| Introduction David Brookshaw, Lit. Professor, Un. Bristol A late nineteenth-century Californian view of Macau: Charles Gunnison’s ‘In Macao.’ Charles A. Gunnison (1861-97), the secretary of the Commercial Publishing Company in San Francisco, lived through a time of transformation in his native state, and indeed in the history of the United States and its relationship with what might be broadly termed, the Iberian and Ibero-American world. The year 1848 witnessed the formal surrender by Mexico of California to the United States, as a result of the US-Mexican War. The opening up of the North American western seaboard to a rapidly expansive United States paved the way for further incursions into the Pacific, culminating in the seizure of the Philippines in 1898 resulting from the brief war with Spain. If, in parallel to this, we also consider the establishment of Hong Kong as a British colony in 1841, which severely dented the historic prestige of Portuguese Macau as the only European entrepot in China, then we could regard the second half of the nineteenth century as a period of unbridled Anglo-American capitalist expansion at the expense of the older Iberian empires in the Western Pacific and South China Sea. It is important to bear this process in mind when reading Gunnison’s short story, ‘In Macao’ (1892), for it explains the stereotyped portrayals of Robert, “as good a specimen of Anglo-Saxon youth as England herself could boast of” and of Pedro de Amaral, his failed rival for the hand of Priscilla, who “bent upon him such a look of hatred as only the eyes of Latin races can give”,and “hated the happy suitor with all the fierceness of his Southern blood”. This hatred is accentuated by the fact that Priscilla is an orphan of North American origin who has been brought up in Macau. Robert is therefore the rescuer of one of his own stock. A brief look at two of Gunnison’s other short stories available in the same volume as ‘In Macao’ place him well within the vein of romantic Indianism associated in North America with figures such as Fennimore Cooper, and in South America with the Brazilian, José de Alencar. ‘The beautiful eyes of Ysidria’ and ‘A Napa Christchild’ are both set in the author’s native California, at a time before its incorporation into the United States, but when the first Yankee settlers and traders were beginning to make incursions into the area, a period that corresponded to the narrator’s youth, “those merry days of California before the gold was about her dear form like prisoner’s chains; before the greed of the States and England had forced us into the weary drudgery of the earth, and made us the slaves of misbegotten progress”. Gunnison, like both Cooper and Alencar, was ambiguous about the merits of conservation and the inevitability of progress, and it is precisely this depiction of an older world, but which is threatened by change, that is visible in the author’s depiction of Macau, at once beautiful, placid and at one with Nature, but dangerous, secretive, venomous towards that or those which threaten its static order. The idea is that just as exotic beauty may conceal an underlying ugliness, the old cannot give way to the new without extracting a high price and a violent outcome: “On the yellow water here and there were junks with tanned sails and gay banners; islands with graceful pagodas were seen, and the huge white cathedral of the near dependency of Taipa. Then in the foreground at their very feet was Macao, a feast of colour, red roofs, many-hued walls, green trees and brilliant gardens, beautiful as the jewel-set sheath of a Venetian dagger, with its poison and death-dealing wickedness hidden”. This attraction to the ‘Other’, coupled with fear and revulsion, is a characteristic of colonial literature and of what we now understand by the blanket term Orientalism, and this is most tangibly reflected in the figure of the male ‘Other’, who, in accordance with the morality of the colonizer, is feminized. Nowhere is this more clearly reflected in the figure of the open, honest, upright Robert Adams, on the one hand, and the emotional but devious Pedro de Amaral on the other, and in the former’s upbraiding of the latter during his imprisonment: “I thought you my friend, Dom Pedro, and I thought you a man (my stress)”. If Robert and Priscilla, the archetypal innocent victim, are saved from the vengeance of Dom Pedro by a typhoon, this excess of Nature merely serves as a metaphor for the violence and chaos of Dom Pedro’s ‘Otherness’. Equally, Robert’s replacement of Pedro as Dom Luiz de Amaral’s trusted adviser and honorary son seems to suggest a type of compromise at the end between old fashioned concepts of honour and decency enshrined in the decadent Pedro’s father, who significantly, has made shrewd investments in Hong Kong to ensure his position in Macao’s wealthy elite, and progressive capitalism enshrined in Robert, the young, pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon New Englander, drawn to the East by the opportunities afforded by Hong Kong. However, the long arm of vengeance impedes even this new association, and the scene of departure at the end of the story seems to throw into relief Macau’s general abandonment. |
PRESS OF
COMMERCIAL PUBLISHING CO.
