[ { "id": 206938, "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": 9, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "deity in Hong Kong, particularly among the boat-people. There are many temples dedicated to her in the Colony. This particular temple is believed to date from the Sung Dynasty, and with the nearby rock-carving, dated 1274, provides a popular place for pilgrimages. These three last trips were organised by our Vice-president, Mr. James Hayes, who has an extensive knowledge of the history of Hong Kong, particularly its rural areas.\n\nThe ten lectures covered a wide variety of subjects. The first lecture of the year was delivered by Professor Murray Groves, head of the Sociology Department, University of Hong Kong. Professor Groves had lived in New Guinea and worked there as an anthropologist, and he talked about a sea-faring people, the Motu, and their musical styles. His talk was illustrated with slides and tape recordings. The second talk was about Chinese paintings in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art: a Gallery of international reputation, situated in Kansas, and housing one of the major comprehensive collections of oriental art in the U.S.A. The talk was delivered by Professor Chu-tsing Li, Research Curator of the Gallery, and was illustrated with slides. Later in the year, Professor Winston Hsieh of Missouri University, talked to us about the Canton Delta Project which he is currently heading. The Canton Delta has great significance for scholars of Chinese social organization, urban studies, foreign trade, revolutionary movements and overseas emigration, and it is particularly rich in Chinese and Western source materials. The project is interdisciplinary and we look forward to hearing more about its activities.\n\nIn September Professor P. B. Harris, who heads the Political Science Department of the University of Hong Kong talked to the Society on \"Maoism and Rousseauism\", and in November Mr. Henry Lethbridge of Hong Kong University's Sociology Department described the exploits of two adventurers extraordinary who visited Hong Kong in the late 1880's: David de Mayréna, soi-disant King of the Sedangs in Indo China, and the Marquis de Morès. Both died later in mysterious circumstances. Mr. Lethbridge specialises in the social history of Hong Kong, and participated in our symposium last year on \"Hong Kong: Chinese tradition and the growth of a town”.\n\nDr. Hugh Baker, who also participated in our first symposium which I organised in 1964 on “The Social Organization of the New", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206963, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG: THE MARQUIS DE MORES AND DAVID DE MAYRENA\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE*\n\nAdventurers at Government House\n\nIn the nineteenth century Hong Kong's Government House quickly established itself as one of the best caravanserais in the whole Far East. There were then few good hotels in Hong Kong so that His Excellency the Governor usually felt under a strong social obligation to accommodate at government expense any distinguished visitor from abroad; less prestigious persons would be invited to a function—dinner, soirée, levée — and journalists, writers, and other small fry granted in most cases only an interview. It is clear from Sir William Des Voeux's memoirs1 that at certain seasons Hong Kong swarmed with globe-trotters, nearly all of whom would wish to pay their respects to Her Britannic Majesty's representative at Government House.\n\nDes Voeux declares2 that two of the most extraordinary visitors he received at Government House were David de Mayréna, 'King of the Sedangs', and the Marquis Antoine de Morès, 'Emperor of the Badlands', both of whom arrived in Hong Kong in November of 1888 and left behind the remarkable legend that they had fought a duel. This essay is an attempt to describe their strange histories and to explore some questions relating to what may be termed 'the sociology of adventure'. Inevitably such an inquiry must invite discussion of why Europeans left their homeland, for they went overseas not only in pursuit of wealth but in search of a destiny, a term that suggests a number of psychological and sociological problems.\n\nOn 14 November 1888 the Danish steamer Frejr, a small vessel of 397 tons, engaged in the coastal trade and commanded by a Captain Lund, anchored in Hong Kong harbour after a three days\n\nMr. Lethbridge who is Reader in Sociology at the University of Hong Kong is well known for his earlier contributions on local society and government which have appeared in this Journal and elsewhere.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206964, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n29\n\nvoyage from Haiphong. The China Mail's shipping notices reported that the Frejr had landed ‘H.M. The King of the Sedangs and 3 servants and 13 Chinese. The King, of course, was the Frenchman David de Mayréna. As soon as Mayréna had been rowed ashore to a waterfront pier, he hired a chair and was carried off to the Hong Kong Hotel in Pedder Street, where he was booked into Room 23.\n\nThe next day a reporter from the China Mail came to the hotel and interviewed Mayréna at some length in his room. The report that appeared in the newspaper that same day, three columns of print, was headed 'The King of the Sedangs in Hong Kong. An interview with His Majesty'. The monarch from Indo-China was described as:\n\na tall energetic man of, I should say, 50 years of age, with whiskers and a moustache turning gray, and a countenance full of vigour. One could not find a trace of the “exalté” about him. He was dressed in simple white clothes such as are worn by European residents here during the Summer, made by natives of his Kingdom or at least of the adjoining dependency over which the Jesuit missionaries have for several years exercised a kind of authority.