The year 1843 was not a notable year for news in the United States. The occupant of the White House, the nation's tenth President, was fifty-three-year-old John Tyler, who had taken office only two years earlier upon the death of William Henry Harrison. The most exciting event on his agenda was the dedication of a monument at Bunker Hill, where Daniel Webster delivered the keynote address. Members of Congress had bestirred themselves long enough to vote a $30,000 appropriation for the testing of the newly invented telegraph. Dorothea Dix, reformer, published a Memorial attacking the treatment of the insane in the twenty-six states. Edgar Allan Poe won a $100 newspaper prize for his short story "The Gold Bug," and William Hickling Prescott brought out his popular History of the Conquest of Mexico. John Fremont was in Kansas City mounting an expedition to explore the Oregon country. William Miller and his Millerites were preparing for the end of the world. In Nauvoo, Illinois, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith announced that he had received a revelation that sanctioned polygamy for true believers.
The most provocative news story of the year, as it turned out, one that would stimulate international interest and inquiry, was a brief marriage ceremony held in an obscure corner of the state of North Carolina.
The wedding took place, beneath a bower of roses, on Thursday, April 13, 1843, in the two-story private residence of a well-to-do farmer named David Yates, located on Mulberry Farm six miles northwest of the town of Wilkesboro. It was a double wedding—the two brothers, naturalized American citizens, were marrying two native-born Southern sisters—and the Reverend James L. Davis, a minister of the Methodist Church, conducted the ceremony.
First, Mr. C. Bunker, age thirty-one, took Miss Adelaide Yates, age nineteen, for his wife, for better or for worse, to love and to cherish until death did them part.
Next, Mr. E. Bunker, age thirty-one, took Miss Sarah Yates, age twenty, for his wife, for better or for worse, to love and to cherish until death did them part.
The only problem—indeed, the factor that made the occasion international news—was that when Miss Adelaide Yates accompanied Mr. C. Bunker to their home nearby at Trap Hill and then to their nuptial bed, she took with her not only her newlywed husband but also her brother-in-law, Mr. E. Bunker.
And when Miss Sarah Yates prepared to enjoy her honeymoon with her husband, Mr. E. Bunker, she knew that she would have to share it alongside her brother-in-law, Mr. C. Bunker.
If the marriages were solemnized until death did them part, it did not alter the simple, inexorable fact that in life the grooms also could not part, then or ever after. For Mr. C. Bunker and Mr. E. Bunker, who had married the Yates sisters that April day in 1843, were none other than Mr. Chang Bunker and Mr. Eng Bunker—Chang and Eng, the world-renowned original Siamese Twins.
Although distinctly two persons, Chang and Eng had been united as one in their conception and had remained united in the thirty-two years since their birth. On their wedding day they stood joined by a thick fleshy ligament resembling an arm, five to six inches long and eight inches in circumference, that connected them at the base of their chests. Adelaide and Sarah Yates were definitely two separate and normal young women, two of the six children of a five-hundred-pound mother (renowned in the community for her weight, most likely due to a glandular malfunction) and a prosperous Baptist father.
Despite the problem of the two husbands being one and the two wives being two, the marriages of the Siamese Twins to Adelaide and Sarah Yates lasted almost thirty-one years—and produced a total of twenty-one children.
At the time of their marriage, the Siamese Twins were world-famous. Until the appearance of Phineas T. Barnum's twenty-five-inch-tall Tom Thumb the year before, the Siamese Twins had been the earth's stellar show-business attraction. For fourteen years they had been a focus of attention for the press and had attracted enthusiastic audiences throughout most of the United States, the British Isles, France, Holland, and Belgium. They had been called by a contemporary writer "the eighth wonder of the world."
Yet at the time of their marriages—surely few marriages in world history, before or since, have been as incredible as these—not many could imagine that the bizarre saga of the Siamese Twins was just at its beginning.
For Chang and Eng, the actual beginning had occurred thirty-two years earlier, halfway around the world in a distant and exotic land named Siam, which would forever be known for three of its products—the Siamese white elephant, the Siamese cat, and the Siamese Twins.
~ * ~
They were born on May 11, 1811, on a bamboo mat in a small houseboat afloat on the river in the village of Meklong, located sixty miles west of Bangkok, the capital of Siam.
Their mother's name was Nok, and she was three-quarters Chinese and one-quarter Siamese. Their father, a fisherman named Ti-eye, was fully Chinese, born and raised in his native land, from which he had migrated to Siam. A Westerner who later met Nok described her as being "about five feet seven inches in height, well formed, with large hips, and, for her country, a strong woman. . . . She was thirty-five years of age when her twins were born." Nok already had four children. The twins increased the brood to six. There would be nine in all before the father died.
The mother informed an American visitor later "that she suffered no greater inconvenience at their birth than at those of her other children; that they were born with the head of one between the legs of the other, and as infants were rather small."
Once delivered, they lay compactly fitted together but facing in opposite directions, and this excited some wonder among the attending midwives and neighbors. Wonder soon gave way to joy that they were twins (in a land where a woman's prestige was enhanced by the number of children she bore), that they were well formed, that their first sounds proved they were alive and healthy. Immediately, a midwife prepared to right the one who had come out head first, and to separate them and bathe them—but suddenly it was observed that they could not be separated.
It was unbelievable, a sight that had never been witnessed before by any of those present. Nok's newborn twins were bound together, were joined breastbone to breastbone by a short, flexible, fleshy band or ligament. The two were two yet one.
Consternation. Fright, even horror, at this monstrosity. No hands touched them.
Nok, it appeared, was a no-nonsense mother. Whatever their condition at birth, they were still her newborn sons. They lay before her, their connecting band twisted by their manner of birth, continuing to utter their earliest cries of life. Nok untwisted them, straightened the band until they were face to face. Then she bathed them.
Shortly after, Nok and her husband gave the twins their names. The one on the twins' own left was named Chang, and the one on the right was named Eng. In the years to follow, many Westerners would speculate on the meaning of their names. The most common belief was that Chang meant "left" and that Eng meant "right" in the Siamese, or Thai, language. This interpretation was discredited in later years. More than six decades later, Dr. William H. Pancoast, a surgeon teaching at Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College who examined the bodies of the twins after their death, became curious about their names and reported his findings:
I have examined in the Astor Library, of New York, a copy of the celebrated dictionary of the Siamese language, Dictionarium linguae Thai sive Siamiensis, by Monseigneur J. B. Pallegoix, Bishop of Mallo, etc. Therein are numerous translations of the words Eng and Chang, but in no place do they signify right and left. In the Siamese language, words spelt exactly in the same way may have an entirely different signification according to the accompanying accent. Thus, by a different pronunciation, a word is made to do service for various meanings. Of all the different significations of the words Eng and Chang, those which give for Eng the meaning of "strictly, to tie strongly," and to Chang that of "unsavory, tasteless," seem alone applicable.
This justifies the statement which has been made, that the twins were not originally called Eng and Chang to distinguish them as right and left, but that the names were given them to express their natural characteristics. Eng was ever the stronger and healthier of the two, and of a pleasant disposition; Chang was irritable, and less amiable. With this understanding of their peculiarities, the names seem much more appropriate, and were probably given for this reason.
However, the most likely explanation exists in a passage in a Thai textbook, Famous Thai People:
Their mother called them "In" and "Jun" . . . In and Jun were the names of a certain kind of local fruit growing on trees. When the fruit was raw, it was green, and we called it In fruit, and when the fruit was ripe it was yellow, and we called it Jun fruit. Since to Europeans the pronunciation of these two words was not familiar, they pronounced them Eng-Chang.
