Shades of the Past Page 5

In all probability he would have made a successful diplomat, and would never have met Thomas Lake Harris, had it not been that on a night in July, 1861, he was wounded, in fact almost murdered, by a party of Japanese ronin, armed with long swords, who attacked the British Legation. The miscreants succeeded in getting past the Japanese guards and broke into the Legation. There they fortunately became confused when one of them stepped onto the pins of an entomological collection spread on the tatami. In the excitement they became lost among the passageways and became split up into several groups. The five Englishmen, several of whom were armed with revolvers, succeeded in repulsing them. When the would-be assassins finally retired, the unfortunate Oliphant was lying senseless on the floor bleeding profusely from sword cuts on his arm, head, and neck.

  My own theory is that the blow on the head was much more severe than history records—an impression with which you also may agree when you have completed the reading of this article!

  On account of the serious nature of the injuries received, the unfortunate Oliphant was invalided back to England, and, it is of interest to recall, on that journey he was permitted by the British Minister to act as a courier for the Japanese Government.

  The port of Kobe, or rather Hyogo as it was then known, and the city of Osaka were due to be opened on 1st January, 1863, but owing to the continued opposition of a number of the clans to the entry of foreigners, as they put it, "to the sacred soil of Japan being polluted by foreigners " the Authorities were seeking a postponement of the opening of Hyogo and Osaka. It was in those circumstances that the Japanese Government entrusted to Oliphant a letter from the Tycoon to be delivered to Queen Victoria in which a postponement of the opening of those ports was requested. A Japanese embassy was shortly afterwards despatched to England on board a British warship. Their mission was successful and Kobe and Osaka were therefore not opened until five years later, on 1st January, 1868.

  It is also interesting to note that the Japanese Embassy left Japan with what was then the commonly accepted impression that Occidentals were barbarians. However, they were so impressed with all they saw on the British warship and abroad, that upon returning to Japan they reported "it is not the foreigners, but we ourselves who are barbarians and they declared that the Westerners who were popularly considered to be "hairy foreigners with blue eyes like pigs, were gentlemen and not wild beasts " Although their visit did something to correct mistaken impressions, it is but fair to remark that they mixed largely with diplomats and did not have much opportunity of meeting the masses, many of whom at that time would have resented being classified as gentlemen.

  But let us rejoin Mr. Laurence Oliphant. After arrival in England he resigned from the diplomatic service, and later, on recovering from his injuries, he entered politics and was elected to parliament for a brief term. However, he displayed no particular aptitude for the political hustings, but did continue to produce witty writings. He must then have been at a loose end, because when Harris was on a lecture tour in England, both he and his mother, Lady Oliphant, fell under Harris' spell. Oliphant then deserted politics to become one of Harris' disciples. Said Oliphant, when describing Harris, "his eyes were like revolving lights in two dark caverns."

  Having looked into those eyes, the elegant Oliphant, the one-time diplomat who had mixed with the great of many lands, began to serve a period of probation to fit himself for entry into the Brotherhood of the New Life. Whilst awaiting permission from Father Faithful, the name by which Harris was known to his disciples, Oliphant was required to devote a part of every day to sewing petticoats.

  Oliphant and his mother went to America with a number of other followers whom Harris had roped in, and at the instigation of Lady Oliphant, who apparently had both money and ideas, they all chipped in to purchase 1600 acres of land at Brocton on the shores of Lake Erie, where they founded the colony of "The Brotherhood of the New Life." Harris controlled the properties of the entire group and imposed a most rigorous discipline on its members, so that each might "attain the goal of complete self-surrender to the doctrine of Divine Use or purpose "

  On arrival at Brocton, Oliphant was separated from his mother and required to live in a shed, furnished with such things as he could make from fruit cases.

