Terms of Measurement, Units of Currency, and
Bureaucratic Titles
Weights and Measures
Weight
jin 斤 is unit of weight equivalent to 1.3 pounds or just over half a kilogram. Usually translated in the Peking Gazette as a catty.
shi 石 (or sometimes dan) is a unit for measuring grain equivalent to about 133 pounds. Often translated in the Peking Gazette as a picul.
Length
cun 寸 is a unit of length approximately 1.4 inches; ten cun make a chi. Translated in the Peking Gazette as an inch.
chi 尺 is a unit of length approximating a foot; ten chi make a zhang. Often translated in the Peking Gazette as a foot.
zhang 丈 is a unit of length approximating four yards or twelve feet. Not usually translated.
li 里 is a unit of distance, roughly equivalent to one-third of an English mile or half a kilometer. Not usually translated.
Area
mu 畝 is unit of area for measuring land; it is approximately one-third of an acre. Not usually translated.
qing 頃 is a unit of area for measuring land; it is approximately 16 acres. Not usually translated.
Units of Currency
wen 文 is a standard unit of currency made of copper and lead and minted (usually) by imperial decree. The value of the coins varied greatly over time, but their weight, size, and shape (round, with a square hold in the center to allow them to be strung together) remained virtually the same for centuries. Approximately 1,000 wen per liang. Invariably translated in the Peking Gazette as cash.
qian 錢 is a unit of currency equivalent to one-tenth of an ounce or one hundred cash. Usually translated in the Peking Gazette as mace.
liang 兩 is a unit of weight for silver used in monetary transactions, roughly equivalent to one ounce of silver. The value of the liang varied greatly over the Qing dynasty. In the Peking Gazette, the liang is invariably translated as tael. The dollar occasionally appears in translations of the Peking Gazette, by which is meant the Spanish Carolus silver dollar (pre-1890s) or the Mexican silver dollar (post-1890s), the value of which was determined by the fineness of the silver.
Sycee. For larger transactions, the Qing government often dealt in silver in its bullion form. If the silver was unadulterated by any alloy, it was called “sycee” or pure silver. It was usually cast in small ingots (sometimes called “shoes”) because of their distinctive shape.
Dates and Times
In imperial China, dynasties calculated years according to the reign of the present emperor and dates according to the lunar calendar. All dates have been converted to the Gregorian solar calendar.
The day in late imperial China was divided into twelve periods called chen 辰 or watches, which were the length of two contemporary hours. The first watch was 11:00 pm to 1:00 am. In some of the sources below, the translators have continued to use these watches.
Bureaucratic and Administrative Terms
The Imperial Court
Emperor (huangdi 黃帝): The official title used for the living ruler of the present dynasty.
Empress (huanghou 皇后): The first wife of the reigning emperor.
Empress Dowager (huang taihou 皇太后): The actual or adoptive mother of a reigning emperor.
Heir Apparent (taizi 太子): The official title of the reigning emperor’s son who has been chosen as the successor to the throne; the title may be revoked.
Princes (huangzi 皇子): The sons of the reigning emperor. In the Qing, there were four princely ranks, but most individuals were known by the princely titles bestowed upon them by their imperial fathers.
Regent (several appellations): Title applied to a man or woman who presided over the court during the minority of the reigning emperor.
Imperial Clansman (zongshi 宗室): A descendant along any male line of the dynastic founder.
Imperial Clan Court (zongren fu 宗人府): A powerful governing body with jurisdiction over the entire royal family, except the emperor, and all imperial clansmen. Charged with maintaining the royal genealogical records, adjudicating disputes among royal family members, and holding legal jurisdiction in any case concerning a member of the imperial family.
Imperial Household (neiwu fu 內務府): An administrative agency with many offices created to serve the personal needs of the emperor, his immediate family, and his attendants within the palace. In the Qing, staffed mostly by Manchu imperial bondservants.
The Metropolitan Administration
The Grand Council (junjichu 軍機處): Established in the 1730s, the Grand Council quickly became the most important state agency for crafting government policy in the Qing. Its five high-ranking ministers, known as Grand Councilors, met almost daily with the emperors to deliberate over and make decisions concerning civilian and military policy.
The Grand Secretariat (neige 內閣): Throughout the Ming and early Qing dynasties, the Grand Secretariat was considered the supreme council of state with a role similar to the Grand Council. After the formation of the Grand Council, the size of the Grand Secretariat was greatly expanded, but its duties shrank to routine administration of the empire. Nonetheless, appointment to the Grand Secretariat remained a prestigious honor.
The Six Boards or Ministries (liu bu 六部): The Six Boards formed the core of the administrative machinery in the capital, but their duties largely lay in handling paperwork from the provinces and making routine recommendations to the emperors, through the Grand Secretariat, about everyday government affairs. The ministers or presidents of the boards, however, had no authority over provincial officials. The Board of Personnel was in charge of all matters relating to bureaucrats in government service; the Board of Revenue gathered population and economic data, oversaw the collection of taxes, and other matters related to government revenue; the Board of Rites oversaw the entire range of formal ceremonies and rituals related to the government, including foreign relations; the Board of War, in the Qing, was responsible for all matters concerning the Green Standard Army, government communications, and border defenses; the Board of Punishments oversaw the complex judicial and legal system throughout the empire; and the Board of Works oversaw all larger government construction projects.
The Censorate (duchayuan 都察院): An early and unique Chinese government institution with more than fifty censors spread across the empire engaged in the examination and investigation of the behavior and performance of all government officials, including admonishing the emperors, rooting out government corruption, influence peddling, and other forms of unethical behavior.
Mongol Superintendency or, occasionally, the Court of Colonial Affairs (lifanyuan 理藩院): Established in 1636 to oversee Qing relations with various groups of Mongols, its responsibilities grew with the westward expansion of the Qing empire in the eighteenth century to embrace almost all colonial affairs in Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang.
The Zongli Yamen (zongli geguo shiwu yamen 總理各國事務衙門): A foreign affairs agency created in 1861 in the aftermath of the Second Opium War to handle relations with Western countries.
The Hanlin Academy (hanlin yuan 翰林院): The most prestigious academic institution in Beijing consisting of a some of the brightest scholarly minds in the empire, who drafted and edited imperially-sponsored historical, literary, and ceremonial works.
The Provincial Administration
Governor-General or Viceroy (zongdu 總督): The highest-ranking territorial official who administered all civilian and military affairs in one, two, or three contiguous provinces; often concurrently appointed as governor of one of the provinces.
Post Provinces
Huguang
Hunan, Hubei
Liangguang Guangdong, Guangxi
Liangjiang Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Anhui
Minzhe Fujian, Zhejiang (includes Taiwan until 1887)
Shaan-Gan
Sichuan
Shaanxi, Gansu
Sichuan
Yun-Gui Yunnan, Guizhou
Zhili
Dongsansheng
Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang
No governor-general Shandong, Shanxi, Henan
Governor or, occasionally in Gazette translations, Lieut-Governor (xunfu 巡撫): The highest-ranking territorial official within a single province. Subordinate to the appropriate governor-general.
Financial Commissioner (buzheng shisi 布政使司): Second most powerful official in a province. Acted as treasurer for the province, handled matters related to tax collection, census taking, and oversight of the provincial bureaucracy.
Judicial Commissioner or provincial judge (ancha shisi 按察使司): In charge of all provincial legal matters, including the routine review of the more important court cases. He also managed the provincial communications system, evaluated officials, and administered the provincial civil service examinations.
Salt Controller (yanyun shisi 鹽運使司): In major salt producing areas, supervised the distribution of salt under the state monopoly to merchants for sale throughout the empire.
Grain Intendent (liangdao 糧道): Controlled the provincial revenue produced by the grain tax.
Circuit Intendent (daotai 道太): The official in charge of a circuit (dao 道) of two or more prefectures. Some circuits were functionally specific and held provincial-wide responsibilities while others were for more general administration.
Prefect (zhifu 知府): Official in charge of a prefecture, an administrative unit made up of a certain number of counties.
County Magistrate (zhixian 知縣): Official in charge of all government responsibilities in a county, the lowest administrative unit in the empire. In the translations, the county is also translated as department.
Imperial Commissioner (qinchai dachen 欽差大臣): A rare appointment made directly by the emperor to a high-ranking official to undertake an important government mission. An imperial commissioner ranked higher than a governor-general.
Military Titles
Eight Banners (baqi 八旗): The primary military and social organization of the Manchu people established by Nurhaci in the early seventeenth century; some Mongols, Han Chinese, and other ethnic groups were also incorporated into the banner system.
“Tartar General” or Manchu General-in-Chief (jiangjun 將軍): Highestranking Manchu general in each province, rank equivalent to a governor-general. He commanded the provincial banner forces.
Green Standard Army (lüying 綠營): Han Chinese provincial armies, containing both infantry and marines, which served to garrison cities and towns, suppress peasant uprisings, and act as a local police force.
