Part IV should really be Part II (I’m renumbering episodes in chronological order – like George Lucas with the later Star Wars movies!). After Marco Polo but before Paul Claudel comes Fuzhou’s next brush with fame.
The Alpha Ang Mos personified…
DR RUTHERFORD and MRS ALCOCK
Alcock was born in 1809 in the London suburb of Ealing (where else!) and apprenticed to his surgeon father at age 15 (they started young back then). He was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons by age 21 and house surgeon at Westminster Hospital. Two years later, in 1832, he was called up as an army surgeon for deployment to the Carlist Wars.
Ever heard of the Carlist Wars? Neither had I. About as remembered as the Wars of the Spanish Succession in the 1700s -although the W.O.S.S. were important in enlarging Britain’s overseas possessions. History repeated in that the Carlist Wars were again wars of the Spanish succession with Britain and France supporting a liberal (for those times) Infanta against her deep-conservative Catholic uncle. Spanish historians, naturally enough, have focused on the domestic impact of the Carlist Wars, seeing in them the start of a century of civil unrest in Spain that only concluded with the victory in 1939 of the Caudillo, Generalissimo Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
These Carlist Wars were to have a totally unforeseeable impact on Fuzhou, however.
Dr Alcock (I use the modern title “Dr” for surgeons, the traditional title for UK and UK-modelled medical national systems was “Mr” + “surname of surgeon”, retaining the trade, barbers etc, origins of surgery) is remembered today, not in Spain, nor in his homeland Britain, and not in China, but in Japan.
In 1859, he arrived in Japan to take up the post of British Consul General and Envoy Plenipotentiary. Regrettably, homicidal samurai were out to get Alcock – they were none too pleased about the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry’s black ships 5 years earlier. Quite sensibly, Alcock made himself scarce from the British Residence in Edo (Tokyo) and went on a tour around Honshu, the main island, where he became the first Westerner to climb Mt Fuji. Accompanied by his Scottish terrier, Toby. Unfortunately Toby blew up, not on Mt Fuji, but at hot springs nearby when he trod his paws on a geyser and was thrown 40 feet into the air.
Returning to the Legation, in contemplative mood no doubt at the loss of Toby, Alcock found that…the samurai were still after him. Guns weren’t absent in Embassies in those days. The local Japanese staff bravely held the intruders off at the wall and in the garden until the samurai managed to break into the residence where they were met by…the British staff, armed to the teeth with guns and shooting back, Dr Alcock included, with his pepper pot pistol. Which appears mysteriously at the top of the post thanks to the eccentricities of the internet and photo sharing!
No more problems with embassy invasions after that, not for the British, nor for any other nation establishing diplomatic relations with Japan.
Last year’s debacle in Libya – would the homicidal mob have been deterred if they’d known U.S. diplomatic staff would respond with guns blazing? Probably not. Which raises the interesting implication that deterrence theory works with every other world culture except the Arab mob. But then it wasn’t an Arab-Street mob (a mistake which cost Susan Rice her chance of becoming Secretary of State). It was an agitated-into-a-frenzy by Al-Quaeda group of about 20 embassy invaders. They share a not dissimilar cultural affinity to the samurai of 1860 in seeking to destroy what they regard as Western individual ‘polluters’ of their sacred land. So, if nothing deters, then diplomats encountering such sub-cultures might as well be armed.
Maybe the Japanese were embarassed by Dr Alcock’s incident-packed welcome to Nihon and wanted to make amends by a dignified stone memorial to him and Toby. Alternatively, could this not have been the first instance of Japanese successful adoption of Western models, not of science and engineering or legal-political structures, but of art and aesthetics? A canine memorial, a new sentimental tribute to the pet dog only recently originating in Britain. Greyfriars Bobby comes to Meiji Japan, but Made in Japan! (See top of post with pepper pot pistol).
And that’s the only memorial to Dr Sir Rutherford Alcock in the world.
But back to the Carlist Wars. Dr Alcock completed his service in Spain with HM Armed Forces, mostly the Royal Marines and Royal Artillery who were the combat troops sent to the Iberian Peninsular. He advanced medical scholarship too, based on his battlefield surgery experience, with Royal College of Surgeons prize-winning essays in 1839 “On Concussion or Commotion of the Brain.” and 1841 “On Injuries of the Thorax and Operations on its Parietes.“, the latter drawing on his experience in treating gunshot wound injuries.
He was also asked to serve on a Commission of Enquiry into the war, and to help settle compensation claims for wounded British servicemen. His career track was set, to become an army General of medicine, maybe even the chief surgeon to the army, the Surgeon-General. Or to become a highly-regarded civilian surgeon in London.
Until in 1844…
His thumbs became paralysed.
An affliction that would floor me, you, anyone I suggest. But especially in Dr Alcock’s field of medicine. Career-ending, then, and I would imagine now, for a surgeon. The diagnosis was that he had contracted some unknown disease in Spain.
Her Majesty’s Government did not forget Dr Alcock’s service, however.
In the prose of the Victorians…
When thus thrown upon his beam-ends in 1844, an appointment was conferred on Mr Alcock which was not only honourable to him but creditable to the Government which selected him…The Minister responsible for the appointment may be excused if, while selecting a man of proved capacity for a post of unknown requirements, he did not realise the full value of the service he was rendering to his country. Governments are not always so perspicacious in gauging the merits of the uncovenanted, and other nominations made under circumstances not dissimilar have shown how easily the efficiency of the candidate may be subordinated to considerations extraneous to the public weal.
as it was put in a memoir written in 1900 by Alexander Michie using personal and official papers provided by Dr Sir Rutherford’s family and friends (Alcock himself wrote no autobiography).
The State made him an offer.
HAVE WE GOT A JOB FOR YOU.
NOTES
Ang Mo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ang_mo
Caudillo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudillo
Greyfriars Bobby http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars_Bobby Hachiko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D
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