Brian Power’s real upbringing

in the ancient Ming city of

long spelled Tientsin in English

until changed in recent times to Tianjin
but whose meaning remains unchanged as
the Ford of Heaven

as told by
Desmond Power
29 May 2009

Throughout this presentation, paraphrases of a sentence or two from the first print of Brian’s book
are abbreviated as BB1, and from the second as BB2, in both cases followed by the page number.

1
 BRIAN POWER’S UPBRINGING IN TIENTSIN

WHICH IS NOT QUITE AS HE TOLD IT IN HIS BOOK THE FORD OF HEAVEN

Brian’s censure of his mother would surely have been challenged by her were she alive,
but she died in 1983, a year before his book went to print. After it and the 2005 version
came my way and I read the things he said about her, my immediate reaction was to go
to her defence. But there was little I could do, for Brian himself had died a year earlier. It
was only when his obituaries published by the Irish Times and the Daily Telegraph mim-
icked his words to paint her in a bad light for the whole world to see that I decided to go
public with this rebuttal.

In summary, Brian asserted that his mother was a perpetually discontented woman who
hated everything about life in Tientsin, that she was such a victim of self pity that it
marred her for life, that when home after her frequent absences she had nothing better to
do than spend her time at the piano, and, cruelest of all, that she so abysmally failed him
as a mother that the family amah Yi Jieh took him under wing, reared him, helped him
to understand what was happening in his immediate world. This made such an impact on
him, as Brian implied, that she became the central figure of his life while his mother was
sidelined as a pitiable nonentity.

Let me now introduce myself. I am Desmond, the youngest of Brian’s brothers. Next
younger to him was Jocelyn. His one older brother was Pat. We had a sister, Stephanie,
but she died in her first year. After our father died, our mother remarried, and the issue
from that union gave us our half-brother and -sister, Tony and Betty.

Desmond, Jocelyn, Grace, Pat, Brian - 1935

The first I knew that Brian was about to publish a book was from the letter he wrote on 4th
February 1984, apologizing for making no mention in the book of Jocelyn, Tony, Betty,
or me. (Jocelyn told me that he had received a similar letter.) Brian put the blame on his
publisher who had advised him that our inclusion would overburden the book.

We knew his explanation didn’t hold much water since we could have been introduced in
a brief paragraph. What was perfectly obvious to me when I finally read it was that our
inclusion would have demolished his book’s central theme ─ his upbringing by the fam-
ily amah, Yi Jieh. By including us in the story he would have had to explain how Yi Jieh
could have devoted any time to him when she was fully occupied caring for the infant

2
in the cot. When she joined our household, her first charge was Brian, and even before
he grew into a toddler, she had baby Jocelyn on her hands. Then she had me followed
by Stephanie, Tony, and Betty. There was hardly a day between 1920 and 1933 when
she could have abandoned her charge and wandered off with Brian to the market place
or Russian Park or Shanhaikuan on the Manchu border, a good seven hour train journey
from Tientsin.

What also rules out Yi Jieh’s role as Brian’s guide and comforter was her nationality.
She was pure Cantonese as was her son Ah Chin. I use the word ‘nationality’ strictly as
hyperbole to bring home the fact that spoken Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as
French is to English. Yi Jieh understood Mandarin, but could not speak it. Her fractured
Mandarin required that we communicate with her in a mixture of back-alley Tientsinese,
a few Cantonese words she taught us (si fut for our backside instead of Mandarin’s pi
gu), Pijin English, and sign language. I never heard her sing, but if she had tried the street
vendor’s call “Bai Lian Hua”, it would have sounded “Baklinfa” in her staccato guttural.
Curiously, our young half-sister Betty was the only one of us to pick up enough Can-
tonese from her to carry on a conversation in that southern tongue. That was probably
because Betty did not partake in the cruel fun we poked at Yi Jieh for her crazy sounding
Mandarin. It was Brian with his inventive mind who coined such phrases as “guandoong
cluck” (meaning Cantonese cluck) for the sharp rap of the knuckles she administered to
our skulls, and “innyginnygongshu”, which had no meaning but was meant to ridicule
the harsh six tones of Cantonese speech. And he had us bursting with glee when he called
her our “Zouave”. That notion came to him when she arrived at our bedroom one night
to chastise us for noisemaking (Brian, Jocelyn, and I shared the same room), the baggy
trousers of her night attire remarkably like the uniforms of the Zouaves depicted in the
then current re-showing of the old silent Beau Jeste.

THE REAL GRACIE D’ARC.

If his mother was a pitiable nonentity, who then was this Gracie D’Arc, this “Tai-tai”
Power, this “Ma” Lambert, this fiery red-head equally at home in English, French, Ger-
man and high end Mandarin? Was she not the flamboyant Tientsin icon whose wide circle
of admiring friends from every corner of the cosmopolitan community included Detring,
von Hannekin, Tsai, Jones, Travers-Smith, Li, Tipper, Gilmore, O’Connor, Splingaarde,
Fleuriet, Wang, Palmer, de Laberbis, Pearson, Azcue, Samarcq, Radcliff, Bougerie,
Hawkins, Phillips, Wade, Boltee, Demidenko, Lucker, Schmuser, Davis, Voitenco, Rog-
ard, Ibragimoff, Pourbaix, Rumjahn, Simoes, Liang, Shadlovsky, Pertzel, to name just a
few?

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Even as an eight-year-old she began catching people’s attention with her charm and silver
voice. And she did so too with her courage and determination, dashing into the flames to
rescue her dogs in a fire at her father’s hotel.

