The “coffee rush”, which started in the 1840s, led to hundreds of British and other Europeans moving to Sri Lanka to get a piece of the action. With very few of them having knowledge of planting, a great number fell by the wayside. Those who managed to complete the course made their fortunes by laying the foundation for Sri Lanka’s corporate sector.

French connection
The son of a Huguenot (French Protestant) priest from Nîmes, in the South of France, London-born Alfred Sabonadière was a somewhat unconventional pastor in the French town of Meaux. He once harangued the visiting King Charles X of France, and set up “biblical associations of young unmarried people of both sexes” (clubs for young men and women to meet), a radical innovation at the time, although not so controversial perhaps as getting his church consecrated by an Anglican bishop. He died as unconventionally as he lived, of a sun stroke while officiating at a funeral. He had married Sophia Durand, daughter of the Dean of Guernsey, whose curate he had been, and they had three sons.

[pullquote]The “coffee rush”, which started in the 1840s, led to hundreds of British and other Europeans moving to Sri Lanka to get a piece of the action[/pullquote]

The oldest, John Scipio, followed his father into the church, but died young. The other two, Francis Richard and William Augustus, decided to take their chances planting in Sri Lanka, where the abolition of slavery in the West Indies and the availability of cheap land had created a coffee boom. The elder of the two, Francis Sabonadière arrived in the island in 1839 and planted on coffee-pioneer Major HC Bird’s Black Forest Estate in Pussellawa. Coffee planting as a profession was still in its infancy in Sri Lanka, and until the arrival of PJ Laborie’s “The coffee planter of St Domingo”, there were no handbooks extant. Even with Laborie, it remained a hit-and-miss, as green young planters learnt their trade practically. More than one planter had to give up and find their fortune elsewhere. Francis Sabonadière was not one of them. He applied himself and became a master of the craft.

He later entered the service of Ferdinand Moritz Levy, Baron Delmar. The Baron owned – in addition to estates such as Alnwick, Delmar, Dotalle and Massene – the Delta estate in Pussellawa, which Sabonadière managed; one of the best in the country, its bungalow was a frequent stopping place for visitors. In 1859, the Earl of Elgin, who was to become Viceroy of India two years later, stayed a night there, noting the “fine cool climate”. C.F. Gordon Cumming called the Delta bungalow “a charming home with a lovely garden, which … was fragrant with the mingled perfume of roses and jasmines, gardenias, honeysuckle, heliotropes, salvias, mignonette, violets, lilies and pinks, myrtles, magnolias, oleanders, and loquat … while beyond the foreground of luxuriant garden-flowers lay undulating hills all clothed with the glossy green of flourishing coffee estates…”

After the death of his first wife Emily, the daughter of General John Murray (Governor of Demerara, now Guyana), Sabonadière married Mary Sophia, the daughter of civil servant Charles Edward Layard (and granddaughter of Dutch Governor Gualterus Mooyart), giving him access to a network of relatives and friends. He continued working after the Baron’s death for his niece, adoptive daughter and heir, Emily de la Rochefoucauld. His younger brother also became a planter, writing ‘The Coffee Planter of Ceylon’, which replaced Laborie’s tome as the planter’s bible.

At the time, most proprietors were absentees, and found it easier to contract the managing of their coffee estates and the marketing of produce to agency companies, which could be lucrative for  he latter. In 1869, Francis branched out with his own agency company, Sabonadière & Co. His partner in the firm was William Bowden-Smith, a scion of the Hampshire gentry. Bowden-Smith’s father Nathaniel owned Careys, a manor-house in Hampshire’s New Forest. His uncle Richard was a gentleman cricketer who challenged a newspaper proprietor to a duel and was expelled from the South Hants Cricket Club (of which he was secretary) and the exclusive Southampton Club. His brothers included an admiral and two clergymen. William arrived in Sri Lanka in 1858, and planted in Kandy and Pussellawa. He had quite a position in society, being a founder-member of the Colombo Club. In 1872, he married Louise Sophia, the daughter of Charles Robert Prinsep, Advocate General of the English East India Company (EIC).

Company servants
C.R. Prinsep was one of eight sons of the Kolkata indigo-merchant “nabob” John Prinsep, who retired rich to London. One of them, Henry Thoby, became Chief Secretary and later a Director of EIC, dabbling in scholarships in his spare time; another, William Prinsep joined the trading firm of Carr, Tagore & Co, painting when not making money from tea and opium. The most famous, however, was James Prinsep, a Sanskrit scholar, numismatist and founding editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society. It was a time when things Asiatic were devalued, and Thomas Babington Macaulay, the father of the Indian Penal Code, felt able to say, “All the historical information that has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England.” Prinsep and his collaborators, George Turnour and Pandit Kamalakanta Vidyalankar, deciphered the Brahmi script, enabling the ancient inscriptions to be read. Together with Turnour’s research into the Dipavamsa, this caused Indian history to rise in all its glory from the premature grave to which it had been consigned. Alas, Prinsep, the person responsible for that resurrection, died just three years later. Prinsep Ghat in Kolkata was erected in his honour.

