How We Got So Close to a Graham Greene China Book…But Not Quite – Part 1

A while back I speculated on why the great Graham Greene never wrote a book on China – his subject range was so great that it’s hard to imagine China didn’t peak his interest at any point when everywhere from Haiti to Sierra Leone; Vienna to Brighton did – not forgetting of course his Asian masterpiece The Quiet American. In his early career Greene did attempt a play about China (as I noted) but it appears to be lost to posterity. But recently reading Greene’s early memoir of his youth and adolescence, A Sort of Life, he makes two references to his early interest and encounters with China that are worth noting. So first today, the book that first piqued the boy Graham into being fascinated by China.

According to Greene it was Captain Charles Gilson’s The Lost Column – a book, published in 1909, I’m rather ashamed to say I haven’t read. It is all about the Boxer Rebellion, the sieges of Tientsin and Peking and Admiral Seymour’s relief forces. Plenty of daring-do apparently as you might expect but also some local characters including a Mr Wang and the more interesting sounding Jugatai the Tartar.It was a best seller in its day and very popular with young English lads being groomed for Empire.

I’m afraid I don’t know much about Gilson except he wrote quite prolifically for Boy’s Own and Boy’s Adventure type annuals and publications and wrote a number of other novels dealing with Russia and the Orient (The Scarlet Hand for instance is described as an “Oriental tale”). A search on Google will reveal a whole range of titles produced by Gilson with intriguing adventurous titles through to the 1920s. It seems that Gilson did know his China – indeed it seems he did serve with the British portion of the post-Boxer Eight Power Allied Army in Peking and Tientsin. The Lost Column opens on Meadows Road in Tientsin (now Tai’an Dao). There’s plenty of Yellow Peril language though Gilson seems to suggest that the Old China Hands were complacent to miss the rise of the Boxers.

Whatever, the book captivated the young Greene and set him off thinking about China…more tomorrow on his China dreams.