WELCOMED BY OTHER MISSIONARIES
Fortunately the voyage of twenty-four days was not all like this, and after the storm had abated there was much to make the days interesting. At length came the first sight of Siam:
“Friday, March 19. The first sight of Siam. Thy people, O Siam, shall be my people; but my God shall be their God. Here would I die and here would I be buried.... Henceforth I would live for Thee, my God. Thou art a kind Master; and oh, Thou hast bought me, every power and faculty; Thou hast bought me by Thy precious blood. Let me henceforth shrink from nothing—but sin and remissness in Thy blessed service. With the beginning of my missionary life I give myself anew, tremblingly but trustingly to do Thy will O God, my Creator, Guide and Redeemer.”
The following day, Saturday, March 20, 1847, Dr. House landed in Bangkok. The arrival of the new missionary party met with a most cordial welcome by the small group of fellow Americans already engaged in the work. At that time Siam was occupied by two American missions, besides French Catholic missions. The American Board was then represented by Rev. Jesse Caswell and Rev. Asa Hemmenway with their wives; while the Baptist Board was represented by the following men and their wives: Revs. J. T. Jones, Josiah Goddard, and E. N. Jenks, and Mr. J. H. Chandler, a lay missionary.
“Early on the morning of the 20th of March, just eight months to a day from the time of our leaving New York, we found ourselves at the bar which obstructs the entrance of the great river of Siam.... I was despatched with the captain in a swift, but alas open, boat that I might, if the ship was unable to get over the bar, make arrangements with friends to send down for Mr. and Mrs. Mattoon. After a rather broiling row of some twenty miles along a river far more beautiful than I had been led to suppose, arrived at the outskirts of this truly great city about sundown. We had still some three miles or more before we reached the residence of the missionaries of the A. B. C. F. M., and it was then dark. Was most kindly welcomed by Mr. Caswell and Mr. Hemmenway, the only missionaries of that Board now left; and glad indeed they appeared to see me.”
On Monday the ship came up to the city and by that time plans had been made to house the newly arrived missionaries in two of the vacant houses in the mission compound where they had been welcomed.
The relations between the three sets of missionaries were most cordial. So far as economy of effort made it wise they co-operated in their undertakings. It was the dispensary of the A. B. C. F. M. that Dr. House re-opened. The tracts used by the three missions were printed by the press of the Baptist mission. Members of each of the missions took turns at the tract house maintained in the bazaar. Although the Presbyterians had previously been engaged in work in Bangkok they held no property there; and for the present it was neither advisable nor possible for the newcomers to obtain a location for themselves. It was arranged that they should live in the A. B. C. F. M. compound until there was time to obtain a desirable site.
The compound contained several houses built after the native style; set high upon posts, with an open space beneath, a verandah on all sides, no windows but openings for air. In one of these houses Dr. House lived for the first two years, having a servant to take care of the house but taking his meals with the Mattoon family. This arrangement entered upon temporarily continued by force of circumstances for three years until the return of Rev. D. B. Bradley, M.D., with another physician, when a readjustment of housing was necessary. Thereupon Dr. House moved to one of the “floating houses” moored in front of the compound, and this continued to be his abode for more than a year until a permanent site was secured for the mission.
The members of the three missions held a common service of worship each Sunday morning and afternoon. At the morning service the sermon was in Chinese or Siamese, while the afternoon service was wholly in English. It is interesting to learn that an “original” sermon was unusual, the preacher of the day commonly reading a published sermon of some well-known divine. On Wednesdays there was an informal conference for all workers and servants. On Saturday evenings there was a prayer meeting for the missionaries only. Later a “monthly concert of prayer for missions” was established. When the number of Chinese increased a separate service was held for them, and likewise a Sunday school for the Siamese pupils of the day school.
Occasionally there would be in attendance on worship some officers from any English vessel in port and then in turn one of the missionaries would visit the vessel and conduct a preaching service for the crew. After the treaty of Great Britain, in 1855, the number of English families increased very rapidly, and while at first many of these attended the services at the mission, their number soon warranted the erection of a chapel for their own use.
