Life in Treaty Port China and Japan

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Life in
Treaty
Port
China and

Japan
Edited by Donna Brunero
and Stephanie Villalta Puig
Life in Treaty Port China and Japan
Donna Brunero • Stephanie Villalta Puig
Editors

Life in Treaty Port

China and Japan
Editors
Donna Brunero Stephanie Villalta Puig
National University of Singapore The University of Hull
Singapore, Singapore Kingston upon Hull, UK

ISBN 978-981-10-7367-0    ISBN 978-981-10-7368-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7368-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932910

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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 Foreword

Nothing has ever shouted ‘treaty port’ more loudly than Shanghai’s iconic
Bund. And no country ever tried as hard to end the system of ‘unequal’
treaties that created these ports as did China. Yet, as this truly interdisci-
plinary volume demonstrates, treaty ports were neither only Chinese nor
confined to Shanghai. Indeed, my first visit to a former treaty port was not
to Shanghai or anywhere else in China, but to Yokohama, as a very young
boy, decades ago on an American passenger ship en route from San
Francisco to Hong Kong. It was the first time I had ever seen snow—only
a light, white dusting, but enough to remind me I was truly in a foreign
land. The souvenir I purchased was a handmade figurine of a Japanese
child, dressed in what then would have been called ‘traditional costume’.
J.E. Hoare’s chapter in this book reminded me that these ‘sites of mem-
ory’ have different meanings in Japan than they do in China, partly because
of the two nations’ different encounters with the West (and with each
other), not to mention their respective post–treaty port histories. Similarly,
I was struck while reading Yuanxie Shi and Laurel Kendall’s chapter on
treaty port souvenirs from Ningbo how probably no Japanese child at the
time I visited Yokohama would have owned such a figurine as the one I
bought, crafted to reflect a timeless Japan to satisfy a demand for curiosities
by foreign tourists. And yet, as Simon James Bytheway’s chapter on
Japanese woodblock prints and printed ephemera argues, producing images
of the Japanese ‘at home’ was a key part of the nation’s modernisation.
As Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig explain in their intro-
duction, moving ‘beyond the Bund’ provides a more nuanced u ­ nderstanding
of the cross-cultural (and indeed intracultural) encounters and exchanges

v
vi FOREWORD

in these cities and towns. The nine chapters in this volume do so in four
main, interrelated ways: geographically and physically, mentally and emo-
tionally, medically and materially. Linking all these is, of course, the uneven
power relationships that defined the treaty ports, regardless of when and
where, though even those relationships were more complex than previous
scholarship has often suggested.
Expatriate families on the China coast, Brunero argues in her own
chapter, helped to create a feeling of stability and permanence through a
wide repertoire of sites and activities, from ‘treasured places’ such as clubs
and holiday homes to what we might call ‘treasured practices’ such as
maintaining a garden or huddling round a gramophone or piano.
(Incidentally, my family’s piano in 1970s Hong Kong was also from the
Robinson’s Piano Co. mentioned in Brunero’s chapter, engraved promi-
nently with the declaration ‘manufactured for the tropics’.) And as Robert
Nield’s chapter shows, expatriates in the ‘lesser’ treaty ports situated liter-
ally ‘beyond the Bund’ often tried to maintain their Britishness by recreat-
ing the life they had in Shanghai or in the other more developed ports.
Life in these ‘outports’ could be isolated and lonely, though writing and
receiving letters helped close the distance.
As much as treaty port residents might try to shape their own domestic
worlds, they could not change environmental geography. Stephanie
Villalta Puig’s chapter on medical geography in China shows how the
British experience there was a physical one. The medicine practised by the
Imperial Maritime Customs Service aimed to protect its staff and their
families in these sometimes hostile climes. Chester Proshan’s contribution
on cholera in Yokohama helps us to understand the relationships among
empire, deadly disease, and the local ‘matrix of ordinary life’ in nineteenth
century Japan, even though attempts by Japanese and international
migrants to fight cholera never led to any changes in this matrix.
Treaty ports were from the outset about land and territory, and the
right to live and trade there. However, as Yu Chen’s chapter on Sino-­
Anglo land transactions in Xiamen (Amoy) shows, there was never one
single ‘rent-in-perpetuity’ system that applied to all Chinese treaty ports.
The most notorious feature of treaty ports was extraterritoriality: at least
in China, this rankled nationalists more than anything. But Gonzalo
Villalta Puig’s chapter on the Malay murder trials reminds us that extrater-
ritoriality also brought the rule of law and could benefit not only Britons,
Chinese and Japanese in the treaty ports but also colonial subjects from
other parts of the British Empire.
 FOREWORD
   vii

Perhaps most important of all, the chapters in this book remind us that
although treaty ports were about law, diplomacy and power, they were
also about living beings, both ordinary and otherwise: those who created
them, those who lived in them and made them work on a daily basis, and
those who eventually helped end them. And, as we see in Timothy Amos’s
chapter on horses and hostlers in Yokohama’s foreign settlement, these
living beings were not all human. For even horses mattered—practically,
materially and symbolically—in life ‘beyond the Bund.’

The University of Hong Kong John M. Carroll

Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong
 Preface

This volume was conceived by two scholars of treaty port China, two
scholars who originally lived elsewhere but whose careers led them to find
themselves in Asia. Every other contributor is similarly also either based in
Asia or spent significant parts of their lives there. It is not surprising, per-
haps, to find that we shared a fascination for understanding the everyday
life of foreigners in East Asia in a much earlier time. From the collective
lived experiences that have come to inform each chapter, this book is a
work of historical scholarship informed by the modern day and even mun-
dane experiences of the routines of life: the weather, the family, health,
ideals and fears of place, cultural considerations, material collections, sta-
bility of administration and regulations, memory, then nostalgia.
These routines are an endless source of fascination for people wanting
to read more about the histories of globalisation, of expatriate life and the
experience of being a resident in a place where the local and the foreign
were bound together in the interests of trade, colonialism, adventure and
travel. While this volume does not intend to take us chronologically to the
present day, it does venture to explore some of these ideas in the historical
context of the treaty port world.
This volume has its genesis in the Asian Studies Association in Asia
Conference held at the National University of Singapore in 2014 within a
panel dedicated to the treaty ports of China and Japan. While an initial
concern was that our panel might be overly ambitious by combining both
Chinese and Japanese treaty ports into a metageography, our discussions
realised how the interplay of similar themes, concerns and potential inter-
connections were much more productive than the traditional approach of

ix
x PREFACE

restricting the discussion to a solely Chinese or a Japanese focus. Lingnan

University in Hong Kong provided the perfect setting at its 2011 and
2015 conferences Empire State of Mind: Articulations of British Culture in
the Empire, 1707–1997 and Among Empires: The British Empire in Global
Imperial Context Conferences, respectively, for similarly minded scholars to
materialise these discussions into contributions. And it is with this view
that we promote further comparisons, dialogues and scholarship in order
to present the treaty ports as a more common East Asian phenomenon
than the literature has previously acknowledged.

SingaporeDonna Brunero
Hull, UK  Stephanie Villalta Puig
 Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support and collegiality of our fellow treaty port
enthusiasts who have collaborated on this project. By combining a diverse
array of specialisations, we have all been challenged to think about our
own scholarship in new and valuable ways.
Professor John M. Carroll of The University of Hong Kong has been
more than a mentor; we are thankful for his generosity, with regard to
both his time spent conversing over our ideas as this volume took shape
and for his advice.
We would also like to express our thanks to the Yokohama Archives of
History for their permission to use the Famous Places: The Englishman and
Motomura print, dated 1860, for the cover of this volume.
Finally, we appreciate the assistance of the editorial and production
teams of Palgrave Macmillan.

xi
 Contents

1 Introduction   1
Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig

Part I Everyday Life  19

2 ‘Ponies, Amahs and All That …’: Family Lives in China’s

Treaty Ports  21
Donna Brunero

3 Horses and Hostlers in the Making of a Japanese Foreign

Settlement  47
Timothy D. Amos

4 Beyond the Bund: Life in the Outports  73

Robert Nield

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

Part II Health and Welfare 105

5 Treaty Ports and the Medical Geography of China:

Imperial Maritime Customs Service Approaches
to Climate and Disease 107
Stephanie Villalta Puig

6 Japanese, International Migrants, and Cholera

in the Yokohama Treaty Port, 1859–1899 137
Chester J. Proshan

Part III Law and Land 173

7 Extraterritoriality and the Rule of Law in the Treaty

Ports: The Malay Murder Trials of the British
Supreme Court for China and Japan 175
Gonzalo Villalta Puig

8 “Rent-in-Perpetuity” System and Xiamen Title Deed:

A Study of Sino-Anglo Land Transactions in China’s
Treaty Ports 185
Yu Chen

Part IV Visualising the Port 215

9 Who Miniaturises China? Treaty Port Souvenirs

from Ningbo 217
Yuanxie Shi and Laurel Kendall

10 The Arrival of the “Modern” West in Yokohama:

Images of the Japanese Experience, 1859–1899 247
Simon James Bytheway
 CONTENTS
   xv

