Keyt meets Wendt
Tissa Devendra
In the 1930s, when the young painter George Keyt met the equally
young Lionel Wendt, photographer and musician, it was a true meeting of
minds that
 revolutionised
the development of art in Colonial Ceylon. But the brief tale I relate
is not about this seminal meeting but about another Keyt meeting another
Wendt in 1870.
This Thomas Keyt was the son of H.Keyt,J.P and retired assistant to
the Colonial Secretary, a leading figure in Colombo society. Young
Thomas was educated in Queen's College, Colombo and was later
apprenticed as a student of law. He obviously had some of the Keyt-sian
artistic facility which led him to the crime of forgery! In one of his
eloquent pleas , couched in the Queen's [College] English, he wrote that
"at an ill moment, in the company of bad associates, the evils arising
from which his youthful indiscretion could not then perceive [ for he
was only twenty years of age] he thoughtlessly committed the crime." On
his conviction by the Supreme Court he was sentenced to transportation
to Penang Jail in Malaya in 1865.
Thomas found an extraordinarily appropriate 'culture' for the
exercise of his nefarious talents. The prison's English officers were
working a most lucrative racket in collusion with the prisoners. They
tendered for PWD contracts with the prisoners as labourers and sharing a
proportion of the profits. Keyt was employed as a clerk and became an
important cog in the racket. He wrote that "he was allowed to have
money, tobacco, to correspond with his friends and in fact do just as he
pleased". Unfortunately for him this boastful letter fell into the hands
of the authorities and became evidence in the inquiry that uncovered the
whole racket. He was punished by being transferred to the Singapore
Prison.
Here, in 1870, Thomas Keyt met a kindred spirit, George Wendt ,
convicted for forgery while employed in a bank in Ceylon. Singapore
Prison too proved to be equally congenial for the exercise of the
nefarious talents of Keyt and Wendt. The prisoners were engaged in
building the Governor's Palace and the necessary ironmongery, keys,
locks, bolts, hinges etc, were stored in the jail. Wendt and Keyt were
in charge of the inventory. To quote a pithy Sinhalese saying ,this was
" offering ladders to climbing monkeys"!
But their luck was not to last - in spite of an attempt by the ring
leaders, the Blaze brothers, to set the Prison on fire to destroy the
incriminating documents [ a time-honoured ploy]. Keyt and Wendt seem to
have been punished - but the missing hinges etc were never found. The
inquiring officer described Thomas Keyt as "very troublesome, often
punished, and would have been much oftener so, but for his cunning and
lawyer's quibbles". Both Keyt and Wendt disappear from the records after
that - and one cannot but wonder into what exotic exploits the
extraordinary talents of these two 'gentlemen' led them to in later
life.
(With
acknowledgements to Anomi Pieris Ceylankan May 2003) |