34 CALIFORNIA ST., S.F. (1892)
I was seated one pleasant day in the garden, which was given to the city of Macao by the Marcos family, near the grotto sacred to the poet Camoens, when a Portuguese priest came from among the wilderness of flowers and sat beside me. He spoke English with a pleasant accent and we read Bowring’s effusion together, as it is engraved on the marble slab nearby. Scarcely had we finished, and the father was telling me of Goa in India, when my uncle Robert came from beneath the great banyan tree and stood before us. The father jumped to his feet, and throwing back his brown robe, rushed forward toward my uncle with a stilletto held ready for an upward stroke. Quickly my uncle drew a revolver and fired—and the father fell dead at my feet.
I
To those who have been in Southern Europe and have seen the towns along the Riviera, the first view of Macao, as the steamboat approaches from Hong Kong, gives the impression of having been suddenly transported to the sunny Mediterranean. Were it not for the colour of the water, and the Chinese junks, Macao would indeed be a perfect representation of any of those lovely spots, as she lies along her crescent bay, from Mount Nillau to Mount Charil, defended by the frowning forts of Sam Francisco and Our Lady of Bom Parto. Beautiful as this picture is, it was doubly so in the brilliant sunset colouring of a certain March day, as the steamer slowly came to her wharf and the passengers stepped ashore beneath the blue and white flag of Portugal, in this, her farthest eastern possession. The houses with their delicate washings of pink, blue, yellow or green, with white stucco ornaments, now golden in the light, had a warmth of colouring well set off by the dark foliage of camphor and banyan trees showing above the garden walls. The few passengers soon dispersed, in chairs or on foot, leaving but one of their number upon the wharf. He was apparently expecting some one to come for him, for he refused all offers of assistance from the coolies and seated himself just outside the gate. American, of medium height, brown haired and tanned by a tropical sun, Robert Adams was as good a specimen of Anglo Saxon youth as England herself could boast of. He was the last descendant of a New England family, which had preserved its purity for three centuries as unmixed with continental blood as though the three centuries had been passed in the quiet vales of Devon, instead of in the New World with its broken barriers.
For three years, after a successful college course, he had been in the only shipping house in Hong Kong which sickly American commerce of the day was able to support in the once flourishing China trade. A small fortune and a good salary, a constitution which even an Eastern summer could not break down, and above all, the heart of the girl he loved, were surely possessions which any king might envy him. Presently a neat bamboo chair borne by three liveried coolies came at a trot down the street, and being placed before this last of the passengers, carried him away into the darkness which, with the suddenness of the tropics, had fallen upon the city. The stillness was broken only by the noise of escaping steam from the boat and the regular patter of the barefooted chair carriers. When the chair had disappeared up the narrow, winding street, a Portuguese wrapped in a black cloak came from behind a wall, then by another way walked rapidly over the hill and down the other side to the Praya, arriving in front of one of the largest houses on that most beautiful promenade just as the coolies put down their burden.
The oil lamps along the Praya had been lighted, stretching out to the Estrada Sam Francisco, where the bright windows in the hospital of Sam Januarius seemed to be the lake of lights into which this long stream flowed. No one was abroad, no steps sounded along the pavement except those of the sentry as he walked, and smoked, before the neighbouring residence of the Governor. Death at night and sleep in the day time are the characteristics of Macao. No one seems to work, play, sing, dance or even read unless the latter indeed may be done in what Alphonse Daudet calls la Bibliotheque des cigales.
As Robert Adams stepped from the chair, the Portuguese came forward with outstretched hand saying: “What is the news Dom Robert in Hong Kong?” “Oh, Dom Pedro, you came out so suddenly I thought I was attacked. No news, unless it is that the rector of St. John’s is to join me to the loveliest girl in Macao or the world, in just three weeks.” “I hope you won’t disappoint him Dom Robert, you came very near doing so to-night,” said Pedro de Amaral with a laugh. “How, pray?” asked Adams as they entered the now unbarred gate. “You were within three feet of the water, if you had fallen in, that would have disappointed him. Not? Three feet is near. Not?” “Yes, and the boiler might have burst,” replied Adams laughing. “Or more improbable yet the Portuguese government might have revived Macao, which would kill me with astonishment my dear Amaral.”
