A greater part of photos taken by Morrison during his travel across
southwest China in 1894 had been known to the public when he published his book
An Australian in China including a famous one in which he, together with five
Chinese, dressed up like a Chinese from head to foot, even putting on a pair of
glasses that he had never been wearing. The original copies of these photos have
been kept to this day, but some of them are beyond use because of fading and
yellowing. What disappoints me is that the passport script of Morrison as a
British subject with Chinese official form is missing and I have to make a copy
from the first edition of his book An Australian in China in 1895.
The photographs of Morrison himself were grouped into two albums under
“Morrison & family ” in Mitchell Library, but most of them had no words
attached about when or where these photographs were taken. Here I chose some
portraits of Morrison or the ones in daily life and some documents for this part
of the book. All of these drew a clearer outline of Morrison being a traveler, a
statesman, a correspondent, a husband and a father.
A photo of Morrison taken in 1900 probably on the midway of Singapore when
he returned back to Australia was collected in Havard-Yenching Library instead
of in Mitchell Library. Mr. Alastair Morrison thought it the best portrait of
his father. I chose it in this book upon his proposal and permission from
Havard-Yenching Library.
The Chinese character “家” is equal to “home”and “family” in English. The
former refers to the house and yard while the later means the family formed by
people. Morrison’s family was a Chinese family in both senses.
Let’s talk about Morrison’s home at first. Morrison lived in legation
quarter in the first five years after he arrived in Peking in 1897. He moved his
books easily to the British legation during the early period of the siege in
1900. His house, bought in 1899, lay just on the other side of Prince Su’s
palace which was opposite to the British Legation lying on the west band of Yu
River which is now the Zhengyi Road.
Morrison’s house was near the Empire Customs Compound where it should be
the area of Friendship Society of Foreign Relations and Municipal Party
Committee of Beijing today. Morrison’s house was destroyed in the flames of war
in 1900. He sold it in July 1902 and bought another one with £750 on Wangfujing
Street outside the legation quarter that was celebrated later. The house was
close to the street and belonged to the palace of Beizi Lun (Beizi is one of the
titles of nobility after the Prince in Qing dynasty), and was used to be the
house for rent. It located between the south of Department Store of Wangfujing
and Da Tianshuijing Hutung. As a matter of fact, this house was just six or
seven hundred meters to the north of the former one, but belonged to Chinese
residence. He was the neighbor of Tseng Guang-quan. This area was reconstructed
and became the place of No. 151 Company and is the Department Store now.
According to the textual research, Morrison’s house number was No.98 or 100 of
Wangfujing Street, and No.271 today and it was the former address of repairing
store of Swiss watches or the living quarters for staff and workers of the
Department Store. The restaurant Chenghuayuan opened here in 1934.We can
estimate through his over twenty family photos that Morrison’s house was sixty
or even hundred meters long along west side of the Wangfujing Street.
Above-mentioned was the main building that formed right angle to the street.
Behind the building there should be a backyard and a large yard was on the south
of the building with two piles of wing-rooms. Out of the backyard of east wing
was the wall of yard and beside Wangfujing Street. The east wing was divided
into two sections from north to south with the gate in the middle zone facing to
Wangfujng Street. Outside the gate, there were a fan-shaped wall with two stone
lions standing on both sides, and a small part of sidewalk with Juma(a special
fence on both sides of the gate. It was the style of Manchu.). There was a
screen wall inside the gate. We didn’t know clearly about the structure or the
size of the main yard, but the two photos showed that there were stables.
Morrison’s famous library took up the whole south wing according to the memoirs
of Wu Lien-Teh who was the plague fighter and the pioneer of modern Chinese
medical science, hence the wing was on the south of the gate.
Let’s imagine Morrison Street (Wangfujing Street) in those days and forget
the crowded commercial street. When you walked in this street from Chang’an
Street, a pile of the wall on the west side would come into your sight. Then you
would found the roofs of the wings, the fences, the gate and then another wall,
the gable of a western style behind the roof of the wings. No wonder why
Morrison’s house formed a main scene on the Wangfujing Street in the early
twentieth century.
In the early stage of 1980s, I was taking a refresher course in the Academy
of Central Art that was extremely near Morrison’s house. It must be a most
rewarding visiting because Beijing was not reconstructed fully. It is a pity
that I didn’t know the name of Morrison! The adviser of Yuan Shih-K’ai was
forgotten by two generations of China. The battle between Morrison and the
Boxers in 1900 took place right next to the Academy that was at that time a
temple of Shuaifu Yuan. Morrison moved to a large Chinese style house that was
“about one mile”north of his house in Wangfujing Street in 1918. But he never
came back after he left China at the end of the year. His final house was
Sanjiao’an in Jinyu Hutong.
