Page 119 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

104 Kevin McLoughlin
golden boxes, snuffboxes, embellished with precious stones, and enamelled minia -
tures, a jeweler’s fevered dream. 26
One must give up trying to describe the contents of these apartments. Words fail
to depict their material and artistic treasures . . . It was a vision from the Thousand
and One Nights, such a fairyland that a delirious imagination couldn’t dream of
anything comparable to the palpable truth we had before us! 27

As Ringmar’s (2013) analysis of the North China Campaign undertaken in 1860
makes clear, looting, sacking and pillaging were commonplace incidents through out
August and September, both prior to the looting and razing of the Yuanmingyuan,
and subsequently, and so despite, or perhaps because of, its significance and unique -
ness as an imperial site, the looting and the razing of the Yuanmingyuan seems to
have been an almost inescapable outcome given the fatal combination of Chinese
resistance and retreat, and accepted practice among the European military forces
operating in China. 28 The ewer and its presentation to the General are described
in the biography of General Sir Hope Grant, co-authored with Sir Henry Knollys
(1840–1930) in 1894:

Numbers of beautiful ornaments were now put up for sale; and the officers,
knowing they were to get their prize-money, at once bade freely, and the articles
sold for great prices. A small yellow, Chinese teacup realised £22. The prize
committee secured a beautiful gold jug, from which the Emperor of China used
to pour rose-water upon his delicate hands, and this they presented to me in a
very handsome manner. 29

The presentation seems to have taken place on Tuesday 9 October. While no further
explanation accompanies this passage to explain the belief that the ewer was for the
personal use of the Xianfeng emperor, it is clear from the circumstances of the ewer’s
presentation by the prize committee to the General that the ewer was considered
sufficiently singular an object to merit presentation to the General. 30 This brief
account of the presentation is rich with casually compounded characterizations and
assumptions about the Emperor of China. General Sir Hope Grant’s account not
only connects the ewer with the Son of Heaven’s very person, but does so with an
evidently contemptuous characterization of delicate Orientalist effeteness. 31 Despite
Knollys’ account, neither the English language engravings on the ewer nor the entry
in the Museum Register make any mention of the direct connection referred to in
Grant’s account between the ewer and the Xianfeng emperor. The Chinese inscription
of reign date and assay quality on the base appears to have never been translated or
if so the translation was never recorded in Museum records. For instance, the display
label associated with the last display of the Hope Grant Ewer in the Lady Ivy Wu
Gallery between 1996 and 2008 dates the ewer to the “Late 19th century” and
bizarrely ignores the 1852 date inscribed on the base of the ewer (see Figure 7.5).
While the connection between the ewer and the emperor’s person in Knolly’s account
may have had a fanciful aspect, it does have a basis in Qing court practice as we
have already seen above. What is of significance here is that the dominant 1860 based
readings of the ewer—to be found on the ewer itself, in the Museum Register of 1884
(examined in more detail below), and in Knolly’s account of 1894—remained both