Word of the twins' unnatural birth spread through Siam like wildfire, from Meklong to stately Bangkok, and then to outlying villages. Among savants, and some royalty, the abnormal union was regarded as a bad omen, perhaps heralding the destruction of the country, possibly even the world. Two verdicts were reached. One came from several of the nation's leading medical practitioners, who believed that if the twins could be separated, the evil they symbolized would be eliminated. The other came from Rama II, the all-powerful king of Siam. He decided that to avert disaster, the infants Chang and Eng must be put to death.
The Siamese medical doctors of the period, mostly of Chinese origin, were an unorthodox lot by Western standards. An Edinburgh newspaper dismissed them, saying: "Their medicine is as rude as their other sciences. One process of cure is laying the patient flat on the floor and trampling him under foot." Several of these local practitioners came forward to entreat Nok to allow Chang and Eng to be separated. According to a pamphlet published about the twins in New York in 1853:
"Most suggestions offered in the case of the twins were absurd beyond the power of description. One venerable [Siamese] leech proposed hanging them across a fine cat-gut cord, like a pair of saddle-bags, estimating that this would, in time, work its way entirely through the connecting ligature, by degrees, allowing the severed parts time to heal as it progressed. Another advised cutting them apart with a red-hot wire." Yet another Siamese doctor advised they be sawed apart, and still another suggested the ligament be burned.
All of this sagacious advice the mother Nok resisted, dreading the pain that would be imposed on her sons, and eventually the doctors gave up and went their ways to trample on other afflicted patients.
King Rama II's sentence of death was a momentary whim, and he failed to act upon it. He had inherited the throne only two years before the birth of the twins, and he was known to be a compassionate, thoughtful, quiet man possessed of creative gifts. He had a reputation as a poet, and once had collaborated with the leading court poets to produce the Thai version of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Not only did he promote arts and letters, but he instigated the construction of magnificent buildings which he designed himself and for which he personally sculpted decorations. It was said that upon learning that the twins were maturing as healthy and vigorous youngsters and would one day be able to earn their keep—and assured by now that their advent had not doomed the kingdom—he formally retracted his original death sentence and left the twins alone.
Yet another factor may have influenced the king. Quite possibly one of his advisers or scholars had acquired some medical literature from the West and learned that while xiphophagic, or joined, twins had occurred throughout history, their births had not signaled national disasters. These medical records cited around one hundred joined twins. The year 945 saw the birth of the Armenian Twins, united at the abdomen. When an effort was made to separate them, one died immediately, the other three days later. In the year 1100, two sisters, Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, were born in the hamlet of Biddenden, Kent, England. The girls were joined at the hips and possibly at the shoulders. Known as the Biddenden Maids, they lived to the age of thirty-four, leaving twenty acres of land to the church upon their death. Part of the rent from this land was to be spent each Easter to distribute cakes bearing the twins' images to itinerants and the poor.
Around 1475, the Scottish Brothers were born near Glasgow. The boys were joined at the back, two persons from the waist up, one person from the waist down. They were protected by the king of the Scots, James III, educated and raised at court, and lived to the age of twenty-eight. In 1689, there were joined twins born in Basle, held together by a ligament one inch long and five inches in diameter. At risk of life, a celebrated doctor named Fatio operated upon them. Employing six surgical wires, Dr. Fatio successfully separated them. In 1701, there were the Hungarian Sisters, Helen and Judith, whose bodies were welded together back to back, with only one pair of legs for the two of them. Helen and Judith spent their early years being exhibited in fairs across England, Holland, Germany, and Italy, but at the age of nine they were placed in a convent. The pair survived until the age of twenty-two.
If King Rama II was indeed told about these births, and had learned that none of them was followed by a natural calamity, it would explain why he permitted Chang and Eng to escape death.
To understand the original attitude of the king and his medical practitioners toward the birth of Chang and Eng, one must understand the country of Siam as it was in the year 1811. At that time, Siam—which had become a nation in the sixth century—was an independent kingdom located in southeastern Asia, due south of China, with Burma bordering it to the west, and Cochin China as its neighbor to the east. For more than a thousand years, the nation's rulers called their country "Sayam"—or Siam—in communications with the outside world. But to the people themselves, the country was known as Muang T'ai—"land of the Thai race"—which became "Thailand" in discussions with foreigners. (Not until 1939 did the then-regent of Siam officially decree that the nation would thereafter be known, to foreigners and natives alike, as Thailand.)
Siam was a feudal kingdom of over five million persons in 1811. Under King Rama II the land was divided up among the nobility—lords and princes who, in turn, leased their acres to impoverished tenant farmers. Every male Siamese over twenty was ordered by law to toil on these farms, mostly rice paddies, three months out of every year, just as every male over twenty was expected to serve six months in the Thai army, a portion of that time without pay.
One group of citizens was exempt from these onerous duties—the Chinese immigrants who had become subjects of the Siamese king. About 310,000 citizens of Siam were Chinese, and the Chinese males over twenty were excused from farm labor and military conscription so long as each paid a tax of three dollars every three years for such exemption. The reason for this favoritism went back to an ancient time when Siam had been subjugated by neighboring Burma. There had then arisen in the ranks of the conquered Siamese army a Chinese-born soldier named Piatac, who had rallied and organized the Siamese fighting men, led a revolt against the Burmese, driven the invaders out, reestablished Siam's independence, and made himself king of the newly free country, establishing Bangkok as his capital.
Piatac had given his fellow Chinese in Siam special privileges, and these privileges were still perpetuated under King Rama II. One of the beneficiaries of this traditional largess was the Chinese father of Chang and Eng.
King Rama II ruled his land as an absolute monarch. His ornate Royal Palace, surrounded by a two-mile wall, was located sixty miles west of the village where the twins were born, in Bangkok (which in Thai means Village of Wild Plums), a city built largely on piles and floating pontoons and with a population of about 400,000. In the palace were the king's family, his aides and statesmen, his servants, numbering three thousand persons in all. Since polygamy was the custom, practiced mostly by the wealthy, King Rama II had a harem of seven hundred wives and concubines. This harem, and that of his successor, King Rama III, was modest compared to the seraglio of the latter's successor, King Rama IV, better known to history as King Mongut. After Mongut attained the throne in 1851 and opened Siam to the West, he filled his harem with nine thousand wives and concubines, thirty of whom gave him sixty-seven children.
All of this was attested to by Mrs. Anna H. Leonowens, an English woman from Wales who as a twenty-seven-year-old widow had come to Bangkok to tutor King Mongut's vast brood of children. After five years in the king's palace, Mrs. Leonowens departed to write two best-selling books, The English Governess at the Siamese Court and The Romance of the Harem. The first book became famous in the next century when it served as the basis for another book, Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, and a play and motion picture that were both called The King and I. "Polygamy—or, properly speaking, concubinage—and slavery are the curses of the country," Mrs. Leonowens wrote in her second book. "The number of concubines is limited only by the means of the man. As the king is the source of all wealth and influence, dependent kings, princes, and nobles, and all who would seek the royal favor, vie with each other in bringing their most beautiful and accomplished daughters to the royal harem. ... Woman is the slave of man."
King Rama II kept his country isolated from the West. At the beginning of his reign, the only foreigners admitted were Chinese, Portuguese, and Dutch traders. But in his later years he did admit a handful of English and American traders. According to Jesse Franklin Graves, an American jurist who was close to the twins during most of their adult life, "The people of Siam have a great attachment to their country and their feeling of nationality is so strong that they look upon all foreigners except the Chinese with suspicious hatred and contempt, holding themselves to be vastly superior to the people of every other nation."
