Siam : The Land of the White Elephant as It Was and Is

"He made everything new and beautiful and of curious appearance, and of a good style of architecture and much stronger than they had formerly been constructed by his three predecessors, the second kings of the last three reigns, for the space of time that he was second king. He had introduced and collected many and many things, being articles of great curiosity, and things useful for various purposes of military arts and affairs, from Europe and America, China and other states, and planted them in various departments and rooms or buildings suitable for these articles, and placed officers for maintaining and preserving the various things neatly and carefully. He has constructed several buildings in European fashion and Chinese fashion, and ornamented them with various useful ornaments for his pleasure, and has constructed two steamers in manner of men-of-war, and two steam-yachts and several rowing state-boats in Siamese and Cochin-China fashion, for his pleasure at sea and rivers of Siam; and caused several articles of gold and silver, being vessels and various wares and weapons, to be made up by the Siamese and Malayan goldsmiths, for employ and dress for himself and his family, by his direction and skilful contrivance and ability. He became celebrated and spread out more and more to various regions of the Siamese kingdom, adjacent states around, and far famed to foreign countries even at far distance, as he became acquainted with many and many foreigners, who came from various quarters of the world where his name became known to most as a very clever and bravest prince of Siam."

Much more of this royal document is quoted in Mrs. Leonowens' "English Governess at the Court of Siam."

CHAPTER VIII.

PHRABAT SOMDETCH PHRA PARAMENDR MAHA MONGKUT

In some respects the most conspicuous name in the history of the civilization of Siam will always be that of the king under whose enlightened and liberal administration of government the kingdom was thrown open to foreign intercourse, and the commerce, the science, and even the religion of the western world accepted if not invited. His son, the present first king, is following in the steps of his father, and has already introduced some noteworthy reforms and changes, the importance of which is very great. But the way was opened for these changes by the wise and bold policy of the late king, whose death, in 1868, closed a career of usefulness which entitles him to a high place among the benefactors of his age.

A description of this king and of his court is furnished from the same editorial narrative from which the last two chapters have been chiefly quoted. It will be remembered that the period to which the narrative refers is the year 1857, the time of the visit of the Portsmouth, with the ratification of the American treaty.

His majesty, the first king of Siam, kindly gives us our choice of titles by which, and of languages in which, he may be designated. To his own people he appears in an array of syllables sufficiently astonishing to our eyes and ears, as Phrabat Somdetch Phra Paramendr Maha Mongkut Phra Chau Klau Chau Yu Hud; but to outsiders he announces himself as simply the first king of Siam and its dependencies; or, in treaties and other official documents, as "Rex Major," or "Supremus Rex Siamensium." The Latin is his, not mine. And I am bound to acknowledge that the absolute supremacy which the "supremus" indicates is qualified by his recognition of the "blessing of highest and greatest superagency of the universe," by which blessing his own sovereignty exists. He has been quick to learn the maxim which monarchs are not ever slow to learn nor slow to use, that "Kings reign by the grace of God." And it is, to say the least, a safe conjecture that the maxim has as much power over his conscience as it has had over the consciences of some kings much more civilized and orthodox than he.

This polyglot variety of titles indicates a varied, though somewhat superficial, learning. Before he came to the throne the king had lived for several years in the seclusion of a Buddhist monastery. Promotion from the priesthood to the throne is an event so unusual in any country except Siam, that it might seem full of risk. But in this instance it worked well. During the years of his monastic life he grew to be a thoughtful, studious man, and he brought with him to his kingly office a wide familiarity with literature which marked him as a scholar who knew the world through books rather than through men. His manner of speaking English was less easy and accurate than his brother's; but, on the other hand, the "pomp and circumstance" of his court was statelier and stranger, and is worthy of a better description. The second king received us with such gentlemanly urbanity and freedom that it was hard to realize the fact that we were in the presence of royalty. But our reception by the first king was arranged on what the newspapers would call "a scale of Oriental magnificence," and it lingers in memory like some dreamy recollection of the splendors of the Arabian Nights.

