 1825), pp. 285–88.

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in the Metropolis of the British Empire, something of this kind exists; but though richer than any other country in the extent and variety of our possessions, and having more facilities from our colonies, our fleets, and our varied and constant intercourse with every quarter of the globe, for collecting dead specimens and introducing living animals, we have as yet attempted little and done almost nothing; and the student of Natural History, or the philosopher who wishes to examine animated nature, has no other resource but that of visiting and profiting by the magnificent institutions of a neighbouring and a rival country. It is to be hoped that this opprobrium to our age and nation may disappear, and there can scarcely be a better moment for an undertaking of this kind than the present: a state of profound peace, increasing prosperity, and overflowing wealth, when the public mind is prepared to employ its activity and direct its resources to new objects and enterprizes. It is proposed to establish a Society bearing the same relation to Zoology, that the Horticultural does to Botany, and upon a similar principle and plan. The great objects should be the introduction of new varieties, breeds, and races of animals, for the purpose of domestication, or for stocking our farm-yards, woods, pleasure grounds, and wastes; with the establishment of a general Zoological Collection, consisting of prepared specimens in the different classes and orders, so as to afford a correct view of the animal kingdom at large in as complete a series as may be practicable, and at the same time point out the analogies between the animals already domesticated, and those which are similar in character upon which the first experiments were made. To promote these objects – 1st. A piece of ground should be provided, with abundance of water, and variety of soil and aspect, where covers, thickets, lakes, extensive menageries, and aviaries, may be formed; and where such Quadrupeds, Birds, and Fishes, as are imported by the Society, should be placed, for ascertaining their uses, their power of increase, or improvement. – 2dly. Sufficient accommodation for the Museum should be provided in the Metropolis, with a suitable establishment, so conducted as to admit of its extension on additional means being afforded. It is presumed that a number of persons would feel disposed to encourage an institution of this kind; it is therefore proposed to make the annual subscription from each individual only two pounds, and the admission fee three pounds. The members, of course, will have free and constant access to the collection and grounds, and might, at a reasonable price, be furnished with living specimens, or the ova of Fishes and Birds. When it is considered how few amongst the immense variety of animated beings, have been hitherto applied to the uses of man, and that most of those which have been domesticated or subdued, belong to the early periods of Society, and to the efforts of savage or uncultivated nations,* it is impossible not to hope for many new, brilliant,

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and useful results in the same field, by the application of the wealth, ingenuity, and varied resources of a civilized people. It is well known, that, with respect to most of the animal tribes, domestication is a process which requires time, and that the offspring of wild animals, raised in a domestic state, are more easily tamed than their parents, and in a certain number of generations the effect is made permanent, and connected with a change, not merely in the habits, but even in the nature of the animal. Even migration may be, in certain cases, prevented, and the wildest animals supplied abundantly with food, may lose the instinct of locomotion, and their offspring acquire new habits: and a breed, fairly domesticated, is with difficulty brought back to its original state. Should the Society flourish and succeed, it will not only be useful in common life, but would likewise promote the best and most extensive objects of the scientific history of animated nature, and offer a collection of living animals, such as never yet existed in ancient or modern times. The present menageries of Europe are devoted to objects of curiosity. Rome, at the period of her greatest splendour, brought savage monsters from every quarter of the world then known, to be shewn in her amphitheatres, to destroy or be destroyed, as spectacles of wonder to her citizens. It would well become Britain to offer another, and a very different series of exhibitions to the population of her Metropolis; – animals brought from every part of the globe to be applied to some useful purpose as objects of scientific research, not of vulgar admiration; – and upon such an institution, a Philosophy of Zoology founded, pointing out the Comparative Anatomy, the habits of life, the improvement and the methods of multiplying those races of animals which are most useful to man, and thus fixing a most beautiful and important branch of knowledge on the permanent basis of direct utility. March 1st, 1825 * We owe the Peacock and Common Fowl to the natives of India, most of our races of Cattle, and Swans, Geese, Ducks, to the Aborigines of Europe; the Turkey to the natives of America; the Guinea Fowl to those of Africa. The Pike and Carp, with some other Fishes, were probably introduced by the Monks.

On 18 February 1825 Raffles had written to Edward Adolphus Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who was on holiday in Paris, asking him to make enquiries about the organisation of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle as a guide for the new Society. The Duke replied on 2 March, having directed his enquiries to the anatomist,

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Georges Léopold C.F.D. Cuvier (1769–1832), and not Frederic Cuvier (1773–1838), Keeper of the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes:26 In consequence of the latter part of your letter …, I yesterday called on M. Cuvier to obtain some of the information you wanted, for (I must say) the very laudable purpose of establishing in England a Museum of Natural History that may be worthy of the Nation. M. Cuvier told me that I should find every thing I could want upon the subject, in a book which I mean immediately to send you. It is called “Histoire et Description du Múseum Royal d’Histoire Naturelle”, and was published here about two years ago.27 He said it showed all the arrangements, and the œconomy of the Establishment, which is (as you observe) conducted at a very moderate expense. M. Cuvier said that, of all the Englishmen he knew, Mr. Pentland was the most capable of arranging and managing a Museum of Natural History.28 Mr. Pentland is now travelling in Italy with Mr. Rickets,29 a relation of Lord Liverpool’s. In the meetings of the Institute, at which I have been present, almost all the Papers read have been on subjects of Natural History. I mention this to show how much attention it attracts at present, and what an important place it occupies. In England however it must necessarily be circumscribed much more than it is here, partly because we have subdivided it by our surgical and agricultural and horticultural and botanical establishments …

The Duke received in Paris a copy of the first Prospectus of the Zoological Society dated 1 March 1825,30 which was distributed during March and April 1825. In the absence from London of Sir Humphry Davy, Raffles undertook the task of enlisting subscribers to the Society, including his friend, the Tory politician, Sir Robert Harry Inglis (1786–1855):31 Duke of Somerset to Raffles, 2 March 1825, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/28.

26

J. P. F. Deleuze, Histoire et Description du Muséum Royale d’Histoire Naturelle, ouvrage rédigé les Ordres de L’administration du Museum (Paris, 1823), 2 vols. An English edition was published in the same year: History and Description of the Royal Museum of Natural History, published by Order of the Administration of that Establishment. Translated from the French of M. Deleuze (Paris, 1823).

27

Joseph Barclay Pentland (1797–1873), the British traveller who surveyed in 1826–27 (with Sir Woodbine Parish (1796–1882), the British chargé d’affaires at Buenos Aires) a part of the Bolivian Andes. Pentland had studied at the University of Paris where he presumably came into contact with Cuvier.

28

Charles Milner Ricketts, formerly Chief Secretary of the Bengal Government and a Member of the Supreme Council (Chapter Eight, note 7), who supported Raffles’s plans for a British settlement at Singapore in 1819 (John Bastin, The Founding of Singapore 1819 (Singapore, 2012), p. 158, n.71).

29

Duke of Somerset to Raffles, 31 March 1825, BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/28.

30

31

Raffles to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 28 April 1825, Lady Raffles, Memoir, p. 590. Sir Robert Harry Inglis was the son of Sir Hugh Inglis to whom Raffles owed his appointment as Assistant Secretary of Prince of Wales Island in 1805. Raffles stayed with Sir Hugh Inglis at Milton Bryant, Bedfordshire, on his return to England

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As Sir Humphrey [sic] has gone out of town, leaving with me the list of names in support of the plan for extending our zoological researches, &c., to add the names of as many of my friends as might be desirous of promoting it, I am induced to ask if I may have the honour of putting down your name. Mr. Peel’s name is at the head of the list,32 and those of Lord Spencer,33 Lord Lansdowne,34 Lord Stanley,35 Mr. Heber,36 and many others of weight follow. When the list is completed to a hundred, which I conclude it will be in a day or two, it is proposed to appoint a committee, when the objects of the society will be more clearly defined. In the first instance, we look mainly to the country gentlemen for support, in point of numbers; but the character of the institution must of course depend on the in 1816, and also before his departure for west Sumatra in 1817 (Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 204, n.94). He also formed a close bond of friendship with his son, with whom he corresponded from Singapore and Bengkulu (Lady Raffles, Memoir, pp. 384–401, 411–12, 590–2). Lady Raffles retained the friendship of Sir Robert Harry Inglis after the death of her husband, and he assisted her in compiling her Memoir. He wrote on 23 February 1830, on receiving a copy of the book: ‘Accept my kindest thanks for your magnificent Volume, which I shall always regard with double pleasure as a Memorial of the friendship between us, as well as that which I had the priviledge to enjoy with Him, to whom in that volume you have done equal honor & justice’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/10). As a Member of Parliament he represented Dundalk, Rippon and, from 1829 to 1854, Oxford, strongly opposing Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform. He was described as ‘an old fashioned tory, a strong churchman, with many prejudices and no great ability’, but the attorney Henry Crabb Robinson, who met him in March 1835, recorded in his Diary that there was ‘something highly respectable in his appearance; benevolence and simplicity are strongly expressed in his countenance’ (Vol. III, pp. 60–1). Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), Tory Member of Parliament, was Home Secretary in Lord Liverpool’s Government in 1822 and also in the ministry of the Duke of Wellington in 1828, later becoming Prime Minister. His repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 led to a split in his party and he was forced to resign. He was thrown from his horse on 29 June 1850 and died from his injuries three days later.

32

John Charles Spencer, Viscount Althorp and 3rd Earl Spencer (1782–1845), first supported Pitt but later became leader of the Whig opposition, becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of he House of Commons under Lord Grey in 1830–31.

33

Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne (1780–1863), a moderate Whig politician, who had studied under Dugald Stewart at Edinburgh University with such contemporaries as Broughan, Cockburn, Jeffrey, Horner and Sydney Smith. He was introduced to Raffles in 1817 by Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, and he invited him to visit Bowood House, his seat in Wiltshire, both before and after his return from west Sumatra in 1824. Lansdowne had a high opinion of Raffles, writing to Lady Raffles in 1830 in acknowledgement of receiving a copy of her Memoir: ‘There have existed few men the record of whose lives & services could prove at once so interesting to their friends & so instructive to the publick, at a moment when they are called upon to consider the greatest questions of Eastern Government & policy, when principles, the first elements as well as the practical application of which may be collected from Sir Thomas’s views & actions’ (BL:MSS.Eur.D.742/10). Lansdowne was a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society and strongly supported Raffles’s endeavours in forming the Zoological Society of London, becoming his successor as President from 1827 to 1831 (Bastin, Founding of Singapore, p. 183, n.267, and Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 215–16, n. 212).

34

Edward Smith Stanley (1775–1851), 13th Earl of Derby, and Whig Member of Parliament for Preston (1796–1812) and Lancashire (1812–32). He was President of the Linnean Society of London in 1828–33 and President of the Zoological Society. He established his own private menagerie at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool, where the artist Edward Lear (1812–88), was engaged to illustrate John Edward Gray’s Gleanings from the Menagerie and Aviary at Knowsley Hall (Knowsley, 1846).

35

Richard Heber (1773–1833), book-collector and Member of Parliament from 1821 to 1826. He was a friend of John Leyden (Chapter Two, note 24), a fact which one supposes would have been known to Raffles. C.E. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954), p. 716 n.2 confuses him with his half-brother, Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta (1783–1826).

36

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proportion of men of science and sound principles which it contains. I look more to the scientific part of it, and propose, if it is established on a respectable footing, to transfer to it the collections in natural history which I have brought home with me.

Less interest was shown in the proposed Society than Raffles expected, though members of the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society of London, which had been formed in November 1822 to promote the study of zoology and all branches of comparative anatomy,37 gave considerable support, including the Chairman, Joseph Sabine (1770–1837),38 Secretary, Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1785–1840),39 and committee member, Dr. Thomas Horsfield, all of whom later served as Treasurer, Secretary and Assistant-Secretary of the new Society. In May 1825 a disagreement arose between Raffles and Sir Humphry Davy ‘as to the share which science is to have in the project’, Davy believing that the Society’s main function should be the domestication and breeding of animals as a measure of utility in supplying the country’s farms.40 It was decided, in the absence of agreement on these points, that it would be necessary to re-issue the original Prospectus of March 1825, together with a shorter one giving a simple statement of the Society’s aims with a list of names of subscribers. This second Prospectus was dated 20 May 1825 and was issued shortly afterwards with the names of 66 subscribers:41 May 20, 1825 It is proposed to establish a Society having the same relations to Zoology that Horticulture bears to Botany, and upon a similar plan and similar principles. The MSS. Minutes of the Zoological Club are preserved in the Archives of the Linnean Society of London. Further details about the early activities of the Zoological Club may be found in the Zoological Journal, vol. 1 (1825), pp. 132–3, 279–80, 418–21, 585–7; vol. 2 (1826), pp. 133–7, 279–83, 548–54; vol. 3 (1828), pp. 298–303, 601–7; vol. 4 (1829), pp. 131–4, 503–8. See also H. Scherren, The Zoological Society of London (London, 1901), pp. 1–10. For a corrected account of the chronology of the foundation of the Zoological Society of London, see John Bastin, ‘The first prospectus of the Zoological Society of London: new light on the Society’s origins’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 5, pt. 5 (1970), pp. 369–88; and ‘A further note on the origins of the Zoological Society of London’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 6, pt. 4 (1973), pp. 236–41.

37

Joseph Sabine was Inspector-General of Assessed Taxes (1808–35) and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was an original member of the Linnean Society of London and was also Honorary Secretary of the Horticultural Society (1810–30), contributing papers on horticultural subjects to the Transactions of the Society.

38

Nicholas Aylward Vigors, Fellow of the Royal Society (1826), was the first Secretary of the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society of London and the first Secretary of the Zoological Society of London. He inherited the family estates in County Carlow in Ireland in 1828 and became a Member of Parliament for Carlow four years later.

39

The views of Sir Humphry Davy on the domestication and breeding of animals seem to have become less important as the Zoological Society of London developed.

40

D.C. Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897), p. 348 wrongly confuses this Prospectus of 20 May 1825 with the original Prospectus of the Zoological Society of London.

41

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The objects of this Society are, 1st. – To introduce, by means of a public Establishment, new varieties, breeds, or races of living Animals, such as Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, &c. which may be judged capable of application to purposes of utility, either in our Farm Yards, Woods, Wastes, Ponds, or Rivers. 2d. – To assist this Establishment and the general study of Zoology by a Museum of prepared specimens. It is proposed to make the Annual Subscription from each Individual Two Pounds, and the Admission Fee Three Pounds. Persons desirous of belonging to this Society,will signify their wishes, by letter, to Mr. T. Griffith, 21, Albermarle-street.

Raffles sent a copy of this short Prospectus to the Reverend Thomas Raffles on 6 June 1825:42 I sent you by the Coach of Saturday a few of the Copies of the Prospectus of the Zoological Society – It is a subject on which much has been said and more might be written; but it has been thought best in the present state of the Speculation to confine the Notice to a few words – The names are coming in fast and I shall be happy to receive a List of any of your friends at Liverpool who may be desirious of becoming Subscribers – The amount of the Sum will not ruin them, neither will they find themselves in bad Company – and no pecuniary call will be made until the plan is advanced & we can shew them something for their money – It is proposed to have a general meeting of the Subscribers who may be in Town, in the course of the present month, in order to appoint a Committee & proceed to business – We expect to have at least 500 members to begin with, and that Government will provide us with Ground, &ca [.]

The meeting of the original proposers of the Zoological Society was held on 22 June 1825 in the rooms of the Horticultural Society in Regent Street, London,43 with the Earl of Darnley44 in the chair. It was resolved to appoint Raffles as Chairman, with a Committee which included the Duke of Somerset, Viscount

Raffles to the Reverend Thomas Raffles, 6 June 1825, Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, pp. 174–7.

42

P. Chalmers Mitchell, Centenary History of the Zoological Society of London (London, 1929), p. 14; Scherren, Zoological Society, p. 17.

43

Edward, 5th Earl Darnley (1795–1835), Member of Parliament for Canterbury, 1818–30.

44

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Gage,45 Lord Stanley,46 the Bishop of Carlyle,47 Sir Humphry Davy, Joseph Sabine, William Sharpe MacLeay,48 N.A. Vigors, and Dr. Thomas Horsfield. It was also resolved to appoint Messrs. Drummonds as Bankers to the Society and to meet again when the number of subscribers reached two hundred. Raffles was in the chair at the following meeting of the Committee on 26 February 1826 to consider the plan of the proposed Society. Also present were the Duke of Somerset, Earl Darnley, Sir Humphry Davy, Sir Everard Home,49 Davies Gilbert,50 Sabine, Vigors and Horsfield, with Lord Auckland,51 Sir Robert Harry Inglis, and Dr. Harewood as visitors. It was resolved that the new body would be designated the Zoological Society of London and that application would be made to the Government to secure an allotment of land in Regent’s Park suitable for use by the new institution. A deputation consisting of Raffles, Davy, the Earl of Darnley, and Lord Auckland was appointed to wait on the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool (1770–1828), to ascertain the attitude of the Government towards the new Society, and Davy was instructed to approach Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), the Home Secretary, for his advice, because he had earlier responded favourably to the idea of establishing the Society.52 A new Prospectus for the Society was to be drawn up by a sub-committee consisting of Raffles, Sabine and Vigors under instruction that, ‘as the immediate objects of the Society must necessarily be limited by their means, it is not deemed advisable in the first instance that they should extend beyond the introduction and domestication of new Breeds of Animals, with a Museum and Library to be attached, as its resources may admit.’ The same sub-committee was appointed to frame a report for the next general meeting ‘containing a Review of the present state and progress of Natural History, especially Zoology, with an account of the Institutions by which it is encouraged on the Continent, and shewing the necessity of some similar establishment in this country, so as to place the interests of the science on a footing Henry Hall, 4th Viscount Gage (1791–1855).

45

Note 35.

46

Samuel Goodenough (1743–1827), Bishop of Carlisle (1808–27) and Vice-President of the Linnean Society of London.

47

Chapter Eight, note 44.

48

Chapter Seven, note 23, and Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles, p. 241, n.50.

49

Davies Gilbert (1767–1839), President of the Royal Society (1827–30) and Member of Parliament for Helston (1804) and Bodmin (1806–32).

50

George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland (1784–1849).

51

Mitchell, Centenary History of the Zoological Society, pp. 14–15.