Tientsin was deprived of her presence when her

parents sent her off to the then foremost girls’ school
in China, the Holy Ghost Convent at the German
fortified port of Tsingtao. She proved herself there,
attaining fluency in German and taking the school
prizes in English, French, and Music – theory, piano,
and organ. When in 1914, the nations of Europe went
to war, and plans were drawn up by Great Britain
and Japan to attack Tsingtao, chivalry had not quite
disappeared. Agnes D’Arc was allowed into the
fortress gate to collect her daughter. The oft told fam-
ily myth has it that Grace refused to leave. She told
the German Commandant that a lieutenant serving
in the cruiser Emden had paid court to her, she had
accepted him and they were engaged. Whereupon
the Commandant in full voice ordered her to leave at
once because her first duty was to her Fatherland and
not to her affianced. This is family myth, but what is
haunting about a myth is that it may be true.

Back in Tientsin, she was quite the lady, with suit-

ors coming from all sides, but only one catching her
fancy. At the funeral for the Irishman Tommy Bon-
fil she met for the first time the deceased’s cousin,

4
 Stephen Power, an examiner on the outdoors staff of
Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. They fell in love.
He proposed, she accepted, but her parents withheld their
approval. Undaunted, she swept aside their protestations,
decamped, and married her Stephen forthwith.

And never mind how Brian described Grace and Ste-

phen’s wedding as a soulless affair with only two per-
sons attending, an Irish Customs officer and Brother
Faust, a Dubliner, who taught at the French Marist
Brothers school. BB1-33 BB2-27 The local press account
dated June 15 1915 paints it as a happy event attended by fifty well wishers who were
th

also guests of the reception held at the Imperial Hotel, Tientsin’s fashionable venue for
gala events. It’s true, however, that Grace’s parents were noticeably absent. It was left to
Stephen’s brother Jack to give the bride away.

Anyway, Brother Faust could not have been present since he was in Shanghai at the time,
teaching at St Francis Xavier’s College.

The first six years of their married life were joyous and fulfilling, their issue coming in
quick succession: Pat 1916, Brian 1918, Jocelyn 1920, Desmond 1923, and Stephanie
1924. Stephen’s earning power had risen dramatically when on the completion of his
employment contract with the Customs Service in 1919, he went to work at the Tientsin
office of Sun Life Assurance Co of Canada.

5
Their final three years together, from 1922 through 1924, were sheer hell for her. Drink
getting the better of Stephen, he lost his way, lost his job, lost his public esteem. He failed
to keep track of the insurance he had written. When he was unable to explain the disposi-
tion of premium payments he was charged and arrested. With characteristic resolution
Grace ploughed through and straightened out the mess of his day books and ledgers, and
though five months pregnant she proved a staunch witness at his trial. He was acquitted.
Though proven innocent of any criminal doing, he could not live with the shame he had
brought upon the family. He went down to Shanghai at the end of 1923 to start a new
life, but before the summer was out he was dead – of sunstroke, we were told. On Octo-
ber 30, 1924, still in mourning, she gave birth to Stephanie, the daughter she had always
longed for. Happiness had at last come her way, but not for long. Her father George
D’Arc who had come to her side with love and support died just six weeks later of a sud-
den asthmatic attack. The final brutal blow struck before her Stephanie reached the age
of one. An error in a doctor’s prescription left her dead in her cot. American and Irish
in-laws and local friends rallied to her side, offering to take in her four boys, but her pride
and sagacity would never allow this. She would bring up the boys on her own.

6
Within months she found employment as a secretary at the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank.
There, her faultless English stood her in good stead (taking and correcting dictation). And
her total fluency in Mandarin proved invaluable when assisting management in discus-
sions with the Compradore who knew not a word of English. What the bank considered
most remarkable about her, as told me in prison camp by Sandy Cameron (her immediate
boss in 1941), was her attendance record. From 1925 to 1941 she hardly missed a day at
work except for the two occasions when she was given maternity leave.

Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, Tientsin staff, 1925

How could she not be intimidated, a lone woman among 59 men!

Maternity leave? Yes, maternity leave for the birth of our half-brother Tony in 1927 and
half-sister Betty in 1930. A few years earlier, Brian had asked for and was granted per-
mission to bring home an English soldier who had palled up with him at the Recreation
Grounds. He was Jim Lambert, a corporal in Loyals Regiment who not only represented
the regiment on its soccer and field hockey teams, but also was its welterweight boxing
champion. What she liked best about him was his way with the boys. Nature took its
course. She married him on August 26 1926 when his army term of service expired.

Regrettably, having the protection of a husband did not free her from the need to be em-
ployed for, unprepared for civilian life, only menial, low paying jobs were open to him.
But at least she was free to assert herself again in the community. It was not long before
the choir she organized was eagerly sought after for weddings, First Communions, and
Midnight Mass. She wrote and directed the children’s show Mother Goose (she of course
taking the principal role) that was broadcast weekly on Doong Fang Radio Station when
radio was in its infancy. She produced the Christy Minstrels which played repeated per-
formances by popular demand at the Union Jack Club, the blackface cast made up of her
four sons plus half a dozen of their schoolmates, she accompanying herself on the piano
with Paul Robson’s soulful 1932 hit Oh Ma Baby, Pat who could strum the banjo doing
Camptown Races, Brian giving an angelical rendition of a song with no connection to the
old South, Comin’ Through the Rye, and Jocelyn and I combining in a Polly Wolly Doo-
dle duet. In 1936 though torn by the departure to England of her three boys, Pat, Brian
and Jocelyn, she, at age 40, had the spirit and drive to perform as the “Queen” in Madame
Voitenco’s Grand Ballet Sleeping Beauty.

