Death of a Consul

Tengyue c1910

Fate is a funny thing. In 1906 it threw together three of the most unlikely characters – an adventurous British official, a botanist working for a Liverpool businessman, and a self-obsessed mountaineer and occultist – in a backwaters border town at China’s far southwestern extremity: Tengyue.

Also known by its Burmese name, Momien, Tengyue (nowadays Tengchong) sits on a richly-farmed subtropical plain surrounded by the rounded cones of extinct volcanoes, the last town in China’s Yunnan province before the frontier with Burma. In former times it was a staging post for mule trains loaded with Burmese jade and cotton, the dark-green first jade worked in town and then exported, along with bales of raw cotton, 650km northeast along a difficult post-road towards the provincial capital, Kunming. The journey took several weeks, traversing a series of malarial valleys and high, parallel mountain ranges spilling south from the Tibetan plateau which separated the Nujiang (Salween), Lancang (Mekong) and Yangzi rivers.

Tengyue itself wasn’t an especially happy place. During the mid-nineteenth century Yunnan’s Muslim communities had staged a violent uprising against their deteriorating status under Chinese rule. The rebels had taken Tengyue and held the town for over a decade, until finally defeated by Imperial forces in 1873. Almost everything inside the town’s huge lava-block walls was destroyed during the conflict, and though temples and government offices were swiftly resurrected, the ruins of abandoned residential districts were eventually given over to vegetable gardens and wasteland. Most citizens relocated to the suburbs outside the south gate, half-a-dozen narrow lanes lined with craft workshops and business. A lively, crowded market took place every five days.

The British, looking for a “back door” into China’s interior and its millions of potential customers for their goods, saw Tengyue as a gateway from their neighboring holdings in Burma. A trade expedition led by Colonel Sladen reached here in 1868, when the town was under Muslim occupation. They were treated well, but a second expedition in 1875 was misinterpreted by the recently-returned Chinese administration as an invading force; the British were attacked and one of the expedition members killed.

Later Britain and China wrangled over the exact line of the Burma-Yunnan frontier. Once that had been resolved in 1899, Tengyue was chosen for the site of a British consulate and customs post to monitor and take a cut of the cross-border trade. The following year George Letablere Litton was appointed at Tengyue as the British “officer in charge” (later Acting Consul).

Litton was already familiar with the region. Born at Dublin in 1867, by the time he was seven his mother was dead and his barrister father was serving a five-year prison sentence for fraud. Raised by relatives he did well at school, took a First-class Honors in History and Law from Oxford and in 1891 enrolled as a cadet in the British consular service in the Straits Settlements, Malaysia. Four years later he transferred his to China as a student interpreter.

Litton’s professional progress was uneven. While he got on well with ordinary Chinese, his reports sometimes needed to be censored for their blunt criticism of corrupt or lazy officials:

“[Magistrate] Kuan has now been in office for over three months. His administration gives general dissatisfaction. He is the typical Mandarin, whose strong avarice is checked by a well-developed timidity; he is both ignorant and careless of the needs and even of the geography of his district. He takes far more trouble in evading his responsibilities than would be necessary to fulfill them. He is occupied in filling his pockets... respectable citizens object to Kuan because he has authorized gambling and pockets heavy fees for allowing this breach of the law. The result is that all the professional sharpers and bad characters of the countryside are attracted to town and neither the person nor the property of good citizens is safe.”

Perhaps because of his lack of diplomacy, Litton found himself packed off to China’s distant southwest, some 1500 kilometres from the major foreign communities at Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing. Having spent 1897 reporting on recent anti-foreign agitation in Sichuan province (for which he largely blamed the Chinese authorities), the next year saw him appointed British consul to the Yangzi port city of Chongqing – an important administrative and trading hub for the Chinese, but as remote a posting as any British officer could wish to avoid.

Litton’s subsequent job took him even further away, seconded as an Assistant to the Burma-China Frontier Delimitation Commission. The work included surveying unmapped territory north of Tengyue, home to the largely independent Wa ethnic group.

On 9 February 1900 Litton, Major Kiddle of the Royal Army Medical Corps and a British official from the Burmese administration named Sutherland, were attacked by Wa tribesmen at a country market. Major Kiddle and Sutherland were killed and decapitated; Litton shot one of his attackers before being knocked senseless “but was eventually saved by the bravery and presence of mind of a Chinese soldier”, according to the Hong Kong Telegraph. Sino-British  reprisals later levelled sixty Wa villages.