  For about two years this man of fashion, who had an entree to some of the best clubs in London and some of the best homes in England, laboured as a farm hand, whilst his mother, Lady Oliphant, widow of a former Chief Justice of Ceylon, also served the Brotherhood by washing "the gentlemen's linen" and working in the fields with a hoe.

  Although Oliphant had been nearly murdered by the Japanese and his career ruined, he did not lose his regard for their better qualities, and it was as a result of his efforts and influence that about twenty Japanese men, largely from the samurai class, came to Brocton to study Harris' gospel of the "two-in-oneness." For those who could not pay their own steamship passages Oliphant arranged for financial aid through his friends. He had a theory that the Japanese were by nature better fitted than most Occidentals to live up to the strictness of Harris' teachings.

  Oliphant was not however permitted to speak to the Japanese, nor indeed to his own mother, because of "the danger of our states mixing and passing over to Faithful." In a letter to a friend, Oliphant, now known in the Brotherhood as Woodbine, wrote:

  I cannot speak to the Japanese, though I see them, dear souls, every day hard at work with their countenances beaming with delight.

  And again:

  Some more Japanese have just joined the Use. They said that their past lives in Japan had been very wicked and any punishment which Faithful saw fit to inflict they would willingly bear.

  Among the Japanese who came to Brocton through the agency of Oliphant were several young samurai, who had been sent abroad to study by the Kagoshima clan. Most of them soon drifted away and later in life, when they had become famous public men in Japan, as members of the peerage and as cabinet ministers, they did their best to forget the delusions of Father Faithful. And so when it came to submitting a precis of their autobiographies for Who's Who they suppressed all reference to their association with The Brotherhood of the New Life. Their reticence is understandable enough, for the verdict of history seems to be that the Brotherhood was a community of crackpots.

  However that may be Father Faithful was able to rope in so many wealthy followers that he soon had acquired over twenty thousand acres of land. The Oliphants had contributed a goodly sum to the cause.

  That Oliphant threw himself into this new life with zest may be judged from a letter to a friend:

  ..I see you began your letter to me "Mr. Oliphant" but Mr. Oliphant has taken his departure long ago—he disappeared almost entirely—and left only your most affectionate and loving little Woodbine. Such a letter from Oliphant, the brilliant writer and conversationalist, whose company even delighted royalty! He had actually accompanied the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) on several of his expeditions to Paris, where Prince Edward described him as "sugar doodling the ladies."

  The community appears to have adopted some unusual practices. According to The Dictionary of American Biography, from which I again quote:

  Their distinctive practices were "open breathing a kind of respiration by which the Divine Breath entered directly into the body: and a system of celibate marriages whereby each person was left free to live in spiritual union with his or her heavenly counter-part"

  "Counter-partal marriages" were defined as the indwelling of eternal mate with external mate. Harris appears to have had three wives in all, but only two eternal mates, because his third wife is described as being his second eternal mate.

  It must be all very confusing to simple married couples, but apparently not to Oliphant or to his Victorian wife condemned to a celibate marriage and "martyr love." She never complained, if we are to believe Oliphant. Her reward it seems was after death, when as his heavenly counterpart they were more intimate than when she was alive—at least so said Oliphant.

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nbsp; As for the doings of Father Faithful he slept little and spent his nights mostly in visions with a celestial spouse. Or rather that was his story.

  Eventually owing to divergences between Oliphant and Harris, the community split and Harris and a number of followers purchased a 1200 acre vineyard in California, where Harris lived in luxury much like an Oriental potentate.

  Finally in 1881 the Oliphants pulled out completely and recovered most of their original investment, but only after Harris' counter move to have Oliphant certified as insane, had failed.

  For some years after they had separated Oliphant continued to believe that Harris, by some form of telepathic means, could exercise control over him. In fact on Oliphant's death some years later, Harris announced with malevolent glee:

  I was at the death. I watched him die and heard him talk. I did it.

  And so Oliphant, one of the great English eccentrics, disappears from this particular story, although actually the remainder of his life was even more amazing than the part already told.