Symbiosis
Meanwhile, C.R.Prinsep used his substantial income to fund his dream of establishing an interconnected and symbiotic Indian Ocean commercial and shipping empire. He purchased a vast nutmeg estate in Singapore, on part of which “Istana”, now the official residence of the President of Singapore, was built later. Forming the Australian Association of Bengal, together with his brother William, the latter’s business partner Dwarkanath Tagore and others, he invested in the Adelphi estate in Tasmania and was behind the early growth of Western Australia. He purchased 23,000 acres near Bunbury, WA, on which he ran horses, which he hoped to breed for the Indian cavalry, using indentured Indian labour, also shipping timber for use as sleepers in Indian railways. His son, Henry Charles Prinsep went to Western Australia to manage the estates there. H.C.Prinsep’s brother-in-law Bowden-Smith gave him an interest-free loan of £200 for the horse/timber business – to no avail, as it went bankrupt; he became a civil servant, ending up as Chief Protector of Native Affairs.

Louise dwelt with William Bowden-Smith at the Beira-frontage Darley House – later the residence of Bishop Copplestone. Sabonadière & Co prospered, helped no doubt by give-and-take interactions with various relatives. It was all very cosy: Louise’s relative, Thoby Prinsep’s brother-in-law C.H.Cameron gave Sabonadière & Co the managing agency business for his estates – Louise’s brother James Prinsep was employed as superintendent of Cameron’s Vallambrosa and Yuillefield estates in Kotagala. Bowden-Smith’s brother Henry also joined him, as did his nephew Ernest, who planted in Agrapatana, marrying Ada Mary Lawrence, the daughter of the proprietor of Balmoral – their Agrapatana-born son, Philip competed in equestrianism at the 1924 Paris Olympics and commanded the Secret Intelligence Service in Kandy during the Second World War. Another family connection who joined was Frank A.Fairlie, who in his spare time hunted butterflies and played golf, being a founder-member of the Royal Colombo Golf Club.

Henry Cumberbatch
Yet another relative who joined the company was Henry Cumberbatch, son of William Bowden-Smith’s eldest sister Harriette. The Cumberbatch family, arriving in Barbados in the 1690s, had made its money in sugar plantations. Henry’s grandfather Abraham Parry Cumberbatch retired to Tunbridge Wells in England. His uncle Robert (great-great-grandfather to actor Benedict Cumberbatch) was the British consul in Smyrna, Turkey. His father, Lawrence, was Deputy Surveyor (head – there is no “Surveyor”) of the New Forest, occupying a large mansion known as Queen’s House in Lyndhurst, the “capital of the New Forest”. Henry went to Winchester College, England’s oldest continuously running public school, before being shipped off to become an East India merchant.

By 1883, Sabonadière & Co was, by far, the biggest agency house in the island, employing nearly 700 workers at their Ambewatte Mills on Vauxhall Street and Maddema Mills (later Liptons) on Union Place, and representing over a hundred estates. Francis Sabonadière, who was renowned for his knowledge and the straightness of his dealings, retired to London’s Kensington with his daughters – his wife Mary Sophia died on Delta in 1865.

[pullquote]In 1947, Cumberbatch & Co merged with Carson’s, founded by R.B. Carson in 1857, to become Carson Cumberbatch PLC, one of Sri Lanka’s top blue chips today[/pullquote]

However, the coffee blight, which had destroyed so many other firms and estates, finally took its toll. On 4 September 1884, the Oriental Bank Corporation had to suspend payments, and Sabonadière & Co went bankrupt. Francis Sabonadière returned to Sri Lanka and spent the rest of his life getting out of debt. He is buried next to Mary Sophia in Pussellawa. William Sabonadière went to plant coffee in Jamaica, where he died. Nevertheless, all was not lost. Henry Cumberbatch took over the liabilities under the name Cumberbatch & Co. The firm, with its headquarters at the Ambewatte Mills, prospered and switched over to tea and rubber, also moving into Malaysian plantations. Cumberbatch retired to England, where he first lived with his uncle, Henry Prinsep, before marrying and moving to London, where he died in 1904. In 1947, the company merged with Carson’s, founded by RB Carson in 1857, to become Carson Cumberbatch PLC, one of Sri Lanka’s top blue chips today.