\"\n\nDuring the interview the French Consul in Hong Kong, M. de Verleye, called, and Mayréna informed them that a royal palace was being constructed in the capital of his kingdom.\n\nThe day after the lengthy article on Mayréna appeared in the China Mail, the Hong Kong Telegraph also published a report on the King, in which its readers were told that:\n\nif many a man here in the Far East wrote his own history, even with a moderate adherence to the truth, it would make unusual reading. For romantic adventures, however, the, at present, principal guest at the Hong Kong Hotel far excels the average adventurer... His few visitors find him a tall, middle-aged, military gentleman, bearing many scars, and with an indifference to his rank except in so far as to assert his right to it at the outset.\n\nThe article affirmed that the King was\n\nnow desirous of attracting Chinese emigration to the Sedangs, with a view to opening it up. To men of enterprise and capital there should be a magnificent opening.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206965, "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": 36, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "30\n\nFL. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nThe arrival of the Marquis de Morès was, on the other hand, barely noticed in the press. The China Mail merely reported in its shipping column: 'Arrived Per Calédonien for Hong Kong from Marseilles. Marquis de Morès. Also Marquis de Morès servant'.* The Marquis had boarded the Calédonien, a Messageries Maritimes vessel, at Marseilles on 20 October and had arrived in Hong Kong on 22 November, eight days after Mayréna had taken a room at the Hong Kong Hotel. The Marquis was accompanied by William Van Driesche,' who in fact was not a servant but the Marquis' private secretary or rather homme de confiance. Because Government House was overflowing with guests, Morès had been forced to seek a lodging in the town and had booked into the Hong Kong Hotel. But Morès was not interviewed by any diligent reporter and we have, therefore, no contemporary description of the Marquis' personality or of his bearing and appearance in Hong Kong.*\n\nBoth Mayréna and Morès visited Government House, though not on the same occasions. Morès was invited to dine with the Des Voeux because they knew the Marquis's father, the Duke of Vallombrosa,* and had visited him in 1866 and 1872 at his villa 'des Tours' in Nice. Morès brought a letter of introduction from his father. Des Voeux states that he knew nothing of his extraordinary past, which is now so notorious that it is unnecessary to refer to it. At the time of his arrival my house was full, and so I was unable to ask him to stay with us, as I should certainly have done otherwise in memory of hospitality received from his family. But he dined with us several times, and we found him to be decidedly clever, and, I am bound to say, as agreeable and amusing as he was good-looking. His experiences, however, had been of such a wild nature that I was not altogether sorry for the accident which caused him to be a guest at an hotel instead of Government House.10\n\nMayréna's audience with Des Voeux took place on 15 November, the day after he landed in Hong Kong. We know that Mayréna had contrived the meeting and that Des Voeux was curious to see this strange visitant from pagan Sedang, a country about which nothing was then known in Hong Kong. This is confirmed by Des Voeux himself who states that Mayréna had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206966, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n31\n\nwritten his name in the visitor's book at Government House as 'Marie, Roi des Sedangs', and that hearing he was an educated man, who had brought with him respectable references, I was somewhat curious to see him, and I therefore caused him to be informed that while I was unable to acknowledge as King one who had not been recognised as such by Her Majesty, I should be happy to receive him, if he called as a private person. He adopted my suggestion, and as I found him interesting, I asked him to dinner by the name of Mons. de Mayréna. He came in a magnificent uniform, of unknown design; but as no impertinent inquiries on the subject were addressed to him, I never learnt to what corps or position it belonged.11 Mayréna's uniform—a Ruritanian, musical comedy type of costume—had been designed by the King himself and would have delighted Nathan, the famous theatrical costumier of Drury Lane. With this bizarre outfit Mayréna sported a long Annamite sword worn in a sash, Sedang style.\n\nA day or two after their meeting, Mayréna sent Des Voeux an award—a magnificently engraved diploma of the Grand Cordon de l'Ordre de Sedang. Des Voeux claims, of course, this was at once returned with my appreciative thanks, coupled with an intimation that English officers were not permitted to accept foreign orders except with the special sanction of Her Majesty. I saw nothing more of this gentleman afterwards.1 Des Voeux in any case would have seen little of Mayréna because on 27 November Des Voeux, together with his family, left for a shooting trip to Shanghai and did not return until 18 December. By then Mayréna's star had dimmed and discreditable rumours were beginning to circulate about him, fanned by comments in the China Mail. Des Voeux, a careful man, did not write very much about Mayréna, but it is clear that hidden under the regal plumage he detected a louche adventurer, a royal Raffles all too inclined to pocket the silver spoons at Government House. Des Voeux, who was a great snob,1 doubtless also felt Mayréna was only every other inch a gentleman.