The attaché at Peking — A Reader’s Guide

Arrivals and Disasters

The narrative opens with the arrival of Sir Rutherford Alcock, the new British minister, after a series of mishaps. His journey from Shanghai was marked by disaster: the Legation treasure chest, containing 18,000 dollars, was lost overboard outside the bar at Taku. The attaché notes dryly that divers may have recovered it, but the weather was ill-suited for diving. Meanwhile, the Legation courtyards are flooded with packing-cases containing furniture, pianos, harmoniums, and games of croquet—the latter impractical, as there is not a blade of grass nearer than the Temple of Heaven. This juxtaposition of European comforts with the barren Peking landscape sets the tone for the letters.

Winter Scenes and Street Life

The winter of 1865 is described as the beau idéal of weather: sharp frosts, a genial midday sun, and air “perfectly delicious.” Yet the same conditions bear hard on the beggars, who go about “stark naked, livid with cold.” The author observes the filth of furs worn by poorer Chinese, and the common sight of men stripping to hunt vermin in the sun. The principal streets are crowded with sellers of cast-off clothes, “rags that would be rejected by a respectable paper factory,” who chant monotonous rhythms as they trade. These details ground the letters in the sensory reality of Peking’s streets.

Curiosities and Credulity

The attaché recounts two encounters with Chinese merchants that highlight the gap between European skepticism and local beliefs. A drug merchant offered a black toadstool called the “tree of life,” said to grant immortality, found in the mountains of Manchuria and appearing only once in a thousand years. When asked where the last consumer was, the merchant left in disgust. Another curio-seller explained the veins in a crystal snuff-bottle by noting that Chinese once wore their hair long, and the hair had somehow entered the crystal. These episodes illustrate the author’s amused but respectful curiosity about Chinese natural history and folklore.

The Rhythm of Isolation

The letters are structured by the seasonal rhythms of Peking: the freezing of the Gulf of Pechili, the closing of the river, and the final mail before the city is “shut up.” The attaché writes in December 1865, hoping to catch a vessel at Taku before the ice sets in. The sense of isolation is palpable, yet the tone remains brisk and observant. The preface hints at an undercurrent of danger—the possibility of a massacre or rebellion—but the letters themselves focus on the daily texture of diplomatic life: the arrival of officials, the state of the roads, the quality of the air. This tension between surface calm and latent threat gives the collection its distinctive character.

Readers should approach these letters as a series of snapshots rather than a continuous narrative. The author’s voice is that of a shrewd but good-humored observer, attuned to the absurdities and hardships of his post. The letters do not attempt a systematic account of Chinese society; instead, they offer a personal record of what it meant to live “within the walls” during a period of uneasy peace. For those interested in the texture of 19th-century diplomatic life in China, this collection provides a vivid, if partial, window.

I keep thinking about how the attaché’s letters captured that strange, suspended feeling of being an outsider in a place with such deep rhythms—the weather, the beggars, all of it oddly intimate. Your note reminded me of a similar quiet ache in Seville: an historical and descriptive account of "the pearl of Andalusia" — Edition Insights—not the facts, but the way a city can hold you at arm’s length while you really see it. Both stayed with me like a half-remembered afternoon.