Part 19 (2/2)
[Footnote: Ghost, spirit, soul, devil, evil angel.] After puzzling over it for more than an hour, getting himself possessed with the word as with the devil it stands for, and all to no purpose, he ordered one of his lesser state barges to be manned and despatched with all speed for the British Consul. That functionary, inspired with lively alarm by so startling a summons, dressed himself with unceremonious celerity, and hurried to the palace, conjecturing on the way all imaginable possibilities of politics and diplomacy, revolution or invasion. To his vexation, not less than his surprise, he found the king in dishabille, engaged with a Siamese-English vocabulary, and mentally divided between ”deuce” and ”devil,” in the choice of an equivalent. His preposterous Majesty gravely laid the case before the consul, who, though inwardly chafing at what he termed ”the confounded coolness” of the situation, had no choice but to decide with grace, and go back to bed with philosophy.
No wonder, then, that P'hra-Alack experienced an access of grat.i.tude for the privilege of napping for two hours in a snuggery of suns.h.i.+ne.
”Mam-kha,” [Footnote: Kha, ”your slave.”] he murmured drowsily, ”I hope that in the Chat-Nah [Footnote: The next state of existence.] I shall be a freed man.”
”I hope so sincerely, P'hra-Alack,” said I. ”I hope you'll be an Englishman or an American, for then you'll be sure to be independent.”
It was impossible not to pity the poor old man,--stiff with continual stooping to his task, and so subdued!--liable not only to be called at any hour of the day or night, but to be threatened, cuffed, kicked, beaten on the head, [Footnote: The greatest indignity a Siamese can suffer.] every way abused and insulted, and the next moment to be taken into favor, confidence, bosom-friends.h.i.+p, even as his Majesty's mood might veer.
Alack for P'hra-Alack! though usually he bore with equal patience his greater and his lesser ills, there were occasions that sharply tried his meekness, when his weak and goaded nature revolted, and he rushed to a snug little home of his own, about forty yards from the Grand Palace, there to s.n.a.t.c.h a respite of rest and refreshment in the society of his young and lately wedded wife. Then the king would awake and send for him, whereupon he would be suddenly ill, or not at home, strategically hiding himself under a mountain of bedclothes, and detailing Mrs.
P'hra-Alack to reconnoitre and report. He had tried this primitive trick so often that its very staleness infuriated the king, who invariably sent officers to seize the trembling accomplice and lock her up in a dismal cell as a hostage for the scribe's appearance. At dusk the poor fellow would emerge, contrite and terrified, and prostrate himself at the gate of the palace. Then his Majesty (who, having spies posted in every quarter of the town, knew as well as P'hra-Alack himself what the illness or the absence signified) leisurely strolled forth, and, finding the patient on the threshold, flew always into a genuine rage, and prescribed ”decapitation on the spot,” and ”sixty lashes on the bare back,” both in the same breath. And while the attendants flew right and left,--one for the blade, another for the thong,--the king, still raging, seized whatever came most handy, and belabored his bosom-friend on the head and shoulders. Having thus summarily relieved his mind, he despatched the royal secretary for his ink-horn and papyrus, and began inditing letters, orders, appointments, before scymitar or lash (which were ever tenderly slow on these occasions) had made its appearance.
Perhaps in the very thick of his dictating he would remember the connubial accomplice, and order his people to ”release her, and let her go.”
Slavery in Siam is the lot of men of a much finer intellectual type than any who have been its victims in modern times in societies farther west.
P'hra-Alack had been his Majesty's slave when they were boys together.
Together they had played, studied, and entered the priesthood. At once bondman, comrade, cla.s.smate, and confidant, he was the very man to fill the office of private secretary to his royal crony. Virgil made a slave of his a poet, and Horace was the son of an emanc.i.p.ated slave. The Roman leech and chirurgeon were often slaves; so, too, the preceptor and the pedagogue, the reader and the player, the clerk and the amanuensis, the singer, the dancer, the wrestler, and the buffoon, the architect, the smith, the weaver, and the shoemaker; even the _armiger_ or squire was a slave. Educated slaves exercised their talents and pursued their callings for the emolument of their masters; and thus it is to-day in Siam. _Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur_, P'hra-Alack!
