When We Shall All Shine Together (Moulmein; Rangoon: 1846 - 1847)

When We Shall All Shine Together

[ Moulmein; Rangoon: 1846-1847 ]

O Adoniram, the voyage was the pleasantest he had yet experienced. His cabin was comfortable, the food was good, Emily proved to be an excellent sailor, and Captain Hallet was more than considerate. Worship was held on board every evening; Sundays there was a service for the crew, and a Bible class.

To Emily it was enjoyable but far from uneventful. The sea so fascinated her that she found herself incapable of fear. In a gale off the Cape of Good Hope she described it:

... lashed into perfect fury, rising and sinking in strange contortions, wrCSting our little floating nutshell from the hands of the crew, to leap, and plunge, and wrestle, as though born of the mad billows which bellow as they rise, and, burSting, cover it with their foam. The water is of inky blackness in the hollows; but each billow, as it bounds upward, becomes green and half transparent, and bursts at the summit, the long wreaths of foam circling over and over each other, tumbling to the bottom, and disappearing like immense piles of down.... And still we go on rearing and plunging, reeling and tumbling, as though the centre of gravity was surely lost, and our frail teasaucer capsizing itself, and then pausing on the top of a billow, quivering in every spar before venturing another plunge, which it seems must be fatal. [One of these nights she dreamed she could see the center of gravity “in the shape of a bull’: eye” sinking too low for safety.] I watched every plunge with trembling breathlessness—a kind of night-mare feeling—a little more, iust a little more, and we were lost for ever! At length it came. I bounded from my berth, Staggered, and tumbled headlong, grazing my shins most beautifully.”

[Later there was an even stronger gale]... a perfect hurricane, but it was astern, and so swept us on our way at a furious rate. A Dutch bark came within a few rods of us, and I assure you my heart went pit-a-pat when I saw it reeling and tumbling. though I was told that it went on quite as sedately as we did. At one minute it seemed leaping to the clouds, and at the next not even the top of the mast was visible, so low had it sunk behind the mountain billows. But the beauty of the scene was the showers of rainbows, for the sun was gloriously bright...

Her descriptions were vivid. In a sudden squall, “the tarpaulins scramble, racing after each other up the rigging like so many rats, and shouting a chorus something in the tone of a bellowing bull... ” Or “a supper of dolphins, which, but for their being fried in rancid lard, would have been delicious.” She had an eye for color. The dolphin was “rich brown on the back, and blue, and green, and gold, shaded into each other along the side to the belly, which becomes of a deep salmon hue, then pale rose, and then white.” A Portuguese man-of—war, that strange living jelly, had a sail “of ribbed silver, fringed with pink and purple; the body seems silver, and then the long strings of purple beads.”

While Emily occupied herself with observing and describing, Adoniram did what he could on the dictionary. Without the native assistants he had sent home during Sarah’s last illness there was nothing he could add, but at leaSt he could occupy himself with revising and transcribing the first part. He had scarcely finished when, in late November of 1846, after a voyage of more than four months, the first cry of “Land ho!” rang out from overhead.

Emily had proved an exquisite companion. Her lack of physical fear; the boldness of her thought; the sharpness of her eye, and her ability to put into words what she saw and felt; her sensitivity; and, most of all, the delicious completeness of her love—all these together had given him a kind of happiness he had never known before. Each of his wives had brought with her love a diStinctly different personality. Nancy with her dark youthful beauty had brought the fire of incomparable resolution and a pure singleness of purpose that matched his own. Most of the three, she was another aspeCt of himself. Sarah had brought sweetness and serenity, an ability to accept what came to her without frantic struggle. Emily, lacking their physical beauty, brought a subtly compounded blend of character. She was piquant, Spicy, bold but meltable, independent yet deeply feminine, deeply responsive. She was his equal, with her own accomplishments, which she prized; yet she revered him. She could throw off her adulthood in a way that encouraged him to throw off his; they could play and tease together like children. Whatever happened, they could never be bored with each other.