Provincial Commander-in-Chief or General (tidu 提督): Commander of the provincial Green Standard troops.
Civil Service Examination Titles
Metropolitan Graduate (jinshi 進士): A candidate who had passed the triennial metropolitan examination held in the imperial capital.
Provincial degree holder (juren 舉人): A candidate who had passed the triennial examinations held in the various provincial capitals.
County degree holder or Licentiate (shengyuan 生員 or xiucai 秀才): A candidate who had passed the county-level examination; graded according to performance on the examination.
Student (tongsheng 童生): Scholars in each county who had passed a series of preliminary examinations making them eligible to take the county-level examination.
Introduction
This book was born of frustration, frustration at my inability to find a classroom reader—or almost any single work—focused on nineteenth-century China that could convey its extraordinary ruptures and remarkable continuities to my students. Most readers on modern Chinese history focus either on the twentieth century or the entire Qing period (1644–1912) and contain illustrative documents from a variety of sources that elucidate particular themes. My students and I often struggled to fashion satisfactory interpretations that could connect those documents to each other and the broader contours of Chinese history. About that same time, and to much greater success, I started using selections from an exceptionally large corpus of existing Englishlanguage translations of original Chinese documents that all came from the same source—the government of the Qing dynasty—covering the last age of imperial rule under the Manchus. The purpose of this reader, then, is to present to students and colleagues a work on nineteenth-century Chinese history that allows them to penetrate into the beliefs, values, and practices of the Qing state and its multiethnic subjects through the study of a single collection of documents.
This reader contains material ranging from the Macartney mission in 1793 to the abdication of the last Qing emperor in February 1912, a period we might describe as China’s long nineteenth century. The purpose of foregrounding the long nineteenth century is twofold. First, it allows students to engage with an extensive number of Qing sources precisely at the moment when domestic troubles like population growth, economic stagnation, and military overextension intersected in new ways with international challenges like the rise of the British empire, the spread of capitalism, and the appearance of Western international law to produce a palpable sense of crisis among Qing officials. Students can then follow this tumultuous period of crisis to its logical conclusion at the end of the imperial order in 1912. Second, the concept of the long nineteenth century allows us to look beneath those dramatic moments of change to explore the extraordinary continuities in the daily workings of the empire, in the mental outlook of its officials, and in the voices of its subjects. Within each chapter, and often within each source, students will thus find themes of change and continuity as Qing officials and subjects grappled with imperial decline, but also set China on the path to its contemporary rise.
The chapters in this book cover some of the most important political, social, and cultural movements, trends, and events in nineteenth-century China: the contentious encounter between the Qing empire coming out of a long age of
prosperity and an aggressive imperialist West; China’s survival amidst a series of peasant rebellions ranging from White Lotus sectarians in the late eighteenth century to anti-foreign spiritual Boxers in the early twentieth; systemic crises in the functioning of the government and the long-term breakdown of the imperial order culminating in the 1911 Revolution; as well as some of the lesser-known themes of late imperial history like state rain-making practices in times of famine, honoring the various gods who inhabited the mental world of nineteenth-century Chinese, and the commemoration of women who committed suicide to protect their chastity. As readers progress through the chapters, they will hear the authentic voices of Manchu emperors who “strike the earth with Our feet, lift Our voices to Heaven, rend Our hearts, and shed tears of blood,” Han provincial officials who discourse on the lofty Confucian ideals that animated the empire for two millennia, local elites and gentry leaders who struggled with the unprecedented changes occurring all around them, and peasant commoners who celebrated their clansmen, but who also confessed to the most heinous crimes. They will read about government efforts to relieve the poor, widespread practices of official corruption, coups against two emperors, descriptions of the “red-haired Barbarians,” shocking stories of women cutting their flesh to feed their ailing parents, and imperial degrees conferred on eighty-year old men still taking the lowest level of the civil service examinations. These voices and perspectives were heard almost daily throughout the empire in a periodical that is little known today, a publication known to English speakers in the nineteenth century as the Peking Gazette.
The Peking Gazette
The Peking Gazette (jingbao 京報), that “patriarch of periodicals,” is often considered the oldest newspaper in world history. Rightly speaking, the Peking Gazette was not a newspaper at all in the sense of publishing editorial opinion, generating unique content, and providing social and cultural commentary on the events of the day, but it did contain “news value” in as much as any traditional government gazette published contemporary documents pertaining to the day-to-day working of the state. In seventeenth-century Europe, editors with close connections to their governments began publishing periodicals “by Authority,” like the famous London Gazette (1665–), as a record of the public business of government. When European missionaries and merchants first started arriving along the borders of the Qing empire in large numbers, they searched for sources of news that would help them understand what was happening in the world’s largest empire. Soon enough, they encountered the
jingbao with its records of official movements, imperial edicts, and memorials from officials and came to understand it as something like the gazettes published in their own countries. As they slowly mastered the linguistic expertise necessary to read the formal, documentary proclamations of the Qing emperors and his officials, they came to see what they started calling the Peking Gazette as something else. Much more than the dry official records of the British or French governments, the Peking Gazette contained the emotional discourses of the emperor as he gave vent to “his hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows.”1 He mourned with his subjects, celebrated their accomplishments, and honored their longevity. As John Barrow, who served as personal secretary to Lord Macartney on the latter’s mission to China in 1793, wrote, the Gazette is “a vehicle for conveying into every corner of the empire the virtues and the fatherly kindness of the reigning sovereign.”2
The Peking Gazette, also translated as the “Metropolitan Reporter” or “Court Announcements,” was more than just a mouthpiece of the emperor, it was also the most important public source of information about the workings of the late Qing state. It provided room for discussion of imperial policy, censorial criticism of high-ranking officials, insights into the beliefs and practices of common people in times of crises, titillated the public with court cases about wayward women and their paramours, and revealed the motivations of sectarian rebels against the government. Through the gazette “one is able to feel the pulse of the whole empire,” wrote Jehu Lewis Shuck, the first Baptist missionary to China.3
In the nineteenth century, the Peking Gazette was the only source of information that circulated throughout the empire and, for foreigners, the “single most important source on Chinese affairs.”4 Since then, however, the Peking Gazette has been largely forgotten by historians and students of Chinese history as access to government archives has changed how we study the late Qing state over the course of the long nineteenth century. Reading the Gazette again, more than a century later, shows us that the early missionaries, foreign officials,
1 Samuel Mossman, “The Peking Gazette,” Leisure Hour 14 (February 25, 1865), 122.
2 John Barrow, Travels in China; Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country, from Pekin to Canton (London: A. Strahan, 1804), 391.
3 “Extracts from Communications of Mr. Shuck,” The Baptist Missionary Magazine 18: 3 (March 1838), 55.
4 Jonathan Ocko, “The British Museum’s Peking Gazette,” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 2: 9 (January 1973), 36.
and sinologists were not wrong in spending so much time reading and translating the Gazette. It continues to provide a unique vantage point from which to understand the policies, behaviors, and attitudes of the central government, the ideas and cultural perspectives of the officials who populated the administrative machinery of the Qing state, and the mentality and ways of thinking among several hundred million subjects of the empire. As Sir Rutherford B. Alcock, one of the first British consuls in the newly-opened treaty ports, wrote, the Gazette contains “a great deal of matter calculated to convey information of the highest value to any student.”5 What kind of information did the Gazette convey?
The Peking Gazette was not an official publication of any specific office in the Grand Council or Grand Secretariat, the two highest administrative bodies in the land, but a periodical, like its European counterparts, “issued by authority.” The missionary Robert Morrison, one of the first translators of the Gazette, had it right when he described the gazette as containing “orders issued by Imperial Authority.”6 Morrison’s publisher put it slightly differently, “no thought, no word, except such as his majesty has made public, goes forth in that publication.”7 The different types of information and orders released by the emperors to the public gave both form and content to the Gazette.