IV
RELATIONS WITH ROYALTY AND OFFICIALS
Soon after their arrival Dr. House and Mr. Mattoon were taken by their fellow missionaries to call upon two princes who had manifested a friendly interest in the westerners. The acquaintance thus formed proved to be of large influence both to the mission and to the Siamese nation. One of these princes was entitled Chao Fah Yai, which signifies “The older brother of the king,” while his brother was entitled Chao Fah Noi, meaning “The younger brother of the king.” As Chao Fah Yai later became King of Siam and his brother the Vice-King at the same time and as this new king played a momentous part in the opening of Siam to intercourse with the western nations as well as showed much favour to the mission work, it is essential to give a sketch of that important personage.
When, in 1824, the throne was made vacant by the death of the royal father of these two men, the older son had expected to succeed to the throne. Apparently this had been the father’s intention, for he had given this son the name “Mongkut,” meaning “crown prince.” Through intrigue, however, the crown went to a half-brother who, under the title Phra Chao Pravat Thong, was the reigning king when Dr. House reached Siam. Chao Fah Yai, having been thwarted in his aspirations towards the throne, entered the priesthood and retired to a watt, doubtless as the safest way to avoid the royal displeasure towards a rival,—a course which the custom of the country made possible for him.
The princely rank of this priest made him the leader of the Buddhist religion in Siam; and his great wealth enabled him to make his watt one of the most notable and influential in the country. He was a man of enlightened mind beyond his generation. In marked contrast to the king, he was interested in foreign affairs and amicably disposed towards the few foreigners living in Bangkok, especially towards the missionaries, because of their education and culture.
Having already learned Latin from the French priests, in 1845 (then about forty years of age), he invited Rev. Jesse Caswell, a missionary of the American Board, to become his tutor in English. To secure the services of Mr. Caswell he offered in return a reward which he perceived would be more prized than any fee of gold he could propose. He offered Mr. Caswell the privilege of using a room in one of the buildings connected with the watt for preaching the Christian religion and distributing tracts, and granted permission to the priests of the watt to attend if they wished. Mr. Caswell accepted the invitation and continued for three years, until his death, to teach English to the chief Priest of Buddhism in his own temple, and to preach Christianity to all who cared to listen. The esteem of the Prince for his tutor is evidenced by the fact that in 1855, when Dr. House was returning to America on furlough, he made the doctor the bearer of a gift of one thousand dollars to Mr. Caswell’s widow in token of appreciation of her husband’s services, and again in 1866, by the same agent, he sent a gift of five hundred dollars. He also caused a monument to be erected, in memory of his tutor, at the grave of Mr. Caswell.
The more one contemplates the terms made by Chao Fah Yai with Mr. Caswell the more astonishing it appears. Here is the most influential priest in all Siam, the recognised head of the Buddhistic cult in Indo-China, inviting into his watt an uncompromising teacher of the Christian religion notwithstanding the known antipathy of the king to the westerners and their religion, and in return for instruction in the English language he grants him freedom to teach the moral and religious doctrines of Christianity within the precincts of consecrated ground and permits novitiates and priests under his authority to listen to that doctrine.
This broadmindedness of Chao Fah Yai is further shown by an incident which he related to one of the Protestant missionaries. Sometime previous to the engagement of Mr. Caswell a young priest of the watt became a Roman Catholic. The prince was urged to flog the young man for abandoning the religion of his country. To this suggestion the prince said he replied: “The individual has committed no crime; it is proper for every one to be left at liberty to choose his own religion.” On a later occasion the Governor of Petchaburi, having forbidden the distribution of books by the Roman Catholic priests in his province because he said they sought to shield their converts from the authorities when accused of crime, conferred with Chao Fah Yai as to whether he should place the same ban on the books of the Protestants; but the Priest-Prince was able to explain to him the difference of policy between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants and to dissuade him from forbidding the distribution of Protestant literature.
