BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING
71
1866 the student-interpreters put on an amateur theatrical performance, consisting of Our Wife, and To Paris and back on £5. The female parts were all taken by the students, and it was voted a great success. The faces of the Chinese servants, watching from the back of the hall, gave Mitford a lot of quiet amusement. The next summer he was staying in a temple which he calls Ta Chio Ssu or "Temple of Great Repose", about twenty-three miles from Peking, having moved there with all his furniture together with chickens and a cow and its calf. But even there he could not entirely escape the despatches. "Copying despatches with the thermometer at 100° in the shade, with a basin of water and a towel at one's side for very necessary hand-wiping, and a pad of blotting-paper over the blank part of one's paper, is indeed an affreux métier." The climate took its toll, and Mitford mentions two of his young companions who died of fever.
Mitford left Peking for Japan in 1866. In the same year Major Crossman of the Royal Engineers was sent out from England by the Government to inspect the British Legation and Consular Buildings in China and Japan. From one of his reports, written at Shanghai in July 1867, we can glean some more information about the early development of the Legation at Peking. For instance he gave a hint as to the origin of the Legation Chapel when he wrote: "There is a large house opposite to the Chinese secretaries' quarters, used partly as a theatre and partly as a lumber-room, well and solidly built, which can be converted into a good church by the addition of an external porch, removing the flooring of the upper storey so as to throw it open to the roof, and by the addition of some wood work and ornament, to give it a somewhat ecclesiastical appearance." He also mentioned that the number of student-interpreters was shortly to be increased to thirteen.
Meanwhile Sir Frederick Bruce had been succeeded by Sir Rutherford Alcock at the end of 1865, while Sir Thomas Wade was promoted to be Minister in 1871, a post which he held for the next twelve years. In 1883 he was succeeded by another ‘old
14 Parliamentary Papers, "Reports from Major Crossman and Correspondence respecting the Legation and Consular Buildings in China and Japan", 315 of 1868, No. 7, p. 22.
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1
BRITISH LEGATION AT PEKING
71
1866 the student-interpreters put on an amateur theatrical performance, consisting of Our Wife, and To Paris and back on £5. The female parts were all taken by the students, and it was voted a great success. The faces of the Chinese servants, watching from the back of the hall, gave Mitford a lot of quiet amusement. The next summer he was staying in a temple which he calls Ta Chio Ssu or "Temple of Great Repose', about twenty- three miles from Peking, having moved there with all his furniture together with chickens and a cow and its calf. But even there he could not entirely escape the despatches. "Copying despatches with the thermometer at 100° in the shade, with a basin of water and a towel at one's side for very necessary hand-wiping, and a pad of blotting-paper over the blank part of one's paper, is indeed an affreux métier." The climate took its toll, and Mitford mentions two of his young companions who died of fever.
Mitford left Peking for Japan in 1866. In the same year Major Crossman of the Royal Engineers was sent out from England by the Government to inspect the British Legation and Consular Buildings in China and Japan. From one of his reports, written at Shanghai in July 1867, we can glean some more information about the early development of the Legation at Peking. For instance he gave a hint as to the origin of the Legation Chapel when he wrote: "There is a large house opposite to the Chinese secretaries' quarters, used partly as a theatre and partly as a lumber-room, well and solidly built, which can be converted into a good church by the addition of an external porch, removing the flooring of the upper storey so as to throw it open to the roof, and by the addition of some wood work and ornament, to give it a somewhat ecclesiastical appearance. He also men- tioned that the number of student-interpreters was shortly to be increased to thirteen,
Meanwhile Sir Frederick Bruce had been succeeded by Sir Rutherford Alcock at the end of 1865, while Sir Thomas Wade was promoted to be Minister in 1871, a post which he held for the next twelve years. In 1883 he was succeeded by another ‘old
14 Parliamentary Papers, "Reports from Major Crossman and Corres- pondence respecting the Legation and Consular Buildings in China and Japan", 315 of 1868, No. 7, p. 22.
!
1
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