52

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at least equal to that on which they stand elsewhere’. Such a report, it was considered, would show the more extensive objects of the Society and so attract public attention and promote ‘a taste for Natural History in general and Zoology in particular’.53 On 4 March 1826 a meeting of the Committee of proposers of the Society was attended only by Sir Humphry Davy, the Reverend Dr. Goodenough, Dr. Horsfield and Nicholas Vigors, when a resolution was passed relating to the publication and distribution of a new Prospectus detailing the aims of the Society. A further resolution was agreed appointing Raffles and Davy to report on the place at Carshalton which had been proposed previously for the preservation of fish and water fowl.54 At a meeting of the Committee held on 28 April 1826 it was reported that the Carshalton site was deemed suitable for the purposes intended and that negotiations had begun with the proprietor for its acquisition. Raffles reported that he and the other members of the sub-committee appointed to wait on the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, and (Sir) Robert Peel, had found the latter ‘extremely favourable to the views of the Society’,55 and that while ‘he had not yet received the conclusive reply of the Government, … he felt authorised to state that Government had consented to the wishes of the Society respecting the grant of ground in the Regent’s Park’. He also stated that he had issued circulars among the friends of the proposed Society for a meeting on the following day, ‘in order that the Society may be organized without further delay’.56 This general meeting on 29 April 1826 was again held at the premises of the Horticultural Society in Regent Street, London, and was attended by 48 ‘Friends’ of the proposed Zoological Society, including the Marquess of Lansdowne, the Earls of Darnley and Egremont, Lords Auckland, Clinton and Stanley, the Lord Mayor, Sir Humphry Davy, Sir Everard Home, Sir Thomas Ackland, Dr. Horsfield, and Messrs. Bennett,57 Vigors and Yarrell. On a motion by Sir Humphry Davy, seconded by the Earl of Darnley, Raffles took the Chair, and Vigors was requested to act as Secretary of the meeting. A letter from the Commissioners of Woods and Forests agreeing to a plot of land in Regent’s Park being granted to the Society was then Ibid., p. 15.

53

Ibid., p. 16.

54

Ibid., p. 17.

55

Ibid.

56

Edward Turner Bennett (1797–1836), later Keeper of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, who contributed substantially to Horsfield’s Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores (London, 1838–52) (Chapter Eight).

57

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read, and a series of resolutions passed constituting the Zoological Society ‘for the advancement of Zoological knowledge’, and the formation of ‘a Collection of living Animals; a Museum of preserved Animals; and a Library connected with the subject’.58 On the nomination of the Marquess of Lansdowne, seconded by the Earl of Darnley, Raffles was appointed President of the Zoological Society, with a Council consisting of the above names and the Duke of Somerset, Viscount Gage, and others. Joseph Sabine was appointed Treasurer, Nicholas Aylward Vigors, Secretary, and Dr. Thomas Horsfield as Assistant Secretary. Raffles then read an opening Address to the Society in which he ‘took a review of the past and present state of Zoology in … [Britain], and entered into a detail of the objects and plans of the Society’.59 Unfortunately, no copy of this Address has survived. The Council of the Zoological Society held its first formal meeting on 5 May under the chairmanship of Raffles, who circulated the following circular:60 A Society has been formed for the advancement of Zoology, the immediate object of which will be the introduction and exhibition of such subjects of the animal kingdom as may be of utility, and a source of interest and gratification. With this view a collection of living animals in Aviaries, Gardens, Ponds, Enclosures and Buildings will be formed, to which will be attached a Museum and a Library connected with the subject. An advantageous site had been obtained from His Majesty’s Government for this purpose, in the Regent’s Park, to which such subordinate establishments will be annexed as circumstances may require. To these establishments Members will have access as a matter of right, and the public in general on such conditions as may be hereafter arranged. Members will also have a preference in obtaining specimens of such subjects as may be imported. The extent to which these objects can be attained must depend on the amount of subscriptions; and the most liberal support is therefore solicited. The Society consists of such Members as have already subscribed their names, or who shall do so with the approbation of Council, on or before the 1st of January next, and subsequently of such other Members as shall be admitted by ballot. The present terms of admission are either the subscription of five pounds, with the annual payment of two pounds on every first of January; or a donation of twenty Mitchell, Centenary History of the Zoological Society, pp. 23–4.

58

Ibid., pp. 24–7.

59

Ibid., pp. 27–8.

60

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five pounds or upwards, for it is hoped that the support of those able to give the Society efficient assistance will not be limited to this amount.

It was reported that more than 300 members had joined the Society and that temporary accommodation had been taken at No. 33 Bruton Street for offices and a Museum. In June, plans of the architect Decimus Burton (1800–81) were approved for the Gardens and £5,000 allocated for the purpose, together with a further £1,000 for the Museum. The Proprietor of the long-established Zoo at the Tower of London, Edward Cross, offered his animals for purchase but this offer was declined by the Society.61 The sudden death of Raffles on 6 July at his country house ‘High Wood’ near Hendon,62 threw the plans of the Society into turmoil, and a Council meeting was called two days later when the Duke of Somerset, who presided, informed members that they ‘had been summoned in consequence of the sudden and lamented death of their President’. The Duke suggested that ‘under the present depressing circumstances, and at this unfavourable season of the year, it would be inexpedient to take any steps to fill up the vacancy that has occurred with so great a loss to the Society, and proposed that the Vice Presidents who may be in town during the summer months be requested to superintend the execution of the plans already commenced under the direction of their late President’.63 Sir Humphry Davy, as President of the Royal Society, and Raffles’s co-adjatator in the establishment of the Zoological Society, presented a short account of his friend, emphasising the point that despite the loss of his first zoological collection in the fire on the Fame, Raffles had immediately commenced the formation of another, which he placed at the disposal of the Zoological Society.64 Before his death, Raffles had discussions about the terms of the gift of his collection of Sumatran animals to the Museum at No. 33 Bruton Street, and Lady Raffles’s interests in the matter were subsequently placed in the hands of the Scherren, Zoological Society of London, p. 23.

61

J.C.M. Khoo, C.G. Kwa, L.Y. Khoo, ‘The Death of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826)’, Singapore Medical Journal, vol. 39, pt. 12 (1998), pp. 564–5. From Sir Everard Home’s post-mortem report (BL:MSS. Eur.D.742/9; The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XCVI, pt. 2 (1826), p. 275), the Singapore Medical Journal concludes that Raffles’s condition can be diagnosed as arterio-venous malformation: ‘The hypervascularity of the dura was noted [by Home] as “exceeding anything I have ever seen”. Also, an organised haematoma of about 4 oz was found in the right lateral ventricle indicating the arterio-venous malformation had bled internally into the ventricle’.

62

Scherren, Zoological Society of London, pp. 23–4.

63

Ibid., p. 24.

64

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Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, following his appointment to the Council of the Society in November 1826. The collection was officially presented to the Society in April 1827 on conditions stated in the minutes of the meeting of the Council held on the 24th of that month, the most important being that ‘every subject shall be distinguished by a particular mark’ upon being deposited in the Society’s Museum, and that the property should remain vested in Raffles’s representatives to be resumed in the event of any breach of conditions on the part of the Society.65 As a resident of Liverpool, Dr. Raffles found it increasingly difficult to attend meetings of the Council of the Society, so Lady Raffles arranged in April 1829 to have her oldest surviving brother, William Hollamby Hull (1790–1860), substituted in his place, and at the same time she urged the Society to have a catalogue made of the collection. According to Dr. Horsfield, Nicholas Vigors completed ‘a nomenclatural abstract’ of the collection by the end of the year, ‘so far as regards the vertebrated animals, with more concise notices of the insects’, in the expectation of giving detailed descriptions in ‘a more extensive work’, Museum Rafflesianum, assisted by William Kirby, Thomas Bell (1792–1880), Edward Turner Bennett (1797–1836) and Horsfield himself.66 In the meantime, a brief composite catalogue of the zoological specimens in Raffles’s collection in the Museum of the Zoological Society, and in Horsfield’s collection in the Museum at the East India House, was drawn up, and this was published as an appendix to Lady Raffles’s Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830).67 The projected catalogue Museum Rafflesianum was never completed, and we are left with the printed lists appended to Lady Raffles’s Memoir and two short catalogues published by the Zoological Society in 1829 and 1838.68 Unsatisfactory as they are, they represent, with the printed Prospectuses, the surviving record of Raffles’s extraordinary endeavours in successfully establishing a Zoological menagerie and museum in the heart of London.69

MS. Zoological Society Minutes of Council, vol. I, fol. 13.

65

Bastin, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 6, pt. 4 (1973), p. 240–1, n.31.

66

Pages 633–97.

67

[N.A. Vigors], Catalogue of the Animals preserved in The Museum of The Zoological Society, September 1829 (London, 1829); G.R. Waterhouse, Catalogue of the Mammalia preserved in The Museum of The Zoological Society of London (London, 1838).

68

For the history of the Zoological Society of London following Raffles’s death, see Scherren, Zoological Society of London; Mitchell, Centenary History of the Zoological Society; Wilfrid Blunt, The Ark in the Park The Zoo in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1976).

69

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Bibliography CHAPTER ONE THE EAST INDIA HOUSE AND WILLIAM BROWN RAMSAY MANUSCRIPT SOURCES BRITISH LIBRARY Letters of Raffles to William Brown Ramsay: MSS.Eur.D.742/20 Letters of Lady Raffles to Mary Anne Flint: MSS.Eur.D.742/15 DR. WILLIAMS’S LIBRARY, LONDON Correspondence of Elton Hamond and Thomas Stamford Raffles PRIVATE COLLECTION MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers, January 1815 PRINTED SOURCES Anson, Sir Archibald, About Others and Myself 1745 to 1920 (London, 1920) Bastin, John, OIivia Mariamne Raffles (Singapore, 2002) Bastin, John, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009) Bastin, John and Weizenegger, Julie, The Family of Sir Stamford Raffles (Singapore, 2016) Boulger, D.C., The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897) Cunyngham-Brown, Sjovald, The Traders: A Story of Britain’s South-East Asian Commercial Adventure (London, 1971) Darton, F.J. Harvey, The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851) from the Diaries of Captain and Mrs. Sherwood (London, 1910) Davey, James, In Nelson’s Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars (New Haven, London, 2015) Hodson, V.C.P., List of the Officers of the Bengal Army 1758–1834 (London, 1927–47), Parts IV. 405

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Kelly, Sophia, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, (Chiefly Autobiographical) with Extracts from Mr. Sherwood’s Journal during His Imprisonment in France & Residence in India. Edited by Her Daughter (London, 1854) Lamb, Charles, The Letters of Charles Lamb to which are added those of his sister Mary Lamb (ed.) E.V. Lucas (London, 1935), 3 vols. Langdon, Marcus, Penang: Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830 (Penang, 2013–15), 2 vols. Lloyd, Peter, The French are Coming!-1805-The Invasion Scare of 1803–5 (Tunbridge Wells, 1991) Lucas, E.V., The Life of Charles Lamb (London, 1921), 2 vols. Parkinson, C.N., War in the Eastern Seas 1793–1815 (London, 1954) Prance, C.A., Companion to Charles Lamb (London, 1983) De Quincey, Thomas, ‘Recollections of Charles Lamb’, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey (ed.) David Mason (London, 1896–7), 3 vols. Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830)

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Bibliography   407

CHAPTER TWO THE SCOTTISH POET AND ORIENTALIST JOHN LEYDEN MANUSCRIPT SOURCES NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND The principal collections of manuscript sources relating to Dr. John Casper Leyden are preserved in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Reference has been made to MS.331, MS.939, MS.971, MS.1809, MSS.3874–82, MSS.3380–4, MS.11320, MS.11691 (Captain Taylor’s Journal), MS.12120, and MS.IE623 BRITISH LIBRARY Letters of William Marsden to Raffles: MSS.Eur.D.742/2 Letters of Raffles to William Brown Ramsay: MSS.Eur.D.742/20 Other sources: MSS.Eur.D.29, MSS.Eur.E.104, MSS.Eur.F.148/3, MSS.Eur.F.148/4, MSS.Eur.C.34–35 Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 47 DR. WILLIAMS’S LIBRARY, LONDON Correspondence of Elton Hamond and Thomas Stamford Raffles BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD Letter of Raffles to Alexander Hare, St. Helena, 20 May 1816: MS.Curzon b.36 PRINTED SOURCES Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, ‘The Hikayat Abdullah An annotated translation’, by A.H. Hill, JMBRAS, vol. XXVIII, pt. 3 (1955), pp. 1–345 (ix) Anderson, Robert (ed.), A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain (London, 1792–5) Anon., ‘Memorials of Dr John Leyden’, ‘Anecdotes of Dr Leyden, &c.’, The New Scots Magazine (Edinburgh, 1828–29), vol. I (January 1829), pp. 73–8, 111–20; vol. II (August 1829), pp. 98–104 Anon., Scenes of Infancy, and Other Poems, by the Late Dr. John Leyden. With a Memoir of the Author (Jedburgh, 1844) Anon., ‘Dr John Leyden’, Chambers’s Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts (Edinburgh, c.1847), pp. 6–13

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Morton, Reverend James, The Poetical Remains of the Late Dr. John Leyden, with Memoirs of His Life (London, 1819) Morton, Reverend James, The Monastic Annals of Teviotdale or, The History of the Abbeys of Jedburgh, Kelso, Melrose and Dryburgh (Edinburgh, 1832) Murray, Alexander, History of the European Languages; or, Researches into the Affinities of the Teutonic, Greek, Celtic, Sclavonic, and Indian Nations (Edinburgh, 1823), 2 vols. O’Leary, Patrick, Sir James Mackintosh The Whig Cicero (Aberdeen, 1989) Parkinson, C. Northcote, War in the Eastern Seas 1793–1815 (London, 1954) Percy, Thomas, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (London, 1765) Phillimore, R.H., Historical Records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 1945–58), 5 vols. Raffles, T.S., ‘A Discourse Delivered at a Meeting of the Society of Arts and Sciences in Batavia, on the Twenty-fourth day of April 1813, being the Anniversary of the Institution’, VBG, vol. VII (1814), pp. 1–34 Raffles, T.S., The History of Java (London, 1817), 2 vols. Raffles, T.S., ‘On the Maláyu Nation, with a translation of its Maritime Institutions’, Asiatic Researches; or, Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal, vol. XII (London, 1818), pp. 102–59 Raffles, T.S., ‘The Maritime Code of the Malays’, JSBRAS, nos. 3–4 (1879–80), pp. 62–84, 1–20 Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c… (London, 1830) Ramsden, Lady Guendolen, Correspondence of Two Brothers: Edward Adolphus, Eleventh Duke of Somerset, and His Brother, Lord Webb Seymour, 1800 to 1819 and After (London, 1906) Reith, John, Life of Dr John Leyden Poet and Linguist (Galashiels, c.1910) Reith, John, The Life and Writings of Rev. Alex Murray (Dumfries, 1903) Ricklefs, M.C. and Voorhoeve, P., Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Indonesian Languages in British Public Collections (Oxford, 1977) Ridley, H.N., ‘The Botanists of Penang’, JSBRAS, no. 25 (1894), pp. 163–7 Rogers, Reverend Charles, The Scottish Minstrel The Songs and Song Writers of Scotland Subsequent to Burns with Memoirs of the Poets (London, Edinburgh, 1885) Rosselli, John, Lord William Bentinck The Making of a Liberal Imperialist 1774–1839 (London, 1974) Scott, Sir Walter, ‘Biographical Memoir of John Leyden, M.D.’, The Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1811 (Edinburgh, 1813), vol. IV, no. 2, pp. xli–lxviii Scott, Sir Walter, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: consisting of Historical and Romantic Ballads, collected in the Southern Counties of Scotland; with a few of Modern Date, founded upon Local Tradition (Kelso, Edinburgh, 1802–3), 3 vols. Scott, Sir Walter, Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott (ed.) David Douglas (Edinburgh, 1894), 2 vols.

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Scott, Sir Walter, The Letters of Sir Walter Scott (ed.) H.J.C. Grierson (London, 1932), 12 vols. Scott, Paul Henderson, ‘John Leyden: Polymath and Border Reiver’, Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 324, nos. 1956–7 (October–November 1978), pp. 285–90, 421–6 Scott, Paul Henderson, ‘John Leyden: Polymath and Border Reiver’, Defoe in Edinburgh and Other Papers (East Linton, 1995) Scott, R.E., ‘The Leyden Monument Some Notes on its Building and Builder’, Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society (1982), pp. 15–17 Shaw, John, A Rough Sketch of Part of An Intended Essay towards ascertaining, deducing, elucidating, and Correctly Establishing the Rudiments of the Juh,wee, or Jahwee Language, vulgarly called The Malay Language;… (Penang, 1807) Skinner, Cyril, ‘The Author of the “Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala”’, BKI, vol. 132, afl. 2–3 (1976), pp. 195–206 Skinner, Cyril (ed. and transl.), Ahmad Rijaluddin’s Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala, Bibliotheca Indonesica, no. 22 (1982) Sinton, James, ‘Leydeniana’, Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society (1911), pp. 47–56 Stockdale, J.J., Sketches, Civil and Military, of the Island of Java and its Immediate Dependencies …, (London, 1811), reprinted with an introduction by John Bastin (Singapore, 1995) Smiles, S., Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768–1843 (London, 1891), 2 vols. Taylor, Stephen, Storm and Conquest The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1809 (London, 2007) Thorn, William, Memoir of the Conquest of Java; with the Subsequent Operations of the British Forces, in The Oriental Archipelago (London, 1815) Topham, Edward, Letters from Edinburgh Written in the Years 1774 and 1775 (London, 1776, reprinted Edinburgh, 2003) Travers, Thomas Otho, The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960) Tulloch, Revd. W.W. (ed.), [John Leyden], Scenes of Infancy, Descriptive of Teviotdale … With a Biographical Sketch of the Author by the Rev. W.W. Tulloch (Kelso, 1875) Veur, Paul W. van der and Lian The, ‘The Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap: An Annotated Content Analysis’, Papers in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series (Athens, Ohio), no. 26 (1973), pp. vii, 143 Wathen, James, Journal of a Voyage, in 1811 and 1812, to Madras and China; Returning by the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena (London, 1814) Webster, Anthony, The Richest East India Merchant The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta 1767–1836 (Woodbridge, 2007) Welsh, Revd. David., Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Brown, M.D. (Edinburgh, 1825)

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CHAPTER THREE THE AMERICAN NATURALIST THOMAS HORSFIELD IN JAVA MANUSCRIPT SOURCES The main body of manuscript materials relating to Dr. Thomas Horsfield is preserved in the British Library in the Mackenzie Collection (Private), the Raffles Collection, the Raffles-Minto Collection, and the Java and Sumatra Factory Records. In the same depository are to be found his topographical and natural history drawings as well as his maps of Java and Bangka. Reference to these various materials is made in the notes. Horsfield’s extant letters are in the manuscript collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague; the ’s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden; the Linnean Society of London; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, and the Netherlands State Archives, The Hague. Seventeen letters of Raffles to Horsfield dated between 1812 and 1823 are in the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden (Westerse Handschriften H 562), and 45 letters addressed to Horsfield by a variety of persons between 1817 and 1859 are preserved in the Zoological Library of the Natural History Museum, London (89 QH). Horsfield’s papers on the flora of Java and related documents are preserved in the Botanical Library of the National History Museum, London, and there are also zoological materials in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. PRINTED SOURCES Arberry, A.J., The India Office Library. A Historical Sketch (London, 1967) Archer, Mildred, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962) Archer, Mildred, British Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1969), 2 vols. Archer, Mildred and Bastin, John, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office London (Kuala Lumpur, 1978) Arnold, J., ‘A Volcano in Java’, The New Monthly Magazine, vol. VII, no. 39 (1 April 1817), p. 241 Bastin, John, ‘Palembang in 1811 and 1812’, BKI, vol. CIX (1953), pp. 300–20; vol. CX (1954), pp. 64–88 Bastin, John, ‘Raffles’ Ideas on the Land Rent System in Java and the Mackenzie Land Tenure Commission’, VKI, vol. XIV (1954), pp. 1–193