The masses of the people were erratically educated and poorly read. The few popular books were "written on slips of palm-leaf, with an iron style, a black powder being thrown over the impression to render it legible. These slips are from a foot to a foot and a half long. To bring a volume together, they are tied up in small bundles, richly gilded and painted on the edges, and placed in an envelope of silk or cotton cloth."
Almost the entire population of Siam was guided by religion and superstition. Basically, the people were Buddhists, but a few innovations had been added, such as a belief in a single creator known as the Golden Supreme. While the people subsisted peacefully on rice and fish, and chewed betel, and dwelt in poverty, the priests lived in comfort in magnificently decorated temples.
Justice was primitive. The fate of the accused in a trial was usually determined by some ordeal. Typically, when a man accused of a crime was brought to trial, he was ordered to pluck a large stone out of a pot of boiling water. Afterward his hands were wrapped in bandages and these were not removed for three days. If on the fourth day his hands showed burn marks, he was declared guilty of the crime. If his hands showed no burns, he was declared innocent and freed.
This was the world in which Chang and Eng, called the Chinese Twins by their neighbors, grew to maturity. Their immediate world, however, was much more limited. Their home remained a bamboo house, the roof thatched with palm leaves, set on a raft secured to the bank of a branch of the Meklong River. There were several small rooms in the house, with a table set outside the front door from which their father sold his catch of fish as well as various small articles of merchandise.
Above the river bank rose the village of Meklong, described by a visitor, Sir John Bowring, as "a populous and beautiful city, with its floating bazaars, fine pagodas and gardens, and a population of ten thousand, the largest proportion of which are Chinese. There is a considerable fortification for the defense of the place. The soil is remarkably fertile, and the salt-pits produce enough to supply the whole kingdom. Both sides of the river are peopled and cultivated."
As infants, the Chinese Twins were delicate and constricted, held face to face by their common ligament. They remained objects of intense curiosity. Townfolk who had heard of the strange birth came to see them, and visitors from afar sometimes lined the river bank for a glimpse of them. Gradually, as they grew and the villagers became used to seeing them, the crowds of curious onlookers thinned, and eventually disappeared altogether.
Their mother Nok was determined that they should grow up as normally as possible, and she neither ignored the twins nor pitied and overprotected them. She was matter-of-fact about them, and treated the two much as she treated her other children.
One of the first difficulties they faced was in learning to walk. An American pamphlet described their initial efforts: "Anyone who has ever seen two inebriated men, with locked arms, endeavoring to proceed in a fixed direction, may form some idea of their earliest efforts; but their mother has remarked that, after once becoming accustomed to the task of maintaining a proper center of gravity, their advance in the practice of pedestrianism was truly astonishing."
In one of their first forays alone, they were toddling along the river bank when they were attracted by the music from a floating theater gliding by. They started toward it, and went tumbling straight into the river, from which they were rescued "by the crew of an aquatic laundry."
In their childhood, they were always attentive to music and theatrical performances. Among their fondest memories in later years was a magical night when they were taken to view a Siamese play. The play was not a written play—in Siam, based on no more than a thread of a story, the actors made up their own dialogue. It was a romantic play recounting the adventures of a remote historical prince in love and war, and the story was filled with the feats of tumblers, jugglers, sword-swallowers, fire-eaters. The twins never forgot it.
Soon they were not only walking firmly, but were running with ease. Their favorite sport was to leave their floating home, scramble to the summit of a nearby hill, wrap their arms around each other tightly, and roll down the hill shouting with laughter.
The twins learned to anticipate and coordinate their movements, like a practiced dance team, but sometimes there were accidents. One day they raced toward a low fence and attempted to leap over it together. As they left the ground, one lagged a split second behind the other. They came down hard, their connecting ligament straddling the top of the fence, and one twin was left hanging on each side of it. They dangled there until one had the strength to haul himself over the top to join the other. But the ligament that bound them had been badly bruised, and both were ill for several days.
During all of this, they had grown quite strong. Now when they played rough games with the neighborhood children, they were always confident. Once one of them remarked that, since there were two of them to one of everyone else, they should do everything twice as well as their friends.
The river was their father's life and part of their own lives, too. Quickly, they learned to swim in tandem, and they learned to handle a boat. Their father, like many others dependent on the river, had a small spare craft tied to the houseboat, which was used for fishing and travel. In a short time the twins, too, were using the boat, standing at the stern, each plying one oar.
This strenuous physical activity, which was constantly encouraged by their mother, began to affect their joining band. Gradually, the connecting ligament stretched, from four inches to five and a half inches, so that soon they moved away from their face-to-face position and were able to walk almost side by side, their arms around each other's shoulders.
There were occasional problems of health and of temperament. At the age of six they were ill for two weeks with smallpox, but they overcame that successfully. They had caught it on the same day, and recovered on the same day.
More serious was the matter of their opposing temperaments. Chang, the slightly shorter of the pair, who stood on their own left, was the dominant member of the two and the more quick-tempered. Eng was more agreeable, compliant, docile. In disagreements, Eng usually gave in and thus avoided trouble. But on one occasion, in a heated argument, Eng refused to give in. Then, for the first and only time in their childhood, they began to hit one another. The fight grew more violent, until their mother came between them. The situation was critical. They could not be pulled apart and sent off to different rooms, for they were held together, with their anger, only inches from one another. Their mother lectured them, reasoned with them, explained that their condition made any more fights impossible. They must learn to tolerate each other, take turns at placating and compromising. Without such self-control, they would not survive their physical bondage to one another. The lesson was not lost on them.
By the time they were seven, Chang and Eng had received their first schooling. According to an American pamphlet: "At an early age they received the usual amount of teaching given to the middling classes, and learned to read and write their native language with tolerable proficiency."
They grew up completely at the age of eight.
It was 1819, and it was in that year that disaster struck their close-knit family. A cholera epidemic swept through all of Southeast Asia, and it hit the village of Meklong full force. Long after, Chang and Eng would recount the devastation to their American friend Judge Graves, and he would note their impression of the disaster in his unpublished biography of the twins:
"The cholera came upon the inhabitants of Meklong in the most malignant form; no precaution would prevent it; no remedies, relieve or cure it. The victims died suddenly; the living were unable to bury the dead; the bodies were thrown into the river; the sluggish water did not remove the putrid mass; stench arose from the water."
The twins' family at the outset of the horror numbered eleven—the two parents and their nine children. Almost immediately three of the children died. In short weeks, two more children succumbed to the plague, and the father, Ti-eye, lay seriously ill. And then, finally, he died, too.
When the cholera epidemic abated, only five of them were left. The mother Nok was alive, as were an older brother named Noy and an older sister whose name is not known—and Chang and Eng themselves.
The dead siblings had long since been removed, and what remained was the father's funeral, an event that could never be erased from the twins' minds.
Although only eight, Chang and Eng trailed after their mother, brother, and sister into the courtyard of the Buddhist temple. The coffin that held the body of their father rested on a bier covered with cloth, six feet above the ground. The coffin itself was draped with a crimson cloth woven with gold. Above the bier was a canopy of white—the color of mourning—and the canopy was festooned with fragrant flowers.
Soon there was the sound of music, as Siamese flutes, drums, and gongs began to play together. Nearby, in the courtyard, a Buddhist priest appeared in a shed to read aloud a prayer, while on a low platform at his feet sat a group of women holding lighted tapers.
When the prayer was done, the priest, accompanied by several other priests, moved slowly toward the coffin. Chang and Eng watched as the priests lifted a strip of cloth that was attached to the head of their father's coffin. The cloth was cut by the priests, and pieces of it were handed to Nok, to Noy, to the sister, and to Chang and Eng.
Now the priests lifted the coffin and moved it inside the temple. Chang and Eng were told that temple attendants were washing and purifying their father's corpse.
