With the death of King Mongkut the personal relations of the
pioneer missionaries with the reigning monarch were terminated.
Concerning the successor, Chulalongkorn, Dr. House wrote:
“I have not seen much of the young prince in childhood; he
had been under the tutorship of the English governess Mrs.
Leonowens and, later, of Mr. Chandler (formerly a lay Baptist
missionary).... He had grown to maturity during the nearly
three years of my absence in America.”
As second or vice-king there had been chosen Prince George
Washington, with whom Dr. House was better acquainted.
The missionaries were eager to learn whether the new government
was to be as progressive as the old, and especially to know the
attitude to be assumed towards their work. Signs that progression
was to be the order of the reign were not long wanting. Custom
hitherto required that the coronation should be in the presence of
the princes only. At the coronation of Chulalongkorn an innovation
was introduced by invitations to the official representatives of
other nations resident in Bangkok to attend. Shortly after the
coronation the missionaries arranged, through the United States
consul, to pay their respects to the new king. They were graciously
received, and although the young king was suffering from effects
of a fever contracted on the ill-fated astronomical expedition, he
gave them an audience and conversed with them a few minutes. When
the consul was arranging for his official visit of congratulations
upon the vice-king, that personage requested as a personal favour
that the consul be accompanied by Dr. House. The king was but
fifteen years of age when he came to the throne, and during his
minority the government was under the regency of Somdetch Chao Phya
Boromaha Sri Suriwongse, an able and upright statesman.
With rapid succession came decrees changing age-long customs and
bringing Siamese social and civil institutions into line with
Western civilisation. The most radical and noteworthy of these
changes were: the abolition of the practice of prostration by which
everyone, of whatsoever rank, had been obliged to prostrate himself
on the ground, face downwards, in the presence of any who had a
superior rank in the social scale; the introduction at court and
in the army of a modified European dress to cover the near-nudity
which formerly prevailed; the prohibition of enslavement for
debt, a pernicious custom by which parents could sell their
children, husbands their wives, and anyone himself into servitude
to discharge a ruinous debt, resulting in a state of peonage from
which the hopeless victim could scarce escape; reformation of
unjust political practises; and the initiation of a state system of
schools, telegraphs and posts.
Concerning two of these reforms interesting sidelights have been
cast by writers. Mrs. Leonowens, by whom the prince had been
tutored in English, relates that when he heard of the death of
Abraham Lincoln he declared that “if he ever lived to reign over
Siam he would reign over a free and not an enslaved nation, and
that he would restore the ancient constitutional government and
make Siam a kingdom of the free.” Mr. J. G. D. Campbell, in his
volume _Siam in the Twentieth Century_, sketches the court-scene
when the ancient custom of prostration was abolished:
“In 1874,” he writes, “King Chulalongkorn assembled his
ministers and nobles and, having ascended the throne,
promulgated a decree emancipating them and all subjects
from the degrading custom of crawling on their knees in the
presence of a superior; after which, at his command the whole
assembly arose from their prostrate position on their hands
and knees and stood erect for the first time in the presence
of their sovereign.”
Though his personal relation with the occupant of the throne was
terminated, Dr. House found that the new government included many
of his old-time friends from the days of his lectures on science.
Among these were the regent himself, the minister of foreign
affairs, the master of the new mint and the commander-in-chief of
the army. A new office also had been established, and the doctor
found his friend Godata, formerly a priest in Chao Fah Yai’s watt,
appointed as court preacher with the duty of preaching on the
Christian Sabbath a moral lecture to the soldiers and cadets, by
the king’s orders.