One of the most singular illustrations of the ups and downs of nations and of races which history affords, is to be seen in the position of the Portuguese in Siam. They came there centuries ago as a superior race, in all the dignity and pride of discoverers, and with all the romantic daring of adventurous exploration. Now there is only a worn-out remnant of them left, degraded almost to the level of the Asiatics, to whom they brought the name and knowledge of the Western world. They have mixed with the Siamese, till, at the first, it is difficult to distinguish them as having European blood and lineage. But when we asked who the grotesque old creatures might be who came to us on messages from the king, or guided us when we went to see the wonders of the city, or superintended the cooking of our meals, or performed various menial services about our dwelling, we found that they were half-breed descendants of the Portuguese who once flourished here. When we landed at the mouth of the river on our way to Bangkok for an audience with the king, one of the first persons whom we encountered was one of these demoralized Europeans. He made a ridiculous assertion of his lineage in the style of his costume. Disdaining the Siamese fashions, he had made for himself or had inherited a swallow-tailed coat of sky-blue silk, and pantaloons of purple silk, in which he seemed to feel himself the equal of any of us. Had any doubt as to his ancestry lingered in our minds, it must have been removed by a most ancient and honorable stove-pipe hat, which had evidently been handed down from father to son, through the generations, as a rusty relic of grander days. This old gentleman was in charge of a bountiful supply of provisions which the king had sent for us. It was hard not to moralize over the old man as the representative of a nation which had all the time been going backward since it led the van of discovery in the Indies centuries ago; while the people whom his ancestors found heathenish and benighted are starting on a career of improvement and elevation of which no man can prophesy the rate or the result.

The old Portuguese referred to would seem to be the same whom Sir John Bowring mentions in the following passage, and who has been so long a faithful servant of the government of Siam that his great age and long-continued services entitle him to a word of honorable mention, notwithstanding the droll appearance which he presented in his remarkable costume. Sir John Bowring, writing in 1856, says:

"Among the descendants of the ancient Portuguese settlers in Siam there was one who especially excited our attention. He was the master of the ceremonies at our arrival in Paknam, and from his supposed traditional or hereditary acquaintance with the usages of European courts, we found him invested with great authority on all state occasions. He wore a European court dress, which he told me had been given him by Sir James Brooke, and which, like a rusty, old cocked hat, was somewhat the worse for wear. But I was not displeased to recognize in him a gentleman whom Mr. Crawford (the British ambassador in 1822) thus describes:

"'July 10 (1822). I had in the course of this forenoon a visit from a person of singular modesty and intelligence. Pascal Ribeiro de Alvergarias, the descendant of a Portuguese Christian of Kamboja. This gentleman holds a high Siamese title, and a post of considerable importance. Considering his means and situation, his acquirements were remarkable, for he not only spoke and wrote the Siamese, Kambojan, and Portuguese languages with facility, but also spoke and wrote Latin with considerable propriety. We found, indeed, a smattering of Latin very frequent among the Portuguese interpreters at Bangkok, but Señor Ribeiro was the only individual who made any pretence to speak it with accuracy. He informed us that he was the descendant of a person of the same name, who settled at Kamboja in the year 1685. His lady's genealogy, however, interested us more than his own. She was the lineal descendant of an Englishman, of the name of Charles Lister, a merchant, who settled in Kamboja in the year 1701, and who had acquired some reputation at the court by making pretence to a knowledge in medicine. Charles Lister had come immediately from Madras, and brought with him his sister. This lady espoused a Portuguese of Kamboja, by whom she had a son, who took her own name. Her grandson, of this name also, in the revolution of the kingdom of Kamboja, found his way to Siam; and here, like his great-uncle, practising the healing art, rose to the station of Maha-pet, or first physician to the king. The son of this individual, Cajitanus Lister, is at present the physician, and at the same time the minister and confidential adviser of the present King of Kamboja. His sister is the wife of the subject of this short notice. Señor Ribeiro favored us with the most authentic and satisfactory account which we had yet obtained of the late revolution and present state of Kamboja.'"