The Gazette consisted of three sections. Each issue began with a section entitled “Copies from the Palace Gate” (gongmenchao 宮門抄) that contained very brief descriptions of imperial audiences, guards on duty in the imperial city, and the physical movements of the emperor. A typical example: “Tomorrow morning the Emperor will pass through the Huayuan and Shenwu gates on his way to the Dagao temple to worship. His Majesty will return by the same road. Everything must be in readiness by six a.m.” The second section entitled “Imperial Decrees” (shangyu 上諭) contained both imperial decrees and rescripts. An imperial decree was an announcement from the throne in the emperor’s voice to the officials and people of the empire. The bulk of this section consisted of announcements concerning the appointment, transfer, demotion, dismissal, or retirement of imperial bureaucrats. It was something like a service list in which officials were literally “gazetted.” On occasion, this section also contained lengthy discourses by the emperors as they waxed philosophic
5 Rutherford Alcock, “The Peking Gazette,” Fraser’s Magazine 7: 38 (February 1873), 245.
6 Robert Morrison, Translations from the Original Chinese with Notes (Canton: P. P. Thoms, 1815), preface.
7 “Periodical literature: Chinese Almanacs; imperial Court Calendar; the provincial Court Circular of Canton; the Peking Gazette; with remarks on the condition of the press in China,” Chinese Repository 5: 1 (May 1836), 12.
in the vermilion ink reserved for themselves, discourses that provide the best insight into the public minds of the emperors. An imperial rescript, by contrast, was most often a short reply by an emperor to a memorial from an official. In most cases, after publishing the entire memorial, the emperor’s reply would be something simple, such as: “granted by imperial rescript,” “Let the relevant Board take notice,” or “It is known.” The third part of the Gazette, known as the “Memorials” (zoubao/zouzhe 奏報/奏摺) section, contained official reports or requests by Qing bureaucratic officials to the emperors begging for “the Sacred glance” or “Imperial gaze” thereupon. This was usually the longest section of the Gazette as prolix Qing provincial or metropolitan officials addressed their sovereign in language often described by foreigners as “humbug.”8 The three sections were not, as far as we can tell, an innovation of the Qing period, but served as a fairly standard format going back to the earliest forms of government gazettes in Chinese history.
The History of the Gazette
There is considerable controversy about the origins of the government gazette in Chinese history. Much of the controversy is the result of scholars approaching the history of the gazette as the beginning of Chinese “journalism” or the “news” industry. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the term Peking Gazette (jingbao) is simply a generic English name for a variety of periodicals issued by various publishers under different names throughout Chinese history that disseminated official papers from the government. Although we are not particularly concerned with the merits of those arguments here, it will be helpful to the student to have some understanding of the changing purposes of the gazette throughout Chinese history as well as Qing printing and distribution practices.
Ge Gongzhen (1890–1935), one of the first Chinese newspaper historians, believed that the gazette originated in a moment of imperial crisis and political fragmentation. Ge argued that a version of the gazette dated back to the early Han (206 BCE –220 CE ) dynasty. In this view, the early Han emperors reacted to the harsh centralization policies of the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE ) by reintroducing a feudal-like structure of semi-independent commandaries and kingdoms into the state. To maintain communications between these semi-independent territories and the court, each commandary and kingdom established a liaison office in the capital staffed by a di 邸 official,
8 Alcock, “The Peking Gazette,” 253.
whose primary task was to forward imperial edicts and official information in manuscript form back to his respective lord. These manuscript copies came to be known as dibao 邸報 or Reports from the Di Office.
The first actual use of the term dibao is found only in literary sources from the Tang dynasty (618–907).9 After the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) devastated much of the Tang empire, the court reintroduced autonomous provincial leaders and regional military commanders. These semi-autonomous elites established Capital Liaison Offices (jinzouyuan 進奏院) to, among other things, maintain communications with the court through the Gazette of the Capital Liaison Office (jinzouyuan zhuangbao 進奏院狀報). Rather than serve to integrate the empire, as these arguments suggest, the earliest gazettes were tools used by autonomous political leaders, semi-independent lords, or military commanders to stay informed about happenings at the court. At the end of the Tang, however, the purpose of the gazette underwent a fundamental shift.
The Tang-Song transition saw the creation of what historians call the early modern agrarian state, a state designed to centralize the empire through a leaner administrative structure. The success of this new-style state was in no small measure due to its command and control over the circulation of official information through a new-style gazette. The centralization campaigns of the Taizu (r. 960–976) and Taizong (r. 976–997) emperors of the Song brought most of the territories of the former Han dynasty under their control. In the new Song capital at Kaifeng, the Chancellery opened a Memorials Office under the control of a supervising secretary, who served as the center of the Song communications system between the court and local governments by overseeing the production and dissemination of what was probably a hand-written manuscript form of the gazette, variously called the zhuangbao or chaobao (朝報). Unlike the previous Capital Liaison Offices serving the interests of independent military commanders, the new Memorials Office and its gazette served to integrate the empire and give the central government greater control over the circulation of information about imperial edicts, official memorials, and government personnel movements. In this sense, the Song transformation of the meaning of the gazette marked “a major transition in imperial political culture” by standardizing the ways the court interacted with the reading public.10
9 Ge Gongzhen 戈公振, Zhongguo baoxue shi 中國報學史 (A history of Chinese journalism) (1927, reprint: Sanlian shudian, 1955), 24–25.
10 This description of the early Song gazette is based on: Hilde De Weerdt, “‘Court Gazettes’ and ‘Short Reports’: Official Views and Unofficial Readings of Court News,” Hanxue yanjiu 漢學研究 (Chinese studies) 27: 2 (June 2009): 167–200, quote on p. 169.
The short-lived Mongol Yuan (1279–1368) dynasty and its obscure gazettelike service list called the chumu 除目 ended with Zhu Yuanzhang’s establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368.11 In the Ming, the gazette originated in the offices of a group of officials known as the provincial couriers (titangguan 提塘官), one for each province, who served as smaller versions of the Song-era memorials office. As soon as the Office of Transmission (tongzhengsi 通政司) in the capital received memorials from the provinces, they were routed through the various bureaucratic offices to the emperor. After being read by the emperor, the grand secretaries re-routed the documents to the Offices of Scrutiny for the Six Boards (liuke 六科). The supervising secretaries of the Offices of Scrutiny, after checking the documents for errors, posted those for dissemination on placards in their hall. The provincial couriers then visited the hall, copied down the documents related to their provinces as well as material of general interest, and delivered the copies to their own “reporting offices” (baofang 報房). The reporting offices, it is believed, carved the woodblocks, printed a few copies of the gazette, and sent them to their respective provincial capitals, where the gazettes were reprinted in much larger numbers for general distribution to local officials.12 It was essentially the duty, then, of the fifteen provincial administration commissions to keep themselves informed of court happenings by posting their provincial couriers in the capital. This new diffuse system for generating the gazette meant that it was not a single, comprehensive, and integrated periodical issued by a single government office, but that there were many different types of gazettes in the Ming.
As in many other areas of government, the Qing dynasty followed much of Ming administrative practice, but altered arrangements to suit their own purposes. Official responsibility for printing the gazette is described in the Statutes of the Great Qing. 13 In the Statutes, the now sixteen provincial couriers stationed in the capital were entrusted with attending the Offices of Scrutiny of the Six Boards to make copies of all imperial decrees and reports of memorials to the Throne that had been “released for dissemination” (fachao 發抄) or “turned over” (jiao 交) for publication, which they gave to their reporting offices for printing. By the nineteenth century, however, the functions of the reporting offices had changed dramatically. Most of them had been taken over
11 On the Yuan chumu, see: Li Man, “On Yuan Dynasty ‘Newspapers’: The Existence of ‘Dibao’ and ‘Guanbao’ Reexamined,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 42 (2012): 343–74.
12 I would like to thank Professor Kai-wing Chow, of the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, for sharing his research on the Ming gazette with me.
13 Qinding Da Qing huidian 欽定大清會典 (The imperially authorized Collected statutes of the Great Qing dynasty) (Jiaqing edition), juan 39.
by private commercial publishers on Liulichang, Beijing’s publishing street, who signed contracts with the provincial couriers to issue the gazette.14 This Qing innovation, the production of gazettes by private publishers, transformed the appearance of the gazette and commercialized its distribution.
Private Publishing and the Qing Gazette
Private commercial publishing establishments changed how gazettes in the Qing were distributed, printed, sold, and even named.15 The private publishers covered their contracts, operating costs, and made profits by printing different versions of gazettes and manipulated the market for information by selling them in different forms and at different times.16
By the nineteenth century, at least ten commercial publishers in Beijing were producing three different physical forms of the gazette, though the content in each version also continued to vary. The official form (guanben 官本) was printed with movable wooden type, a probable innovation of the Qing, and measured approximately seven inches tall by four inches wide. It was usually issued every other day and distributed in the provinces by the slowest means possible thus making it the cheapest form of the gazette. The longform (changben 長本), usually measuring nine inches by four inches, was often poorly printed using a wax process that could quickly be prepared, printed, and re-used. The long-form was usually, though not invariably, distributed slightly earlier than the official form, but the print quality was notoriously poor. The most sought after form of the gazette was the elegantly hand-written manuscript copy (xieben 寫本), produced by copyists working for the commercial publishers, that often appeared on the streets of Beijing the same day the imperial edicts or memorials were posted in the Hall of the Office of Scrutiny. Copies were quickly made and sent out to the provinces, where they fetched a
14 Emily Carr Mokros, “Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2016), 102, 115.
15 Not until the middle of the nineteenth century did private printing establishments began stamping “jingbao” on the cover of their publications. Many early Western translators knew it as the “Te-tang King-paou” (提塘京報) (Capital gazette from the provincial couriers) or “King Chaou” (京抄) (Copies from the capital).
