The Attache at Peking

These letters were written many years ago, but in China, and especially at Peking, the old order changes slowly, and they are at any rate a faithful record of the life which was led by those whose duties lay, as the Chinese say, “within the walls.” They profess no more than that. Those who wish to learn more about China and Chinese manners must go to that monumental work of the late Dr. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, to Sir John Davies’s fascinating book, The Chinese, or to Professor Douglas’s book on Chinese society.

It will occur to many people to ask how it comes that we should have lived for so many years peacefully, travelling through the country unarmed, in the midst of a people capable of the atrocities which have recently taken place. China is of all countries the land of contradiction and of paradox. But I think that those who read these letters will see that though, for obvious reasons, they were written in a spirit of optimism, there was an undercurrent of feeling that at any moment things might become very different. For instance, if the insurrection in Shantung had not been quelled, and the rebels had marched upon Peking, which was undoubtedly part of their programme, the tragedy of 1900 might, and probably would, have been anticipated in 1865. Moreover, although we were riding at anchor in smooth water, there were from time to time uncomfortable signs of disturbance below. I remember how on more than one occasion we were warned that on such and such a day there would be a massacre of Europeans for the old reason, the murder of babies whose eyes were used for purposes of photography. These stories were put about by intriguing mandarins, who succeeded in deceiving even some of the more ignorant of their own class. The famous General Tsêng Kwo Fan (father of the Marquis Tsêng, who was afterwards minister in London) was talking one day with an English doctor on the subject of this babies’-eyes fraud, when suddenly he said, “It is no use your attempting to deny it, for I have here some of the dried specimens,” and he pulled out a packet of those gelatine capsules which are used for covering castor oil and other nauseous drugs! We paid little heed to these warnings, though, as recent events have proved, there was perhaps more in them than we supposed. We were sitting on a volcano, for experience has often shown how swiftly this seemingly mild and almost childlike people can be lashed into a fury like that of the flaming legions of hell. One thing we knew for certain. If a rising should take place, we were in a death-trap from which there could be no escape. Those grim and frowning gates once shut, rescue was impossible, for what could a mere handful of men—in those days there were but some seventy or eighty Europeans, all told, in Peking—avail against the seething mob of enraged devils? When years afterwards, in 1879, there came the horror of Sir Louis Cavagnari’s murder, with all his company, at Cabul, I could but think how much the position of the Legations at Peking resembled his.