Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (45 page)

But such condescension was nothing like the disdain and suspicion directed towards the Chinese. If the West was the source of rationality, order and progress, then China especially remained resolutely corrupt, chaotic and unsound. A taste for ‘
chinoiserie
' had been fashionable among the European elite since the eighteenth century, a special exhibition of ‘Ten Thousand Chinese Things' had been shown in Hyde Park in 1841, and Chinese objects had been part of London's Great Exhibition, but these events had done little to change perceptions of the country, all too easily associated in Victorian minds with the seediness and corruption of the opium trade. The Chinese were typically viewed as childish and incapable, militarily weak and embroiled within a stagnant culture: ‘toddling, little-eyed, little-footed, little-bearded, [and] little-minded', suggested the writer Leigh Hunt dismissively.
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With the experimental new science of photography, travellers like John Thomson, an Edinburgh photographer, were able to document some of the most remote and spectacular areas of China, bringing to the English middle classes images of unfamiliar landscapes and communities, of pagodas, river villages and the Great Wall. But, even so, opinions remained entrenched:
what the British saw in the photographs simply reaffirmed the distinction between the barbarous East and their own more civilized way of life.

Such attitudes were fully on display in public museums. Most visitors expected the presentation of the collections to confirm the way in which they saw the world; in turn, the museum used the objects as a way of shaping opinion. The mechanics of this complicated mutual relationship were rarely explicit, but were clear enough in the arrangement of the exhibits and the language used to discuss them. The American
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
thought the displays of Chinese objects at South Kensington were important not only for bringing to light ‘the romance of the East' but also, and more significantly, for their ability ‘to revise, correct and estimate the traditions of the Oriental world'.
¹²
Only through the discipline imposed by the museum, it implied, might a respectable and acceptable impression of China emerge. The 1872
Catalogue of Chinese Objects
at the South Kensington Museum was blunt about what it called ‘the Chinese character', and was anxious to emphasize the distance between the middle-class visitor and the Chinese on display. ‘It would hardly be supposed that an effeminate race like the Chinese should have a taste for working in metal,' it pronounced, ‘but it must be remembered that they have not always been a degenerate race, softened by luxury and by too great a facility for enjoyment, but that on the contrary, they are still a hardy race.'
¹³

Stephen Bushell, of course, had been brought up with such attitudes, and would have been familiar with the contempt which the British were apt to show to unfamiliar parts of the world. He worked for several years in Peking under Sir Rutherford Alcock, whose views of both the Chinese and Japanese were uncomplimentary, and life in a government enclosure would have given Bushell a daily dose of imperial pride and prejudice. But, from his own explorations of Peking and the land around, he knew that
there was much more to China than most British people could ever imagine. The stories he listened to outside the compound revealed vibrant histories and contemporary achievements that confounded the common view of the Chinese as ‘degenerate'. And he understood that perhaps the best way for the Victorian imagination to grasp the complexity, significance and beauty of Chinese culture was through the artefacts that he was able to collect and explain.

Bushell found an ally in Augustus Franks. Franks, too, was unwilling to be seduced by unthinking and damning caricatures. His wanted his ethnographic collection to speak for itself, to encourage intelligent minds into a new perspective on the world. He wanted more than just an attractive display of curious objects; he was determined to extend Western knowledge of distant countries and understanding of different cultures. His enthusiastic collecting of Indian pieces, for example, had little to do with asserting imperial supremacy or showing off the bizarre accomplishments of a heathen race. Instead, he wanted to raise understanding of Indian art until it was regarded as important and beautiful in its own right: ‘I am ambitious to show the fanatics for Greek and Roman sculpture that the art of India is not to be despised,' he wrote in 1881.
¹⁴
Similarly, his energetic pursuit of Islamic pieces helped persuade museum staff and visitors that these objects were worthy of a place alongside the esteemed Western antiquities of the ancient world. Franks drew the line at costumes and examples of modern manufacturing from other countries, but otherwise he was quick to see the value of even the most ordinary objects, and their ability to change the way his fellow Victorians looked at cultures beyond their own: even ‘the commonest things of the country', he maintained, had a place in explaining and understanding the world.
¹⁵

Bushell soon recognized a kindred spirit in Franks, and, as well as working for the South Kensington Museum, he also joined the
international network of collectors serving the British Museum curator. He was not content, however, with just sending back ‘the commonest things' and worked hard to find objects that would intrigue, delight and inform back in Britain. He began to establish, and study, a considerable library of books to help him in his search, and he gradually extended his network of local contacts. As time went on, he developed an astounding breadth of knowledgeable interests in his curiosity about all things Chinese. Scrambling up trees, climbing rocky slopes and sliding down riverbanks, he collected plant specimens and seeds for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, thinking nothing of wet feet, muddy knees and the bites of strange insects. He began to study a range of complex extinct Chinese scripts, coming to recognize the difficult characters and in some cases decipher them. He even led a small expedition to the sacred burial grounds of the Qing emperors in the mountains outside Peking so that he could capture rare monkeys that he had seen there, scampering around the ancient stonework. He successfully managed to lure a pair of young animals into his trap, before sending them back on the long journey to the Zoological Society in London.

