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successful. He made the lengthy journey but would appear never to have achieved arranging the loan.
In 1879 Liu K'un-yi, Governor General of the Two Kuangs, was disposed to retain Mesny on his staff at Canton to take charge of the Foreign Affairs Department, and superintend the creation of a local naval force and the fortification of the coast of Kuangtung province. Mesny related a lengthy story about the local gentry in Canton requesting him to visit Peking to persuade a 'well-known prince' with a bribe of Taels 100,000 in order to gain permission to re-open the Wei-sing Lottery Offices in Kuangtung province. After being put under considerable financial and other inducements Mesny decided that he did not want to have anything to do with the lottery business and at his next interview with the Viceroy he was told that there were no funds available to build ships and forts and therefore there was no further need for his services. Mesny added that he understood the money derived from the lottery would have been entrusted to him to build ships of war and fortifications. He concluded [and this was written in 1895] that after that episode his friends deserted him and he never had an offer of really substantial employment after that day. He later added, 'I have been reduced to the lowest ebb of poverty. I have lost all my property, and been left unemployed ever since, so that I am sometimes driven to think that honesty may not be the best policy in China.' He also claimed that after Mason's trial in 1891 when his name had been linked with a major anti-imperial secret society he had never again been offered employment by [the Chinese] government.
On 7 September 1891, according to Mesny, a typhoon struck Shanghai and did much damage. He referred to the disaster when describing his precarious financial state, explaining that it had destroyed the Olympia Skating Rink in Lloyd Road, his property, thus ruining him financially.
During the publication of his Miscellanies, in addition to his many references to his weak financial position, signs of financial circumspection are obvious: for example, Volumes 1 and 2 were produced on very cheap paper, and in No 20 of Volume 2 in 1896 he announced that the printer had not delivered the edition on time to the Editor through lack of funds to pay for printing... ‘difficulties,' he added, ‘had now been overcome.'
He recorded a loss of over $2,000 on first year's publication but