187
THE PROTO-MARTYR OF CHINESE PROTESTANTS: RECONSTRUCTING THE STORY
OF
CH’ÜA KAM-KWONG
LAUREN PFISTER
As much as the writings of a person extrapolate and delimit their public presence after they die, so the deaths experienced around a person - perhaps we could call them the "public absences" they experience - these "public absences" often give form to that person's private world of meanings and influence the directions of their life's later years. Regularly, though probably not always, the public realm of writings and the private sphere of felt deaths intersect. In the life of a Scottish Victorian missionary-sinologist and pastor, these two dimensions often collided in scribbled correspondence, mission reports, literary reflections, and the biographical sketches others made from these sources about those public absences.
James Legge
Across the eight decades of James Legge's (1815-1897) active life it is not hard to identify the power and presence of this sphere of public absences, especially during his hyphenated missionary-scholar experience in Hong Kong from 1843 to 1873. He was indeed a "pastor" in the full sense of the Dissenter traditions he represented, not seldom found describing, in linguistic forms stereotyped across the Victorian era's professional clergy from many denominations, the deathbed scenes of missionary colleagues, their family members, and elderly members of the Chinese congregation he co-pastored with Ho Tsun-sheen (1817-1871). Colonial life led him also to the soldiers' barracks for occasional worship services, and to the jails, where death was calculated into the normal conditions of life far more frequently than among "normal" social settings. But the more personally felt deaths can also be numbered - there were fourteen which shook his consciousness with varying degrees of starkness, most coming from his large and extended family ties. Among the four
187
THE PROTO-MARTYR OF CHINESE ROTESTANTS: RECONSTRUCTING THE STORY
OF
CH’FA KAM-KWONG
LAUREN PFISTER
As much as the writings of a person extrapolate and delimit their public presence after they die, so the deaths experienced around a person - perhaps we could call them the "public absences" they experience these "public absences" often give form to that person's private world of meanings and influence the directions of their life's later years. Regularly, though probably not always, the public realm of writings and the private sphere of felt deaths intersect. In the life of a Scottish Victorian missionary-sinologist and and pastor, these two dimensions often collided in scribbled corresponder.ce, mission reports, literary reflections, and the biographical sketches others made from these sources about those public absences.
James Legge
Across the eight decades of James Legge's (1815-1897) active life it is not hard to identify the power and presence of this sphere of public absences, especially during his hyphenated missionary-scholar experience in Hong Kong from 1843 to 1873. He was indeed a "pastor" in the full sense of the Dissenter traditions he represented, not seldom found describing, in linguistic forms stereotyped across the Victorian era's professional clergy from many denominations, the deathbed scenes of missionary colleagues, their family members, and elderly members of the Chinese congregation he co-pastored with Ho Tsun-sheen (1817-1871). Colonial life led him also to the soldiers' barracks for occasional worship services, and to the jails, where death was calculated into the normal conditions of life far more frequently than among "normal" social settings. But the more personally felt deaths can also be numbered - there were fourteen which shook his consciousness with varying degrees of starkness, most coming from his large and extended family ties. Among the four
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