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J. L. CRANMER-BYNG
China hand' of great experience, and a man of forceful character, Sir Harry Parkes. His daughter, Marion, had accompanied him to Peking and in a letter to a friend wrote of the Minister's house:
How can I describe the house to you? It is so utterly unlike anything we have seen or lived in before. It really was originally a series of Chinese temples, and has been adapted for the use of Europeans by having odd little rooms built on, at odd and inconvenient corners. The entrance is very fine: first come two courts, with handsome red pillars; the carving and painting of the roofs is very picturesque and the colouring really beautiful. From the court you mount a flight of steps, and enter the hall, or Queen's room as it is called - her picture being there.
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The grounds here are small but very nice; each person has his little home, and it reminds me much of a cathedral close; it is very peaceful and quiet.
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In the following year Parkes had to part with his daughter Marion when she was married in the Legation Chapel to James Keswick, a partner in the firm of Jardine, Matheson and Company, and at that time Chairman of the Municipal Council of Shanghai. In the Spring of 1885 Parkes was unwell and he died after a short illness, the only British Minister to die in harness in Peking. He drove himself too hard and died of overwork.
The life of a student-interpreter at this time has been well described in a book called Where Chineses Drive,16 which was published in 1885, the title being taken from Paradise Lost, Book III.
The author, W. H. Wilkinson, described the Legation as having a frontage along the Imperial canal of about three hundred yards, and continued:
The compound forms an oblong of which the shorter side is about one hundred and thirty yards long. On the north it is shut in by the Han-lin College; on the west for the greater part of its length by the Lüan-i K'u, or as we call it, the "Imperial Carriage Park”. South of this, still on
15 Quoted in Lane-Poole, op. cit., II, 368-9.
16 "Where Chineses Drive". English Student-Life at Peking. By a Student Interpreter. (London, 1885). The name of the author does not appear on the book but Henri Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica, I, 217, attributes it to W. H. Wilkinson.
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