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CHAPTER FIVE THE BRITISH NAVAL SURGEON JOSEPH ARNOLD IN JAVA MANUSCRIPT SOURCES MITCHELL LIBRARY, SYDNEY MS. Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold (27 August 1810–17 December 1815): C720, fols. 549: Java section: fols. 449–546. The S. W. Rix transcript of the Journal (A1845–A1846), 2 vols., fols. xxx, 305, 308–677, with the Java section: fols. 381–448. For an account of the Journal and the Rix transcription, see John Bastin, ‘The Java Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold 3 September – 17 December 1815’, JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), pp. 1–92 BRITISH LIBRARY Letters to Lady Raffles from persons who have received copies of her Memoir: MSS. Eur.D.742/10 PRIVATE COLLECTION MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers PRINTED SOURCES Archer, Mildred, and Bastin, John, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library London (Kuala Lumpur, 1978) Arnold, Joseph, Dissertatio Medica Inauguralis, De Hydrothorace … Pro Gradu Doctorali … Josephus Arnold (Edinburgh, 1807) Bastin, John, ‘The Raffles Gamelan’, BKI, vol. 127 (1971), pp. 274–8 Bastin, John [= John Sturgus], ‘The Raffles Gamelan’, Straits Times Annual for 1972, pp. 69–72 Bastin, John, ‘The Java Journal of Dr. Joseph Arnold 3 September – 17 December 1815’, JMBRAS, vol. XLVI, pt. 1 (1973), pp. 1–92 Bastin, John, ‘Dr Joseph Arnold and the Discovery of the Rafflesia Arnoldi in West Sumatra in 1818’, J. Soc. Bibl. Nat. Hist., vol. 6, no. 5 (1973), pp. 305-72 Bateson, C., The Convict Ships 1787–1868 (Glasgow, 1969) Boulger, D.C., The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897) Carey, P.B.R., ‘The Sepoy Conspiracy of 1815 in Java’, BKI, vol. 133 (1977), pp. 294–322

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428  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Carey, P.B.R. (ed.), The British in Java 1811–1816 A Javanese Account, Oriental Documents X (British Academy, Oxford University Press, 1992) Carey, P.B.R., The Power of the Prophecy Prince Dipanagara and the end of an old order in Java, VKI, 249 (2007) Crawford, D.G., A History of the Indian Medical Service 1600–1913 (London, 1914), 2 vols. Crawfurd, John, History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), 3 vols. [Crowfoot, William], ‘Dr. Joseph Arnold’, Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XC, no. 1 (1820), pp. 182–4 Daendels, H.W., Staat der Nederlandsche Oostindische Bezittingen, onder het Bestuur van de Gouverneur-Generaal Herman Willem Daendels … in de jaren 1808–1811 (The Hague, 1814), 1 vol + 3 Bijl. Dawson, W.R., ‘Dawson Turner, F.R.S. (1775–1858)’, J. Soc. Bibl. Nat. Hist., vol. 3, pt. 6 (1958), pp. 303–10 Dawson, W.R., ‘A Bibliography of the Printed Works of Dawson Turner’, Transactions Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vol. III, pt.3 (1961), pp. 232–56 Deventer, M.L. van, Het Nederlandsch Gezag over Java en Onderhoorigheden sedert 1811 (The Hague, 1891), vol. 1 Ellis, M.H., Lachlan Macquaries His Life, Adventures, and Times (Sydney, 1952) Evatt, H.V., Rum Rebellion: A Study of the Overthrow of Governor Bligh by John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps (Sydney, 1955) Fagg, W. (ed.), The Raffles Gamelan A Historical Note (The Brtitish Museum, 1970) Gage, A.T., A History of the Linnean Society of London (London, 1938) Gage, A.T., Stearn, W.T., A Bicentenary History of The Linnean Society of London (London, 1988) Haan, F. de, Priangan: De Preanger-Regentschappen onder het Nederlandsch Bestuur tot 1811 (Batavia, 1910–12), 4 vols. Haan, F. de, Oud Batavia (Batavia, 1922), 2 vols. + Atlas Haan, F. de, ‘Personalia der Periode van het Engelsch Bestuur over Java 1811–1816’, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 477–681 Hanson, J., Route of Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Nightingall, K.C.B. Overland from India (London, 1820) Raffles, T.S., ‘A Discourse Delivered on the 11th September 1815 to the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences at Batavia’, VBG, vol. VIII (1816), pp. 1–62 Raffles, T.S., The History of Java (London, 1817), 2 vols. Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830) Rix, S.W., ‘Memoir of Joseph Arnold, M.D., Surgeon R.N., and Naturalist in the Suite of Sir Stamford Raffles’, Beccles and Bungay Weekly News, 17 December 1861

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Temminck, C.J. (ed.), Verhandelingen over de Natuurlijke Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Overzeesche Bezittingen (Leiden, 1939–45), 4 vols. Transactions of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences (Batavia, 1814–16), vols. VII, VIII Travers, T.O., The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960) Turner, Dawson, Memoir of Joseph Arnold, M.D. (Ipswich, 1849) Wilde, A. de, De Preanger Regentschappen op Java Gelegen (Amsterdam, 1830) Wurtzburg, C.E., Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954)

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CHAPTER SIX RAFFLES’S COUSINS AND THE PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORY OF JAVA MANUSCRIPT SOURCES BRITISH LIBRARY Letters to Lady Raffles from persons who have received copies of her Memoir: MSS. Eur.D.742/10 Letters of Raffles to Mary Anne Flint: MSS.Eur.D.742/17 Letters of Raffles to Thomas |Murdoch: MSS.Eur.D.742/22 Letters of Raffles to the Duke of Somerset: MSS.Eur.D.742/25 Letters of Raffles to the Duchess of Somerset: MSS.Eur.D.742/24 Letters of the Duchess of Somerset to Raffles: MSS.Eur.D.742/27 DR WILLIAMS’S LIBRARY, LONDON Correspondence of Elton Hamond and Thomas Stamford Raffles LIBRARY OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, LONDON Notes by Elton Hamond: [Captain G.P.] Baker MSS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Letters of Raffles to Thomas Macquoid: Add.MS.7386 PRINTED SOURCES Archer, Mildred and Bastin, John, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library London (Kuala Lumpur, 1978) [Assey, C.,] Review of the Administration, Value, and State of the Colony of Java with its Dependencies As it was, – As it is, – and As it may be (London, 1816) Bastin, John and Brommer, Bea, Nineteenth Century Prints and Illustrated Books of Indonesia (Utrecht, Antwerp, 1979) Bastin, John, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009) Bastin, John and Weizenegger, Julie, The Family of Sir Stamford Raffles (Singapore, 2016) Bohn, H.G., New, Valuable, and Most Important Books, offered at Very Reduced Prices, Supplement to Bohn’s General Catalogue (London, 1847) Crawfurd, J., History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), 3 vols. Crawfurd, J., ‘The Ruins of Prambanan in Java’, Asiatic Researches, vol. XIII, no. ix (1820), pp. 337–68

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Crawfurd, J., ‘On the Ruins of Boro Budor in Java’, Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, vol. II (1821), pp. 154–66 Forge, A., ‘Raffles and Daniell: Making the Image Fit’, Recovering the Orient: Artists, scholars, appropriations (ed.) A. Gerstle, A. Milner (Switzerland, 1994) Haan, F. de, ‘Personalia der Periode van het Engelsch Bestuur over Java 1811–1816’, BKI, vol. 92 (1935), pp. 477–81 Hodson, V.C.P., List of the Officers of the Bengal Army 1758–1834 (London, 1926–46), 4 parts Horsfield, T., ‘Essay on the Mineralogy … of Java’, VBG, vol. VIII, no. 5 (1816), pp. 47 Horsfield, T., ‘On the Geography, Mineralogy and Botany of the Western portion of the Territory of the Native Princes of Java’, VBG, vol. VIII, no. 6 (1816), pp. 183 Macquoid, T., ‘Notes of Dutch History in the Archipelago. Extracted from the Records at Batavia under the Administration of Sir Stamford Raffles’, JIA, vol. I, no. 2, n.s. (1856), pp. 141–93 Marsden, W., The History of Sumatra (London, 1814), facsimile edition (Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1966) Marsden, W., Miscellaneous Works (London, 1834) Phillimore, R.H., Historical Records of the Survey of India (Dehra Dun, 1945–54), 4 vols. Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830) Raffles, Reverend Thomas, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Late Reverend Thomas Spencer of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1813) Raffles, Reverend Thomas, The Messiah, by Klopstock, Translated from the German (London, 1814), 3 vols. Raffles, Reverend Thomas, Letters, during a Tour through some parts of France, Savoy, Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands in the Summer of 1817 (Liverpool, 1818) Raffles, T.S., The History of Java (London, 1817), 2 vols. Raffles, T.S., The History of Java (London, 1830), 2 vols. + Atlas of plates Raffles, T.S. (ed.), Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Rev. Thomas Raffles, D.D., LL.D. (London, 1864) Ramsden, Lady Guendolen, Correspondence of Two Brothers: Edward Adolphus, Eleventh Duke of Somerset, and his Brother, Lord Webb Seymour, 1800 to 1819 and After (London, 1906) Sadler, T., Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-atLaw, F.S.A. (London, 1869), 3 vols. Smiles, S., A Publisher and His Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768–1843 (London, 1891), 2 vols. Smithies, M.S., ‘A New Guinean and the Royal Society – 1816–1817’, Hemisphere, vol. 27, no. 6 (1983), pp. 365–71

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432  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Sutton, T., The Daniells: Artists and Travellers (London, 1954) Travers, T.S., Journal of Thomas Otho Travers (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum No. 4 (Singapore, 1960) Weatherbee. D.E., ‘Raffles’ Sources for Traditional Javanese Historiography and the Mackenzie Collections’, Indonesia, vol. 26 (October 1978), pp. 63–93 Wurtzburg, C.E., Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954)

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CHAPTER SEVEN RAFFLES AND JOSEPH ARNOLD IN SUMATRA MANUSCRIPT SOURCES BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD: Letter of Raffles to Dr. Joseph Arnold: MS Montague d.9 BOTANICAL LIBRARY, NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON: MS. Catalogue of Dried Plants from Java Dawson Turner Collection of Banks Letters, vol. 19 BRITISH LIBRARY: Letters to Lady Raffles from persons who have received copies of her Memoir: MSS. Eur.D.742/10 Letters of Lady Raffles to Mary Anne Flint: MSS.Eur.D.742/15 Letters of Raffles to Mary Anne Flint: MSS.Eur.D.742/17 Letters of Raffles to the Duchess of Somerset: MSS.Eur.D.742/24 Letters of Lady Raffles to the Duchess of Somerset: MSS.Eur.742/26 Letters of Raffles to the Duke of Somerset: MSS.Eur.D.742/25 Home Miscellaneous: 24 (2) Sumatra Factory Records, vols. 47, 48 HUNTERIAN MUSEUM, LONDON: Rough Minute Book: Donations to the Hunterian Museum KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE, LEIDEN: Westerse Handschriften H 562 LIBRARY TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE: Dawson Turner MSS NATIONAL ARCHIVES, SINGAPORE: Letters to Bencoolen, 1819–20: L10

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434  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

PRINTED SOURCES Abel, C., Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China (London, 1818) Archer, Mildred, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962) Bastin, John, The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra: An Economic Interpretation (Oxford, 1957) Bastin, John, The British in West Sumatra (1685–1825) (Kuala Lumpur, 1965) Bastin, John, ‘Dr Joseph Arnold and the Discovery of Rafflesia Arnoldi in West Sumatra in 1818’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist. vol. 6, pt. 5 (1973), pp. 305–72 Bastin, John, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009) Bateson, C., The Convict Ships 1878–1868 (Glasgow, 1985) Beaglehole, J.C., The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 (Sydney, 1962), 2 vols. Boulger, D.C., The Life of Sir Stamford Raffle (London, 1897) Brooks, C.J., ‘English Tombs and Monuments in Bencoolen’, JSBRAS, no. 78 (1918), pp. 51–8 Brown, R., ‘An Account of a New Genus of Plants, named Rafflesia’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), pp. 201–34 Burkill, I.H., ‘William Jack’s Letters to Nathaniel Wallich 1819–1921’, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 147–268 Campter, P., Natuurkundige Verhandelingen … over den Orang Outang; en Eenige Andere Aap-Sorten (Amsterdam, 1782) Cowan, J.M., ‘Some Information on the Menzies and Jack Collections in the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh’, Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, vol. XXI, pt. 4 (1954), pp. 219–27 Crawford, D.G., A History of the Indian Medical Service 1600–1913 (London, 1914), 2 vols. [Crawfurd, John], Review of T.S. Raffles, The History of Java (London, 1817), The Edinburgh Review, vol. XXXI, no. LXII, art. viii (March 1819), pp. 395–413 Crawfurd, John, History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), 3 vols. Crawfurd, John, A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries (London, 1856) [Crowfoot, W.], ‘Dr. Joseph Arnold’, The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XC, no. I (February 1820), pp. 182–4 Dawson, W.R., The Banks Letters (London, 1958) Dawson, W.R., ‘Dawson Turner, F.R.S. (1775–1858)’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. hist., vol. 3, pt. 6 (1958), pp. 303–10 Dawson, W.R., ‘A Bibliography of the Printed Works of Dawson Turner’, Transactions Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vol. III, pt. 3 (1961), pp. 232–56 Ellis, H., Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China (London, 1817) Forbes, R.J. (ed.), Martinus van Marum Life and Work (Haarlem, 1971), 3 vols. Gould, J.W., ‘Sumatra – America’s Pepper Pot, 1784–1873’, Essex Institute Historical Collections, vol. XCII (1956), pp. 83–152, 203–51, 295–348

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Hall, B., Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, 1818) Harfield, A., Christian Cemeteries of Penang & Perak (London, 1987) Home, Sir Everard, Lectures on Comparative Anatomy; in which are Explained the Preparations in the Hunterian Collection, Illustrated by Engravings (London, 1814), 2 vols. Home, Sir Everard, Autopsy on Raffles, The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. XCVI, no. ii (1826), p. 275. Koorders, S.H., Botanisch Overzicht der Rafflesiaceæ van Nederlandsche-Indië (Batavia, 1918) Lyell, Mrs., Life Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. (London, 1881), 2 vols. M’Leod, J., Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Alceste (London, 1817) Malayan Miscellanies (Bencoolen, 1820–2), 2 vols. Mabberley, D.J., Jupiter Botanicus Robert Brown of the British Museum (Braunschweig, 1985) Morrison, R., A Memoir of the Principal Occurrences during an Embassy from the British Government to the Court of China in the Year 1816 (London, 1820) Munby, A.N.L, The Cult of the Autograph Letter in England (London, 1962) Raffles, T.S., The History of Java (London, 1817), 2 vols. [Raffles, T.S.], Review of John Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820), The Quarterly Review, vol. XXVIII, no. LV, art. V (October 1822), pp. 111–38 Raffles, T.S., ‘Descriptive Catalogue of a Zoological Collection, made on account of the Honourable East India Company, in the Island of Sumatra and its Vicinity, under the Direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles …’, Trans. Lin. Soc., vol. XIII (1821-3), pp. 239–74, 277–340 Raffles, T.S., Statement of the Services of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1824) Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830) Rheede tot Draakestein, H. van, Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (Amsterdam, 1678–1703), 12 vols. Rix, S.W., ‘Memoir of Joseph Arnold, M.D., Surgeon R.N., and Naturalist in the Suite of Sir Stamford Raffles’, Beccles and Bungay Weekly News, 17 December 1861 Rouffaer, G.P., Muller, W.C., Rumphius Gedenkboek 1702–1902 (Haarlem, 1902) Roxburgh, W., Icones Roxburghianæ or Drawings of Indian Plants (Calcutta, 1964 et seq.) Rumphius, Georg Everhard [Rumpf], Het Amboinsche Kruidboek [Herbarium Amboinense] (Amsterdam, 1741–55). Sadler, T., Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at Law, F.S.A. (London, 1869), 3 vols. Sealey, J.R., ‘The Roxburgh Flora India Drawings at Kew’, Kew Bulletin, nos. 2 & 3 (1956), pp. 297–348, 349–99 Sherren, H., The Zoological Society of London (London, 1905) Steenis-Kruseman M.J. van, ‘Malaysian Plant Collectors and Collections being a Cyclopædia of Botanical Exploration in Malaysia …’, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis (Jakarta, 1950), ser. I, vol. I, pp. 1–639

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Steenis, C.G.G.J. van, et al., ‘Louis Auguste Deschamps A Prominent but Ill-fated Early Explorer of the Flora of Java’, Bull. Brit. Mus. (N.H.), hist. Ser., vol. I, pt. 2 (1954), pp. l 51–68 Stoughton, G.T., Notes of Proceedings and Occurrencies, during the British Embassy to Pekin, in 1816 (London, 1824) Travers, T.O., The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813-1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960) Turner, Dawson, Memoir of Joseph Arnold, M.D. (Ipswich, 1849) Visser, H., ‘Iets over het Landschap de Pasemah Oeloe Manna en zijne tijdelijke Onderwerping door Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’ TBG, vol. XXVIII (1833), pp. 314–36 Wurmb, Baron von F., ‘Beschrijving van de groote Borneosche orang-outang, of de OostIndische Pongo’, VBG, vol. II (1780), pp. 245-61 Wurtzburg, C.E., Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1952)

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CHAPTER EIGHT THOMAS HORSFIELD IN SUMATRA AND LONDON MANUSCRIPT SOURCES Listed under Chapter Three PRINTED SOURCES Arberry, A.J., The India Office Library. A Historical Sketch (London, 1967) Archer, M., Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962) Bastin, John, Essays on Indonesian and Malayan History (Singapore, 1961) Bastin, John and Moore, D.T., ‘The Geological Researches of Dr Thomas Horsfield in Indonesia 1801–1819’, Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (hist. Ser.), vol. 10, no. 3 (1982), pp. 75–115 Blume, C.L., Bijdragen tot de Flora van Nederlandsch Indië (Batavia, 1825–6) Blume, C.L., Flora Javæ (Brussels, Leiden, 1828–51) Blume, C.L., Rumphia, Sive Commentationes Botanicæ Imprimus de Plantis Indiæ Orientalis (Leiden, Amsterdam, 1835–49) Cowan, C.F., ‘Horsfield, Moore, and the Catalogues of the East India Company Museum’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 7, pt. 3 (1975), pp. 273–84 Curtis, J., British Entomology; being Illustrations and Descriptions of the Genera of Insects found in Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1824–39) Desmond, R., The India Museum 1801–1879 (London, 1982) Gunther, A.E., The Founders of Science at the British Museum 1753–1900 (Halesworth Suffolk, 1980) Hooker, J.D. and Thomson, T., Flora Indica (London, 1855) Horsfield, T., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects Contained in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company, … (London, 1828–9) Horsfield, T., A Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects in The Museum of the Hon. East-India Company (London, 1858–60) Horsfield, T., Bennett, J.J. and Brown, R., Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, Descriptæ Iconibusque Illustratæ, Quas in Insula Java, Annis 1802–1818, Legit et Investigavit Thomas Horsfield, M.D. … (London, 1838–52) Horsfield, T., A Catalogue of the Mammalia in The Museum of The Hon. East-India Company (London, 1851) Latham, J., A General History of Birds (London, 1821–8), 10 vols. Mabberley, D.J., Jupiter Botanicus Robert Brown of the British Museum (Braunschweig, 1985) Macleay, W.S., Horæ Entomologicæ, or Essays on the Annulose Animals, … (London, 1819– 1821), 2 vols.