Meanwhile, combustibles were being thrown on the bier. At last the priests reappeared carrying the body, which they placed gently on the bier. A priest passed out lighted tapers to the mourners, then returned to the bier and set fire to it. He signaled for the mourners to put their burning tapers to the funeral pyre also. Soon flames surrounded it, licking upward toward the sky, engulfing the twins' father in a blaze of red.
And then it was over, the cremation ended, their father gone forever.
Nok made the final expected ceremonial gesture. She turned toward the pressing group of beggars who had gathered from the village and went among them distributing alms.
It had been an impressive ceremony, a necessary one, but a woefully expensive one. Its cost depleted all of Nok's small savings. The family was penniless, and without a father to support it. Chang and Eng would never be young again.
Mourning could be of only short duration. For the survivors to continue to survive, they had to eat, and to eat they had to find an immediate means of livelihood.
Nok at first undertook to extract and make oil from cocoa nuts, but it was slow and difficult work, too difficult for the children to help her with, and too much to do by herself. She gave this up, and by some desperate means managed to collect notions, which she placed for sale on the outdoor table of the houseboat. This brought some small income, but not enough. It was then that young Chang and Eng realized that they must go to work, become family providers, and from that time on, for the rest of their lives, they rarely had surcease from work.
Their father had been a fisherman. They decided to be fishermen, too. They found a job with a successful fisherman on the river and helped him with his catch, but after a while they felt that they could do better going into business for themselves. With the extra money they had acquired, they bought a small boat and began to fish on their own. Their income increased.
Presently, they determined to go into something even more profitable. They would become, as they themselves called it, “merchants". They would buy various goods cheap, ferry them to the floating marketplace, and sell them at a profit. Thus, between the ages of ten and thirteen, the twins engaged in trade and made money. Three factors worked for them. They possessed an innate shrewdness at bargaining. As the Chinese Twins, bound together by a band of flesh, they aroused the sympathy and interest of others. And, because of their handicap, the government did not tax them as it taxed other peddlers, and so they could sell cheaper than their competitors.
Soon they were able to support the family, as well as set aside small savings. However, life was not without its occasional problems. One night, while tied in with a small armada of boats manned by other merchants, they moved down a canal toward the Meklong River. With the coming of morning, one merchant discovered that some of his most valuable goods—parcels of peacock tail feathers—had been stolen during the night. The victim did not know who had done it, but he knew the crime had been committed by someone in the group. Immediately, he summoned the authorities. Everyone, including Chang and Eng, was arrested and brought before the district chief. Like the others, the twins gave testimony and pleaded not guilty. Since the court could not uncover the culprit by ordinary means, the chief pronounced that a trial by ordeal would be held. The test was simple: each suspect must swallow an emetic. The first one who vomited would be considered guilty and punished. The twins took the emetic, and held it down. One of the others threw up immediately, was declared guilty, and summarily punished. However, an hour later the real thief was caught with the peacock tail feathers in his possession.
It was the twins' only bout with the law in a merchandising career which continued to prosper.
Meanwhile, in Bangkok, a new monarch had ascended the throne of Siam. King Rama II had been succeeded by thirty-seven-year-old King Rama III. Unlike his predecessor, the new ruler was a militarist, not an artist. He set his armies on a course of conquest, expanding his empire in the Malay Peninsula to the south, invading the Lao territory in the north, and subduing part of Cambodia. When not at war, the king's diversions were limited. He presented food to the monks who came to beg each morning. He enjoyed feeding his pet tortoise. A devout Buddhist, he gave much time to prayer and to denouncing Protestant missionaries (who had failed to gain a single convert in eighteen years). He held a one-hour audience every morning and a three-hour audience every night. He inspected new ships or the casting of artillery guns. He played with his children. He fought the growing opium trade. Under his supervision, nine new temples were erected and a ninety-foot-long reclining Buddha, made of brick and mortar and coated with gold, was built. Somewhat of a prude, he hated the ballet and sought further recreation in marvels and the bizarre.
King Rama III had been on the throne little more than a year when he heard of the wondrous curiosity in the village of Meklong. There were, he was told by travelers, two youthful merchants known as the Chinese Twins who were joined together by a band of flesh. The king was intrigued. He summoned the twins to appear before him and his royal court at the palace in Bangkok.
To understand the reaction of Chang and Eng, two fourteen-year-old peasant boys, to this summons from King Rama III, one must understand the exalted position of the nation's monarch in 1825.
The summons from the king was, as a nineteenth-century pamphlet reports,
. . . an event which nearly overwhelmed them with astonishment and awe, as the veneration attached to the person of the king of Siam, by his subjects, is, perhaps, without parallel in any other land. It is believed that his body is the vehicle of a soul in a highly advanced state of migration towards a final state of beatitude, and that the very fact of his being king is complete evidence of extraordinary piety in former conditions of existence. No one dares pronounce his name, nor is it ever mentioned in writing, or even known, except by a very few of his principal courtiers. It would be the height of presumption to inquire after his health, for however sick and wretched he may be, he must always be supposed to be free from all bodily infirmities. When he is obliged to call upon the services of his physician, it is not for a moment allowed that he can be in the need of any medicine, or that his system can, by any possibility, have become deranged, but his physic is offered him with the assurance that it is an exquisitely palatable and agreeable preparation, the swallowing of which cannot fail to afford him unspeakable satisfaction and delight; whereupon his majesty bolts it down, and tries to look as if he liked it.
No heir to the throne is appointed during the lifetime of the king, for to imagine his death is not only in its legal, but in its popular acceptation, high treason.
In rank, there is no comparison between the sovereign and the most exalted of his officers or courtiers; and the idiom of the language itself takes care to mark the immeasurable distance which exists between them. If he wishes to compliment a young prince, or nobleman, he addresses him as "Illustrious Dog," or "Noble Rat," terms of condescension, which are received with the utmost thankfulness and gratitude. . . . No wonder that the youths felt some trepidation at the idea of facing such a person-age. If the highest princes were set down as rats, where in the whole range of the animal creation could a creature be found humble enough to furnish them with an appelation?
Thrilled and trembling, Chang and Eng were prepared for their meeting with the king of Siam.
While they were to be briefed on the formalities and protocol after they arrived in the palace, their mother did her best to get them ready for the royal audience. She shopped for new clothes for each of them, and modified the jackets so that they could accommodate the twins' ligament. She learned what she could of what they might expect, and lectured them on behavior and the sights that would meet their eyes. As the time for departure neared, she combed their long hair and braided it into Chinese queues.
At last, officials of the palace arrived in Meklong to escort Chang and Eng to Bangkok. It was agreed that their mother and sister could accompany them. But something else also accompanied them. The twins insisted upon taking along a cargo of duck eggs, preserved so that they could be eaten two to three years later. These they wanted their mother to sell or trade in Bangkok, and thereby acquire a large stock of new goods that they might sell at a profit upon their return to Meklong.
With the palace officials, Chang and Eng and their sister, mother, and cargo traveled in a large junk up the river sixty miles to the capital of Bangkok.
Approaching the city, after passing rice fields and herds of buffalo, they moved between crowded rows of houseboats and floating shops, largely owned by Chinese. Soon the small, nondescript boats gave way to fleets of huge Siamese vessels and enormous Chinese junks that had just arrived from China.