Having entered the house he was followed by Dom Pedro, who bent upon him such a look of hatred as only the eyes of Latin races can give. The Portuguese turned to the right to his own apartments and Adams following a servant to the left, was soon in the dimly lighted library of Dom Luiz de Amaral the father of Dom Pedro. There were not many books on the shelves but a superb collection of Oriental swords and knives was arranged in the cases from which the shelves had been taken. Two old engravings, one of the poet Camoens and the other of Catarina de Atayde, his beloved, who died of grief at his banishment, hung on the wall; the rest of the furnishings was of that cosmopolitan character which is sure to collect in the home of a European resident in the far East.
“Can’t you see me Robert?” said a laughing voice of great sweetness from a corner of the study. “One would think that both your eyes had met the same fate that the right one of poor Camoens did in Morocco.” “My darling Priscilla how could I see you ten feet away from the light? You know olive oil don’t give the brightest illumination. But its enough though.” “Don’t!” “Just one,” and then a sound not unknown to many of us put a stop to the conversation. “Shall I leave the room children?” came in merry tones from another corner and immediately an old lady came forward giving both hands to him. “That miserable oil of Dom Amaral’s has put me into a pretty mess,” said Adams half annoyed, but laughing as he greeted the lady. “Don’t berate me before my face dear friend about my light, especially when you are so soon to take our brightest light away from us.” “Fairly trapped, Dom Amaral,” cried Adams laughing heartily at this third interruption. “And here is Dom Pedro dressed for dinner,” he continued as the younger Amaral entered the room. “I’ll be with you presently and have my eyes toned down to your Macao standard.”
Being so constant a visitor, Robert Adams had his own rooms at Dom Amaral’s, where he found his bags unpacked and the clothes laid out by those deftest of servants, the Chinese. According to custom the dinner of Macao was served at the late hour of nine.
Dom Luiz Diego de Amaral was one of the wealthiest Portuguese in the city, having, unlike most of his fellow citizens, investments abroad which brought him a considerable income after the birth of Hong Kong killed Macao and left it a city of the past, of poverty and pride. Having in his youth married a Spanish woman who bore him one son, Pedro, he was left a widower before the age of twenty-five.
Some years after, being in Boston where he then had large shipping interests, he took a second wife, Priscilla Harvey, and returned to Macao. Madam de Amaral’s only sister, wife of Captain Fernald had one child which was left an orphan at an early age by the drowning of both parents in Portsmouth harbour.
This orphan, Priscilla Fernald, was taken to her aunt in China and became a member of the household of Dom Amaral. It was a strange transplanting for such a flower from the cold coast of Puritan New England to the tropical, Roman Catholic colony in the heart of heathendom. But the flower of so sturdy a stock remained true. It was long accepted by all, even by the maiden Priscilla, that young Amaral was to be her husband though nothing had been said on the subject. Later, the small circle of Macao society, of which poverty and pride were the ruling features, became too dull for the young girl and her foster parents took her often to Hong Kong where she met with those of the outer world.
In that hospitable society of the “city of the fragrant streams,” where the dinner table seems to be the only rendezvous, save a garden party now and then, a Tarrantella dance or a Government House ball, the fair Priscilla met young Robert Adams, a native of her far away and almost unknown home. The acquaintance blossomed into friendship and ripened into love. The lover was accepted, and now a courtship of two years was in three weeks to see them married. There were many disappointed youths and envious of Robert Adams, but all took their misfortune as in the way of the world, except young Amaral, who, in silence, had watched the course of events and now hated the happy suitor with all the fierceness of his Southern blood.
That night Robert Adams, unlike the conventional lover, but like a healthy, light-hearted fellow, fell asleep without a sigh, listening to the waves as they broke regularly on the stone embankment before his window. In the room below, Dom Pedro walked until the early morning, no beating of waves could lull him to sleep, for his head ached and his eyes burned in the fever of jealousy. Thus he brooded over his loss till the sun gilded the hermitage fort of Our Lady of Guia.