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Macleay, W.S., Annulosa Javanica, or An Attempt to Illustrate the Natural Affinities and Analogies of the Insects Collected in Java by Thomas Horsfield, M.D. F.L. & G.S. and Deposited by Him in the Museum of the Honourable East-India Company (London, 1825) Macleay, W.S., Annulosa Javanica ou Descrition des Insects de Java … Précédés d’un extrait des Horæ Entomologicæ du nême auteur (Paris, 1833) Mathews, G.M., ‘Dates of Ornithological Works’, The Austral Record, vol. IV, pt. 1 (1920), pp. 1–27 Mitchell, P.C., Centenary History of the Zoological Society of London (London, 1929) Raffles, T.S., ‘Descriptive Catalogue of a Zoological Collection, made on account of the Honourable East India Company, in the Island of Sumatra and its Vicinity, under the Direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough; with additional Notices illustrative of the Natural History of those Countries’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1821–3), pp. 239–74, 277–340 Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830) Steenis-Kruseman, M.J. van, ‘Malaysian Plant Collectors and Collections being a Cyclopaedia of Botanical Exploration in Malaysia …’, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis, ser. I, vol. 1, XI–CLII (1950), pp. 1–639 Travers, T.O., The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum No. 4 (Singapore, 1960) Wallace, A.R., The Malay Archipelago (London, 1869), 2 vols. Wallace, A.R., My Life A Record of Events and Opinions (London, 1905), 2 vols. Weber, C., ‘Oiseaux et mammifères de la collection Horsfield au Muséum de Genève’, Musées de Genève, no. 258 (1985), pp. 2–6 The Zoological Journal, vols. I–IV (1825–9)

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CHAPTER NINE THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST WILLIAM JACK IN PENANG, SINGAPORE AND SUMATRA MANUSCRIPT SOURCES BRITISH LIBRARY Letters of Raffles to the Duchess of Somerset: MSS.Eur.D.742/24 Treaty with the rulers of Pulau Nias: MSS.Eur.F.32/9 MSS.Eur.E.108/14, MSS.Eur.E.108/15 Collection of rocks: MS. 1911.1349 Sumatra Factory Records, vol. 48 Bengal Public Consultations, vol. 29 NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH Archives of John Murray, publisher, London ARCHIVES DEPARTMENT OF THE SHETLAND ISLANDS COUNCIL, LERWICK Correspondence of Andrew Hay and William Jack PRINTED SOURCES Anderson, P.J., Officers and Graduates of University & King’s College, Aberdeen, 1495–1860 (Aberdeen, 1893) Anon., ‘Slave Trade at the Island of Nias’, J. H. Moor, Notices of the Indian Archipelago, and Adjacent Countries (Singapore, 1837), pp. 185–8 Archer, Mildred and Bastin, John, The Raffles Drawings in the India Office Library London (Kuala Lumpur, 1978) Aspinall, A., Letters of the Princess Charlotte 1811–1817 (London, 1949) Bastin, John, The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra An Economic Interpretation (Oxford, 1957) Bastin, John, The British in West Sumatra (1685–1825) (Kuala Lumpur, 1965) Bastin, John, Letters and Books of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles: The Tang Holdings Collection of Autograph Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009) Bastin, John, The Founding of Singapore 1819 (Singapore, 2012) Brown, R., ‘An Account of a new Genus of Plants, named Rafflesia’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1822), pp. 201–34

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Burkill, I.H., ‘William Jack’s Letters to Nathaniel Wallich, 1819–1821’, JSBRAS, no. 73 (1916), pp. 147–268 Burton, Reverend R., ‘Proofs of Cannibalism among the Battas’, Malayan Miscellanies, vol. II, no. X (1822), pp. 1–3 Calcutta Journal of Natural History, vol. I (1841) Farquhar, W., ‘Account of a new species of Tapir found in the Peninsula of Malacca’, Asiatic Researches, vol. XIII, no. xi (1820), pp. 417–27 G[rant], F.J., ‘The Family of Bolt’, Shetland News, 14 December 1896 Hanitch, R., ‘Letters of Nathaniel Wallich relating to the Establishment of Botanical Gardens in Singapore’, JSBRAS, no. 65 (1913), pp. 39–48 Harfield, A., Bencoolen A History of the Honourable East India Company’s Garrison on the West Coast of Sumatra (1685–1825 (Barton-on-Sea, 1995) Hooker, W.J., ‘Description of Malayan Plants. By William Jack. With a brief Memoir of the Author, and Extracts from his Correspondence’, Companion to the Botanical Magazine; being a Journal … (London, 1835–6), Vol. I, pp. 121–57, 219–24, 253–72 Jack, W., ‘Description of Malayan Plants, No. 2’, Malayan Miscellanies, vol. I, no. V, (1820), pp. 1–49 [Jack, W.], ‘First Report of the Sumatran Agricultural Society’, Proceedings of the Agricultural Society, established in Sumatra, 1820, vol. I, no. III (1821), pp. [i–ii], [1]–53 Jack, W., ‘Memorandum of a Journey to the Summit of Gunong Benko, or the Sugar Loaf Mountain’, Malayan Miscellanies, vol. II, no. 1 (1822), pp. 1–22 Jack, W., ‘On the Geology and Topography of the Island of Sumatra, and some of the adjacent Islands.’, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, ser. 2, vol. I, (1824), pp. 397–405 Kemp, P.H. van der, ‘Raffles’ Betrekkingen met Nias in 1820–1821’, BKI, vol. 52 (1901), pp. 587–8 Knight, D.M., Natural Science Books in English 1600–1900 (London, 1972) Lee, J., An Introduction to Botany … extracted from the works of Dr. Linnaeus, with an Appendix containing upwards of two thousand English names of plants, referred to their proper titles in the Linnean System (London, 1760) Lee Kam Hing, The Sultanate of Aceh Relations with the British 1760–1824 (Kuala Lumpur, 1995) Lightfoot, Reverend J., Flora Scotica: or, a Systematic Arrangement in the Linnean method of the native plants of Scotland and the Hebrides (London, 1777), 2 vols. Mabberley, D.J., ‘Robert Brown on Rafflesia’, Blumea, vol. 44, no. 2 (1999), pp. 343–50 Malayan Miscellanies (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1820–22), 2 vols. Malcolm, John, Malcolm Soldier, Diplomat, Ideologue of British India The Life of Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) (Edinburgh, 2014) Merrill, E.D., ‘William Jack’s Genera and Species of Malaysian Plants’, Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, vol. XXXIII, no. 3 (1952), pp. 199–251

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Noltie, H.J., Raffles’ Ark Redrawn (London, Edinburgh, 2009) Prinsep, H.T., History of the Political and Military Transactions in India during the Administration of the Marquess of Hastings 1813–1823 (London, 1825), 2 vols. Proceedings of the Agricultural Society, established in Sumatra, 1820 (Sumatran Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1821), vol. I Puvanarajah, T. and Suntharalingam, R., ‘The Acheh Treaty of 1819’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol. 2, no. 3 (1961), pp. 36–46 Raffles, T.S., Substance of a Memoir on the Administration of the Eastern Islands (London, 1824) Raffles, T.S., ‘Descriptive Catalogue of a Zoological Collection, made on account of the Honourable East India Company, in the Island of Sumatra and its Vicinity, under the Direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough; with additional Notices illustrative of the Natural History of those Countries’, Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. XIII (1821–3), pp. 239–74, 277–340 Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S., &c. (London, 1830) Van Rheede tot Draakestein, H., Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (Amsterdam, 1678–1703), 12 vols. Roxburgh, W., Flora Indica, or Descriptions of Indian Plants, by the late William Roxburgh … Edited by William Carey, D.D., to which are added Descriptions of Plants more recently Discovered by Nathaniel Wallich, M.D., F.L.S. &c. Superintendent of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Mission Press, Serampore, 1820–24), 2 vols. Scott, H. (ed.), Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ (Edinburgh, 1893), vol. VII Steenis-Kruseman, M.J. van, ‘Malaysian Plant Collectors and Collections being a Cyclopædia of Botanical Exploration in Malaysia …’, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis, ser. I, vol. 1, XI–CLII (1950), pp. 1–639 Stone, B.C., ‘A Note on the Repaged Reprint by William Griffiths of Jack’s “Descriptions of Malayan Plants” (Calcutta, 1843)’, Bartonia, no. 57 (1991), pp. 32–5 Stone, B.C., ‘Description of Malayan Plants I–III. By William Jack’, JMBRAS, vol. 51, pt. 1 (1978), pp. 122–4 The Straits Times (Singapore), 24 October 1932 Travers, T.O., The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960)

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442  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

CHAPTER TEN THE DANISH NATURALIST NATHANIEL WALLICH AND THE SINGAPORE BOTANIC GARDEN MANUSCRIPT SOURCES The letters which Nathaniel Wallich, Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden, addressed to Raffles in 1822 proposing the establishment of a Botanical Garden at Singapore were published in JSBRAS, no. 65 (1913), pp. 39–48 under the title, ‘Letters of Nathaniel Wallich relating to the Establishment of Botanical Gardens in Singapore’, with commentary by Dr. R. Hanitch. They were reprinted under the same title in JMBRAS, vol. 42, pt. 1 (1969), pp. 145–54. The original letters are preserved in the Library of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Sibpur), and were copied for publication by permission of its then Superintendent, Major A.T. Gage. They form part of 33 large volumes of Wallich’s correspondence spanning the period from 1817 to 1846 which were once in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, but which were returned to Calcutta in 1887–88. Raffles’s letters to Wallich, including his reply to the latter’s proposal to establish a Botanic Garden at Singapore, are now reproduced from microfilm copies which were made for me some years ago by the Botanical Survey of India. Also published by permission of the Librarian are 11 other letters from Raffles to Wallich in possession of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague (72/E17). The letters in both libraries constitute a whole, and their division is explained by Wallich being invalided in 1828 and bringing the letters to London in response to Lady Raffles’s desire to use them in her Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830). The letters, or portions of them, were printed in that book (pp. 382, 537–8, 539–40, 550–1, 551, 555–6, 563–4, 564, 575) and were apparently returned to Wallich, who failed to re–incorporate them in his own volumes of correspondence in Calcutta. With the exception of Letter No. 22, they came into the possession of a certain John Sterry, whose bookplate is on the inner cover of the volume now in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague. The letters were acquired by the Library in 1916, as stated in its annual report of that year (Verslag der Koninklijke Bibliotheek over 1916 (The Hague, 1916), p. xli). A holograph letter of Raffles to Wallich dated 11 February 1823 was recently acquired by the National Museum, Singapore, and its contents have been summarised in note 140.

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[Raffles, T.S.], Review of John Crawfurd’s History of the Indian Archipelago (Edinburgh, 1820) in The Quarterly Review, vol. XXVIII, no. LV, art. V (1823), pp. 111–38 Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. Particularly in the Government of Java, 1811–1816, and of Bencoolen and its Dependencies, 1817–1824; with Details of the Commerce and Resources of the Eastern Archipelago (London, 1830) Ransome, G., Portraits of Honorary Members of the Ipswich Museum (Ipswich, 1852) Robinson, John, Memoirs of the Rev. W. Robinson, Baptist Missionary (Benares, 1856) Robinson, W., An Attempt to Elucidate the Principles of Malayan Orthography (Baptist Mission [Sumatran] Press, Bencoolen, 1823) Roxburgh, W., Hortus Bengalensis, or a Catalogue of the Plants Growing in the Honorable East India Company’s Botanic Garden at Calcutta (Mission Press, Serampore, 1814) Roxburgh, W., Plants of the Coast of Coromandel; Selected from Drawings and Descriptions Presented to the Hon. Court of Directors of the East India Company, by William Roxburgh, M.D. Published by their order, under the direction of Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P.R.S. (London, 1795–1819 [1820]), 3 vols. Roxburgh, W., Flora Indica; or Descriptions of Indian Plants, by the late William Roxburgh … Edited by William Carey, D.D., to which are added Descriptions of Plants more recently Discovered by Nathaniel Wallich, M.D., F.L.S. &c. Superintendent of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Mission Press, Serampore, 1820–24), 2 vols. Royal Society of London, Catalogue of Scientific Papers 1800–1863 Compiled and Published by the Royal Society of London (London, 1867–72), vol. VI, pp. 252–3 Sawyer, F.C., ‘The Dates of Issue of J.E. Gray’s “Illustrations of Indian Zoology”’ (London, 1830–35), J. Soc. Biblphy Nat. Hist., vol. 3, pt. 1 (1953), pp. 48–55 Singapore Local Laws and Institutions, 1823 (London, 1824) Sotheby’s, London, Catalogue: Topographical Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings, 20 October 1993, pp. 113–31: ‘The Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings of Malacca’, Lots 291–98 Stafleu, F.A., Taxonomic Literature (Utrecht, 1967) Steenis-Kruseman, M.J. van, ‘Malaysian Plant Collectors and Collections being a Cyclopaedia of Botanical Exploration in Malaysia…’, Flora Malesiana (ed.) C.G.G.J. van Steenis (Jakarta, 1950), ser. I, vol. 1, pp. 1–639 Tarling, N., ‘The Palmer Loans’, BKI, vol. 119 (1963), pp. 161–8 Travers, T.O., The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813–1820 (ed.) John Bastin, Memoirs of the Raffles Museum, No. 4 (Singapore, 1960) Trocki, C.A., Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Development of Johor and Singapore 1784–1885 (Singapore, 1979) Turnbull, C.M., A History of Singapore 1819–1975 (Kuala Lumpur, 1977) Wake, C.H., ‘Raffles and the Rajas The Founding of Singapore in Malayan and British Colonial History’, JMBRAS, vol. XLVIII, pt. 1 (1975), pp. 47–73

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450  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Wallich, N., Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores; or, Descriptions and Figures of a Select Number of Unpublished East Indian Plants (London, 1830 [1829]–32), 3 vols. Wallich, N., Tentamen Floræ Napalensis Illustratæ consisting of Botanical Descriptions and Lithographic Figures of Select Nipal Plants (Asiatic Lithographic Press, Serampore, 1824–26) Wallich, N., A numerical List of Dried specimens of plants in the East India Company’s Museum, collected under the superintendence of Dr. Wallich of the Company’s botanic garden at Calcutta (London, 1828–49) Webster, Anthony, The Richest East India Merchant The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta 1767–1836 (Woodbridge, 2007) Westergaard, P.B.C., Danske Portraeter (Copenhagen, 1934), vol. II Wijeysingha, E., A History of Raffles Institution 1823–1963 (Singapore, 1963) Winstedt, R.O., ‘A History of Johore (1365–1865)’, JMBRAS, vol. X, pt. 3 (1932), pp. 1–167 Wright, Nadia H., ‘The Career of Francis James Bernard: Nepotism and Patronage in Early Singapore’, JMBRAS, vol. 89, pt. 2 (2016), pp. 25–44 Wright, Nadia H., William Farquhar and Singapore Stepping out from Raffles’ Shadow (Penang, 2017) Wurtzburg, C.E., ‘The Baptist Mission Press at Bencoolen’, JMBRAS, vol. XXIII, pt. 3 (1950), pp. 136–42 Wurtzburg, C.E., Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954) Wurtzburg, C.E., ‘The Private Letter Books of John Palmer’, JMBRAS, vol. XXII, pt. 1 (1949), pp. 182–3

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Bibliography   451

CHAPTER ELEVEN RAFFLES AND HIS MALAY CLERK JOHN LEYDEN SIAMI MANUSCRIPT SOURCES NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND John Leyden: MS 971 NATIONAL ARCHIVES, SINGAPORE Letters to Bencoolen, 1819–20: L10 PRIVATE COLLECTION MS. Journal of Thomas Otho Travers PRINTED SOURCES Barr, Flinders, ‘How Singapore Was Founded’, The Straits Times (Singapore), 4, 11, 18, 25 October, 1 November 1937. Bastin, John, Letters and Books of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles: The Tang Holdings Collection of Autograph Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009) Boulger, D.C., The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897) Buckley, C.B., An Anecdotal history of Old Times in Singapore (Singapore, 1902) Ché-Ross, Raimy, ‘Syair Peri Tuan Raffles Pergi Ke Minangkabau A Malay Account of Raffles’ Second Expedition to the Sumatran Highlands in 1818[: Based’, JMBRAS, vol. LXXVI, pt. 2 (2003), pp. 25–80 Gibson-Hill, C.A., ‘The Master Attendants at Singapore, 1819–67’, JMBRAS, vol. XXXIII, pt. 1 (1960), pp.1–64 Hill, A.H., (transl.), ‘The Hikayat Abdullah An annotated translation’, JMBRAS, vol. XXXIII, pt. 3 (1955), pp. 345, [9]. Leyden, John, ‘On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations’, Asiatic Researches, vol. X (1808), pp. 158–289 Leyden, John, A Comparative Vocabulary of the Barma, Maláyu and Thái Languages (Baptist Mission Press, Serampore, 1810) Leyden, John, Malay Annals: Translated from the Malay Language, by the Late Dr. John Leyden. With an Introduction by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. &c. (London, 1821) Marsden, William, A Grammar of the Malayan Language, with an Introduction and Praxis (London, 1812)

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452  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Minto, Countess of, Lord Minto in India: Life and Letters of Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto from 1807 to 1814 while Governor-General of India (London, 1880) [Morrison, R., T.S. Raffles], Formation of the Singapore Institution. A.D. 1823 (Mission Press, Malacca, 1823) Proudfoot, Ian, ‘Abdullah vs Siami: Early Malay Verdicts on British Justice’, JMBRAS, vol. LXXX, pt. 1 (2007), pp. 1–16 Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830) Raffles, T.S., The History of Java (London), 1817), 2 vols. [Siami, John Leyden], ‘Poem in the Malay Language descriptive of the Journey of the Lieut. Governor to Menangcabow in 1818’, Malayan Miscellanies (Baptist [Sumatran] Mission Press, Bencoolen, 1820), Vol. 1, No. 13. Skinner, Cyril, ‘The Author of the “Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala”’, BKI, vol. 132, (1976), pp. 195–206 Skinner, Cyril, ‘Ahmad Rijaluddin’s Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala’, Bibliotheca Indonesica, 22 (1982), pp. 1–198

