Watkin Tench, La Perouse and Lost Horizon.

What an odd title you may observe but it came about because I recently read or reread four books and they set me off thinking about the subject of Utopias. The first was Watkin Tench's Letters from Revolutionary France. Tench was held a prisoner of war in 1793-4 at an inland French town in Brittany. While there he wrote a series of letters to a friend in England. They give an Englishman's inside view of France just after the fall of Robesphere and the end of the 'Terror'.

The second book was the new biography of La Perouse by John Dumore which was reviewed in the last edition of Margin. Dunmore is the great writer on French exploration in the Pacific. This introduces the third book I read again recently and it is entitled Fragmens du la Voyage de La Perouse, not the French original but the translation by Professor Dunmore of a copy of the Fragmens held in the National Library of Australia.

The fourth book is the 1930s novel by James Hilton entitled Lost Horizon and it is the story of a strange utopia hidden it the mountains of Tibet. When I first read it many years ago and found it fascinating, I did not realise at the time that Shangri La was a utopian concept and contained a prediction of the Second World War. That is by the by because it is the Utopia that I want to talk about.

Utopias have been written ever since Thomas Moore invented the term many years ago in his famous book De optimo reip. deque nova insula Utopia ... Utopias were usually 'found' in some distant obscure place and the Pacific Ocean was sufficiently distant and unknown in the 17th and 18th century to be the scene of some of them. Professor Dunmore has written about them in a book entitled Utopias and Imaginary Voyages to Australia published by the National Library of Australia in 1988.

The interesting fact is that all Utopias are perfect. The political and social descriptions give us a pleasant view of a perfect world with everyone contented and happy. In Lost Horizon the Lamasery was peopled with monks of high intellectual powers who carded on their lives of scholarly research and writing like a group of Dons in a type of Oxford University. Every modern convenience was there, the buildings and gardens were perfect, tasteful and comfortable, food and wine was plentiful and servants (Tibetans) were there to do the work. They lived in the valley as a happy community. The basis of the system is moderation. They were all moderately good or moderately bad with moderation in both work and play and moderation in drink and sex.

It is an amusing concept of Utopia. It is all too elegant and I suspect some of the inmates might have found it a little bit boring. Perhaps James Hilton was being gently satirical about the concept of Utopia.

The other Utopia in this article is the one called Fragments de la Voyage de La Perouse. It was set on an island in the Pacific called The Blue Island, which La Perouse was supposed to have discovered by accident. The interesting thing about this Utopia published in 1797 in Quimper (France) was that it was for many years considered to be a true account of a discovery by La Perouse on his voyage to the Pacific.

You will be aware that La Perouse during his voyage to make discoveries in the Pacific called in to Botany Bay a couple of days after the arrival there of the First Fleet. While he was there building some life boats and coping with difficult aboriginals he was visited by some of the officer members of the First Fleet including Captain Lieutenant Watkin Tench. Because Tench was educated and interested in scientific discoveries he spent some time talking with La Perouse and some of the scientists on the Expedition.

This third book that I have mentioned, Fragmens of the Voyage of La Perouse, was a story about a Utopia quite different from that one in Lost Horizon. The La Perouse explorers were depicted as landing on the island in the Pacific in order to find some fresh food and water and to recover from the hazards and privations of life at sea. The crew members were greeted by the friendly inhabitants who were surprisingly civilized. This civilization had been established many years earlier when the crew of another French ship was wrecked on the Island. The crew rescued much of the material on the ship in much the same way that Robinson Crusoe had done in Defoe's Tale. They then trained the native people in the arts of civilized society. The French crew 'married' native girls and a mixed population grew up. They built houses and wore clothes similar to Greek robes made from the fine bark of a tree not unlike the clothes of the people of Honolulu. They cultivated the soil and organised a happy society. Professor Dunmore postulates that the story was a satire on the French revolution with its ideas of a perfect society which the Revolution was meant to create.

No author was given for the Fragmens but a preface claimed that it was stolen by a seaman of the First Fleet when he accompanied Watkin Tenth on one of his visits to La Perouse during the stay of the French ships in Botany Bay. The stolen manuscript was kept by the sailor who was later captured when his ship was taken by the French in a battle. Professor Dunmore considered this was a made up story to hide the identity of a Frenchman writing a satire of the Revolution which was still taking place in France at the time of publication.

Some years ago I gave a paper when I claimed that it was quite possible for a sailor to have stolen the manuscript and kept in in his possession. Sailors often collected odd things in their sea-trunk so it was not an impossible story. However it was unlikely that an ordinary sailor would have been held in Quimper at the time although Tench did have a sailor servant with him. Tenth was on parole in Quimper as the aide-de-camp and interpreter for Admiral Bligh who had been the captain of the ship in which Tench was serving when captured.

Other factors now come into the story and that brings in Watkin Tench's Letters from Revolutionary France originally published in 1796. These letters give a vivid picture of Teneh's activities in Quimper and his meeting with some of the local minor aristocrats.

As interpreter for Admiral Bligh fluency in French was necessary and Tench was very fluent in the language. He had lived in or visited France at an earlier time. He was educated and well read and Professor Dunmore commented about the author of Fragmens as follows: 'we know him to be an educated man, probably of the minor nobility or at least the professional classes, widely read and a soundly based interest in botany ... his classical references to Virgil and Homer, to Roman and Greek history and French classical literature are casually made as befits a well bred man. His skill is evident in the botanical notes he appends. They proceed from the known and therefore the likely to the improbable.'