7
8
At the outbreak of WWII she contributed to the War Fund by organizing Tombola Nights
and Whist Drives and directing a cast of twenty or more in a patriotic musical pageant
(There’ll Always Be An England, Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major, Wish Me Luck As
You Wave Me Good-bye, etc).

She might be at the office all day, but she was always home for us in the evenings and
weekends, smoothing over fights and quarrels, helping us with our homework, pressuring
us to give of our best at school, as this letter Pat wrote to Aunt Katie (Catherine) in New
Hampshire demonstrates:

When I started school at St Louis College in the French Concession, I got there by sitting
between Mother’s feet on the footrest of the rickshaw that took her to the office every
morning. On the way she would call out a number between two and twelve, and that
was the signal for me to recite the times table for that number. Whenever I got stuck, the
nudge of her heels would spur on my memory. So I never had a problem with the times
tables which were chanted sing-song fashion at that school.

9
As “Tai-tai”, titular head of the house, she ruled us with a firm hand, but she was also
one with us. As an example, determined that her family would come off with a medal on
Empire Day, she had us come to the Recreation Grounds daily to watch Brian and her
train for the Mother and Son’s Relay Race. I can’t remember if the two pulled it off, but
my memory does not fail me when I think of those wonderful Customs Club Christmas
parties. Her lifelong membership at the Customs Club, gained during her first marriage,
allowed us to participate in what was to become our biggest event of the year. How we
stuffed ourselves with French pastries! How we thrilled with excitement at the arrival of
Santa with his huge sack of gifts!

Pat, Brian, and Jocelyn were in for bigger thrills, and how she must have skimped and
saved to make that possible! For several years running she sent them to the boys’ summer
camp at Shanhaikuan, that picturesque seaside town where the Great Wall reaches the
sea, and where she and Stephen had had their honeymoon. Tientsin’s British, French and
Italians garrisons had camps there, and it was the British who gave up a corner of their
camp, tents and all, to the boys. I was too young to go, but not so young to be green with
envy, especially when I was regaled with tales of the incredible expanse of the blue sea
which they saw for the first time, of swimming in the surf, of riding Mongolian ponies, of
being taken on expeditions up the mountains to visit Buddhist and Taoist temples.

The control she exercised over us to ensure a state of peaceful coexistence was not to last.
From the start, Pat had resented his step-father’s presence. When at age 19 he brought
home an army rifle and a clip of ammunition, she was alarmed enough to suggest that he
might want to go to England and join the Royal Air Force. Jocelyn spoke his mind, the
Royal Navy for him. So early in 1936 the two left for England. (See news cutting on page
18.)

Brian who longed to further his education got his wish when Mother determined that by
giving piano lessons and tutoring French and doing without luxuries for herself, she could

10
meet the college fees and room and board. Brian left for London University that sum-
mer. Four years later, with war waging furiously in Europe and Japan threatening to join
in, her husband Jim left for Calcutta to enlist in the British Indian Army. And not long
after Pearl Harbor, when the brutal Japanese overran Tientsin’s British Concession, she,
Tony, Betty, and I were incarcerated in prison camp. She lost everything, her family, her
home, her very way of life. There were those who having suffered the same fate broke
down mentally and physically. Not Gracie. She endured all with boundless spirit. She
became the French teacher, and a popular one, at the prison camp school. She helped with
the production of musical shows. She was the organist for both the nuns’ and prisoners’
choirs. She made such a fine example that the Trappist Monk Father Scanlan on being
removed by the Japanese from the camp visited her in her quarters to bid farewell and ask
to be remembered with this note.

She found it difficult and painful to settle in England after the war, for she seemed un-
able to overcome her heartfelt longing for life in Tientsin. She pined for Tientsin till her
dying day. But her staunch spirit prevailed and she took the position of French teacher at
Carshalton Girl’s College. And when her daughter, our half-sister Betty, began to achieve
success in her dancing career, she updated her needlework skills learned at the Tsingtao
Convent forty years earlier to take over as Betty’s costumier, travelling with her to the-
atres across Europe. And she was behind the scenes at the London Palladium at the 1960
Royal Command Performance when Betty as the exotic dancer Zari, shared equal billing
with Nat King Cole, Liberace, Sammy Davis Jr, Vera Lynn.

11
She lived out her last few years at the Hampstead Old Peoples’ Home alert enough to pit
one visitor off against the other, sometimes breaking into French, sometimes Chinese to
the chagrin of her husband Jim, daughter Betty, and sons Jocelyn and Desmond (on his
annual visits from Canada), but not Pat who was in Malaya, or Brian who was some-
where in London, or Tony in Australia. And when she finally died at the age of 87, the red
roses placed on her coffin were shaped to form the letters “Tai Tai” (Matriarch).

THE REAL STEPHEN POWER

What about this Irish gallant from County Clare who swept Grace off her feet, married
her against her parents’ wishes, and gave her four
sons and a daughter before leaving her a widow at the
tender age of 28?

One thing for sure, after he left Tientsin for Shanghai

in the autumn of 1923, none of us ever saw him again.
So Pat, seven at the time, must have been the only one
of us who could remember him positively, while five-
year-old Brian’s memory of him could only be vague
at the best, and that of Jocelyn three, and mine at less
than a year, a total blank.

