In the 1920s & 1930s Hope Danby was a familiar name in Peking’s “Foreign Colony”. She knew just about everyone who was anyone, edited and proofread many books, and wrote a few of her own too…
Remembering Dulcie Hope Danby
Recently came across a delightful copyof In Charming Peking: A Diary of Seven Days Spent in the Old Chinese Capital by Hope Danby with illustrations by Gladys Mary Havers. It was published and printed in 1930 by the North China Standard, a pro-Japanese English-language newspaper in Peking founded in 1919.
Hope Danby (she was invariably known as just “Hope”) was a prolific writer on Chinese history and archaeology as well as an avid collector of Chinese glassware… which later, after her death, came up for auction and was much praised as a collection.
Exhibition of Chinese Glass. The Hope Danby Collection. David Freedman and John Ayers. Published by S. Marchant & Son., London, 1999.
She was friends with both the diplomat-scholar ETC Werner (see Midnight in Peking) and Edmund Backhouse (and he didn’t have that many!). She wrote Backhouse’s entry for the Dictionary of National Biography and also edited and proofread many of the most famous works of Sinology in the 1930s. These included reviewing and correcting the manuscript for Lewis Arlington and William Lewisohn’s seminal 1935 book, In Search of Old Peking. Lewisohn was obviously appreciative signing a copy to Hope…
To Mrs D Hope Danby for the valuation (sic?) for checking and correcting MS (manuscript) with compliments from LC Arlington, Peiping, 15th July 1935
Dulcie Hope Bertie Danby, nee Smedley, (1889–1981) was born either in Derbyshire or East Manley, New South Wales (sources differ). The family did emigrate to Australia for a time and also lived in Hong Kong, China and Japan in the 1870s. She married Charles Gilbert “Cobbles” Hope Danby (1879–1958), a Yorkshireman who worked as an insurance agent in Asia.
Though In Charming Peking records a mere seven day trip, Hope Danby did eventually live in China, first in Hankow and then Peking. During World War Two, the Danbys remained in China, had two children (Noelle Pixie in 1913 – who died at just 14 – and Charles in 1918). They were briefly interned by the Japanese though repatriated in late 1942. They subsequently lived in Hawkhurst and Tunbridge Wells in Kent.
As well as In Charming Peking Hope Danby published a historical novel, The Illustrious Emperor (London: Ziff Davis, 1947) to mixed reviews. However the novel attracted a lot of newspaper attention as Hope claimed she’ d smuggled the manuscript out of China shortly before being interned and was reunited with it later in England.
Tillotson was a popular American book illustrator at the time
She also published The Garden of Perfect Brightness: The History of the Yuan Ming Yuan and of the Emperors Who Lived There (London: Williams & Norgate, 1950) detailing the rise and destruction of the Old Summer Palace, interestingly with an introduction by Sir John T Pratt (long-time China diplomat and brother of the actor Boris Karloff).
And finally My Boy Chang (London: Victor Gollancz, 1955), a memoir of interwar China focussed on Hope’s relationship with her house-servant (or “boy” in the lingo of the times)…
PS: Gladys Mary Havers
You’ll have noticed above the colour illustration accompanying Hope Danby’s In Charming Peking . They were provided by Gladys Mary Havers (later Gladys Mary Smedley Dunn, 1881–1954). Here’s a couple more….
Havers was a British-Australian artist and illustrator best known for her vivid visual illustrations of China. She was born in New South Wales and then spent a significant portion of her adult life living and working in Shanghai and Peking. I believe she was Hope’s sister—in-law. She married her first husband, Arthur de Vere Havers, in Shanghai in 1898, though retained “Gladys Mary Havers” as her professional name. I think Hope’s brother was her second husband – but any clarification on that welcome? She certainly was also an accomplished watercolourist….
I mentioned this year that among artist FH Schiff’s commissions for bar/nightclubs was the Blue Peter Bar. This was never one of the legendary bars of old Shanghai as it only opened in 1940, a year or so before the Japanese takeover of the International Settlement. It was on Birkill Road (now Fengyang Lu), close to the corner of Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing Xi Lu) and Carter Road (Shimen #1 Lu), just behind the Roxy Theatre (which only opened the year before).
Whoever is arranging the revolving wall photo exhibits at the Hong Kong FCC is doing a great job – the last year has seen Bill Lascher’s display of Mel Jacoby’s wartime China photos, Macao-based photographer Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro’s images of Macao’s fading streets and colonial-era buildings, and now Katharina Hesse’s often stark yet poetic portraits. On till October 31….
In an Edinburgh used bookshop I picked up a copy of The China Run: Being the Biography of a Great-Grandmother (Hodder and Stoughton), a 1948 book purporting to be a biographical novella by the Scottish writer Neil Paterson (1915–1995, a novelist, screenwriter, and Academy Award winner). It’s a curious and slim little book – only 95 pages and marketed by Hodder as a “long-short story”. It claims to tell the story of Paterson’s great-grandmother, Christian West, who lived in Banff on Scotland’s east coast and famously became a sea captain in the China tea-clipper trade sailing out of Wales. What an amazing…. and little known… tale – a woman captain in the China Trade? Who could resist! I see Hollywood, I see Kidman, I see Oscars….
