[
    {
        "id": 206880,
        "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-1973",
        "page_number": 157,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nWILLIAM THOMAS MERCER (1822-1879):\n\nHONG KONG'S POET LAUREATE?\n\n151\n\nHong Kong, a city dedicated principally to the acquisition of wealth, has produced few, if any, English writers of quality. But it did provide a home for over twenty years for a poetaster deserving of a niche in D.B. Wyndham Lewis's anthology of bad verse, The Stuffed Owl? This colonial versifier was William Thomas Mercer, who arrived in Hong Kong in 1844 as Private Secretary to his uncle, Sir John Davis, Governor of Hong Kong, became Colonial Secretary in 1854 and remained thereafter the chief executive officer of the Colony until retirement on pension in 1867, being then only forty-five years of age.3\n\n4\n\nIn 1869 Mercer appeared on the London literary scene as the author of Under the Peak; or, Jottings in Verse, written during a lengthened residence in the Colony of Hong Kong. This book, an octavo volume of 305 pages, was published in London by John Camden Hotten of 15lb Piccadilly. That Hotten published Mercer's innocuous poems is surprising. That Mercer should have entrusted his precious verses to such a man is even more startling. Hotten, a speculative and disreputable publisher, in 1866 took over the publication of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads after the original publisher, Moxon, had withdrawn, frightened by the clamour that arose over Swinburne's 'fleshly' poems. Hotten, who died in 1873 of 'a surfeit of pork chops', was in his day a notorious publisher of erotica and facetiae. His list included not only Swinburne and, in 1869, the 'unfleshly' Mercer, but such works as Aphrodisiacs and Anti-Aphrodisiacs and A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus. Mercer, who was described by Sir Richard Macdonnell as 'a gentlemanly, scholarly person', was in Hotten's list keeping decidedly curious company.\n\n5\n\nIt seems likely, however, that Mercer paid for the cost of publication of Under the Peak, for Hotten was a shrewd businessman and not likely to invest his own money in such a humdrum and tame book. Mercer had, in fact, done this before. In 1867, soon after his return from Hong Kong, he had put out at his own expense Addresses presented to W.T.M., recently Acting Governor of Hong Kong; with services, testimonials, etc., a eulogistic volume prompted by pique at failure to obtain a colonial governorship.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206882,
        "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-1973",
        "page_number": 159,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n153\n\nFor once Hotten had backed a loser with the publication of Under the Peak; certainly no further edition or impression was called for by a panting public. We do not know whether Mercer continued to write verses until his death at Reading on 23 May, 1879, but it seems likely for Mercer had all the enthusiasm of the bad poet.11\n\nNOTES\n\n1 One would like to cite P. G. Wodehouse, the son of H. E. Wodehouse, a Hong Kong Cadet Officer; but P. G. Wodehouse was born at Guildford, Surrey, and did not spend much time in Hong Kong. After leaving Dulwich College he worked for two years at the London branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.\n\n2 London, 1930.\n\n3 For biographical information on Mercer see particularly G. B. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-Book of Early Hong Kong, Singapore, 1962, pp. 79-83. J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, 2 vols., Hong Kong, 1898, provides many details about Mercer's official career.\n\n4 For information on Hotten see especially Ronald Pearsall, The Worm in the Bud, London, 1969, pp. 387-90; and Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians, New York, 1966, pp. 68-75. Hotten was born in Clerkenwell, London, and showed an early interest in books and bookshops and achieved the dubious distinction of having been struck in a bookshop by the irate historian Macaulay. In 1848 Hotten went to America and there acquired a good knowledge of American literature. On his return to London he published the works of a number of American authors, including Bret Harte's 'heathen Chinee' poems.\n\n5 An account of Swinburne's dealings with Payne of Moxon's is given in Humphrey Hare's Swinburne, London, 1949, pp. 109-134.\n\n6 Written by Richard Payne Knight in 1786 but reprinted by Hotten in 1865.\n\n7 Written by John Davenport and published in 1873. In 1872 Hotten reprinted seven works on flagellation alone.\n\n* Copies of both Under the Peak and Addresses are in the British Museum. The Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, has a copy of Under the Peak, now a very scarce book.\n\n9 p. 4. 10 p. 6.\n\n11 Several cadets maintained their interest in classical studies after reaching Hong Kong, notably (later Sir) Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). In 1911 Clementi published his translation, with apparatus criticus and explanatory notes, of the Pervigilium Veneris. In a preface to a later edition of this work, published by B. H. Blackwell of Oxford (3rd edition, 1936), Clementi tells us that he worked on his manuscript in Hong Kong and during periods of leave in England and Europe.\n\nHong Kong, March, 1973.\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214337,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 195,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "159\n\nhome and the work and pleasure of establishing common cause with fellow men and women in the whole of China could progress on a less awkward foundation.\n\n(0)\n\n(2)\n\n(3)\n\nNOTES\n\nIllustrations from the Illustrated London News are reproduced by permission of The British Library, shelfmark PP7611(42).\n\nThe following convention is used: when \"[]\" appears within a quotation, this represents that the present writer has either added letters or words missing in her copy of the original, or has supplied an explanatory comment.\n\nThe author is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University, and author of The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), published by the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, 4 Renfrew Road, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, 1997. ISBN: 962-8027-08-5.\n\nEducated in the United Kingdom, she has previously taught English Literature at the University of Lagos, Nigeria (she was there during the Civil War), the University of Hong Kong, and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has worked for Longman University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has worked for Longman Far East as an English-language editor, and she is an occasional freelance writer and journalist. She was briefly an Assistant Mistress at St Stephen's Girls' College, Hong Kong. Previous publications include articles, papers, presentations, and reviews on George Orwell, Leonard Woolf, Lafcadio Hearn, A. C. Swinburne, African Literature in English, New Zealand poetry, and numerous contributions on education in Hong Kong, with a particular focus on the creation of the Government education system under Frederick Stewart, the contributions of the first Anglican Bishop of Hong Kong, George Smith, language policy and standards from 1841 up to date, expatriate teachers, the learning of Chinese by non-Chinese, and the training and supply of translators in early Hong Kong. She has published a Bibliography of Hong Kong creative writing in English. Her entry on Frederick Stewart, commissioned by the New Dictionary of National Biography, has been accepted, and she has now been commissioned to write a revised entry on Bishop Smith, first Anglican Bishop of Victoria (who was the first Warden of St Paul's College, and based in Hong Kong).\n\nShe is married to Dr Verner Bickley, MBE, formerly Assistant Director of Education and founding Director of the Institute of Language in Education in Hong Kong (now absorbed into the Hong Kong Institute of Education).\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]