SINGAPORE’S FOUNDER

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 May 1931, Page 9

SINGAPORE’S FOUNDER

RAFFLES THE FIRST ) Among the various ways in which one’s belongings can be lost, I suppose that the sinking of the ship in midocean is the most effective (writes E. V. Lucas in the London “Sunday Times”). Thieves can be caught; receivers can be forced to disgorge; even from a fire there is often some salvage. But when the ship goes down the loss is complete. What, then, would be the word to describe the deprivation- which' was suffered by Sir Stamford Raffles, the East Indian administrator, who, returning home from Singapore for good, with the prospect of many years of well-earned rest and lettered case before him. embarked on a vessel which first caught tire and then sank, carrying with it to the bottom the ex-Governor’s MSS., historical and natural historical, two thousand drawings of fauna and flora, temples and forests, a vast collection of birds, beasts, fishes, butterflies, and flowers, and a map that had occupied six months . in. the making? Davy Jones’s Locker has had many windfalls, but few more diversified than this, and few more distressing to be narted from, or, I should guess. less welcome to Davy, who prefers sailors. Of their bones is coral made. Having been recently in Java and Sumatra, where Raffles feigned under the East India. Company, for some years at the beginning of the last cehtury, before his Singapore period, and having seen the grave of his first wife in the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens—'a forlorn little classical temple with its grey columns of stone among sumptuous tropical foliage—and. furthermore, being a frequenter of the London Zoo, and, therefore, familiar with Raffles’s bust in the Lion House —I have been looking into his biography, and find him to be as different from the only Raffles of which this generation has cognisance—-Hornung’s gentleman burglar—as could be imagined. For, 'although quixotically honest and endowed with great tenacity of purpose and no little imagination, he was fragile of frame and consistently unlucky. The loss of his collection at sea was but one of the misfortunes that occurred to him: his first wife died in Java; four of his children a second marriage died in Sumatra; he was never well and often very ill; he had many and malignant political foes, not only in the East Indies, but in London and in Calcutta; whence all his public funds came and all orders that were not sent him by John Company’s Board of Directors at home. 1 LONDON ZOO FOUNDED

His conduct of affairs was again, and again impugned, and he was kept busy in drawing up defences of himself. What a life! Yet all the while he found time to explore, to observe, to discover new flowers, to add to his collections, to write his histories, and to design his maps. The shipwreck, the culminating calamity, occurred in 1824; Raffles died at his house at Barnet in 1826 at the age of only 45, in the interim having earned the gratitude of his countrymen and particularly. of Londoners by founding the Zoo. If you would see what he was like in full, look for Chantrey’s statue of him in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey.

The Zoo, however, was a trifle; Raffles’ pre-eminent service to the State was to discern the strategical importance of Singapore and to persuade England to buy it. Why the Dutdh overlooked its advantages is a mystery; but they did. Could he see how Singapore has developed and how her harbour has spread and filled with shipping, he would be a proud man; and surprised, too, for he has become one of those rare figures, a prophet with honour in his own country, as the Raffles Museum, the Raffles Hotel, and Stamford this and Stamford that would assure him. But perhaps “honour” is not the right word, for when I was in Singapore a few weeks ago and, for fun, asked a passer-by who the Raffles was who was commemorated by the statue, he said he was the builder of the hotel. That there were Chinese in Singapore in Raffles’s day we know, for he ,vas interested in the Anglo-Chinese College and he established an institution for the study of Chinese and Malay literature, but it is doubtful if, with all his sagacious prevision, he could have foreseen the extent to which the Chinese have multiplied and the power that they wield. Singapore has its whites and its half-castes and its natives; but the impression that one carries away is of faces that are yellow There are Chinese everywhere. and two- packed side by side, in every rickshaw. The onlv industry that apparently they do not invade and qpnquer is that of the diving boys who follow the ships in their crazy canoes and clamour for coins to be thrown to them. I say “diving, but that is not the word. They do not dive, these merry black amphibians; they insert themselves in the water, almost as naturally as if they were poured into it from a jug. But it is not. this rapprochement between man and ocean that I shall always remember most clearly, but their additional skill at a variety of ball-game which they play with their paddles. I never saw such accuracy as in their astonishing rallies. Performing sealions could not excel them; and that is saying a good deal.