A Living Collection - Linda Jaivin

Linda Jaivin is a novelist, essayist, playwright, specialist writer on China and translator.

Her first novel was the comic-erotic bestseller Eat Me. The Infernal Optimist was shortlisted for the 2007 ASL Gold Medal. Her non-fiction includes the acclaimed China memoir The Monkey and the Dragon and the collection of essays Confessions of an S&M Virgin.

Her latest book, the historical novel A Most Immoral Woman, is set in 1904 and is based on an incident in the life of George 'Chinese’ Morrison. The novel brings together Linda’s interests in China, history, journalism and the character of the female libertine.

 

Diary entries, 29–30 March 1904

Morrison, George Ernest, 1862–1920
Letts’s No. 41 Indian and Colonial Rough Diary, 1904
Presented by the Morrison family, 1946
ML MSS 312/11

(transcription)

Tuesday 29 March 1904
Up early Menzies [Major George Fielding Menzies] having come to see me at 7 and went for a walk before bkfast. He suggested I should go into the country and find some restful brick-kiln. After bkfast I called upon Ducat [Lieut. Colonel Charles Merewether Ducat] in his office and arranged mine, saw Buchheister and spoke to him of __ Gunpowder __ and C.D. Jameson besides Armstrong cruisers and £6,000 of ammunition for the latter. Bought medicine called on Southcott re S.A. Labour lunched with Ducat and Menzies at Astor House and afterwards took May [sic] for a drive. It was surprising how little fatigued the horse was after an absence of 4 hours or more. While dressing the S.S. [Steamship] Shong King moored alongside and a little further along the Hain Fung. We visited latter drove a little. Then I dropt [sic] May and called on Wingate [Colonel Alfred Woodrow Wingate] – long talk – working very __ but generally abusive. And Menzies coming to dinner we afterwards called round on the __ and met Dr Peck and his ponderous Consul General himself ––– I had a ride on my new bike in the moonlight. E__ well.

Wednesday 30 March 1904
Came up to Peking distressed and disturbed in my mind. What an individuality to be thrust into my path! and how as usual it comes too late. But I am better in body and mind. I was up at 5.30. Sent off everything to the train. Had to pay 2 ½ per cent on my household effects in Tientsin and 3 per cent again on arrival in Peking. Had I had the foresight to cook the monies(?) for my own protection as I ought then done I could have saved $20.

Arrived found huge mail – two heavy sackfuls and spent the afternoon getting things in order. Exchanged notes with Jameson. Had letter from Perry wrote to Bland but did not get a note from May though I wrote to her this morning before leaving Tientsin ––– Korzumi Ernst and Kamei came to see me. Denby came up. He says The Russians have quite regained heart. Hunter who is here also says __ it is in his __ __ surprising that the Japanese have acted with such dilatoriness. What does it mean? Kamei says only three divisions have been landed in Korea – no more! ––– 66,000 men since Feb 7. It is absurdly low number.

 

George Ernest Morrison as a young man, c. 1883

Grouzelle & Co., Melbourne
Burnished albumen print
Presented by the Morrison family, 1946
PX*D 153-2, no. 70 (Young Morrison)

At the age of forty-two, the handsome and influential Australian George Ernest Morrison, Peking correspondent for The Times of London, is considered the most eligible Western batchelor in China. But Morrison has yet to meet his match…

After an assignation in the Chinese city of Tientsin with the irrepressibly sensuous American heiress Mae Perkins, Morrison wrote this in his diary: ‘…took May [sic] for a drive. It was surprising how little fatigued the horse was after an absence of four hours or more.’ Miss Perkins had Our Morrison coming and going up and down the China coast for months in 1904. He summed up the effect of the affair with this ‘most immoral’ woman in the next day’s entry: ‘Came up to Peking distressed and disturbed in my mind. What an individuality to be thrust into my path!’

I felt for Morrison and fell for him too, a century after Miss Perkins smit him with her astonishing and, thanks to Morrison’s journals, well-documented charms. This iconic Australian deserves to be better known, and in all his contradictory, fascinating complexity - hence, my novel A Most Immoral Woman.

 

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