16 Emily Mokros argues that commercial publishing of the gazette was a hallmark of the Qing period in her “Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette,” Chapter 2; see also Hyun-Ho Joo, “The Jingbao as Late Qing China’s News Medium and Its Reports on Korean Affairs,” Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 13: 2 (2013): 235–49.
premium price because they appeared much earlier than the official or longform of the gazette.
What did the Peking Gazette look like? The official form of the Peking Gazette was generally printed on thin, yellow or brownish bamboo paper noted for its absorbency. The cost savings achieved by the printing establishments through the use of cheap, light-weight paper, however, was not appreciated by foreigners who described the Qing-period gazettes as “very coarsely printed on miserable-looking paper of the flimsiest material.”17 Although there was much variation in the length of the gazettes, they were usually about twenty to twenty-five pages in length. The cover was typically of bright yellow, slightly thicker paper, and bound together with a few stitches of thread or twisted paper. Often, though not always, the characters for “jingbao” were stamped on the cover along with the name of the commercial printing establishment (Figure 1). In some cases, the cover had also been stamped with a depiction of an official dressed in traditional clothing who held in his hands a scroll from which he was discoursing (Figure 2).
Late Qing officials received the Gazette as one of the privileges of their office while private subjects or foreigners could purchase among several different
Figure 1
Cover of a rare white-bound Peking Gazette published by the Jusheng baofang 聚陞報房 of Beijing. Source: http://www.jibao.net.cn/product/ view.asp?id=57.
17 Alcock, “The ‘Peking Gazette,’” 248.
Figure 2 Image from Samuel Mossman, “The Peking Gazette,” Leisure Hour 14 (February 25, 1865), 120.
Figure 3
Illustrated London News (March 22, 1873), reprinted in William Simpson, Meeting the Sun: A Journey All Round the World through Egypt, China, Japan, and California, Including an Account of the Marriage Ceremonies of the Emperor of China (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1874), 269.
reprints either through a yearly or monthly subscription, directly from a street hawker (Figure 3), or even rent them for the day. Many tea shops and other popular places where people congregated had copies of the Gazette for customers to peruse while they relaxed. In the 1850s, an annual subscription apparently cost some 3,000 coppers and was “read by every shopkeeper and householder who can afford the subscription.”18 For those of smaller means, who could only afford the monthly subscription to the long-form gazette, it cost about twenty-five coppers in the mid-1870s. Foreigners who wanted the latest news at the quickest speed could purchase a subscription to the manuscript edition for an annual cost of 9,000 coppers or approximately 200 US dollars in 2017 currency.
The Gazette-Reading Public
Although it is impossible to estimate how many people read the Gazette out of a population of approximately four hundred million who lived in the late Qing empire, contemporary accounts suggest it was read constantly by officials, literate local elites, and foreigners who had mastered documentary Chinese, all
18 North China Herald (September 14, 1850).
of whom got their news from this “tongue of orthodoxy.”19 Reading the Gazette, John Francis Davis argued, was encouraged by the Qing government because the documents it published exhibited “obvious proofs of an anxiety to influence and conciliate public opinion upon all public questions.”20 For officials, reading the Gazette gave them their only comprehensive picture of what was happening across the empire, but it also allowed them to participate in and follow ongoing debates about imperial policy. Many officials would have also read the Gazette for personal reasons, to keep up with their network of colleagues and friends as they circulated throughout the country on public business. “Hungry provincial expectants,” those qualified but not yet appointed to an official post, read with “avidity” the sections of the Gazette on official promotions and demotions hoping they would be the next lucky soul to secure an official position.21 According to Samuel Wells Williams, editor of the Chinese Repository, the leading Western periodical on the China coast in the early nineteenth century, the gazette was also “very generally read and talked about by the gentry and educated people in cities, and tends to keep them more acquainted with the character and proceedings of their rulers, than the Romans were of their sovereigns and senate.”22
English Translations of the Peking Gazette
The readers who most concern us were the Protestant missionaries, British government officials, and early China scholars who read and translated the Peking Gazette for the broader global public.23 Robert Morrison (1782–1834), the first Protestant missionary to China, arrived in Macao in 1807 and immediately began looking for contemporary sources to study the Chinese language in preparation for his translation of the Bible. Not long after arriving, Morrison
19 Mittler, A Newspaper for China?, 205.
20 John Francis Davis, The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants (London: Charles Knight & Co, 1836), Volume 2, 171.
21 E. H. Parker, “The ‘Peking Gazette’ and Chinese Posting,” Longman’s Magazine (November 1896), 74.
22 S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, &c, of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1848), Volume 1, 328–29.
23 For a study of the earliest translations of the gazette, see: Yin Wenjuan 尹文涓, “Yesuhuishi yu xinjiao chuanjiaoshi dui ‘jingbao’ de jie yi” 耶穌會士與新教傳教士對“京報”的節譯 (Selected translations of the ‘Peking Gazette’ by the Jesuits and Protestant missionaries), Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 世界宗教研究 (Studies in world religions) 2 (2005): 71–82.
stumbled across the Gazette and almost immediately set to work learning to read it with the assistance of his Chinese tutors. Eight years later, Morrison began publishing translations of the Peking Gazette in periodicals in Canton and Malacca.24 As Morrison’s publisher wrote of his translations, “His design in communicating [his translations], is from a hope of its tending to illustrate the character of modern China, to bring Europeans and Chinese into closer connection with each other, and to assist the good and wise in forming a proper judgement of ‘the ways of God with men.’”25 From 1815 until his death nearly two decades later, Morrison routinely published his translations in various periodicals like the Indo-Chinese Gleaner, the Canton Register, and the Chinese Repository while also starting to train the next generation of translators such as John Francis Davis, who would later become the Governor of Hong Kong.26
After Morrison’s death in 1834, a few other missionaries tried their hand at translating the Gazette to varying degrees of success, but the Qing government had also become concerned that “the transmission of the Capital News [jingbao] to the rebellious barbarians surely is the deed of traitorous natives.”27 Qing concerns about foreigners reading the Gazette seems to have made them wary about what to release for publication. As James Hevia has written of a slightly later period, “The ability to authoritatively decode Qing internal documents….and the use of translated documents as offensive weapons worked to destabilize the administrative reporting structure of the Qing Empire.”28 Before long, the Qing government started suppressing the publication in the Gazette of most information concerning foreign countries, which explains why so little appeared on the Opium War (1839–1842) and almost nothing on the Second Opium War (1856–1860). During such conflicts, the British public in
24 Morrison’s earliest translations of the Gazette appear in his Translations from the Original Chinese, with Notes (1815). For an excellent study of Morrison’s work in translating the Peking Gazette, see: Mokros, “Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette,” Chapter Four.
25 Indo-Chinese Gleaner 3: 1 (February 1818), 44.
26 John Francis Davis, “Extracts from the Peking Gazette for 1824, Being the Fourth Year of Taou-kwang,” Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1: 2 (1826): 383–412.
27 J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, “On the Types and Uses of Ch’ing Documents,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 5: 1 (January 1940), 62.
28 James Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 61; Mokros specifically shows how Western diplomats used their understanding of the gazette during tense negotiations with the Qing. “Communication, Empire, and Authority in the Qing Gazette,” 277–86.
China came to believe, the publication of sensitive documents in the Gazette “is probably more jealously watched than ever.”29
The topic that came to dominate the pages of the Gazette in the mid-nineteenth century was the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). Just before the outbreak of the rebellion, a Shanghai-based auctioneer named Henry Shearman founded a weekly newspaper called the North China Herald in August 1850. Following the tradition of the Chinese Repository, which would cease publication the following year, Shearman began publishing “Select Extracts from the Pekin Reporter” in the very first issue of the Herald 30 When the Taiping Rebellion started a few months later, Shearman and the Herald were in a perfect position to translate and speculate on this ongoing Christian-inspired rebellion. Among the notable translators of the Gazette in this period were the budding sinologist and future British Minister to China Sir Thomas Francis Wade, the missionary Walter Henry Medhurst, and the missionary-turned-diplomat William C. Milne, whose father had published Morrison’s translations of the Gazette while editing the Indo-Chinese Gleaner. 31 When Shearman’s death coincided with the end of the offensive phase of the Taiping Rebellion in 1856, however, translations of the Gazette in the North China Herald petered off between 1856 and 1865 and stopped entirely from 1865 to 1870.
In 1870, the Macanese C. E. do Rozario, who had been one of Shearman’s original compositors at the Herald, established a short-lived magazine called The Cycle in Shanghai to compete with his former employer. Although do Rozario’s magazine would only last a year, his reintroduction of translations from the Gazette inspired Richard S. Gundry, the editor of the Herald from 1867–1878, to begin publishing a weekly translation of “an abstract” from the Peking Gazette in 1871. This is how Gundry described his purpose: “The knowledge gained from these papers is always interesting, and often valuable. The more we know of a nation’s habits, customs, and drift of thought, the better we can understand it…And certainly few better introductions in these respects, to the national mind, can exist, than the utterances, on nearly every prominent topic, of its leading statesmen.”32 Until the Peking Gazette stopped publication with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor in February 1912, newspapers all
29 North China Herald (June 5, 1858).
30 North China Herald (August 3, 1850).
31 In the mid-nineteenth century, Wade also published additional translations of the Gazette in his A Note on the Condition and Government of the Chinese Empire in 1849 (Hong Kong: China Mail Office, 1850) and Decree of the Emperor of China, Asking for Counsel, and the Replies of the Administration, 1850–51, with Other Papers (London: Harrison, 1878).
