A word if I may on Yuán Shì-kai who is both a General and holder of a top political post, the Viceroy of Chihli. By his strategic disposition Yuán completely controls all approaches to the Capital. The ultimate purpose of the equipped and disciplined troops is locked in his breast. Consequently we know little of his ambitious military plans. Where will the guns be deployed? Will they be pointed towards rebellious elements inside China herself? Or face the Treaty Ports, including Hong Kong?
The Commandant is a little in love with plenitude and panoply but without question he is to be taken with the utmost seriousness. We believe him to be the most powerful individual in China after the Empress Dowager herself. Foreigners can be tricked by Yuán’s affability. They retire from his yamen (headquarters) with the idea they have deeply impressed him with the object of their interest.
As the Secretary of State for War informed you, we know little of events in China outside Peking and the Treaty Ports. Our agents in the German Rhineland report a burst of activity in the Krupp armaments factories with China in mind. Large crates roll out after dark, designated for Hankow, Mukden, Hangchow and Tientsin. We believe they contain dozens of an as-yet secret 75 millimetre field-gun, and hundreds of Krupp .313 machine-guns. Throw in a few quick-firing field guns from Austria-Hungary’s Škoda Works, complete with carriages, ammunition waggons and limbers, it all adds up to a formidable force.
I have occupied your attention too long already except to add there is a powerful school of thought in England which wishes our Foreign Secretary would pay far more attention to the Chinese partridge than the French sparrow. They hold that great empires like Britain’s must continue to expand or, like stars at the end of their life, implode. In their eyes China would be no more difficult to administer than India has proven to be.’
‘Yours ever truly’ followed.
I folded Mycroft’s letter back into its envelope, turning to the package, and stripped off the covering paper. It contained a first printing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In green ink on the fly, without comment, Mycroft had transcribed The Spider and the Fly, a poem well remembered from my childhood.
‘Take care’ was valued advice, especially coming from Mycroft Holmes, the greatest spider of them all, tucked in the silken den, The Diogenes Club. In a few weeks I would be in Cathay, a fabulous land ruled by one of the most capricious, debauched and cruel courts ever recorded in history, Orient or Occident, where flattery and charm were not pleasantries but deadly traps, the Imperial throne at the centre, a pole star about which the whole world revolved.
Chapter IV
I Ready Myself for China
The days passed quickly. My journey was to commence in under a week. After a quiet dinner at the nearby Great Western Royal Hotel I clambered up to the box-room where my tackle and clothing from Army days were stored in moth-proof trunks. ‘The East India Vade-Mecum’, my first guidebook for military service in India, lay among the memorabilia. It counselled voyagers to take ‘a washbasin, a chamber pot, a pound of tea, five pounds of sugar, soap that could be dissolved in salt water and both a horsehair and a feather pillow’ - the latter for cold weather, the former for warmer climes. As on that first adventure, I would take an assortment of emergency drugs, a few diagnostic instruments and a small leather-cased amputation kit.
I considered my wardrobe. For the rough terrain en route to northern China a trip to tailors Gieves and Hawkes would be in order. On each of my visits a now-elderly cutter reminded me that Gieves tailored the uniform Admiral Lord Nelson wore when he died aboard HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. And that when Henry Mortimer Stanley came across David Livingstone in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on 27 October 1871, the former was clad head to toe in Hawkes & Co. dress. Even Livingstone wore a Gieves Consular hat.
My formal wear too was in severe need of an update. I would order a bespoke frock coat, grey, with silk-faced lapels, and perhaps a matching grey silk cravat. My existing waterproof horse-hide shooting boots had seen better days and needed replacing.
Food would be a problem on the long route. Mycroft Holmes could send stores to way-stations ahead - a few dozen 2lb lever-top canisters of the ‘McDoddie’, preserved carrots, celery, French beans, Julienne, leeks etc. (‘cannot be distinguished from the fresh’) described favourably in The Lancet as maintaining the true flavours and, as important, the peculiar chemical conditions of the food constituents. An electric torch would be convenient but obtaining fresh charges an impossibility. Instead a couple of Italian Alpine Club lanterns and a ball of spare wick, a gallon of oil of the best quality and wax tapers would serve nearly as well. Plus a 3-draw spyglass in a leather case. For compiling notes I would take my favourite stylographic pen and a stone bottle of Draper’s dichroic ink. By contrast with writing-ink, the latter is quite unaffected by wet.
I dropped in at Salmon & Gluckstein of Oxford Street (‘Largest and Cheapest Tobacconists in the World’) to purchase a half-dozen tins of J&H Wilson No. 1 Top Mill snuff, a few Churchwarden clay pipes, and a box of Trichinopoly cigars manufactured from tobacco grown near the town of Dindigul.
That evening I went to my work-table and took out a top-breaker six shot revolver in .476 calibre with a bird’s head grip and two spare barrels. New rounds can be reloaded quickly. Given Mycroft’s and the Chinese General’s dire warnings I would include the bespoke shotgun inherited from my father, after taking it in the morning to Athol Purdey for servicing. A stroll back to the Army & Navy Stores for a supply of Spartan sauce and a few tins of preserved soup, followed by a meal at The Holborn would complete a pleasant day.
An imperious knocking called me to the side-door. A messenger-boy handed me a telegram and pushed a palm at me for a gratuity.
‘Mister,’ he said, pointing at the sturdy revolver in my hand, ‘my grandfather has one just like that. Webley-Pryse, ain’t it? He spends his evenings cleaning it with a rag too.’