The king's taste for English composition had, by much exercise, developed itself into a pa.s.sion. In the pursuit of it he was indefatigable, rambling, and petulant. He had ”Webster's Unabridged” on the brain,--an exasperating form of king's evil. The little dingy slips that emanated freely from the palace press were as indiscriminate as they were quaint. No topic was too sublime or too ign.o.ble for them. All was ”copy” that came to those cases,-from the glory of the heavenly bodies to the nuisance of the busybodies who scolded his Majesty through the columns of the Bangkok Recorder.
I have before me, as I write, a circular from his pen, and in the type of his private press, which, being without caption or signature, may be supposed to be addressed ”to all whom it may concern.” The American missionaries had vexed his exact scholars.h.i.+p by their peculiar mode of representing in English letters the name of a native city (_Prippri_, or in Sanskrit _Bejrepuri_). Whence this droll circular, which begins with a dogmatic line:--
”None should write the name of city of Prippri thus--P'et cha poory.”
Then comes a pedantic demonstration of the derivation of the name from a compound Sanskrit word, signifying ”Diamond City.” And the doc.u.ment concludes with a characteristic explosion of impatience, at once critical, royal, and anecdotal: ”Ah! what the Romanization of American system that P'etch' abury will be! Will whole human learned world become the pupil of their corrupted Siamese teachers? It is very far from correctness. Why they did not look in journal of Royal Asiatic Society, where several words of Sanskrit and Pali were published continually?
Their Siamese priestly teachers considered all Europeans as very heathen; to them far from sacred tongue, and were glad to have American heathens to become their scholars or pupils; they thought they have taught sacred language to the part of heathen; in fact, they themselves are very far from sacred language, being sunk deeply in corruption of sacred and learned language, for tongue of their former Laos and Cambodian teachers, and very far from knowledge of Hindoostanee, Cinghalese, and Royal Asiatic Society's knowledge in Sanskrit, as they are considered by such the Siamese teachers as heathen; called by them Mit ch'a thi-thi, &c., &c., i.e. wrongly seer or spectator, &c., &c.”
In another slip, which is manifestly an outburst of the royal petulance, his Majesty demands, in a ”displayed” paragraph:--
”Why name of Mr. Knox [Thomas George Knox, Esq., British Consul] was not published thus: Missa Nok or Nawk. If name of Chow Phya Bhudharabhay is to be thus: P'raya P'oo t'a ra P'ie. And why the London was not published thus: Lundun or Landan, if Bejrepuri is to be published P'etch' abury.”
In the same slip with the philological protest the following remarkable paragraphs appear:--
”What has been published in No. 25 of Bangkok Recorder thus:--
”'The king of Siam, on reading from some European paper that the Pope had lately suffered the loss of some precious jewels, in consequence of a thief having got possession of his Holiness' keys, exclaimed, ”What a man! professing to keep the keys of Heaven, and cannot even keep his own keys!”'
”The king on perusal thereof denied that it is false. He knows nothing about his Holiness the Pope's sustaining loss of gems, &c., and has said nothing about religious faith.”
This is curious, in that it exposes the king's unworthy fear of the French priesthood in Siam. The fact is that he did make the rather smart remark, in precisely these words: ”Ah! what a man! professing to keep the keys of Heaven, and not able to guard those of his own bureau!” and he was quite proud of his. .h.i.t. But when it appeared in the Recorder, he thought it prudent to bar it with a formal denial. Hence the politic little item which he sent to all the foreigners in Bangkok, and especially to the French priests.
His Majesty's mode of dealing with newspaper strictures (not always just) and suggestions (not always pertinent) aimed at his administration of public affairs, or the const.i.tution and discipline of his household, was characteristic. He snubbed them with sententious arrogance, leavened with sarcasm.
When the Recorder recommended to the king the expediency of dispersing his Solomonic harem, and abolis.h.i.+ng polygamy in the royal family, his Majesty retorted with a verbal message to the editor, to the purport that ”when the Recorder shall have dissuaded princes and n.o.blemen from offering their daughters to the king as concubines, the king will cease to receive contributions of women in that capacity.”
In August, 1865, an angry altercation occurred in the Royal Court of Equity (sometimes styled the International Court) between a French priest and Phya Wiset, a Siamese n.o.bleman, of venerable years, but positive spirit and energy. The priest gave Phya Wiset the lie, and Phya Wiset gave it back to the priest, whereupon the priest became noisy.
Afterward he reported the affair to his consul at Bangkok, with the embellis.h.i.+ng statement that not only himself, but his religion, had been grossly insulted. The consul, one Monsieur Aubaret, a peppery and pugnacious Frenchman, immediately made a demand upon his Majesty for the removal of Phya Wiset from office.
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