32 North China Herald (July 14, 1871).
along the China coast, in the world’s great capitals, and even in small towns across America reprinted North China Herald translations of the Peking Gazette to do what we hope to do, to help readers better understand the interplay of complex political themes, social movements, and cultural ideas over the course of the long nineteenth century in China.
About this Book
This reader will be useful for instructors who teach modern Chinese history, Chinese civilization courses, or broader East Asian surveys. The reader is designed so that instructors can use the entire text, select out several pertinent chapters that fit the structure of their course, or assign the various chapters to their students as the basis of research papers using translated primary sources. For instructors and students who would like to delve even more deeply into the Gazette—to explore additional sources on the included topics, craft their own thematic chapters, or research other subjects—I have worked with Brill to produce a database of approximately 8,500 pages of English-language translations of the Gazette, which is available for purchase through your library under the title Translations of the Peking Gazette Online.
Each chapter opens with a brief introductory essay describing the immediate background of the event or topic, discusses possible avenues of interpretation, and sometimes outlines the major historiographical debates surrounding the subject of the chapter. The purpose of these introductions is not to analyze the documents in question, the job of the student historian, but to help initiate classroom discussions and promote engagement with the texts. Discussions may also be started by addressing the additional questions provided at the end of each chapter. A short list of briefly annotated suggested English-language readings, some primary and some secondary, is also appended to each chapter to guide students who decide to use a specific chapter as the starting point for a research or term paper.
As students read the documents they will not only gain an unusual familiarity with day-to-day and unique concerns of the Qing empire, but also encounter perspectives and arguments that run counter to the prevailing interpretations of nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese history. This is intended. I must caution students against reading these documents too literally. It is often necessary to read between the lines, to unpack the packaged content, to fully understand the material published in the Gazette. By continuously reading these selections, and constantly questioning their contents, students will hone their analytical abilities and come to appreciate the artful ways information
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complete quiet, the residence alluded to (if it fulfilled the promise of its advertisement) appeared to be all that I could desire.
‘Park-like grounds!’ exclaimed my wife, with animation. ‘How the dear children will enjoy themselves.’
‘And two and a-half miles from church or station,’ I responded eagerly. ‘No neighbours, excellent fishing, and at a nominal rent. It sounds too good to be true.’
‘Oh, Arthur! you must write, and obtain all the particulars this very day. If you put it off, some one will be sure to take the house before we have time to do so.’
‘I shall go and see the city agents at once,’ I replied, resolutely. ‘It is too rare an opportunity to be lost. Only, don’t raise your hopes too high, my dear. Advertisements are apt to be deceptive.’
But when I had seen Messrs Quibble & Lye on the subject, it really seemed as though for once they had spoken the truth. Rushmere, the house in question, had been built and furnished for his own use by an old gentleman, who died shortly afterwards, and his heirs, not liking the situation, had placed the property in the agents’ hands for letting. The owners were wealthy, cared little for money, and had authorised the agents to let the house on any reasonable terms, and it was really a bargain to anyone that wanted it. They frankly admitted that the loneliness of the position of Rushmere was the reason of its cheapness; but when I heard the rent at which they offered to let me take it, if approved of, for three months, I was quite ready to agree with Messrs Quibble & Lye in their idea of a bargain, and that, for those who liked solitude, Rushmere offered extraordinary advantages.
Armed with the necessary authority, I found my way down into Monmouthshire, to inspect the premises on the following day; and when I saw Rushmere, I felt still more disposed to be surprised at the opportunity afforded me, and to congratulate myself on the promptitude with which I had embraced it. I found it to be a goodsized country house, comfortably furnished, and, to all appearance, well built, standing in enclosed grounds, and on a healthy elevation;
but, notwithstanding its isolated situation, I was too much a man of the world to believe, under the circumstances, that its greatest disadvantage lay in that fact. Accordingly, I peered eagerly about for damp walls, covered cesspools, unsteady joists, or tottering foundations, but I could find none.
‘The chimneys smoke, I suppose?’ I remarked, in a would-be careless tone, to the old woman whom I found in charge of the house, and who crept after me where-ever I went.
‘Chimbleys smoke, sir? Not as I knows of.’
‘The roof leaks, perhaps?’
‘Deary me, no. You won’t find a spot of damp, look where you may.’
‘Then there’s been a fever, or some infectious disorder in the house?’
‘A fever, sir? Why, the place has been empty these six months. The last tenants left at Christmas.’
‘Empty for six months!’ I exclaimed. ‘How long is it, then, since the gentleman who built it died?’
‘Old Mr Bennett, sir? He’s been dead a matter of fifteen years or more.’
‘Indeed! Then why don’t the owners of the place sell it, instead of letting it stand vacant?’ thought I to myself.
But I did not say so to the old woman, who was looking up in my face, as though anxious to learn what my decision would be.
‘No vermin, I hope?’ I suggested, as a last resource. ‘You are not troubled with rats or mice at night, are you?’
‘Oh, I don’t sleep here at night, sir, thank heaven!’ she answered in a manner which appeared to me unnecessarily energetic. ‘I am only employed by day to air the house, and show it to strangers. I go home to my own people at night.’
‘And where do your people live?’
‘Better than half a mile from here, sir, and ours is the nearest cottage to Rushmere.’
And then—apprehensive, perhaps, that her information might prove a drawback to the letting of the property—she added, quickly, —
‘Not but what it’s a nice place to live in, is Rushmere, and very convenient, though a bit lonesome.’
I perfectly agreed with her, the ‘lonesomeness’ of the situation proving no detraction in my eyes.
On my return to London I gave my wife so glowing a description of the house and its surroundings, that she urged me to conclude the bargain at once; and, in the course of a few weeks, I and my family were transplanted from the purlieus of Bayswater to the banks of the Wye. It was the middle of May when we took possession, and the country wore its most attractive garb. The children were wild with delight at being let loose in the flower-bespangled fields, and, as I watched the tributaries of the river, and perceived the excellent sport they promised me, I felt scarcely less excited than the children. Only my wife, I thought, became inoculated with some of the absurd fears of the domestics we had brought with us from town, and seemed to consider the locality more lonely and unprotected than she had expected to find it.
‘It’s a charming place, Arthur,’ she acknowledged, ‘and marvellously cheap; but it is certainly a long way from other houses. I find we shall have to send for everything to the town. Not even the country carts, with butter and poultry, seem to call at Rushmere.’
‘My dear Jane, I told you distinctly that it was two and a-half miles from church or station, and you read it for yourself in the paper. But I thought we looked out for a retreat where we should run no risk of being intruded on by strangers.’
‘Oh yes, of course; only there are not even any farmhouses or cottages near Rushmere, you see; and it would be so very easy for anyone to break in at night, and rob us.’
‘Pooh, nonsense! What will you be afraid of next? The locks and bolts are perfectly secure, and both Dawson and I have firearms, and are ready to use them. Your fears are childish, Janie.’
But all my arguments were unavailing, and each day my wife grew more nervous, and less willing to be left alone. So much so, indeed, that I made a practice of seeing that the house fastenings were properly secured each night myself, and of keeping a loaded revolver close to my hand, in case of need. But it damped my pleasure to find that Jane was not enjoying herself; and the country looked less beautiful to me than it had done at first. One night I suddenly awoke, to find that she was sitting up in bed, and in an attitude of expectation.
‘My dear, what is the matter with you?’
‘Oh, hush! I am sure that I hear footsteps on the stairs—footsteps creeping up and down.’
I listened with her, but could detect no sound whatever.
‘Lie down again, Jane—it is only your imagination. Every one is fast asleep in bed.’
‘I assure you, Arthur, I am not mistaken. Once they came quite near the door.’
‘If so, it can only be one of the servants. You don’t wish me to get up and encounter Mary or Susan in her night-dress, do you? Consider my morals!’
‘Oh no, of course not,’ she replied with a faint smile; yet it was some time before she fell to sleep again.
It was not many nights before my wife roused me again with the same complaint.
‘Arthur, don’t call me silly, but I am certain I heard something.’
To appease her fears, I shook off my drowsiness, and, with a lighted candle, made a tour of the house; but all was as I had left it.
Once, indeed, I imagined that I heard at my side the sound of a quick breathing; but that I knew must be sheer fancy, since I was
alone.
The only circumstance that startled me was finding Dawson, the man servant, who slept on the ground floor, also awake, and listening at his door.