\n\nThe speed with which Mayréna approached Des Voeux demands little explanation. Mayréna was indeed an adventurer and time was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206967, "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": 38, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "32 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nnot on his side. He had come to Hong Kong with an express aim - to obtain cash. His design was to persuade Hong Kong merchants to invest heavily in the exploitation of the territory he claimed to rule as soi-disant King of the Sedangs, a title he had assumed in June 1888 with the passive assent of an innocent montagnard people. There were rich men in Hong Kong - speculators, gamblers, risk-takers - and Mayréna hoped to interest them in the mineral wealth and natural products of his new kingdom. Thus he assumed that meeting Sir William and Lady Des Voeux at Government House would vouch for his respectability and provide an entrée into the social enclosure of the rich European merchant class. \n\nMorès, on the other hand, had no such motivation. He was in Hong Kong with William Van Driesche, and an engineer, a M. Thorel, en route for Tonkin. His visit to Hong Kong was an accident. The Calédonien, the ship he boarded at Marseilles, berthed at Saigon and Hong Kong but not at Haiphong, so Morès was forced to travel on to Hong Kong and transfer to another ship for Haiphong, the entry port for Hanoi and the Red River basin. He was in a hurry and bent on business. Hence he stayed in Hong Kong for only a week, leaving on 29 November by the small German steamer, the Clara. It was during this week that the alleged duel between the two adventurers took place; but to explain why they had both wandered into the East and why they clashed, we must first examine their previous careers. \n\nMarie-Charles David de Mayréna16 \n\nThe future King of the Sedangs was born into a bourgeois milieu at Toulon on 31 January, 1842. His father was a commander in the French navy, who died when Mayréna was a child so that he was reared entirely by a complaisant mother. He failed his examinations for the Ecole navale in 1857 but joined the Sixth Dragoons in 1859, transferring to the Spahis de Cochinchine in 1863. He served in Indo-China until 1868, when he resigned and returned to France. His career so far had been unremarkable. \n\nThe next year he married a colonel's daughter; but little is known about the marriage and it seems likely that they soon separated or divorced. Mayréna was a great womaniser. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and he was recalled to the colours and procured the rank of captain. In February 1871 he was awarded the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206969, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "34 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nMayréna was joined by Father Guerlach, a missionary who had lived in the Moï region for many years and spoke several local dialects. On 3 June 1888, the members of the confederation accepted a constitution drawn up by Mayréna, which made him king. It is suggested by Marcel Ner1 and other scholars that Mayréna owed much of his success to his skill at prestidigitation, for the Moï were extremely superstitious and accepted his tricks as a sign of moral excellence and divinity. \n\nMayréna by a surprising turn of fortune had become Marie, King of the Sedangs. The new kingdom was named after the Sedangs simply because this tribe formed the most populous element in the confederation of Moï tribesmen. He made Mercurol, the middle-aged, malaria-riddled adventurer from Saigon, the Marquis of Henoui, and created a number of orders of chivalry. His most fanciful creation was the Order of Merit pour récompenser les lettres, les arts, les sciences, l'industrie et le dévouement à la maison royale. It is difficult to understand for whom this order was intended since the Sedangs were totally illiterate. His Annamite mistress—Ahnaïa20—became Queen of the Sedangs, but although the official religion of the kingdom was now Catholicism, the young Ahnaïa resolutely refused to give up her pagan practices, much to the disgust of the missionaries who had foregathered at Mayréna's capital, Kon-Djeri, where the royal palace was a primitive hut above which, however, the royal standard fluttered. \n\nMayréna led his warriors into several campaigns against recalcitrant tribes with varying success; but his real problem was not one of warfare but of money. He lacked the means to live in the style which he now felt was his due. It was the search, therefore, for financial support which led him to Hanoi and Haiphong and in November 1888 to Hong Kong. \n\nThe Marquis de Morès21 \n\nAntoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent-Manca de Vallombrosa, marquis de Morès et de Monte-Maggiore, was born in Paris in 1858. Unlike Mayréna, he was of noble blood. His ancestors, the Spanish Mancas, had been granted feudal estates in Sardinia in the fourteenth century. The family remained based in Sardinia until the early nineteenth century when the Marquis' grandfather settled in France. Morès received the conventional education of one of his class; he was first tutored by an abbé, then sent to the Catholic", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206972, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n37\n\nVicar Apostolic, Bishop Raimondi, and the heads of the various Catholic missions and organisations. He attended mass daily at the new Catholic Cathedral in Caine Road. But he drew a blank: no Catholic institution was prepared to finance any of his schemes. He now threw away his mask of piety, doubtless with great relief, and settled down to enjoy himself and to gull another class of person. He soon installed a mistress in a rented house in Lyndhurst Terrace, loaded her with gimcrack jewellery and dresses from Gate and Fairall, the milliners of Queen's Road, and hired for her a sedan chair, complete with liveried chair-bearers. She appeared with the King on sundry royal occasions at the Hong Kong Hotel.