Inside Canton.
The mere notion that I was in possession of a room inside Canton—with freedom to wander through every quarter of that hitherto mysterious city, of which former travellers had only conveyed a notion from glances taken from the White Cloud Mountain, revealing nothing but an expanse of tiles and trees, with a pagoda-top or two, and a few mandarin flag-poles—was sufficient to banish anything like sleep. And apart from this constant wondering at perpetually finding myself where I was—the sharp “tung” of the mosquitoes before settling down for their gory banquet, the calls of the French and English bugles answering each other from the five-storied pagoda to the joss-house barracks, the terribly breathless atmosphere, and the grim, gigantic Chinese gods, who sat in the moonlight like pantomime ogres round my chamber, were quite enough to have kept one awake, and would have done so even if a genius had descended to read a paper on Art, which they might have discussed with him afterwards.
At last the quickly-rising tropical sun fired a ray like a shell into my eyes through a broken pane in the mother-of-pearl window of my joss-haunted room. This drove me out of bed, or, rather, off my matting, as quickly as though a real shrapnell had hissed its intention of immediately exploding beneath me. For this fearful sun of a Canton summer falls in red-hot death upon the European whose brain it can reach. Our soldiers were struck down before it in the White Cloud expedition as though a crane had dropped a woolsack on their heads.
We have all of us, at some time or another, said, “I never felt so hot in my life!” This has been less with relation to actual caloric than to a sudden flush of awkwardness attendant upon having asked people after their dead relations, or uncomfortable family affairs; or in expectation of some accidental and unintentional revelation of a circumstance in our own lives, of which we were not remarkably proud. Or, more especially, on being introduced by a gushing man to an enemy you had long since cut, with the assurance that you ought both to know each other. But I find this morning that I feel hotter still. The wind blows against me as from the door of a glasshouse; and the sun comes straight down like a red-hot nail, even through my double umbrella (which I am careful to put up before I venture out on the terrace), and my light but thick pith hat. At such times your claret is self-mulled, and butter becomes thick oil. You cannot find a cool place on your hard-stuffed pillow. The sun apparently twists its rays—sends them round corners, and through venetians, and under porticos; the light being so vivid that its mere reflection banishes shade. The swinging punkah—which A-wa, whose picture you have seen on cheap grocers’ tea-papers, pulls night and day, awake and asleep, as though he were a slightly vitalized lever-escapement—this flounced and flirting terror of all bilious people gets up a delusive breeze, and when it stops the heat comes rushing back with double force. Everything you wear clings to you; or, if flannel, fetches out the “prickly heat” until you are beside yourself. In every draught, one side is chilled whilst the other is burned, as happens at the fireplace of an old country house, where one side is roasted, whilst on the other you are nearly blown up the chimney. And when you are actually out and about, you appear to live and move in the focus of one large burning-glass. It is a dead thick heat, that you fancy might be cut into blocks, and stored in Arctic ships for gradual distribution.
The kindness of General Straubenzee had consigned me to a Buddhist temple for my residence. It was the last costly work of Yeh, on Magazine Hill, and was barely finished when we took the city. An elaborate bell, yet unhung, stood sentinel at my door. I afterwards watched its departure to be taken to England, by Captain Maguire, in the Sanspareil, and it may now be seen in the Crystal Palace. Magazine Hill is to Canton what Montmartre is to Paris, and is covered with joss-houses, now all used as barracks for our men. It is to the extreme north of the city, which it commands, as well as the country outside, and is the only high ground within the walls, which here come close to it. Gazing from this on the open country, one is reminded of the view from the walls of our own Chester, near the jail, looking over the Roodee towards the Welsh mountains. To continue the comparison with places which may be familiar to my readers, the look-out towards the south, comprising the entire city, is marvellously like the eye-stretch over Lyons from the Fourvières, when the air is too hazy to see the Alps. There is, however, one localized object—a tall pagoda, rising high above the expanse of red roofs. One involuntary thought of Kew Gardens brings one back, for the moment, to home; and as this pagoda is not considered safe to ascend—on the authority of Major Luard, who gallantly tried it—and as it promises at some future time, if not taken down, to form a gigantic accident (as all columns and pagodas must do one of these days) the likeness is more perfect.