‘What roused you, Dawson?’
‘Well, sir, I can hardly say; but I fancied I heard some one going up the stairs a little while ago.’
‘You heard me coming down, you mean.’
‘No, sir, begging your pardon, it was footsteps going up—lighter than yours, sir. More like those of a woman.’
Yet, though I privately interrogated the female servants on the following day, I could not discover that any of them had been out of their beds; and I forbore to tell my wife what Dawson had said in corroboration of her statement.
Only I was as much annoyed as astonished when, as I finished my catechism of Mary, our head nurse, she informed me that she had made up her mind to leave our service. Mary—my wife’s right hand —who had been with us ever since the birth of our first child! The announcement took me completely aback.
‘What on earth is your reason for leaving us?’ I demanded angrily; for I knew what a blow her decision would be to Jane. ‘What have you to find fault with?’
‘Nothing with you or the mistress, sir; but I can’t remain in this house. I wouldn’t stay in it a night longer, if it were possible to get away; and I do hope you and Mrs Delamere will let me go as soon as ever you can, sir, as it will be the death of me.’
‘What will be the death of you?’
‘The footsteps, sir, and the voices,’ she answered, crying. ‘I can hear them about the nurseries all night long, and it’s more than any mortal can stand—it is, indeed.’
‘Are you infected with the same folly?’ I exclaimed. ‘I see what it is, Dawson has been talking to you. I didn’t know I had such a couple of
fools in my establishment.’
‘Mr Dawson has said nothing to me about nothing, sir,’ she answered. ‘I hear what I hear with my own ears; and I wouldn’t stay a week longer in this ’aunted place, not if you was to strew the floor with golden guineas for me.’
Not possessing either the capability or the inclination to test Mary’s fidelity by the means she alluded to, and finding her determination unalterable, I gave her the desired permission to depart; only making it a stipulation that she should not tell her mistress the real reason for her leaving us, but ascribe it to bad news from home, or any other cause.
But though I could not but believe that the woman’s idiotic terrors had blinded her judgment, I was extremely surprised to find she should have been so led astray, as I had always considered Mary to possess a remarkably clear head and good moral sense. The wailing and lamentation, from both mother and children, at the announcement of her departure made me still more angry with her obstinacy and folly. But she continued resolute; and we were driven to try and secure some one to fulfil her duties from the neighbouring town. But here a strange difficulty met us. We saw several fresh, rosy-cheeked maidens, who appeared quite willing to undertake our service, until they heard where we resided, when, by an extraordinary coincidence, one and all discovered that some insurmountable obstacle prevented their coming at all. When the same thing had occurred several times in succession, and Jane appeared worn out with disappointment and fatigue, the landlord of the inn where we had put up for the day appeared at the door, and beckoned me out.
‘May I make bold enough to ask if you want a servant to go to Rushmere?’ he inquired of me in a whisper.
‘Certainly, we do. Our nurse has been obliged to leave us suddenly, and we want some one to supply her place.’
‘Then you may give it up as a bad job, sir; for you’ll never get one of the country people here about to set a foot in Rushmere—not if
you were to live there till the day of your death.’
‘And why not?’ I demanded, with affected ignorance.
‘What! haven’t you heard nothing since you’ve been there, sir?’
‘Heard? What should I have heard, except the ordinary noises of the household?’
‘Well, you’re lucky if you’ve escaped so far,’ returned the landlord, mysteriously; ‘but it ain’t for long. No one who lives in Rushmere lives there alone. I can tell you the whole story if you like?’
‘I have no desire to listen to any such folly,’ I replied, testily. ‘I am not superstitious, and do not believe in supernatural sights or sounds. If the people round about here are foolish enough to do so, I cannot help it; but I will not have the minds of my wife or family imbued with their nonsense.’
‘Very good, sir; I hope you may be able to say as much two months hence,’ said the man, civilly.
And so we parted.
I returned to Janie, and persuaded her he had told me that all the girls of that town had a strong objection to leave it, which was the reason they refused to take service in the country. I reminded her that Susan was quite competent to take charge of the whole flock until we returned to London; and it would be better after all to put up with a little inconvenience than to introduce a stranger to the nursery. So my wife, who was disappointed with the failure of her enterprise, fell in with my ideas, and we returned to Rushmere, determined to do as best we could with Susan only.
But I could not forget the landlord’s earnestness, and, notwithstanding my incredulity, began to wish we were well out of Rushmere.
For a few days after Mary’s departure we slept in peace; but then the question of the mysterious footsteps assumed a graver aspect, for my wife and I were roused from deep slumber one night by a loud knock upon the bedroom door, and springing up to answer it, I
encountered, on the threshold, Dawson, pale with fright, and trembling in every limb.
‘What do you mean by alarming your mistress in this way?’ I inquired, angrily.
‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he replied, with chattering teeth, ‘but I thought it my duty to let you know. There’s some one in the house to-night, sir. I can hear them whispering together at this moment; and so can you, if you will but listen.’
I advanced at once to the banisters, and certainly heard what seemed to be the sound of distant voices engaged in altercation; and, light in hand, followed by Dawson, I dashed down the staircase without further ceremony, in hopes of trapping the intruders.
But all in vain. Though we entered every room in turn, not a soul was visible.
I came to the conclusion that the whole alarm was due to Dawson’s cowardice.
‘You contemptible fool, you are as chicken-hearted as a woman!’ I said, contemptuously. ‘You hear the frogs croaking in the mere, or the wind blowing through the rushes, and you immediately conclude the house is full of thieves.’
‘I didn’t say it was thieves,’ the man interposed, sullenly; but I took no notice of the muttered remark.
‘If you are afraid to sleep downstairs by yourself,’ I continued, ‘say so; but don’t come alarming your mistress again, in the middle of the night, for I won’t allow it.’
The man slunk back into his room, with a reiteration that he had not been mistaken; and I returned to bed, full of complaints at having been so unnecessarily roused.
‘If this kind of thing goes on,’ I remarked to my wife, ‘I shall regret ever having set eyes on Rushmere. That a pack of silly maidservants should see a robber in every bush is only to be expected; but how a sensible man like Dawson, and a woman of education like
yourself, can permit your imagination to betray you into such foolish fears, is quite past my comprehension.’
Yet, notwithstanding my dose of philosophy, poor Jane looked so pale upon the following morning, that I was fain to devise and carry into execution a little excursion into the neighbouring country before she regained her usual composure.
Some time passed without any further disturbance, and though upon several occasions I blamed myself for having brought a family, used to a populous city like London, to vegetate in so isolated a spot as Rushmere, I had almost forgotten the circumstances that had so much annoyed me.
We had now spent a month in our temporary home. The fields and hedgerows were bright with summer flowers, and the children passed most of their time tumbling amongst the new-mown hay. Janie had once more regained courage to sit by herself in the dusk, and to rest with tolerable security when she went to bed. I was rejoicing in the idea that all the folly that had marred the pleasure of our arrival at Rushmere had died a natural death, when it was vividly and painfully recalled to my mind by its actual recurrence.
Our second girl, a delicate little creature of about six years old, who, since the departure of her nurse, had slept in a cot in the same room as ourselves, woke me up in the middle of the night by exclaiming, in a frightened, plaintive voice, close to my ear,—
‘Papa! papa! do you hear the footsteps? Some one is coming up the stairs!’
The tone was one of terror, and it roused my wife and myself instantly. The child was cold, and shaking all over with alarm, and I placed her by her mother’s side before I left the room to ascertain if there was any truth in her assertion.
‘Arthur, Arthur! I hear them as plainly as can be,’ exclaimed my wife, who was as terrified as the child. ‘They are on the second landing. There is no mistake about it this time.’
I listened at the half-opened door, and was compelled to agree with her. From whatever cause they arose, footsteps were to be
distinctly heard upon the staircase—sometimes advancing, and then retreating, as though afraid to venture farther; but, still, not to be mistaken for anything but the sound of feet.
With a muttered exclamation, I seized my revolver.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ I said, hurriedly; ‘there is not the slightest occasion for it. And, whatever happens, do not venture on the landing. I shall be quite safe.’
And without further preamble, only desirous to settle the business once for all, and give the intruders on my domains a sharp lesson on the laws of meum and tuum, I sprang down the staircase. I had not stayed to strike a light; but the moon was shining blandly in at the uncurtained passage window, and the landing was as bright as day Yet I saw no one there. The thief (if thief it were) must have already taken the alarm, and descended to the lowest regions. I fancied I could detect the same footsteps, but more distinctly marked, walk by me with a hurried, frightened movement, accompanied by a quick, sobbing breath; and, as I paused to consider what such a mystery could indicate, a pair of heavily-shod feet rushed past me, or seemed to rush, upon the stairs. I heard an angry shout commingle with a faint cry of terror below the landing whereon I stood; then, the discharge of a firearm, followed by a low groan of pain—and all was still.