Part V Treaty Port Legacies 269

11 Memories of Times Past: The Legacy of

Japan’s Treaty Ports 271
J. E. Hoare

Index  293
 Notes on Contributors

Timothy D. Amos is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the

National University of Singapore. His research primarily focuses on ques-
tions of human rights, marginality, and social stratification in Japan from
the early modern period through to the present. His most recent writings
explore various aspects of Japanese outcaste history, including population
registration (2014) and urban transformation (2015).
Donna Brunero is Senior Lecturer of History at the National University
of Singapore. Her research focuses on the intersections between maritime
and imperial history, with a particular interest in the colonial port cities of
Asia and the treaty ports of China. She is the author of Britain’s Imperial
Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949
(2006). She has forthcoming publications on the British maritime empire
in Asia, on maritime ethnography, and on piracy on the South China coast.
Simon J. Bytheway is Professor of Financial and Economic History at
Nihon University in Tokyo and the author of Investing Japan: Foreign
Capital, Monetary Standards, and Economic Development, 1859–2011
(2014), and Central Banks and Gold: How Tokyo, London, and New York
Shaped the Modern World [coauthored with Mark Metzler] (2016).
Yu Chen is an architect, an urban historian and an Assistant Professor at
the National University of Singapore. Her research interests centre around
the history of treaty ports in China, overseas Chinese architecture and
regeneration in Asia. Her publications include The Making of a Bund in
China: The British Concession in Xiamen (1852–1930).

xvii
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

J. E. Hoare holds a PhD from the University of London. From 1969 to

2003, he was a member of the British Diplomatic Service. An Honorary
Research Associate at SOAS University of London and an associate fellow
of the Asia Programme at Chatham House, he now writes and broadcasts
about East Asia.
Laurel Kendall is the Chair of the Anthropology Division at the American
Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the curator of Asian
Ethnographic Collections at the AMNH. She recently completed a term
as the president of the Association for Asian Studies.
Robert Nield lives in Hong Kong. Since retiring as a professional accoun-
tant, he has focused on China’s treaty port history. Publications include
The China Coast: Trade and the First Treaty Ports (2010) and China’s
Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era,
1840–1943 (2015). He is currently an MPhil candidate with the University
of Bristol.
Chester J. Proshan is retired, from Bunka Gakuen University, where he
was Professor of American Studies. He continues to teach, part-time, as
Adjunct Professor at Toyo University. His areas of interest are immigra-
tion history and contemporary Jewish history. Recent articles he has writ-
ten on international migration and the Yokohama Treaty Port have
appeared in the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture and the East
Asian Journal of Popular Culture.
Yuanxie Shi is a PhD student in East Asian Studies at the University of
Chicago and holds an MA in Museum Anthropology from Columbia
University. Born in Ningbo, she first encountered Chinese handicraft in
her own family and has also worked in the art market.
Gonzalo Villalta Puig is Head of the School of Law and Politics and
Professor of Law at the University of Hull. He is the inaugural holder of
The University of Hull Chair in the Law of Economic Integration.
Professor Villalta Puig is Chair of the Research Group for Constitutional
Studies of Free Trade and Political Economy of the International
Association of Constitutional Law and a member of the Committee on
Procedure of International Courts and Tribunals of the International Law
Association. He is an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law,
a Fellow of the European Law Institute and an Associate Member of the
International Academy of Comparative Law. Professor Villalta Puig is an
Associate Editor of the Global Journal of Comparative Law (Brill Nijhoff).
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
   xix

Stephanie Villalta Puig is Honorary Fellow in History at The University

of Hull. She was formerly Assistant Professor at The Technological and
Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong and has held posts at The
Chinese University of Hong Kong, La Trobe University and The Australian
National University, from where she holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree
in History. She specialises in the study of the British Empire in China, with
particular interests in world history and cultural and medical history.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 ‘The ‘lady tourist’ and sedan chair’ 7 April 1926, North-China
Daily News26
Fig. 2.2 ‘The story of a sneeze: In the Shanghai Club and the French’,
14 March 1925, North China Herald30
Fig. 2.3 ‘Hot weather philosophy in Shanghai’ 19 July 1926, North
China Herald33
Fig. 2.4 ‘Silhouettes from Peking’, 1926 35
Fig. 3.1 Bushū Yokohama Meishozu Igirisujin Motomura (Yokohama
(Musashi Province) Famous Places: Englishman and
Motomura) by Yoshitora (1860) 45
Fig. 3.2 Yokohama Kaikō Kenbunshi (Record of sights and sounds of the
opening of Yokohama) by Hashimoto Sadahide, from the Gomi
Bunko Collection 59
Fig. 3.3 Yokohama Kaikō Kenbunshi (Record of sights and sounds of the
opening of Yokohama) by Hashimoto Sadahide, from the Gomi
Bunko Collection 60
Fig. 4.1 Map of China’s treaty ports and outports discussed in the
chapter74
Fig. 4.2 The Union Flag flying from near the British Consulate in
Shanghai, c.1924. Image courtesy of Billie Love Historical
Collection and Historical Photographs of China, University of
Bristol75
Fig. 4.3 The Union Flag flying above the fisherman’s shack that was the
British Consulate in Beihai, 1877. The Graphic, 5 March 1887 80
Fig. 8.1 Huaqi signed between Hong Chang and Michelsen, 1874.
Transcribed and drawn by the author. Source: PRO,
FO678/17, Amoy: Lot No. 74 Bruce, R.H., 1902 191

xxi
xxii List of Figures

Fig. 8.2 Huaqi signed between Bradford and Huang Yuan, 1863.
Transcribed and drawn by the author. Source: PRO,
FO678/16, Amoy: Lot No. 4 Tait & Co. 1901 194
Fig. 8.3 The incomplete title deed for Petigura’s fourth lot on the
site, 1916. Transcribed and drawn by the author. Source:
PRO, FO678/120, Amoy: Petigura, P.J. 1916 198
Fig. 8.4 Chinese page of the title deed and attached map for Lot No.
170. Transcribed and drawn by the author. Source: PRO,
FO678/82, Amoy: Lot No. 170 Lim, Mrs G.P., 1929 201
Fig. 8.5 Title deed of Lot No. 1. Transcribed and drawn by the
author. Source: PRO, FO678/133, Amoy: Lot No. 1
Scott, M.G., 1879 205
Fig. 8.6 Title deed of Lot No. 123. Transcribed and drawn by the
author. Source: PRO, FO678/110, Amoy: Lot No. 123
Nicholls, Mrs T.C., 1910 207
Fig. 8.7 Title deed of Lot No. 128. Transcribed and drawn by the
author. Source: PRO, FO678/79, Amoy: Lot No. 128 Lim,
E.V.S., 1914 209
Fig. 9.1 American Museum of Natural History: Top left: farmer with
plough (AMNH 70.2/824); top right: execution scene
(AMNH 70.2/820); bottom right: sedan chair (AMNH
70/1686); bottom left: spinning silk (AMNH 70/4609).
Images courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American
Museum of Natural History 219
Fig. 9.2 American Museum of Natural History: Comparisons of jizi
and figurines (clockwise): top left: jizi scene (AMNH 70/4701);
top right: figurine carrying bundle on a pole (AMNH
70/4615); bottom right: figurine tending geese (AMNH
70/4616); bottom left: crane motif (AMNH 70/4707) 223
Fig. 9.3 American Museum of Natural History: Torture collected and
photographed (clockwise): top left: archival photograph of
wearing cangue, courtesy of Special Collections, American
Museum of Natural History Library, Image number 336619;
top right: two figures sharing cangue (AMNH 70.2/818);
bottom left: figure wearing cangue (AMNH 70/1680) 229
Fig. 9.4 American Museum of Natural History: Being mortared in hell
(clockwise): left: hell painting (AMNH 70/13330); top right:
woman being mortared head first while a hungry dog licks the
blood, courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and
Culture (Catalogue Number 5-14136); bottom right: shadow
puppet mortar for grinding culprits in hell (AMNH
70/10166), both AMNH 230
 List of Figures 
   xxiii

Fig. 9.5 More hell torture: top: figurine being sawn in twain by
hell demons (AMNH 70.2/822); bottom: shadow puppet
demons wielding a saw (AMNH 70/10176) 231
Fig. 10.1 New Invention: German Battleship by Unsen (1874).
Courtesy of Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of
Ambassador and Mrs. William Leonhart, S1998.65a-c 252
Fig. 10.2 Illustration of Tokyo–Yokohama Steam Train Timetable by
Yoshitora (1872). Courtesy of Freer Gallery of Art and
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.: Gift of Ambassador and Mrs. William
Leonhart, S1998.100 254
Fig. 10.3 Illustration of Foreign Establishments of Yokohama by
Hiroshige III (1876). Courtesy of Freer Gallery of Art and
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.: Gift of Ambassador and Mrs. William
Leonhart, S1998.29a-c 256
Fig. 10.4 Foreign Residence in Yokohama by Yoshikazu (c.1861).
Courtesy of Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of
Ambassador and Mrs. William Leonhart, S1998.84a-c 257
Fig. 10.5 Steam Train Railway by the Yokohama Seashore by Hiroshige
III (c.1874). Courtesy of Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur
M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
D.C.: Gift of the Daval Foundation, from the Collection of
Ambassador and Mrs. William Leonhart, S1991.151a-c 259
Fig. 11.1 Yokohama Foreign Cemetery, photograph by J.E. Hoare 280
Fig. 11.2 Nagasaki Glover Gardens, photograph by J.E. Hoare 281
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig

What was everyday life like for foreigners in the treaty ports of China and
Japan? The residents of the treaty ports—local and foreign, in the trading
concessions of China and Japan—experienced vastly different realities in
similar material conditions. How can we understand the routines and feel-
ings of the residents whose material life was conditioned by extraterritorial
regulations and life within the liminal worlds of the treaty ports? The care-
ful study of everyday life is often overshadowed by the special status given
to treaty ports as sites of power and contestation and symbols of moder-
nity in scholarship and as the subject of nostalgia in popular culture. This
volume moves ‘beyond the Bund’ and presents a more intimate view of
the treaty ports as they were experienced by foreign communities.