Perhaps impressed by his resilience, Litton’s superiors now put him in charge of British affairs at Tengyue. In 1901 the town’s population numbered around 1400 Chinese and ethnic minorities – mostly Thai-speaking Shan or Dai – while the foreign contingent comprised Litton, a Commissioner of Customs, two staff, and a couple of Norwegian missionaries.

For the first year or two, Litton lived in what he described as a “glorified mud hut” until grander quarters could be built. There was only erratic telegraph communication with the outside world and virtually no social life, though Litton was already married to a Hong Kong Chinese, “Mary” So Hop, and had several children. Occasional foreign travelers passing through Tengyue were welcomed for their novelty value and any up-to-date news they could bring.

This was the situation when a complete newcomer to China, George Forrest, appeared at Tengyue in August 1904. Originally from Falkirk in Scotland, Forrest was in his early thirties and had taken a while to find his true calling, first working as a pharmacist’s assistant and even migrating to Australia for a few years to try his hand at gold mining and sheep farming. By 1903 he was back in Scotland, getting an education in botany at the Royal Botanic Gardens’ herbarium in Edinburgh. The following year Forrest was head-hunted by Arthur Bulley, a former cotton magnate who was looking for someone to collect seeds for his Bees Nursery in Cheshire.

Since the early nineteenth century European plant hunters had been scouring China for rare species; these collectors were employed by fiercely competitive private nurseries and institutions such as the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The mountainous regions along the China-Burma-Tibetan borders, encompassing everything from lowland jungle to alpine scree, were packed with unknown kinds of orchids, azaleas, rhododendrons, poppies, primulas and other plants common in British gardens today. Tengyue, the first stop over the border from British-held Burma, was a natural entry point, so it was here that Forrest decided to base himself.

Litton immediately took Forrest north into the mountains lining the Lancang valley, where he was heading to investigate reports of growing tensions amongst the Tibetan population. A few months earlier the British had invaded Tibet to counter what they believed were signs of a growing Russian influence there; as machine guns mowed down peasant armies sent to stop them, the Dalai Lama fled and the British managed briefly to occupy Tibet’s holy capital, Lhasa.

Now vengeful Tibetan communities across the region were arming themselves for retribution; a remote Catholic mission up in the mountains north of Tengyue at Cizhong, run by French fathers, was an obvious possible target. Litton and Forrest spent around three months following a roundabout route to Cizhong by way of the walled town of Dali and Zhongdian, where there was an important Tibetan lamasery. Finding no signs of impending trouble, the two moved on to the mission before heading south via the garrison town of Weixi, arriving back at Tengyue that November.

The excursion gave Forrest a feel for the region and in June 1905 he relocated his base to Cizhong, within easy reach of the upper Lancang valley’s botanical treasures. But on 17 July news arrived that Tibetans were massing for an imminent attack. Forrest and the French fathers fled, but the elderly missionaries lagged behind – they kept stopping to drink tea – and were soon captured, tortured and killed. Forrest escaped, going barefoot after he realised the Tibetans were tracking his obviously booted footprints. After eight days hiding out in the mountains, lame from treading on a bamboo spike, hallucinating and nearly dead from exposure and hunger, Forrest found shelter in a Lisu village and given guides for the remote trails back to safety at Weixi. It was weeks before he was strong enough to head back down to Tengyue.

Yet on 11 October Forrest and Litton found themselves on the road once again, setting out to explore the Lisu territory of the upper Nujiang valley. It was not good timing; heavy monsoon rains saturated the forests, triggering landslides, carrying away bridges and roads and sometimes keeping them pinned down in their leaky tents for days; supplies rotted and everyone came down with chills and fevers.

The trails were tough too, continually climbing and descending  steep ridges or traversing boulder fields, and then there were the terrifying bamboo rope crossings over deep gorges, hanging onto a wooden slider as your weight shot you over to the other side. Starvation loomed at many of the villages along the way and supplies proved almost impossible to buy; at one of the larger hamlets they managed to barter a much-coveted ragged jacket for salt and “one skinny chicken, a few pounds of bad rice and coarse maize, and two bamboo tubes full of honey”.

