The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-26 00:00:00

The Ruling King of Siam.

During the reign of the usurping sovereign, the
legitimate heir (let him be honoured with all his
titles) Phra Bard Somdetch Phra, Paramendr Naha
Mongkut Phra Chom Klau Cha Tu Hua, provided
for the safety of his person, seriously menaced, by
withdrawing from the sphere of public observation,
giving to himself the sacred character of a Buddhist
priest, and taking possession of apartments in one of
the I'Vator temples, which form the most prominent
objects in all the towns of Siam, and especially in
the city of Bangkok. He there devoted himself to
profound study. He not only explored such litera-
ture as the ancient Siamese records presented to
him, but mastered the Sanskrit and the Pali lan-
guages ; of Latin he had acquired such a mastery,
mainly by the aid of the Catholic bishop, that he
was engaged while I was in Siam in writing his auto-
biography in that language, and paid great atten-
tion to the English tongue, in which he was
assisted by his intercourse with the Ame-
rican missionaries, who had maintained their
ground in Bangkok and its neighbourhood,
notwithstanding the persecutions and annoyances
of the court. But his principal source of instruc-
tion was found in dictionaries, and his conversation
was therefore much combined with words little used
in ordinary colloquies. For example, he would use
zenith and nadir in preference to north and south :
his collocation of words is not always grammatical,
but he had always an expression at hand, though
not in common use, by which he very distinctly
conveyed his meaning. He reminded one of a man
talking through the medium of a dead language,
translating his thoughts from a language more
familiar, but not thinking in the language which he
spoke. On one occasion when I read an English
address to him at the time of my formal official re-
ception, he sent for me to the interior of the palace,
said he had understood perfectly every word but
one, and of that word he asked an explanation.
And this reminds me of one of those " touches
of nature which make the whole world kin."
On my first public audience we passed through
the centre of a large hall in which all the
principal nobles of the land, clad in garments of
gold, lay on all fours prostrate with their faces
nearly touching the ground, when a curtain was
drawn, and from a raised tribune at the end of the
hall appeared the king seated on his throne, clad in
gorgeous apparel, a sceptre in his hand, a richly
jewelled crown on his head, surrounded by " all
the wealth of Ormus and of Ind." The ceremony
over, he desired to see me in the interior of the pa-
lace in one of his private apartments. He sat there
divested of every ornament, with no other garment
than a shirt ; he held on his knee a little girl ab-
solutely naked, and with no adorning but a chaplet
of fragrant white flowers round her head. He asked
me to admire her beauty—she was his youngest
born ; and here I may add that I received a letter
not very long after informing me that since my de-
parture from Siam five children had been added to
the royal race. " Plenty of royalty," was one of
his Majesty's expressions. In fact, he rejoiced in
the possession of 300 wives and concubines, which
he said was a very moderate number : his father
had 700 for his portion. He laughed loudly on one
occasion when I told him that in England one
wife was found all sufficient. He had a drama got
up for our amusement, in which no lesithan a hun-
dred ladies of the court were engaged as actresses,
under the discipline of an ugly old promptress, whose
scoldings were sometimes louder than the music of
the piece. The women were of every hue, from the
snowy to the sable, and of every oriental race.—Sir
John Bowring, in the Fortnightly Review.