Now he stood at the rail with her, keenly savoring the pleasure of seeing the familiar coast with her fresh eyes. The first land looked to her like “a succession of dark rich purple festoons... turning their convex side to the sky.... ” Another purple island sat “like a pyramid upon the water.” The shores of Burma appeared as “a long chain, made up of irregular links, which it seems that a breath might dissever.” The purple changed to emerald. The trees looked like shrubs. They borrowed a telescope from the captain, and the tiny sails of the inshore fishing boats stood out, and the point of Amherst. Then “tree by tree becomes visible as it appears in relief against the sky—the palm, the cocoa, and the tamarind.”

And one Other tree. Adoniram took the telescope and found it on a “green bank sloping to the water.” He pointed it out to Emily. It was the hopia tree over Nancy’s grave.

They took on a pilot, “a Portuguese, fat, square, and heavy,” on the twenty-seventh. The next morning the ship dropped anchor in the harbor. Emily thought the country “queer, ridiculous, halfbeautiful, half-frightful, extremely picturesque.” And that day she saw in one incident the whole reason for Adoniram’s life. She described it in a letter to her sister before the sun went down.

We were scarcely anchored this morning when a boat of six or seven men came bounding toward us, who, by the fluttering of gay silks, and the display of snowy jackets and turbans, were judged to be something above mere boatmen. [Adoniram], who had been for some time silently watching them from the side of the vessel, leaned far over for a moment gazing at them intently, and then sent forth a glad wild hail. In a moment the glancing of oars ceased, a half dozen men sprang to their feet to the imminent peril of the odd nut-shell in which they floated, and a wilder, longer, and if possible more joyous cry showed that the voice of the salutation was recognized. ChriStian1 beckoned me to his side. “They are our Amherst friends,” he said; “the dear, faithful fellows!”...

In a few moments the men had brought the boat along side, and were scrambling up the sides of the vessel.... How the black eyes danced beneath their grave brows, and the rough lips curled with smiles behind the bristling beards! Then came a quick grasping of hands, and half-choked words of salutation, in a strange, deep guttural, which he only to whom they were addressed could understand; while I, like the full-grown baby that I am, retreated to the nearest shadow, actually sobbing; for what, I am sure I do not know, unless I might have fancied myself a sort of floodgate for the relief of other peOple’s eyes and Voices.

However, though it had been pretty strongly intimated that “mamma” must not be out of sight, just at present, I do not think her madamship was missed until she had made herself tolerably presentable, and then she was again beckoned forward.

The Burmans gave my hand a cordial American grip, but their dusky palms were so velvety that I do not think even your fingers would have complained under the pressure. Then a venerable old man, who, as I afterward learned, is a deacon in the church, came forward, and bending his turbaned head respectfully, commenced an animated address, waving his hand occasionally to the troop behind him, who bowed as in assent. I have no doubt it was a rare Specimen of eloquence, but, of course, I could not understand a word of it, and could only curtsy and simper very foolishly in acknowledgment. You will laugh when I tell you I have seldom been so embarrassed in my life. '

I soon learned that the men had reserved nicely matted seats for us in the boat, and that several of their wives and daughters were waiting at the jetty, with cart and oxen, to take me up to the village. Off ran I for my bonnet, but somebody very peremptorily interfered, declaring that a certain pair of thin checks were quite thin enough already for their owner’s good; and, moreover, that it was very foolish to waste life by keeping the heart all of a flutter, asserting that mine made a dozen trills

1 One of Emily’s pet names for Adoniram. She was referring to the “Christian” of Pilgrim’s Progress. and quavcrs, while that of a sensible person took but one moderate step.