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Bibliography   453

CHAPTER TWELVE RAFFLES’S FRIENDS IN ENGLAND AND THE FOUNDING OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND MANUSCRIPT SOURCES BRITISH LIBRARY Letters of Lady Raffles from persons who have received copies of her Memoir: MSS. Eur.D.742/10 Letters of Lady Raffles to Mary Anne Flint: MSS.Eur.D.742/15 Letters of Raffles to Mary Anne Flint: MSS.Eur.D.742/17 Miscellaneous letters of Raffles: MSS.Eur.D.742/21 Letters of Raffles to the Duchess of Somerset: MSS.Eur.D.742/24 Letters of the Duchess of Somerset to Raffles: MSS.Eur.D.742/27 Letters of the Duke of Somerset to Raffles: MSS.Eur.D.742/28 LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON MSS. Minutes of the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society of London ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON MS. Zoological Society Minutes of Council, vol. I PRINTED SOURCES Allibone, T.E., The Royal Society and its Dining Clubs (Oxford, 1976) Bastin, John, ‘The first prospectus of the Zoological Society of London: new light on the Society’s origins’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 5, pt. 5 (1970), pp. 369–88 Bastin, John, ‘A further note on the origins of the Zoological Society of London’, J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist., vol. 6, pt. 4 (1973), pp. 236–41 Bastin, John, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles (Singapore, 2009) Bastin, John, ‘Provenance of the Raffles Malay Letters’, Ahmat Adam, Letters of Sincerity: The Raffles Collection of Malay Letters (1780–1824), MBRAS, Monograph 43 (2009), pp. vii–xii Bastin, John, The Founding of Singapore 1819 (Singapore, 2012) Blunt, Wilfrid, The Ark in the Park: The Zoo in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1976). Boulger, D.C., The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (London, 1897) Chambers, N. (ed.), The Letters of Sir Joseph Banks A Selection, 1768–1820 (London, 2000)

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454  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Cholmondeley, R.H. (ed.), The Heber Letters, 1783–1832 (London, 1950) Deleuze, J.P.F., History and Description of the Royal Museum of Natural History, published by Order of the Administration of that Establishment. Translated from the French of M. Deleuze (Paris, 1823) Dowden, W.S. (ed.), The Journal of Thomas Moore (London, Toronto, 1984), vol. 2 Furneaux, R., William Wilberforce (London, 1874) Geikie, Sir Archibald, Annals of the Royal Society Club (London, 1917) Gray, John Edward, Gleanings from the Menagerie and Aviary at Knowsley Hall (Knowsley, 1846). Hewitt, Rachel, Map of a Nation A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (London, 2010) Khoo, J.C.M., Kwa, C.G., Khoo, L.Y., ‘The Death of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781– 1826)’, Singapore Medical Journal, vol. 39, pt. 12 (1998), pp. 564–5 Marsden, W., The History of Sumatra (facsimile reprint, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1966) Mitchell, T. Chalmers, Centenary History of the Zoological Society of London (London, 1929) Raffles, Lady, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. &c. (London, 1830) Raffles, T.S., On the Advantage of Affording the Means of Education to the Inhabitants of the Further East (Mission Press, Serampore, 1819) Raffles, T.S., Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Rev. Thomas Raffles, D.D., LL.D. (London, 1864) Ramsden, Lady Guendolen, Correspondence of Two Brothers: Edward Adolphus, Eleventh Duke of Somerset, and his Brother, Lord Webb Seymour, 1800 to 1819 and After (London, 1906) Sclater, P.L. (ed.), A Record of the Progress of the Zoological Society of London during the Nineteenth Century (London, 1901), pp. 145–248 Scherren, H., The Zoological Society of London A Sketch of its Foundations and Development and the Story of its Farm, Museum, Gardens, Menagerie and Library (London, 1905) [Vigors, N.A.], Catalogue of the Animals preserved in The Museum of The Zoological Society, September 1829 (London, 1829) Waterhouse, G.R., Catalogue of the Mammalia preserved in The Museum of The Zoological Society of London (London, 1838) Wurtzburg, C.E., Raffles of the Eastern Isles (London, 1954)

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index botanical collections, 247–248 health, 178, 187, 242–243 smallpox, 241, 243 education, 177–178 first Surgeon-Superintendent on the Northampton, 179 Alexander McLeay, 179 Journal, 177, 181–185, 187, 191, 247–248 arrival in Batavia, 180 on Raffles, 185, 187 stay at Buitenzorg (Bogor), 180, 185–189, 191 impressions of Government House, Buitenzorg, 180 social isolation, 187–189 Raffles’s hospitality, 185 Christian beliefs and morals, 183, 187, 188 finances, 184 foreign languages, 189 Sepoy Conspiracy, 191 voyage on Hope from Batavia to England, 1816, 191, 219 loss of plant collection, 219 correspondence with Sir Joseph Banks, 219 relationship with Robert Brown, 219 friendships in scientific community, 220–223 Memoir of Joseph Arnold, M.D. by Dawson Turner, 220 correspondence with Dawson Turner, 223, 230–231, 238, 240 election to the Linnean Society of London, 221 friendship with Alexander McLeay, 222 appointment as EIC as naturalist, 221– 223

A Abbey, John Roland, Travel in Aquatint and Lithography, 311–312 Abdul Said (Pengulu of Naning), 70 Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, 61, 327–328, 374 Hikayat Abdullah, 328, 336 Abel, Clarke, 170, 224, 231 Aceh (Acheen), 32, 276–280, 314, 346 Adam, John, 332 Addenbrooke, Colonel John Peter, 281, 316 Addison, Thomas, 14 A.L. Johnston & Co., 338 Amherst, Governor-General Lord, 165 Anderson, James, 23 Anglo-Burmese War, 305 Arnold, Dr. Joseph, 105, 176–179, 181, 185, 187, 189, 193, 219–221, 226, 230, 242–244, 246–248, 270, 283, 297 portrait, 176 birth, 177 parents, 177 Assistant Surgeon/Surgeon, 178 observations in Java, 180–184, 190 character, 177, 189, 220–221, 226, 230, 246–247 frugality, 184, 223, 230 disapproval of lavish lifestyle, 184 fear of death, 246–247 solitary nature, 187–189, 226 interest in botany and natural history, 178–179, 219–220, 226–228, 230, 236, 240, 242–244 collection of insects from South America and Australia, 177, 179, 219 loss of insect collections, 177, 184 natural history collection in Java, 181, 184, 219 collection of fossils from England, 221, 248 455

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456  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

physician to Raffles and Lady Raffles, 222, 231, 236 vaccination of locals, 241, 243 reputation, 247 on Lady Raffles, 231, 239 on governance of Sumatra, 231 on the loss of Bangka to the Dutch, 232–233 voyage on Lady Raffles from Falmouth to Bengkulu, 1817–1818, 236 on conditions of Fort Marlborough (Bengkulu), Sumatra, 238 travels around Sumatra with Raffles and Lady Raffles, 238–242, 244 on the Pasemah people, 239, 241 encounter, 241 Rafflesia arnoldi (Brown), 240–241, 269, 282–283 meeting Dr. Thomas Horsifeld, 242–243 death, 220, 243–244, 269 memorandum by Raffles, 245 memorial (Beccles Parish Church), 220, 248 tribute by Raffles, 245 tribute by Travers, 246 memorial (Beccles Parish Church), errors, 249 will, 244 friendship with Raffles and Lady Raffles, 244 Arnold, Edward (father), 177 Arnold, Hannah (mother), 177 Arthur, Lieutenant Thomas, 33 Assey, Charles Chaston, 153, 159–161, 177, 180, 186, 202 birth, 159 parents, 159 education, 159 estimation of him, 159 medical service, 159 invasion of Java, 159, 161, 165 friendship with Raffles, 160 support of Raffles, 160 On the Trade to China and other publications, 160 death, 160 Assey, John (Assey’s father), 159 Assey, Rachel (Assey’s mother), 159 Astell, William, 384

b3461_Index.indd 456

Auber, Captain Henry (Harry), 231, 294 Auber, Peter (Raffles’s family, brother-in-law), 231, 254, 271, 345, 347, 361 Auckland, Sir Thomas, 401 Auchmuty, Samuel, 71 B Baker, Captain Godfrey Phipps, 209, 213–215 Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan 59, 170 Banks, Sir Joseph, 146, 152, 155, 179, 219, 230, 252, 273, 279, 290, 304–305, 389, 392 portrait, 250 death, 392–393 Bannerman, Colonel John Alexander, 276, 283 Banten, Java, 170 Barlow, Sir George, 38, 42 Baron Cuvier, Georges Léopold C.F .D. (anatomist), 276, 396 Baron van der Capellen, General Godert Alexander Gerard Philip, 156 Barton, Dr. Benjamin Smith, 95 Batavia (Jakarta), Java, 17, 32, 53, 55, 63, 65, 71–74, 76–78, 91–93, 97–103, 114, 118, 119, 121, 127, 128, 130, 134, 137–142, 152, 153, 157, 159, 161, 162, 164, 168, 175, 177, 183, 185–191, 210, 224, 361, 377 Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences), 99–101, 103, 110, 112–113, 118–119, 123 Bates, Henry Walter, 260 Baudin, Nicolas, 111 Beechwood House, 384 Bell, Thomas, 404 Bell, William, 188 Bengkulu (also Bencoolen), Sumatra 11, 60, 67, 157, 162, 171, 173–175, 190, 193, 202, 210, 212–214, 221, 222, 236–239, 242, 243, 246, 251, 252, 275–277, 282–293, 295–297, 301, 311, 316, 319, 344–349, 354–356, 360–363, 365, 376, 379, 380, 381, 383, 397 Bennett, Edward Turner, 401, 404 Bennett, John Joseph, 93, 263 Bernard, Charles, 331, 333 Bernard, Francis James, 278, 331, 343 Bennett, William, 13 Bent, Jeffery Hart, 184 Bentinck, William Cavendish, 23, 38

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Index   457

Bie, Caroline Franciska, 307 Bingley, Thomas, Jr. (Bingley’s son), 6, 8 Bingley, Thomas, Sr., 3, 6 Biseel, Austin, 12 Black, Parbury & Allen, 196, 203, 213 Bligh, Edward, 5th Earl of Darnley, 399, 400–402 Blizard, Sir William, 274 Blume, Carl Ludwig, 92, 94, 265 Blythe, Andrew, 18 Bohm, George, 218, 244 Böhler, Peter, 94 Bohn, Henry George, 215 Borneo, Chinese settlement, 232 Borobodur (Boro Bodo Temple), 207–209, 210–212, 214, 217 Brooks, C.J., 243 Broughton, Commodore William Robert, 71 Brown, Robert, 93, 149, 219–221, 227–228, 241, 248, 255, 262, 270, 273, 283, 290, 294, 356 Rafflesia arnoldi, 240 handling of Horsfield’s Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, 262–266 Bruce, Charles Andrew, 52 Buchanan, Dr. Francis (Hamilton), 303, 305 Buckland, Reverend William, 220 Buitenzorg (Bogor) (see also Java), 97, 159, 170, 177, 180, 183, 186–187, 189, 190, 378 Burton, Decimus, 403 Byron, Lord, 387 C Calcutta, 14, 28­­–30, 32, 35–44, 47, 49–52, 54, 55, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 71, 74–79, 91, 127, 129, 130, 132, 150, 160, 166, 171, 173, 174, 207, 214, 237, 269, 274–276, 279, 283–285, 288, 291, 292, , 306–311, 314, 317, 322, 326, 330, 333, 340, 343, 346–349, 357–360, 376, 377, 380 College of Fort William, 48 Calcutta Botanic Garden, 268–269, 275, 299, 303–307, 311 Calder, James, 349 Campbell, Charles, 247 Canning, George, 232 Cape of Good Hope, 13, 307, 383 Carey, Dr. William, 29, 303 Casey, Dr. Thomas, 304

b3461_Index.indd 457

Castlereagh, Lord, (see Stewart, Robert, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry) Charlotte Augusta, Princess of Wales, 233, 235 Cirebon, Java, 102, 106, 117, 142, 156, 252 Cisarua, Java, 97, 177, 181, 183–185, 190 Clarke, Charles Baron, 306 Clark, Reverend A.F., 33 Clubley, William Armstrong, 13, 67 Cobb, James, 254 Cockburn, Lord Henry, 24 Colclough, Reverend Thomas, 173 Colebrooke, Henry Thomas, 63, 296, 304 Cornelius, Lieutenant-Engineer Hermanus Christiaan, 107 Cornwallis, Charles (1st Marquis Cornwallis), 42 Couperus, Abraham, 33 Cousens, James, 13 Cranssen, Willem Jacob, 91, 190 Crawfurd, John, 153, 200, 207, 209, 211, 234, 278, 310, 318, 321, 336, 353 critique of Raffles’s The History of Java (first edition), 200 History of the Indian Archipelago, 211 administration of Singapore, 336–337 complaints, 336, 337 character, 336 criticism towards Raffles, 336 Cross, Edward, 403 Crossley, Lieutenant Francis, 380 Crowfoot, Dr. William, 178, 247 Curtis, John, 257 Cuvier, Frederic, 396 D Daendels, Herman Willem (Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies), 53, 60, 119, 123 Dalgairns, Andrew (Dalgairns’s father), 164 Dalgairns, Charlotte (Dalgairns’s mother), 164 Dalgairns, Lieutenant James, 159, 164–166, 184 Dalzel, Andrew, 19 Dance, Commodore Nathaniel, 13 Daniell, William, 200, 210–214, 257 Daniell, Thomas, 201 Darell, Sir Lionel, 185 Darwin, Charles, 220 Darwin, Erasmus, 97 Dawson, Maria Sarah, 220

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458  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Davey, Robert, 177 Davis, Reverend Thomas, 4 Davy, Sir Humphry, 382, 387, 392, 396–398, 400–401 portrait, 382 disagreement with Raffles, 398 on Raffles, 382, 403 President of the Royal Society, 393 Zoological Society of London, 393 De Jussieu, Antoine Laurent, 111 De Wilde, Andries, 189 De Wit, Hendrik Cornelis Dirk, 265 Dempster, Captain John Hamilton, 11 Deschamps, Louis Auguste, 93 Devenish, Godfrey, 11 Diard, Pierre (French naturalist), 256, 276, 279–280, 297–298, 314, 353 Dick, Major George, 15 Dick, William, 13, 29, 34 Dickens, John, 43 Diehl, Katharine Smith, 314 Don, David, 305 Doppert, J.G., 102, 123, 262 Doughty, John, 94 Duncan, Reverend James, 18 Duncan, Walter Scott, 337 Duncan, William, 272 Dundas, Jane Wedderburn, 12 Dundas, Margaret, 12, 37 Dundas, Philip, 12, 32, 34, 37, 42 Dundas, Robert Adam, 12 Dundas, William, 21 Dundas, Margaret (Philip Dundas’s wife), 205 Dunsby, Rachel (Revd, Dr. Thomas Raffles’s mother), 193 Dunsby, Richard (Revd, Dr. Thomas Raffles’s maternal grandfather), 193 Linois, Rear-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand de, 13–14 Duvaucel, Alfred, 256, 276, 279–280, 297– 298, 314, 353 Dyan Indra, 290 E Eales, Colonel John, 140 Earle, Sir James, 274 East Indian Archipelago, 232 East India Company, 6, 8–11, 21, 33, 35–38, 42, 44, 45, 48, 117, 134, 135, 150,

b3461_Index.indd 458

153, 166, 170, 193, 196, 202, 222, 241, 249, 254–263, 265, 266, 273, 278, 292, 297, 303–305, 381, 384 Museum, 114, 134, 149–150, 254, 256– 258, 305, 310 East India House, 2, 7, 10, 35, 44, 51, 87–88, 161, 193, 267, 271, 294, 347, 389, 404 Eden, George, 1st Earl of Auckland, 400–401 Elliot, Gilbert, 1st Earl of Minto (see also Lord Minto, Governor-General), 17, 24–25, 39, 42, 48–49, 52, 59–60, 68, 71, 91, 132, 175, 377 on Leyden, 24, 26, 29, 39–40, 377 invasion of Java, 48–50 on Horsfield, 133 on Raffles, 69 Elliot, Gilbert, 2nd Earl of Minto (see also Lord Minto), 87–88 Elliot, Hon. George (Lord Minto’s son), 62 Elliot, Hon. William, 65 Elliot, John (Lord Minto’s son), 68 Elout, Commissioner- General Cornelis Theodorus, 156 Engelhard, Nicolaus, 107, 111, 175, 181 Entomological Society of London, 259 Erskine, John James, 13, 67 Erskine, William, 28, 34, 40, 76, 83–84 Esterhazy, Prince Paul Anton, 316 Etherington, Marianne, 11 Evans, George William, 219 F Falck, A.R., 125 Fancourt, Jacob Cassivelaun, 11 Farquhar, Andrew, 330 Farquhar, Lieutenant-Colonel William, 163, 276–278, 280–281, 297, 301, 311, 323, 326, 329–333, 335, 343, 353, 357, 370, 380 character, 301, 370 survey of southern Straits, founding of Singapore, 277 administration in Singapore, 301 popularity in Singapore, 301 conflict with Raffles, 301, 311, 329–330, 335, 343, 353, 357 correspondence with Raffles, 301, 335, 343 nickname of ‘King Malachi’ by Raffles, 323

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charges against Raffles, 331 resignation, 329 opium, 335 experiments with planting of crops in Singapore, 370 Singapore, tenure of rights of hills in Singapore, 332 Singapore Botanic Garden, 370 interest in natural history, 370 Farquhar, Robert Townsend, 150 Fendall, Lieutenant-Governor John, 152–153, 165, 171, 173 Finlay, James, 13 Finlayson, George, 305, 310–311, 322, 350–351, 357 Finlayson, James, 19 Fleming, Dr. John, 303 Flint, Captain William Lawrence R.N., 52, 210, 214, 286, 318, 331, 380 Flint, Mary Anne (née Raffles) (Raffles’s sister), 4, 52, 162–163, 204, 214, 242, 286, 306, 338, 383 Flint, William Charles Raffles (Raffles’s nephew), 286, 383 Foersch, J.N., 97, 117, 128–130 Ford, Henry, 22 Fort Marlborough (see also Bengkulu), 5, 174, 193, 232, 238, 279, 289, 314, 384, 389 Fort St. George (see also Madras), 21, 38 Fox, Charles, 234 Frederick, Prince Leopold George of SaxeCoburg -Saalfeld, 233, 235, 311 Fritze, Dr. E.A., 105 G Gage, Viscount Henry Hall, 399–400, 402 Garnham, John (Garnham’s father), 166 Garnham, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Clement, 159, 166–167 birth, 166 parents, 166 aide-de-camp, 166, 168 military service, 166, 168–169 capture by French and release, 166 invasion of Java, 166 portrait, 167 estimations of him, 168 Raffles’s despatches to Lord Hastings on supersession of Government of Java, 168

b3461_Index.indd 459

Hood, Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel, 168 Resident at Semarang; Basuki and Prabalingga; Yogyajakarta, 168 anti-piratical treaties, 168 Batavia, 168 civil service, 168 keris presented by Sultan Hamengkubuwana IV, 168 meeting with Napoleon, 169 voyage on Ganges to England, 166–168 marriage, 169 birth of children, 169 health, 169 hostilities on Amherst Island, 169 death, 169 Garnham, Harriet Florentia (Garnham’s daughter), 169 Garnham, Mary Asia (Garnham’s daughter), 169 Garnham, Robert Edward Wellington (Garnham’s son), 169 Garnham, Rosa Clementina (Garnham’s daughter), 169 Gauci, Maxim, 300, 306–313 Geological Society of London, 259, 293 Gibbs, Sir Vicary, 273–274 Gilbert, Davies, 400 Gillespie, Major-General Robert Rollo, 91, 124, 161, 175, 185, 193 Girdlestone, Reverend John Lang, 178 Goodenough, Dr. Samuel, Bishop of Carlisle, 400–401 Gordon, G.J., 342 Grant, Howard John, 297 Gray, John Edward, 397 Greig, Captain William, 65 Grimes, Mary, 236 Guthrie, Alexander 13 H Hall, Captain Basil R.N., 209 Hals, Christopher, 307 Hamengkubuwana II, Sultan of Yogyakarta, 91 Hamilton, Archibald, 9th Duke, 389 Hamond, Charles (Raffles’s uncle), 6, 8–9, 11, 201 guarantor of Raffles’s bond with the East India Company, 8, 201