Then the twins had their first view of Bangkok. What they saw was what was seen and described by a visiting British ambassador:
Numerous temples of Buddha, with tall spires attached to them, frequently glittering with gilding, were conspicuous among the mean huts and hovels of the natives, throughout which were interspersed a profusion of palms, ordinary fruit-trees, and the sacred fig. On each side of the river there was a row of floating habitations, resting on rafts of bamboos, moored to the shore. These appeared the neatest and best description of dwellings; they were occupied by good Chinese shops. Close to these aquatic habitations were anchored the largest description of native vessels, among which were many junks of great size, just arrived from China. The face of the river presented a busy scene, from the number of boats and canoes of every size and description which were passing to and fro . . . we were not aware that there are few or no roads at Bangkok, and that the river and canals form the common highways, not only for goods but for passengers. . . . Many of the boats were shops containing earthenware, blachang (a foetid condiment . . . composed of bruised shrimps and other smaller fish), dried fish, and fresh pork. Venders of these several commodities were hawking and crying them.... Among those who plied on the river, there was a large proportion of women and of the priests of Buddha; the latter readily distinguished by their shaved and bare heads, and their yellow vestments.
At this point, the twins and palace officials were met by a boat carrying two representatives of the king. They were presented with a gift–consisting of fruit and tea—and guided to a special landing a few hundred yards away. Once on shore, the party was received by an important officer of the court, who hurried them toward an isolated residence outside the palace wall, explaining that "no one was allowed to see them until his majesty had satisfied his royal curiosity."
Chang and Eng were told that they would have to spend the night in seclusion, that not until the following morning would the king receive them. Meanwhile, they were given thorough instructions in court procedure—how many obeisances to make to the throne, how deeply to bow, how to address the monarch, and how to answer any questions he might put to them. In a state of anxiety and exhaustion, they sank to their knees and practiced bowing their heads to the floor, stretching their ligament as far as possible in attempting to bow in unison.
They spent a fretful, partially sleepless night. At last it was day, and at eight thirty in the morning they were dressed and immaculate and ready.
The court officer appeared. He led them to a twelve-oared barge—the oarsmen attired in scarlet uniforms—and they were rowed along the foot of the surrounding wall to the outer gate of the palace. There, they got into a net hammock suspended from poles, which was lifted by two men. Going through the entrance, they were carried across a vast open courtyard until they reached an inner wall and second gate "guarded by soldiery in singularly fantastic costume." Beyond it, they traversed a long, handsome avenue, lined on either side with sheds housing powerful cannons. Then, to their right was the Hall of Justice, and to their left a broad expanse where a dozen mammoth elephants were being exercised by their keepers.
Now they had reached the third and last gate. As they descended from their litter, the twins were ordered to remove their shoes. They did so, and passed through the gate to find before them three buildings—the spired Royal Palace with its tin roof, a magnificent Buddhist temple, and the sprawling Audience Hall. They were informed that the king was in the Audience Hall, surrounded by numerous courtiers, sitting in judgment on various legal cases. The king was disposing of the final case, and almost ready to receive them.
They followed the court official inside, and were momentarily dazzled by what met their eyes. The Audience Hall was a vast and towering room, eighty by forty feet in size, each wall and the ceiling painted in bright vermilion, decorated with cornices of shining gold. Two rows of giant wooden columns led from the entry door across the long expanse of the room to the throne, elevated fifteen feet above the ground. The throne was covered with golden plates, and over the throne was a canopy formed by seventeen gold umbrellas. The throne area was surrounded on three sides by a sheer yellow curtain with gold decorations.
And seated on the throne, bareheaded, in his loose gown of gold, was pudgy King Rama III of Siam.
The court officer escorting the twins whispered to them. Dumbly they nodded and instantly dropped to the floor, kneeling close together. As instructed, they raised their hands to their foreheads, and in unison bent their heads down lower and lower until their foreheads touched the floor. Then they repeated the entire act again and again, nine times in all. Finally, they stood up, and at a signal from their escort, they went forward, advancing toward the throne until they reached the feet of the king. They dropped to their knees a second time, and nine times more they bowed their heads to the ground. The last time, in undertones, they formally addressed the king: "Exalted Lord, Sovereign of many Princes, let the Lord of Lives tread upon his slave's head, who here prostrate, receiving the dust of the golden feet upon the summit of his head . . ."
A contemporary account reported what followed: "His majesty seemed highly pleased with their appearance, and, through one of his courtiers, addressed to them a vast number of questions relating to themselves, their family, their occupations and their sensations, all of which were answered in a satisfactory manner."
The questions asked, the answers given, the king made an almost imperceptible nod to someone nearby.
Suddenly, there was a deafening clash of gongs. At once, the multitude of courtiers emitted in chorus a mighty shout and fell to their knees, heads bowed, prostrating themselves. As the sounds of the gongs reverberated throughout the room, the yellow curtain surrounding three sides of the throne was hastily closed, hiding the monarch from view.
The unexpected noise and activity frightened the twins. They recoiled and hugged each other protectively. The room was still. The royal audience was over.
But their day in fairyland had just begun. The assembled courtiers, now scrambling to their feet, soon crowded in on Chang and Eng. Until their king had seen the prodigies from Meklong, the courtiers had had to hold their curiosity in check. But once the king was gone, every person in the hall wanted a closer look at these human marvels. They pressed in on the boys from every side, examining the connecting ligament, asking endless questions that the twins tried their best to answer.
At last, the twins were rescued by the court officer assigned to them. It was the king's wish, he told them, that they visit his wives in the Royal Palace, and then they were to be permitted to tour the Temple of the Emerald Buddha—or Temple of Gautama, as it was sometimes called.
First, there was the Royal Palace and His Majesty's harem of seven hundred wives—actually thirty-five wives (who gave him fifty-one children) and the rest concubines. Timidly, the twins entered the king's harem. According to a contemporary account:
"They were taken into a large hall of the principal palace, where every possible inquiry that female curiosity of 700 woman power could devise, was made of them, many of which were not remarkable for their delicacy. They received valuable presents from several of these ladies, and then were allowed to examine the curiosities of the place, until the king's pleasure concerning them should be made known."
Outdoors once more, they were eager to see the sacred white elephants, which were shielded from public view. They were refused permission to do this. However, they were shown through the king's stable of stud horses—actually ponies—and shown two or three horses from the Chinese province of Yu-nau, all of which they enjoyed.
Finally, they arrived at an enclosure. Upon entering it they saw the Temple of Gautama, as well as several smaller temples. They walked under a covered passageway, its walls hung with paintings depicting the adventures of Rama, until they reached the Temple of Gautama, a plastered brick building. Inside the temple, the woodwork was oddly and elaborately carved, and throughout there were statues of mythical creatures—strange birds and serpents and demons. The twins came upon the altar on which rested a number of gold Buddhas, as well as the translucent two-thousand-year-old Emerald Buddha, sparkling with gems from India.
It was breathtaking, dizzying in its splendor, and when the twins tottered outside they were speechless. The court officer was waiting for them, laden with colorfully wrapped parcels. He told them that the king had given them permission to leave for home, and they were to take with them some personal gifts presented by His Majesty in honor of their visit.
Reunited with their mother and sister, regaling them with the wonders they had seen, the twins returned immediately by boat to their village of Meklong.
The neighbors turned out in hordes to greet them as heroes. They had seen the king. From local curiosities they had been transformed into personages of note.
For the first time they had an opportunity to become financially secure.
Chang and Eng had longed to expand their business of raising and selling ducks and duck eggs. Both the ducks and their eggs were considered delicacies in the area, and selling them netted a considerable profit. But an investment in more ducks required a fair amount of capital. Now, at last, the twins could raise the necessary money. They had returned to Meklong with the expensive gifts given to them by the king of Siam and by several of his wives, as well as the money their mother had obtained by disposing of duck eggs in Bangkok. Without a second thought, the twins sold their royal presents to local merchants for cash. With this windfall, they enlarged their flock of ducks.
