Learning Chinese in Howards End

The BBC’s new adaptation of Howards End was generally well received. For China Rhyming readers the last episode may elicit a slight raising of the eyebrow as Tibby Schlegel proudly displays his grasp of Chinese to his sister Margaret and displays well-thumbed, Chinese Grammar as he sits by the fire practicing his tones.

Tibby is in his final year at Oxford and “glancing” at his Chinese Grammar in case he should decide to try for a Student Interpreter post with the Foreign Office (as the lowest rung of the China Service was called – you moved from interpreter up the ranks). In the BBC version Tibby tries out a bit of Chinese on his sister – in Forster’s novel (1910) he merely studies it and keeps his tones to himself.

Tibby might have been immersed in the Reverend Donald MacGillivray’s A Mandarin-Romanized Dictionary of Chinese, probably the Chinese Grammar of choice for Edwardian scholars before the First World War. There are alternatives though and most likely for Tibby’s level of interest was Walter Craine Hillier’s The Chinese Language and How to Learn It (1907 – below). The book was very popular with language students and the generally interested early in the twentieth century.