RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241
NOTES AND QUERIES

THE J.O.P. BLAND PAPERS

Introduction

One day in September 1967, I received, quite out of the blue, a letter from my former commanding officer during the Second World War, Michael St. J. Packe, to say that he had been entrusted with J.O.P. Bland's private papers, with instructions "to find a good home for them," and asking me whether I would like to have them. Before going further, let me explain that Mr. Packe is himself a historian and wrote an excellent biography of J. S. Mill.* We have kept in touch intermittently since we were demobilized from the First Airborne Division (British) at the end of the war, and I have been to visit him at his home on Alderney. This is the really fantastic part of this chain of coincidences. Here was Mr. Packe, living and writing on the little island of Alderney in the Channel Islands while a near neighbour of his was Mrs. Dolores Coombs, an old friend of the Bland family, who had often visited them at their home at Aldburgh in Suffolk. Bland himself died in 1945 and Mrs. Bland in 1953. His private papers were entrusted to his goddaughter, Miss Ailsa Cochrane, who was to act as his literary executor and to try, if possible, to complete the memoirs which he had begun before his death, and to have them published. Before she could achieve much Miss Cochrane became ill and in 1955 her brother sent these papers to Mrs. Coombs who, in turn, was to act as literary executor. Meanwhile Bland's books on China had been given to Trinity College, Dublin. However, a list of these books, preserved among his papers, shows that they amounted to a modest collection without containing anything rare.

Sometime in 1966 Mrs. Coombs was forced by illness to leave Alderney, and it was at this point that she entrusted her friend and neighbour, Michael Packe, with the task of finding a home for these papers. Thus for a period of over twenty years Bland's private papers disappeared from view while two successive literary executors struggled with the task of trying to complete and publish his memoirs. Bland himself, to judge from his instructions to his

* The Life of John Stuart Mill (London: 1954).
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241
182

NOTES AND QUERIES

Another major group of letters consists of correspondence 'out', arranged alphabetically and by date, for the period 1907 - 1935.

A third group consists of correspondence ‘in', arranged in the same way, for the period 1907 - 1945, and includes letters from specialists on Chinese affairs such as Sir Robert Hart, Alfred Hippisley, C. S. Addis, Willard Straight, G. E. Morrison, (The Times correspondent), and Sir John Jordan, as well as letters from various scholars of Chinese history and culture such as H. B. Morse, Henri Cordier, Percival Yetts, Edmund Backhouse and Arthur Waley. This group also contains letters from a variety of literary and political figures, important in their own time, but not specifically connected with China.

7. Nine volumes of pamphlets on China, formerly belonging to Dr. George Jamieson, mainly dating from the period 1836-1898. (A list of titles is available in the Rare Book Department of the University of Toronto Library).

8. Twelve chapters in draft of an autobiography which Bland had started to write before his death. These appear, from a brief perusal, to be somewhat disappointing, mainly social trivia, and were declined by his publishers, William Heinemann.

The Bland Papers are housed in the Rare Book Department of the University of Toronto Library. (Head of Department: Miss M. E. Brown).

One piquant twist of fate. When I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Packe on Alderney in 1951 I apparently met Mrs. Coombs. At that time, however, she was not yet in possession of the Bland papers and I had not yet developed a special interest in modern Chinese history.

University of Toronto, 1969,

Postscript

J. L. CRANMER-BYNG

Does anyone know of the whereabouts of the private papers of Sir Thomas Wade? I am working on his career as British minister in Peking from 1870 until 1882, but so far have failed to find any of his private, as opposed to his public, papers. Is anyone still sitting on them?
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