Book Review

• How the Americans saw us then
• Murder in Colombo

How the Americans saw us then

Images Of Sri Lanka through American Eyes-Travellers in Ceylon in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Edited by H.A.I. Goonetileke, published by the United States Information Service, Embassy of the United States of America (2nd.ed., Colombo 1998).

Reviewed by James W. Spain (US Ambassador in Sri Lanka 1985-89).

It is particularly fitting that this classic work, now having gone through a quarter-century of life in three previous printings, should be given a second edition to commemorate 50 years of diplomatic relations between the United States of America and Sri Lanka. All the original material is here: the bibliography, the 1975 Foreword by Christopher Van Hollen, then US Ambassador, and the collection (the plates now slightly the worse for the wear of four printings) of excellent photographs.

New are an introduction to the 1998 edition by current US Ambassador Shaun Donnelly and a remarkably knowledgeable and sensitive Preface by Neville Kanakaratne, Governor of the Southern Province and former long-time Ambassador to the US.

The names of some of the 36 American writers whose work on Ceylon editor Dr. Goonetileke has extracted are well-known: Townsend Harris, who played a major role in "opening" Japan to the rest of the world; William Seward, President Lincoln's Secretary of State, remembered chiefly for his acquisition from Russia for $7.2 million for Alaska, now America's largest state; Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate; Mark Twain, the humorist; Francis Parkinson Keyes, the popular novelist of the 1930's and 40's; Paul Bowles, the post World War II sage of North Africa, who owned and lived in the island house opposite Weligama which catches the eye of every traveller on the road between Matara and Galle; and Thomas Merton, the Trappist poet who spent a brief time in Ceylon in 1968 before going on to an accidental death in Bangkok a few days later.

In terms of understanding and interpretation of the people involved, both Sri Lankan and American, none of the famous names gives as good value as Dr. H. A. I. Goonetileke, the selector, annotator and editor of the volume. A librarian par excellence and a writer of sheer delight, his introduction of 1975 is full of insight and wisdom. He is modest, describing the book as a mosaic, an "oriental bazaar of a symposium (which) does not reflect any precise pattern of interpretation or clear design of understanding." But at the same time he points out that "it is possible to discern a recognisable and developing texture of appreciation and insight" between the Sri Lankans and Americans who meet and come to conclusions about each other.

There was not much appreciation and insight on the part of the American missionaries from New England who initiated the exchange in the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Dr. Goonetileke accepts them as creatures of their time and place, which indeed they were. They were devoted and unselfish and laid the groundwork for formidable Tamil educational achievements in Sri Lanka. But they were also narrow-minded, found nothing of value in local culture, and were not overly given to charity in the traditional Christian sense. The most interesting of them were Miron and Harriet Winslow (She was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' great-great-grandmother) and their accounts of work in Jaffna, and travels in Colombo, Kandy, Galle, and Nuwara Eliya in the 1820's and 30's are of more than passing geographical interest.

What the Winslows did for geography, William Samuel Wuthman Ruschenberger, a US Navy doctor who turned his brief days in Ceylon around Christmas 1835 into three chapters in a book published in 1838, did for primitive sociology and anthropology. His descriptions of a South Indian book-keeper in the Pettah, Muslim gem merchants in Galle, and a cinnamon planter near Colombo are sharp and accurate and he makes no effort to disguise his interest in the potential benefits to the US of the markets of Ceylon. The first of many, he warns those who follow him to be careful and demanding in bargaining for gems, noting that heat treatment is used to increase price.

The most important single document in "American Images" is the extracts from Col. Henry Steel Olcott's "Old Diary Leaves," which provide an invaluable insight into the mind and heart of the man who is still Sri Lanka's best-known and loved American. Olcott's time in Sri Lanka extended from 1880 to 1906. His writings are full of varied and worthwhile material: e.g., his trying his luck in the Ratnapura gem pits, his 57-mile river trip from there to Panadura, his ruminations on the development and evils of the caste system, his accounts of Protestant Christian efforts to frustrate his work. Remarkable above all is his simple, uncondescending acceptance of the wisdom and worth of Buddhism. If his image is good in Sri Lankan eyes, it is in part at least because Sri Lankan images were obviously and sincerely good in his.

