[
    {
        "id": 206241,
        "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-1971",
        "page_number": 58,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "LETTERS FROM CHINA 1835-36\n\nEditor's note. The extracts that follow from three of the surviving letters of James Calder Stewart are reproduced here with the kind permission of Mrs. Christopher Shorland of Warfield, Berks., through the kind offices of Mrs. David Dunkerley of Hong Kong. Both these ladies are descendants of the Herschel side of the family.\n\nIt has not been possible with the limited research aids available in Hong Kong to ascertain the writer's dates of birth and death or more details of his life. These will have to await my next leave in Britain and will, I hope, form the subject of a later Note.\n\nJames Calder Stewart was the son of Alexander Stewart, D.D., Minister of the Canongate Church, Edinburgh, and his wife, Emilia Calder, daughter of the Revd. Charles Calder of Urquhart. Mrs. Shorland advises that reference to other family letters produces little information about James Stewart. Before going to Canton, where he was apparently in business, he seems to have been in India; a letter written to Sir John Herschel dated L'Epéronnière, 13 October 1837, speaks of his being “still invited to return to India”. According to Mrs. Shorland, an uncle, James Calder, had a business in Calcutta, and it may be presumed that James Stewart found a position with him there. James' brother, Duncan, was also connected with the firm in some capacity. It is likely that Stewart's Canton post was obtained through the Calder connection, or was an extension of the Calder business. Mrs. Shorland states that after his return from China, he was appointed Assistant to the Commissioner of the New Poor Law Bill under Professor Jones 'at not less than £500 per annum'. He married later and had three children.\n\nThe \"Herschel\" mentioned in the letters is Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1791 - 1871), the astronomer, 1st baronet, and only child of Sir William Herschel (1738 - 1832), also famous as an astronomer. Sir John was married to Stewart's sister, Margaret Brodie Stewart (1810-1884). In 1835-36, when the letters were written, and between 1834-1838, Herschel was at the Cape of Good Hope, to which he had gone on a private project to survey the heavens of the Southern Hemisphere.\n\nThe prime interest of the extracts taken from these few letters is the view they give of the life and mind of one of the British merchants resident in Canton and Macau and the restrictions",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206247,
        "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-1971",
        "page_number": 64,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "58\n\nHON EDITOR\n\nit were possible! This is the way to break up the wilderness Knowledge is the only ploughshare for the barren mind — and once the soil is prepared, the truth cannot fail to grow when cast into it. It has half-occurred to me that H. [Herschel] might amuse himself in a dull hour, scribbling a few pages of a Treatise for translation in this Chinese Series is the idea altogether ridiculous? Seriously, then, if it be worth one moment's thought — I can only say that I would make myself personally responsible for the strictest fulfilment here of every wish whatever that H. [Herschel] might express for my guidance in the publication; and there is the highest guarantee for its being turned into the most Classical Chinese pronounceable, in the names of Bridgman and Gutzlaff whose knowledge of the language is quite remarkable and the admiration even of Chinese Scholars. If not in this way, perhaps the Society may have your support or good wishes in some other—I commend it to you very warmly.\n\n**\n\nTO HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW, SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, 26TH JANUARY, 1836.\n\n44\n\nchel.\n\n•\n\n+\n\nI have done nothing meteorological whatever, Hers- All my own meteorological observations have been confined to blowing my\n\nnails on the house-top, like\n\na sparrow or stuffing my “hands\n\ninto my breeches pockets like\n\na crocodile\" — at the grey hour of\n\ndawn each morning; and think that I never experienced any cold so intense. It would be a noble climate at this season, but for the durance vile. How my fancy scampers on these occasions over the wild rocky hills around, that look so provokingly clear and near and dear to view by that unsheathed light! Well—I shall have a spell at Macao by and bye—the Chinese Naples! and shall I not enjoy it!\n\nTO HIS SISTER DATED 30TH NOVEMBER AND 3RD DECEMBER 1836 FROM THE SHIP “ASIA” AT SEA.\n\nHe had been very ill since 6th August with two successive abscesses and internal ruptures of the liver and had been laid",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]