And it had some major fans. Somerset Maugham named it his Book of the Year in the New York Times following its post-war release while it was also praised by the novelists HE Bates and Eric Linklater, receiving warm reviews both sides of the Atlantic and especially in Paterson’s native Scotland.
The Tale…
And it is a stirring tale told concisely. The book opens with the narrator observing two uninspiring portraits of his supposed great-grandmother. Dissatisfied with how they capture her essence, he resolves to paint a “third portrait in words,” presenting the book as a factual biography.
Born in 1829 in a humble two-roomed house in the Scottish coastal town of Banff, Christian West grows up to be an unconventional woman. She marries a Welsh sea captain out of Cardigan Bay, the not wholly appealing Dai Evans, but refusing to endure long, lonely years ashore during his extended voyages, she insists on accompanying him to sea. While aboard, Christian rejects the passive role of a captain’s wife. She dedicates herself to mastering the complex arts of navigation, sailing, and being a ship captain.
Tragedy strikes when her husband dies unexpectedly during a voyage. Instead of handing control over to the crew or returning home in mourning, Christian uses her self-taught skills to assume full command of the ship. She successfully commands a commercial tea-clipper in the highly competitive China tea trade and the unglamourous and often dangerous Welsh roofing slate trade to South America in return for nitrate for fertilisers to spread on Welsh gardens.
Christian earns the respect of a rough, unruly crew, fights off pirates, navigates treacherous global waters, and operates a highly profitable business in a strictly male-dominated industry. At one point she has a brief affair with an American China Trade clipper captain (in a scene and story line of dated male fantasy that wouldn’t make the cut today as she submits during what is clearly a rape).
The novella tracks her extraordinary life until her peaceful death in 1893, concluding with a reference to her obituary in the Banffshire Journal.
But Unfortunately…
However, it must be noted that Paterson gives scant primary sources for his tale, no footnotes. Gripping and seeming revelatory as the story of this unique female ship captain in the China trade is it turns out to be pure fiction. It is a literary illusion – though it’s not clear if either Somerset Maugham or HE Bates realised this? Though some newspapers called it a “fictionalised biography” most reviews seem to have taken its genuineness at face value.
Still the descriptions of Iquique (Chile and formerly Peru) and Antofagasta (Chile) are illuminating on a now oft-forgotten two-way trade between Wales and Peru. Also the description of Melbourne in the nineteenth century feels solid. There are some imaginings of Fuzhou, the tea market and the pirates of the South China Coast down to the legendary Bias Bay that might have inspired James Clavell.
The book was translated into several European languages. It sold well in America where they hyped up the rather toxic relationship with the American clipper captain. The British newspapers reported that The China Run had been optioned by RKO and Rank for a movie – but it never happened sadly (perhaps when they worked out it was all fiction?). However there was a radio adaptation for the BBC Home Service.
Paterson…
A word on Paterson as he had a rather remarkable life. He was educated at Banff Academy, hence the locale for The China Run. I’m pretty sure he’s the only Oscar winner to have come from Banff and captained a professional football team – while at Edinburgh University he played amateur football and rose to captain Dundee United for the 1936–37 season. He also played for Leith Athletic and Buckie Thistle (slightly less well known Scottish teams!). He served in the Royal Navy in World War Two mostly on mine sweepers thus learning a good bit of maritime terminology that would filter into The China Run.
At the 1960 Academy Awards Paterson won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for (the brilliant, and starring Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret) Room at the Top beating both Billy Wilder’s script for Some Like It Hot and Ben-Hur. Convinced he wouldn’t win he didn’t bother leaving Scotland to head to LA. Reputedly Paterson later used his Oscar as a doorstop at his home in Crieff, his home in Perth and Kinross.
“Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves… All gone.” Connie Sachs, Soviet intelligence expert, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
Back on the Le Carre Cast with a new 2-parter – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Ricki Tarr Declassified.
“This episode we talk about all things Ricki Tarr, exploring how Tarr’s backstory reflects the declining British Empire as much as the Cold War, how his past explains his the character we see in the novel and unwrap Tarr’s past as a ruthless killer. Plus, Japanese prisoner of war camps, gun running and spies in Southeast Asia.”
In the second episode we’ll talk about Ricki Tarr’s Hong Kong in TTSS (1974).
A collectors item i was shown in Beijing recently, but can it be real? “溥仪剪掉的辫子” which translates to “The braid cut off by Puyi.” We know Puyi did eventually cut of his queue, f on April 27, 1922. And that it may have been at Reginald Johnston’s urging and indeed Johnston May have done the cutting.
It’s quite rare now to find old photo albums in such good condition as this This album contains photos of a trip to Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shanghai around 1911 or shortly afterwards (one photo shows a Coronation float in Shanghai for King George V). I’m not sure whose album this was but I’m going to assume, given that they included a royal-related image, it’s a British traveller.