The Treaty Ports: An Overview

The treaty ports of China and Japan are the remnants of a bygone era, of
what some scholars could argue as evidence of the ‘Great Divergence’ that
took place where Asia was ‘left behind’ by Europe and was then forcibly

D. Brunero (*)
National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
S. Villalta Puig
The University of Hull, Kingston upon Hull, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 1

D. Brunero, S. Villalta Puig (eds.), Life in Treaty Port China
and Japan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7368-7_1
2 D. BRUNERO AND S. VILLALTA PUIG

brought into contact with foreign traders, diplomats and, importantly,

gunboats in the long nineteenth century.1 China was ‘one of a handful of
existing polities that escaped wholesale incorporation into one empire or
another’. But, as evidenced in the treaty ports, its territorial integrity and
sovereignty was ‘degraded nonetheless’.2 Following Qing defeats in the
Opium Wars, the Treaty of Nanjing forced the Chinese to open a number
of ports to British trade and residence; other foreign powers quickly fol-
lowed suit, seeking similar privileges.3 The initial ports of Shanghai,
Ningbo, Fuzhou, Xiamen (Amoy) and Guangdong soon flourished and
the treaty port system grew to become a vast system of ports and outports
on the China coast, also stretching inland along waterways and at the
frontiers of Qing, and later Republican China.4 As Robert Bickers observes,
‘So as a Chinese man or woman, you could take a walk in Tianjin as
recently as 16 March 1917 from the north-east gate of the port city, and
traverse a French, a British and then a German concession’.5 This same
walk could lead one past the Belgian, Russian, Italian and Austro-­
Hungarian districts. This description captures something of the complex
world of the treaty ports where China played host to numerous foreigners
who existed in a world that was physically in China and, yet, often per-
ceived themselves as ‘set apart’ by cultural difference, a separation rein-
forced through institutional and legal privilege.
The case of Japan was not dissimilar; despite a policy of isolation, the
Japanese were aware of the European powers’ expansion into Asia, and
from the 1790s onwards, a ‘steady stream of Western ships began to enter
Japanese waters’.6 By 1853, matters came to a head when Commodore
Perry’s squadron entered Edo Bay and threatened a forced opening of
Japan.7 To avert a similar fate to that of China, the Tokugawa elite agreed
to limited access at a number of ports. It was, however, not a challenge
that the Japanese were in a strong position to face. We should remember
that despite an appearance of a system to cope with the new arrivals (for-
eigners) Japan by 1853 was in ‘the throes of a revolution in economic and
social matters’.8 The Perry Convention, signed in 1854, was not very radi-
cal; it did not provide for foreign residence or trade, and access to ports
was limited.9 By 1858, other powers not only sought similar conventions
but merchants demanded access to trade markets and Japan signed treaties
which responded to these demands. These ‘unequal treaties’ reinforced
European and American privilege and sounded the death knell for the
Tokugawa, ushering in the Meiji era. In the Meiji era, Japan was ‘remade’,
emerging as a modern, Asian power and one with imperial aspirations of
 INTRODUCTION 3

its own. While the treaty port system in Japan did not have the large num-
ber of ports or the same longevity of the Chinese experience, there were
many parallels in terms of foreign attitudes; traders who were present in
China often also had interests in the Japanese ports, similar institutions were
created (although never a customs service), and foreign enclaves and ameni-
ties (such as the almost mandatory race course) were created. These treaty
ports remained sites of conflict but also of contact and accommodation. It
is through our abiding interest in the exchanges that took place, at the
material level of the everyday, that the focus of this volume comes together.
Indeed, it is only recently that scholars are re-examining the place of the
treaty ports in larger narratives of imperial and colonial histories of Asia.10
The colonial relationship, and for the past three decades, the postcolonial
interpretation of the power relationships at the treaty ports, often falls
prey in historiography to dichotomies of power. The treaty ports of China
and Japan are often examined as sites of cultural interaction and conflict.
J.E. Hoare’s seminal study of the Japanese treaty ports, Japan’s Treaty
Ports and Foreign Settlements: The Uninvited Guests, 1858–1899, provides
an eloquent demonstration of the early development of the treaty port
settlements in Japan. The case studies of Yokohama and Nagasaki are
notably marked by examples of accommodation, but also they often high-
light the conflict that emerged in the treaty port environ—be it over the
legal status of foreigners or concerns over port infrastructure.11 Much of
the historiography of treaty ports of China and Japan is coloured by power
relationships—colonial, postcolonial, informal empire—at the expense of
the practicality, reality and even mundanity of the lives of the residents.12
This volume, then, merges these themes and dichotomies: nostalgia and
reality, the everyday and the extraordinary, centre and periphery, local and
foreign via case studies from China and Japan. And through this merger of
themes come new interpretations of the material and lived experiences in
East Asia’s ports in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
By including both the Chinese and Japanese treaty ports in this volume,
we ask our readers to explore the possible comparisons that can be made
between the different treaty ports. As the broader body of scholarship on
the Asian port city argues, ports can never be seen in isolation—they are
always part of larger, interconnected maritime networks. Flows between
ports were part and parcel of shaping the Asian maritime world.13
Historiographically, China and Japan have been treated as separate case
studies; East Asianists have tended to orient themselves to either a Sino-­
centric or Japanese-centric understanding of the treaty port phenomenon.
4 D. BRUNERO AND S. VILLALTA PUIG

This approach, we argue, while providing a strength in terms of

­specialisation and detail, denies a sense of the dialogue and interplay of
experiences that were common across the treaty ports of East Asia more
broadly.
Life in Everyday China and Japan approaches treaty port history with
a commitment to interdisciplinarity. While all chapters work within the
discipline of history, many contributors write with methodology and train-
ing from other disciplines. This interdisciplinarity informs how we study
material culture and what we mean by sociality, materiality, symbolism,
law, medicine, architecture, art and, of course, culture. The inclusiveness
here encompasses a broad range of scholars, beyond the traditional gambit
of treaty port historians of Chinese and Japanese history to also include
scholars of maritime history, science and empire, urban development, eco-
nomic history, museum studies and law. The richness and creativity that
inform the volume and the rigour of its primary source materials give the
study of treaty port history a new dimension. By moving ‘beyond the
Bund’ (the iconic Shanghai waterfront being a symbolic and visual
reminder of the treaty ports as contact zones) and studying the history of
everyday lives, this volume provides a new insight into cultural exchanges
and materiality in the treaty ports. It lends a more nuanced understanding
to the narrative of encounters between the East and the West in the treaty
ports. And beyond this, the volume provides the potential for fresh
approaches to thinking about the ordinary lives for residents (foreign and
local) of the treaty ports.
It is perhaps not too surprising that a number of our contributors
touched on the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, or close connections
to it, to explore the treaty ports.14 This institution was intimately con-
nected with the treaty port phenomenon—it served as a cornerstone of
the treaty port system—and forms a rich source of research materials for
scholars; it serves as an entry point for considering the China coast on
multiple levels, from political and economic to social and cultural. Other
contributors, however, venture further afield with sources from legal cases,
property titles, ephemera and curios. So, throughout the chapters, we
have movement between formally produced materials from established
institutions in the treaty port world, to items that were produced by now
unknown artisans in a fleeting and transitory treaty port age. This range of
sources and inspirations serves once again to point to the sheer diversity of
sources and approaches available when approaching a study of the materi-
ality of the treaty ports.
 INTRODUCTION 5

Treaty Ports as ‘Suidi’