From his intercourse with Mr. Caswell, Chao Fah Yai was quickened with an interest in Western learning, especially the sciences. By his association with these missionaries and the discussion of the evidences of Christianity he came to recognise that his own religion had accumulated a mass of unauthenticated teachings, the accretion of centuries of priestly fancy; and he perceived that this accretion must be sloughed off if his religion was to meet the pressure of foreign civilisation, which he foresaw could not be forever excluded. Accordingly he became the leader of a new party in Buddhism which rejected the uncanonical writings which had accrued to the extent of some eighty-four thousand volumes and held only to the authentic teachings of Buddha. As the leader of this new sect the Prince-Priest was doubtless responsible for the reinvigoration of the religion of Siam, enabling it better to meet the contest of time.
The interest of Chao Fah Yai in the American missionaries was more on account of their intellectual culture than on account of their religion. On one occasion in conversation with Dr. House he frankly said that while he did not believe in Christianity he thought much of Western science, especially astronomy, geography and mathematics. His interest in these subjects was very keen and practical. From the study of navigation he was led into the subject of astronomy, and took interest in the calculation of time, and was especially proud that his own calculation of an eclipse of the moon was almost identical with the Western almanac. His conversation showed considerable intelligence of the late developments in science. He was also a student of languages, and had a knowledge of several languages of eastern India, such as Singhalese and Peguan; he was familiar with Sanscrit, which had been a contributor to the Siamese language, and had studied Latin because he said he had been told that it was like the Sanscrit; besides these he was an expert student of the Pali, the sacred writing of Buddhism. The prince was also the first native prince of Farther India to procure a printing press, which he obtained from London, with fonts of English and Siamese type, and an alphabet of Pali of his own devising.
Apparently Chao Fah Yai approached the subject of Christianity as a vigourous mind approaches any ponderous subject that presents itself; he considered it philosophically. Every religion studied philosophically presents insuperable difficulties; a religion may be rightly judged only by its practical adaptation to life and its effects on the human heart. Had he attempted to study Christianity in a practical manner as he did the science of the West his conclusions would doubtless have been different. One evening the prince called at the home of Mr. Caswell just as the weekly prayer meeting was assembling and, upon invitation, remained to the meeting. His questions afterwards showed that he had given attention, for he inquired the meaning of such words as “redemption” and “Providence,” which he had heard used.
While it is a fact that on several occasions the prince emphatically disclaimed belief in the Christian doctrines, nevertheless the arguments of the missionaries were not without effect upon his mind, for he felt himself called upon to do an entirely new thing—to publish an apologetic for Buddhism in the points where the Christian arguments were most aggressive. In another manner also he gave evidence that the Christian arguments were pressing upon his conscience. The Baptist mission for some years had printed an annual almanac filled with Christian truth and containing, besides other items of civil information, a list of officials of the government and of the watts. In 1848, for the first time, Chao Fah Yai took exception to the religious character of the almanac in which his name appeared as head priest of his watt. He wrote to the editor of the almanac, expressing a “wish to have added to the description of myself in the English almanac ‘and hates the Bible most of all’; we will not embrace Christianity, because we think it a foolish religion. Though you should baptise all in Siam I will never be baptised.... You think that we are near the Christian religion; you will find my disciples will abuse your God and Jesus.”
Concerning his attitude to Christianity a comment from Mrs. Leonowens’ book, An English Governess at the Siamese Court, casts a little light:
“He had been a familiar visitor at the houses of American missionaries, two of whom Dr. House and Mr. Mattoon, were throughout his reign and life gratefully revered by him for that pleasant and profitable conversation which helped to unlock for him the secrets of European vigor and advancement, and to make straight and easy the paths of knowledge he had started upon. Not even his Siamese nature could prevent him from accepting cordially the happy influence these good and true men inspired. And doubtless he would have gone more than half way to meet them, but for the dazzle of the throne in the distance which arrested him midway between Christianity and Buddhism.”
