Sunset; the Dictionary (Moulmein: 1847 - 1849)

C H A P T E R X

Sunset; the Dictionary

[ Moulmein: 1847—1849 ]

N Moulmein, life quickly settled down to a pleasant, busy routine. Emily’s baby—a girl, christened Emily Frances—was born December 24, 1847. They had taken a house on the outskirts of the mission, but when the baby was two months old they moved into their old home. Emily made a quick recovery and for the next year enjoyed the best health she had ever known. Adoniram, too, felt unusually well. They rose every day before sunrise and went for a brisk walk, often as much as three miles. Sometimes several of the missionaries would go along and even, once in a while, some of the mission children. Their objective was usually the hilltop beyond the city, from which they could see the sunrise.

One of the regular features of the return was the race down the hill between Adoniram and Emily. Emily would go ahead until she was halfway down. Then Adoniram would start after, trying to catch her before she reached the bottom. Members of the watching party at the top would hold their breaths as Adoniram bounded down the path, zigzagging from rock to rock like a mountain goat, checking his speed now and then by caroming off a ledge. He became sixty years old the summer of 1848, but he seemed active as a school boy.

As usual, he had time for more than the dictionary. He exercised general oversight over the work of the mission, and preached regularly in the native chapel Sundays. For a long time his listeners remembered those vigorous sermons, sometimes tinged with humor, in the native tongue—Adoniram wearing a long black gown, standing on the low platform beside a table that served for pulpit, the congregation divided so that women were on one side of the room, men on the other—and their close with a hymn, perhaps one of his own, such as: “I long to reach the golden shore.” 1 Golden! The concept was characteristically Burman, with its Golden Pagoda, the Shwe Dagon; its ruler, the Golden Presence. If these, why not a Golden Shore?

He was mellowing noticeably. Although during his sermons he would ask the mother of a crying child to take it out, when he led meetings for the twenty or so children of the mission, he liked to offer puzzles and conundrums for them to solve, as he had done in his boyhood. More and more, in fact, his life seemed to have swung around full circle. Though his creed was as conservative as ever—essentially the creed of his boyhood—the love and grace of God took a larger and larger place in his thought and teaching.

What elements of mysticism he still preserved in his thinking had transmuted themselves into reflections on the peace and sweetness a Christian could feel after giving his heart to the Saviour. During their first days in Rangoon, Emily had been “a little annoyed by what seemed to me a taint of Guionism, Oberlinism, or something of that sort.” But together with Adoniram she had gone carefully into all the literature “and weighed it with the Bible and common sense.” She had concluded that Adoniram was “strictly and thoroughly orthodox”—the only person she had ever known, beside herself, who was. They agreed on everything, even, she believed, on her opinion of Madame Guion, whom she considered “disgusting” and a “monomaniac,” though she admitted that “notwithstanding her very apparent unamiability, she had grace.”

Young Edward and Henry, however, knew little of creeds. They remembered their father’s affection and how he entered into their games. Nearly forty years later, Edward could recall “how his father used to come into his room in the morning and greet him upon his first awakening with a delicious piece of Burmese cake, or with the joyful tidings that a rat had been caught in a trap the night before!”

It was Emily who supervised the boys’ education. When they had first gone to Rangoon she had insisted on Henry’s learning to 1 This description mostly from V‘Warburton, p. 218. The line “I long to reach the golden shore” has been literally translated by Miss Lucy F. Wiatt, as follows:

Golden land heaven enjoy I long to. Shwe pye Izaungin um longyin le.

tie his shoelaces himself. She had been disturbed at how dependent the abundance of native servants, waiting on them hand and foot, made white children.

Of course, she used servants herself, both in Rangoon and in Moulmein. After Emily was born she described “Granny Grunter (alias wet-nurse, alias May Bya), who does nothing but sleep and eat alternately... during the twenty-four hours, and who would invent a machine to lift the child and carry it to her breast if she were a Yankee”; and “his irnpship, teetotum John, an old Bengalee dwarf, with a smoke-colored face, no teeth, a vermillion tongue, that looks precisely like a snake’s, and muscles all on the outside of his dried-up body.” But he was “that wonder of wonders in this climate, an active man.” And at the door, “erect as a sentinel, stands Sir Oily Longlegs—a Bengalee of the first water—Jessingh by his heathen appellation, and lady’s factotum, at leaSt at present.”

He is a fine-looking six-footer, with a turban which makes him appear at least six inches taller. And what do you think he does—this magnificent specimen of humanity, with his quick eye, graceful figure, and smooth tongue? Why, any thing and everything “mamma” pleases, and as deliberately and superficially as Jessingh pleases. He bathes the boys, dresses and undresses them, sweeps the floor, waxes the tables, puts “mamma’s” things to rights, even in her dressing-room, runs of errands, and lastly, though far from least, sews on all needed strings and buttons.