On the shore, near their houseboat, the twins had built a fenced enclosure, and inside it was a pond where they kept the ducks. Twice a week, in a small boat, they sailed or rowed down to the Gulf of Siam, and there they caught shellfish to feed and fatten their birds. The precious duck eggs came readily. Using an ancient formula to preserve the eggs, the twins converted them into a much desired product. To preserve the eggs, the twins made a soft mixture of clay and salt, and dipped the eggs into this mixture. Then the eggs were covered with dry ashes for a short period. After that they were cleaned, and in this embalmed state they remained fresh and delicious for two to three years. In a single year, the twins sold 12,000 eggs, as well as the older ducks, at a profit, and their family prospered.
Not all the aging ducks, however, went to the market. From their earliest childhood the twins had kept and trained pets. There had been a pet mouse, followed by a sparrowlike bird, and inevitably there would be a duck. This duck, more friendly and intelligent than the others, they named Chee-kou. They trained her to hop on one leg, lie down and quack for food, and walk a slack balancing wire. When word of this duck got about the province, a wealthy lady decided that she wanted Chee-kou, and she made the twins an offer they could not resist. But a week after the lady took the duck, the bird died, and for months thereafter the twins were filled with guilt.
The twins were busy and happy. The idea of leaving Siam had never tempted them. They had never thought it possible, let alone desirable. The possibility came about quite by accident.
Actually, the accident—a chance meeting with a foreigner, a Westerner—had taken place in 1824, when they were thirteen, a year before they were received by the king of Siam.
Foreigners were rare in the cities of Siam. There were the Chinese, of course. But from the West, there had arrived only a handful of Dutch and Portuguese traders, who came and went. In fact, the only Western nation to have a consulate in Siam was Portugal.
One day a British merchant disembarked in Bangkok. He was Robert Hunter, a Scot, the first British trader to enter and take up residence in Siam. Hunter came from a long line of merchants. His ancestors had become wealthy by exporting tobacco from the Virginia Colony in the New World to France, where Jean Nicot, a minister under King Francis II, had popularized "American powder" and whose name had inspired the word "nicotine." Forced to leave Virginia after the Revolutionary War, Hunter's ancestors had returned to Glasgow, where they manufactured glass and later linen. Hunter had inherited the family interest in trade. Eventually, he had made Singapore his base, where he was part-owner of four ships and represented Hunter-Watt and Company. He carried on trade with many foreign countries, made a small fortune, and finally expanded his activities to include Siam.
Robert Hunter was enchanted by Siam, and apparently the Siamese nobility were charmed by him. At first he lived in a houseboat. Later, when permitted to do so, he bought a house in Bangkok, resumed his export business, and rented a warehouse across from the capital city. A latter-day relative has characterized him as interested in money and power, a man of quick temper and some arrogance, both attributes hidden beneath his dour Scots reserve. He was also characterized as shrewd, hard-headed, and persuasive. He made contacts in the Royal Palace, and eventually was able to form a partnership with the government in trading.
Hunter was also a man of boundless curiosity and enjoyed roaming the country, not only to collect goods and artifacts but for the pleasure he got from seeing new sights.
It was one of these side trips that brought Robert Hunter to the village of Meklong in 1824. Late of an afternoon, while crossing the river by boat, his attention was caught by an astonishing sight in the distance. He saw what he first took to be "a strange animal," one with two heads, four arms, four legs, swimming in the river. As he watched, the creature suddenly emerged from the water and clambered into a waiting boat. Drawing closer, Hunter observed the "strange animal" begin to row the boat toward the shore, and then he realized what he was seeing was actually a pair of scrawny boys, naked from the hips up, each tied to the other by a band at their breastbones.
Hunter followed the boys, and when they went ashore, he came after them. Thus did Robert Hunter meet Chang and Eng.
Standing there on the bank of the river, the Scottish trader asked the twins numerous questions. He learned that they lived with their mother, brother, and sister in a nearby houseboat. He learned that they, too, were merchants, engaged in selling duck eggs. He inquired whether he might see them again, and they agreed. Before leaving, he pressed a small sum of money into the hand of one twin as a token of friendship.
Shortly after, Robert Hunter came calling on Chang and Eng at their houseboat, met Nok, met their brother and sister, held conversations with the family, shared food with them. This first visit was followed by many others. By the time the twins were received by King Rana III, Hunter had become a fast family friend.
Clearly, Hunter was not seeing Chang and Eng, two simple country boys, because he was entranced by their repartee or their personalities. Plainly, he had a business enterprise in mind. He saw the Chinese Twins as a spectacular export.
From the moment the idea of taking Chang and Eng to the West and selling them to the public as curiosities had entered Hunter's head, he was aware that there were three obstacles to overcome.
The first obstacle was Chang and Eng themselves. They were provincial youths—the farthest they had ever been from their native village was sixty miles. They loved their homeland, thought it the center of the world, and believed that the world that lay beyond Siam was dull and inferior. According to a nineteenth-century pamphlet, Chang and Eng, like almost all Siamese, had "but a poor opinion of `outside barbarians.' They have heard of the Africans, whom they term 'pepperheads'; of the 'Markan' or Americans, and of the 'Angrit' or English, all of whom they believe to be inhabitants of extremely small and insignificant islands, situated in some unknown seas, which nobody has ever considered it worthwhile to discover."
One can be sure that Robert Hunter set out to correct the impression Chang and Eng had of the West, and to reeducate them about the lands known as the United States and England. No doubt he wooed them with tales of kings and presidents who rivaled their own monarch, of cities of stone buildings and brick pavements and gaslights and horse carriages and coaches that made Bangkok seem backward, of steamships that could easily outdistance their best sailing vessels and junks. No doubt Hunter dazzled them with tales of a race of remarkable beings who populated the vast lands of the West. No doubt he enthralled them with tales of riches and luxuries and lovely women.
And no doubt Chang and Eng reacted first with excitement—and then disbelief that such countries, people, inventions, pleasures could truly exist outside their Siam.
Yet the twins must have given Hunter sufficient promise of their cooperation to encourage him to proceed further. Hunter's next step was to attempt to convince Nok of the desirability of allowing her two fourteen-year-olds to travel abroad. No record exists of her initial response. It may not have been entirely favorable, but it could not have been totally negative, for in 1825, shortly after the twins' audience with Rama III, Hunter approached the king. All of the monarch's subjects were his personal possessions, and none could leave Siam without his specific permission. Hunter sought this permission through his business connections in the palace, intermediaries who spoke to the king on his behalf. In short order, Hunter had the king's reply. Permission for the twins to leave the country for the West was refused.
As a matter of fact, the king already had a trip in mind for Chang and Eng. But it was a journey to another place, and for another purpose.
King Rama III had been making plans to send a diplomatic mission, or embassy, as it was then called, to neighboring Cochin China. The purpose of the mission was to have the Siamese ambassador negotiate with the king of Cochin China on a revision of the laws regulating commerce between the two nations.
When King Rama III undertook the selection of the members of his diplomatic mission, he decided that the Chinese Twins must accompany the party. He felt the joined twins would demonstrate a remarkable Siamese product, as well as provide an amusement for a royal neighbor. Whether the king got the idea of sending the twins along with his mission because of their recent visit to his court, or whether he was suddenly reminded of them by Robert Hunter's request to take them to the West, is not known. What is known is that the king notified Chang and Eng that he wanted them to accompany his mission to Cochin China in the near future, and when the time came he would send for them and bring them to Bangkok, the departure point for the journey.
In 1827, when they were sixteen, Chang and Eng received the royal summons from Bangkok. They left for the capital almost immediately, and arrived just before the Siamese mission was to sail. They were taken aboard a huge five-hundred-ton, Siamese-built junk, its frame constructed of marbao wood, its decks made of teakwood. They watched the wooden anchor being lifted, saw the great square sails billowing, observed the ninety-man crew take their places, and before being led to their cramped quarters below deck they felt the junk moving and could see Bangkok receding from view.