So why did Brian, in letting his imagination run wild,

turn on Stephen’s family in Ireland, ridiculing his
father, Thomas, for being an itinerant thatcher, and
mocking his mother, Margaret, for having only Irish
and not a word of English, a black mark, he said, that
was such an embarrassment to our own mother that
she kept it a shameful family secret? BB1-50 BB2-62 And
why would he suggest in several places in the book the
illiteracy of Stephen’s family, the letters received from them being penned by the village
scribe? And why would he disdain Stephen for setting a bad example to the whole family
for never having been at school? And why his sinister insinuation that in following the
example of his employers the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, whom Brian purport-
ed to have always run the opium trade in China, Stephen had his own supply of the illicit
drug stashed away. BB1-68 and 91 BB2-68 and 94.

Far from being an itinerant thatcher, Thomas McMahon Power not only ran a thriving
boot making operation in Carrigaholt and a farm in Querrin, he was the government sub-
contractor for maintenance of the road between Querrin Cross and Doonaha. And as for
Margaret, her family were successful landowners in their own right before marrying into
the Burroughs family, hereditary Landlords of Querrin Shore.

12
On the matter language ability, the 1901 Census for
Querrin declared Thomas and Margaret to be literate in both
English and Irish. But even more telling is the written recol-
lection of Margaret’s granddaughter Peggy, daughter of her
daughter Anne, who had returned from London to care for
her when she became widowed. Of all Margaret’s grand-
children, Peggy was her closest, spending every summer
with her in Querrin or Dromelihy. Peggy, who now lives in
Kildysart, Co Clare, recalls that her grandmother Margaret
and mother Anne conversed only in English. Her grand-
mother may have known Irish, but she never spoke it in her
hearing. And here is a note for Margaret that her son Jack
penned on the back of his wedding photo. It’s in English.

Village scribes! What need had the Powers and Griffins for scribes? Their letters demon-
strate an English both exuberant and rich that sprang from the same roots which gave the
world Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Casey.

13
As for education, every one of Thomas and Margaret’s thirteen
started off at the local “village school” in Querrin after which some
of the boys were sent to the Christian Brothers College in Kilrush
whose standards must have been as high if not higher than those of
St Louis College in Tientsin. Their son Stephen’s graduation from
Kilrush College placed him in good position for acceptance by the
Chinese Imperial Customs Service, when his older brother Jack, a
veteran of the service, sent for him.
Jack Power

In late 1908 or early1909, Stephen sailed for China to join the Chinese Customs. Un-
like Jack, whose postings took him to southern and central China as well as Manchuria,
Stephen, except for a brief sojourn in Chinwangtao and Shanhaikuan, was permanently
based at Tientsin. Almost ten years later, when his employment contract with the Cus-
toms came up for renewal, he decided on a career change. Taking the plunge, he joined
the Tientsin office of the Sun Life Assurance Co of Canada. As an underwriter, he was an
instant success, winning award after award. The news cutting shown below carries a letter
dated July 14 1921 from Sun Life Assurance to Stephen Power commending him for his
exceptional effort.

14
Tragically, the greater his success in his new career, the deadlier his exposure to the occu-
pational hazard of insurance underwriters ─ alcohol abuse. Alcohol took control of him.
He failed to keep proper records of the premium payments collected. He was arrested and
went to trial. Mainly through the recovery of his records by his wife and the evidence
she gave, he was cleared of any wrongdoing. But overwhelmed by shame and humili-
ation, he quit Tientsin to make a new start on life in Shanghai. And that new life ended
before it could get off the ground. He died on 28th July 1924 of sunstroke while seated in
a rickshaw, as we were repeatedly told. And that may well have been the case in the blast
furnace heat of a Shanghai July.

Mother, nursing Stephanie at the time, was unable to make the three day journey from
Tientsin to attend the funeral. But she may have gained some comfort the following
winter when friends in Shanghai sent her a photo of the Celtic Cross they had erected for
Stephen at the International Settlement’s municipal cemetery on Bubbling Well Road.

Why Brian chose to say that his father was buried in Shanghai’s French Cemetery (which
was on Avenue Dubail in the French Concession) is hard to explain, but his omission of
Stephen’s progeny carved into the tombstone’s tablet is in line with his concealment of
their existence from the seeing eyes of his readers. BB1-85 and BB2-87 and 88.

15
THE REAL GEORGE D’ARC

Never mind that his maternal grandfather, George Lambert D’Arc, was British by birth
(Cheltenham) and British to his dying day, Brian set out as cold hard fact that he was a
hero of the French Army when it helped the British capture Tientsin from the Emperor of
China. BB1-17 BB2-5 Anyway, the timing is all wrong. The fall of Tientsin, a prelude to the
sack of Peking’s Summer Palace by the Anglo-French Expeditionary Force, occurred in
1860. George was born in 1866.
George’s mother was Ann Jane North, a publican’s
daughter from Bath, and his father, Lambert D’Arc,
a wax sculptor from Paris who had moved to Eng-
land where he became a naturalized British subject.
Under Lambert’s tutelage, George learned not only
working with wax, but also the intricate manipula-
tions of a puppet’s multiple strings. He and his five
younger siblings were hardly out of school when
Lambert engaged them full time working the pup-
pets and voicing their parts in such productions
as Blue Beard, Beauty and the Beast. It was when
Mons D’Arc’s Fantoches Françaises gained fame as
Britain’s leading marionette company that Lambert
and his six offpsring toured the show in France, and
then on an extended eight year tour of South Af-
rica, India, the East Indies, and Australia. In 1893,
on Thursday Island at the end of a successful tour
of Australia’s east coast, Lambert died. The show
carried on under the direction of one or other of his
sons and daughters in Dublin, Cape Town, Bangkok,
Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Peking, Tientsin.