I found a sturdy little unshod pony waiting for me at the foot of the hill, with a tidy little pigtailed boy to guide him. The pony was for sale for seven dollars—it sounded cheap, but the expense of keep was the great question. My little friend made a speech:—“Chin-chin! my talkee A No. 1 Inglis, all a plopper (proper).” But I found his vocabulary of even the scanty “Canton English” very limited. I made out, however, that he was going to London to learn “all sort pigeon;” and he was very much delighted at pointing out to me some signboards over a few little shops, edging a pond, and reading:—“Best Wash from Hong Kong,” “A No. 1, Washsoap,” &c. And when we passed two culprits, tied together by their pigtails, and lying full-length upon the ground, guarded by an Irishman in front of a baraque, inscribed “Paddy-goose” (a favourite sobriquet at the dram-shops), he roared with laughter, and said:—“Soger hab catchee two piecey pilat, too muchee drunkee—wanchee chokee-pigeon: no loast duck.” This interpreted expressing, with the Chinese substitution of the l for the r, that two pirates had been captured by the police in an extreme state of intoxication, and that they would go to prison, where roast duck would be a novelty.
After passing over a desert of brick rubbish—the remains of houses destroyed because they formed ambuscades from which the lurking braves captured or shot at stragglers on the walls, I was fairly inside Canton. Here the streets are all so exactly alike, that in endeavouring to give a notion of one, I may describe all. The majority appeared to vary from seven to ten feet in breadth—the crowded Cranbourn Passage, which runs from St. Martin’s Lane to Castle Street could be soon transformed into one, by a handful of theatrical mechanics. The houses are two or three stories high, and their signboards, in gaudy paint or gilding, either hang in front of them, or are set up in stone sockets, and all at right angles to the houses, so that, as the China character is written perpendicularly, they can be read going up or down the street. The manner in which they intrude on the thoroughfare braves all notices of Commissioners and Boards. The streets are all paved with granite in large flags, and this has acquired a peculiarly polished appearance from the absence of all wheel and quadrupedal traffic, and the constant shuffling along of the soft soles or naked feet of the natives. For the Cantonese do not appear to understand the use of wheels, or beasts of burden; everything is carried on bamboo poles by the intensely hard-working coolie population. Where they can do it, the streets are shaded with matting.
And now it was that all my childish associations connected with China were on the point of realization. For in the “pigeon” of Lord Elgin and Sir Michael Seymour—who must shake hands, and understand how much and how honestly both are respected by all of us—in the China Mail information that Patna opium is at 770 dollars, Malwa dull, and for Turkey no demand; and that Bank bills are 4s. 9d.; Sycee silver, 5½ per cent. premium, and Shanghai green-tea quotations are unchanged—in a whirl of treaties, and Peiho forts, and conferences totally misunderstood on either side, from the dismal ignorance of the practical Chinese language amongst our professed Chinese students (who could translate the great metaphysical work of Fo, but would be sadly bothered to decide a simple police “row”);—in all this, there is nothing in common with our old China. But here these associations crowded on us. Men ran along with slung tea-packages, as they did on the gaily-varnished canisters of the “Canton T Company,” in the High Street of my boyhood. Women with their bismuthed faces peered from windows, as they did on the fans and plates from which I formed my earliest notions of what was then called “the Celestial Empire.” And then came another memory, clinging to that delightful time when a belief in the reality of everything was our principal mental characteristic, extending even to “Bogey” in the cellar, and the dustman who threw sand in the eyes of sleepy little boys on the staircase, and the black dog in the passage; nay, even to that celebrated silver spade with which the doctor dug up our little baby brother or sister from out of the parsley-bed—when story-books had that astonishing hold on me that, out of our town, I perfectly established the field along which Christian ran with his fingers in his ears when his neighbours tried to call him back. (And if ever there was a case for the parochial authorities of a man deserting his wife and children, Christian’s was one.) In this happy time I had associations with China, and they now come back from one of the most charming of the attractive stories in the Arabian Nights Entertainments. I was now looking—practically, with my own eyes—on a Chinese town, and a group of idle boys playing. A grave stranger of a foreign and travelled aspect was watching them. I should not have been at all surprised if he had recognized, in one of the urchins, the son of his dead brother—had clothed him at a ready-made tailor’s, and then introduced him, by lifting up a stone with a ring in it, to those wonderful nursery grounds of Hunt and Roskill, and Phillips, and Garrard, where the dew was all diamonds, and the wall-fruit all stones. And was it not likely that, in this very street, the stranger might have subsequently passed when anxious to exchange his new moderator lamps for any old argands, or solars, or camphines that might be dust-collecting about the house? Here again was an open space of ground, on which that palace might have stood, which went away one night in such a hurry. And strange to say, there was a palace here, and it did disappear one early January morning. It belonged to that old miscreant Yeh, and its sudden absence was owing rather to the sponging of practical guns than the rubbing of wonderful lamps. And although I heard nothing, both here and at Hong Kong, but of Hall of the Calcutta, and Mr. Oliphant; Telesio’s pale ale “chop” (or boat store); John Dent’s French cook’s chow-chow; the arrival of the Fei-man steamer; Colonel Stevenson’s bamboo balcony on the hill: the 59th; Sir John Bowring and Mr. Chisholm Anstey: and innumerable “shaves:” yet my thoughts ran upon Confucius and pagodas, nodding mandarins, chop-sticks, and the feast of lanterns, and above all, on Aladdin.