They would always remember the voyage as uncomfortable but thrilling. They sailed down into the Gulf of Siam, made several lengthy stops at ports along the Cambodian coast, and after six weeks at sea they reached the Cochin China promontory called Vung Tau (later Cap St. Jacques under the French occupation). From there, the junk headed up the deep Saigon River, until it dropped anchor at a landing just below the city of Saigon.
Waiting to transport them to their residence were fourteen elephants sent by the governor of the district of Kamboja. Chang and Eng were hoisted onto the back of one elephant—a sight difficult to imagine—and then they were on their way to the public building, resembling a town hall, where they would temporarily stay.
Outside their residence an unruly crowd had gathered to view the Siamese strangers. According to a contemporary source: "When Chang and Eng descended from the back of their elephant, a simultaneous shout arose from all present, and a desperate rush was made in order to get a closer view, but a liberal application of the rattan over the head, face, and shoulders of the mob by the officials in attendance, had the effect of rendering them more moderate in their demonstrations. The news of the arrival of the twins soon circulated through the city, and to pre-vent further annoyance, a guard of a hundred soldiers was sent, who, during the rest of their stay, were enabled to keep the crowd at a respectful distance."
Meanwhile, King Rama III's appointed ambassador and head of the mission—described as "a nobleman of excellent judgment, well acquainted with trade and commerce, and a first rate drinker"—sent his letter from the king of Siam to the governor so that it could be forwarded to the king of Cochin China, who had his court in the ancient capital city of Hue. It was understood by the Siamese ambassador that the mission could not proceed further without the express invitation of the Chinese king.
While awaiting the royal permission from Hue, the members of the Siamese mission were hospitably received and constantly entertained, and Chang and Eng accompanied the ambassador to every event. The very first evening in Saigon, some of the city's leading mandarins, among them several judges on the highest courts, came calling, and they sat down to indulge in a lengthy drinking bout with their Siamese visitors. The mandarins drank themselves into a stupor, and at evening's end were carried away by their servants. The Siamese ambassador indicated to the twins that he was pleased, "as getting intoxicated on a first visit was considered a flattering mark of confidence and esteem."
In the days that followed, the twins, surrounded by their military bodyguard, were taken on numerous tours of Saigon. Although they were particularly fascinated by Saigon's main bazaar, a wide and handsome street lined with shops selling the best Chinese silks and porcelain, one of the high spots of their enforced wait was an invitation to meet with the district governor at his official residence. Along with the other members of the Siamese mission, the twins boarded elephants and, attended by a guard of honor, went to call on the governor.
A half hour was taken up with protocol, each member of the Siamese party, Chang and Eng included, prostrating himself and touching the floor with his brow four times.
Two days later, the mission members were invited to be spectators at an elephant and tiger fight. They were escorted into the Saigon fort and seated just as the governor arrived with a retinue of a thousand soldiers in gold uniforms and eighty elephants. Upon their entry into the fort, one of the elephants broke rank and had to be chased and caught. Immediately, the keeper of the rebellious animal was forced to his knees and beheaded for failing to control the animal.
Chang and Eng, as animal lovers, could not have enjoyed the elephant and tiger fight. It was a mismatch, a one-sided cruelty. The tiger, much feared and hated in Cochin China, had been reduced to the role of a helpless victim since its claws had been extracted and its mouth sewn shut. It was also tied to a stake by a forty-foot rope. Fifty elephants, behemoths all, were lined up facing the tiger. One by one the elephants were urged to attack the tiger. The first half dozen bucked and reared, and then backed off in fright. Their keepers were quickly brought before the governor and were flogged with bamboo at least a hundred times or until they fell unconscious. Meanwhile, a bolder elephant had advanced on the tiger, impaled the cat on his tusks, and thrown him as far as the rope would allow. The elephant repeated this a number of times until finally the tiger lay dead.
If the twins wanted to escape witnessing the violent spectacle, they were unable to do so. The climax of the entertainment was a mock battle—a line of elephants ranged against a barricade of tree branches behind which a company of soldiers waited with rockets and muskets. At a signal, the elephants charged and, as they did, the soldiers set the barricade ablaze and began to launch their rockets and discharge their muskets. A few elephants halted, but the rest trampled across the flaming barricade, forcing the soldiers into a swift retreat, until the keepers brought the rampant elephants under control.
At the end of three weeks, a message came to Saigon from the Royal Palace in Hue that the visitors could embark for Touran, a port on the seacoast, to await further instructions. With relief, Chang and Eng boarded the junk, and soon were on their way. The junk dropped anchor in the harbor three miles from the village of Touran. The ambassador and his aides went ashore a number of times, but Chang and Eng went only once, attracting too many people to attempt it again.
According to a contemporary pamphlet:
In a few days a mandarin arrived from Hue, with four galleys of forty oars each, for the purpose of taking the party to the capital. . . . These galleys were warboats belonging to the king, and were magnificent affairs. Each one was nearly one hundred feet in length, narrow and sharp, but very strongly built, and rigged with two lug sails. . . . Their crew consisted of forty rowers, besides the commander and officers, all attired in rich and showy uniforms. The rowers were admirably drilled, plying incessantly, and in perfect unison, to the music of a monotonous song from one of the officers, accompanied by the beating of two pieces of bamboo. . . .
In less than twenty-four hours, they arrived at the mouth of the river Hue, and were received with a salute from the fort, which appeared to be garrisoned by a strong force; a few hours afterwards, they were opposite the city. Here they were received by a mandarin of high rank, and conducted to a house prepared for their reception. No sooner were they fairly inside of this, however, than all the entrances were barricaded, the building surrounded by soldiers, and the Siamese told to consider themselves prisoners. This was the usual custom of the country, in relation to ambassadors, and was intended to prevent the chance of any misunderstanding with the populace, who are very jealous of foreigners. . . .
While awaiting an audience from the king, they paid a visit to the mandarin of elephants, whom they found in great affliction, having recently lost seventeen of his children from the measles. This bereaved parent had previously buried thirteen, and only forty-two were now left him. As the party had been expected, great preparations had been made for their reception, and a table was spread for them containing seventy-six different dishes, among which, rats served up in five different ways, alligator steaks, and stewed cat, formed prominent features.
The climax of the mission was fast approaching. According to the same contemporary pamphlet:
The innumerable preliminaries to an audience being finally concluded, the embassy waited upon His Majesty, who after taking a good look at the twins, gravely remarked that he had several people similarly united in his dominions—an unqualified falsehood, of course, and quite characteristic of the vanity and utter disregard of truth, prevalent among the Cochin Chinese of all ranks.... A great variety of presents were exchanged among the parties concerned in the negotiations, and a letter, accompanied with numerous costly gifts, was entrusted to the embassy for the king of Siam. The day following the audience, a grand entertainment was given the members of the mission, by a high mandarin of the military order, and on the third day the party started upon their return home, traveling by nearly the same route as that by which they came. Great honors were shown them wherever they stopped, from the fact of their having been admitted into the presence of the king, an act of condescension very rarely bestowed on foreigners.
Upon their arrival at Bangkok, the twins were again brought before their own king, and on their dismission were liberally compensated for their time and trouble, although the journey had been nothing but a pleasure excursion to them. They immediately returned to Meklong, where they found their duck business constantly improving.
One consequence of their first excursion to a foreign land, as would soon become apparent, was that their native village of Meklong had suddenly become too provincial and confining for them. Their one desire was to travel again, to travel more and more extensively. They remembered their friend, the Scottish merchant Robert Hunter, and his glowing tales of faraway Great Britain and America, and now the twins tended to believe those of Hunter's accounts they had formerly held in disbelief.