Dark and mysterious though it appeared to be, I did not dream of ascribing the circumstance to any but a natural cause. But there was evidently no time for hesitation, and in another moment I had flown down the stairs, and stood in the moonlighted hall. It was empty!
Chairs, table, hatstand, stood in their accustomed places; the children’s garden hats and my fishing tackle were strewn about; but of animated nature there was not a sign, of the recent scuffle not a trace!
All was quiet, calm, and undisturbed, and, as I gazed around in mute bewilderment, the perspiration stood in thick drops upon my brow and chin.
My first collected thought was for my wife and the best means by which to prevent her sharing the mystification and dread which I have no hesitation in confessing that I now experienced; but as I turned to remount the staircase, I caught sight of some dark mass lying at the further end of the passage, and going up to it, found to my surprise the body of Dawson, cold and insensible.
The explanation of the mystery was before me—so I immediately determined. The man, whom I knew to be replete with superstitious terror, imagining he heard the unaccountable noise of footsteps, had evidently supplied that which had reached my ear, and in his alarm at my approach had discharged his firearm at the supposed marauder. Pleasant for me if he had taken a better aim: So I thought as I dragged his unconscious body into his bedroom, and busied myself by restoring it to sensation.
As soon as he opened his eyes, and was sufficiently recovered to answer me, I asked,—
‘What on earth made you discharge your gun, Dawson? I must take it out of your keeping, if your are so careless about using it.’
‘I didn’t fire, sir.’
‘Nonsense! you don’t know what you are talking about. I heard the shot distinctly as I came downstairs.’
‘I am only telling you the truth, sir. There is the fowling-piece in that corner I have not drawn the trigger since you last loaded it.’
I went up and examined the weapon. What Dawson had said was correct. It had not been used.
‘Then who did fire?’ I said, impatiently. ‘I could swear to having heard the report.’
‘And so could I, sir. It was that that knocked me over.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, sir, pray take the mistress and the children away from this place as soon as possible. It’s no robbers that go up and down these stairs of nights, sir. It’s something much worse than that.’
‘Dawson, if you begin to talk such folly to me, I’ll discharge you on the spot. I believe the whole lot of you have gone mad.’
‘But listen to my story, sir I had gone to bed last night, as tired as possible, and thinking of nothing but getting a good long sleep. The first thing that roused me was some one trying the handle of my door. I lay and listened to it for some time before I was fully awake, and then I thought maybe you wanted something out of my room, and was trying not to wake me; so I got out of bed and opened the door. But there was nobody there, though I fancied I heard some one breathing hard a few yards off from me. Well, I thought to myself, sir, this is all nonsense; so I came back to bed again, and lay down. But I couldn’t sleep; for directly the door was closed, I heard the footsteps again, creep, creeping along the passage and the wall, as though some one was crouching and feeling his way as he went. Then the handle of the door began to creak and turn again—I saw it turn, sir, with my own eyes, backwards and forwards, a dozen times in the moonlight; and then I heard a heavier step come stumbling downstairs, and there seemed to be a kind of scuffle. I couldn’t stand it no longer, so I opened the door again; and then, as I’m a living Christian, sir, I heard a woman’s voice say ‘Father!’ with a kind of sob, and as the sound was uttered there came a report from the first landing, and the sound of a fall, and a deep groan in the passage below. And it seemed to go right through me, and curdle my blood, and I fell all of a heap where you found me. And it’s nothing natural, sir, you may take my word for it; and harm will come of your stopping in this house.’
So saying, poor Dawson, who seemed in real earnest, fell back on his pillow with a heavy sigh.
‘Dawson,’ I said, critically, ‘what did you eat for supper last night?’
‘You’re never going to put down what I’ve told you, sir, to supper. I took nothing but a little cold meat, upon my word. And I was as sensible, till that shot knocked me over, as you are this moment.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that you seriously believe the report of a firearm could have reached your ears without one having been discharged?’
‘But didn’t you say you heard it yourself, sir?’
This knocked me over, and I did not know what to answer him. In the attempt to allay what I considered his unreasonable fear, I had forgotten my own experience in the matter. And I knew that I had heard, or imagined I heard, a shot fired, and it would be very difficult for any one to persuade me I was mistaken. Still, though I held no belief in supernatural agencies, I was an earnest student of the philosophical and metaphysical school of Germany, and acquainted with all the revealed wonders of magnetism and animal electricity. It was impossible to say whether some such effect as I have described might not have been produced upon my brain by the reflection of the fear or fancy on that of my servant; and that as he had imagined the concussion of firearms, so I might have instantaneously received the impression of his mind. It was a nice question for argument, and not one to be thought over at that moment. All my present business lay in the effort to disabuse Dawson’s mind of the reality of the shock it had received.
‘I said I fancied I heard something like the report of a firearm; but as none had been fired, of course I must have been mistaken. Come, Dawson, I must go back, or Mrs Delamere will wonder what has become of me. I conclude you are not such a coward as to be afraid to be left by yourself?’
‘I never feared a man in my life, sir; but the strongest heart can’t stand up against spirits.’
‘Spirits!’ I exclaimed, angrily. ‘I wonder what on earth you will talk to me about next? Now, I’ll tell you what it is, Dawson—if I hear anything more of this, or am disturbed again at night by your folly, I’ll pack you back to London without a character. Do you understand me?’
‘I understand you, sir,’ the man answered, humbly; and thereupon I left him to himself.
But, as I reascended the staircase, I was not satisfied either with my own half-formed solution of the mystery, or my servant’s reception of my rebuke. He evidently would prefer dismissal to
passing such another night. I could read the resolution in his face, although he had not expressed it in so many words. When I reached my wife’s room, I was still more surprised. Janie and the child lay in a profound slumber. I had expected to find both of them in a state of anxious terror to learn the meaning of the noise that was going on below; but they had evidently heard nothing. This welcome fact, however, only tended to confirm me in the belief I had commenced to entertain, of the whole circumstance being due to some, perhaps yet undiscovered, phase of brain reading, and I fell to sleep, resolved to make a deeper study of the marvels propounded by Mesmer and Kant. When I awoke, with the bright June sun streaming in at the windows, I had naturally parted with much of the impression of the night before. It is hard to associate any gloomy or unnatural thoughts with the unlimited glory of the summer’s sunshine, that streams into every nook and cranny, and leaves no shadows anywhere. On this particular morning it seemed to have cleared the cobwebs off all our brains. The child had forgotten all about the occurrence of the night. I was, as usual, ready to laugh away all ghostly fears and fancies; and even Janie seemed to regard the matter as one of little moment.
‘What was the matter last night, Arthur, dear?’ she asked, when the subject recurred to her memory. ‘I was so sleepy I couldn’t keep awake till you came up again.’
‘Didn’t you hear the fearful battle I held with the goblins in the hall?’ I demanded, gaily, though I put the question with a purpose, —‘the shots that were exchanged between us, and the groans of the defeated, as they slunk away into their haunted coal-cellars and cupboards?’
‘Arthur, what nonsense! Was there any noise?’
‘Well, I frightened Dawson, and Dawson frightened me; and we squabbled over it for the best part of an hour. I thought our talking might have disturbed you.’
‘Indeed, it didn’t, then. But don’t mention it before Cissy, Arthur, even in fun, for she declares she heard some one walking about the room, and I want her to forget it.’
I dropped the subject; but meeting Dawson as I was smoking my pipe in the garden that afternoon, I ventured to rally him on his fright of the night before, and to ask if he hadn’t got over it by that time.
‘No, sir; and I never shall,’ he replied, with a sort of shiver. ‘And I only hope you may come to be convinced of the truth of it before it’s too late to prevent harm you may never cease to repent of.’
There was so much respectful earnestness in the man’s manner, that I could not resent his words nor laugh at them, as I had done before; and I passed by him in thoughtful silence.
What if there were more in all this than I had ever permitted myself to imagine? What if the assertions of my man-servant, the unaffected terror of my wife and child, the fears of my nurse, the evident shrinking of the old woman who had charge of the house, the opposition from the servants of the neighbouring town, combined with what I had heard myself, were not simple chimeras of the brain —fancies engendered by superstition or timidity or ignorance; but indications of a power beyond our control, the beginning and the end of which may alike remain unknown until all things are revealed? I had, with the majority of educated men, manfully resisted all temptation to believe in the possibility of spirits, of whatever grade, making themselves either seen or heard by mortal senses. I use the word ‘manfully,’ although I now believe it to be the height of manliness to refuse to discredit that which we cannot disprove, and to have sufficient humility to accept the belief that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. But at that juncture I should have considered such a concession both childish and cowardly. Yet, there was sufficient doubt in my mind, notwithstanding the glorious June sun, respecting my adventure of the night before, that I resolved, whatever happened, that I would satisfy myself as to the value of the fears of those about me.