16
 In 1894, George, then aged 28, married vocalist Agnes Maney. Two
years later in Peking their daughter Grace was born. When the cou-
ple were next back to Peking in 1900, having left Grace behind in
London with relatives, they were forced to seek refuge in the Lega-
tion Quarter from the fanatical Boxers who rose in frenzy slaughter-
ing foreigners. George and three others made a daring ride through
the Boxer lines to Tientsin to warn the garrisons there, but the siege
of the Peking Legations and attack on Tientsin’s Concessions had
already begun. George enlisted in the Frontier Rifles and fought in
the front line until relief arrived. Then, taking part in Admiral Seymour’s expedition to
Peking, he was overjoyed to find Agnes among the survivors. But it was not all jubilation
for them; their marionettes and stage settings, the very means of their livelihood, were de-
stroyed. It was while they were giving a hand to their fellow besieged, Auguste Chamot,
to restart his Hotel de Pékin that they saw the potential in operating a hotel for foreign
settlers. In 1902 they set off again for China, this time with daughter Grace in tow, to em-
bark on their new life as hotel proprietors. Their hopes were well founded. D’Arc’s Hotel
on Race Course Road was soon to become a Tientsin landmark.

That neither he nor his wife attended their daughter’s wedding is proof enough that they
were dead set against the match. They only softened towards Grace six years later when
she was tragically widowed with four children on her hands. George especially began
showering her with food and money. But in less than six months, he too was dead. He
was not a “black sheep” of Father Molinari’s buried ignominiously in the French Cem-
etery, BB1-93 BB2-97 but after solemn requiem Mass for the faithful in that venerable one
on Canton Road in the British Concession. Moreover, he was placed in the cemetery’s
honoured section, reserved for those who had served in the defence of Tientsin.

When each of us in turn was in the Boy

Scouts, there was one day in the year, Siege
Day, held to honor those who fell during
the Boxer onslaught, that we stood in that
cemetery. Units from the British, American,
French, Italian, and Japanese garrisons and
from the Volunteer Corps paraded there. After
bugles sounded the Last Post, and the band
its haunting Funeral March, and the padre
his prayer for the dead, we Scouts collected
pots of geraniums to place on the graves. I
headed for grandfather’s, which lay alongside
those of his comrades-in-arms in the Frontier
Rifles. Both Brian and Jocelyn had told me
that in that charged atmosphere I would get
the feeling that Grandfather was not three feet
away, breathing the air I was breathing. And
they were right. It was awesome.

17
 THE REAL PAT POWER

Brian had it right about Pat being Mother’s favourite. But isn’t that the case with all
families, the first born being Number One? And he had it right too about Pat’s misbehav-
ior, his disappearing acts, his expulsion from two schools. But on the other hand, he had
his considerable talents: a fine artist who took top prize for his pen-and-ink drawings at
hobby exhibitions, a crooner of Russ Columbo caliber whose broadcasts on Doong Fang
Radio Station (The Very Thought of You, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, etc) won him many
fans, a star athlete at the pool or rink (a few days before he departed for England, he was
on the Tientsin squad that won the coveted Wharton Ice Hockey Cup) that earned him
frequent press coverage.

The press report about his leaving for England must have been widely read, for a large
crowd of friends were on the platform at Tientsin East to see him off. But the report had
it wrong. Pat joined the Royal Air Force. It was Jocelyn who joined the Royal Navy - as a
boy.

But why Brian’s fantasy that when Pat was eight and he was six, they attended a junior
school located on Gordon Road that was controlled by the British Municipal Council?
BB1-62 BB2-61 No entry for such a school can be found in Tientsin’s Hong Lists (City Di-
rectories) nor mention of it in O. Rasmussen’s definitive work: Tientsin – An Illustrated
Outline History published in 1925. In that work’s section on schools, the only one men-
tioned as being run by the British Municipal Council was the Tientsin Grammar School,
which it took over in 1915 when it was situated on Recreation Road. Catering to students
from kindergarten to sixth form with a curriculum aimed at enabling the senior class to
sit for the University of Cambridge School Certificate examinations, the school increased
in popularity until in 1927 it was moved to a new building specially built for it on Avon
Road (which Brian was to attend in 1931).

18
As can be seen from the pieced together students’ register of St Louis College shown
below, the two were sent there when Pat was six and Brian five. And the register shows
that they left on the same day, March 31 1934, when Pat was “dismissed” (a gentler word
than expelled, but not gentle enough for our headstrong mother who removed all four of
her boys from the school right then and there).

Brian’s statement that Pat had gone missing in Burma BB1-189 BB2-207 would have taken us
all by surprise had we had heard it back in 1946 when we were all together in Eastbourne
and London. Pat enjoyed telling us how he had been blessed with the luck of the Irish
from the day he signed on as an aircraftsman in the Royal Air Force in 1936 to the day in
1946 when as squadron leader his term of service ended. Only once did he come under
harm’s way, and that was when in 1941 he kept just ahead of Japanese as they made their
lightning sweep down the length of the Malayan Peninsula, and he was on the last ship
out when they took Singapore. His explanation? His unit which had been operating a
secret radar installation up in Alor Star was given highest priority to get it out before the
Japanese arrived.

