The attaché at Peking

Life at sea may be a very pleasant one for those who like it, but I doubt whether any one ever arrived at the end of a voyage of a month and a half by one of the P. and O. Co.’s...

The _Ganges_ did not leave Hong-kong until the 5th at noon, and we anchored off the lightship in the estuary here on Monday night, but the river is so difficult of navigation th...

I daresay you will understand that I was rather melancholy at leaving Shanghai. For the first time on all this long journey I was to set out alone, and my hosts, although they w...

We left Tientsing early on Friday morning the 19th, by which means we had the tide in our favour, and were able to get quicker clear of the hideous sights and smells of the rive...

When Wade was in England last year Lord Stanley said to him: “Peking’s a gigantic failure, isn’t it? not a two-storied house in the whole place, eh?” To Lord Stanley’s practical...

Since I wrote to you last I have neither seen nor done anything worth recording. The thermometer has been standing at from 95° to 107° in our courtyard, so there is not much tem...

A pleasanter addition to my personnel, and a sweeter, for he does not eat garlic nor smoke opium, is a small Manilla poodle, Nou-nou by name, whom I have inherited. He has conso...

You will see by the date of this that we have beaten a retreat from the dust, heat, and filth of the city, and that our “villegiatura” has begun. Indeed, Peking was becoming ins...

We have ridden in to spend three days, copying despatches and sighing for our “cool grot.” The town seemed too beastly as we came in. Peking, as Southey said of Exeter, “is anci...

I daresay you will be curious to hear something more of our temple life than I have been able to tell you hitherto. We have been exploring the neighbourhood in all directions, a...

No mail in—we are expecting it any minute, but have begun to fear that we must send off our bag before its arrival. I never saw anything so curious as the change which the last...

The extreme heat has left us at last, and the autumn has set in—a most charming season in this climate. It is a regular second spring—not such a spring as we are used to in Engl...

Since I last wrote to you we have been leading the most monotonous of lives, and no news from home has come to cheer us. We have had staying with us one of the few stray visitor...

We started on the 25th August, as I told you before. Saurin and Frater, one of the student interpreters, were going to make a journey in Mongolia, and Murray and I accompanied t...

In my last letter I told you how we went to Ku-Pei-Ko̔u. We turned homewards (that I should talk of Peking as home!) on the 29th of August. I began my backward journey unluckily...

I who so lately wrote to you about blazing sun and scorching heat am now glad to nestle into the chimney-corner and watch the “pictures in the fire.” Outside, the rain is fallin...

I was awakened this morning by such a noise of squibs, crackers, petards, maroons, bombs, cannon, and all manner of fireworks, that I rubbed my eyes and was half inclined to fan...

We are sending off a mail to-day in the hopes that it will yet be able to leave Tientsing for Shanghai before we are finally shut out by the frost from communication with the ou...

The messenger who brought us in the welcome mail of the 26th September also told us that there was still a chance of catching a vessel at Taku, before the final freezing of the...

The arrival of the mail last night brought the old year to a happy termination, but, alas! Saurin is to leave us for a German post. My batch of letters was doubly welcome, it wa...

Since I last wrote we have all been leading the lives of vegetables in our own garden; with a skating rink inside the Legation there is no excuse for facing the wind and dust ou...

The mail day has come round again very quickly, so I am in hopes that you are getting letters more regularly than I had led you to expect. If the wonderfully warm weather we are...

I expect this will reach England with the bag that was despatched last Saturday; at any rate it will give you a few days later news; I have but little to say.

My last letter to you was dated 8th February, on which day the festivities of the Chinese New Year began with the feast of Tsao, the god of the hearth. This, of course, is inaug...

I am going to tell you about an entertainment at the house of a Chinese mandarin. You will have gathered from my former letters to you that we see nothing of the Chinese in thei...

Since I last wrote I have done nothing and seen nothing that I have not told you about over and over again. However, to-morrow morning I am off for a three weeks’ trip into Mong...

We left Peking, the doctor and I, on the 23rd April. We took with us my servant Chang Hsi, groom, and fat cook. We of course rode our own horses, while five mules carried the se...

The last mail took you no letter from me because I was far away in Mongolia. My first intention had been merely to go as far as Chang Chia Ko̔u, to accompany Brenchley and make...

When I returned from Mongolia three weeks ago I found that all the world, that is to say, the three or four diplomatists who compose our world, had very wisely taken itself off...

Some time ago I was invited to go to the play by the great curio merchant here—Han Chang-kwei-ti. As the Pekingese theatres have a great celebrity, I ought to give you some acco...