\n\nIt is difficult to identify Mayréna's 'consort'. Soulié asserts that she was a Miss Dahlberg,25 who had accompanied her brother and Mayréna to Hong Kong on the Frejr, and that Mayréna met this blonde Swedish ice-maiden in 1888 at Bangkok, where she was engaged apparently in archaeological exploration; but other writers suggest Mayréna's new mistress was a lady from an Italian Opera Company touring in the East,26 which arrived in Hong Kong in late 1888. The latter seems the more plausible account, for at that time European opera singers and ballet dancers were often accommodating ladies who desired nothing better than to be set up in state by some rich protector. Whoever she was, all witnesses agree that the \"Queen of the Sedangs' in Hong Kong was a most voluptuous demi-mondaine and that she fascinated the topers of the Hong Kong Hotel and the other hostelries that Mayréna frequented.\n\nMuch of Mayréna's roistering was done necessarily at the Hotel, since he could obtain credit and simply await the chits at the end of the month, and in its hospitable bar he met many kindred spirits, such as the atrabilious, scandal-mongering Robert Fraser-Smith,27 proprietor of the Hong Kong Telegraph, and also John Joseph Francis, Q.C.,28 Hong Kong's leading barrister and noted Irish tippler.\n\nBy 1888 the Hong Kong Hotel, established in 1860, had become Hong Kong's social centre. One author claims it was ‘rightly termed the heart of the Colony, for it is one great social rendezvous for dinners, teas, dances, and is probably the most noteworthy meeting place in the Orient'.29 'Proteus', in the Hong Kong Telegraph, supplies this description of its grandeur:\n\nAfter a shower-bath and a change of clothes in our room—and all the rooms in the hotel are on the same scale of loftiness and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206974, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n39\n\ntic, sly campaign that gradually revealed Mayréna's shady past. Bain at first simply published extracts about Mayréna from the Courrier d'Haiphong and other sources. On 24 December the Mail reported that there was a rumour in town that M. de Mayrénna (sic) King of the Sedangs, has placed his country under a German protectorate We can scarcely believe the report, although the king does not seem to be consumed with a desire to speedily revisit his new found subjects, and might not regret if he were pensioned and the very heavy responsibilities of Kingship taken off his shoulders'. On 26 December two columns were again published on Mayréna and this time the Mail quoted from an article by Father Guerlach in the Courrier, which made clear that the Mission had been swindled by Mayréna and that he was appallingly dishonest.\n\nThe attacks upon Mayréna's integrity by Bain did not go unchallenged. The King was defended with magnificent pomposity by Fraser-Smith, editor of the Telegraph. The rival editors excoriated each other's opinions with a ludicrous solemnity, reminiscent of the pen-and-ink duels fought daily by Mr. Pott and Mr. Slurk at the time of the Eatanswill election in Pickwick Papers. Father Guerlach's disclosures, for example, were dismissed by Fraser-Smith in these words: 'like most missionary utterances, this one breathes hatred and uncharitableness throughout, and on that account loses any influence on the impartial reader',35\n\nOn 14 January Bain further disclosed that there were 'warrants out for the arrest of the \"King of the Sedangs\" should he touch French territory. He is accused of having declared himself King of a country under French protection; and for one or two other reasons our local monarch would find Saigon an extremely hot place if he returned there'. The next day Bain reported that another letter from Father Guerlach had been published in the Courrier and ‘the charge therein made against the \"King of the Sedangs\" is of so serious a character that we hesitate to translate it, not being in a position to verify the statement. We may say, however, that the letter contains a warning against placing reliance on a letter of credit for 200,000 frs, purporting to be signed by Monseigneur Van Camelbecke, Bishop of Quinhon, no such letter having been written or signed by the Bishop.'\n\nOn 7 January 1889 the Mail published a long editorial entitled \"The King of the Sedangs-Some Interesting Revelations', in which\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206975, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "40 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nMayréna's reputation was totally destroyed: \"The \"King of the Sedangs\", in truth, seems to have followed the example of a brother \"King\" of French origin, who after establishing a Kingdom in a district on the borders of French Guiana, ended an illustrious career in the inside of a French prison. Of course we do not say that the denouement will be the same in this case.' But it was clear to the readers of the Mail that the editor thought that Mayréna was jail material. \n\nBy the beginning of the year 1889 it became clear to Mayréna that nothing more was to be gained by staying in Hong Kong. His overtures to the German Consul in Hong Kong and to his colleague at Canton had borne no fruit. Although he offered to put his kingdom under the protection of the German Emperor, his offer was rejected. He decided—there was no other option—to