His correspondence with Philip Cunliffe-Owen and the staff at South Kensington became increasingly enthusiastic. In 1880, he sent a consignment of bronzes for display, followed a couple of years later by four pieces of carved and perforated stone that were traditionally used as weapons and which were, Bushell added proudly, ‘relatively rare in China'.
¹⁶
Soon, he was given permission to buy officially on the museum's behalf. Instead of financing everything personally, and loaning his own pieces back for display in London, Bushell was now given £250, with the understanding that he would act as an authorized agent and use his expertise to acquire 100 objects at around 50 shillings each. He was delighted. The arrangement gave him both extra funds to collect and the museum's formal sanction for his activities. ‘The specimens will
be collected gradually and sent to England when opportunities occur,' he wrote cautiously in February 1882 when the agreement was first made, but such was his eagerness – and the richness of what was available – that by November he had already sent a range of objects to the museum, hoping, modestly, that they ‘may fill some gaps on the shelves'. By spring 1883, he had asked for, and was granted, another £250 to spend.
¹⁷
Jars, cups and dishes; figures, bottles, bowls and bronzes; a sacrificial wine vessel in the form of a rhinoceros and an ivory lion, as well as three glorious examples of early Ming porcelain, all found their way from Peking to South Kensington under Bushell's watchful connoisseurship. Perhaps more importantly, so too did at least some of his understanding of the culture from which they came. These were not objects from the dark, backward China of the Victorian imagination; they were the evidence of a precious past and of a country worthy of more positive attention. Bushell's collecting was beginning to reveal the East in a new light.

Despite what must have been frequent and lengthy absences from the compound, and a growing collection of lovely things adorning his home within it, Bushell's enthusiastic activity in Peking was rarely remarked upon by his British contemporaries. Caught up in the day-to-day responsibilities of government administration, it seems that they were unaware of the progress he was making in China, or of his contribution back in London. Quiet and unassuming, looking every inch the respectable and uncontroversial Victorian doctor, with a neatly trimmed beard, erect, even slightly stiff, stance and earnest demeanour, Bushell was content to keep his achievements to himself, perhaps unaware of quite how much he was accomplishing. When people asked him about his research into Chinese art, or about his collection of objects, he was modest and self-effacing, keen, he said, to ‘disclaim any pretension to authority'.
¹⁸
He had no desire to get caught up in the
academic debates that were starting to erupt as the study of China, or sinology, became more widespread in Europe, and he was acutely aware that, however much he learned, there was always more out there waiting for him in such a vast, ancient and varied nation.

Bushell also knew that he was not alone in his collecting. As Mary Crawford Fraser admitted, ‘Of course everybody collected. Half the time there was nothing else to do.' Whiling away a long morning perusing the artefacts ‘artistically spread out for inspection', or indulging in ‘everlasting bargaining', was just part of the ‘native' entertainment of living abroad.
¹⁹
During the Peking winter, from November to March, the British delegation was virtually cut off. All provisions had to be brought from Shanghai before the weather closed in and blocked trade routes, and the highlight of the year was provided by a delivery from London, from the Civil Service Stores or the Army and Navy store, once communications reopened. Collecting was a diversion from the enclosed monotony of life, a common talking point. Perhaps this explains why Bushell's activity went largely unnoticed by his colleagues. But, unlike the dilettante souvenir hunter, he was not simply killing time with a hobby. What set him apart was his knowledge and perseverance, his consistent attention to detail and his willingness to dedicate long hours to the study of the pieces he found. In many ways, he was the archetypal scholar, collecting for his own pleasure and to further his own knowledge, happy to share what he knew through the objects he sent back to London, and utterly devoted to his subject.

In time, Bushell collected his knowledge into an authoritative publication,
Chinese Art
, a pioneering study of oriental objects and the culture from which they emerged. He chose to end the first volume with a description of a white agate vase. It was elegant and graceful, a fine example of craftsmanship and a rare piece. And, like so many of Bushell's objects, it was intricately entwined
with a story, the fable of the successful scholar. The vase, Bushell noted, was carved with three fishes, animated and lithe, captured in the act of springing into the air and becoming dragons. Only after a fish had managed to overcome the rapids and waterfalls of the Yellow River, after long perseverance and much noble effort, was it worthy of such a transformation. Bushell explained that the fish carved into the vase represented the triumphant scholar who, after arduous study, finally managed to have his name added to what the Chinese called the ‘dragon list' – the first step on the ladder of official rank. Poring over the complexities of the Chinese script and overwhelmed by the variety of objects around him, Bushell may well have felt that he was still swimming hard in the river currents. But his collecting increasingly demonstrated an understanding of the combination of material, technique and symbolism, of tangible object and enigmatic myth; showing just how well he was coming to know China, and how close he was to taking the leap as a dragon.

M
agic Chinese bronze mirrors had first been seen in Europe in the early nineteenth century, when distinguished scientists had tried to explain how they worked. When Bushell saw one for the first time, with the sounds of Peking city life buzzing outside, he was enchanted and mystified. It did not seem possible. The front of the mirror was simply a highly polished bronze disc, slightly convex, its surface acting like an ordinary mirror and reflecting the image of anyone looking into it. The reverse was elaborately moulded with mythological figures, animals and birds, and floral scrolls in strong relief. The magic happened when the polished face of the mirror was held up to catch the sun streaming in through the window. Then, on the wall opposite, Bushell saw an exact image of the raised decoration on the back of the mirror. There was still nothing on the face except the glare of the sun, but it was as if the light was passing straight through, as though the mirror had become transparent, a thing no longer of solid metal but of air and light.