[ { "id": 206980, "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-1974", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n45\n\nthe Sedangs, a warrior chant. Mayréna was in full dress uniform, complete with multiform decorations. He was saluted by the other European passengers, who inclined their bodies, and he responded with a military salute. Present were the ennobled and happy industrialist and several rich young men from the Brussels haute-bourgeoisie. The chaplain was a former curé, who had been unfrocked for immorality. And so Mayréna left Europe for the last time.\n\nThe voyage out was mostly uneventful, though Mayréna drank far too much and was often indiscreet enough to talk about his past with his courtiers. Court etiquette was strictly enforced aboard ship --- Buckingham Palace rules at table - except when brief forays were made ashore at Port Said, Aden and Colombo; then the King assumed his incognito as the Comte de Drey. On 18 April 1890 the Sachsen anchored in Singapore harbour.\n\nWhen Mayréna stepped ashore he was at once stopped by a courier from the French Consulate and told that the Consul wished to see him urgently. At the Consulate he was greeted politely but informed that the French Government now claimed rights over the territory of the Sedangs, that he was therefore no longer King, and would be arrested if he set foot in Indo-China. Mayréna, after much argument, returned to Ralph's Hotel, where his officials and courtiers had lodged temporarily, and informed the party that the Sedangs had revolted and that it was impossible to proceed to his kingdom. The group, it appears, were not surprised by the turn of events. They had enjoyed a splendid ocean vacation at the expense of the rich industrialist, Mayréna's backer, but had no desire to seek martyrdom among the savages of the Moï country. At the end of the week the party - court chamberlain, chaplain, other officials and passengers - all returned to Antwerp by the Sachsen. Mayréna stayed on in Singapore. There was little else he could do.\n\nMayréna's sojourn in Singapore is not well documented, though Soulié claims Mayréna met in that city a European he had known formerly at Haiphong, a companion of Miss Dahlberg's brother, who was now domiciled on the island of Tioman and making a living by collecting birds' nests, those of the sea swallow, for the Chinese market. Mayréna decided to accompany this trader back to Tioman, because the island was under the jurisdiction of the Malay State of Pahang, and once settled there he felt he could not be extradited to either France or Indo-China, where he would have had to face trial assuredly for treason.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206990, "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-1974", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n55\n\nnot serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor.\n\n28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds.\n\n29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366.\n\n30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel.\n\n31 7 January, 1889.\n\n32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs.\n\n33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889.\n\n34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable.\n\n35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888.\n\n36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality.\n\n37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889.\n\n38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889.\n\n39 7 January, 1889.\n\n40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206991, "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-1974", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "56\n\nH. I. LETHBRIDGE\n\n41 In 1838 Charles Mirfin was killed in a duel on Wimbledon Common. The principal escaped abroad but the seconds were found guilty, sentenced to death, but later reprieved. In 1841 the Earl of Cardigan wounded Captain Tuckett in a duel and was accused of 'assault with intent to murder'. In 1852 a group of Frenchmen were indicted for duelling on English soil, sent for trial, and imprisoned. It must have been well known to both Mayréna and Morès that duelling was a criminal offence under English law and that the guilty could not escape easily from a term of imprisonment, even in Hong Kong. In 1872 the Spanish Consul in Hong Kong and the Peruvian Consul in Macao fought a duel at Chinese Kowloon. The Peruvian Consul was wounded by a pistol shot. They were each fined $200 at the Supreme Court in Hong Kong, although the duel had not taken place on Hong Kong soil!\n\n42 ...the duel is a leisure-time institution... In civilised communities it prevails as a normal phenomenon only where there is an hereditary leisure class, and almost exclusively among that class' (Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York, 1934, p. 239.)\n\n43 Alfred Capus (1858-1922) was a well-known journalist and man-about-town.\n\n44 Maurice Mac-Nab (1856-1890) was a chansonnier, poet and notorious noctambule. The Rat Mort was a well-known café-chantant in Montmartre, the haunt of decadents, harlots and pleasure-seekers. The composer Charles de Sivry (1848-1900) was for a long time accompanist at the Cabaret du Chat-noir. He was the brother-in-law of Arthur Rimbaud.\n\n45 At table, for example, the courtiers were expected to wait until the King introduced a topic of conversation.\n\n46 John Fortescue Owen, born in 1869, entered the Federated Malay States Civil Service in 1889 and was appointed Junior Officer and Magistrate, Pahang, in that year.