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

180mm x 255mm

460  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Hamond, Elton (Raffles’s cousin), 12, 201–203, 207, 212–215, 217, 220 birth, 201 parents, 201 character and behaviour, 202–203, 207 familial history of mental health issues, 201 friendship with Raffles, 201–202 The History of Java (second edition), 202–203, 207, 212–215 literary ambitions, 202 loan to Raffles for passage to Penang, 1805, 202 quarrel relating to Raffles’s unpaid debts, 203–204, 206–207 tea business, 203, 207 suicide, 214 Hanson, Lieutenant James, 140 Harare, Dr. James, 303 Hardie, Thomas, 19 Hardwicke, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas, 133, 304, 313, 349 Hare, Alexander (British Resident at Banjarmasin), 59 Hare, James, Jr., 74 Harrington, Thomas Talbot, 13 Harris, Henry, 34 Hastings, Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquess, 171, 269, 283, 304, 359 Hastings, Lady Flora (née Muir Campbell), 322 Hay, Andrew, 297 Heber, Elizabeth, 389 Heber, Reverend Reginald, Bishop of Calcutta, 389, 397 Heber, Richard, 23, 84, 397 Heyne, Benjamin, 305 Hikayat Abdullah, 61, 327, 374–375 Hill, John, 19 The History of Java, 17, 82, 110, 131, 133, 182, 196, 200, 202–203, 207, 211–212, 214–215, 257, 378, 389 (first edition), 194, 198–199, 208 aquatints, 201 reviews of first edition, 195–201, 209 (second edition), 202–203, 207, 211–215 The History of Sumatra, 198–199, 211, 389 Historical Society of Philadelphia, 259 Hobson, James Philip, 13 Hodgson, John, 190

b3461_Index.indd 460

Home, Sir Everard, 211, 224, 225, 256, 280, 309, 328–329, 401 Hood, Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel, 168 Hooker, Joseph Dalton, 265 Hooker, Sir William Jackson, 220–221, 223–224, 226, 228, 230, 270, 355 Hope, Hugh, 65 Hornemann, Jens Wilken, 302, 307 Horsfield, Dr. Thomas, 90, 92–102, 104–110, 112–123, 126, 128–130, 134–135, 137–138, 140–156, 212, 219, 252–254, 256, 258–260, 262–267, 398, 402 birth, 94–95 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 94–95 Moravian influence and baptism, 94 family, 94–95, 267 parents, 94–95 grandparents, 94 great-uncle, 94 siblings, 95 interest in Asia, 96 portrait, 90 natural history collections, 92, 109, 113, 118, 134–135, 145, 152–153, 156, 254, 256 interest in botany and materia medica, 92–94, 96 recognition for contributions to natural history, 92, 96, 99, 109, 132–133, 141, 146, 155, 213, 253, 258–259, 265–267 Harsfieldii species named after him, 113 Keeper of EIC Museum, 92 voyage on China from Philadelphia to Batavia, Java, 92 death, 93, 267 obituary notice, 267 will, 93 destruction of journals and notebooks, 93, 267 education, 93–95, 260 foreign languages, 93 medical apprentice at the Pennsylvania Hospital, 95 University of Pennsylvania, 95 dissertation, 96–97 travels and exploration of Java, 93, 98, 105–106, 116, 144–147, 252 on the climbing of Gunung Papandayan, 105

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   461

observed goitre among women of Jember, 115 fondness for Banyuwangi, 116 impression of the land rent system in Java, 142 Ramadan festivities at Banyumas, 145 observed goitre in villagers of Pandantoyo, 151 botanical researches in Java, 97–99, 101, 106–110, 113–114, 117–118, 120, 122, 145, 155, 255 Upas Tree of Java, 96, 113, 117, 118, 128–129 jati forests, 109 collection of specimens, 109, 113, 118, 256 new method on making impressions of dried plants, 120 on mountain flora near Dieng Plateau, 146 geological researches in Java, 100, 101, 102–108, 110, 115–116, 118, 130, 141–142, 146, 151, 155–156 ‘On the Mineralogy of Java’, 103–105, 130 volcanic activities, 101, 116, 118 zoological research in Java, 100, 113–114, 117, 121–122, 145–147, 153 A Descriptive Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects…, 114, 122 zoological specimens, 114, 121, 256, 260 capture of Javan Leopard Cat and Bay Owl, 115 species discovered around Banyuwangi, 117 capture of Larger Fishing Eagles, 150 under Dutch employ in Java, 97–98, 101–102, 104, 106, 109, 110, 113–114, 118–120, 122 physician in Java, 97 report on Priangan region in 1802, 98 establishment of Hortus Medicus, 99 reports in and around Batavia, 1803, 101 account of Gunung Gunturr, 1804, 104 botanical collections from Bandung, 106 report of jati forests and journey from Surakarta to Gresik, 1806, 109 collections from around Pasuruan, 1805–1806, 110 report on travels along Solo River to Tengger highlands, 1806, 113–114

b3461_Index.indd 461

report on Pasuruan and Malang, 1807, 118 Dutch interest in materia medica, 98, 119 salary from Dutch government, 119, 123 Register of botanical drawings and Catalogue of plant collections, 1808, 120 request for continuation and support of natural history investigations, 1811, 122 health, 97, 118, 141, 252, 265 natural history drawings in Java, 102, 108–110, 112–113, 118–120, 123–124, 126, 137, 141–143, 145, 147, 149–152, 154–155, 262 pupil-draughtsmen from Semarang Marine School, 102, 106, 109, 120, 123 J.G. Doppert, 123 Louis Théodore Leschenault de la Tour, 112–113 collaboration, 112 interest in entomology, 114 diaries, 124 on Raffles, 125 appointment as naturalist for the EIC in Java, 126 correspondence with Raffles, 126, 131– 132, 137, 143, 145, 147, 150, 152, 155, 256 on ‘Narrative of a Journey thro’ the Island of Java’, 126 under EIC employ in Java, 126–127, 131–134, 137, 147, 150, 152–153, 355 salary from British government, 100, 102, 126, 143, 153 report on Upas Tree, 1812, 118, 128 account on mineralogy of Java, 1812, 131–132 report on the insect Endolendol, 133 proposal to assemble mammals and birds for EIC Museum, 1812, 134 request to tour Cianjur and Batavia with Dr. William Hunter, 137 account of findings in western Javanese Principalities in 1814, 147 dried plant collection to Sir Joseph Banks’s Herbarium, 1814, 148–149 dried plant collection to EIC Museum, 1814, 150

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

180mm x 255mm

462  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

travels and findings in eastern Javanese Principalities in 1815, 150 seeds of plants for Bank’s Herbarium. 1816, 150 guaranteed all collections to the EIC before Dutch takeover of Java, 153 appeal for stipend for the preparation and classing of collections, 255 encouragement from Raffles and EIC, 126, 133–135, 146, 150, 153, 254 meeting with Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen and, 1812, 138 Bangka, 137, 140–143 commission of enquiry, 137, 140–141 geological research, 141–142 reports on geological findings, 142–143 report on state of the island, 1813, 142 correspondence with Sir Joseph Banks, 148–149 friendship with Raffles, 152, 154, 253, 267 saddened by Raffles’s departure for England, 1816, 152 refusal to transfer collections to the Dutch, 156, 254 voyage on Lady Raffles from Batavia, Java to Bengkulu, Sumatra, 157 journey to Minangkabau with Raffles and Lady Raffles, 242, 251 friendship with Arnold, 243, 248 geological researches for the EIC in Sumatra, 251–252 voyage on Lady Raffles to London, 252 character, 254, 267 estimations of him, 254 patience, 266 Zoological Society of London and other Societies, 259, 400–402, 404 Curator of the East India Company Museum, 259 meeting with Alfred Russel Wallace, 260 publication of Catalogues, 261–262, 266 publications, 93, 100–101, 108, 118, 130, 148, 258–259, 261–267 Zoological Researches in Java, and the Neighbouring Islands, 92, 121, 145 illustrations, 257

b3461_Index.indd 462

Plantæ Javanicæ Rariores, 93, 97, 100–107, 262, 266, 401 Postscript, 98, 100, 108, 118 disappointments in publication delay, 262 issues with Robert Brown, 262–263, 265–266 publication delays, 264 Publication of Part 1, 1838, 263 Publication of Part 2, 1840, 265 Publication of Part 3, 1844, 265 Publication of Part 4, 1852, 265 reviews, 265–266 scientific reputation affected by publication delay, 265–266 itinerant life in London, 267 transfer of botanical collections to Royal Botanic Gardens, 267 transfer of zoological collections to British Museum, 267 Herbarium, 306 Horsfield, Juliana Sarah (née Parsons, Horsfield’s mother), 94 Horsfield, Mary (née Doughty) (Horsfield’s grandmother), 94 Horsfield, Isaac (Horsfield’s great-uncle), 94 Horsfield, Timothy (Horsfield’s deceased brother), 95 Horsfield, Timothy, Jr., (Horsfield’s father), 94–95 Horsfield, Timothy, Sr., (Horsfield’s grandfather) 94 Horsfield, William (Horsfield’s brother), 95 Hornstedt, Claës Frederic, 93 Huddart, George, 309 Hull, Alice Watson, 384 Hull, Lieutenant Lawrence Nilson, 174 Hull, Robert, 286 Hull, Sophia (see Lady Raffles) Hull, William Hollamby, 164, 269, 404 Hullmandel, Charles Joseph, 257 Hunter, Andrew, 19 Hunter, Dr. William, 40, 74, 127, 133 Husain Mahomed Syah, Sultan of Johor, 278 I Ibbetson, Robert, 13 Imperial Academy Naturæ Curiosorum, 259 Inglis, Sir Hugh, 10, 396

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   463

Inglis, Sir Robert Harry (Raffles’s friend), 396–397, 400 J Jack, Alexander (Jack’s brother), 271–272 Jack, Andrew T.W. (Jack’s brother), 271 Jack, Grace (née Bolt) (Jack’s mother), 271–272, 273, 296, 298 Jack, Robert (Jack’s brother), 271, 296, 360 Jack, Reverend William (Jack’s grandfather), 271 Jack, William, Sr. (Jack’s father), 271, 296, 298 Jack, Dr. William, 268–269, 301, 308, 351 recognition and contributions, 269–270, 273–274, 280, 284, 298–299 unofficial botanist for the EIC, 269, 279 Surgeon to Raffles and family, 269, 296, 314 character, 270–272, 298, 321 estimations of him, 321 birth, 271 grandparents, 271 siblings, 271–272, 296 health, 271, 273–275, 282, 293, 297–299 childhood, 272 parents, 273, 296, 298 letters to family, 273, 275, 280, 282, 287– 288, 290, 293–294, 296–297, 315 talents and intellect, 271–274, 298 memory, 272–273 education, 272–273 Master of Arts degree, St. Andrews University, 273 Juvenile Medical Society, 273 foreign languages, 273, 274, 280 death, 269–271, 296–298, 301, 360 cause of death, 270 memorial at Calcutta Botanic Garden, 268, 299 post-humous naming of Jackia ornate, 299 tribute by Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, 369 interest in botany and geology, 272, 275 love of nature, 272, 280, 282, 292 fondness for Singapore flora and landscape, 280 desire to join the EIC, 273 appearing before the Court of Examiners, 273–274

b3461_Index.indd 463

military surgeon, Bengal Medical Establishment, 274 military surgeon, Nepal War, 274 botanical research in Nepal and Calcutta, 274–275 meeting Dr Nathaniel Wallich, 274 friendship with Wallich, 275 letters to Wallich, 277–279, 282–283, 286, 288–291, 294–296, 313–315, 317 support for Wallich, 314 meeting Raffles at the Botanic Garden, Calcutta, 1818, 275 friendship with Raffles, 270–271, 279, 283, 297–298, 301, 321 on Raffles, 289 voyage on the Nearchus from Calcutta to Penang, 1818, 275–276 account of Raffles’s political manoeuvres in Penang, 277–278 as Civil Surgeon in Fort Marlborough (Bengkulu) Sumatra, 279, 314 Secretary of Raffles in west Sumatra, 279 botanical research for the EIC, 282, 291 Nepenthes (pitcher plant) in Singapore, 281–282 Rafflesia arnoldi (Brown) in Bengkulu, 288, 289, 316 Rafflesia Titan, 283, 294 specimens from Bengkulu, Sumatra, 282 specimens from Sugar Loaf Mountain (Gunung Bengko), 295 specimens from Riau, 282 specimens from Tapanuli region, 286 Nepenthes (pitcher plant) in Singapore, 282, 315 Sonerila from Penang, 1819, 317 voyage on the Indiana to Singapore, 1819, 280 voyage on the Indiana and Favourite to Bengkulu, 1819, 282 collection of specimens in Riau, 315 voyage on Favourite from Bengkulu to Calcutta, 1819, 284 official reports on Bengkulu population, 284 voyage from Calcutta to Tapanuli and Bengkulu, 286–287 account of the Batak people from Tapanuli, cannibalism, 287

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

180mm x 255mm

464  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

attitude on Batak customs of cannibalism, 287 attitude on Sultans and Rajahs of Sumatra, 290 attitude on local superstitions, 295 on the people of Pulau Nias, 292 political mission to Pulau Nias, 291–292 Treaty with Nias rajahs, 292 visit to Mukomuko and Lais, Sumatra, 296–297 election to Geological Society of London, 296 publications, 269–270, 275, 290, 294, 315 Catalogue of zoological collections, 288–290 Malayan Miscellanies, 283, 291, 294 paper on Rafflesia Titan (Rafflesia Arnoldi), 283 paper on the geology of Sumatra, 293 papers in Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 296 report on Pulau Nias in Malayan Miscellanies, 293 Descriptions of Malayan Plants, 369 On the Malayan Species of Melastoma, 369 Jackson, Isaac, 74 Jackson, Lieutenant Philip, 320, 334, 337, 350–351, 371 Janssens, Jan Willem, 123 Java, 97, 176, 193–194, 198–199, 201–202, 209, 211, 213 British invasion of Java, 1811, 71, 91, 125, 159, 161, 164–166, 170 capture of Meester Cornelis, 161, 164– 165 restitution to the Dutch, 1814, 151, 153, 175 Sepoy Conspiracy, 1815, 152, 162, 191 Java Government Gazette, 133–134, 138–139 Jenkinson, Robert Banks, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (see also Lord Liverpool), 396– 397, 400–401 Jennings, William Robert, 237 Jerichau-Baumann, Elizabeth, 313 Johnston, Alexander Laurie, 338 Johnson, Major Jeremiah Martin, 186 Junghuhn, Franz Wilhelm, 92, 94, 105

b3461_Index.indd 464

K Kempt, Mackintosh & Co., 296, 360 Kiai Adipati Suro Adimonggolo, 181 Kirby, William, 404 Koek, Adrian, 69 L Lake, General Gerard, 1st Viscount, 161 Lambert, Aylmer Bourke, 305, 315 Lamb, Charles, 6 Lawrence, John Curson, 13 Leach, Dr. William Elford, 258 Lear, Edward, 397 Leschenault de la Tour, Jean-Baptiste Louis Claude Théodore, 94, 110, 113 Leslie, Charles Henry, 162 Le Vaillant, François, 114 Leyden, Dr. John Casper, 16–17, 376, 397 portraits, 16, 31 tribute by Raffles, 17 friendship with Raffles, 17, birth, 18 parents, 18, 75 education, 18–19, 21 recognition for literary and scholarly works, 20, 22, 26, 38 voyage on Hugh Inglis from England to India, 1803, 22–23 character, 22–24 arrogance, 24 Assistant Surgeon in Fort St. George (Madras), 21, 23 salary from the East India Company, 23 languages and oriental studies, 22–23, 26–30, 33–35, 37–40, 42, 71 ambition, 22­–23, 40 study of Indian languages, 27–29, 40, 43, translations of gospel, 28–29 Professor and Examiner at the College of Fort William, 1807, 29, 43 ‘On the Maláyu Nation’, 48 tour of Naning districts, Melaka, 69–70 description of accent and voice, 26–27 recognition for linguistic talents, 29–30, 37, 39, 45 health, 32, 37, 46 voyage on Louisa Villa to Penang, 1805, 32 friendship with Raffles, 32, 43, 47, 77

