[ { "id": 212711, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 20, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "shy of sharing their knowledge with us, possibly, and perhaps understandably, wishing to retain family privacy.\n\nComparatively few of his autobiographical ‘facts' have been verified though he does assure us at the beginning of at least one of his autobiographical essays that it contains 'facts not fiction'. The autobiographical paragraphs and snippets scattered throughout his Miscellanies appear to have been honest and candid in so far as his revealed details. There is no reason to doubt anything he has written, anything dishonest, though with his statement that he is a 'self-proclaimed publicist,' one cannot help coming to the conclusion that there are times when he doth protest too much and that some of the details are slightly more supportive of his claims than one would have thought strictly true or indeed necessary. One is often left with more than a slight suspicion that Mesny had a touch of Walter Mitty about him, and in a number of his exploits one suspects he has embellished an already good story. The chapters of this biography on The Early Years, The Pacification of the Miao, and the Later Years, are to all intents and purposes autobiographical, and much of the substance of these chapters may seem to be grandiloquently worded, pompous and stilted. This is because I have transcribed most of the anecdotes written by Mesny in the first person singular into the 'third person' otherwise leaving the narrative as a whole as it was in the Miscellanies to provide the reader with a distinct and palpable feel for his personality.\n\nAt least three potted biographies of Mesny have been written, beginning with an entry in Balleine's Biographical Dictionary.2 Later, a piece in The Pilot's first volume (July 1946) which described The (Jersey) Trinity Boy who became a Chinese General, under the general heading of ‘Adventurous Jerseymen.' This was repeated in The Pilot of July 1980. Douglas Ford of the Jersey Museum added a little to Balleine and The Pilot in his 'From Jersey to the Celestial Empire' [undated], and when the Jersey Post Office produced its stamp series in May 1992 commemorating the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Mesny's birth they issued a short piece which added yet more about him. These were all laudatory describing Mesny's adventures and successes without portraying the unromantic and often wretched side to his life. These hyperbolised descriptions occasionally lead to erroneous claims such as the assertion that Mesny always wore Chinese clothes. In practice he wore foreign clothes most of the time and only donned Chinese robes for some fifteen years, when he had his photograph taken with his son and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212721, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "'Union'. There was no indication that either Mesny or Kahler realized the implication behind the extraordinary ugliness of the emperor nor that the print had anti-Manchu secret society connotations.\n\nThe only time Mesny refers to photography was when Pickerell, his friend in Hankow in about 1864/5 who knew something of the rudiments of the art, 'then very imperfectly understood,' added Mesny, had produced some very good negatives and positives on glass of his Chinese employers. This spread Pickerell's fame and brought him lots of business. The colodion gave out and none was to be obtained at any price. Mesny tells us in his Miscellany that he knew how to make it and produced some which served the purpose until a supply could be obtained from Hong Kong. This yet again highlights the enigma of how did Mesny keep abreast with European and American business and scientific advances whilst in remote parts of China, and how did he, at the age of 22 or 23, in the heart of China, having left Jersey some ten years earlier, know anything about photography and in particular the constituents of colodion and how to make it?\n\nThe illustrations provided by the Jersey Post Office on the commemorative stamps are interesting illustrations of how the present day artist imagined Mesny and his surroundings. They should therefore be regarded as fanciful representations rather than accurate depictions. Mesny, for example, at no time appears to have worn the square badge of the civil official as portrayed in the illustration with Governor Chang. Again, he was never a 'Mandarin first class', he was a 'military official second class.' Finally, at no stage did he ever refer to himself at 'the River Gate.' Every walled town down the Yangtze would have had one but Mesny, himself, never mentioned the term and again, to our knowledge, was not on the Yangtze in 1874.\n\nNOTES\n\nThe Manchu dynasty was actually descended from the Jürchen, the so-called Golden Horde. The Manchus in China were neither Mongol nor even, strictly speaking, autochthonous Manchus but Jürchen conquerors from Manchuria\n\n1 Balleine G R: A Biographical Dictionary of Jersey Staples Press: London\n\nReady O: Life and Sport in China London. 1904\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212751, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "45 \n\nworks recommended by Pioneer [i.e. Mesny] through Governor Chang Chih-tung of Shansi, are now, or soon will be, in full operation in various parts of China, though with no other advantage to the conceiver of those useful nineteen undertakings than that of having done just so much good, gratis, for the benefit of China and her millions of industrious people, to whom we wish long continued peace, happiness and prosperity.\" However, whenever China attempted anything which would lead to modernisation, Mesny leapt into print to congratulate whoever was putting the modernisation in train stressing that it was in line with his suggestions of so many years ago. \n\nIn his early days he displayed extraordinary qualities - audacity, determination, adventurousness and a depth of interest in everything he came across; later, however, when in his declining years he had reverted into a petty entrepreneur, he displayed his achievements on his sleeve and at times waved them above his head just in case they might be overlooked. His rank as a brevet Lieutenant General1 in the Chinese Imperial army with the award of the Pa-r'u-lu and the peacock's feather is stressed right to the end of his life. He is an FRGS and a FR Hist S; and in the very last years of his life he even records in his curriculum vitae as one of his qualifications his membership of the Royal Asiatic Society, North China Branch, into which he was elected as late as 1914 when he was 72. This despite having written for the Journal back in 1891 and his son having been elected in 1911. An outstanding question regrettably remains unanswered. Well we might ask why Mesny was promoted brevet Lieutenant General in 1886, so many years after he had completed his active military service in 1874? Balleine may have the answer. He wrote that Mesny volunteered for active service in 1883: whereupon he was sent to Yunnan, and in 1884 to Foochou. In 1885 he was in charge of two arsenals in Canton and the following year was promoted i.e. whilst still working at the arsenals. \n\nMesny explained that officers as junior as Lieutenant Colonel, when in command of troops, were referred to by the honorific title of General. Mesny began his service in 1868 as a company commander rising to brevet Colonel in 1869 and technically in command of troops, though as he himself does not make this point, we can assume that he was never referred to as 'general'. In 1873 he was promoted to Major-General during the latter days of the second Kueichou campaign when, though he again does not say so, he would have been referred to as 'general'. \n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 } ]