return to Europe and seek support from financial circles there. On 20 January 1889 the King of the Sedangs left Hong Kong for Genoa by the German steamer Bayern, travelling as a second-class passenger and under the pseudonym of ‘le comte de Drey'.36 \n\nMayréna's exit from Hong Kong was in sharp contrast to his triumphal embarkation at Haiphong in November 1888. Then the royal standard of the King of the Sedangs fluttered above the Frejr and the deferential Captain Lund had greeted him as 'Votre Majesté' and all had been bowing and scraping by a perspiring crew. Nevertheless, Mayréna left Hong Kong in 1889 with some panache. Many friends and well-wishers were at the waterfront to see the popular King go, although no band played, no royal standard adorned the Bayern, and no representative of Sir William Des Voeux was present. Mayréna looked very much a king in exile; among the throng many, like Fraser-Smith and J.J. Francis, were truly sorry to see their old drinking companion go. \n\nMayréna's departure from Hong Kong was greeted by a jubilant article in the Mail, which began: 'Another King has gone into exile. M. de Mayréna, a Frenchman who arrived here about two months ago with a flourish of trumpets, telling a story of adventures worthy of ranking with 1001 in the Arabian Nights, quietly left Hong Kong, we believe, by the Bayern, for Genoa, on Sunday morning'. The writer continued: 'We need scarcely say that in publishing the revelations which put an end to his schemes in Hong Kong we were actuated solely by a desire for the public interest \n\nAs,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206976, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n41\n\nhowever, he was attempting to start a company with the professed intention of working his new-found country, we thought it our duty to let Hong Kong know both sides of the story of his adventures. Even supposing the adventurer's conduct to have been straight, we can scarcely conceive how any speculators in Hong Kong could be induced to embark in such an enterprise. Meantime for a\n\nHong Kong Company to think of opening up trade with such an inaccessible country as the Sedangs is the most Quixotic project that has ever been mooted in Hong Kong.\"37\n\nThe next day the vitriolic but loyal Fraser-Smith dashed into print to defend the departed King in a long diatribe against the Mail. The article, as a good specimen of Hong Kong journalism at the time, should be quoted from in extenso:\n\nThe article in last night's China Mail regarding M. de Mayréna the King of the Sedangs, is like the former attacks made by this religious journal on that gentleman, a tissue of barefaced falsehoods, published out of sheer malice. “Another King\" has not gone into exile, as the gutter scribe of the China Mail gleefully records. M. de Mayréna has gone to Paris to assert his rights, and where he will have some chance of obtaining fair play and justice. With his influential connections in the French capital, there seems no reason to doubt that his position and claims will be fully vindicated. And when he does return to this colony, which will probably be in about four months' time, the cowardly libeller of the China Mail will summarily be called to account. We should do it with a strong horsewhip; M. de Mayréna will take criminal proceedings for defamatory libel. As we have already indicated, our contemporary's latest attack on the King of the Sedangs—prudently made after that gentleman had left the colony—bristles with inaccuracies and ignorance. The writer is as weak in his geography as he is reckless in his alleged facts. He does not even know where the Sedangs country is. The \"one reader\" of the China Mail is assured that if the cruiser Filipinas had been purchased by the King \"it could never have even reached the country unless it was transported overland.\" The Mekong, by far the largest and most important river in Indo-China, runs right through the Sedangs country, dividing it from Siam, and is navigable beyond Stung Treg, the chief town in Sedangs. It is further untrue, as affirmed by the China Mail, that M. de Mayréna attempted \"to start a company in this co-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206977, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "42 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nlong with the proposed intention of working his new-found country.\" He merely wished to form a syndicate to prospect the country, and agreed if their report was favourable to grant certain concessions. And the China Mail writer ought to know, since he claims to have taken so much interest in the King's personal affairs as not to be ashamed to pry into his private life, who he took to supper, and other details which only a hypocritical Pharisee and blackguard of the deepest dye would have had the audacity to set out in print, that the syndicate in question had been duly formed and the agreement signed. Had M. de Mayréna been the adventurer and swindler he has been called by the China Mail he would have surely tried to raise money by his promised concessions but he made no such attempt. He asked for nothing until his bona fides had been clearly established and the enterprise he proposed was thoroughly tested and shown to be genuine. That he may have acted foolishly in some respects during his stay in Hong Kong is probable enough, but we doubt if the China Mail's self-constituted censor is so immaculate a being that he can afford to throw mud at an erring brother. The China Mail oracle says he cannot conceive, even supposing M. de Mayréna's conduct to have been perfectly straight, how any speculators in Hong Kong could have been induced to embark in such an enterprise. That merely proves poverty of conception and further