While there is a good body of scholarship on both the treaty ports of
China and Japan, finding works that survey the historiography of treaty
port scholarship is elusive. The most recent work in this regard is the
2016 edited volume by Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, Treaty Ports
in Modern China. In the introduction to their volume, Bickers and Jackson
outline how the Chinese treaty port has been studied but then also present
the case for the commonality of the structure of the ‘suidi’, a typical ‘any
port’ which can be used as a typology for thinking about the treaty ports
in a general sense. This typology deserves some discussion as rarely have
scholars tried to articulate a common framework for thinking about the
treaty ports.
According to Bickers and Jackson, the suidi or the archetypal ‘any port’
is a ‘narrative presentation of the rise and fall of a fictional ‘representative’
example’ that allows the reader to see how time shaped the way treaty
ports developed.15 Many of the developments that the suidi experienced
seem familiar in form and structure. The symbols of power in the opening
of a new treaty port, the administration of land and other regulations, the
rituals of holidays, clubs, churches, newspapers—at once class conscious
and quasi-colonial, all feature in the suidi. Added to this, we should not
overlook the scholarship by Jeremy E. Taylor on the symbolic (and practi-
cal) role played by the ubiquitous waterfront, the bund in East Asia,
which, he argues, was a distinct feature not only of treaty port morphology
but of its cultural and visual identity.16 The bund served as a spatial
reminder of the ‘entire social system and lifestyle that came to East Asia
with the treaty ports’.17 So the bund, and the physical morphology of the
port, is significant to the suidi. This volume explores and tests this typol-
ogy by extending the notion of the suidi to the so-called outports, beyond
the China coast and to the Japanese treaty ports. And in doing so, we
demonstrate the potential for comparative work, and for scholars to recon-
sider the parallels between the Chinese and Japanese treaty port worlds.
When conceptualising this study of the treaty ports of China and Japan,
one of the common elements that emerged among many contributors was
a shared interest in the materiality and social aspects of life in the treaty
ports. These transitory places, the suidi, however, become often extremely
elusive when we try to investigate material culture in a systematic man-
ner.18 Often, the most obvious aspects of material culture are what have
the strongest resonance, items of ephemera like the cigarette girl posters
6 D. BRUNERO AND S. VILLALTA PUIG

of ‘Old Shanghai’ (which are reprinted and re-purposed, such is their pop-
ularity in the present day) as a well-known motif. In a bid to move beyond
the stereotypical accounts and representations of the treaty ports, this sec-
tion briefly surveys some of the works on material culture and the treaty
ports that have served as inspiration for or provided direction in our
understanding of the treaty ports. This volume does not focus on ‘high
arts’ or objects and items of ‘elite status’, but on the more mundane
aspects of life where, as our contributor Chester Proshan observes, the
ordinary and extraordinary co-mingled in remarkable ways. The embry-
onic roots of mass-produced material culture is explored in this volume
too in the form of tourist curios, as is the symbology of tribute taking
societies against the foreign-led development of the rule of law at the vari-
ous treaty ports, as Gonzalo Villalta Puig reveals.
One striking aspect of material culture studies is that they not only have
the potential to cross regions but also are almost certainly interdisciplinary
in nature.19 Moving on from Fernand Braudel’s scholarship on economic
histories and everyday life in Western Europe, material culture has argu-
ably enjoyed a surge in scholarly attention in the last two decades.20 Arjun
Appadurai’s edited volume The Social Life of Things is perhaps the most
pivotal work in drawing attention to material culture, as it brought
together scholars from anthropology, history and other fields to discuss
objects and the multiple meanings that they held.21 For the historian then,
the ‘turn to the material’ opens new possibilities for research, interpreta-
tion and collaboration, and can rightly be considered a dynamic field with
still much potential. Furthermore, scholars who have studied the idea of
Asian material culture argue that we should see the diversity of scholarly
interest as a strength of material culture that allows for histories of lived
experiences, sociality and symbolic rituals: these themes provide a con-
necting thread for many of the chapters in our volume.
In Writing Material Culture, Gerritsen and Riello observe that histori-
ans have often used the term ‘material’ very loosely to mean objects and
the practices surrounding how these objects are used.22 This volume
defines material culture along similar lines, recognising that objects hold
intrinsic value both at the time and in the context of their creation and
use, but also subsequently in their ‘afterlives’ (how collectors and scholars
have stored, used and understood them). We recognise that documents
too, be they case law reports or title deeds, also take on material culture
significance, as they were collected, bound, consulted, stored and some-
times reproduced as part of the treaty port world. In Asian Material Culture,
 INTRODUCTION 7

Hulsbosch, Bedford and Chaiklin make the observation that at the heart
of material culture lie continuous, dynamic relationships and social actions
which are forged between the object, the individual and society as a
whole.23 We should be cognisant that, while we look at objects as part of
material culture and the materiality of the everyday, these objects were
(and are) not static but rather subject to innovation and change on an
ongoing basis. They, just like the treaty ports, are re-imaged, re-­experienced
and re-purposed.24
Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China by
Frank Dikötter maps the changes in the material landscape of China from
around the time of the opening of the treaty ports to the advent of
­communist rule in 1949.25 Dikötter’s work demonstrates how foreign
objects and commodities became not only a status symbol for the elites,
but gradually permeated all levels of society, shaping the daily routines of
the masses.26 The intertwining of the ideas of foreign/Western and that of
the modern, Dikötter argues, meant that, over time, some objects were
not only seen as signs of ‘progress’, of moving away from a traditional era,
but also regarded with ambivalence.27 This modernity was not, however,
simply transplanted or imposed, but often the genesis of internal and
external global forces.28 Objects often attracted ambivalence, however, as
sometimes they are assimilated, acculturated or seen as hybridised. This
ambivalence is important to consider when we find how objects can have
multiple meanings at the treaty ports. Objects can be seen as modern but
at the same time may pose a challenge to social order or even reflect a
greater ideological change that is taking place. Examples here include the
act of horse riding not only for leisure but also for the social mobility that
this activity conferred to the rider and the hostler.29
A fascination with the traditional, however, remains a potential pitfall
for scholars of the treaty ports. Influentially, Dikötter provides a caution-
ary note: ‘A refusal to engage with the presence of the modern has been
one way to preserve the fiction of a more ‘authentic’ China to be discov-
ered by romantic traveler and nostalgic historian alike’.30 Likewise,
Spectacular Accumulation, Morgan Pitelka’s study of material culture in
early modern Japan, notes the tendency for scholars (and the public) to
view one collection and to imagine this as representative of an entire era.
Such extrapolations are misleading, and demonstrate that material culture
needs a deft touch and an awareness of the context as part of the method-
ology of material culture studies.31 Reflecting on these issues, Shi and
Kendall’s chapter on carvings from Ningpo demonstrates that
8 D. BRUNERO AND S. VILLALTA PUIG

r­ eproductions of ‘traditional’ Chinese daily practices were often collected

by tourists wanting something ‘authentic’ from China, echoing Dikötter’s
observation of the avoidance of the modern in favour of an idealised
‘China’. Here the tensions between traditional and perceptions of moder-
nity are important when we consider material culture.
Morgan Pitelka’s Spectacular Accumulation, while examining an earlier
period of Japanese history (he focuses on Tokugawa Ieyasu and the late
sixteenth to early seventeenth century), raises a number of noteworthy
ideas that resounded with our contributors. Pitelka’s study of objects asso-
ciated with power, and passed down through warrior lineages via Tokugawa
Ieyasu (e.g. warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s tea gathering in Kyoto in
1587),32 questions whether such events were designed not only to impress
elites but also to bring commoners into the appreciation of a ‘collection’.33
While our volume does not focus on elites, it does deal with the idea of
collections, the physical displays of objects and expressions of power that
came through their use. Pitelka also muses on the nature or legacy of items
and describes them as often ‘polyvocal’ sources, as they speak on more than
one historical experience.34 Falconry is another intriguing aspect of Pitelka’s
work, and our examination in this volume of ponies, both in Japan and in
China, reveals parallels in terms of thinking about animals as vehicles of
sociality and mobility and as representative of class (or class aspirations).35
This study, through its various chapters, brings the material dimension
to the fore in unexpected ways; from property titles, to health reports, to
gramophones, tourist souvenirs, horses and saddles. All of these examples
point to the ways in which material culture is diffused throughout the
treaty ports. One of our overarching aims with this volume was to think
how the treaty ports were experienced via material culture and what values
were attributed to various items. No study can claim to be exhaustive, but
via its focus on material culture and materiality, this book makes a
­contribution to our understanding not only of the treaty ports but also
importantly of the everyday.
The chapters in this study are arranged thematically. Each theme is a
reference to different aspects of material culture or materiality in the treaty
ports. For this reason, the chapters are structured around key ideas such as
everyday life, health and welfare, law and land, visualising the port and the
legacies of the treaty ports. Within each section, and indeed, across sec-
tions, chapters speak to each other of shared experiences, common con-
cerns and how the material aspects of life in the treaty ports form a strong
focal point for considering treaty port history anew.
 INTRODUCTION 9

