As a young man of 26, printer Alfred North was so full of passions, doubts and pronouncements of great surety that, though his pen yielded constrained, constant little lines, his thoughts could hardly be whittled into expression, even through the long, looping sentences that filled page upon page of his correspondence. This was especially true of the letter he sent to Reverend Dr. Wisner, Secretary to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), upon the notably hesitant offer of a post as printer to the Singaporean mission extended to him in 1834.
North had spent two years clamoring for appointment to a missionary post when the offer of Singapore came from Wisner. The clamor then ceased. With some, perhaps, uncharacteristic restraint, North considered the offer for three weeks before replying to it. Writing from Utica, New York on August 1, North began, initially moving toward a rejection of the offer:
I can hardly assent to your remark, “since you have a strong desire to be thus employed.” Of late I begin to entertain very different views of this subject. I thought I had I examined it sufficiently, and counted the cost of becoming a missionary, till a few weeks ago, when returning from a Baptist missionary meeting, I began to suspect myself of having known very little of the matter. And I have much reason to believe that the greater part of the young missionaries in the service of the American Board, and other societies, who have gone from this city and vicinity, with some of whom I have been intimately acquainted, have had, when they engaged to go, no tolerable sense or even information of the greatness of the evils they were to encounter. Indeed I know this to have been the fact … And I have good reason too to believe that some in the service of your Board, when they come into actual contact with the extreme depravity, ignorance, and stupidity of the heathen, and the inconveniences of so different a climate and manner of living, bitterly lament their choice. And though they may be compelled, by the circumstances in which they find themselves placed, to betake themselves to work, and eventually become tolerable missionaries, still how severely they must suffer from such a state of mind! … When I think of the probably frequent perplexity and incessant fatigue to be expected by the person who shall occupy the important station you mention, and certainly its great responsibility; when I think of the hard heartedness, ingratitude, and faithlessness, the grievous impudence and shocking lewdness of the heathen, and above all my own want of spirituality, (and Singapore, withal, right on the equator!) really, my dear sir …
Singapore was, certainly, not what North had in mind when he first applied to the Home Mission Society and their Greek mission (for which he was rejected). Imagining some kind of equatorial proxy for the “evil” of the “heathens” he would be encountering in his work, North flinched at accepting the offer. Spending another day in contemplation and conversation though (the results of which could not be described “for want of room” on the page) resolved him to accept the offer, stating:
I am willing, heartily willing, to go to Singapore.
If the emphasis of that sentence was clear in and of itself though, taken in context with the labored prose that surrounded it, Wisner must have been unsure of North’s final position on the matter. Replying later to Wisner’s request for clarity and conciseness with a letter that could be considered brief only comparatively, North wrote:
Sir—In compliance with your direction, I will briefly state, in [connection] with the offer of my services to your committee as printer to a foreign missionary station, what may be desirable for them to know concerning myself, and my views and motives in wishing to be employed in their service … Though, at times, when considered the greatness of the responsibilities of a missionary, I have been afraid to assume them, my desire to do so has on the whole been increasing up to the present time, and is now stronger than ever before and in watching the indications of divine Providence, I seem to have been placed, during this time, in such circumstances as were best [calculated] not only to make me sensible of those defects in my character [from] which most might be feared in the peculiar situation of a foreign missionary, but most impressively to suggest to me my duty …
“Your Committee are at liberty to send me as printer …” he concluded, despite the “worst evils” he expected to encounter abroad.
In his post right on the equator for the next eight years, North served as manager of the mission’s printing department. Immersed in the languages and stories of the place, he lost at least some of his disdain for the place and people. Most notably he is celebrated for encouraging Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, Sir Stamford Raffles’ former scribe, in the writing and printing of Hikayat Abdullah (The Story of Abdullah), a central text in modern Malaysian literature. A manuscript copy of Hikayat Abdullah may be found at Houghton, MS Indo 23. A commonplace book, MS Indo 14, including Malay letters, poetry, genealogies and contracts complied by North is also available online.
The letters quoted here may be found in the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions archives, 1810-1961, ABC 6 vol. 11:23.
This post is part of a weekly feature on the Houghton Library blog, “You’ve Got Mail,” based on letters in Houghton Library. Every Friday this year a Houghton staff member will select a letter from the diverse collections in the Library and put that letter into context. All posts associated with this series may be viewed by clicking on the You’veGotMail tag.
[Thanks to Emilie Hardman, Metadata and Reference Assistant, Houghton Library, for contributing this post.]