This was the Priest-Prince upon whom the newcomers made their first call of respect. The acquaintance formed at this time ripened into a friendship that continued warm and true to the end. Dr. House, in his journal, carefully records the details of the call:
“His Royal Highness was somewhat unwell, but he would come down. A servant was sent to ask if we would not take some refreshments. Soon a plate of stone-fruit was presented, resembling in flavour our peach; also a plate of Chinese cakes, white and thin, with a bowl of dark Chinese jelly and sugar. Knife, three-pronged fork and teaspoon were brought and we made an excellent tiffin.
“I looked around the room; Bible from A. B. Society, and Webster dictionary stood side by side on a shelf of his secretary, also a Nautical Tables and Navigation. On the table a diagram of the forthcoming eclipse in pencil with calculations, and a copy of the printed chart of Mr. Chandler....
“This man, if his life is spared, is destined to exert an all-powerful influence upon the destinies of this people. He must possess a vigour of mind and much energy of purpose thus to commence the study of a new language at the age of forty. Indeed he seems Cato-like in other things....
“Soon the Prince-Priest appeared with two or three following, dressed in yellow silk robes worn as a Roman toga. His manners were rather awkward at introduction, and his appearance not prepossessing at first, though we became more interested in him as we saw him more. He seated himself on a chair by the center table, and asked our names and ages and whether married. Wished to know if I could cure sick as Dr. Bradley did. Whether I could cure the dropsy, for there was a case in the watt. He understands English when he reads it, but cannot speak it well yet.
“We asked to see his printing room; several young priests and servants on bamboo settees folding books. One composing type, one correcting proof. They gave us a copy of a book published in the Prince’s new Pali alphabet—it was the Buddhist ten commandments and comments on them. Mr. Caswell had previously told him of the present of a keg of printing ink we had for him from our friend G. W. Eddy, of Waterford. He asked who it was from, and if ‘they had heard of him in America’; and was evidently well pleased to find that he was known. Upon taking leave, he promised to call in return upon his guests in a few days.”
This call of the new missionaries was returned by the priest, and on several occasions afterwards he visited the Doctor in his house. Occasionally he would send notes by his servants requesting various favours, medical attendance upon inmates of the watt, loan of books. On a second visit, when Dr. House went to engage the services of a young priest as instructor in Siamese, the prince proposed that the Doctor should come over to the watt and make use of the room which Mr. Caswell occupied for his class in English, and “there distribute medicines and teach the young men of the watt how to be doctors.” Among the papers of Dr. House was found an autograph letter in English written by Chao Fah Yai about this time inviting him and the other missionaries to attend a cremation ceremony at watt Thong Bangkoknoi; and offering him the privilege of distributing religious books among the head priests assembled there from several watts and to preach to them on the new religion. On other visits he inquired about the new instrument that “would send intelligence quickly” (the telegraph), asked why American vessels so seldom came to Bangkok, and discussed the difference between the Latin and English Bibles.
In proper sequence of courtesy the new missionaries were taken to call upon the other prince, Chao Fah Noi. For some reason this prince had withdrawn from his former intercourse with foreigners, but he very courteously received the callers and was manifestly pleased with the attention. He, too, was interested in Western learning and especially inclined towards the physical sciences. On the palace grounds he had several shops, one for a forge, one for iron lathes, one for wood-working. Power for all this machinery was developed by slave-muscle. In one room was a working model of a steam engine, two and a half feet long, made entirely by the prince’s own hands. Being somewhat unwell he consulted Dr. House, but explained that he was under the King’s physician and to refuse to take his medicine would be an act of disrespect to His Majesty, and for that reason would not ask Dr. House to prescribe for him.
The acquaintance thus formed was used, at first, by the prince more as a means of securing personal instruction on physical sciences. Frequently servants were sent to Dr. House to borrow books or to ask for advice on chemistry, electricity, photography, lithography and kindred subjects; and on various occasions the doctor was summoned to the prince’s palace only to find that his assistance or instruction was desired in some experiment. In after years, however, when Chao Fah Noi had become Vice-King upon the accession of Mongkut, his intercourse with Dr. House rested more upon the basis of friendship.