Our visitors had brought us bottles of milk, eggs, fish, shrimps, yams, sweet potatoes, plantains, and oranges for our comfort, and while they were unloading their treasures, I borrowed the captain’s glass and took a long look at the jetty. I could see now that I knew they were actually there, the women grouped along the beach, and another object, which I was told was the cart and a pair of cream colored oxen, standing farther back upon the greensward. My feet fairly ached to press that soft carpet of earth and vegetation, but even the strong man who came for me acknowledged that “mama” was too small for the undertaking, and so went away alone.

Now, darling, you know I am not a Niobe; you know I always did try to steer clear of certain sentimental indulgences, because they were sure to bring on headache without leaving any mortal good in return. You know I say that I am not one of “earth’s sorrowful weepers,” but somehow I did get overtaken this time. Down into my cabin I went, every nerve in me quivering, and treated my pillow to a regular tear-bath. “Twice of a single morning?” you ask. Twice of a single morning, dear ---or what is nearer the truth, the quarter deck operation continued. I was deep in the melting luxury, when the door was softly opened, and I knew that some person stood beside me. I did not move; but kept my face covered with the tolerably well wetted bit of linen, that had divided my favors with the pillow; fortifying meanwhile my voice in anticipation of a question.

Presently I heard words, but though spoken close to my ear, they were not addressed to me. How that low, mellow voice crept down into my heart, calming its foolish agitation, imparting the strength of faith, illuminating its tremulous, shadowing depths with hope, and elevating it to a still, serene reliance on Him who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, simply because His nature though sinless, has vibrated to every earthly emotion.

Then how strange to be so thoroughly comprehended! Any body else now would have thought I was in a pet from the disappointment of not going on shore, or something else of the kind.

He knew, I can not tell how, but he told it all in that prayer as I never could have done—he knew just how a faint heart feels, suddenly pressed upon with a View of moral sublimity to which it is for the moment inadequate; he knows what it is to have the doors of time, all shut and barred, and the long vista of eternity stretching in solemn perSpective before the shrinking soul, and he knows just what it needed at such a crisis.

I remember a soothing, balm-distilling influence, a feeling of perfect security and serenity, and then I went to sleep. When I awoke, the jolly boat with the officers and gentlemen passengers, Christian among them, had gone on shore and with the exception of a half-hour devoted to the hopia tree, I have been writing to you ever since.

Three days later, on Monday, they were rowed up the river to Moulmein by a crew of the Amherst converts in what looked to Emily “very much like a long watering-trough, whittled to a point at each end, and we were all nestled like a parcel of caged fowls under a low bamboo cover... ” Nothing looked or sounded like home. The birds — “the white rice-bird, or a gayer stranger, with chameleon neck and crimson wing”; the flowers—“rich blossoms of new shapes and hues... some in clusters, and some in long, amber wreaths, stained here and there with amber and vermilion”; the oarsmen in their “gaudy patsoes,” with “bare, brawny shoulders, and turbaned heads”; the luxuriant, wild tropical trees and the vines trailing down into the water—it was all strange, strange as the manners and language of the people. But she was delighted with the “picturesque beauty—a mingling of awkward simplicity with magnificence quite as clumsy and awkward— a rich gorgeousness, a fantastic extravagance, a rudeness sometimes annoying, but oftener ludicrous... ”

To all this the houses of the missionaries in Moulmein offered a sharp contrast. They were “the plainest possible, built of teak boards, and furnished with the same kind of wood, without varnish. The partitions between the rooms are mere screens, reaching a little above the head, so that a word spoken in one room is heard all over the house.” Nevertheless, she liked them. “I think I was made for an uncivilized land.”