At least most of the Lisu were friendly enough towards the expedition, though constantly at war with each other over the most trivial of grudges inflated into vengeful feuds. All male Lisu carried crossbows and warned them that the next village along was inhabited by unmitigated savages. Litton did his best not to be seen to be taking sides, in case this sparked more pointless inter-village conflict. Nobody spoke Chinese and the only other outsiders they encountered was a party of traders from the Lancang region who imported cotton, cloth, opium, goats and salt to exchange for varnish, bees-wax, medicinal herbs and small quantities of gold dust.

They eventually crossed the Lancang divide themselves, to find a completely different landscape beyond: “Instead of sharp crags and cliffs of limestone, dense semi-tropical jungles, extensive forests, and wild Lisus with their poisoned arrows” the scenery took in peaceful, cultivated sandstone and clay terraces dropping down to the wide river basin. Settlements were laid out in streets rather than houses randomly scattered over the hillsides, and people wore regular Chinese dress. Far away they could just make out the permanently icy ranges of the Yuelong Xue Shan, a week’s march away to the north. The nights became freezing as they climbed on through snow, pine woods, rhododendrons and marshes to one final pass, from where there were splendid views of “a vast wall” of limestone with a few clearly defined peaks running due south.

But by now Litton and Forrest were weak with fever and exhaustion, and their medical supplies had run out. On top of this were rumors of a major conflict blocking their route back; bridges had been cut and three thousand Chinese troops sent to quell the fighting between Lisu factions. The whole thing turned out to be greatly exaggerated; two villages had one of their usual spats, one group chasing away a rival headman, spearing his relatives and feasting on the village pigs. The other side counter-attacked while the raiders were drunk, killing several and chasing the rest into the hills. Finally the local Chinese administrator had arrived with a dozen (not three thousand) soldiers, at which point anyone remaining at the scene fled too.

The expedition returned to Tengyue on 13 December, when Litton wrote to his superiors that he was “very tired and knocked up” having suffered “great hardships” on the road. He had already requested sick leave back in August, and while waiting for a response decided to make one last easy journey west towards the Burmese frontier to meet surveyors working on a proposed Burma-Yunnan railway. At the start of 1906 he left an equally exhausted Forrest behind at Tengyue as acting-consul and set out.

A few days into his journey Litton was surprised to meet another British traveler – no less than the future occultist and black magician Aleister Crowley. Born in 1875, at the age of twelve Crowley had inherited a small fortune and abandoned his formal education, going mountaineering in the Alps and experimenting with his sexuality. Leaving Cambridge without a degree, in 1898 he was inducted into the secret occult society “Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn”.

He bought an estate in Scotland, published poetry, fell out with the Golden Dawn and in 1900 began a two year tour to Mexico, Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and India, taking part in an abortive attempt to climb K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. Next he married Rose Kelly (against her family’s wishes) and spent much of 1904 in Cairo, studying Islamic mysticism and writing the “Book of the Law”, which he claimed was dictated by the Egyptian god Horus. This identified Crowley as prophet for a new age of humanity, and later formed the basis of his own religion, Thelema.

July 1905 saw Crowley joining a Swiss expedition to climb Kanchenjunga, but they failed to reach the summit – Crowley claimed he alone reached a then-record altitude of 7600m. Several porters and one of the Swiss died during the descent; Crowley blamed them for ignoring his advice not to set out that day, and later absconded with the expedition funds. He met up with his Rose and their infant daughter in Calcutta, shot two would-be thieves, and thought it wise to leave India. He decided to make a trip into China and had now crossed the Burmese border en route to Tengyue.

Litton and Crowley “lunched together by the roadside”, chatting away for hours. Litton was appalled to find Crowley’s young family in tow, but Crowley immediately took to the consul, finding him “possessed the spirit of adventure in its noblest and most joyous form”. He was genuinely grateful when Litton provided pointers for travel in China, along with detailed route notes for the journey through to the provincial capital, Kunming.

Lunch over, Crowley and his entourage continued to Tengyue, where “We met with a warm welcome at the consulate from Litton's Chinese wife, an exceedingly beautiful woman with perfect manners. They had five charming children.” Otherwise he found Tengyue a depressing place:

The conversation invariably turned upon battle, murder and sudden death, embroidered with fantastic wealth of disease and torture. It was an absolute nightmare. I really take great credit to myself for having spent twenty-five days in this community without losing my nerve or becoming obsessed. Everyone seemed to be preoccupied with the idea that at any moment the Chinese might break out and put us all to the most cruel death.