\n\n47 See W. Lineham, 'A History of Pahang', Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 14, Part 2, 1936, p. 135.\n\n48 Sir Hugh Clifford, 'The King of the Sedangs', Asia, July-Dec., 1926, p. 920.\n\n49 Edouard Drumont (1844-1917) wrote a famous book, La France Juive, (1886), in which he attempted to demonstrate that France was controlled from behind the scenes by a pack of Jews.\n\n50 R. H. Sherard gives an account of a personal interview with Morès in the Santé prison in The Real Oscar Wilde, London, n.d., pp. 401-2.\n\n51 Morès did not mean to kill Mayer: Mayer impaled himself by running upon Morès's foil.\n\n52 The Marquise offered a large reward for the capture of the assassins. There is a story that she tried to hire a number of cowboys to effect the rescue. She died in 1921 and in her will—a copy of which is in Somerset House, London—she left a sum of money for the erection of a monument at Mechiguig. In 1928 a large granite cross was placed on the spot where Morès fell. Lesley Blanch in her book The Wilder Shores of Love (London, 1954) claims that the Arab-loving Isabelle Eberhardt went in pursuit of Morès' assassins, but I have found no confirmation of the story.\n\n53 Times, 20 July, 1896.\n\n54 Soldiering was also an aristocratic sport, better than the chase. Many people volunteered to fight in wars which did not concern them; see, for example, the career of St. Leger Grenfell, who fought with John Hunt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210340, "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-1984", "page_number": 311, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "290\n\nRODERICK O'BRIEN S.J.\n\nhad only to retire to the Consulate where a rare treat awaited me in going over his collection.\n\nAlthough at this stage in his fifties, and in weak health (he died a few years later in 1889), Woods apparently planned a substantial scientific voyage up the Yangtze (Changjiang) River, but was unable to achieve this aim.\n\nApril 1885: Passing Through\n\nWoods then joined HMS Flying Fish on a voyage to the Philippine Islands. On 20 March 1885, we find him writing from Manila to his brother, Terry. But the exigencies of war in the region meant that the Flying Fish had to return to Hong Kong, and so also Woods.\n\nThe precise date of his return to Hong Kong is not known. In any event, Woods was soon gone again, this time to Japan. He left Hong Kong on 11 April 1885.\n\nJuly 1885: Pokfulam\n\nThe visit to Japan was planned to be only a short one, and Woods intended to return on the same steamer. But he was taken sick, and it was over a month before he could leave Japan. On 21 June, he was able to leave, and returned to Hong Kong about four weeks later,\n\nThis time, in a letter to his brother Terry dated 7 July 1885, he tells us that he was staying at Pokfulam, at the home of the managing partner in the firm of Douglas Lapraik & Company. Apparently he had not recovered in health, and the Governor arranged for him to spend his stay in the more salubrious climate of Pokfulam. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently attentive that in a later publication on the geography and geology of Hong Kong he was able to make specific mention of formations near the reservoir.\n\nPresumably recovered, he left Hong Kong to complete his work in the Malaysian area, arriving in Singapore once again, and undertaking an excursion to Pahang on the east coast of the peninsula.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215788, "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-2002", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "20\n\nintervened to prevent the chiefs of Rembau and Sungei Ujong from levying illegal duties on British merchants. However, these cases of intervention were brought about by individuals such as Governor Cavenagh who deviated from the Government's non-intervention policy. In cases like the Naning War for instance, the Supreme Government did express their unwillingness to extend territory. (Mills, supra, Chap 7 p 127) Thus the Calcutta Government did play an inactive role in these cases which they disapproved of, and from these examples, it could be argued that the merchants had reasonable grounds for their complaint to the House of Commons. Further examples would include the British intervention in Pahang where a civil war had broken out between Wan Ahmad and Wan Mutahir. The Siamese intervened and later it was followed by Trengganu's involvement. This greatly disrupted the trade of British merchants there. Thus, this led to the bombardment of Trengganu by the British in 1862. The motives were partly to protect British trade, but the main reason was to check Siamese aggression. Even then the British bombardment was a violation of the Burney Treaty and the governor's action was highly condemned. (Mills, supra, pp 167 - 173)\n\n55 Thio, supra, p xvi - xvii\n\n56 for example, the disturbance of the Larut wars which continued into the 1870s and was further complicated with the succession disputes there. (Mills, supra, Chap 9, p 180)\n\n57 Hall, supra, p 512\n\n58 as compared to the period after 1874\n\n59 In Selangor, the disturbances of the Klang war and frequent piracy along the coast led to British intervention in 1871. These cases of piracy later served as an excuse for the British to intervene officially in Selangor in 1874, (Mills, Ibid, p 241 - 242)\n\n60 The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce, supra; Buckley, supra, p 756\n\n61 this point should be read in the context of the chapter as a whole, because the problems discussed are associated heavily with this issue\n\n62 Mills, supra, p 90", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]