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   465

influence and mentoring of Raffles’s studies in languages, 32–33, 43, 44, 48 impression of Macassarese and Bugis people, 33 voyage on Santo Antonio from Penang to Calcutta, 1806, 37 Assistant Secretary to the College of Fort William, 40 Lord Minto, 39–40 correspondence with Raffles, 41–42, 44–48, 53–65, 69–70 correspondence with Olivia Raffles, 51, 63, 66–68 invasion of Java, 62–63, 64, 66, 377 assisting Raffles’s communications with Calcutta, 62–63, 64 attitude towards Malays, 63 corresponding with Indonesian rulers, 71 death, 72, 91, 377 tombstone, 72–73 tribute by Raffles, 73–74 will, 75–76 siblings, 75, 84, 86 literary works and publications, 17, 19–20, 23, 26, 28–29, 32, 39–41, 59, 76–77, 81, 83–85, 88 Malay Annals, 52, 75, 78, 81–87 fate of works and manuscripts, 76–79, 84, 87­–89 Leyden, Isabella (née Scott) (Leyden’s mother), 18 Leyden, John (Leyden’s father), 18, 75 Leyden, Margaret (Leyden’s sister), 75 Leyden, Robert (Leyden’s brother), 84, 86 Lindeman, Harriot (Raffles’s aunt), 3 Lindeman, Reverend John, 3–4 Lindeman, William, 3 Lindley, John, 266 Linnean Society of London, 221, 245, 248, 256, 258, 267, 290, 294, 303, 306–308, 313, 351, 397, 398, 413 Loftie, John Billington, 54 London, 193, 195, 198, 214, 399 Lucas, John, 313 Lumsdaine, Dr. John, 63, 222 Lyde, Edward, 3 Lyde, Elizabeth (Raffles’s maternal aunt), 201 Lyell, Sir Charles, 220, 221

b3461_Index.indd 465

M Macalister, Colonel Norman, 13, 15, 42 Macdonald, Lieutenant David, 51 Mack, Karl Freiherr von Leiberich, 41 MacLachlan, Ewen, 272 Macleay, William Sharp, 32, 261, 400 Mackenzie, Captain William Gordon, 347–348 Mackenzie, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin, 74, 76, 111, 127, 317 Mackenzie, Graham, 333 Mackintosh, Sir James, 28, 37 Mackintosh & Co., 326, 342 Macquoid & Co., 163 Macquoid, Thomas, 165, 210, 337 Madras, 11, 14, 21–23, 26, 28, 33–34, 38, 49, 60, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 111, 127, 140, 160, 164, 184, 227, 232, 301, 317, 325, 359, 362 Madras General Hospital, 23 Madras Native Infantry, 140, 160, 164, 184, 359 Magendie, François, 128 Maguire, Thomas Herbert, 313 Mahratta Wars, 42, 173, 286 Majoribanks, Campbell, 88 Malcolm, Sir John, 33, 42, 87–88, 285 Malay Annals (transl. John Casper Layden) introd. by Raffles, 52, 71, 78, 81–84, 86, 88, 377 Manning, Reverend William, 51 Manning, Thomas, 50 Marsden, Elizabeth, (née Wilkins), 389 Marsden, William, 48, 60, 128, 198–199, 211, 270, 311, 324, 336, 388–389 Marshman, Joshua, 50 Martin, William Byam, 60 Maxim Gauci, 300, 306, 313 Maxwell & Co, 338 Maxwell, Catherine, 209 Maxwell, John Argyle, 338 McLeay, Alexander, 179, 221 Melaka (see also Malacca), 13, 27, 32–33, 35, 38, 48–49, 52, 54, 57–61, 63–64, 66–71, 127, 203, 237, 269, 301, 323–324, 354, 362, 375–377, 381 Government House, 203 Melaka Laws (Undang-undang Melaka), 35, 61 restitution to the Dutch, 1818, 69 Straits of Melaka, 13, 269, 276, 305

20-Mar-19 9:22:16 AM



b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

180mm x 255mm

466  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, 158, 161, 209, 214–215, 301, 311–312, 328, 396–397, 404 Menzies, Archibald, 247 Methven, Lieutenant Cathcart, 159, 165, 170, 181, 184, 186, 224, 348 conspiring against Raffles, 165 aide-de-camp to Raffles, 170 education, 170 military service, 170–171 invasion of Java, 170 investigation of Banten sultanate, 170 Assistant to the Resident of Buitenzorg (Bogor), Java, 170 mission to Banjarmasin, Kalimantan, 170 essay on the Dayaks of Borneo, 170 Malay translator, 170 capture of live orang utan, 170 aide-de-camp to Lieut.-Gov. John Fendall, 171 character, 171 merchant business in Singapore, 171 charges of money lending and other misappropriations, 171 dispute with Raffles, 171 death, 171 Minangkabau, Sumatra 242, 251, 317 Milne, William, 328 Minto, Lord (see Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 1st Earl of Minto) Minto, Lord (see Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 2nd Earl of Minto) Mitan, James, 217 Moffat, William, 13 Monro, Alexander, 21 Montgomerie, Dr. William, 309, 325–326 Moore, Frederic, 260, 266 Moore, Thomas, 384–385 Morgan, John, 335 Morrison, Dr. Robert, 324, 333, 344 Morton, Reverend James (Leyden’s cousin), 30 Mudge, Lieutenant-General Richard Zachariah, 384 Muntinghe, Harman Warner, 91, 175 Murray, Alexander, 27 Murray, John, 196, 215, 311, 353 Muséum de Genève, 267 Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 276, 395

b3461_Index.indd 466

N Napier & Scott, 333 Napier, Anna, 333 Napier, David Skene, 333 Napier, Macvey, 333 Nepal War, 237, 274 Nightingall, Lady Florentia Elizabeth, 185 Nightingall, Sir Miles, 185 Nitschmann, David, 94 Nixon, Captain John, 186 Noroña, Francisco, 93 O Ochterlony, Sir David, 274 Oliphant, Anne, 12, 38 Oliphant, John Hope, 12, 47 Olivier, Johannes, Jz., 104 Otto, Dr. John Conrad, 95 Otto, Dr. John Frederik, 95 P Parish, Sir Woodbine, 396 Parsons, William, 94 Parton, Sir William, 387 Palmer & Co., 330–331 Palmer, John, 330, 357 Paschen, Jacob George Diederik, 97–98, 138 Payen, Antoine Auguste Joseph, 105 Pearson, Henry Shepherd, 13, 44 Pearson, Sir Richard, 44 Peel, Sir Robert, 397, 400–401 Pelletier, Auguste, 257 Penang (Prince of Wales Island), 8, 10, 12, 14, 27, 29, 30, 32–34, 36–38, 45, 48, 51, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 66, 67, 77, 160, 161, 171, 203, 252, 268, 276, 277–280, 283–285, 287, 304, 309, 311, 329, 376, 380, 381 Government House, 15, 47 George Town, 52, 68 Pentland, Joseph Barclay, 396 Petty-Fitzmaurice, Henry, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, 384, 397, 401–402 Phillimore, Reginald Henry, 307 Philipps, John Lyon, 283 Phillips, Lieutenant-Governor William Edward, 15 Phillips, Nathaniel, 5 Phillips, William Edward, 283, 326 Pigeot, Julius, 309

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   467

Pitt, William, 2nd Baron Amherst and 1st Earl Amherst, 358 Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 272 Playfair, John, 19, 39 Port Morant, Jamaica, 3–5 Porter, George, 309 Portsmouth, England, 4, 12, 13, 22, 80, 160– 162, 178 Poston, Reverend A.P., 11 Presgrave, Edward, 239 Prince, John, 291 Prince Regent, Prince of Wales, George Augustus Frederick, 198 Q Queiros, Claude, 330, 341 R Raden Aria Surca, 290 Raden Saleh, 181, 187 Raden Rana Dipura, 237, 378–380 Raffeneau-Delile, Alire, 128 Raffles, Ann (née Lyde) (Raffles’s mother), 3–4, 201, 205 Raffles, Ann (Raffles’s deceased sister), 3–4 Raffles, Ann (Raffles’s sister), 4 Raffles, Benjamin (Raffles’s deceased brother), 4 Raffles, Captain Benjamin (Raffles’s father), 3–4, 193 Raffles, Charlotte Sophia Tunjung Segara (Raffles’s daughter), 236–237, 346 Raffles, Ella Sophia (Raffles’s daughter), 296, 301, 346 Raffles, Elizabeth (Raffles’s deceased sister), 4 Raffles, Flora (Raffles’s daughter), 347 death, 358, 365 Raffles, Harriot (Raffles’s sister), 4, 54 Raffles, Leonora (Raffles’s sister), 4, 54 Raffles, Leopold Stamford (Raffles’s son), 280, 295, 346 Raffles, Mary Anne (Raffles’ sister) (see Flint, Mary Anne, née Raffles) Raffles, Mary (Raffles’s great-aunt), 3 Raffles, Olivia Mariamne (née Devenish) (Raffles’s first wife), 9, 11, 32, 37, 44, 48, 54 Raffles, Reverend Dr. Thomas (Raffles’s cousin), 5, 193, 217, 297, 334, 345, 379, 384, 390, 392, 399

b3461_Index.indd 467

portraits, 192, 201 reunion with Raffles, 193 parents, 193 religious beliefs, 193 education, 193 Reminiscences, 193 literary recognition, 194 on Raffles, 194, 198, 311, 384 Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Late Reverend Thomas Spencer of Liverpool, 194 The History of Java (first edition), 194– 195, 197 collaboration with Raffles on Sĕrat Bratayuda, 194–195, 197 Zoological Society of London, 404 Raffles, Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 396 Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford portraits, 365 appearance, 194, 375 birth, 3 family parents, 3–5, 193, 201, 205, 383 death of mother, 383 grandparents, 3 siblings, 3–4, 54, 204, 214 cousins, 5, 12, 193, 201, 203, 212, 214, 217, 297, 403 first marriage (Olivia Mariamne), 11, 32, 37, 44, 48, 54 second marriage (Lady Raffles), 9, 163, 197, 207, 209–210, 214–215 uncle, 6, 8–9, 11, 201, 214 aunt, 193 aunt (maternal), 201 nephew, 383 children, 236–237, 280, 296 birth of son Leopold, 280 birth of son Stamford Marsden, 289 death of Leopold, 295 death of Stamford and Charlotte, 296 loss of children, 301, 346, 358, 365 sending Ella to England, 296, 301 reunion with daughter Ella, 384 name of Stamford, 3 name of Bingley, 3 declining family fortunes, 4–5 attitude on slavery, 5, 291, 344 education, 6

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

180mm x 255mm

468  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

East India House, 6, 8, 9 ‘extra clerk’, 6–9 salary as junior clerk, 8–9 bond, 8 Brigade of Royal East-India Volunteers, 8 finances, 8–10, 12, 164, 185, 201, 203– 207, 236, 387 debt to Charles Hamond, 9, 12, 203–204, 206–207 debt to Elton Hamond, 12, 203–204, 206–207 character, 10, 125, 312 Christian belief and morals, 187 attitude towards free market, 324, 326 attitude against favoritism and partiality, 332, 342 estimation of him, 198, 279, 397, 403 Freemasonry, 175 interest in natural history, 125, 301, 309, 311, 355, 370 received instructions from Dr. Joseph Arnold on collection methods, 236 natural history collection, 219, 281, 314–315, 317, 355, 387, 390, 392, 403–404 Rafflesia arnoldi, 240–241, 269, 282, 316 Nepenthes (pitcher plant), 315 loss of plant specimens on Dr. Arnold’s voyage to England, 1816, 219 collection from Bengkulu after Fame shipwreck, 1820, 387, 392, 403 Museum Rafflesianum, 404 natural history drawings, 256, 314, 366 health, 48, 163–164, 195, 296, 301, 324, 326, 347, 352, 354, 358, 383–384, 403 death, 164, 209, 311, 403 cause of death, 403 tribute by Wallich, 311–312 Assistant Secretary (later Secretary), Prince of Wales Island Government, 1805, 10, 17, 202–203, 389 voyage on Ganges and Warley from England to Penang, 1805, 13–15 naval battle with the French, 14 Malay language and customs, and oriental studies, 17, 32, 33, 35–36, 45–48, 60–61, 182–183, 238, 240, 280, 291, 376, 378, 390

b3461_Index.indd 468

translation of the Melaka Laws (UndangUndang Melaka), 35, 61 employment of native translators, 35–36, 52, on the Malay calendar cycle, 45 recognition for Raffles’s proficiency in Malay, 36, 48 descriptions of the Dayak people, 170 instruction in Malay from Siami, 376 Dr. John Leyden, 17, 72–74, 77–79, 80–83 friendship, 17, 32, 43, 47, 72–74, 77, 80–83 declaring Leyden’s works upon his death, 77–79 support for Raffles’s studies in languages, 32–33, 43, 44, 48 correspondence, 41–42, 44–48, 53–65, 69–70 Malay Annals, 78, 81–83 invasion of Java, 1811, 49–50, 56–58, 62, 91 as political agent to the Governor-General with the Malay States, 49–50, 232 on the failed Dutch attack on Palembang, 53 request for military stores, 54–58 Java administration, 1811–1814, 91 Lieutenant-Governor of Java, 17, 59, 74, 91, 177 liberalisation of trade, 91 treaties with Javanese courts, 91 on limiting freedom of movement, 124 charges of corruption by Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie, 161, 193 Sepoy conspiracy in Java, 191 Dr. Thomas Horsfield, 126, 132–135, 146, 150, 152­–153, 213, 250, 253–254 support for Horsfield’s research, 126, 133–135, 146, 150, 153, 254 friendship, 152, 154, 253, 267 on Horsfield, 132, 213, 250, 253–254 correspondence, 126, 131–132, 137, 143, 145, 147, 150, 152, 155, 222, 256, 310 cession of Bangka to the Dutch, 1814, 232, 234 reunion with Revd. Thomas Raffles in London, 1816, 193

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   469

letters to Reverend Dr. Thomas Raffles, 195–197, 297, 392, 399 meeting with Napoleon at St. Helena, 1816, 162, 169 translations and publications, 181, 194– 195, 197, 256, 257, 390 Sĕrat Bratayuda, 181, 194–195, 197 The History of Java, (first edition), 194– 201, 198–199, 208 aquatints, 201 reviews of first edition, 195–201, 209 (second edition), 202–203, 207, 211–215 An Account of the Antiquities of Java, 213–214 ‘Some account of the Dugong’, 309 Elton Hamond, 201–202 letters to Hamond, 202, 204–208, 210– 215 quarrel relating to Raffles’s unpaid debts, 203–204, 206–207 correspondence with Sir Joseph Banks, 219, 245, 279–280 as Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough (Bengkulu), Sumatra, 1818–1824, 152, 160, 237, 275 289, 299 voyage on Lady Raffles from Falmouth to Bengkulu, 1817–1818, 236 administration and reforms in Fort Marlborough, 232, 238, 289 travels around Sumatra with Dr. Joseph Arnold and Lady Raffles, 238–242 natural history collections from Bengkulu, 387, 392, 403 advocating botanical research in Sumatra, 269 Rafflesia arnoldi, 240–241, 269, 282, 316 encounter with the Pasemah people, 239, 241 treaty with Pasemah ulu Manna, 1818, 241 Minangkabau, west Sumatra, 242, 251, 317 journey to Minangkabau with Dr. Joseph Arnold and Lady Raffles, 1818, 242, 251 discovery of plant species and geological specimens, 251 treaties, 251

b3461_Index.indd 469

natural history collection from Minangkabau, 317 seizing of zoological collection from the French naturalists, 1820, 256 dispute with French naturalists, 288 Dr. Joseph Arnold, 218, 236, 224, 244– 248 on Arnold, 218, 236, 244, 246, 248 tribute on Arnold’s death, 245 correspondence with Arnold, 227 arrival in Calcutta with Lady Raffles, 269 proposed expansionist policies in Sumatra against the Dutch, 1818, 269 visit to Calcutta Botanic Garden, 269, 275 William Jack, 269–271, 275, 280–281, 297–298, 314, 360 meeting with William Jack and Nathaniel Wallich, 275 appointment of Jack as Personal Surgeon, 269, 314 on appointing Jack as unofficial botanist for the EIC, 269 encouraged publication of Malayan Miscellanies, 282–283, 291 on Jack, 270–271, 280–281, 297–298 tribute, 360 voyage on the Nearchus from Calcutta to Penang, 1818, 275–276 Aceh mission, 1818, 276–280, 314 decision to delay mission, 277 survey of southern Melaka Straits (see also Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford, founding of Singapore), 276–277 voyage on the Indiana to Singapore, 1819, 280 Singapore, 1819, 1823–1824, 369, 276–281, 301, 329–330, 333, 335, 343, 353, 357 founding, 269, 276–278, 396 Treaty, 278 botanical collections, 279 instructions to Farquhar on administration, 1819, 280–281, 301 conflict with Farquhar, 301, 311, 329– 330, 333, 335, 343, 353, 357 establishment of laws and regulations, 328, 333, 353 reforms to tenure rights of land, 326–327, 329, 332

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

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470  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

conflict with local British and European traders, 301 conflict with Claude Queiros, 340 Anglo-Chinese College, 344 bungalow at Government Hill, 324–325, 329 establishment of printing press, 328 Crawfurd’s replacement of Farquhar as Resident, 329 attempts at re-settling Asian communities, 331 social life, 333 development of Singapore settlement, 333, 334, 341, 349 education and institutions, 344, 351 Singapore Botanic Garden, 309, 319, 337, 344, 350, 353 finances, 320 letters to Wallich on establishing a botanic garden, 319, 321 voyage on the Indiana and Favourite to Bengkulu, 1819, 282 news of Governor of Prince of Wales Island’s death, 283 voyage on Favourite from Bengkulu to Calcutta, 1819, 284 desire to be Governor of united administration of Penang, Bengkulu and Singapore, 283–285 depression from failure to be Governor, 285 journey from Calcutta to Tapanuli and Bengkulu, 1820, 286 Nathaniel Wallich, 301–302, 308–309, 311, 317–318, 320–321, 325, 342, 367 friendship, 301–302, 308–309, 311, 317, 321, 367 on Wallich, 308, 310, 318, 320, 325, 342 correspondence, 309, 311, 313, 315, 317–321, 322–325, 328–329, 338–339, 341, 345, 352, 355–356, 363, 365, 368, 370 shipwreck of Fame, 1824, 311, 365, 367, 382, 386, 403 distress at loss of friends, 364 voyage on the Mariner from Bengkulu to England, 1824, 383

b3461_Index.indd 470

visit to Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne House on No. 23 Lower Grosvenor Street, 387, 390 visiting Wilberforce at Uxbridge, 390 High Wood house, Middlesex, 390 Museum, 390, 392 friendship with Charlotte Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, 387, 389 correspondence, 237, 245, 251, 269, 324, 359, 387, 389–390, 393 friendship with Edward Adolphus Seymour, Duke of Somerset, 201, 395–396, 389 Fellow of the Royal Society, 389 Zoological Society in London, 392–393, 395, 397, 403 seeking support, 397 appointment as President, 402 Chairman, 399–400 disagreement with Sir Humphry Davy, 398 Prospectus, 392–394, 396, 398–400 Raffles, Lady (née Sophia Hull), 9, 163, 197, 207, 209–210, 214–215, 236, 384, 404 portrait, 218 marriage to Raffles, 9, 163, 197, 207, 209–210, 214–215, 239 loyalty to her husband, 239 on Raffles’s miniature portrait, 365, 367 on Raffles’s health, 383 on Raffles’s natural history collection, Zoological Society of London Museum, 404 pregnancy, 222, 236, 280 children, 236, 280, 289 birth of first child, Charlotte, 236 birth of Leopold, 280 birth of Stamford Marsden, 289 death of Leopold, 295 death of Stamford and Charlotte, 296 sending Ella to England, 236, 296, 301 loss of children, 346, 358, 365 reunion with daughter Ella, 384 health, 231, 324, 347, 358, 362, 384 in Dr. William Jack’s medical care, Penang, 278 recovery in Cheltenham, 384