It is not safe always to judge by the appearance. This grotesque old personage, whom the narrative describes, represented a story of strange and romantic interest, extending through two centuries of wonderful vicissitude, and involving the blending of widely separated nationalities. But to resume the narrative:

When at last, after our stay in Bangkok was almost at an end, we were invited by "supremus rex" to spend the evening at his palace, we found our friend of the beaver hat and sky-blue coat and purple breeches in charge of a squad of attendants in one of the outer buildings of the court, where we were to beguile the time with more refreshments until his majesty should be ready for us. Everything about us was on a larger scale than at the second king'sthe grounds more spacious, and the various structures with which they were filled, the temples, armories, and storehouses, of more ambitions size and style, but not so neat and orderly. A crowd of admiring spectators clustered about the windows of the room in which we were waiting, watching with breathless interest to see the strangers eat: so that as we sat in all the glory of cocked hats and epaulets, we had the double satisfaction of giving and receiving entertainment.

But presently there came a messenger to say that the king was ready for us. And so we walked on between the sentries, who saluted us with military exactness, between the stately halls that ran on either hand, until a large, closed gateway barred our way. Swinging open as we stood before them, the gates closed silently behind us, and we found ourselves in the august presence of "Rex Supremus Siamensium."

It might almost have been "the good Haroun Alraschid" and "the great pavilion of the caliphat in inmost Bagdad," that we had come to, it was so imposing a scene, and so characteristically Oriental. What I had read of in the "Arabian Nights," and hardly thought was possible except in such romantic stories, seemed to be realized. Here was a king worth seeing, a real king, with a real crown on, and with real pomp of royalty about him. I think that every American who goes abroad has a more or less distinct sense of being defrauded of his just rights when, in Paris or Berlin, for example, he goes out to see the king or emperor, and is shown a plainly-dressed man driving quietly and almost undistinguished among the throng of carriages. We feel that this is not at all what we came for, nor what we had been led to expect when, as schoolboys, we read about imperial magnificence and regal splendor, and the opulence of the "crowned heads." The crowned head might have passed before our very eyes, and we would not have known it if we had not been told. Not so in Bangkok. This was "a goodly king" indeed. And all the circumstances of time and place seemed to be so managed as to intensify the singular charm and beauty of the scene.

We stood in a large court, paved with broad, smooth slabs of marble, and open to the sky, which was beginning to be rosy with the sunset. All about us were magnificent palace buildings, with shining white walls, and with roofs of gleaming green and gold. Broad avenues, with the same marble pavement, led in various directions to the temples and the audience halls. Here and there the dazzling whiteness of the buildings and the pavement was relieved by a little dark tropical foliage; and, as the sunset grew more ruddy every instant,

"A sudden splendor from behindFlushed all the leaves with rich gold green,"

and tinged the whole bright court with just the necessary warmth of color. There was the most perfect stillness, broken only by the sound of our footsteps on the marble, and, except ourselves, not a creature was moving. Here and there, singly or in groups, about the spacious court, prostrate, with faces on the stone, in motionless and obsequious reverence, as if they were in the presence of a god and not of a man, grovelled the subjects of the mighty sovereign into whose presence we were approaching. It was hard for the stoutest democrat to resist a momentary feeling of sympathy with such universal awe; and to remember that, after all, as Hamlet says, a "king is a thing … of nothing." So contagious is the obsequiousness of a royal court and so admirably effective was the arrangement of the whole scene.

The group toward which we were advancing was a good way in front of the gateway by which we had entered. There was a crouching sword-bearer, holding upright a long sword in a heavily embossed golden scabbard. There were other attendants, holding jewel-cases or elegant betel-nut boxes – all prostrate. There were others still ready to crawl off in obedience to orders, on whatever errands might be necessary. There were three or four very beautiful little children, the king's sons, kneeling behind their father, and shining with the chains of jewelled gold which hung about their naked bodies. More in front there crouched a servant holding high a splendid golden canopy, beneath which stood the king. He wore a grass-cloth jacket, loosely buttoned with diamonds, and a rich silken scarf, which, wound about the waist, hung gracefully to his knees. Below this was an unadorned exposure of bare shins, and his feet were loosely slippered. But on his head he wore a cap or crown that fairly blazed with brilliant gems, some of them of great size and value. There was not wanting in his manner a good deal of natural dignity; although it was constrained and embarrassed. It was in marked contrast with the cheerful and unceremonious freedom of the second king. He seemed burdened with the care of government and saddened with anxiety, and as if he knew his share of the uneasiness of "the head that wears a crown."

