Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse [Paperback]

Sir Edmund Backhouse (1873-1944), up until this book was first published in 1976, was renown as a great scholar of sinology. In conjunction with the British journalist and former Times correspondent J.O.P Bland, he had authored two best selling books about the Chinese Royal Court at the Forbidden City, Peking (now Beijing). Backhouse, by the time of his death, had lived in China for nearly 40 years. The high esteem in which he had been held by students and scholars of Chinese history collapsed upon publication of this book by Hugh Trevor-Roper (HTR). Trevor-Roper of course is the esteemed British historian and author of the classic "The Last Days of Hitler". The "Hermit of Peking" is the first full biography of one of history's greatest scam artists, Sir Edmund Backhouse. The pinnacle of Backhouse's achievements, the publication of "China under the Empress Dowager" in 1910, was found to be based on a forgery, one of many forgeries as it transpires, perpetuated by Backhouse, the ramifications of which continue to this day.

I first read of Backhouse in Diana Preston's book "The Boxer Rebellion", (a modern account of the siege of the Peking legations in 1900 by the Chinese Boxers) and again in Sterling Seagrave's "Dragon Lady", a revisionist biography of Tzu Hsi, the Dowager Empress. Both authors are not charitable about Backhouse, and both give a potted biography of the man, particularly in Seagrave's book. In fact, Seagrave gives a particularly scathing review of Backhouse. He argues that as a direct consequence of Backhouse's forgery of a diary supposedly by a high Manchu court official, and subsequent book publications based upon the diary, popular history regards the Dowager Empress as an evil, scheming, and manipulative woman, who went as far as having her own son murdered to maintain her grip on the regency of China.

The "Hermit of Peking" gives a much fuller account of the life of Backhouse, and fills in more detail about the numerous frauds that Backhouse tried pull off. Not only was Bland as co-author of "China under the Empress Dowager" a victim (Bland believed until his death that the diary could not have been a forgery) of Backhouse's fraudulent activities, but also G. Morrison, the renown Times Correspondent. Even Oxford University and the British Government were taken in as HTR gleefully relates. It is amazing that Backhouse got away with what he did without the greater world being aware of it, but HTR shows the reader how he did so (Backhouse's victim's embarrassment was one reason). In part, "The Hermit of Peking" is a detective story as HTR pulls the threads of this tale together, sorts fact from the many fictions. It is well written, and only in the final chapters does HTR delve into the literary pornography for which Backhouse is now famous for, and HTR does so with taste, sparing the reader the graphic details (Seagrave doesn't spare though). Trevor-Roper relied on a number of sources, which in the main is the private correspondence of Bland and Morrison. The author also had access to the archives of the Foreign Office and of one of Backhouse's former employers. And of course, HTR uses Backhouse's own writings to point out historical contradictions and fabrications which can be verified with certainty.

If there is a quibble with the book, it is that HTR doesn't dwell on the historical consequences of Backhouse's frauds and how it contributes to a long and widely held misconception of the final days of the Chinese Royal Court, and the role which Tzu Hsi played. Many histories of China have relied on the writings of Backhouse as a historical source and reference, thus perpetuating the popular myth of the Dowager Empress as a ruthless leader of her people. At times HTR is typically given to eloquent turns of phrase, making reading a little slow at times. None the less, "The Hermit of Peking" is a stirring read, and despite its age, should be viewed as a companion to the much more recent "Dragon Lady" by Sterling Seagrave to flesh out one of the main characters of early 20th century Peking.

One of several books tracing the life of a dubious character who washed up in China. In 1973 Hugh Trevor-Roper was asked to handle two unpublished works by the Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, and though Trevor-Roper wasn't himself a Sinologist, he definitively investigated and discredited Backhouse's academic and business affairs.

The story is certainly engaging, Backhouse claiming to have dicovered 'the Diary of His Excellency Ching-shan' while sheltering in Ching-shan's house in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion, and nine years later publishing the diary as a chapter of 'China Under The Empress Dowager', written in collaboration with J.O.P. Bland, the Times correspondent. The diary purports to detail the events of the Boxer Rebellion as seen by Ching-shan from inside the imperial court, a perspective much sought-after by historians in the years after the rebellion. Although G.E. Morrison, Bland's superior at the Times, denounced the diary as a fake straight away, Backhouse's reputation continued to survive, even when a number of other Sinologists began to dispute the origins of the 'diary'.

It appears that there was nothing Backhouse could do honestly, apart perhaps from early in his career bequeathing 27,000 volumes of Chinese books and manuscripts to Oxford University, which he had left early to escape mounting debts. You might wonder how Backhouse had acquired such a collection, but post-Boxer Rebellion looting may explain a lot of it. And Backhouse's business efforts were scams, such as selling non-existent ships to the Chinese or, during the First World War, with Britain desperate to supply arms to her ally Russia, fleecing the Britsh government over sales of imaginary weapons.

It is galling to read how Backhouse essentially got away with it all, dying in 1944 as a well-liked member of the foreign community in Peking. Other scholors would politely ask him to explain discrepancies which they had spotted in his story of finding the diary, and though he occassionally had some explaining to do he was seemingly untroubled by this, patiently trotting out more untruths. He was never called to account for the vast sums he had defrauded friends, business partners and politicians for.

This book might be a model of how literary detective mysteries should be written, except for its somewhat aloof tone. Trevor-Roper does not share enough with us. He mentions books and other works which he has seen, but he rarely quotes from them to illustrate his arguments; it merely suffices that he has seen them. And though this book was written not too long ago, older books have been written with a more modern ambience. Trevor-Roper writes from a world in which men have their papers, frequently discussing this or that person and his papers. It's a self-regarding milieu that he conjures up, and one which he appears to be a member of. A passage on page 24 shows the slightly suffocating tone of Trevor-Roper's approach:

"The private papers which might have shed light on Backhouse's early years in China are those of Lord ffrench, with whom Backhouse was closely connected in 1908-9; of Percival Yetts, who was both a Chinese scholar and, while Legation doctor, Backhouse's medical adviser; and of Sir Reginald Johnston, the Confucian scholar and Chinese administrator... But no ffrench papers have survived and we know that both Yetts and Johnston caused their own papers to be destroyed. Sir Sidney Barton, who knew Backhouse well in Peking, seems to have left no personal papers. Two men whose personal judgements on Backhouse as a man and as a scholor would be of interest are Sir John Jordan, British Minister in Peking 1906-20, and Arthur Waley; but I have been unable to trace any private papers of Jordan, and Waley's papers disappeared in mysterious circumstances after his death."

Papers, papers, papers; aren't they called 'archives' nowadays? Still, it's a good book, written by someone who surprisingly was later to be fooled by another fake diary, that purporting to be of Adolf Hitler. With nine photos, a particularly creepy photo showing Backhouse looking archly into the camera over the shoulder of Princess P'u-lun, who doesn't know he's there. All of Backhouse's secretiveness and talents for dishonesty are summed up in that photo.