Father Beurel managed to return to Singapore with six Brothers and four Sisters, having set off from Antwerp by ship in December 1851. Travel was difficult in the 1850s – sea journeys were long and hazardous and the Suez Canal had not yet been built. Their ship was nearly wrecked while still in the English Channel; it encountered rough seas around the Cape of
20 For the full text, see Wijeysigha and Rene Nicolas, Going Forth, 221. 21
Wijeysigha and Rene Nicolas, Going Forth, 221.
22 See Beurel‘s letters of 14 July 1848 and 4 July 1848 in Rev. Brother Anthony, ed. The Letters of Fr. J. M.
Beurel Relating to the Establishment of St. Joseph's Institution, Singapore. Translated by Rev. Br. Anthony (Penang: St. Xavier's Institution, 1987). Available on microfilm NA1334, National Archives of Singapore.
23 For a detailed study of a similar teaching order, see Rebecca Rogers, "Retrograde or Modern? Unveiling the
Teaching Nun in Nineteenth Century France." Social History 23, no. 2 (1998): 146-64.
64 Good Hope and took five months to reach Singapore.25 Adding to the trauma, the Mother Superior had died en route, another Sister had fallen gravely ill, and the only English- speaking Sister ‗spent a lot of time with the Captain during the endless journey‘ and decided to leave the Order on arrival in Singapore.26 The Bishop, to Father Beurel‘s frustration, directed that the two remaining Sisters (who were only twenty-two years old and therefore considered unable to manage by themselves) and the three younger Brothers relocate to Penang.27
In May 1852, St Joseph‘s Institution opened for male students, but plans for the Convent with its girls‘ school could not proceed without Sisters. Father Beurel persisted in trying to get land for the Convent. He applied again for the land across from the church that Governor Butterworth had previously denied him. (The building of the courthouse had not eventuated, and the land was being used instead by convicts to store firewood and timber, which disturbed parishioners attending the church.) But once again he was unsuccessful.28 Eventually, in August 1852, using his own funds, Father Beurel purchased Caldwell House. The building had been designed and built in the neo-classical style for a Mr Caldwell by George Coleman, the Superintendent of Public Works, in 1840 or early 1841.29 Father Beurel later bought several adjoining lots being sold off by the Raffles Institution, as well as an adjoining house to be used for the orphans.30 This site at the corner of Victoria Street and Bras Basah Road was where the Convent would eventually be established.
After the failure of the first mission, the Ladies of St Maur dispatched a second mission, this time led by Mother Mathilde, accompanied by two French Sisters and an Irish Sister. Another long and arduous journey – they sailed from Southampton in September 1852, arrived in Egypt and travelled down the Nile, then joined a camel caravan to cross the desert to Suez from where they boarded a ship to Penang, finally landing in October. They waited for a year
25 Kong, Low and Yip, Convent Chronicles, 33. According to Kong, Low and Yip, oral sources state that she
eloped with the ship‘s Captain, p. 34.
26 Pilon and Weiler, The French in Singapore, 55. 27 Wijeysigha and Rene Nicolas, Going Forth, 226. 28 Wijeysigha and Rene Nicolas, Going Forth, 235. 29
T.H.H. Hancock, Coleman's Singapore (Kuala Lumpur: The Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1986), 57. Note, however, that there are varying accounts of how Caldwell House was acquired – other accounts state that it was acquired by Mr Cassette, an American friend of the Sisters.
30 See Charles Burton Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore: From the Foundation of the
Settlement under the Honourable The East India Company on February 6th, 1819 to the Transfer of the Colonial Office as Part of the Colonial Possessions of the Crown on April 1st, 1867., First published 1902 ed. (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1965), 265-66.
65 in Penang where they opened a school and taught while their headquarters sent more Sisters out. When the third mission eventually arrived, and the Bishop finally gave permission, Mother Mathilde and three Sisters left for Singapore, arriving on 5 February 1854, co- incidentally the day before Governor Butterworth‘s Grand Ball, which I examined in Chapter Two.31 So, as the preparations for the ball were in train, this significant effort of getting nuns for the school was finally coming to fruition. It had been a long and difficult process of negotiation by Father Beurel, and no doubt, sheer courage by the women who risked their lives and left all behind to travel to the ‗Far East‘.
Father Beurel welcomed the Sisters enthusiastically when they arrived in Singapore and took them to the church where a crowd of well-wishers and a mass of flowers awaited them. He then took them to Caldwell House, the house that he had bought in 1852 opposite the church. While in Paris, Sister Mathilde had trained herself for the tropics by sleeping covered with thick woollen blankets and with all the windows closed. That, and her time in Penang, had undoubtedly prepared her for difficulties, but perhaps not for the oversight by Father Beurel who had forgotten to offer the nuns anything to eat and drink, leading Sister Mathilde to write that ‗hymns, flowers and complimentary speeches are all very fine but not very filling.‘32
The house, too, was in a pitiful state. Sister Mathilde noted: ‗the house itself was correct, but all the rooms were very untidy with many things broken: not a door anywhere, even at the place it is most convenient to have one. To use this humble room, we needed to hide ourselves with an umbrella‘.33 Kong, Low and Yip comment on the incongruity of the Sisters, ‗said to be of the most aristocratic order in France‘, having to use umbrellas for privacy!34
The Sisters used the first storey as the parlour and visitors‘ room and eventually were able to use the room in the upstairs of the house with a distinctive bay window as their lounge, where they could gather around a large table to write, sew or knit.35 Their motto, still high on the walls of the lounge, reads: ‗Marche en ma présence et sois parfait‟ (Walk with Me and be perfect).
31 Pilon and Weiler, The French in Singapore, 55. 32 Kong, Low and Yip, Convent Chronicles, 44-45 33 Pilon and Weller, The French in Singapore, 55. 34
Kong, Low and Yip, Convent Chronicles, 45.
66 Despite the initial obstacles, only ten days after arrival, they opened the school for girls, with fourteen European and Eurasian students and a handful of orphans supported by fees paid by the other students.36 It came to be known popularly as the Town Convent or the Victoria Street Convent.