He stood in conversation with us for a few moments, and then led the way to a little portico in the Chinese style of architecture, where we sat through an hour of talk, and drink, and jewelry, mixed in pretty equal proportions. For there were some details of business in connection with the treaty that required to be talked over. And there were sentiments of international amity to be proposed and drunk after the Occidental fashion. And there were the magnificent royal diamonds and other gems to be produced for our admiring inspection – great emeralds of a more vivid green than the dark tropical foliage, and rubies and all various treasures which the Indian mines afford, till the place shone before our eyes, thicker

"With jewels than the sward with drops of dew,When all night long a cloud clings to the hill,And with the dawn ascending lets the dayStrike where it clung; so thickly shone the gems."

All the while the nobles were squatting or lying on the floor, and the children were playing in a subdued and quiet way at the king's feet. Somehow the beauty of these little Siamese children seemed to me very remarkable. As they grow older, they grow lean, and wrinkled, and ugly. But while they are children they are pretty "as a picture" – as some of those pictures, for example, in the Italian galleries. Going quite innocent of clothing, they are very straight and plump in figure, and unhindered in their grace of motion. And they used to bear themselves with a simple and modest dignity that was very winning. They have the soft and lustrous eyes, the shining teeth (as yet unstained by betel-nut), the pleasant voices, which are the birthright of the children of the tropics. In default of clothes, they are stained all over with some pigment, which makes their skin a lively yellow, and furnishes a shade of contrast for the deeper color of the gold which hangs around their necks and arms. I used to compare them, to their great advantage, with the Chinese children.

There is not in Siam, at least there is not in the same degree, that obstinate conceit behind which, as behind a barrier, the Chinese have stood for centuries, resisting stubbornly the entrance of all light and civilization from without. I do not know what possible power could extort from a Chinese official the acknowledgment which this king freely made, that his people were "half civilized and half barbarous, being very ignorant of civilized and enlightened customs and usages." Such an admission from a Chinaman would be like the demolition of their great northern wall. It is true of nations as it is of individuals, that pride is the most stubborn obstacle in the way of all real progress. And national humility is the earnest of national exaltation. Therefore it is that the condition of things at the Siamese court seems to me so full of promise.

By and by the king withdrew, and intimated that he would presently meet us again at an entertainment in another part of the palace. His disappearance was the signal for the resurrection of the prostrate noblemen, who started up all around us in an unexpected way, like toads after a rain. Moving toward the new apartment where our "entertainment" was prepared, we saw the spacious court to new advantage. For the night had come while we had waited, and the mellow light from the tropic stars and burning constellations flowed down upon us through the fragrant night air. Mingling with this white starlight was the ruddy glow that came through palace windows from lamps fed by fragrant oil of cocoanut, and from the moving torches of our attendants. And as we walked through the broad avenues, dimly visible in this mixed light, some gilded window arch or overhanging roof with gold-green tiles, or the varied costume of the moving group of which we formed a part, would stand out from the shadowy darkness with a sudden and most picturesque distinctness. So we came at last to the apartment where the king had promised to rejoin us.

Here the apparition of our old sky-blue friend, the beaver-hatted Portuguese, suggested that a dinner was impending, and, if we might judge by his uncommon nervousness of manner, it must be a dinner of unprecedented style. And certainly there was a feast, sufficiently sumptuous and very elegantly served, awaiting our arrival. At one side of the room, on a raised platform, was a separate table for the king, and beside it, awaiting his arrival, was his throne,

"From whichDown dropped in many a floating fold,Engarlanded and diaperedWith inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold."