  The Times considered him sufficiently important to devote two columns to his obituary notice.

  Thomas Lake Harris, now generally recognised to have been a pious fraud more interested in the charms of his attractive secretary, known to the Brotherhood as "Dovie," than in any tenuous celestial counterpart, continued in public to pursue his vortical atoms.

  Shortly before his death he assigned to five beneficiaries, one of whom was one of the original Japanese converts, the entire property then valued at $250,000—a considerable achievement for a grocer's boy and one who started out with what some commercially-minded people might consider the great handicap of being a poet.

  Thomas Lake Harris then disappears from this scene, except that he maintained his interest in the Japanese as a chosen people, although according to his wife's diary he found "the sexual state of the Japanese corrupted by British influences," a statement which to me, as a Britisher, does not make much sense.

  The deed which Harris had drawn up, provided that the property, which was then largely in vineyards, should eventually go to the beneficiary who lived longest and to the beneficiary's heirs. This clause later caused much confusion and litigation.

  The original five beneficiaries comprised a married couple well on in years, a widow, a spinster and a Japanese. Now it would seem to a simple person such as myself, that the elderly married couple, the widow, and the husbandless old maid might have been at a distinct disadvantage in the race to win the $250,000 prize by producing an heir, unless it was that Harris had reckoned that his doctrine of celibate marriages would have put them all on a level.

  A research into the newspapers of the time and into much which appeared in print on the disputes that arose, has left me more confused than ever. And so it is that I really do not know by what process the Japanese won the race. Although he did not actually live the longest, he did have an heir. It is also a fact that he was the community's expert in animal husbandry and vineyards, and so he may have known all about the birds and the bees!

  However that may be he eventually got all, despite the handicap from which he may have suffered. As the son of a samurai he had been taught in his childhood that the accumulation of wealth by commerce was the lowest occupation in the land, but in the end he seems to have been the best business man of them all!

  Later during the days of Prohibition he ran into difficult times, but Harris' teachings of two-in-oneness perhaps came to his aid, because whilst refusing to do any bootlegging he continued to store up large quantities of sherry which aged and became more mellow whilst he was waiting for prohibition to be repealed.

  The vineyards are still flourishing, but Harris' vortical atoms, his two-in-oneness, his celibate marriages, and his celestial spouses have long since disappeared from the scene. Only his library now remains. Unlike the sherry it does not improve with age. In time the bookworms will devour it, and the Shades of the Past lingering within its pages will be lost.

  THE

  MUTINY

  OF

  THE

  "CYPRUS"

  Their Justice is severely executed without any partialitie upon transgressors of the Law.

  WILL ADAMS, 1611

  It was a far cry from the convict and bushranging days of Australia to the feudal days of the Tokugawa period in Japan, and an ocean separated them, but surprisingly enough an historical incident linked the two.

  There was a time in England, and elsewhere also, when the magistrates had the power of sentencing a man to penal servitude for life for trifling offences—for stealing a loaf of bread or for poaching a rabbit on the squire's lands. Thereafter he became a member of chain gangs and the unfortunate associate of the dregs of the criminal world who were deservedly suffering penal servitude for more heinous crimes. At first the American Colonies were the most convenient places to which to ship such convicts. There they were largely used on the tobacco plantations of Virginia, although they never proved as tractable as the Negro slaves. Finally when the American Colonies made themselves independent, the convicts had to be kept in England, and for a while the English jails and hulks were jammed to overflowing until someone thought of the newly discovered continent of Australia.

  Eleven ships, known as the First Fleet, were sent out with the first English governor, his staff, 160 marines as guards, and 757 convicts including 192 women. After a strenuous voyage of eight weary months, during which 32 of the convicts died, they arrived at Port Jackson just two days ahead of La Perouse who came hoping to claim Australia for France. Governor Phillip landed at Sydney Cove on 26th January, 1788, and hoisted the British Flag. That day is Australia Day—Australia's birthday.