Part I: The Everyday

Donna Brunero opens Chap. 2 with an examination of sketches on the
family life of treaty port China. These were produced by the famed Russian
cartoonist Sapajou, known for his insightful and often whimsical humour
relating to expatriate and settler life in 1920s–1930s’ China. The chapter
recreates the everyday concerns of resident families, using memoirs, per-
sonal papers and images from the ports. The humour of Sapajou’s car-
toons provides insights into not only the politics of Republican China but
also, importantly, the more mundane existence of the everyday for the
settlers on the China coast. Families created a sense of permanence in an
often-transitory existence. In this chapter, readers are invited to consider
how families created a sense of stability along the China coast and also
how they remembered their time at the treaty ports. For a community
whose life was intertwined with the China coast, recreating home was a
major concern and items such as gramophones and even holiday homes
took on special significance.
The layer of everyday experience of the family life of foreigners in China
is enriched in Chap. 3 with the material and cultural tensions of the locals
and Westerners who resided in treaty ports of Japan. Timothy Amos writes
on ‘Horses and Hostlers in the Making of a Japanese Foreign Settlement’.
Horses, he argues, have for too long been regarded as a ‘thing’—a by-­
product of treaty port literature on gunboat diplomacy. By focusing on the
horse and acknowledging its status at the material and symbolic levels as
gifts as well as ‘technologies of power’, Amos explores the way in which
horses held symbolic meaning according to the level of sociality and inter-
action with residents at the Yokohama treaty port. Horses held high social
status for Japanese elites and, accordingly, those who were not members of
that elite were not allowed to ride them. Foreigners who engaged in horse
riding for leisure were the subject of suspicions, they disrupted the socio-
political order, and this eventually led to increasingly violent incidents
against foreigners. Horses in everyday life then, held politically symbolic
roles as conveyors of status and purveyors of civilisation, as well as their
more practical uses as vehicles of transport and sociality. Hostlers too, the
betto, disrupted and challenged existing social orders as they moved through
the foreign settlement. The significance of these themes are so powerful
that we have chosen to illustrate the front cover of our volume with a print
derived from this study: ‘Famous Places: The Englishman and Motomura’
print, dated 1860, which is held in the Yokohama Archives of History.
10 D. BRUNERO AND S. VILLALTA PUIG

In Chap. 4, ‘Beyond the Bund: Life in the Outports’ Robert Nield

revisits the core and periphery thesis of empire with his typology of
Shanghai as the core of treaty port life, ‘the jewel in the crown of Britain’s
Chinese Raj’. The ‘lesser of the treaty ports in China were referred to as
“outports” by people at the commercial centre; people in the outports
tried to replicate the life they had of or experienced in Shanghai’ or they
tried to return to the major ports. This chapter examines the lives of mem-
bers of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and also consuls, business-
men and ordinary folk. Considerations of their life at the outports are
narrated: from contractual obligations, marriage and language to the
experience of loneliness. Loneliness sometimes degenerated into bore-
dom, and letter writing helped to dissipate the feeling of remoteness.
Relations between foreign and local are also detailed: attitudes to technol-
ogy and change, manners, social networks, clubs and facilities. A sense of
‘Britishness’, then, pervaded treaty port life even at the outports. Nield
concludes that the outports consisted of ‘a small number of ordinary for-
eign people leading perhaps privileged but unexciting lives in isolated
places; when they departed, all their influence left with them’ and appeals
to new scholarship on the smaller foreign places in China that were beyond
the Bund.

Part II: Health and Welfare

This section crafts the layer of health, mortality, disease and medical care
as a material consideration for the everyday practices of treaty port living
through studies that discuss medical experiences from China, and then
from Japanese treaty port, Yokohama.
Chapter 5 articulates some of the immediate fears of residents. Stephanie
Villalta Puig observes how, informed by the everyday physicality of living
in the tropics, residents, upon arrival, immediately became aware of the
limitations imposed on their life by the climate: ‘The true advice is to make
China as like Europe as we can’. Treaty port China, then, was often con-
sidered as a medical boundary between health and disease for the British
constitution, and this chapter argues that climate was a conscious consid-
eration for residents of the Chinese treaty ports. Climate shaped how you
felt, your mood, what you wore, what foods you ate and what medical
theory you subscribed to inform your hygienic practices and concerns.
The environmental geography of China, at once imperial and borne of
scientific language, is the focus of this chapter. Using medical documents
Another random document with
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died away. And, greatly to her own astonishment, she found her
head falling heavily upon that of her new friend.
“Ah, child, it is selfish of me to make you talk!” cried Mrs. Dale.
“You are faint, and must rest now. Come and talk to me some other
time.”
Mabin overcame the faintness which had seized her, and quite
suddenly raised her head again. The little excitement of the hope
held out to her brought all her senses back.
“Come and see you! Oh, may I? I should like to so much!”
The girl almost nestled, as she spoke, against her new friend.
But over Mrs. Dale’s fair, childlike face there came at once a sort
of shadow, as if a terrible remembrance had suddenly taken the
power for all pleasurable emotion from her. It almost seemed to
Mabin that the little hands made a movement as if to push her away.
And then there burst forth from the infantile red lips some words
which struck terror into her young hearer, so bitter, so full of sadness,
of biting remorse, were they:
“No, child, no. You must not come. I am too wicked!”
The girl was struck dumb. She wanted to comfort pretty Mrs. Dale;
she wanted to laugh at her self-accusation, to express incredulity,
amusement. But in the face of that look of anguish, of that
inexpressibly mournful cry straight from the heart, she could not
even open her lips. She knew that there was some grief here which
no words of comfort could touch.
So deeply absorbed was she in the silent compassion which kept
her with lowered eyelids and mute lips, that she was quite startled
when Mrs. Dale’s voice, speaking in her ordinary tones, struck again
upon her ear.
“That young fellow who picked you up is one of the Vicar’s sons,
isn’t he?”
“Yes,” answered Mabin in a rather colder voice.
“He seems a very nice lad, and very much interested in—
somebody?” suggested Mrs. Dale archly.
Mabin laughed.
“Yes, so he is. But it is not the ‘somebody’ you mean,” answered
she. “Mrs. Bonnington, that’s his mother, says he can think about
nothing but—Mrs. Dale!”
 Again the sweet face changed; and it was in a low voice full of
sadness that the lady in black said, slowly and deliberately:
“I hope with all my heart that she has made a mistake.” Then, with
a rapid gesture, as if brushing away some thought which was full of
untold terror, she added with a shudder: “Don’t let us talk about it. It
is too horrible!”
 CHAPTER III.
AN INVITATION AND A WARNING.