I could not keep my wife and children in a house where they might be liable at any moment to be frightened out of their seven senses, from whatever cause, without ascertaining the reason of it. Some reason there must be, either natural or otherwise; and I determined, if possible, to learn it that very night. I would not tell Dawson or
anyone of my intention; but I would keep watch and ward in the old parlour on the ground floor, so as to be ready to rush out at a moment’s notice, and seize any intruder who might attempt to disturb us. I still believed—I could not but believe—that the footsteps which so many of us had heard were due to some trickster, who wished to play upon our nerves in that lonely old house. I had heard of such things being done, purposely to keep visitors away; and I determined, whosoever it might be, whether our own servants or strangers, that they must take their chance of being shot down like any other robber
According to my resolution, I said nothing to Janie, but tried to render the evening as cheerful and merry a one as possible.
I ordered strawberries and cream into the hay-field, and played with my troop of little ones there, until they were so tired they could hardly walk for the short distance that lay between them and their beds. As soon as they were dismissed, and we had returned to the house, I laid aside the newspapers that had arrived by that morning’s post, and which I usually reserved for the evening’s delectation, and taking my wife upon my knee, as in the dear old courting days, talked to her until she had forgotten everything but the topics on which we conversed, and had no time to brood upon the coming night, and the fears it usually engendered. Then, as a last duty, I carried to Dawson with my own hands a strong decoction of brandy and water, with which I had mixed something that I knew, under ordinary circumstances, must make him sleep till daylight.
‘Drink this,’ I said to him. ‘From whatever cause, our nerves were both shaken last night, and a little stimulant will do neither of us harm.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied, as he finished the tumbler at a draught; ‘I don’t deny I’m glad to have it. I dread the thoughts of the night before us.’
‘Lock your door on the inside,’ I added as I left him, ‘and don’t get up whether the handle moves or not. Then, at all events, you will feel secure till the morrow.’
‘Keys won’t keep them out,’ muttered Dawson, as he entered his sleeping apartment.
But I would not notice the allusion, though I understood it.
I went up to bed with my wife as usual; and it was not until I saw she was sound asleep that, habited in my dressing-gown and slippers, I ventured to creep softly out of the room and take my way downstairs again.
It was then about twelve o’clock. The moonlight was as bright as it had been the night before, and made every object distinctly visible. From the loud snoring which proceeded from Dawson’s room, I concluded that my opiate had taken due effect, and that I should be permitted to hold my vigil undisturbed. In one hand I grasped a loaded revolver, and in the other a huge knotted stick, so determined was I not to be taken by my tormentors at a disadvantage. I turned into the general sitting-room, which opened on the hall. All was as we had left it; and I ensconced myself on one of the large oldfashioned sofas, trusting to my curiosity to keep me awake.
It was weary waiting. I heard one and then two sound from the big clock in the hall; still there was no other noise to break the silence. I began to relapse into my first belief that the whole business was due to imagination. From this I passed to self-satisfaction; selfsatisfaction induced inertion, and inertion brought on heavy sleep. How long I slept I do not know, but I had reason afterwards to think, not more than half-an-hour.
However, that point is immaterial. But what waked me—waked me so completely that in a moment all my faculties were as clear as daylight—was the sound of a hoarse breathing. I sat up on the sofa and rubbed my eyes.
The room was fully lighted by the moon. I could see into each corner. Nothing was visible. The sound I had heard must then have proceeded from outside the door, which was open; and I turned towards it, fully expecting to see Dawson enter in a somnambulistic condition, brought on by his dreams and my soporific.
But he did not appear. I rose and looked into the hall. It was empty, as before. Still the breathing continued, and (as I, with now fullyawakened faculties, discovered) proceeded from a corner of the parlour where stood an old-fashioned secretary and a chair. Not daring to believe my senses, I advanced to the spot and listened attentively. The sound continued, and was unmistakably palpable. The breathing was hoarse and laboured, like that of an old man who was suffering from bronchitis or asthma. Every now and then it was interrupted by a short, roupy cough. What I suffered under this mysterious influence I can hardly tell. Interest and curiosity got the better of my natural horror; but even then I could not but feel that there was something very awful in this strange contact of sound without sight. Presently my eyes were attracted by the chair, which was pushed, without any visible agency, towards the wall. Something rose—I could hear the action of the feet. Something moved—I could hear it approaching the spot where I stood motionless. Something brushed past me, almost roughly—I could feel the contact of a cloth garment against my dressing-gown, and heard the sound of coarsely shod feet leaving the room. My hair was almost standing on end with terror; but I was determined to follow the mystery to its utmost limits, whether my curiosity were satisfied by the attempt or not.
I rushed after the clumping feet into the hall; and I heard them slowly and painfully, and yet most distinctly, commence to toil up the staircase. But before they had reached the first landing, and just as I was about to follow in their wake, my attention was distracted by another sound, which appeared to be close at my elbow—the sound of which Dawson had complained the night before—that of a creeping step, and a stifled sobbing, as though a woman were feeling her way along the passage in the dark. I could discern the feeble touch as it felt along the wall, and then placed an uncertain hold upon the banisters—could hear the catching breath, which dared not rise into a cry, and detect the fear which caused the feet to advance and retreat, and advance a little way again, and then stop, as though dread of some unknown calamity overpowered every other feeling. Meanwhile, the clumping steps, that had died away in the distance, turned, and appeared to be coming downstairs again. The moon streamed brightly in at the landing window. Had a form
been visible, it would have been as distinctly seen as by day I experienced a sense of coming horror, and drew back in the shadow of the wall. As the heavy footsteps gained the lower landing, I heard a start—a scuffle—a faint cry of ‘Father!’ and then a curse—the flash of a firearm—a groan—and I remember nothing more.
When I recovered my consciousness, I was lying on the flat of my back in the passage, as I had found poor Dawson the night before, and the morning sun was shining full upon my face. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and tried to remember how I had come there. Surely the moon had looked in at that window when I saw it last. Then in a moment came back upon my mind all that I had heard whilst holding my vigil during the past night; and I sprang to my feet, to see if I could discover any traces of the tragedy which seemed to have been enacted in my very presence.
But it was in vain I searched the parlour, the passage, and the stairs. Everything remained in its usual place. Even the chair, which I could swear I saw pushed against the wall, was now standing primly before the secretary, and the door of the room was closed, as it usually was when we retired for the night. I slunk up to my dressingroom, anxious that my wife should not discover that I had never retired to rest; and having plunged my head and face into cold water, took my way across the sunlighted fields, to see if the fresh morning air might not be successful in clearing away the confusion with which my brain was oppressed. But I had made up my mind on one point, and that was that we would move out of Rushmere as soon as it was possible to do so. After a stroll of a couple of hours, I re-approached the house. The first person I encountered was the under nurse, Susan, who ran to meet me with a perturbed countenance.
‘Oh, sir, I’m so thankful you’ve come back! Dawson has been looking for you for the last hour, for poor missus is so ill, and we don’t know what on earth to do with her.’
‘Ill! In what way?’ I demanded quickly.
‘That’s what we can’t make out, sir. Miss Cissy came up crying to the nursery, the first thing this morning, to tell me that her mamma had tumbled out of bed, and wouldn’t speak to her; and she couldn’t
find her papa. So I ran downstairs directly, sir; and there I found my mistress on the ground, quite insensible, and she hasn’t moved a limb since.’
‘Good heavens!’ I inwardly exclaimed, as I ran towards the house, ‘is it possible she can have been affected by the same cause?’
I found Janie, as the nurse had said, unconscious; and it was some time before my remedies had any effect on her. When she opened her eyes, and understood the condition she had been in, she was seized with such a fit of nervous terror that she could do nothing but cling to me, and entreat me to take her away from Rushmere.
Remembering my own experience, I readily promised her that she should not sleep another night in the house if she did not desire it. Soothed by my words, she gradually calmed down, and was at last able to relate the circumstance which had so terrified her.
‘Did you sleep in my room last night, dear Arthur?’ she asked, curiously.
‘I did not. But since you awoke, you surely must have been aware of my absence.’
‘I know nothing, and remember nothing, except the awful horror that overpowered me. I had gone to sleep very happy last night, and none of my silly fears, as you have called them, ever entered my head. Indeed, I think I was in the midst of some pleasant dream, when I was awakened by the sound of a low sobbing by the bedside. Oh! such a strange, unearthly sobbing’ (with a shudder). ‘I thought at first it must be poor little Cissy, who had been frightened again, and I put out my hand to her, saying,—“Don’t be afraid, dear. I am here.” Directly, a hand was placed in mine—a cold, damp hand, with a death-like, clayey feel about it that made me tremble. I knew at once it was not the child’s hand, and I started up in bed, exclaiming, —“Who are you?”
‘The room was quite dark, for I had pinned my shawl across the blind to keep the moon out of my eyes before I went to bed, and I could distinguish nothing. Yet still the cold, damp hand clung to mine, and seemed to strike the chill of death into my very bones. When I