Crowley further dismissed the town’s tiny foreign community as colourless, doleful and brainless, abusing the Bengali doctor, Ram Lal Sircar, as “the worst specimen of his race I have ever seen. He was fat and oily, with small piglike treacherous eyes. On the rare occasions when he was not eating, he was writing anti-British articles for the Bengal native press.” The only foreigner to escape his scorn was George Forrest, with whom he “struck up an immediate warm friendship”, impressed by the Scotsman’s physical toughness and tales of his escape from the Tibetans.

Meanwhile, Litton continued towards the border. At the small Shan town of Mangyun he met a Mr. Mengel of the railway survey team, who reported that  Litton was complaining of a painful, blister-like mark on his right shoulder. This spread rapidly; the survey team’s doctor was summoned and Litton bundled into a sedan chair to be rushed home. He died along the way, on 9 January 1905, at the Shan town of Gan’ai (Yingjiang), about halfway back to Tengyue.

According to Crowley,

At eight p.m. on January 10th we were sitting at dinner in the consulate when we heard confused cries and flying footsteps in the courtyard. The doors were suddenly flung open and a gigantic runner dripping with sweat came crashing into the room, sprawling his gaunt arms and legs in the extravagance of his gestures. For a moment we believed that an attack was imminent but Forrest soon elicited a somewhat vague story to the effect that Litton was ill and required the services of a doctor… [Forrest and I rode out and] kept up a tremendous pace as far as the foot of the hills. It was a wild and windy night; torn clouds scudded fitfully across a misty moon. Some rain had fallen and the broad smooth stones of the road were as slippery as glass... at last we came to the crest of the ridge and began to run down the other side of the path towards the hot springs. There was just sufficient light in the east to reveal the landscape by the time we got near the foot of the hill. Then I saw a litter slowly approaching. Forrest gave a shout and dashed enthusiastically forward; but I silently turned my horse, for I saw that the consul's legs were tied [to stop the corpse from falling out of the litter].

They escorted Litton’s body back to Tengyue, where the Bengali doctor Ram Lal Sircar – having been beaten by Crowley after he refused to perform an autopsy or even properly examine the body – gave the cause of death as erysipelas. Crowley suspected poison. The plausible official view was that “Mr. Litton’s energy in carrying out the duties of his post in spite of ill-health was no doubt responsible for his death”. According to Herbert Ottewill, Litton’s replacement:

His devotion to his duties as Consul, and desire for original and accurate information forced him to undertake long and arduous journeys which in his bad state of health enfeebled his constitution to such an extent that it was unable to withstand the disease to which he fell victim.

Forrest and Napier, the Commissioner of Customs, organised a coffin and the funeral took place the following day. Litton was buried on Laifeng Shan, a prominent hill overlooking Tengyue, “in the Customs Cemetery which is outside the South Gate”.

Forrest later returned to Scotland, married and enjoyed a successful career as a botanist, returning for six more collecting trips to Tengyue. In January 1932 he died there of a heart attack while out hunting, aged 58, and was buried next to Litton on Laifeng Shan. Their graves have since been lost, possibly destroyed by the Japanese forces who entrenched here during WWII.

Litton’s wife So Hopi died in 1954 aged 76. Of their two sons, George Litton moved to Manila after WWII and founded a textile dynasty, while John Litton was killed fighting the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in 1941.

Laifeng Shan cemetery 2018 - both Litton’s and Forrest’s graves lost

Sources

Census records: ancestry.co.uk

Coates, Patrick D. The China Consuls (Oxford University Press 1988)

Crowley, Aleister The Confessions of Aleister Crowley hermetic.com/crowley/confessions/index

Forrest, George George Forrest’s claims for losses incurred during the Tibetan uprising (including first-hand account of Forrest’s escape; National Archives FO 371/21/19)

Hong Kong Telegraph 1906

London Gazette: thegazette.co.uk

Litton, George John Letablere

– intelligence reports from Tengchong, 1905 (National Archives FO 371/21/28)

– Report by Acting Consul Litton on a Journey in North-West Yunnan (Harrison and Sons 1903)

– Salween River Exploration Report of Journey from Teng Yueh to Upper Salween (National Archives FO 371/30/52, map of route MR1/1835/2)

McLean, Brenda George Forrest Plant Hunter (Antique Collectors’ Club 2004)

Old Bailey transcripts: oldbaileyonline.org

Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser 1906

Various Litton declines promotion; circumstances surrounding Litton’s death with eyewitness reports (National Archives FO 369/8)