  Many other shiploads of convicts arrived thereafter, and they played a big part in the construction of the early ports, towns, and roads. They worked in chain gangs. Later many were released on parole as "ticket-of-leave" men, and ultimately many were pardoned and gained their freedom.

  (Our English friends even nowadays do at times jokingly utter a good-natured quip at our ancestry by some allusion to the convicts, but we Australians may always reply that those early arrivals were picked out and sent out by the best judges in England!)

  From time to time some of the convicts escaped and became outlaws or bushrangers as the term was in Australia. Occasionally the bushrangers captured small vessels or the convicts effected their escape by sea and embarked on a career of piracy. And it was from one such incident that developed the historical link between the convict and bushranging days of Australia and the feudal days of Japan.

  In August, 1829, the brig "Cyprus" was bound from Hobart to Macquarie Harbour in New South Wales with thirty-three convicts, a crew of twelve, a guard, and eleven women and children. En route the brig anchored in Research Bay on the coast of Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen's Land, to search for an anchor and cable that had been lost there some time previously. One evening during her stay the officer of the ship's guard and several others including the coxswain of the brig—a "ticket-of-leave" man named Popjoy—set out from the brig in a longboat to do some fishing. They had not rowed far before they heard a commotion on board the brig and realised with dismay that the convicts had captured the vessel. They later learned that some of the convicts, although heavily ironed, had rushed and overcome the captain and two sentinels, and then battened down the hatchways until the remaining soldiers and crew under deck surrendered.

  Those in the longboat endeavoured to get back on board but were held at bay by the mutineers who had possessed themselves of the arms of the ship. After some bargaining the convicts agreed to hand over the women and children, all of whom together with the captain, the officer of the guard, and the disarmed soldiers were then rowed ashore by the mutineers and abandoned on a small island in the bay without any means of reaching the nearest settlement far distant on the mainland. The convicts, realising that they would need the services of the coxswain, had compelled Popjoy at the point of the musket to return on board.

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bsp; They thereupon raised sail and departed, but as soon as the brig was under way, Popjoy jumped overboard and swam ashore, where he rejoined those marooned on the island. Without shelter and with nothing to eat but a few shellfish gathered off the rocks, their predicament was one of great danger. Popjoy however contrived to build a rough raft on which he put to sea in the hope of intercepting another vessel and securing help. In this he was fortunately successful and eventually all the castaways were rescued. As a reward Popjoy received a full pardon and elected to return to England.

  The fate of the "Cyprus" remained a mystery for some months, but in March of the following year a ship's boat landed at Canton, in China, with four men who represented themselves as being survivors of a brig "Edward" which they stated had left London Docks bound for Rio de Janeiro and on the return voyage had called at Valparaiso, and then at Sandwich Islands, as the Hawaiian Islands were then known. Afterwards they had attempted to touch at Japan for fresh water and supplies but had been fired on by a battery and heavily damaged. Leaking badly the brig was abandoned near Formosa. The four men further claimed they were the only survivors. Although their story was received with some doubt they were sent back to England as distressed British seamen on board the "Charles Grant."

  A few days after their departure another boat with three men on board arrived. They also said that they were survivors from the brig "Edward," but the account which they gave differed in so many details from that of the former arrivals, that the original suspicions of the Consular Authorities were revived and the three were sent home under arrest on the ship "Killie Castle," which reached London before the "Charles Grant." When the "Charles Grant" arrived the four on board were promptly arrested. All seven were subsequently tried for piracy at the Admiralty Court and five, one of whom had been a bushranger, were hanged. The principal witness was Popjoy.

  The only part of the story told by the convicts, when they arrived at Canton, which was true was their description of the reception they received in Japan. It was the year 1830, during that period of about 215 years extending from 1637 to 1853 when the Tokugawa Shogunate had decreed that Japan should seclude herself from all nations.