As for Brian’s further comment that after Mother’s release from a Japanese prison camp,
no one dared give her the news about Pat having gone missing in Burma, what he must
have meant for “no one” was the rest of the family. And this is what transpired with the
rest of the family at that time. In January 1946, desperate for news of Mother, Jocelyn,
serving in HMS Swiftsure then in Sydney, obtained compassionate leave to fly to China.
At the British Consulate in Shanghai his classmate, Billy Laidlaw, now a captain in the
army detachment stationed there to assist liberated internees, told him that his mother,
Tony, and Betty were up in Tientsin but that I was in Shanghai. Jocelyn asked Billy to
send signals of this good news to Jim Lambert and to Pat and Brian Power. He then found
me bunked down in a liberated prison camp awaiting passage out. When I told him that
Mother absolutely refused to leave China, he hopped a USAAF plane for Tientsin where
he convinced her to board the repatriation ship Highland Chieftain at Chinwangtao. I
joined the ship at Shanghai, and when she and Jocelyn and Tony and Betty and I arrived
in Hong Kong, there was Pat on the dockside waiting with open arms. Overjoyed by

19
Mother’s survival, he threw a grand party for us at the Peninsula Hotel. A few months
later she and Pat and Jocelyn and Tony and Betty and I were in England, staying at Joc-
elyn’s place at Eastbourne. No one had heard from Brian, not even after Jocelyn who had
kept in contact throughout the war and had sent him repeated messages about Mother’s
liberation. When we decided to visit Grannie D’Arc in Brighton, Mother asked Pat to try
his best to find Brian. He took the bull by the horns and cabled Brian’s CO telling him
that his mother who had recently been released from a Japanese prison camp was des-
perate to hear from him. That did the trick. Brian joined us in Brighton. The photograph
below shows the family (except for Jim Lambert in India) on that one and only day when
we were all together. Next day Brian departed and we were not to hear from him again
for a good number of years.

THE REAL BROTHER FAUST

The first mention Brian makes of Brother Faust, a teacher at St Louis College run by
the Marist Brothers, is that he was one of only two who attended our mother’s wedding.
Further mention concerns intimate discussions with our father Stephen in which the
good Brother accused the British controlled, Irish manned, Chinese Imperial Maritime
Customs Service of importing opium into China, and, with a wink and a nod, suggesting
that Stephen himself was involved in the illicit trade. And, concerning Stephen’s death in
Shanghai, Brian maintains that it was Brother Faust who reported it to the family BB1-85

20
BB2-87and that it was he who travelled down to Shanghai to represent the family at the
funeral, following which he brought back photographs of Stephen’s Celtic Cross.

The fact of the matter is that Brother Faust could never have known Stephen Power, for
he did not arrive in Tientsin until eight years after Stephen’s death. According to a his-
tory of his life by Brother Kenny Doheny, the last Brother Director of SLC in Tientsin,
and according also to St Francis Xavier’s Diamond Jubilee Souvenir Album published
in Shanghai in 1934, on Brother Faust’s arrival in China in 1895, he was assigned to
teach at St Francis Xavier’s College in Shanghai. There, he worked his way up the ladder
until in 1926, when the then Brother Director Antonin was promoted to Provincial of the
Marists, he took over as Brother Director of the college. In 1932, after serving two terms
as Brother Director of St Francis Xavier’s, he was transferred to Saint Louis College in
Tientsin.

THE REAL “MAD MAC”

Early in the book, Brian introduces the character “Mad Mac” as the best friend of his fa-
ther. BB1-53 BB2-51 And he goes on to say that the man lived alone, that he disappeared into
the interior for weeks on end, and that if he happened to be in Tientsin on New Year’s
Day, he always spent it at our home. And throughout of the book there is mention of his
imbibing in alcohol.

Expert piano tuner, Herbert George McKenzie, aka “Mad Mac”, that well known and
much liked Tientsin eccentric was a confirmed teetotaler. He and his wife Dorothy Wini-
fred aka “Mrs Mac” and their sons Ralling and Leslie were a close knit family of dour

21
Scottish Presbyterian stock. Below, we see Ralling and Leslie, both smartly dressed, at a
Union Church (Presbyterian, Methodist, Calvinist) picnic organized in 1930 by Eric Lid-
dell of Olympics fame.

Brian well knew that Mad Mac was very much a family man. His sons Ralling and Leslie
were classmates Pat’s and his at Tientsin Grammar School. For several years running,
they shared the same tent at the boys’ summer camp in Shanhaikuan. In the group photo
on Page 10, Ralling is second from the left and Leslie on the far right of the middle row.

By the time I was old enough to go to Shanhaikuan, war that had broken out between
warlords fighting for supremacy over that vital gateway to Manchuria, and the British
army camp was closed. But Peitaiho remained open to us. During the summers of 1934
and 1935 when we were staying at the Peaceful Hotel there, Mad Mac and his family oc-
cupied the adjacent unit to ours.

Back in Tientsin, our parents moved in different circles (Presbyterian vs Catholic?). I

never once saw Mad Mac in our house (our piano tuner was Russian), nor were we ever
invited to his at 42 Recreation Road.

22
THE REAL SERVANTS

Where it might seem incredible that Mother could afford servants on her meager sec-
retary’s salary, it should be remembered, and shamefully remembered, that servants
were paid a scandalous pittance. At 131 Meadows Road she had a Number One Boy
(the degrading term was used only between colonials) whose title in Chinese was the
more respectable Guan Shi di ─ Steward, but more often than not we would call him
by his name, Lu Yeh. Dignified in an ankle length gown, Lu was responsible for receiv-
ing guests, serving at the table, and passing on instructions to the other servants. Under
Lu Yeh was Number Two Boy, sometimes called Coolie whom we always addressed by
name Sung Ge Ge (elder brother Sung). He did the sweeping, mopping, dusting, carrying.

