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becoming increasingly financially desperate.
His fourth volume on better paper, weekly fascicules published on Sunday instead of Saturday as in previous volumes, begins with a photo of himself in Chinese robes with his mandarin's cap beside him in the manner of Chinese officials in the standard photographs of themselves. He apologised for the delay between Volumes III and IV, from 1899 to 1905, some five years, because he had been overwhelmed with misfortune and had lost all his savings at a stroke.' In the final fascicule in June 1905 he advised readers that he was unable to afford to continue the Miscellany but would be publishing Mesny's Commercial Guide from that date. In June 1905 after the completion of Volume IV he expresses gratitude to his subscribers but was, he regretted, unable to undertake the publication of a fifth volume as yet due to insufficient support.
During almost the entire six months of the production of the weekly parts of Volume IV Telegrams of the Week reflected the mounting excitement of the Russo-Japanese War and contained hundreds of items detailing the departure, the 'secret' journey and arrival of the Russian Baltic fleet in the Far East ending with its catastrophic defeat by the Japanese navy in the Tsushima Straits at the end of May in 1905. The unfolding picture of the Russian navy's progress, route and activities from their almost inexplicable attack on British fishing vessels in the North Sea [believing them to be Japanese torpedo boats] to the devastating destruction off Japan makes compulsive reading, and though of secondary interest as far as Mesny was concerned, the series continued to highlight the fear entertained by the Chinese of Russia swallowing up further large parts of northern Chinese territory.
Two questions stand out: did he ever get round to a fifth volume? and what happened to all the unused notes he must have had stored away?
From an advert in the second to last issue of the Miscellany Volume IV, it is possible that Mesny, giving up the idea of the Miscellany, perhaps only temporarily, requires a 'Job Printing Plant' suitable for printing a small daily newspaper and a small illustrated magazine (nfd). It may be a coincidence but most likely there is a connexion. An advert in the very next Miscellany, the final issue, offers Mesny's Commercial Guide to be published immediately after the completion of Volume IV of the Miscellany.
From Mesny's own hand we learn that he frequently advised senior