She took the children, Henry and Edward, now four and two years old, to her heart. One night in December when Emily had just put them to bed Adoniram wrote to the two sons in Worcester, “Henry is singing and talking aloud to himself; and what do you think he is saying? Your new mamma has just called me to listen. ‘My own mamma went away, away in a boat. And then she got wings and went up. And Charlie, too, went up, and they are flying above the moon and the stars.’ ”

By late December they had settled down, but Adoniram had not yet returned‘to the dictionary. Moulmein, he felt, was not the place for it. Rangoon, where he could have the help of learned Burmese scholars, would be better. Ava would be better still. He had been considering a move to Rangoon even before leaving Boston and had discussed it with Emily. But although the ease of working on the dictionary was an important factor, it was not the real reason. He had never felt that Moulmein was really Burma—and Burma was where he belonged. He thought it possible he might at least be tolerated in Rangoon. If so, perhaps he could regather a small congregation and continue at least part of the time with missionary work.

But he was sure he was not needed in Moulmein. Nearly thirty missionaries were there already—far too many, he thought. The work had been departmentalized. Stevens was in charge of the native church; Howard and Burney each had a school; Ranney functioned as business manager and had charge of the printing office; Haswell superintended the printing of the New Testament in Peguan; Stilson oversaw the printing of Burmese elementary books for schools.

All of these jobs were being done at least as well as he could do them. But he had longer eXperience than anyone else in the regions not under British control; in Rangoon and Burma proper there was not a single missionary; and no one was as qualified as he to make the dictionary. He decided to go to Rangoon alone for a few weeks and find out for himself whether it was possible to settle there with a family.

Meanwhile Emily was becoming accustomed to life and the duties of a wife in a strange land. She opened her journal on New Year’s Day of 1847 with the bewildered observation:

Actually in Burmah! And is it really myself? Is the past year a reality, or am I still dreaming up there in Dominie Gillette’s chamber, where I lay down (seemingly) a year ago? If it be a dream, I pray God that I may never wake, for I believe it would break my heart to be other than I am. Thank God, it is a reality—a blessed reality: and I am in the very spot I so longed to plant my foot upon, years and years gone by.

January 2. I have got a teacher. and made a beginning in the language, but the children absorb so much of my time that I can not study much. They are dear little fellows, but so full of mischief!...

January 5. It seems to me as though I do nothing but get up, turn around, and then go to bed again! I believe there never was such a novice in housekeeping; and then the children, and the language, and the thousand and one other botherations! I expected to make a rush at the language, take it by storm, then get a parcel of natives about me, and go to work in “true apostle style”...

January 10. This taking care of teething babies, and teaching [natives] to darn stockings, and talking English back end foremost to teetotum John, in order to get an eatable dinner, is really very odd sort of business for Fanny Forester.... But I begin to get reconciled to my minute cares. I believe some women were made for such things; though when I get settled, I hOpe to put in a mixture of higher and better things, too. But the person who would do great things well, must practice daily on little ones; and she who would have the assistance of the Almighty in important acts, must be daily and hourly accustomed to consult His will in the minor affairs of life.

Q

Adoniram had procured passage for Rangoon on the schooner Cecilia, Captain Crisp, and was to embark on the eighteenth of January. It was their first separation since their marriage. Even before he left Emily found herself frequently weeping and unable to sleep—and to her surprise, and consolation, she found that Adoniram could weep too. “If men who have been through prison and all perils weep at such separations,” she wrote, “surely such a weakling as I should not be put in a strait-jacket. The truth is, we poor humans are utterly baffled in attempting to estimate each other’s sufferings. I will venture to assert that it required a far greater effort in Ann 1-]. Judson to leave her husband (such a husband!) in Rangoon, and go to America alone, than to play the heroic part in his presence, and for his sake, that she did at Ava.

But Dr. J’s going to Rangoon for two or three weeks is not my going to America, and I must not try to be quite a fool.”

By the nineteenth, the Cecilia had dropped out of sight of Moulmein and was near Amherst. On the way down the river Adoniram occupied part of the time writing to Emily, wondering how she and the children were spending their time that day. “It seems as if I had been associated with you for many years; and hardly knew how to deport myself in your absence.”