The kitchen was the domain of the Number One Cook whose grander Chinese title was
Da Shi Fu (Master Chef). His assistant, the Number Two Cook, Er Shi Fu, was really no
more than a scullion.

Then there was the Amah (a pijin English term whose Chinese equivalent might be
Bao Mu, nursemaid) responsible for the care of her employer’s infants and toddlers and
sometimes the household laundry and mending as well. Yang Nai Nai (nursemaid Yang)
was Pat’s amah. When she left, Mother found a replacement in the diminutive but tough
Southerner who had probably arrived in Tientsin as amah to some family from Hong
Kong. Only Mother addressed her by her surname (which I forget) with Nai Nai tacked
on. We addressed her by her title, Yi Jieh (Number One Sister).

When in 1930 we moved house, neither Lu Yeh nor Sung Ge Ge came with us, but Yi
Jieh did, and she brought alongwith her, her daughter-in-law whom we called Jieh Jieh
(older sister) but not her son Ah Chin. Our new Number One Cook was Wang whom
none of us would forget because a few years after leaving us he became the owner/opera-
tor of the Peaceful Hotel, noted for its high quality cuisine, at Peitaiho Beach. We stayed
there several summers running as did the Fleuriet family, the Hawkins, the Radcliffes,
and the McKenzies: Mad Mac, his wife Mrs Mac, and their sons Ralling and Leslie.

When we moved again in 1932, Mother, ever anxious over Betty after what happened
to Stephanie, assigned Yi Jieh a room of her own adjacent to Betty’s. Though not in our
employ, Yi Jieh’s son, Ah Chin, and daughter Ah Kwun, moved in with Jieh Jieh in the
servants’ quarters. And we had a new Number One Boy and Number Two Boy, the broth-
ers Hsiu Yueh Hsiang and Hsiu Gui Hsiang, both able to read and write, unlike Yi Jieh
and Jieh Jieh who were illiterate, as with the custom of the time when it was considered
unnecessary for females to read or write.

This remained our servants’ complement for the next five years during which time Jieh
Jieh whose main duties had been that of laundress and seamstress took on more of an
amah’s role as Yi Jieh’s sight began to fail. After Pat, Brian, and Jocelyn left for England,
20 Edinburgh became too big for us so we moved to a smaller place at 35 Sydney Road.
Hsiu Yueh Hsiang didn’t stay long and his brother Hsiu Gui Hsiang became Number One
Boy, and Ah Chin took over as cook.

23
The caption Brian gave for Photo 7 that appeared between pages 48 and 49 of the first
edition of his book, and on page 4 of the second edition, identifies the servants from left
to right as Ah Chin, Yi Jieh, Jieh Jieh, and Sung Ge Ge.

I took that photograph with my Baby Brownie in 1939, two years after we moved to Syd-
ney Road, and three years after Brian had left for England. On the left that certainly is Ah
Chin, very much alive despite Brian having stared at his corpse after he was run over by a
car. BB1-167 and BB2-180 Petulant and with ever an axe to grind, Ah Chin was given to Can-
tonese diatribes at the least provocation. If he had ever been the sickly opium addict as
Brian described, BB1-46 BB2-43 it would have shown in his physical appearance, and I only
knew him as a tough, sinewy fellow, ever wont to box our ears, as Tony and I could attest.
Next to him in the photo is his aged mother, Yi Jieh, who is obviously blind or close to it.
And next to her, her daughter-in-law, Jieh Jieh, a northerner, who proved most useful to
us interpreting Yi Jieh’s Cantonese. She was not with Ah Chin when he rejoined us after
our liberation from prison camp. She’d run off with a French family’s Number One Cook.
The man on the right is not Sung Ge Ge, who had left our employ nine years earlier, but
Hsiu Gui Hsiang, our Number Two Boy in 1932 and Number One in 1938. On Page 28
there is a signed photo of him taken about the same time as this one in question. When he
too called on us after our liberation in 1945, it was not to regain his job but to express his
joy at our survival. Amazingly, in 2007, the Secretary of Tianjin’s 20th Middle School,
on my behalf, tracked down Hsiu Gui Hsiang’s daughter who recognized her father in my
photographs of him and the amahs taken at our Sydney Road House.

CONCLUSION

With so much from Brian’s book drawn from the imagination, we have to conclude that
he meant it to be a dream, a fantasy, along the lines of Ballard’s Empire of the Sun. But
where Ballard was right up front calling his work a novel, Brian allowed his readers
to believe it was his real life story. A book reviewer was so convinced that he publicly
called Brian’s mother a glued-to-the-piano neurotic who was in terror of the Chinese.
Similarly taken in, both the Irish Times and Daily Telegraph call his book a memoir, thus
enshrining it as a true story. And so their reading public, who have no reason to believe
otherwise, accept the denigration of his mother as straight fact. Therefore, I fervently
hope this rebuttal will redeem her reputation by presenting her in her true light, which
was that of a loving mother who devoted a lifetime of sacrifice to her family.

Desmond Power
29 May, 2009.

24
 POSTSCRIPT

Though of less consequence, but to keep the record straight, here are some further points
where my brother and I differ.

Our amah Yi Jieh’s face was pock-marked. BB1-15 BB2-3.

She had a smooth unblemished face of brownish complexion.

Chinese, with the exception amahs, were not permitted in Victoria Park. BB1-20
BB2-10 Brian forgets our exciting game of “Tiger”, the name he himself gave to a long
gowned Chinese, one of many who frequented the park every day. We would creep up
behind this man and yell Tiger! Tiger! And he in mock fear for his life would let out such
screams of terror that we fled helter skelter through the park.