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   471

voyage on Lady Raffles from Falmouth to Bengkulu, 1817–1818, 236–237, instructions by Dr. Joseph Arnold on natural history, 236 on conditions of Fort Marlborough (Bengkulu), Sumatra, 238 travels around Sumatra with Raffles and Arnold, 1818, 238–242 discovery of Rafflesia arnoldi (Brown), 240–241 encountering the pasemah people, 241 journey to Minangkabau, 242, 251 accompanying Raffles to Calcutta, 1818, 269 voyage on the Nearchus from Calcutta to Penang, 1818, 275–276 voyage on the Indiana to Singapore, 1819, 280 voyage on the Indiana and Favourite to Bengkulu, 1819, 282 Singapore, 329, 333 bungalow at Government Hill, 329 distress at loss of friends, 364 voyage on the Mariner from Bengkulu to England, 1824, 383 visiting Wilberforce at Uxbridge, 390 correspondence with Charlotte Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, 238 correspondence with Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, 311, 319 correspondence with Mary Anne Flint, 333, 383 correspondence with Rev. Dr. Thomas Raffles, 390 friendship with Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 397 publications Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, 158, 161, 209, 214–215, 301, 311–312, 328, 396–397, 404 2nd edition, 312 presentation of special copies to important persons, 311 review by Wallich, 312 reviews, 396–397 The History of Java (second edition, 1830), 215

b3461_Index.indd 471

Raffles, Stamford Marsden (Raffles’s son), 289, 346 Raffles, Thomas (Raffles’s grandfather), 3 Raffles, Thomas Macquoid, 210 Raffles, William Daniell (Raffles’s uncle), 214 Rafflesia arnoldi, 177, 240–241, 248, 283, 316 Robert Brown, 241, 290 Rafflesia titan, 283, 294 Rajah Dyan Mabela, Sultan of Inderapura, 290 Ralph, Lieutenant Henry, 276 Ramsay, William Brown, 9–10, 44, 49, 134, 162 Ramsay, William, Sr., 10 recommendation of Raffles for Assistant Secretary in Penang, 10 Ransome, George, 314 Reith, John, 27 Reinwardt, Caspar Georg Carl, 125, 156 Richard (Nathaniel Phillips’s son), 5 Ricketts, Charles Milner, 276, 396 Ridley, Henry Nicholas, 313 Roberts, Colonel John, 8, 21 Robertson, Andrew, 313 Robison, Captain William, 125 Robison, Major William, 141 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 203, 214, 220, 397 Robinson, William, 13, 55 Robinson, Reverend William, 364 Rogers, Samuel, 387 Ross, Daniel, 278 Ross, Dr. Johan Theodoor, 99 Ross, Johannes Theodorus, 183 Roxburgh, Dr. William, 128, 223, 227, 229, 247, 303–305 Roxburgh, William, Jr., 247 correspondence with Henry Tucker, 302, 306–307 works and publications, 306–307 Royal Asiatic Society, London, 51, 63, 153, 207, 259, 397 Royal Society, London, 128–129, 155, 179, 196, 209, 219, 224, 252, 259, 288, 304, 308–309, 336, 387, 389, 392, 398, 400, 403 Transactions, 288, 290 Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 96 Rumphius, Georg Everhard, 228 Russell, James, 21 Ryan, Charles, 318

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

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472  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

S Sabine, Joseph, 400, 402 Salmond, Francis, 295, 362 Salter, Ann, 3 Samouelle, George, 262 Schill, Jeremias, 183 Scott, Captain William, 54 Scott, Charles, 333 Scott, John, 54 Scott, Robert, 333 Scott, Sir Walter, 19, 24, 34 Sejarah Melayu (see Malay Annals) Semarang Marine School, 109, 113, 120, 123 Sepoy Conspiracy (see under Java) Sĕrat Bratayuda, 181, 194–195, 197 Seven Years War, 94 Seton, Archibald, 74 Sevestre, Sir Thomas, 169, 185 Seymour, Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 209, 252, 385, 387, 389–390, 393, 397 birth, 389 parents, 389 character and intellect, 387 marriage to Edward Adolphus Seymour, 389 education, 389 health, 389 intellect, 389 social life, 387 friendship and correspondence with Raffles, 387, 389–390, 393 on Raffles, 389 death, 389 Seymour, Edward Adolphus, 11th Duke of Somerset, 201, 395, 399–400, 402–403 portrait, 208 death, 209 correspondence with Raffles, 396 marriage to Charlotte, Duchess of Somerset, 389 Shaw-Stewart, Margaret, 209 Sherwood, Captain Henry, 14 Sherwood, J.T. Le Mesurier, 13 Sherwood, Mary Martha, 14 Ships Admiral Gardner, 166 Akbar, HMS (Captain Drury), 71

b3461_Index.indd 472

Alcmene, HMS (Edwards Graham), 179 America, HMS (Josias Rowley), 179 Ann (Captain Benjamin Raffles), 3–4 Arethusa, HMS, 166 Ariel, HEIC (Lieutenant David Macdonald), 51–53 Asia (Ship), 169 Baring, HCS (H. Templer), 274 Blenheim, HMS (Austin Bissel), 12–15 Borneo (J.C. Ross), 296 Brunswick, 13 China (ship), 92 Coutts (J. Hay), 13 Cumberland, 13 Daphne (Noak), 387 Devonshire, 14 Discovery (J.G.F. Crawford), 278 Dorsetshire (Robert), 12–14 Dromedary (Captain Pritchard), 178 Enterprise (R. Harris), 278 Fairlie, HCS, 169 Fame, 311, 355, 358, 365, 367, 384, 387, 390, 403 Favourite (J. Lambert), 283–284, 345 Florentia, 169 Ganges (James Bernard), 278 Ganges (Peter Falconer), 152, 162, 165, 193, 378 Ganges (Thomas Talbot Harrington), 12–13 Hero of Malown (Ship), 210 Hibernia, HMS (Edward Brace), 179 Hindostan, HMS (John Pasco), 178 Hope (James Pender), 12 Hope (H. Elliott), 177, 190, 219 Hugh Inglis (William Fairfax), 22 Illustrious, HMS (Captain Festing), 71 Indefatigable (Mathew Bowles), 177, 180, 184 Indiana (James Pearl), 278, 280, 282, 286, 315, 347, 380 Investigator (Daniel Ross), 278 Isabella (John Scott), 54 John Adam (Brown), 310 John Adam (Thomas MacDonnell), 330 John Adam, 311, 322–323, 372 La Belle Poule (French ship), 13 La Bellone (Perroud), 166 Lady Flora (M’Donnel), 383

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   473

Lady Raffles (Harry Auber), 157, 160, 162, 211, 213, 229, 231, 234, 236, 242–243, 376, 379 Lady Raffles, 252–254, 282, 285, 297 Layton, 271, 297, 360 Lord Minto (William Greig), 71, 74, 377 Lord Nelson, 166 Louisa Villa, 32 Malacca, HMS (D. Mackay), 168 Marengo (French ship), 13 Mariner, 366, 383 Marquis of Hastings, 173 Marquis of Wellington, 169 Minerva (J. Bell), 163, 166 Minerva (M. Holmes), 140 Mercury (J.R. Beaumont), 278 Minto (J.S. Criddle), 276 Modeste, HMS (Hon. George Elliot), 26, 62, 67, 71, 91, 377 Nearchus, HCS (William Maxfield), 276, 278, 380 Nepenthes, 281 Northampton (J.O. Tween), 179 Phoenix, HMS, 67 Piémontaise (French warship), 60 Princess Royal, HMS, 4 Providence, 173, 210 Rochester (D. Sutton), 286 Santo Antonio, 37 Sellicherry (Extra Ship), 166 Sir David Scott, HCS (W. Hunter), 309 Udney, 380 Venelia (Thompson), 323, 387 Victory, HMS (Lord Horatio Nelson), 178 Warley (Henry Wilson), 12–14 Wellington (G. Maxwell), 366 West Indian, 5 Siami, John Leyden, 374, 376 as Raffles’s clerk and translator, 376–377, 379–380 Thai origins, 376 poems, 376, 378 on naming of John Leyden, 377 assistance to Leyden, 377 friendship with Raffles, 378–380 visit to London, 379 assistance to Francis Crossley, 380

b3461_Index.indd 473

service in Singapore, 380–381 dismissal and bitterness with the EIC, 376, 381 Siberg, Governor-General Johannes, 97–98 Siddons, George John, 276 Simes, John Thomas, 365 Singapore, 3, 13, 57, 64, 67, 278, 300–301, 309, 319–320, 328–329, 333, 337, 344, 350–351, 353, 368, 370, 372, 384, 387, 392 founding of EIC settlement, 269, 276– 278, 329, 333, 396 printing press, 328 Laws, 328 New Harbour, 327 rapid expansion, 301 Anglo-Chinese College, 344, 350 Singapore Botanic Garden, 300, 309, 337, 344, 353, 368, 370, 372 establishment, 309, 319 extension of Government Garden, 320 finances, 320 Singapore Institution, 344, 351 Slave trade, 291, 343 Smith, Sir James Edward, 305 Soleiman Almah Jamat (Sultan), 59 Sophia Hull (see Lady Raffles) Spencer, John Charles, Viscount Althorp and 3rd Earl Spencer, 397 Spencer, Reverend Thomas, 194 Stamford, Thomas, 3, 5 Stanley, Edward Smith, 13th Earl of Derby (Lord Stanley), 397, 400–401 Stanley, Sir Edmond, 48 Staunton, Sir George, 99 Steploe, Catherine, 10 Stewart, Dugald, 19 Stewart, Lieutenant-Colonel Mathew, 39 Stewart, Robert, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (Lord Castlereagh), 233, 236 Stewart, Sir Michael Shaw (5th Bart), 209 Stopford, Rear-Admiral Robert, 71 Stuart, James, 314 Sukabumi/Sookaboomee estate, 189 Sultan Anom, 187 Sultan Najmu’d-din of Palembang, 138 Sultan Sepuh, 187 Sumatra, 251, 256, 269–270, 275, 279–282, 286–288, 290, 293, 296

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

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474  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

British administration, 231 commerce, 231 gold production, 232 Supper, Reverend J.C., 188 Susuhunan Pakubuwana IV, 125 Swainson, William, 262 T Tait, Captain Charles, 55 Tan Che Sang, 334 Tayler, John, 210, 214 Taylor, Captain William Thomas, 26–27, 65, 72 Taylor, Richard S., 11, 206–207 Taylor, William, 257 Teak forests, 114 Tegart, Arthur, 13 Temenggong Abdul Rahman, 278, 327 Tumenggung Wiradiredja (later Adipati Prawiradiredja), 188 Tengku Pengiran Sukma Dilaga (of Siak), 61 Thomsen, Reverend Claudius Henry, 328 Thompson, Quintin Dick, 13, 49 Travers, Captain Thomas Otho, 9, 54, 143, 157–158, 160, 184, 251, 284, 376, 384 portrait, 158, 160 birth, 160 parents, 160 military service, 160–163 friendship with Raffles, 160–161, 163– 164 flattering account of Raffles in Lady Raffles’s Memoir, 161 Journal of Travers, 160, 164–165, 171, 175, 246 Assistant-Secretary of Prince of Wales Island Government, 161 on Raffles, 161, 164, 384 aide-de-camp, 161–162 Raffles’s despatches to London against charges of corruption, 161 Raffles’s despatches to the Dutch at Batavia, 162 invasion of Java and capture of Meester Cornelis, 161 health, 161–163 on Raffles’s meeting with Napoleon at St. Helena, 1816, 162, 169 visit to family in Ireland, 162–163

b3461_Index.indd 474

marriage, 162, 166, 169 children, 166 voyage on Lady Raffles from Portsmouth to Bengkulu, Sumatra, 1817–1818, 160, 162 promotion to rank of Captain, 162 as First Assistant and Second Assistant to the Fort Marlborough Government, Bengkulu, 162 Treasury, 162 on Raffles’s plans to serve as Resident of Singapore, 163 departure from Singapore on the Minerva to England, 163 brief resignation, 163 Recruiting Office for the EIC, Ireland, 163 death, 163 wealth, 163 lavish lifestyle, 163, 184 losses in Macquoid & Co., 163–164 visiting the Raffles’s in Cheltenham, England, 1824 on Raffles’s poor health, 163–164 on Raffles’s death, 164 friendship with Lieutenant James Dalgairns, 165–166 Freemasonry, 175 tribute to Dr. Joseph Arnold, 246 Travers, Barbara (née Delamain) (Travers’s mother), 160 Travers, Charles Henry (Travers’s son), 166 Travers, Isabella Mingay (née Syder) (Travers’s wife), 169 Travers, James Dalgairns (Travers’s son), 166 Travers, Lucia (Travers’s daughter), 166 Travers, Mary (née Peacock), 162, 166 Travers, Robert (Travers’s father), 160 Travers, Robert Otho (Travers’s son), 166 Travers, Thomas Francis (Travers’s son), 166 Troubridge, Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas, 12, 14 Tucker, Lieutenant Charlton, 186 Turner, John, 22 Turner, Dawson, 220–221, 246, 248 U Upas Tree of Java, 96, 112, 115, 117, 128–130, 389 Upcott, William, 223

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   475

V Vahl, Martin Hendriksen, 302 Van Marum, Martinus, 227 Vigors, Nicholas Aylward, 398, 400–402, 404 Vishnu Prasad (also Vishnupersaud), 306–307 Visser, H., 241 Voysey, Henry Westley, 353 W Walker, Brigadier-General Alexander, 383 Walker, John, 21, 195, 201, 217 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 260 Wallich, Dr. Nathaniel Wulf, 269, 274, 282, 284, 286, 289–290, 294, 296, 298–300 portrait, 300, 313 botanical interest and pursuits, 301–302 arrival in India, 1807, 302 prisoner-of-war of the British, 302 character, 275, 303–304, 308, 318, 342 estimations of him, 302, 308 friendship with Dr. William Jack, 275, 298–299, 314, 360–361, 369 naming of Jackia ornate, 299 correspondence, 277–279, 282–283, 286, 288–291, 294–296, 313–317 support for Jack’s appointment as Raffles’s Personal Surgeon, 314 tribute, 321, 369 arrangements for monument in Jack’s memory, 360 birth, 302 education, 302– 303, 308 health, 303, 307, 309, 345–346 Herbarium, 306 marriages, 307 children, 307 meeting Raffles at the Calcutta Botanic Garden, 1818, 275, 308 friendship with Raffles, 301–302, 308–309, 311, 367 assisting Raffles with natural history study in Singapore, 1822, 301–302 correspondence, 309, 313, 315, 317–319, 320–325, 328–329, 338–339, 341, 345, 352, 355–356, 363, 365 deciding location of Raffles’s bungalow on Government Hill, Singapore, 324 tribute to Raffles, 311–312

b3461_Index.indd 475

recognition, honours and distinctions, 302–305, 307, 319–320 Fellow of the Royal Society, 308 Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, the Cross of Honour, 308 member of the Royal Danish Society for the Sciences, 308 naming of palms, Wallichia (Roxburgh), 308 Mount Wallich in Singapore, 335 death, 307 burial, 307 obituary, 308 petition for position in the East India Company, 1811, 303 support from friends, 304, 317 recommendation by William Roxburgh, 302–303 assisting Roxburgh at the Calcutta Botanic Garden, 1809, 303 sending of plants to Sir Joseph Banks, 305 under East India Company employ, 304, 306 salary from the British government, 303 Assistant Surgeon in Bengal Establishment, 1814, 303 Calcutta Botanic Garden, 303–307, 311 temporary charge of the Garden, 1815– 1816, 303–304 Superintendent, 1817–1846, 304–305, 307 catalogues and drawings of botanical collections, 304, 306 development of grounds, 304 expansion of collection, 304, 307, 311 research and collection in Singapore, Penang and the region, 1822, 309–311 botanical collection from Alligator Island, 1822, 310 Superintendent General of Plantations, Ava, Burma, 1826–27, 305 study on cultivation of tea plant in Assam, 1833, 307 distribution of duplicate specimens to Herbaria and other gardens, 1836–1840, 305, 307 donation of Indian plants to Danish Galathea expedition, 1845, 307 resignation from the EIC, 1846, 307

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

180mm x 255mm

476  Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

natural history collection, 305–307, 310–311 visit to Singapore, 1822, 309–311, 320, 368–372 Committee reporting on Singapore River, 309 assisted in the dissection of Dugong, 309 appreciation of climate and flora, 309, 368–369 on Farquhar’s hospitality, 370 on commercial cultivations in Singapore, 368–370 Singapore Botanic Garden on the establishment of Singapore Botanic Garden, 319, 368–372 finances, 320 friendship with Lady Raffles, 311 review of her Memoir, 312 retirement, 306–307 Linnean Society of London, 306–307 Elected Fellow, 1818, 303, 307 Elected Vice-President, 1849, 307 works and publications A numerical List of Dried specimens of plants in the East India Company’s Museum, 305 assisting the publication of Roxburgh’s Flora Indica, 306 Plantæ Asiaticæ Rariores, 1829–1832, 306, 310, 361 Tentamen Floræ Napalensis Illustratæ, 1824–1826, 306 Wallich, George Charles (Wallich’s son), 307 Wallich, Hanne (née Jacobson) (Wallich’s mother), 302 Wallich, Juliane Marie (née Hals) (Wallich’s first wife), 307 Wallich, Købmand Wulff Lazarus (Wallich’s parents), 302 Wallich, Nathaniel David Scott, 307 Wallich, Sophie (née Colling) (Wallich’s second wife), 307, 313 Walpole, Horace, 272 Walpole, Sir Robert, 1st Earl of Oxford, 272 Walthen, Maria, 11 Watson, Captain Thomas Colclough, 159, 165, 172–174, 180–181, 210, 284 portrait, 172 birth, 173

b3461_Index.indd 476

parents, 173 aide-de-camp to Raffles, 173 military service, 173–174 assault on Bharatpur expedition to Macau, 173 account of tour of Java with Raffles, 173 aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-Governor John Fendall in Java, 173 marriage, 173 failure to secure position in Sumatra, 173 Commander of the Local Corps, Fort Marlborough, 174 conflict with Raffles, 174 disobedience and arrest, 174 character, 174 health, 174 death, 174 Watson, Colonel Jonas (Watson’s father), 173 Watson, Harriett (Watson’s mother), 173 Watson, John Forbes, 266 Watson, Major-General Samuel (Watson’s uncle), 173 Watson, Sarah (née James) (Watson’s wife), 173 Webster, Anthony, 331 Wellesley, Richard Colley, 1st Marquis Wellesley (1760–1842), 42, 50 West, Sir Edward, 87 Woodhouse, Dr. James, 95 White, Joseph, 22 Whitcombe, Thomas, 366 Wight, Robert, 305 Wilberforce, William, 390–392 diary, 390 friendship with Raffles, 390 retirement in Uxbridge, 390 correspondence with Raffles, 392 Williams, Theodore (Vicar of Hendon), 392 Wilkins, Sir Charles, 87, 252, 255, 315, 389 Wilson, Horace Hayman, 259 Winstanley, Thomas, 22 Wurtzburg, C.E., 397 Wynter, Charlotte, 5 Wynter, Elizabeth, 5 Y Yarrell, William, 401 Yogyakarta, 200

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b3461   Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries

Index   477

Young, Captain Charles (Captain of Fame), 383 Z Zoological Society in London, 397, 400, 403–404 circular, 402 committee, 399–401

b3461_Index.indd 477

first formal meeting, 402 founding of, 382 supporters, 396, 398–399, 401 Prospectus, 393, 395–401, 404 objectives, 397, 399–402 membership, 403 Regent Park, 400 museum at No. 33 Bruton Street, 403–404

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