High Commissioner's speech
to mark the 200th anniversary of the building of the Mount Lavinia Hotel
Excellencies, most distinguished descendents of British governors,
Viscount and Viscountess Maitland and Mr Brownrigg, Mr and Mrs Sanath
Ukwatte and the management team of the Mount Lavinia hotel, ladies and
gentlemen.
It really is a great pleasure to be at the Mount Lavinia hotel to-day,
to have traveled down from Fort station by train in the Viceroy carriage
(which included a 19th century stowaway arriving 200 years late for
this building's opening ceremony), to be met by wonderful Kandyan dancers
and their band, and to have had the honour of unveiling the portrait
of Sir Edward Barnes.
It may sound fanciful to say so, but there is a thread of continuity
that links the British Governors of Ceylon of the past to the British
High Commissioner to Sri Lanka of today.
Our roles and particularly our powers (sadly I don't command an army
or run an administration) are very different. But Governors, in their
day, and High Commissioners now are the representatives of the monarch
and are the most senior officials of the British government on this
island.
We both took our instructions from the Secretary of State before coming
here. We are both expected to carry out government policy while we are
here. We are both trying to act in the interests of the people of Britain
and of this island.
So as I stand here in these magnificent surroundings and in the presence
of descendants from two of those early Governors, I sense the ghosts
of the past Governors watching me.
To be precise, I sense the presence of the four Governors who are associated
with this building - Sir Thomas Maitland, Sir Robert Brownrigg, Sir
Edward Paget and Sir Edward Barnes.
They were respectively the second, third, fourth and fifth British governors
of Ceylon and their span of office lasted from 1805 - the year of the
battle of Trafalgar - to 1831 - the year Charles Darwin set off on his
famous voyage of discovery in the Beagle.
Sir Thomas Maitland arrived in Ceylon on 17 July 1805 aged 46 years
young. Most of his adult life had been spent as a soldier, where he
saw service in India, and as a Member of Parliament.
As Governor, Sir Thomas Maitland was not afraid to use his formidable
powers and he earned the nickname 'King Tom' for the way he administered
Ceylon. But essentially he was a practical Scot with great common sense
and an iron will - the right antidote to the less fortunate governorship
of his predecessor, the intellectually brilliant but not very competent,
Frederick North.
When Sir Thomas Maitland arrived here, he moved into the house in Colombo,
which had belonged to the last Dutch governor. But he wasn't satisfied
with that. For, shortly afterwards, he built another residence, on this
lovely spot jutting out into the Indian Ocean.
Sir Thomas Maitland may have had another motive in building a house
here, in addition to the natural beauty of the coast. Popular legend
has it that he had fallen in love with the daughter of the head of the
troupe of dancers that formed part of his welcoming party to this island.
This was not a liaison that a British Governor could pursue in the
public gaze. But away from Colombo, it was easier for him to rendezvous
with Lovina, the object of his affections. It was still, however, necessary
to take precautions and it is said that a special passageway was constructed
in the building to enable Lovina to come and go without being seen.
She was a dancing girl, he was the British Governor. I wonder: did
they walk, arm in arm, along the beach, listening to the roar of the
Indian Ocean's waves? Did their feet, 200 years ago, make prints in
the sand just below this hotel? Did they try to make sense of their
love for each other?
The passage of time has smoothed over these details, which are now
lost to us, just as their footprints on the beach have been washed away
by the waves.
But the Mount Lavinia building, a monument to that forbidden romance,
still stands.
The next Governor was Sir Robert Brownrigg who served here from 1812
to 1820. Like Maitland, Sir Robert was a former soldier.
The great achievement of his time in Ceylon was the capture of the
Kingdom of Kandy in 1815. This was achieved without having to fight
a battle, such was the unpopularity of Sri Vikrania Rajasinha, the last
king, with the other leading Kandyans.
The fall of Kandy brought to end 2,357 years of Sinhalese independence.
It is not surprising then that there were soon stirrings against the
new British rule. In 1818, there was a serious revolt that was only
put down with great loss of life.
The fall of Kandy also enabled the British eventually to unite the
island, for reasons of administrative convenience, for the first time
in its history. Some say that the people of Sri Lanka are living with
the consequences of that decision today.
Brownrigg was hailed in Britain as 'the conqueror of the kingdom of
Kandy' and King George III allowed him to bear the crown, sceptre and
banner of the King of Kandy on his coat of arms.
The next two governors were Sir Edward Paget and Sir Edward Barnes.
Barnes and Paget, like Maitland and Brownrigg, were former soldiers.
Both Barnes and Paget had both fought under the Duke of Wellington.
Paget had lost an arm at the siege of Oporto and Barnes had been badly
wounded at Waterloo.
Paget had one of the briefest of governorships, eight months, during
which nothing much happened.
Sir Edward Barnes, on the other hand, was the longest serving Governor
of Ceylon, holding office twice, from 1820 to 1822 and again from 1824
to 1831.
Barnes is remembered chiefly for two things - building roads and starting
the plantations.
He was a man of great energy. Barnes' new roads connected Colombo to
every other town on the island and that linked Kandy to every coastal
town. And having built the roads, he decided to develop the countryside
to which the roads gave access. He encouraged the plantation of coffee,
which gave way later to tea, an industry which continues to bring fame,
renown and export earnings to Sri Lanka today.
Sir Edward Barnes loved parties and good living. He loved this place,
this building to which he made many improvements. One writer said that
Barnes 'lived more luxuriously that a Park Lane millionaire'. I think
he would very much have approved of the wonderfully, splendid condition
of the Mount Lavinia hotel.
Ladies and Gentlemen.
One of the attractive features of life in modern Sri Lanka, at least
for my countrymen and women, is that the 150 year period of British
rule, under the thirty British governors who served here, is, on the
whole, viewed fairly positively. It was the period in which the island
went, by stages, through the greatest radical change in its recorded
history as it transformed itself from a traditional agrarian society
to a modern economy and liberal democracy.
Our governors are seen generally to have done their best for the development
of this island and its people, albeit acting according to their own
ideas and beliefs that were necessarily a product of the social and
political circumstances of their time. A time, I need hardly add, that
is very different from multicultural, meritocratic, modern Britain.
It is a tribute to the political maturity of Sri Lankan society and
to the vision of the owners and management of the Mount Lavinia hotel
that these four governors should be at the centre of the bicentenary
of this great building. It is also a great pleasure for me to be part
of that commemoration and to be remembering with a certain pride the
connection to the British governors who lived here.
As they look down upon us, I think the ghosts of the four governors
must be very pleased with what they see.
Thank you very much.
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