Mabin’s sprained ankle was a more serious affair than she had
supposed. For a month she never left the house, and for another she
went out in a wheel-chair, or hopped about on a pair of crutches.
And during all that time she caught no glimpse of the pretty
neighbor who had done her such eminent service at the time of the
accident. In vain she had hung about the road outside “The Towers”
looking up at the west side of the house, which was built into the wall
alongside the road, trying to distinguish the fair, blue-eyed face at
one of the windows which peeped sombrely out of the ivy.
Dreary the place looked, Mabin thought, as she pondered over the
mystery surrounding the lady in black. The lowest window visible
from the road was about three feet above the girl’s head; and all she
could see was a pair of crimson moreen curtains, which, she
thought, harmonized ill with what she had seen of the tenant of the
gloomy house. The house had long been “To let, Furnished.” But
why had not dainty Mrs. Dale improved away those curtains?
Mabin did not usually trouble her head about such trifles as
furniture; but she had enshrouded the figure of the pretty widow in
romance; and she felt that her fairy queen was not living up to her
proper standard in contenting herself with crimson moreen.
“What are you looking at so intently?”
Mabin, who, leaning on her crutches, was gazing up at that
mysteriously interesting window, started violently as she saw a white
hand, glistening with diamonds, thrust suddenly out through the ivy
in the midst of a space which she had taken for blank wall.
And, parting the close-growing branches, Mrs. Dale peeped out,
pink and fair and smiling, from a window at the same level as the
one Mabin had been watching, but so thickly covered with ivy that
the girl had not suspected its existence.
“I—I was looking for you. I was hoping to see you,” stammered
Mabin.
 “And now that you have seen me, won’t you please condescend to
see a little more of me?” asked Mrs. Dale. “I won’t eat you up if you
come into my den. Look, here is another inhabitant whom I have
entrapped. But there are strawberries enough for three.”
Mabin hesitated; not from any scruples about the propriety of
visiting the lady about whom so much gossip was talked, certainly,
but because she was shy, and because the thought of a meeting and
a talk with her ideal heroine and a stranger seemed rather
formidable.
But Mrs. Dale would not allow her time to refuse.
“I will send the other inhabitant down to let you in,” said she.
And the ivy closed again, and Mabin could hear the lady’s voice
giving some directions to some person within. She moved
mechanically, on her crutches, toward the high closed gates. And by
the time she reached them they were opening, and Rudolph was
holding them back for her.
The girl could not repress a slight exclamation of astonishment.
Rudolph reddened.
“You are surprised to see me,” said he, rather bashfully. “I hope
you won’t refuse to come in because I am here? I will go away rather
than that.”
Mabin hesitated. She was not very worldly-wise, but it seemed to
her that there was something rather strange about his presence in
the house where the rest of the Vicar’s family were not allowed to
enter. And at the same moment she remembered Mrs. Dale’s
apparent horror at the idea of the young fellow’s admiration for her.
Rudolph’s color deepened still more.
“Why are you always so rude to me, Mabin, or I suppose I ought to
say—Miss Rose?” asked he quickly. “Doesn’t it seem rather unfair,
when you come to think of it? We were great chums once, you
know? Weren’t we?”
“When we were children, yes,” replied Mabin stiffly.
“And why not now?”
The blood rushed to the girl’s forehead.
“How can you ask?” she said, indignantly. “When I owe my
lameness to you?”
Rudolph stared at her, as if uncertain whether he heard aright.
 “To me?”
“Why, yes. Surely you don’t pretend it was not you who threw the
stone which knocked my bicycle over?”
The stiff haughtiness with which she said this melted suddenly into
apologetic alarm when she saw by the change to fierce indignation in
Rudolph that she had made another, and most absurd blunder. At
first he could only stare at her in speechless anger and amazement.
“Do you take me for a street-urchin?” he asked at last.
Mabin recovered herself a little, and refused to be withered up.
“Your brothers do it,” she said below her breath.
“Then I’ll give the little beggars a good hiding the first time I catch
them at it,” said Rudolph sharply. “But I should have thought you
could distinguish the difference between a man and a schoolboy,
and not have visited their sins upon me.”
Mabin felt miserable. She blushed, she stammered when she tried
to speak; and the tears came into her eyes.
“I—I’m sorry!” she said in a constrained voice. “I—I see, I might
have known. But you know—you were rude to me—that very day—
when I saw you at Seagate!”
“Ah! I remember! I asked you to have a cigarette. It was
injudicious, not rude. You should have made a distinction again.”
There was an awkward silence. Rudolph was still resentful; but
when he saw the downcast eyes, and the tears which were
beginning to fringe the long black lashes, he found himself softening.
And, putting her hand too hastily into her pocket for the handkerchief
to wipe away her tears, Mabin dropped one of her crutches.
“Let me help you along,” said he in a gentle voice, as he picked up
the fallen crutch. “I don’t like to see a girl using those things.”
And, without waiting for her permission, he thrust the crutch under
one arm, and insisted on supporting the unwilling girl with the other.
And as they crossed the broad gravelled space to the portico, in the
shade of the trees, Mabin felt a curious sensation of peace and of
pleasure, and suddenly looked up at her companion with a frank
smile.
“I’m very glad we’re friends again,” said she.
And he, smiling too, but with a little more malice, a little more guile,
than she, answered readily:
 “Why, so am I. But I must remind you that it is your fault, not mine,
that we have ever been anything else.”
Mabin hung her head, feeling rather guilty, but with yet more
enjoyment of the present reconciliation than remorse for the past
estrangement. Instead of taking her straight in, Rudolph led her
across the gravel to a flower-border, where, in a little open patch of
sunlight, a rosebush grew. It was a “Mrs. John Lang,” and the huge
pink blossoms were in their full beauty and fragrance.
“I’ve brought you here,” he said didactically, “to read you a moral
lesson. Here we have a rose, full of beauty and sweetness to every
one, but without any thorns. While some Roses I know——”
“Are all thorns to everybody, and are without any beauty,” finished
Mabin for him, laughing, “and without any sweetness.”
“No, no, not at all. But they seldom let you come near enough to
admire the beauty, and they are rather chary of their sweetness.
Now I hope you’ll profit by this lesson.”
“To be sure I—shan’t!” replied Mabin with a rather doleful smile. “I
do try to be less—less objectionable—sometimes,” she added with
seriousness which made Rudolph smile. “But it doesn’t seem to be
very successful. I think I’m going to give up the effort and accept the
fate of ‘an awful example’ as serenely as I can.”
Rudolph tried not to let his smile grow too broad for politeness.
“You are an odd girl,” he said at last. “Or is it another insult to tell
you so?”
Mabin shook her head.
“If it’s an insult,” answered she, “it is one that I’m used to.”
“One is almost as much afraid of saying anything complimentary to
you as of giving you what you call insults,” he began cautiously.
“Otherwise I would tell you that I like ‘odd’ people, people who don’t
always say and do the right thing, that is.”
“Then you ought to appreciate me,” retorted Mabin quickly. “For
everybody says I always do and say the wrong thing!”
“I do appreciate you.”
Mabin laughed and blushed.
“I only said that in fun,” she said awkwardly.
“Well, I said what I did in earnest.”
“Mrs. Dale will be wondering what has become of us,” said Mabin.
 She was not at all anxious to go in; but the pleasure she felt in this
talk with Rudolph had grown rather alarming to her reserve. She
began to fear that she would spoil it all by one of her far-famed
blunders of speech. And so she chose to cut short the enjoyment
while it could remain a recollection of unalloyed delight.
Rudolph, on his side, was in no hurry to go in; although he took a
step obediently toward the portico.
From a feeling of perversity which she could not have accounted
for, Mabin chose to talk about Mrs. Dale as they went slowly toward
the house.
“I have been longing to see her ever since my accident,” she said.
“But although I have been always hovering about the place, wishing
she would come out, to-day is the very first time I have caught sight
of her.”
“That is exactly my own experience,” said Rudolph. “She seems to
have given up driving about the place, and to have shut herself up in
this dreary old house just like a nun.”
“Oh!” said Mabin, feeling quite relieved to hear that he had not, as