I was to join Mr. Parkes at the yamun of the Allied Commissioners, and go with him to pay a visit to Peh-kwei, the Governor of Canton. This yamun had been the palace of the Tartar general, but was now filled with English and French officials, soldiers, marines, compradors, coolies, and Chinese rabble, attending the police cases. We here formed a small procession, and our revolvers came into show; for Mr. Parkes was the most unpopular man in the city with the Cantonese. They called him “the red-bristled barbarian,” and had let fly various jingals at him, at different times, in the streets. But he had the courage of the——anybody you please; and the more they annoyed him, the more he would ride them down, and bang them back into their ambuscades. We were all on ponies or in chairs, with the exception of our guards; and we rode so fast along the narrow streets, and through the bustling crowds of passengers, and almost over the wares displayed out of doors, that a fire-engine going through the Lowther Arcade in a hurry could not have created greater confusion. On entering the first court of Peh-kwei’s yamun, we were saluted with guns, and standards were hoisted on the mandarin poles. These courts are large paved areas, with a very broad flag-path up the middle, and fine trees at the sides; they are divided from each other by vast wooden buildings, like barns, with Chinese roofs, and stone lions guarding them. The patient ingenuity of the makers is shown in these animals; they have a large ball in their mouths, which you can turn round behind the teeth, but cannot take out; it has evidently been cut from the solid. We rode through the centre of these barns, up the stairs, to a higher court beyond, but our attendants filed off round the sides; and then we dismounted, and were introduced to Peh-kwei. I had often seen him wagging his head, and tongue, and hands, in old china-shops; but now he stood upright, in a long, white silk peignoir: and then he and Mr. Parkes began bowing to one another in such continuity, that they looked wound up, and minutes elapsed before either of them would take a seat. Then tea was brought in, and for a little time the talk was exactly like the twaddle that passes at a morning call in England between people who don’t care a straw about each other, never have, and are never likely to. But Mr. Parkes began to pull some Chinese documents from his pocket; and as I had been introduced as “a mandarin on his travels,” Peh-kwei made a very lucky suggestion that I should see his grounds.
This was just what I wanted—liberty to invade what would have been deemed a privacy even by the Cantonese; but the acres of unkept, overgrown wilderness, with its rotting pavilions, tumble-down temples, dried-up lakes, crumbling rockwork, and broken seats and tables, formed the spring of all the impressions I afterwards received in and about Canton. Nothing so dreary—not even Vauxhall on a wet Christmas Day—ever could be imagined. It was not the breakdown of acute organic lesion, but the decay of long, long-continued atrophy: and I formed a theory at the moment, which the appearance of every other yamun, or temple, strengthened, that the Chinese had for ages so jealously shut up their vaunted city, not from any terror of the barbarians becoming acquainted with their secrets of trade, government, or manufacture, but from a positive idea of shame that any one should see the mouldering neglected “lions” of their southern capital. True to the estimated value of their curios, everything was in a state of “crackle.” Combine all you can call to mind of dreary places—Miss Linwood’s old room in Leicester Square, and the present aspect of the Square itself; the gaunt, cheerless show-rooms of palaces generally: the “Moated Grange” and “Haunted House;” the old pavilion on Monkey Island, and indeed “pavilions” generally, from that in Hans Place to any damp ceiling-stained summer-house, dedicated to friendship or nature, that you know of—mix them together, and extract their essence, and then you will not have the least idea of the general rot and ruin that is spreading, like an ulcer, throughout Canton.