They wanted to see Robert Hunter again, but Hunter was in Bangkok, attending to his multiple business enterprises. They could not know that one of Hunter's business enterprises would involve their own futures deeply.
For in Bangkok, Robert Hunter, through a chance reunion with a onetime business associate and old friend, had revived his interest in Chang and Eng as a potentially successful commercial export. The friend who had awakened these speculations in Hunter was a thirty-seven-year-old American trader named Abel Coffin, the master of the sturdy Nantucket sailing ship Sachem, which he had more and more frequently been bringing to Bangkok on business.
Of Captain Coffin, there was much to be said in his favor. He was a loving husband and father who communicated regularly with his wife, Susan, and his two children, Susan, six, and Abel, eight, all of whom had remained at home in East Boston, Massachusetts. But despite this virtue, and the fact that he was a God-fearing man—sincerely reminding his children, "I wish you both to remember in everything you are accountable beings, that God can always see you"—Captain Coffin saw himself as beyond accountability in his own business transactions. He was a shrewd Yankee trader, and not above shamelessly exploiting a product or person to turn a fast dollar.
In fact, at the time of his reunion with Hunter in Bangkok in late 1828 or early 1829, Coffin had just acquired a number of crates of firearms at an auction in Calcutta, and had come around from India to Siam to sell them at a substantial profit. By selling these arms, Captain Coffin was indeed catering to the warlike propensities of King Rama III. The king needed arms to implement his expansionist dreams and to subjugate restless vassal states. At the time of Captain Coffin's arrival in Siam, the king required guns to put down a revolt being led by the ruler of the vassal state of Wiang-chan in Laos. The rebel was Chao Anu, prince of Laos, who was attempting not only to free his country but to invade Siam itself. After annihilating a small Siamese garrison, Anu met the king of Siam's main forces in pitched battle. King Rama III's forces won the day. Prince Anu was driven to flight, but while in hiding he was betrayed by a son-in-law and turned over as a prisoner to the Siamese. Anu was brought to Bangkok on January 15, 1829, and installed in an iron cage by King Rama III.
Apparently, Captain Coffin enjoyed good relations with King Rama III. A short time after Prince Anu had been caged, the king invited Coffin to have a look at how traitors were treated in Siam.
A year later, Captain Coffin was to recall the experience in detail for a pamphleteer who printed the story:
“. . during the residence of Capt. Coffin in Bangkok, in 1829, he was ordered by His Majesty to witness the punishment preparing for the prince of Laos, who had revolted from his allegiance and was subsequently taken prisoner. When Capt. Coffin saw him, he and thirteen of his family were confined in an iron cage, loaded with heavy chains. From thence he was to be taken to the place of execution, and there hung by a hook to be inserted under his chin; he was afterwards to be seated on sharp pikes five inches long; then to be placed in boiling oil, and finally pounded to pumice in an immense mortar. All these cruelties would doubtless have been consummated, had not the prince escaped their horrible infliction, by poisoning himself the day before the sentence was to have been carried into execution."
When Hunter and Captain Coffin were reunited in Bangkok, the Scottish merchant could not have been unaware of Coffin's close connection with the king. Although Hunter himself had tried but failed to obtain permission for Chang and Eng to leave the country, he must have realized that with Coffin's assistance he might have a second and better chance.
Hunter told Captain Coffin of his discovery of the incredible Chinese Twins in the village of Meklong. Instantly, Coffin's business sense was piqued. Hunter suggested a partnership in the venture. If Coffin could get permission from the king to show the twins in America and Great Britain, he would share the profits with Coffin on a fifty-fifty basis. Captain Coffin said that he wanted to see the twins. If they lived up to expectations, he would seek a travel permit for them from the king.
Together, Hunter and Coffin went down to Meklong, and Captain Coffin was introduced to the twins. He studied their binding ligament, watched them walk, row a boat, swim in tandem. He was entranced. He felt that the twins could secure the partners a fortune if they were exhibited in Boston, in New York, in London. The captain was ready to proceed. Again, the three steps had to be taken.
First, Hunter and Coffin consulted with the twins. This time the boys were enthusiastic, ready to leave at once on a journey to the fabulous Western world. Next, their mother had to be convinced. Hunter introduced Captain Coffin to Nok, and presented their proposition to her. They would like to take the twins to America and Great Britain, to display them to the world with great dignity. The twins would be absent no more than two and a half years, at which time they would attain their majority of twenty-one years and be returned to their family in Siam.
The proposition frightened Nok, and she had many objections. Despite their close acquaintance with the river, the Siamese villagers were not used to the open sea and to long sea voyages. Further, Nok feared that as exhibits her twin sons would be treated unfeelingly, inhumanely, and would suffer. Finally, at seventeen, Chang and Eng were the family breadwinners, and she could not survive without their help.
Smoothly, Hunter and Captain Coffin met Nok's objections one by one. The sea voyage was not to be feared. Captain Coffin had spent years traveling between America and Southeast Asia in complete safety. The security and welfare of the twins, the manner in which they would be presented and handled—surely Coffin here invoked his relationship with his own children—could be guaranteed. As to losing her breadwinners, Nok would receive more than adequate compensation. She would be left a large sum of money. Hunter and Coffin would later tell the press that they gave the twins' mother what was a princely sum for that day, $3,000 cash, for her approval. Three years later, Chang and Eng—who often wrote as one, in the first person singular—protested in a letter meant for Mrs. Coffin, "Are you more over aware that $500—(Five Hundred Dollars) is the amount paid to our Mother (from first to last?)" In the same letter the twins remarked that together they were paid a total of $10 a month salary and expenses, and only after two years of exhibits were they raised to $50 a month.
Whether the sum Nok received from Hunter and Captain Coffin was $3,000 or $500 to release her two sons, it was still to her a magnificent sum that would support the remaining members of the family for some time. Reassured by this offer, and the sincere promise of the Scot and the Yankee to care for Chang and Eng, Nok gave her approval of the trip.
For the partners, that left one final obstacle—King Rama III. Hunter and Captain Coffin returned to Bangkok elated, and it was Coffin who contacted the king. According to an account of the negotiations written a year later, Coffin's arguments to His Majesty were psychologically persuasive:
"An appeal to national vanity, finally proved successful, and Chang and Eng were allowed to depart, in order that the world might behold that the favored empire of Siam could alone produce, of all the nations of the earth, such a living wonder as the famous united brothers. The king always retained an interest in their welfare, and frequently enquired of Americans who visited Bangkok, subsequent to their departure, respecting their health, and the manner in which they were treated."
There were other versions to explain the Yankee seafarer's successful negotiations with the king. But most likely it was the king's appreciation of Coffin's firearms and Coffin's appreciation of the king's ego that made the negotiation a favorable one for the two Western partners.
King Rama III forthwith gave his permission in writing for Chang and Eng to leave Siam.
On March 31, 1829, Chang and Eng, accompanied by the most portable of their worldly belongings, by a caged pet python, by a neighbor and friend—a boy named Teiu who would travel with them as a companion—and by their mother Nok, arrived in Bangkok and immediately boarded Captain Coffin's sailing ship, the Sachem. The partners, Hunter and Coffin—"the concern," as the twins would call them later—were waiting on deck to welcome them. After their mother saw that they would be comfortable, she bade each of her joined twins a tearful farewell. With that she left the ship.
Chang and Eng were now alone, yet together, about to sail in the morning for a distant port known as Boston in a land known as the United States of America.
They were sailing for Boston, but they could not know that they were also sailing into legend.