In the bright light of many lamps the room was strangely beautiful. On one side, doors opened into a stately temple, out of which presently the king came forth. And as, when he had disappeared, the nobles seemed to come out from the ground like toads, so now, like toads, they squatted, and the sovereign of the squatters took his seat above them.

Presently there was music. A band of native musicians stationed at the foot of the king's throne commenced a lively performance on their instruments. It was strange, wild music, with a plaintive sweetness, that was very enchanting. The tones were liquid as the gurgling of a mountain brook, and rose and fell in the same irregular measure. And when to the first band of instruments there was added another in a different part of the room, the air became tremulous with sweet vibrations, and the wild strains lingered softly about the gilded eaves and cornices and floated upward toward the open sky.

It seemed that the fascination of the scene would be complete if there were added the poetry of motion. And so, in came the dancers, a dozen young girls, pretty and modest, and dressed in robes of which I cannot describe the profuse and costly ornamentation. The gold and jewels fairly crusted them, and, as the dancers moved, the light flashed from the countless gems at every motion. As each one entered the apartment she approached the king, and, reverently kneeling, slowly lifted her joined hands as if in adoration. All the movements were gracefully timed to the sweet barbaric music, and were slow and languid, and as quiet as the movements in a dream. We sat and watched them dreamily, half bewildered by the splendor which our eyes beheld, and the sweetness which our ears heard, till the night was well advanced and it was time to go. It was a sudden shock to all our Oriental reveries, when, as we rose to leave, his majesty requested that we would give him three cheers. It was the least we could do in return for his royal hospitality, and accordingly the captain led off in the demonstration, while the rest of us joined in with all the heartiness of voice that we could summon. But it broke the charm. Those occidental cheers, that hoarse Anglo-Saxon roar, had no proper place among these soft and sensuous splendors, which had held us captive all the evening, till we had well-nigh forgotten the everyday world of work and duty to which we belonged.

It is when we remember the enervating influence of the drowsy tropics upon character, that we learn fitly to honor the men and women by whom the inauguration of this new era in Siamese history has been brought about. To live for a little while among these sensuous influences without any very serious intellectual work to do, or any very grave moral responsibility to bear, is one thing; but to spend a life among them, with such a constant strain upon the mind and heart as the laying of Christian foundations among a heathen people must always necessitate, is quite another thing. This is what the missionaries in Siam have to do. Their battle is not with the prejudices of heathenism only, nor with the vices and ignorance of bad men only. It is a battle with nature itself. To the passing traveller, half intoxicated with the beauty of the country and the rich splendor of that oriental world, it may seem a charming thing to live there, and no uninviting lot to be a missionary in such pleasant places. But the very attractiveness of the field to one who sees it as a visitor, and who is dazzled by its splendors as he looks upon it out of kings' palaces, is what makes it all the harder for one who goes with hard, self-sacrificing work to do. The fierce sun wilts the vigor of his mind and scorches up the fresh enthusiasm of his heart.

"Droops the heavy-blossomed flower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree."

And all the beautiful earth, and all the drowsy air, and all the soft blue sky invite to sloth and ease and luxury.

Therefore I give the greater honor to the earnest men and to the patient women who are laboring and praying for the coming of the Christian day to this benighted people.

His majesty, Phrabat Somdetch Phra Paramendr Maha Mongkut closed his remarkable career on October 1, 1868, under circumstances of peculiar interest. Amid all the cares and anxieties of government he had never ceased to occupy himself with matters of literary and scientific importance. Questions of scholarship in any one of the languages of which he was more or less master were always able to divert and engage his attention. And the approach of the great solar eclipse in August, 1868, was an event the coming of which he had himself determined by his own reckoning, and for which he waited with an impatience half philosophic and half childish. A special observatory was built for the occasion, and an expedition of extraordinary magnitude and on a scale of great expenditure and pomp was equipped by the king's command to accompany him to the post of observation. A great retinue both of natives and of foreigners, including a French scientific commission, attended his majesty, and were entertained at royal expense. And the eclipse was satisfactorily witnessed to the great delight of the king, whose scientific enthusiasm found abundant expression when his calculation was proved accurate.