shows that the writer knows nothing whatever about the subject which he pretends to elucidate for the benefit of the public.38 \n\nIt is at first sight difficult to understand why Bain and Fraser-Smith attacked each other with such rancour, but a clue is provided by the following comment in the Mail: 'Imitating the example of the old Kings of France, the King of the Sedangs showed a remarkable affection for literature; and, one night, when the \"flow of soul” was especially strong, he knighted the whole staff of a local newspaper which had kindly taken to espouse his cause.39 The newspaper was of course the Telegraph, which had a staff of five Europeans in 1888. The journalists of the Telegraph, all of whom had suddenly become 'chevaliers' of the Kingdom of Sedang, no doubt swelled up with pride at their elevation and infuriated the puritanical Bain by their airs. \n\nThere is a pendant to the story of Mayréna's odyssey in Hong Kong. In Sir Hugh Clifford's words:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206979, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "44 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nWhy did they fight? Again we cannot say; but it would seem sensible to suggest that Morès, a true-blue aristocrat, was antagonised by the monarchical pretensions of the bourgeois Mayréna, who had by his bogus elevation, leap-frogged over the Marquis to out-point him as King. \n\nThere is, finally, the further possibility that Mayréna had put the story of a duel about as a form of self-advertisement, designed to clarify the ambiguities of his status, to signal that he was a proper gentleman, for only 'gentlemen', not the commonalty, were permitted to engage in the duel by caste-conscious European society. But I think we should accept Des Voeux' implication, for as Governor he was likely to be well informed about what was really happening in the town. \n\nLast Adventures \n\nOn his return to Europe Mayréna stayed first of all at the Grand Hotel in Paris under the name of the Comte de Drey. He then opened a small legation in the Rue de Grammont. He was seen frequently on the boulevards and in the fashionable cafes and was interviewed by several noted journalists, including the feuilletoniste Alfred Capus.43 He survived by selling decorations and orders at the Café de Paris, at Weber's, and even at the Rat Mort and the Moulin Rouge, where one evening the singer Maurice Mac-Nab44 and the musician Charles de Sivry composed a national anthem for the Sedangs, an anthem that is unique in that its music is reminiscent of the can-can. But the big prize eluded Mayréna in Paris: he could not find a rich backer. In April 1899 he abandoned that city for Brussels. \n\nHere at last he found an appropriate victim. He met a rich Belgian industrialist, besotted by titles, who desperately sought ennoblement. The obliging Mayréna granted his wish. As King of the Sedangs, Mayréna conferred upon the industrialist the Order of Sainte-Marguerite and the title of Baron and gave him a slice of territory, at least on paper, for his new barony. The industrialist declared he would finance the King's return from exile. \n\nOn 15 January 1890 the 600 ton yacht, the Sachsen, moored to the quay at Antwerp, was about to sail for Indo-China. The royal standard of the King of the Sedangs—rows of daisies on a blue background—was raised expectantly. A choir sang the Hymn of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 206981, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "46 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nOn the island Mayréna lived alone in a shack with a French poodle. He did not collect birds' nests, a task he left to his fellow European, but the feathers of birds of paradise. It seems that he took another 'wife—the twelve-year-old daughter of a local village chief. But he soon began to suffer acutely from paranoia, barricading and fortifying his shack and interrogating at the point of a rifle all who approached. He also suffered from delusions; he walked around gesticulating and talking to himself. He was now more than a 'king in exile', he was a 'mad king'. \n\nFor Mayréna's last days we must rely on the testimony of J.F. Owen,46 the Collector of Kuala Rompin on the mainland, who visited Tioman and made friends with Mayréna. In November 1890 Mayréna visited Owen at Kuala Rompin. The morning after he drew up his will, and executed it formally in the presence of Owen, who was a magistrate. Then he called Auguste, his poodle, and set forth for a stroll along a jungle path. Soon he returned in great pain and claimed to have been bitten by a poisonous snake. He died soon afterwards in the presence of Owen. He was buried, Lineham states, at Kampong Jawa on the Rompin and his grave was marked by a plain block of chengal wood.47 There was no inscription. ‘But if you chance to visit Tioman', Sir Hugh Clifford writes, \"the natives of the place will point out to you a number of strange-looking quadrupeds, half-pariah, half-poodle, and with pride will inform you that these are \"ânjing pranchis\" (French dogs); and these uncouth descendants of the well-beloved and redoubtable Auguste are the only traces left upon this little fairy island marking it as the erstwhile refuge of Marie David de Mayréna, Comte de Ray (sic), and King of the Sedangs'.48 \n\nThe Marquis de Morès' nirvana was as strange as Mayréna's. Back in Paris he discovered that he could not go ahead with his scheme to construct a railroad in Tongking because of opposition from Ernest Constans, Minister of the Interior, who had just driven from France another ambitious soldier who, too, had left the French army. This was the sentimental General Boulanger, who was later to commit suicide over his mistress's grave at Brussels. Morès, as a result of what he felt was a personal conspiracy against him, became an implacable enemy not only of Constans but of the regime, the Third Republic, that Constans served. He had also become an anti-semite, principally because of his experiences with the Jews in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206985, "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": 56, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "H. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nEuropean expansion and domination that ended in 1914 provided a more richly fertile environment for this social type. Adventurers do not compose a social group held together by common beliefs or ideology like anarchists, bolsheviks or suffragettes; rather they are supreme individualists and their individualism and egomania asserts itself most brutally in periods of rapid social change, in periods of social dislocation, fluid social boundaries, disorder and political ambiguity. Adventurers surface in greater numbers, then, under particular social conditions; they can impose their will, in the short run at least, by force, bluff, imposture or sheer physical courage,56 either because their social audience is credulous or because their victims desire victimisation, as a martyr seeks martyrdom; for the need to be dominated is as strong sometimes as the urge to dominate. Domination means accepting constraints, and constraint may bring a measure of psychic security and peace.\n\nSouth-East Asia, Central and South America, the Wild West and the Pacific, all provided an ideal terrain for the adventurers' individual obsessions, whether it was the pursuit of power, wealth, status, excitement, luxury or sensuality. And these were areas, of course, where the white man increasingly exercised control, by means of his advanced technology and dominant culture. Mayréna in the land of the Moï and Morès in the Bad Lands of North Dakota, a frontier area only recently cleared of Sioux, lived outpost lives on the margin of civilisation—one became, briefly, the King of the Sedangs, the other, likewise, the Emperor of the Bad Lands. Conditions in these places were perfect for the seigneurial role they sought to play. Such conditions would not be found easily today.\n\nAt this time, two other factors favoured the adventurer class: respect for titles and poor communications. Mayréna succeeded in making dupes of several influential and wealthy persons because they were deeply impressed by his assumed rank—the 'King of the Sedangs' or 'le comte de Drey'. Morès was a nobleman and a grand seigneur by birth; the fact that his name and that of his noble house could be found enshrined in print in the Almanach de Gotha seduced people of lesser rank. The European bourgeoisie achieved economic and a larger degree of political power in the nineteenth century; this parvenu class, ostensibly resentful of social distinctions was, on the other hand, often mesmerised by titles of any kind. This was true even in democratic America: the shady thespians who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206987, "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": 58, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "52 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nThe blue-eyed conqueror was also a sexual conqueror, as this poem intimates; Mayréna, unlike the monogamous Morès, had a superfluity of mistresses; since the Sedangs practised polygamy he felt justified in acquiring a large number of women, though it must be added, usually in serial form. \n\nBut a deeper motive attracted Europeans to what was then thought of as the uncivilised portions of the world, a motive that would explain Mayréna's various fugues: this was a quest for redemption, for the acquisition of a new identity, one cleansed of accumulated filth from the past. The adventurer, in this case, is a swimmer who leaves his clothes on the shore and strikes out through lustral waters toward a further island—a new destiny. \n\nArthur Rimbaud, with his adolescent precocity, affirmed ‘Ma journée est faite; je quitte l'Europe Je reviendrai, avec des membres de fer, la peau sombre, l'oeil furieux: sur mon masque, on me jugera d'une race forte. J'aurai de l'or: je serai oisif et brutal.\"59 In these lines the ambitions of Mayréna and Morès are summarised,60", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206988, "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": 59, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n53\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Sir William Des Voeux, My Colonial Service, 2 vols., London 1903. Sir Frederick Lugard, Governor of Hong Kong 1907-1912, also found that 'entertaining was an essential part of governing. Hong Kong Government House was used as a high-class hotel, restaurant and sports club by many of the hundreds of passengers who left their ships to write their names in the Governor's book...socially more exacting were the many distinguished foreigners and Eastern potentates-Chinese and Japanese princes, Indian Rajahs, the Governor of the neighbouring Portuguese Macao, foreign admirals who had to be visited in their warships and later entertained in turn at Government House; ambassadors en route to or from Tokyo or Peking, and many lesser functionaries.' See Margery Perham, Lugard, vol. 2, London, 1960, p. 289.\n\n2 My Colonial Service, vol. 2, p. 234. Sir William Des Voeux (1834-1909) was Governor of Hong Kong from 1887 to 1891, in which year he retired from the colonial service.\n\n3 14 November, 1888.\n\n4 15 November, 1888.\n\n5 16 November, 1888.\n\n6 22 November, 1888.\n\n7 William Van Driesche was the third generation of his family to serve the Morèses. The children used to call him Mr. Willie.