she had supposed, been in the society of the beautiful widow
constantly since the day of the accident.
“Yes,” he went on. “I was passing by only half an hour ago, when I
glanced up at the windows, and Mrs. Dale stopped me to ask if I had
heard how you were. And then she asked me in, saying she felt
lonely. And so should I, so would any one, in that mouldy old house
all alone.”
“Poor lady! I am so sorry for her!” said Mabin.
Rudolph looked at her quickly.
“Do you feel like that about her too?” said he earnestly. “All the
other people one meets are either jealous of her beauty, or envious
of her handsome turnout, or angry with her for not wanting to make
their acquaintance.”
“I am very sorry for her,” answered the girl gravely. “I feel certain
that she has had some very great sorrow—”
“Why, yes, her husband’s death,” suggested Rudolph.
“Oh, yes, that of course,” assented Mabin, surprised to find that
the universal doubts whether Mrs. Dale really was a widow had
infected her also. “But something even more than that, I should think.
I have an idea that there is something tragic in her story, if one only
knew it.”
Rudolph said nothing to this, but he looked at his companion with
a quick glance of surprise, as if he himself shared her opinion, and
was astonished to find it echoed.
They were under the portico now, and as their footsteps sounded
on the stone, they saw through the open door into the dark hall and
heard Mrs. Dale’s soft voice calling to them.
“It takes ever so much longer to get a thing done than to do it
one’s self!” she exclaimed brightly, with a sigh, as she came out of
the room on the left, and invited them to go in. “I could have brought
Miss Rose in in half the time, even if she had fought to get away. Did
she fight?” went on Mrs. Dale with arch innocence.
They were in the room by this time, and Mabin, coming in out of
the glare of the sun, stood for a few seconds without seeing
anything. Then her hands were gently taken, and she found herself
pushed into a low chair.
“Bring her some strawberries, Mr. Bonnington,” said Mrs. Dale. “By
the by, I may as well remark that I don’t intend to call you Mr.
Bonnington very long. I shall drop into plain ‘Rudolph’ very soon, if
only to give a fresh shock to the neighborhood, to whom I am
Shocker in ordinary.”
“The sooner the better. I can’t understand anybody’s being Mr.
Bonnington but my father. Now he looks equal to the dignity, while I
don’t. I always feel that there is a syllable too many for me, and that
people despise me in consequence.”
Mabin, who had recovered the use of her eyes, felt rather envious.
The quick give and take of light talk like this was so different from the
solemn conversations carried on at home, where her father laid
down the law and everybody else agreed with him, that she felt this
levity, while pleasant and amusing, to be something which would
have caused the good folk at home to look askance.
“And how have you been, child, since that unhappy day when I
saw you last?”
And Mrs. Dale came to the next chair, and piled sugar on the
strawberries.
 “Oh, I’ve been getting on all right, but it is tiresome not to be able
to walk without those things. And it has made me in everybody’s
way,” sighed Mabin.
“How is that?”
“Papa could have let the house to go abroad, as he wanted to,
when the accident happened. Only I couldn’t well be moved then.
And now that I could go, he has lost the house he had heard of at
Geneva, and one which he could have now is too small for us. So
that I feel I am in the way again.”
“Do you mean,” asked Mrs. Dale quite eagerly, “that they could go
if only they could dispose of you?”
“Yes. There is one room short.”
Little Mrs. Dale sprang up, and the color in her cheeks grew
pinker.
“Do you think,” she asked, after a moment’s pause, “that your
parents would allow you to stay with me? If you would come?” she
finished with a plaintive note of entreaty on the last words.
“Oh, I am sure they would, and I am sure I would!” cried Mabin,
with undisguised delight.
And then quite suddenly the face of the black-robed lady grew
ashy gray, and she sank down into her chair trembling from head to
foot.
“No. I—I mustn’t ask you,” she said hoarsely.
And there was a silence, during which both her young hearers cast
down their eyes, feeling that they dared not look at her. It was Mabin
who spoke first. Putting her hand between the two white hands of
Mrs. Dale, she said gently:
“Is it because you are lonely you want me to come?”
She did venture to look up then, startled by the shiver which
convulsed Mrs. Dale as she spoke. And in the blue eyes she saw a
look of terror which she never forgot.
“Lonely! Oh, child, you will never know how lonely!” burst from her
pale lips.
“Then I will come,” said Mabin. “I should like to come.”
There was another silence. Mrs. Dale had evidently to put strong
constraint upon herself to check an outburst of emotional gratitude.
Rudolph, moved himself by the little scene, was looking out of the
window. The lady in black presently spoke again, very gravely:
“I don’t think you will be very much bored, dear, and you will be
doing a great kindness to a fellow-creature. And yet—I hardly like—I
don’t feel that I ought——”
“But I feel that I must and shall,” said Mabin brightly. “You don’t
know how beautiful it would be for me to feel that at last, for a little
while, I shouldn’t be in the way!”
And the overgrown girl, who was snubbed at home, had tears in
her eyes at the remembrance of the kind touch which she had felt on
the day of her accident. Mrs. Dale was too much moved to say much
more, but it was agreed between the ladies that the suggestion
should be formally made by the tenant of “The Towers” to the heads
of the household at “Stone House” without delay, that Mabin should
stay with her new friend during the absence abroad of the rest of the
Rose family.
Mabin did notice, while they talked, that Rudolph remained not
only silent but somewhat constrained; but it was not until she took
her leave of Mrs. Dale, and he followed her out, that the young girl
attached any importance to his reserve.
Once out of hearing of Mrs. Dale, who stood on the stone steps to
bid them good-by, Rudolph asked her abruptly:
“Do you think they’ll let you come?”
“Oh, yes, they’ll only be too glad to get rid of me. Why do you ask
in that tone?”
“Well, there is something I think I ought to tell you, if you are
thinking of staying with Mrs. Dale.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It is that she is being watched.”
“Watched!”
“Yes, by a stranger, a man whom I have never seen in the place
before. He hovers about this place, keeping out of range of possible
eyes in the house, at all hours of the day and even of the night.”
“But how do you know this?”
The words slipped out of her mouth, and it was not until she saw
Rudolph redden that she saw that she was too inquisitive.
“I am sure of what I say, anyhow,” said he quietly.
 Mabin looked thoughtful.
“I don’t care!” she said at last.
“I thought you wouldn’t.”
“And I shan’t tell anybody anything about it.”
“I was sure you wouldn’t.”
“But I shall tell Mrs. Dale.”
Rudolph stopped and looked at her.
“I think you had better not do that,” he said.
“But why should a person watch her, except with the intention of
trying to do her some harm?”
“Well, I don’t know. But I think if you do tell her, knowing how
highly nervous she is, you will do her more harm than ever the
mysterious watcher would. Perhaps you would even drive her out of
the place, in which case most assuredly the watcher would go after
her, while if we keep her here perhaps we may manage to draw his
fangs.”
Mabin felt frightened. Then, being a matter-of-fact girl, she got the
better of this feeling quickly, and looked up keenly at her companion.
“What do you exactly mean by that?” she asked.
“Only that I will get hold of the man quietly and find out what his
little game is. Though I can guess.”
“Well, you can tell me what your guess is?”
“Why, debt, of course. One can see she is inclined to be
extravagant, and very likely she has run up bills somewhere. Don’t
you think that seems likely?”
His tone was rather anxious, Mabin thought. But she answered
indignantly:
“No, I don’t. It would be very dishonorable to run away without
paying one’s debts, and I don’t think you much of a friend to poor
Mrs. Dale to suggest such a thing!”
Rudolph looked not guilty, but grave.
“Well” said he, “people don’t hang about a place, at the risk of
getting taken up ‘on suspicion of loitering, for the purpose of
committing a felony,’ without some reason.”
“Why,” cried Mabin triumphantly, “that is the reason! Mrs. Dale has
some lovely diamond rings, and the loitering gentleman wants to
steal them!”
 “Well, perhaps you are right,” said Rudolph doubtfully.
“I am sure of it!” retorted Mabin resolutely. And she held out her
hand. “Good-by, and thank you for your help.”
“And you will remember my parable about the Roses?” said he, as
he took her hand and thought he liked gray eyes after all better than
blue ones.
“Perhaps,” said Mabin cautiously, as she hopped away on her
crutches.
 CHAPTER IV.
WAS IT A RECOGNITION?

