“that indefinable eccentric something…O.W. Philips describing Reginald Johnston: “Sinophile to a degree which tended to warp his judgment on any Anglo-Chinese issue, had that indefinable eccentric something that pervades all those westerners who have made a deep study of China and Chinese.”
The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (Elliot & Thompson) is out now in the UK; US in November.
A kind review of The Last Emperor of China from Aspects of History who also ran a Q&A with me, both highlighting what I bring to the Puyi party that’s new….
Three items once owned by ‘WAHM – William Moule of Shanghai
Chinese white metal presentation plate, engraved with faux bamboo border and centre engraved with bamboo and storks – for winning the Tennis Handicap 1891
Chinese white metal mug with faux bamboo handle and engraved with dragon amongst clouds, awarded for Tennis 1892
Chinese white metal goblet decorated with figures and animals in woodland scene
The Moule family were missionaries in China from the mid-1800s until the early 1920s. Arthur Moule (1836-1918) was Archdeacon of Mid-China. He was also a poet and wrote The Glorious Land (1891), New China and Old (1902), and Half a Century in China (1911). He and his wife had six sons, one of whom, William Augustus Handley Moule (1870-1946), was the headmaster of the Church Missionary Society in China (CMS) Anglo-Chinese School in Shanghai for 34 years, as well as a first-class sportsman – winning these items for his tennis prowess.
A nice 1942 Chatto & Windus edition of one of the most gossip-laden old Beijing novel Peking Picnic (1932). The debut novel by British author Ann Bridge (the pen name of Lady Mary Dolling O’Malley).
I’ve taken an article I wrote on JG Ballard and the pre-war/wartime Shanghai he grew up in back when I published my book City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir. However, China Books Review decided it was wroth rerunning but with some comments also on the recent new biography of Ballard, The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of JG Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2026).
Click here to read “JG Ballard’s Dystopian Shanghai” on China Books Review…
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).