II
The following day was Sunday, the liveliest, or rather the only day with any life at all, in Macao, for the visitors from Hong Kong then go about the city sight seeing to be ready for the early return of the steamboat on Monday morning.
A pleasant spot, and one not often molested by visitors on account of the somewhat toilsome climb required to reach it, is the church of Our Lady of Pehna on the summit of Mt. Nillau. Built in 1622 on this high point to be more easily protected from any possible invasion of the Chinese from the main island of Heang Shang, the church serves now only as an addition to the picturesqueness of Macao, and though repaired in 1837 is again in ruin. Priscilla and her affianced chose this for their Sabbath walk, for it is only through nature that the Protestants in Macao can worship nature’s God, and surely the incense of flowers could bear to Him on high the thanksgiving of those two happy hearts, as truly as the frankincense and myrrh which the good Fathers of the last century burnt upon Mt. Nillau. The narrow but well paved streets with their stuccoed houses, barred windows and little peep-holes at the doors, for questioning the doubtful applicants for admission, even the two months old posters of Chiarini’s circus had a new charm this Sunday morning; for Adams it was a day of quiet after his week of noise and bustle in Hong Kong, while for Priscilla it seemed a gala day full of life after the six silent days of sleepy monotony. “I can see that Pedro is not friendly toward you Robert,” she said; “I could hear him walking during all the night and am sure he is planning something to annoy you, I know his ways so well.” “Don’t worry, Priscilla, Dom Pedro was probably troubled over some loss at the fan-tan table; they say he won five hundred Mexicans last week and then lost that sum doubled.”
“That may be so, Robert, but our approaching marriage is a great cross to him. It is hard to tell what Pedro’s thoughts are; his eyes are like our Macao windows of isinglass and let very little light either way.”
The winding road between ruined walls of gray stone, half covered with clinging ficus, spanned by broken arches, with here and there a fallen urn, led them through picturesque turns and by mossy steps to the foot of the huge black cross erected before the empty church. Neither spoke; they did not care for words and the only expression which framed itself audibly was that oft repeated jubilate of health and youth, “How beautiful it is to live!”
Dim in the distance, of almost the same shade as the sky, rose the White Cloud Hills; lesser hills more distinct in waving outline lay before them; then rocky promontories and islands with grotesque forms like the twisted dragons of Chinese embroideries, and the low stretch which marked the position of the wonderful city of Canton. On the yellow water here and there were junks with tanned sails and gay banners; islands with graceful pagodas were seen, and the huge white cathedral of the near dependency of Taipa. Then in the foreground at their very feet was Macao, a feast of colour, red roofs, many-hued walls, green trees and brilliant gardens, beautiful as the jewel-set sheath of a Venetian dagger, with its poison and death-dealing wickedness hidden.
Dom Amaral with his wife had gone to the new cathedral to services; their well appointed chairs had scarcely left the court and the gates been bolted behind them when Dom Pedro came from his room. His face had changed greatly since the day before; the loss of sleep and the bitterness of his heart had made him look pale and thin. For the first time in his life he had spoken harshly to his valet, and that meek Celestial wore an expression of grief and surprise, for Pedro Amaral, whatever his faults, did not have the vulgar one of venting his spleen upon his inferiors, so that his lifelong servant was at a loss to account for the sudden change.
Dom Pedro walked to the library and drawing the curtains behind him sat down before the cases filled with brilliant steel. Suddenly he looked away and picked up a book from the table, opening it at random but constantly his eyes reverted to the cases before him. Slowly his features relaxed and with a broken sigh he was about to replace the book when a small photograph card fell from its pages; the face was that of Robert Adams, the book Priscilla’s “Common Prayer.” Like a flash the old lines came back in his forehead; he went to the case and opening the glass doors, carefully took down a small, silver sheath, the work of some artist of Goa, wherein the influence of both India and Europe showed in the execution. The pressure of a button pushed out a grooved dagger which fitted so low in the sheath as to show only the head of its jeweled hilt. Dom Pedro removed the dagger, wrapped it in his handkerchief and then putting it in his breast pocket replaced the empty sheath in its old position.
To be continued next week
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