Landlord & Tenant

There is probably no finer house in Malaya than Bukit Serene (peaceful hill), the green-tiled granite palace of the Sultan of Johore. But the Sultan has never occupied Bukit Serene. Four years ago he was persuaded to let it indefinitely to Malcolm MacDonald, the British commissioner general in Southeast Asia, at a nominal rent--just enough to pay the wages of the palace's 37 gardeners.

Yet the Sultan, an old Oxonian, had no reason, especially in his personal history, to like British officials, or planters, or Singapore's British businessmen. They had not openly objected to his marriage back in 1930 to Scottish-born Helen Wilson (after he had shed an unspecified number of Moslem wives, and she had shed a husband who happened to be the Sultan's personal physician), but they left him in no doubt about their views of his method of divorcing Helen. In the traditional Moslem manner, the Sultan called it off by saying "Talak [I divorce you]" the required three times.

Most Damnable. The British also reacted haughtily about Lydia Hill, the English showgirl the Sultan met in London's Grosvenor House in 1934. He brought Lydia to Johore with a flashing diamond on her left hand, but the British sahibs refused to accept her. The Sultan's reply: he ordered his gardeners to plant shrubs all over the sahibs' golf course, which was, after all, his own property. In time, the Sultan sent her back to England, and there Lydia was killed in an air raid in the act of buying a fur coat. The Sultan was desolate.

A few days later, still in grief, the Sultan met Marcella Mendl. She was a tall, reddish-blonde Rumanian who spoke five languages, and it was a case of love at first sight. The warring British at that moment were too busy to comment on his marriage to Marcella, and the couple lived peacefully in Pasir Plangie Palace through the Japanese occupation. It was not until 1951, when the Sultan was preoccupied with his year-old child and also beginning to feel his 79 years, that the British went even further to displease him.

At 3 a.m. the R.A.F. was sending low-flying waves of bombers roaring over Pasir Plangie Palace. "Damnable, most damnable," protested the Sultan. He wrote to the editor of the Straits Times: "I am experiencing terrible noise . . The sky is very wide and I am certain they could avoid flying above my house if they will only take a little trouble to change their course ... I am really sick with the whole affair." The bomber people were actually about the King's business: they were hitting at Communist guerrillas who threatened the security of Malaya, and so the Sultan's letter got a prompt unofficial reply from an R.A.F. pilot: "Who the hell is the Sultan anyway? He wouldn't be where he is now if it weren't for the R.A.F. and the security forces." In a terrible temper, the Sultan decided to take his revenge upon the British: he ordered Commissioner General MacDonald to get out of Bukit Serene.

After four years at Bukit Serene, Commissioner General MacDonald felt it was his home. He had done most of his entertaining there, pursued his hobby of ornithology, housed there his collection of objets d'art (Malay silver and Chinese porcelain) and his rare Asian library. When he showed no inclination to move, the Sultan's men cut off the water supply to the swimming pool. Scot MacDonald, a stubborn man, went swimming in the rivers of Borneo instead, and went on living at Bukit Serene. Last week, however, all appeals to the Sultan's better nature having failed, he packed up his books and bird specimens and moved out. A Chinese millionaire friend, a fellow bird watcher and collector, had lent him his 20-acre, $500,000 estate. Said MacDonald resignedly: I'll be closer to my work now.

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