In the late Nineteenth Century, the Grand Oriental, the Galle Face, and the Bristol hotels begin to show up in the journals of the travellers and there is still much to be recognized of them in today's edifices. Mary Thorn Carpenter, a young woman tourist from Duchess County, New York tells of Christmas 1890 spent at the first, offering a more vivid account of Colombo and Kelaniya than the famous Mark Twain, who during his one-day visit in January 1896 seems to have left both wit and wisdom at home.. Equally regrettably in later years, Paul Bowles, the Lord of Count de Mauny's Island at Weligama seems to have done the same.

The variety as well as the volume of travellers increased as time went on. There was Harry A. Frank, the "hippie-like" college boy from Michigan who slept out while walking from Colombo to Kandy in 1905, and Eugene Wright, the absent-without-leave merchant seaman who explored Colombo's bazaars in 1928. Two Fulbright scholars, William Hull from Hoffstra University (1955-56), and Yvonne Hannemann from Columbia, made real contributions to "Images" with a graphic word picture and a series of excellent photographs, plus in Ms. Hanemann's case (1964) a vivid description of a village "bali" ceremony designed to drive away evil spirits.

With a second edition of "Images" just off the press, it is comforting to know that the book will be available for some time to come. At the same time re-reading it reminds this reviewer of how much splendid additional material has developed over the last twenty-five years. Surely a dozen years of renewed Peace Corps activity has produced unique impressions at a level hitherto not really touched. Dozens more Fulbright professors and students have come and gone. With our present emphasis on economic development, the views of the many American businessmen who have worked here would be useful. And, of course, there is the other side of the coin. What kind of images have the thousands of literate, articulate Sri Lankans who have lived in the US formed of Americans?

Maybe it's time to begin working on yet another volume.

Murder in Colombo

The Murder of a Mystery Man: Charles-Christophe Taschereau, by A.C. Alles, reviewed by A.R.B. Amerasinghe

This small book of fifty pages is one of a series of books on "Famous Criminal Cases of Sri Lanka" written by A.C. Alles. This is the fourteenth volume in that series. Many of the earlier books have been republished, showing that they were well received by the public. That hardly comes as a surprise: Crime is reprehensible; yet, ironically, especially those deserving of the greatest censure, seem to hold the public in thrall, and so there is a demand for information on "famous", or, in a neutral sense, "notorious" crimes.

Moreover, the narration and analysis of the events have come from the pen of no less a person than one who was a member of the Department of the Attorney-General for two decades, involved in numerous prosecutions, and ending up in that Department as Solicitor-General. Alles then served as a Judge of the Supreme Court for many years. But, I suppose, the decisive factor when it comes to marketing, is whether a book is readable.

The latest work of Alles, like those preceding it, is agreeable in style and capable of being read with pleasure and interest.

The book is about the murder in Colombo of Charles-Christophe Taschereau, a Canadian citizen who lived from time to time in Sri Lanka. The murder took place in 1980. The persons accused of the murder, escaped from custody and the trial of the persons accused, in their absence, was, it seems, only concluded in 1998. Alles makes some comments about the law's delay that, although devoid of novelty, nevertheless deserve serious consideration.

Who really was Taschereau (alias Charles White) lawyer, spy, international criminal? What was the importance to be attached to the metal box that was discovered several months after the murder beneath the carpets in the residence of the deceased?

That, in my view, was the central issue posed by Alles. He provides no answer but states that had Agatha Christie been given the facts, we might have had a work entitled "The Mystery of the Metal Box".

Perhaps so. But what purports to be a clinical account of the murder of Taschereau by Alles, nevertheless deserves attention.

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