Now we talk about Morrison’s family. Morrison had been a bachelor before he
was fifty years old with constant romantic affairs. Though a single man in a
large residence in Peking, he didn’t feel lonesome because there were a large
number of honest servants and their families. He treated them as the members of
his family. Every two or three years he would ask the photographer of the photo
studio to go to his house to take photos. First it was the group photo of him
and the servants, then of the servants and their families. The photos were
developed in large number and were given to them except one set for Morrison
himself and other sets for preparing to give others as souvenirs. Those that
were not handed out were kept up to now. He often took photos with kids of his
servants in addition to those“family photos”.
The servants employed by the foreigners in Peking belonged to a close
organization. Most of them were Catholics and bannermen. The other stewards
should guarantee them. They had a strict estate system. Sun Tien-lu had been
Morrison’s head servant since he was hired in 1898. Morrison had been hoping to
go back to Peking and die even when he was confined to his bed with a serious
illness in Sidmouth in 1920. He wrote in his letter three weeks before he
died:“I would like the old Boy to come and meet us in Shanghai. I would dearly
like to see the old fellow again, and I can imagine the extremely depressing
speech which he will make when he sees me so wasted.” Morrison’s second son
Alastair returned to Peking and found Sun Tien-lu after Morrison died twenty
years. The old man had a multitude of feelings and wept unashamedly. His nephew
had the portrait of Alastair drawn in the snuff bottle and gave him as a
present. Alastair fell into Japanese hands as a prisoner of war after the
Pacific War broke out. Sun Tien-lu’s nephew supported him financially. The
friendship of the previous generation had been carried onto their
descendants.
Morrison married Jenny Robin in 1912 and had three sons in the following
five years. The house bustled with activity. But all good things must come to an
end. Jenny sold the house in Peking and died three years later following
Morrison’s death. Their children went to Britain. Morrison Street was just in
its name only.
Morrison’s library is his major cultural achievement that was an influence
on the people of our era. Morrison himself devoted much attention to it. After
he bought the residence on Wangfujing Street,he had the building reconstructed
and built a special house for the library. The library was in the south
wing-room according Wu Lien-Teh’s memoirs. He asked Yamamoto Photo Studio of
Peking to come to his library and take dozens of photographs when he intended to
sell his cultural treasure. These photographs have been kept in good condition
up to now. The whole kept the minutes of about sixty shelves in all, in which
the four photos formed a complete full view of the indoor with four directions
and the others were the photos of a pile of shelves or a set of shelves. One of
them (with several copies) was the scene of indoor taken by the same studio
before the house was reconstructed. The windows were in Chinese style and three
tables that scattered were later put together with a piece of white cloth on
it.
It was 4 meters high, 6 meters wide and 25～30 meters long inside the
library taking the height of bookshelves and the desks as the base. Unlike
Chinese traditional wood structure, the house had no pillars but the crossbeams
and the roofs were cast in cement or reinforced concrete. The floor was paved
with bricks and the small windows were square in shape. A row of nine
bookshelves stood along the south wall while the other three walls each had six
bookshelves separately. All of the windows were made more than two and a half
meters above from the ground so that they furnished the library with full
daylight.
The outdoor scene of the above-mentioned house has not been found in
Morrison’s photo collection of family. We don’t know clearly the part of the
south of the gate including the library except two photos of the stable.
Four of the photos were selected in this book to give a full view of the
library but the background of one photo was the same as that of Morrison with
the Japanese taken in 1917, hence it was replaced by a photo that showed the
indoor scene before the house was reconstructed.
The Chinese who associated with Morison were countless. We can get a hint
of this from his collection of visiting cards both in western and Chinese style.
But the photos couldn’t mirror his circle of social intercourse completely. For
example, the Chinese whom he got in touch with frequently were Tseng Guang-quan,
Tsai Ting kan, Tong Shao-yi, Prince Su,etc. But there was not any photo of them
in his collection or we are not able to recognize them probably.But letters
written by the important person such as Tsai Ao were found.
Some brilliant photos often won our admiration. There were the group photo
of Li Hung-chang with his children and grandchildren； Ku Hung-ming, Morrison’s
alumnus of Edinburgh University and the assistant to Chang Chih-tung, was a
gentleman with awe-inspiring righteousness different from the pedant image we
had before. There was a photo of Chang Chih-tung and a British officer at
Paoting taken on May 14, 1903 while Chang’s single photo at the same time was
marked “Yi Kwang”by mistake in a book published by Forbidden City Press.
Morrison gave a clear indication of Chang at the back of the photo. This verdict
can be reversed today. The long beard of the two men was different after all. A
group photo taken at the same time of Chang was arranged under the subject “New
Army”. I tried to look for Ku Hung-ming on this photo but failed. I found Liang
Dun-yen who was more important than Ku at that time. Liang was a returned
student from America. It is a pity that I couldn’t identify some of the other
officials. But I presume that they must be some bodies since they took photo
together with Yi Kwang and Na Tung, etc. I hope that other researchers can solve
this problem.
精彩生活 