Tench fits all of these requirements. Tench's letters also show a man who was very much concerned with what was happening in France at the time. Although in a town distant from Paris he wrote that he would frequent the coffee house to consult the Paris newspapers. He was therefore very much in touch with the progress and the failures of the Revolutionary government. In fact the father of one of his aristocratic friends in Quimper was a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and had risked his life in voting against the proposal to execute the king. He had been in hiding and was returning to Paris at the time Tench was in France.

Tench also met a number of the local people, both minor aristocrats and the sans culottes. He did not like the sans culottes because of their manners or their concept of equality. In his letters from his very first experience when captured he did not have a good word to say about French naval ships, their officers, their cleanliness or their discipline. Equality seemed to be based on the concept that no one took orders.

Tench's friendships with some of the minor aristocrats and he described how he sometimes met them in an informal way. I have a picture of Tench sitting by the fire with Madame Kerelligan and some gentlemen talking about his experiences in New South Wales. Tench was well known, from later accounts, for recounting his stories about Botany Bay and some of his experiences in the colony. These would naturally include his meetings with La Perouse and other members of the French expedition.

Then from this attractive picture of his relations with these minor French nobles I began to wonder if he also invented for the amusement of the company a story about La Perouse when he 'discovered' an unknown island, referred as The Blue Island, with a population which had many of the aspects of western civilization. It described a utopia which was a gentle satire on the society established by the Revolution.

My speculation of seeing Watkin Tench making up the story and writing it down for the enjoyment of a group of French people was a possibility especially as the account of La Perouse expedition was being published in France at this time. I examined the small pamphlet to see if there was anything in it that might indicate that Watkin Tench wrote it. Professor Dunmore suggested at least one idea when he commented that the writer (he thought to be a Frenchman) had possibly read Tench's book The Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay. This idea came from Tench's spelling of the name La Perouse which was distinctly different from the usual spelling of the name. He wrote 'de la Peyrouse' so if Tench had written the Fragmens, then he would have simply used his own spelling. That was the first connection.

The second clue was the comment that the writer knew the French West Indies. Tench in his Narrative mentions that he had travelled to the West Indies. He does not specify if it was to the French West Indies. There was an indication that Tench travelled in one of his mother's family's ships to the West Indies. The Tarletons were very much involved in the importation of sugar to Liverpool in England from the islands of the West Indies.

The third clue was in the names of the unusual plants that grew on the Blue Island. The writer was said to have been well versed in botany according to Professor Dunmore. Tench had been involved in the collection and interest in the unusual plants of New South Wales. Many of the officers of the First Fleet as well as seamen collected and preserved not only plants but also animals and fish to send back to their patrons in England. Surgeon White was most active in collecting specimens of shrubs in the Sydney area and Captain Hunter painted many examples. Governor Phillip himself collected plants and seeds and sent them back to Sir Joseph Banks and his letters to that gentleman held in the Mitchell Library have news about his activities but he lamented that he was no botanist. Although Tench indicated he also was not a botanist and that the colony needed one to record the new plants he did indicate that he was familiar with the Latin names of plants. On page 119 of The Narrative Tenth referred to the trees at Sydney which were not much use for building. He stated that they 'yield a profusion of thick red gum (not unlike the sanguis draconis)'; his brackets. He also described one flowering shrub as 'a tall shrub, bearing an elegant white flower, which smells like English May, is particularly delightful and perfumes the air around to a great distance.'

Some of the botanical names in Fragrens have amusing names and descriptions. For example:

'PEYROUSIA [note the Peyrous. of the spelling of the name.]

This new genus of which I have seen two species belongs to the Bignonia family.

Generic characteristics

Small fleshy perianth with a rim of no appreciable divisions. Very large campanulate monopetalous corolla: at the lower end of a very long curving tube a voluminous protuberance contains a very abundant nectar.

Five stamens, one stunted and two other seemingly with no pollen. Pedicellate cylindrical upper ovary surmounted by a style emerging from a corolla and ending in a stigma divided in two very wide sensitive laminae (as in martinia). A very elastic pericarp containing a great number of small seeds.'

Another flower was called LYRIODENDRUM CHRYSOLOPOS

Yellow-bark tulip tree ...

There is in fact a tree Liriodendron called a Tulip Tree from lirion meaning a lily for the shape of the flower and dendron meaning tree. It is related to the Magnolia.

There are ten plants all fully described. Tenth must have had fun inventing these imaginary rare new plants. It is possible that the invention of the unusual plants found on the Blue Island was a co-operative event with the groups around Tench taking part as a kind of game.

This imaginary utopia in the Pacific shows great skill and imagination. The idea of a strange utopian civilization on an undiscovered island was not new. There had been earlier examples. Possibly Abbe Conyer's A Discovery of the Island of Frivilia of 1750. There was another story which was a link with the Voyages of Anson called Supplement au Voyage de Bourganville published in 1796 a couple of years after Tench's capture. There were to be many later utopias to follow like that in Lost Horizon. That Fragmens emerged in a provincial city so soon after Watkin Tench had spent some months a prisoner-of-war must be more than a coincidence. All the evidence which I have simply touched upon, much of it outlined by Professor Dunmore, points to Watkin Tench as the author of Fragmens of the Voyage of La Perouse (spelt correctly this way on the original title page). This indicates that the printer knew the correct spelling of La Perouse but printed the text as it was in the manuscript he was given.