\n\n8 There are several photographs of Morès in Donald Dresden, The Marquis de Morès: Emperor of the Bad Lands, Norman, Oklahoma, 1970, and in Charles Droulers, Le Marquis de Morès 1858-1896, Paris, 1932. Morès was six-feet tall, lithe, ramrod-straight, muscular, with a needle-pointed waxed black moustache. He looked every inch a d'Artagnan.\n\n9 Richard Manca, Duke of Vallombrosa, born 1834, married the daughter of the Duke Des Cars, conqueror of Algeria. He had three children, of whom Morès was the eldest.\n\n10 Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 234.\n\n11 Ibid., p. 235.\n\n12 Ibid., p. 235.\n\n13 The Hong Kong Daily Press, 24 November, 1888. The Governor was accompanied on his trip by his wife, young daughter, and James Russell, the Chief Justice. The Colonial Secretary, Frederick Stewart, administered the government in Des Voeux's absence.\n\n14 The China Mail (1845-1911) was edited by George Murray Bain from 1879 until 1908(?).\n\n15 It is not surprising that Des Voeux took a great interest in his betters since promotion in the colonial service in the nineteenth century depended to a large degree on knowing people in high places.\n\n16 No full-scale study of Mayréna has been published as yet; the best book is probably Jean Marquet, Un Aventurier du XIXe siècle: Marie Jer, roi des Sedangs, 1888-1890. Hanoi, 1927; but Maurice Soulié, Marie Jer, roi des Sédangs, 1888-1890, Paris 1927, is amusing though really une vie romancée. The most penetrating essay on Mayréna is that by Marcel Ner, 'Marie Ier, roi des Sedangs: essai sur la psychologie de l'aventure”, Extrême-Asie, Revue Indochinoise (Hanoi), no. 21, March 1928, pp. 397-407 and no. 22, April 1928, pp. 491-498. There are many references to Mayréna", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206989, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "54\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nin André Malraux, Antimémoires. Paris, 1967, pp. 375-473. There is a short biography in Roman d'Amat and R. Limouzin-Lamothe, eds., Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, Paris, 1965.\n\n17 Souvenirs de Cochinchine par Ch. David de Mayréna, Capitaine d'État-Major, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur... Toulon, J. Laurent, 1871.\n\n18 See Marcel Ner, 'Marie Ier Roi des Sedangs', Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient (Hanoi), Vol. 27, 1927, p. 316.\n\n19 Ibid., p. 333.\n\n20 Ahnaja, Mayréna's consort, died of tuberculosis in late 1888. She had followed Mayréna from Saigon but they were never legally married.\n\n21 There are many studies of Morès, but most are written from a French nationalist point of view: see, for example, Baron Charles de Donos, Morès: Sa vie, sa mort, Paris, 1899; Auguste Pavy, L'Expédition de Morès, Paris 1897; Félicien Pascal, L'Assassinat de Morès, un crime d'État, Paris, 1902; Jules Delahaye, Les Assassins et les vengeurs de Morès, 3 vols., Paris, 1905-1907; Pierre Frondaie, L'Assassinat du marquis de Morès, Paris, 1934. Of great interest are chapters on Morès in Maurice Barrès, Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme, Paris, 1902, and in Georges Bernanos, La Grande peur des bien-pensants, Paris, 1931. For details on the family see Almanach de Gotha, Gotha, 1890, pp. 390-91. Robert F. Byrnes, Antisemitism in Modern France, vol. 1, New Brunswick, NJ., 1950, contains many illuminating insights into Morès' political career. The most modern study is Donald Dresden's The Marquis de Morès: Emperor of the Bad Lands, 1970, which is particularly good on Morès's adventures in the Far West.\n\n22 One of his fellow cadets was Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), who later became the head of the Vichy Government. Another was the saintly Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), a missionary in the Sahara.\n\n23 His full name is given in the New York Times Obituary Index as Louis A. von Baron Hoffmann. He died in 1909. His daughter's name, Medora, was probably taken from Byron's poem 'The Corsair'.\n\n24 See Russell Reid, 'The De Morès Historical Site', North Dakota Historical Quarterly, vol. 8, 1941, pp. 272-83. In 1963 Louis Vallombrosa, the Marquis' eldest son, presented the château and the surrounding grounds to the State of North Dakota.\n\n25 See Maurice Soulié, Marie Ier, roi des Sédangs, 1888-1890, Paris, 1927, pp. 122-6. Mlle Dahlberg was supposed to be studying Siamese monuments in Bangkok but she was probably in the pay of the Germans who had recently discovered an interest in the region. Her brother was ostensibly a trader at Haiphong but really engaged in the smuggling of contraband goods.\n\n26 A tour of the East was often a risky venture. Many companies went broke and singers and actresses left penniless and hence vulnerable as a consequence. See, for example, Conrad's novel Victory and Somerset Maugham's story 'Flotsam and Jetsam' for fictional but accurate accounts of the lives of distressed European actresses in the East.\n\n27 Robert Fraser-Smith founded the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1881. He was also its editor and publisher until his death in 1895. The paper was edited from 6 Pedder's Hill and Fraser-Smith employed a staff of about four Europeans, usually Scotsmen, as reporters. As J. S. Thomson in The Chinese (London, 1909) writes: \"The newspapers of the Treaty Ports are generally set up by the Macaense (sic) and edited by Scotchmen\". Fraser-Smith was constantly involved in libel actions and in 1890 was sentenced to six months imprisonment for libelling J. Minhinett, a foreman in the Public Works Department, by suggesting he had committed rape. He did\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "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 } ]