But he felt “in excellently good spirits in regard to making the attempt at Rangoon,” though he doubted the success of the effort. However, he meant to do his best “and am quite willing to leave the event in the hands of God. ‘Trust in God and keep your powder dry,’ was Cromwell’s word to his soldiers. Trust in God and love one another is, I think, a better watchword.” The thought sent him into one of his charaCteristie lover-like homilies:

Let us do the duties of religion and of love, and all will be well. Conjugal love stands first. Happy those who find that duty and pleasure coincide. Then comes parental love and filial love; then love to associates, and then love to all that come within our reach. I have been talking to Crisp this two hours, and you see I have become quite ethical. Sweet love, I wish I could reason out the subject, and come to a satisfactory solution on your lips.

The next morning as the Cecilia passed out of Amherst harbor, the sight of the hopia tree over Nancy’s grave, still just visible, reminded him of “conjugal love” in a way it had when Sarah was still living:

I seem to have lived in several worlds; but you are the earthly sun that illuminates my present. My thoughts and affections revolve around you, and cling to your form, and face, and lips. Other luminaries have been extinguished in death. I think of them with mournful delight, and anticipate the time when we shall all shine together as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars for ever and for ever.

He disembarked at Rangoon january 23, 1847, and stayed for about ten days. He met the city governor—an old acquaintance to whom he had been introduced some twenty years before —and after an interview decided it would be safe to move the family. The governor had invited him to settle and promised him a location for an English church, so that the English might have some place to worship. But he made it clear, without saying so explicitly, that Adoniram was expected to confine his ministrations to the foreigners. The dictionary aroused genuine interest in the governor. He promised to mention it favorably to His Majesty and even held out some hope that Adoniram might someday go to the capital and look for royal patronage at the Golden Feet.

But none of this implied religious tolerance. The new reign 2 was perforce a little more friendly to foreigners than the previous one; but as to the natives, they had less freedom of faith than when Adoniram first came. But Adoniram had already met quietly with some of the converts for worship. He was sure something could be done in secrecy.

Once he had made up his mind, Adoniram proceeded to rent a place to stay. In Moulmein he had heard of a large brick house in a “street of Mussulmans.” He found it—a huge, gloomy, prisonlike building. The upper floor was for rent, for a hundred rupees a month. Adoniram beat the owner down to fifty, and took it. He wrote Emily that he hesitated to take her into it, but at least it had six or eight rooms, some large, and it was the best he could find. Living would be eXpensive. “Two or three bottles of milk for a rupee, and eight loaves of very poor bread; but fowls and fish are cheaper.”

He returned on board the Gyne, which anchored on February 5 in front of Amherst. Emily already knew of the impending move and was packing. Once more the sight of that port which he had helped locate and dedicate moved him to reflections. Waiting for the tide to change, he wrote to Emily:

Here we lie, with Amherst in sight from our cabin window. Amherst, whither I brought Ann, and returned to find her grave; AmherSt, whither I brought Sarah, on returning from 2King Bagyidaw had become insane. In 1837, the “Tharrawaddy prince” (“Sarawady”) had deposed him. Tharrawaddy in turn became sadistically insane and died in confinement in 1846. He was succeeded by his eldest son Pagan Min, 3 debauched tyrant atop a crumbling central administration riddled with gangSter dacoits. See D. G. E. Hall’s account in Europe and Burma, or Mrs. Ernest Hart’s Picturesque Burma. my matrimonial tour to Tavoy, and whence I took her away in the Paragon, to return no more; Amherst, the terminus of my long voyage in the Faneuil Hall with Emily. The place seems like the centre of many radii of my past existence, though not a place where any of us have lived for any length of time. Ann never saw Moulmein; Sarah never saw Rangoon. If we should remove to the latter place, it would seem to me like beginning my life anew. May it be under more propitious auspices, and may the latter part of life make some atonement for the errors of the former. May you, my dearest, be happy, and useful, and blessed there! May we be luminaries to Burmah, and may our setting sun descend in a flood of light!..

Your devoted husband

A. JUDsON