But at least she did everything she could to instruct the boys and make them independent and fearless. In Rangoon, she wrote, they had become “great cowards.”

One night Edward, who slept in a little room by himself, called out that he was “afraid,” and would not be comforted.... So I prayed with little E., kissed him goodnight, and left him apparently satisfied. Pretty soon, however, I heard him call out, as though in great distress, “Oh, Dod!” The poor little fellow had not sufficient acquaintance with language to know what to say next, but this up-lifting of the heart evidently relieved him, for in a few minutes after, he again called out “Oh, Dod!” but in a tone much softened. I Stepped to the door, but hesitated about entering. In a few minutes he again repeated

‘Oh, Dod!’ but in a tone so confiding that I thought I had better go back to my room and leave him with his Great Protector. I heard no more of him for some time, when I at last went in and found him on his knees fast asleep. He never fails now to remind me of asking “Dod to rate tare of him,” if I neglect it, and I have never heard him say a word since of being afraid. Emily was busy, too, not only with the two little boys and Emily Frances, but learning Burmese. She had finished the biography of Sarah long ago in Rangoon. In fact, it had taken her only six weeks. Acquiring Burmese took longer, but she had a remarkable facility and made extraordinary progress. She soon was able to finish Sarah’s Scripture Questions, keep a Bible class, and conduct prayer meetings for the Burmese women.

All in all, it was a good year, that year 1848, a happy year, a busy year for both Adoniram and Emily—perhaps their happiest together. And it closed with a momentous accomplishment.

For early in the new year, on January 24, 1849, Adoniram was able to note that he had finished the English—Burmese part of the dictionary. A quarto volume of six hundred pages, it was a prodigious accomplishment. He eXpected the Burmese-English part to be about the same length. He knew, of course, that it would undergo changes and improvements, but he judged correctly that it would be one of the foundations for all future work on the language. “No one can tell what toil it has cost me. But I trust it will be a valuable and standard work for a long time.”

This was all to the good. Other events were not so good. For instance, the opening of 1849 also found Emily ill again with a cough which kept growing worse and worse. Her appetite failed and she lost weight. Nursing Emily Frances through a short but severe illness pulled her down still more. For a few days she rallied. Her usual walks with Adoniram were out of the question, but they bought a pony so that she could ride with him—“a beautiful, black little creature, smooth and glossy; full of spirit, but gentle and obedient, and ga110ps, 0, so charmingly.”

But Emily used the pony only a week. The cough returned, worse than before, and with it fever and night sweats. In a little while she was hardly more than a skeleton. In desperation, they decided on the usual voyage, and she took a steamer to Tavoy to visit the Bennetts. Here she grew worse, if anything, and the Bennetts began to be afraid she would die away from home. After a week in Tavoy she returned to Moulmein. Adoniram was in despair. There was no better climate in the Orient, and it was the warm, dry season, best of the year. The Houghs, now in British employ, in charge of a government school, sent their carriage for her every morning, and these short drives seemed to relieve her enough so that Adoniram and Emily decided to have a horse and carriage of their own. But they both expected her to die soon; and although wishful of a longer life, she composed herself as well as she could.

Only their physician, a Dr. Morton, held out hope. He was convinced her ailment was caused by “congestion of the liver rather than disease of the lungs.” He gave her quinine for the fever and various dosages which he thought would help. To Adoniram’s surprise, they did. She slowly improved through that summer, but Adoniram suspected she would always be delicate.

As for Adoniram, age seemed to improve him. He worked, wrote Emily in July, “like a galley slave; and really it quite distresses me sometimes, but he seems to get fat on it, so I try not to worry. He walks—or rather rum—like a boy over the hills, a mile or two every morning; then down to his books, scratch-scratch, puzzlepuzzle, and when he gets deep in the mire, out on the veranda with your humble servant by his side, walking and talking (lean-ing we call it in Burman) till .the point is elucidated, and then down again —and so on till ten o’clock in the evening. It is this walking which is keeping him out of the grave.”

That summer of 1849 he finally received word from America that he could go to Ava. The Board had appropriated the necessary money at last. But it was too late, for there was no longer any prospect of winning toleration. The trip would add nothing to the dictionary —only delay it—since by now Adoniram had managed to employ an accomplished Burmese scholar, once a priest in Ava, who had wandered on to Moulmein, But Adoniram hoped that the appropriation would remain available. When the dictionary should be finished—a matter of another year or so—perhaps he could use it.