Keep the secret secret still;
Here and there may truth be guessed
From what can be seen—suppressed!
One of the things that make this biography worth writing is the freedom from conventional restraints. So readers shall have the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The bear’s master has long been a friend of mine, and I hope will so continue, but truth is dearer than anybody. So I will not suppress the remarks of the honest lawyer at Kyauktan, who is also an old friend, and has read the first draft of this work. He sent me [302] ]a letter on the subject, containing the excruciating words that the bear at Kyauktan had become “a nuisance.” The expression is his. My responsibility is limited to quoting it. I desire to express no opinion of my own.
What her own master could not help seeing was the contrast between her behaviour and that of a very respectable bear at Syriam, a place at the other end of the ridge, nearly a day’s walk from Kyauktan, just across the river from Rangoon. The bear living there belonged to Mr Brand of the Burma Oil Company, and he and our heroine’s master often compared notes, and discussed the problem of her higher education. Mr Brand seemed to think she had good natural gifts, but had come to a difficult age when she needed daily supervision. He never went on tour himself, and was willing to take charge of her. She would be sure to benefit by the company of an older and well-behaved bear, and the two together would be happier at Syriam than either was alone. At last her owner was persuaded, and, when every preliminary had been settled, our heroine set out for her new home (A.D. 1900).
She went in a slow cart, and the day was hot. It is not so well known as it should be that bears and elephants and tigers, too, are almost as [303] ]sensitive to the sunshine as white men. In this instance, though every possible precaution was taken, the bear was decidedly unhappy on the way. We have to remember that she was an adolescent female and a fully emancipated one, who had lived exclusively for her own amusement, and never had anything particular to do or to suffer in this world. Her sensations, therefore, must have been remarkably like those of the American family, immortalised in Ruskin’s letter to Norton of 1869.
“I ... was fated to come from Venice to Verona with an American family, father and mother and two girls—presumably rich—girls 15 and 18. I never before conceived the misery of wretches who had spent all their lives in trying to gratify themselves. It was a little warm—warmer than was entirely luxurious—but nothing in the least harmful. They moaned and fidgeted and frowned and puffed and stretched and fanned, and ate lemons, and smelt bottles, and covered their faces, and tore the cover off again, and had no one thought or feeling, during five hours of travelling in the most noble part of all the world, except what four poor beasts would have had in their den in a menagerie, being dragged about on [304] ]a hot day....” (Letters of John Ruskin to C. E. Norton, I, pp. 218 and 219.)
The longest road has an end, and Syriam was reached at last. The cart stopped, and the bear came down from it with every sensation smothered in one irresistible craving for coolness “Anything to be cool!” A pleasant-looking tank of water was near, and into it she plunged.
The details of what followed are variously reported. Eyes she had and ears of the best; but she used them to avoid people. It was only after a long time that it pleased her to emerge, quite shivering now, cool enough at last.
Fever came on and pneumonia; and, next day she died, and that is the end of the story. When you think of it, that is how every story would end if it went on long enough.