While Mabin was still talking to Rudolph in the road between “The
Towers” and “Stone House,” a tall parlormaid, in snow-white French
cap and ends, passed them, on her way from the former to the latter
house, bearing a letter in her hand.
And when Mabin reached home, she found that the Powers had
already received Mrs. Dale’s invitation to Mabin.
In truth it had put both husband and wife into a position of some
difficulty. For while, on the one hand, they were delighted at this
opportunity of getting “the one too many” off their hands for a time,
yet there were the opinions of their neighbors to be considered; and
the tide of public feeling had set in strongly against the lady in black.
If her hair had been dark instead of fair, it would have made all the
difference. The beauty which goes with brown hair and a more or
less dark complexion is not so startling, not so sensational, as the
loveliness of pink and white and gold which made Mrs. Dale so
conspicuous. If again, she had not been in mourning, and such
pretty mourning, they would have been readier to make allowance
for her eccentricities. But the knowing ones had begun to discover
that there were discrepancies in her attire, that her mourning was
either too deep for diamond rings to be permissible, or not deep
enough for the heavy black veil she wore.
So that, in short, it was now almost universally admitted that this
person with the too showy carriage and horses, and the dangerously
pretty face, was an individual to be avoided, and it was decided that
her reluctance to enter the best society of the place, when that
society had held out its uninviting arms to her, arose from a
wholesome fear that the wise women of the place would “find her
out.”
Mr. Rose read Mrs. Dale’s note twice through, very slowly, as if
trying to discover hidden meanings in its simple words. Then he
looked at his wife, who was watching him rather anxiously.
 “Well, my dear, and what do you think?” asked he.
It pleased him to ask her opinion thus on most things, not that he
ever had any intention of heeding her wishes in preference to his
own, but in the hope that she would express some modest inclination
one way or the other, to give him an impetus in the opposite
direction.
“I think, dear, that it would hardly do,” murmured the lady, hoping
that for once her husband would fall in with her views. “You must
have heard the way in which people talk about this Mrs. Dale, so that
it would be thought very strange if we let Mabin stay with her. Don’t
you think it was rather underhand of her to get hold of the child this
afternoon?”
“Underhand! Certainly not,” replied Mr. Rose with decision. “The
most natural thing in the world, considering how kind she was to the
girl at the time of her accident. And as for the talk of the place, why, if
you listened to all the old women say you would never go outside
your door for fear your neighbors should think you were going to
steal their hens!”
There was a pause. She would not irritate him by another remark.
So he presently went on:
“I suppose you think the Vicar’s wife would scold you?”
“Not scold, of course, but I am sure she would disapprove,” said
Mrs. Rose meekly.
“Ah! I thought so. Well, I will give the old lady something to talk
about then. Mabin shall stay with Mrs. Dale if she wishes.”
Mrs. Rose sighed heavily.
“She will wish it, of course. Girls always wish to do the very things
which are not proper for them.”
“You may be quite satisfied, Emily, that what I allow my daughter
to do is quite proper,” said Mr. Rose severely, as he left the room.
Mrs. Rose sighed. She had not told him, because it would have
been of no use, that she had to be more particular than he about
Mabin, because, being the girl’s step-mother only, she was the more
exposed to the gossip of the neighborhood—a force she dreaded—
than her husband was. But she vented her ill-humor on Mabin
herself, whom she informed very acidly that if she chose to go to
“this Mrs. Dale,” and was not comfortable with her, the fault was hers
and her father’s.
Mabin received these remarks meekly, rejoicing in the
approaching holiday. She had nothing very serious to complain of in
her treatment under her father’s roof, but the snubs of her father, the
tacit dislike of her step-mother, and the fact that the difference in age
between her half-sisters and herself left her much alone, all
combined to make her welcome the change.
Emily and Ethel, who were fourteen and twelve years of age,
insipid and spiritless young persons with little brown eyes and little
brown pigtails, teased her with questions about her visit of the
afternoon.
“Is it true that her hair’s dyed?” asked Emily, getting Mabin into a
corner after tea.
“No, of course it’s not,” was the indignant answer.
“Oh, well, you needn’t be so angry. Miss Bradley said she was
sure it was, and that she knew the very stuff she used.”
“Miss Bradley had better try the stuff on her own wisp then,”
retorted Mabin angrily.
“What is the house like inside, Mabin?” asked Ethel, who, though
only twelve, was quite as great a gossip as there was in the parish.
“Why, there were chairs and tables in it, just as there are in every
other house. What do you suppose it was like?”
“Mabin, don’t snub the children. Their interest is very natural,” said
Mr. Rose peevishly from the other end of the room.
“Horsehair and mahogany, red moreen curtains, and a black
marble clock on the mantelpiece,” said Mabin laconically.
“Why, that doesn’t sound very nice, that you should be in such a
hurry to go there!” objected Ethel. “But perhaps the other rooms are
better.”
“Very likely,” said Mabin.
But Mabin was really just a little bit alarmed at her own good
fortune in getting her father’s consent so easily. She had a
superstitious feeling, in spite of her reputed strength of mind, that
anything worth having ought to be rather difficult to get. In spite of all
her loyalty to her heroine, too, she thought more often than she
wished about Rudolph’s ridiculous fancy that Mrs. Dale was
watched. And although she always dismissed the thought by saying
to herself that Rudolph was in love with the lovely widow, and
therefore “fancied things,” she was anxious to meet him again and to
learn whether he still thought that the fair tenant of “The Towers” was
being watched.
In the mean time great confusion reigned at “Stone House.”
Everybody was immersed in the horrors of “packing up,” and it
was impossible to go upstairs without encountering people
staggering under the burden of a heap of things which would have
been better left behind. Even the authority of Mr. Rose, who disliked
the daily routine to be disturbed, failed to get any meal eaten at the
proper time, or without unnecessary hurry.
Even the fact that Mr. Rose’s old friend Mrs. Haybrow was
expected on a short visit before the migration, failed to check the fury
of the packers. It was unfortunate that she should come at such a
time, certainly. But Mrs. Rose reckoned on inflaming her friend’s
mind with her own zeal, and inwardly proposed orgies of competitive
trunk-filling to while away the visitor’s time.
Mrs. Rose secretly hoped, too, that Mrs. Haybrow, through her
connections at Todcaster, would be able to furnish her husband with
proofs that Mrs. Dale was not a person to be encouraged. It was not
yet too late to put off Mrs. Dale, although Mr. Rose had called upon
that person to thank her for the invitation to his daughter and to
accept it.
It was the day of Mrs. Haybrow’s expected arrival, and Mr. and
Mrs. Rose had driven to the station to meet her. Mabin, wondering
whether the visitor, whom she had not seen since she was a child,
would be “nice,” was hobbling along the garden path, rather painfully
indeed, but at last without a crutch, when she heard a great rustling
of the branches of the lilac bushes which grew close under the wall.
And then, above the wall, she saw the face of Rudolph.
“Oh!” cried Mabin, with a little fluttering of the heart. “I—I thought
you had gone back to your ship!”
“Why, so I had,” replied Rudolph, raising himself so that she had a
view of his shoulders as well as of his head. “But I’ve come back
again, you see.”
 “I can guess what brought you!” said Mabin, wishing the next
moment that she had not uttered the words.
Rudolph took her up quickly.
“Can you? Well then, what was it?”
Mabin blushed scarlet. Of course the thought that was in her mind
that the charms of the fascinating widow had drawn him to Stone.
And just the least little twinge of nascent jealousy had given a sting
of pique to her tone. But she would not for the world have owned to
this; and the mere thought that he might have guessed it was misery.
As she did not answer, Rudolph shook his head.
“I don’t think you are quite as clever as you suppose,” he said.
“And I don’t choose to tell you what brought me back. But I may just
warn you that you are likely to get tired of the sight of me before I do
go away altogether, as I can get as much leave as I like while my
ship is at Portsmouth. Rather alarming prospect, isn’t it?”
“You will get tired of being on shore, won’t you?” asked Mabin, not
feeling equal to answering him in his own tone, which was what her
parents and the Vicarage people would have called “flippant.”
“That depends,” said Rudolph, looking down with interest at the
dried-up blossoms of the lilac trees.
Mabin glanced at him, and began to hope nervously that she might
not see too much of him. She had never seen a man whom she
considered so handsome as this brown-faced young lieutenant with
the merry black eyes, who made her feel so ridiculously shy and stiff.
And the very attraction he had for her seemed to the simple young
girl alarming, since she raised him in her maiden fancy to a pinnacle
from which such a peerless creature could never descend to her.
In spite of herself her tone sounded cold and constrained,
therefore, as she cut short the pause in the conversation by asking if
they were all well at the Vicarage.
“Quite well, thank you,” answered Rudolph demurely. “I suppose
that kind inquiry is meant for a snub, isn’t it? And intended to imply
that I ought not to have addressed you in this informal manner over
the wall, but that I ought to have called in the proper manner at the
other side of the house?”
“It wasn’t meant to imply that,” replied Mabin with solemn
straightforwardness. “Only I wanted to say something, and I had
nothing better to say. I must tell you that everybody says that I have
no conversation.”
“People allow you very few good points, according to your
account.”
“Quite as many as I have, though!”
“Well, at least, then you have one merit of unusual modesty.”
Mabin looked up at him steadily and frankly.
“It’s rather difficult for me to talk to you, because I can never tell
whether you are serious or only laughing at me. Don’t you rather—
rather puzzle Mrs. Bonnington?”
“Well, I am afraid I rather—rather shock her too.”
“We must all seem, down here, very antediluvian to you. There is
only one person about here you can speak to in your own way.”
“Mrs. Dale?”
To Mabin’s fanciful and rather jealous eyes it seemed that
Rudolph’s color grew a little deeper as he uttered the name.
“Yes.”
“Ah! You will have an opportunity of learning the art, if you are
going to stay with her.”
“But it is an art which will be entirely useless when I get back here
again. Papa and mamma would think it rather shocking. Do you
know, if they knew how lively Mrs. Dale is in her ordinary talk they
wouldn’t let me go to her?”
“Then I shouldn’t tell them, if I were you. You will find a use for the
art of conversation some day, you know, when you come across
other frivolous and good-for-nothing young persons, like Mrs. Dale
and me.”
Mabin would rather he had not coupled his name with that of the
lovely widow.
“Were Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington interested to hear you had been to
see her?” asked Mabin, feeling as she spoke that this was another
indiscretion.
But Rudolph began to laugh mischievously.
“They would have been extremely ‘interested,’ I am sure, if they
had heard of it,” said he. “But I have too much consideration for my
parents to impart to them any information which would ‘interest’ them
too deeply to be good for their digestions. I suppose you think that
shocking, don’t you?”
But Mabin was cautious. There was more than one gulf, she felt,
between her and the merry young sailor, and she was not going to
make them any wider.
“I’m sure you do what is best,” she said modestly.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” said he. “But it’s rather a
confidential communication, and these lilac bushes extend a long
way. Will you come nearer to the wall? Or may I get over it?”
“You may get over if you like,” said Mabin, coming as she spoke a
little nearer to the bushes.
Rudolph availed himself of the permission in the twinkling of an
eye, and stood beside her on the grass path under the limes, looking
down at the pretty nape of the girlish neck, which showed between
the soft brown hair and the plain, wide turn-down collar of pale blue
linen which she wore with her fresh Holland frock.
“The man—I told you about the man I saw watching ‘The Towers,’
well, he has disappeared,” said Rudolph, not sorry to have an
excuse for whispering into such a pretty little pink ear.
“Oh! I am glad!”
“So I hope we shall see no more of him.”
“And do you still think—surely you can’t still think—that he was
watching Mrs. Dale?”
“Oh, well, don’t know, of course. And at any rate the slight
objection I had to your going to ‘The Towers’ has disappeared.”
Mabin felt a strange pleasure at the interest implied in this concern
for her. There was a pause, broken by Mabin, who suddenly started,
as if waking from a dream.
“The carriage!” cried she. “They have come back. I must go in.
Good-by.”
She held out her hand. He took it, and detained it a moment.
“I may come and see you sometimes, when you are at ‘The
Towers,’ mayn’t I? For old acquaintance’ sake?”
“Or—for Mrs. Dale’s!” said Mabin quickly, as she snatched away
her hand and ran into the house.
She was not so silly as not to know where the attraction of ‘The
Towers’ lay!
 Mrs. Rose’s lumbering old landau, which made such a contrast to
Mrs. Dale’s smart victoria, had returned from the station, and as it
drove slowly along the road past ‘The Towers,’ Mrs. Rose was just
finishing to Mrs. Haybrow a long recital of her difficulties in
connection with the doubtful new resident.
Mr. Rose had chosen to come back on foot, so his wife could pour
out her tale without interruption or contradiction.
“There,” she cried below her breath, as they came close to the
gates of ‘The Towers,’ “you will be able to see her. She is standing
just inside the garden, calling to her little dog. Don’t you think that a
little dog always looks rather—rather odd?”
Mrs. Haybrow thought that this was somewhat severe judgment,
but she did not say so. She got a good view of the mysterious lady in
black; for Mrs. Dale raised her golden head as the carriage passed,
and she and Mrs. Rose exchanged a rather cool bow.
To the great surprise of her companion, Mrs. Haybrow fell
suddenly into a state of intense excitement.
“Why, it’s Dolly Leatham, little Dolly Leatham!” she cried with
evident delight. “The idea of my meeting her down here! I haven’t
seen the child for years.”
“You know her then?” asked Mrs. Rose, in a tone which in relief
was mingled with disappointment at the collapse of her own
suspicions.
“I used to know her very well. She was the belle of that part of
Yorkshire. The last I heard of her was that she was engaged to be
married to some man who had a lot of money; and they said she was
being hurried into it by her people rather against her will.”
“Well, she has managed to get rid of him,” said Mrs. Rose coldly.
“You see she is in widow’s dress now.”
“Yes, so I see. Poor Dolly! It seems rather strange to find her here,
so far from all her friends! And the things you have told me.”
After a pause Mrs. Haybrow said decidedly: “I must call upon her
to-morrow—No, I’ll go and see her at once. There will be plenty of
time before dinner, won’t there? There’s something mysterious about
this, and I must find out what it is.”
So, when she had had a cup of tea, Mrs. Haybrow went straight to
“The Towers.”