Whatever the reason, there can be no doubt that there is indeed a bond between Commissioner Lin and Charlie. The Commissioner has even issued a public commendation to Charlie and it was for a while posted all around Fanqui-town (you can imagine the effect of this on Mr Dent and his ilk!).
When the destruction of the surrendered opium started, a few days ago, Charlie was one of the few foreigners who was present at the event. He described the scene to me in the most vivid detail and I was so taken with it that I have resolved to make a painting of it – I have already made a few sketches and Charlie tells me they are perfectly accurate!
The scene is set in a small village, not far from the Bogue. It is a flat, marshy place, intercut with creeks and surrounded by rice paddies. A field has been marked out, and trenches have been dug; the crates are stacked nearby as they arrive. The Commissioner is determined to prevent pilferage so the perimeter is guarded day and night and everyone who works there is searched, before they enter and when they leave.
Day by day the stocks of opium accumulate: the crates rise by the hundred until they reach a total of twenty thousand three hundred and eighty-one. Their combined value is almost beyond human imagining: Zadig Bey says that to buy it you would need hundreds of tons of silver! (Can you conceive of that, Puggly dear – a hillock of silver? And all this opium was intended for sale in a single season: does it not make the mind boggle?)
But there it is, this great haul of opium, and the day comes for Commissioner Lin to set in motion the process of its destruction. And on the eve of the ceremony, what does the Commissioner elect to do? Why, he sits down to write a poem – it is a prayer addressed to the God of the Sea asking that all the animals of the water be protected from the poison that will soon be pouring in.
When the time is right he goes to sit in the shade of a raised pavilion. From there he gives the signal for the work to start. The chests are opened, balls of opium are broken up and mixed with salt and lime and then thrown into the water-filled trenches; when the opium melts the sluices are opened and the opium is allowed to drain into the river. It is hard work: five hundred men, working long hours, can destroy only about three hundred chests a day.
Such was the scene that met Charlie’s eyes when he went to the place. The Commissioner was seated in his pavilion and presently Charlie was taken there to meet him. This was the first time Charlie had been face-to-face with him and he was startled to find that the Commissioner was not at all the man his enemies had portrayed him to be: his manner was lively to the point of being vivacious, Charlie said, and he looked young for his age; he was short and rather stout, with a smooth full face, a thin black beard and sharp, black eyes. After exchanging a few pleasantries, the Commissioner asked Charlie who, amongst the Co-Hong merchants, he considered the most honest. When Charlie was unable to produce an immediate answer he burst into peals of laughter!
Is it not a most wonderful tableau, my dearest Puggly? I am of a mind to call it: ‘Commissioner Lin and the River of Opium’.
Charlie was in transports of delight to see the drug being transformed, as he said, into heaps of ashes instead of kindling the fires of lust and frenzy in the brothels of a hundred cities. But his joy is tinged with a terrible sadness for he knows that the Commissioner’s victory will not be long-lived: already several English and American battleships are on their way to China, and there can be little doubt of what the outcome will be if it comes to war. Charlie is so worried that he has written a long letter, addressed to Captain Elliot. It is, in my eyes, a most marvellous piece of writing, and being the inveterate copyist that I am, I could not refrain from noting down a few passages (I will slip them in with this letter when I send it off).
Charlie is often terribly downcast when he thinks of what lies ahead for he thinks that a great cataclysm is coming. Whether that is true or not I do not know – and nor, honestly, do I care. I am persuaded that this is a moment that should be savoured and celebrated. For it is a rare thing in this world, is it not, Puggly dear, when a couple of good men prevail against the forces arrayed against them?
As always, my dear Puggly, I have been overly prolix – it is a besetting sin. But I cannot end this letter without mentioning a very odd thing that happened last week.
One morning a bright red envelope, of the kind that is used in China for invitations, was found on the doorstep of this house. It was addressed to me, in English, and it was (or purported to be) from none other than Mr Chan (or Ah Fey or whatever you will). This is what it said:
‘Dear Mr Chinnery, I have had to leave town on some pressing business and I do not know when I will be back. It is a pity because I had put together some good flowers for you. But you should know the golden camellia was not among them. That is because this plant does NOT exist. It was invented by Mr William Kerr. Like so many things that are said about China it is a HOAX. Mr Kerr made it up so that his sponsors would send him more money, that is all. The pictures were made by a painter called Alantsae. Mr Kerr taught him about botanical paintings. I know because I was their family servant and gardener – it was Alantsae’s mother who sent me to work for Mr Kerr. I wanted to have the pleasure of telling Mr Penrose this myself, but I do not know if that will happen now.
‘I bid you farewell. Lenny Chan (Lynchong).’
Frankly, Puggly dear, I don’t know what to make of this and will not try. It is all so very singular – and yet perhaps it is not so for Canton.
Flowers and opium, opium and flowers!
It is odd to think that this city, which has absorbed so much of the world’s evil, has given, in return, so much beauty. Reading your letters, I am amazed to think of all the flowers it has sent out into the world: chrysanthemums, peonies, tiger lilies, wisteria, rhododendrons, azaleas, asters, gardenias, begonias, camellias, hydrangeas, primroses, heavenly bamboo, a juniper, a cypress, climbing tea-roses and roses that flower many times over – these and many more. Were it in my power I would enjoin upon every gardener in the world that they remember, when they plant these blooms, that all of them came to their gardens by grace of this one city – this crowded, noisome, noisy, voluptuous place we call Canton.
One day all the rest will be forgotten – Fanqui-town and its Friendships, the opium and the flower-boats; even perhaps the paintings (for I doubt that anyone will ever love these pictures (and painters) as much as I do; this is, after all, a bastard art, neither sufficiently Chinese nor European, and thus likely to be displeasing to many).
But when all the rest is forgotten the flowers will remain, will they not, Puggly dear?
The flowers of Canton are immortal and will bloom for ever.
*
To Charles Elliot Esq., amp;c amp;c.
For nearly forty years, British merchants, led on by the East India Company, have been driving a trade in violation of the highest laws and the best interests of the Chinese empire. This course has been pushed so far as to derange its currency, to corrupt its officers, and ruin multitudes of its people. The traffic has become associated in the politics of the country, with embarrassments and evil omens; in its penal code, with the axe and the dungeon; in the breasts of men in private life, with the wreck of property, virtue, honour and happiness. All ranks, from the Emperor on the throne, to the people of the humblest hamlets, have felt its sting. To the fact of its descent to the lowest classes of society we are frequent witnesses; and the Court gazettes are evidence that it has marked out victims for disgrace and ruin even among the Imperial kindred.
Justice forbids that the steps taken by the Chinese, to arrest a system of wrongs practised on them, under the mask of friendship, be made pretence for still deeper injuries. Interest condemns the sacrifice of the lawful and useful trade with China, on the altar of illicit traffic. Still more loudly does it warn against the assumption of arms in an unjust quarrel, against – not the Chinese government only – but the Chinese people. Strong as Great Britain is she cannot war with success, or even safety, upon the consciences – the moral sense – of these three or four hundred million people.