During her last year at the convent in Tsingtao, Grace wrote to tell her mother that she
wanted to become a nun. BB1-31 BB2-25.
I don’t ever remember Mother telling us this, but I do remember the family myth of her
engagement to an officer serving in the German cruiser Emden which belies any sugges-
tion of her wishing to enter a religious order.

Grace and Stephen were married in the French Concession at the Church of Notre Dame
des Victoires. BB1-33 BB2-27. They did marry in the French Concession, but at St Louis
Church on rue St Louis. Notre Dame des Victoires, standing outside the concession and
so without the protection of the French garrison, was the thrice built twice destroyed
cathedral, the scene of the infamous Tientsin Massacre of 1871.

25
Stephen was the twelfth born of Thomas and Margaret’s fifteen children, three of whom
died young, three went to America, three became nuns, three enlisted with the Royal
Navy, and two stayed in Ireland, one in Dublin and one in Querrin. BB1-50 BB2-47.
The Ennis Baptismal Records show that Stephen was the tenth of the thirteen surviving
offspring. (Twin boys born between Margaret and Michael lived only a few days.)
Five of their offspring chose to emigrate to America. Of these Mary and Catherine (aka
Kathleen) married well, raising thriving families in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Johanna, who had been a teacher’s assistant in Querrin, was the only sibling to join a
religious order when she took vows as a teaching nun in Alabama. Patrick, making use
of his boot making skills, found employment with a medical shoe manufacturer in Man-
chester, New Hampshire. Joseph in Chicago rose to the position of General President
of the International Association of Plasterers and Cement Masons. Two of Thomas and
Margaret’s offspring, John (better known as Jack) and Stephen went to China to join the
Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service. Two others, Margaret and Edmond, went to
a teachers’ college in London where on graduation they remained as teachers until retire-
ment. And one, James, made his life at sea with the Royal Navy which awarded him the
Distinguished Service Medal for his conduct under fire during WWI. He came out of re-
tirement at the start of WWII to help establish the Irish Naval Service in its present form.
Of the three who spent their working days in Ireland there was Michael, who after study-
ing in London for the British Civil Service examinations, was one of the thirty success-
ful candidates to gain a coveted vacancy out of the 700 who competed. He went on to be
appointed “Gauger” at the Customs and Excise Department in Galway where he settled.
And there was Anne, at a London school for nurses when Thomas (the father) died, who
sacrificed her career to return to Querrin to care for her mother. And finally, there was
Thomas (the son) who stayed on in Querrin to operate the family farm.

26
Sir Robert Hart, Inspector General of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, whom Ste-
phen Power met, preferred to recruit Irishmen for the service.BB1-51 BB2-49. Sir Robert
Hart, CMG, GCMG, KCMG, Bart, was on a plane with the uppermost levels of both the
Chinese and British governments when he retired from the service in 1908. If it had been
in his plans to recruit Irishmen to fill the ranks of the outdoor staff, then it was the only
failure of his supremely successful career. Irishmen represented only a tiny fraction of
Customs staff. Of the total complement of 114 of the joint Tientsin, Tanku, Taku office in
1930, only three were Irish. It was not Sir Robert who recruited Stephen into the Customs
but his brother Jack. Here is an extract from a letter Jack, a veteran of the service, sent in
1909 from China to his sister Margaret, teaching in London:

27
My father travelled out of town so frequently for the Customs that Pat and I hardly ever
saw him. BB1-49 BB2-87. They could never have known him when he was in the Customs, for
he had joined Sun Life of Canada in 1919 when Pat was three and Brian one.

We moved ( from Meadows Road) to our new house on Edinburgh Road opposite the Min
Yuan. BB1-139 and BB2-149. The move from 131 Meadows Road was to 102 Wellington Road.
The move to 20 Edinburgh Road occurred two years later.

Pat had blue eyes like his father BB1-49 BB2-46 . Not a single photo of Pat shows his eyes to
be blue. His widow Daphne remembers his eyes being brown. The portrait of him Brian
placed on page 191 of his book’s second edition shows up the dark colour of his eyes.

After a film show at Empire Theatre, soldiers would frequent bars and brothels in nearby
Dublin Road. BB1-104 BB2-109 Dublin Road, in a quiet residential area of the British Conces-
sion, ran alongside the Tientsin Grammar School, a Sikh Temple, and a Russian Orthodox
Church. The straight-laced British Municipal Council would never have allowed bars or
brothels to operate there.

For Photo 6, between pages 48 and 49 of the first edition of Brian’s book, gives the cap-
tion “Jieh Jieh with Pat.” It is, of course, Yang Nai Nai with Pat.

Brian calls Photo 13, between pages 144 and 145 of his first edition, “The Chapel of the
Jesuit College.” Chapel? It was a rather grand church with high altar and side chapels.
And strange that he fails to mention the significance of the occasion, or the identities of
his family who are present. The photo (from the family album) taken in 1938, two years
after he left China, marked the occasion of the First Communion of his half-brother Tony
and half-sister Betty In the left front pew are the amahs Yi Jieh, Jieh Jieh and Ah Kwun,
his brother Desmond, a boy unrelated, and Mrs and Mr Phillips (head of NAAFI at the
British barracks) for whom in his book Brian assigned the fictitious names of Mrs and
Captain O’Riordan. In the right front pew, the girl on the left is his half-sister Betty, and
the boy on the far right is his half-brother Tony. In the right second pew, the woman on
the left is his mother Grace, and the man on the far right his step-father, Jim Lambert.

28